All Quiet On The Gaming Front

Well it's not entirely true that it's been all quiet on the gaming front of late, but it has been rather sporadic and somewhat disjointed, for the usual real life reasons of being a parent carer that I won't bore you with! So without further ado what has been happening chez moi:

Ancient & Medieval Wargaming

My regular followers will know that over the years I have tried to get into ancients and medieval gaming, but to no avail. Something has never quit clicked, whether it be the rules, figures, periods etc. But a few weeks ago a post on The Wargames Website mentioned Matakashi's Tea House , a site that I had not looked at for years. Whilst browsing and I highly recommend you do if you have some time, I stumbled across the following post.

Well this immediately struck a chord with my interest in the Warhammer Empire milieu that I used to enjoy way back in the day. The whole look of the Army I just loved and fitted in with some units I had already based up a few years ago and then as is my want, nothing happened with them. 

So with the visual look sorted as it were, my mind turned to what rules I could use for some decent battle on a 4' x 4' table or smaller? It's fair to say that I have bought quite a few over the years for ancient and medieval games, but none really grabbed me as mentioned at the start. Lion Rampant is a favourite though so I tried out some simple games, but for me although they worked really well for skirmish games (no surprise there then as that's what they're designed for) they didn't scale up well. Neil Thomas's Ancients & Medieval rules i've used before and although not a bad set of rules, the lack of C&C was and has always been a big issue with me.

Then I saw that Warlord Games were releasing Hail Caesar II, which piqued my interest. These days commonality of rules is really important to me as well as the ability to play fun and challenging solo games. I feel like an old dog that is too old to learn new rules, so HCII really appealed to me. After some mulling things over for a week or so in the end I decided to pre-order them, given that they have now extended the period to include the Hundred Years War as well as The War of the Roses, both of which fit in nicely with the above Religious Fanatics inspiration that kicked this all off. 

Now I just have to await the release of the rules and then hope that the Royal Mail deign to deliver them to me! 

Terrain

As you know, I still love making terrain, more so than in fact painting toy soldiers. I don't always have the time nor the motivation for the latter, but can often find time to fit in some of the former. This was the case recently when I finally completed some Russian buildings from Battlescale Wargames Buildings. These had been primed for ages and then the Muse was upon to finished them, which I grealty enjoyed. The detail on these 6mm buildings is superb and they come highly recommended.

Painting

As alluded to above, the painting mojo has been somewhat lacking of late. However with a forth coming game planned, I finally got around to finishing off some WWII German AFV's that had sat basecoated for an embarassinly long time! My skay arm made painting these more difficult that I first thought, but they look fine when on the games table. In the future I will not make the camo scheme so dense to make it easier to paint for me.

Just a comparison shot to show how big the Russian T-35 take was, as when you see a Tiger II at Bovington, that really is a Big Beast. As you can see the T-35 is bigger (or well onger to be more precise!).

BKCII Battle

I had planned on getting more games in in November, but that fell by the wayside due to the aforementioned real life issues. Still plenty of ideas were being mulled over and in the end I settled upon a BKCII game based upon a classic Featherstone scenario. This was finally played a few days ago and the AAR will follow in due course.

Reveille Wargames Show

The last Sunday in November has traditionally been when our local wargames show, Reveille, is held at in Bristol. Covid had meant that it hat been held for 3 years so it was nice to be able to attend once again. Even though it is mainly a 28mm show and with traders around that 'scale', I still try and support it as it would be a shame to see it disappear. 

The show was busy, even though a few of the usual traders were not there, a sign of the times of them cutting back on the shows that they attend. Still it was very well attended, to the point that it was too crowded to take any photos due to the small spaces between the table and traders. There were some nice games on show, even some that were not 28mm!, with the recently released 'Never Mind The Billhooks' game being particularly popular. 

For once there was nothing there that piqued my interest on the purchases front, but the fickle nature of wargaming meant that I could have bought a brand new copy of 'Rules of Engagement' from Great Escape Games for just £3.00! 10 years ago or maybe a bit more these rules were really, really popular. I imagine they, like many rulesets, were replaced by the latest shiny new offerings, namely Chain of Command and Bolt Action. A topic for another post maybe?

Xenos Rampant

I knew that Dan Mersey had planned upon releasing a Sci-Fin version of his 'Rampant' ruleset, but was unaware that anything had happened until I saw a few posts on various Blogs about Xenos Rampant. Whilst Sci-Fi is not really my thing, I do like the idea of some HG Wells type action set in the late 19thC. In fact many moons ago I did collect some plastic kits for this very purpose, but nothing ever progressed after they were assembled. However I did ponder whether to buy these rules to re-visit these ideas, but decided against it for the present, given that I have more than enough projects on the go as it is.

With Xmas suddenly upon us I'm not sure how much more I'll get done in the next few weeks, but maybe the odd game and some painting would be nice. First up though I need to compile the AAR of my recent game. So until then, stay safe and keep healthy!