American Civil War Game - "Action Front"

On Sunday I got in an American Civil War game against Joe D who has a really nice collection of 28mm figures for the war. All of the troops in the pictures are his except for the 114th PA which is mine. The figures are from Sash & Saber primarily with some being Old Glory, the buildings are from Old Glory, the roads are from JR, the fences are refinished Pegasus Hobbies fences, and the tree stands and hills were made by a few of the local guys.

We each ran a brigade of 4 regiments with an attached battery. Joe ran the Rebs and I ran the Union. Joe's brigade outnumbered mine, but he had a couple of "Fresh Fish" regiments and his battery was Veteran whereas my units were all Experianced. We used a set of rules being developed by Don E. who has a great ACW blog called "Action Front" http://actionfront.blogspot.com/

We hadn't played in a while so decided to march our troops on to get used to maneuvering again. Once we came to blows things turned to the Union advantage fairly quickly mostly due to Joe's decision to lead with a Fresh Fish regiment and his really poor dice rolling. All in all it was a fun game (helped because I won) and I am certain that Joe will be looking for a rematch soon!

The brigades march on...

The lines form...
Union infantry passes through the battery...

CHARGE!

A bloody repulse!

15mm Old Glory Mongols

Here are the 15mm Mongols that were painted by Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service (http://saguaropainting.blogspot.com/). Like the Medieval Russians in my previous post, Tim did a good job on these and I simply did touch-ups, some highlighting to my liking, and the basing (boy, am I glad the basing is over with...the trouble is I have a ton more to do!). The Mongols will be the heart of this army and the Russians will just compliment it as an allied contingent from time to time.

Mongol Heavy Cavalry & Generals

Mongol Light Cavalry

Allied Light Cavalry (Cuman figures)

All of these figures are Old Glory 15mm based on Litko bases. The allied Light Cavalry are Cumans and are suitable for a wide variety of armies. There are 24 stands of Mongol Heavy Cavalry, 30 stands of Mongol Light Cavalry, 12 stands of allied Light Cavalry and 3 Mongol General stands.

15mm Old Glory Medieval Russians

Several months ago I contracted with Tim K of Saguaro Painting Service (http://saguaropainting.blogspot.com/) to paint up a 15mm Mongol army with Russian Allies. Tim did a nice, quick job and the figures look the part of a battle tested force. Well...once I got them back, they just sat there...you see, in case I haven't said this before, I LOATHE basing figures!!!! I did start to work on them slowly and did some touch-ups and highlights, which is much easier than painting the entire figure (that's for sure). I finally got around to finishing up the basing this weekend, so here's the Russian allied contingent that will serve their Mongol overlords well (hopefully!).

Russian Heavy Cavalry Closeup

Russian Heavy Cavalry

Russian Heavy Infantry

Russian Archers

Russian Skirmishing Crossbowmen

All of these 15mm figures are from Old Glory and are mounted on Litko bases for the Might of Arms set of rules. I look forward to their first battle. There are 9 stands of Heavy Cavalry, 1 General, 9 stands of subheavy infantry, 9 stands of subheavy crossbowmen, 12 stands of light/medium bow & 6 stands of skirmishing crossbows.

28mm American Civil War - Samples

Well, I'm finally emarking on a project that I've really wanted to get to, 28mm American Civil War. My goal is to be able to do a refight of the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg on the upcoming anniversary. This will take a lot of figures, so with that in mind I painted up some samples to send off to a painting service to get painted. While doing this I realized a couple of things: one being the Union troops, though boring to paint, are very easy to paint due to the limited color pallet, and the other being that artillery crew for both sides are also easy to paint because they don't have a lot of equipment on them. As a result of this, I'm going to send over 200 Confederates and just one unit of Union infantry to get painted, and I'll paint the bulk of the Union and artillery crew myself.

So, here are some pictures of the samples I painted.

All of the models are from Sash and Saber which are very nice castings; very clean, with little if any flash and good detailing.

So with my decision to paint up the bulk of the Union and artillery crew, I've decided to send a fairly large 28mm Byzantine army off to get painted as well. I've recently started playing Clash of Empires and my interest in 28mm ancients has been sparked again.

More updates to follow as I work toward finishing up some projects and starting some new projects.

More 28mm Republican Romans

Well I finished up 48 28mm Republican Romans for Mike. These figures are from Crusader Miniatures and paint up nicely IMO. These are all sword armed figures; the next 48 will be armed with pila with the exception of the command figures.

I'm going to take a brief break from the Romans and work on some other things for a while. More updates to follow when I get stuff done!

15mm Late War German Panzer Company Finished

A while back I worked out a deal with Robert from the Drunken Samurai Painting Blog http://dspaintingblog.blogspot.com/ where he would paint up a Late War German Panzer Company for me in exchange for a bunch of dwarfs for Lord of the Rings. He did a great job in painting up the force and documenting it on his blog. I picked up the Germans last week and they look better in person than on the 'net. I look forward to getting them on the table. I did have one little piece of work to do on the army and that was to base up the infantry that he had painted for the Aufklarungs Platoon. Eventhough I hate basing because I find it so tedious at times (probably because I always seem to end up basing entire armies instead of just a few stands), I dove right into this because I wanted the force done. Below is the infantry for the force all finished!

This force consists of 10 PzKw IVh's, 3 Panthers, 2 Tiger I's, a 2 squad Aufklarungs Platoon and 3 SdKfz 10/5 AA halftracks. I will use it primarily for Flames of War but can use it for other rules as well.

I seem to be getting back into the groove when it comes to working on miniatures. I've almost completed 48 more Romans for Mike's army and I'm going to start work on basing some other stuff up and getting some samples painted so I can send some figures off to get painted; so stay tuned, hopefully the next update won't be far off.

"Throne of Skulls" Thoughts

Well, having attended my first GW "event", I have some observations and thoughts on my experiance.

Things I liked:

• Seeing and talking with players I've gotten to know at Gathering in the Desert


• Facing tough opponents


• The food; good catering


• Winning a random door prize of 3 Lord of the Rings "command" boxes


• The venue (Vegas!)

Things I didn't like:

• The fact that some guys played against each other in 2 out of the first 3 games and got a bonus point for it; there were enough armies (24) in the tournament to allow for no rematches on the first day of the tournament.


• Not having good vs. evil for the first round; again, there were almost enough armies from each "side" to allow for that in the first round. Instead it was Gondor vs. Gondor, Isengard vs. Isengard and Moria vs. Moria for some of the first round match-ups.


• The format. There were only wins, losses and draws; there were no "minor" or "major" category for either wins or losses. I guess I've been spoiled by the effort that Tim K goes through at GITD and other organizers that I've heard about at other Independant tournaments have taken to give players interesting yet challenging scenarios for LOTR.


• The scoring. It seemed kind of mysterious to me...no painting...no sportsmanship (just a single vote for the "favorite game" which was just weird IMO).


• The results/awards. Besides taking so long to give out the awards, I think that for being a "core" game, LOTR got shorted. For WHFB and 40k, each distinct army present that has an official codex had a best general award, even if there was only 1 or 2 armies from that faction participating. This didn't happen for LOTR with only a best "good" and a best "evil" general and a best overall given. It just doesn't seem consistent to me; the LOTR players traveled just like players from those other systems and should have been given the same consideration.

Things I'm undecided about:

• The terrain. The battle boards were nice as were the ruins, but I didn't like the tree bases or all of the fences...apparently there are abandoned farms throughout Middle Earth with random fences everywhere. Now I understand trying to make the terrain consistent for a tournament setting such as this, but again I guess I'm spoiled by the themed terrain Tim K puts out for GITD and that I know others also put a lot of effort into.


• The paint scoring. Two of the three armies that won awards for painting in LOTR were nice, but I felt there were a couple of others that were clearly nicer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

Other thoughts:

• If I qualify for next year's TOS, will I go to Memphis? If I had to decide right now, no I wouldn't go. The event wasn't bad, but I expected something more...this just was "eh"...ok. Now, when the time comes and if I had an opportunity to go, I probably would just to catch up with everyone and hope to get in some challenging games, but only time will tell on that.


• I'm not sure if I like 700 point games. Until this tournament I've only played at 350, 500 and 600 points. Out of those I honestly like 350 point games the best. I saw some of the games at 700 points end in draws because both players were at max model count and it took so long to deploy, move, shoot and fight that those armies couldn't hope to break an opponent in the alloted time. This point level also gives some players additional leeway to take even odder, more strangely configured (IMO) armies than at lower point levels. LOTR is a skirmish game and I've always felt that the forces on the table should reflect lower level battles from the books and not turn into min-max combinations where players cherry pick certain troop types and ally them with another certain troop type from another army just to win. I mean, why can't people try to win with common troops or troops from just one list? Isn't that more of a measure of how good of a player you are instead of spending hours figuring out great combinations from various lists that will be ultra-competative? Of course, this doesn't apply to all of the armies that were there...there were some very solidly themed armies, but there were several others that left me scratching my head.