A Return to the Table

 Well, 2020 is finally over and it is time to have a look back at the plans I wrote at the end of 2019 and to see how they worked out. Let me start with the easiest one to look at, my show list.  Basically, I made it to Hammerhead in March and that proved to be the only one that went ahead that I had planned to go to.  One good thing about that though was that my spend on figures and terrain is right down this year, especially with Baccus only opening for short periods.  So, what are the plans for 2021 well that is mainly going to be decided by what happens with COVID and the vaccine rollout, but as Hammerhead has already been pushed back until July I am figuring on going to mainly the shows in the second half of the year, which in addition to the rearranged Hammerhead show I will try to get to Joy of Six, Claymore, Fiasco, Border Reiver and Battleground shows, provided they go ahead that is. Next thing to sort out was the table, I was going to buy a folding table, b...

Back in the first lockdown I decided to give the scenarios in the Programmed Wargame Scenarios book a try.  I controlled the attacking Royalist force, whilst the defending Parliamentarian force would be controlled by the rules given in the scenario, I will be using the Twilight of Divine Right rules again as I really like them. So, the background to this hypothetical battle is as follows.  The year is 1643 and King Charles feels that it is time that he needs to retake London, so he marches the Oxford Army south east towards Henley on Thames, little does the King know though that his plans have been betrayed to Parliament and part of the London Trained Bands have been mustered and are moving to intercept the Kings army to delay them until Essex can bring his army into play. Just north of Henley the vanguard of the Kings army approach a vital road junction only to find that several London Trained Band regiments had got there first and deployed onto a ridge blocking the route th...

 Well, things can sometimes move incredibly quickly at times.  Within a week of posting my last blog post, where I mentioned we were looking at downsizing, we were accepting the keys for a new property.  We have moved from a three bedroom house  into a two bedroom apartment, which suits my wife and her medical needs much better.  But, it does mean that I have lost the gaming and painting room, at least until eldest son decides to move out.  Fortunately, the painting station, figure cases and boxes of terrain have all managed to find a home in the main bedroom until they can move to their permanent home. On the subject of painting, this weekend I picked up the brush for the first time in over a month to carry on painting some French Line and Light infantry.  After this I only have a couple more infantry bases to go then I have fourteen cavalry bases and six artillery bases to do to complete the Army of the South.  I am hoping to get them all done b...

 Well, again several months have flown by without me giving any sort of update as to how things have gone.  But, in my defence I have been a bit busy painting and reorganising things.  First things first though, my purchases.  I decided to take the plunge and pick up the Jutland fleets from Navwar and they will make a nice future project, probably 2022 the rate I am going.  On the English Civil War project, I now have all the figures needed to create the musketeer and pike only regiments and they are planned to be next on the painting desk after the the current batch of French Napoleonic troops are finished.  On the subject of the Napoleonic project, I also picked up some packs of Spanish figures to add to the British forces at some point.  Apart from figures, I have been busy buying up several sets of Renaissance rules including a set I loved back in the 1980's, the 5th edition of Tercio which I picked up when I had 15mm French Catholic and Huguenot a...

This weekend should bring to an end the painting of the Peninsula War British for now.  I have managed to paint forty three foot regiments (thirty nine out of the fifty one foot regiments for the Peninsula, the missing twelve are all from the Left Centre Column).  Twenty cavalry regiments (including all seventeen British cavalry regiments for the Peninsula)  Eight out of the twelve RA/KGL/RHA batteries for the Peninsula are done.  Finally, four bases of Commanders have been done. So, that just leaves the Portuguese, Spanish and a few more artillery batteries to do, all of which I will tackle in a couple of months time.   So, what am I going to do to fill my painting time with, I guess the obvious answer is to begin doing the French that I need.  I will begin with the Army of the South under Gazan, comprising thirteen line, five light regiments of infantry, ten dragoon, three chasseur a cheval, a single hussar regiment and finally eight batteries of eit...

Here we are at the start of June and things have progressed quite well with the British Peninsula army, mainly because my wife was hospitalized (non-COVID related) at the start of the month for nearly a week, fortunately she is well enough now.  Though I do think it was all a ploy to get out of giving me a return game and a chance to even the score. The infantry were put on hold a couple of weeks ago as I was awaiting some new flags from Maverick Models, typically for me, I had the figures for several line infantry battalions but no flags and flags for some light infantry but no figures, so, I decided to make a start on doing the cavalry and that is where I hit the first snag.  I had originally planned to have either twelve or sixteen figures per base, as I could get eighteen in two ranks on one of my ECW bases.  Of course I had forgotten about the regimental name strip that I am putting on the back of all the bases and that meant that I couldn't get the two ranks on the ...

Well, we are now at the end of April and things have been progressing quite quickly on the painting front.  There are now a total of twenty six British infantry stands completed and they look really quite good, I have been using a different flock on the bases compared to the ECW bases I did as it adds a colour variation into the bases.  Also, I have started to uses some static grass tufts from  Boon Town Metals which look great.  My painting still isn't too brilliant, but I am still happy with how the figures are turning out, I am also sticking by the flags from  Maverick Models who managed to resize the flags from the order I placed up to 9mm to make them the same size as the flags from Baccus, so I am in the process of replacing the generic Baccus flags with the proper regimental flags from Maverick. Here are two of the most recent battalions to be finished; 7th Royal Fusiliers 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers So, in addition to painting figures ...