Hasta la vista!

Well I'm flying out for Los Angeles first thing in the morning, so I won't be posting on the blog much over the next few weeks.  It's possible that I will get the chance to post something while I'm away, though I won't be doing anything related to wargaming other than thinking idly!

We've got two days in LA, during which the lovely A intends to hug a few cartoon characters, before picking up my brother and his girlfriend from the airport and driving to Las Vegas.  We're heading there to a wedding of a highschool friend of mine, and will be there a week.  There will be some pretty epic piss-ups there I'd say - it's not every day you get to have a stag do in Vegas after all!  We'll be doing all of the usual things, including a token bit of gambling (I'm not a gambler), a trip out to the grand canyon, and going to a show of Cirque du Soleil.  Should be fun!  I'm just really looking forward to some time off work and being able to relax and blow some money without a conscience.  I've been saving for quite a while for this trip so have really been skimping.  It'll be a relief to just let loose.  Fortunately I'll be getting paid while I'm away (this working thing rocks - paid annual leave!) and the back pay for this year's pay review will also be deposited into my bank account while I'm away.  I'll be coming back more flush than when I leave!  Not a bad place to start with some purchases for my wargames table eh?!

So after Las Vegas we're flying to Oaxaca for 4 days (splitting off from my brother and his girlfriend who are spending some time in Mexico City).  We're doing a cooking course with a local chef and will hopefully make it out to see some of the local artisans.  After that the girls are heading home and my brother and I are heading to the coast to a place called San Agustinillo on the Pacific coast.  I gather it's relatively secluded and totally relaxing!  Should be a nice change of pace before we get on the long flight back to New Zealand.

Anyway, back to wargaming.  Not too much has been happening, though I have made a bit of progress over the last week.  I've started basing my mortar platoon. I've built up the bases with a polyfilla product, glued grit on top of that and sealed the grit on with another coat of watered down PVA.  Now that the PVA has dried (and when I'm back from holiday) I'll brush undercoat it with primer, apply a base coat or two of green ochre, and dry brush light flesh over the top (see Garth's photographs below for the effect of this paint scheme - I rather like it).  I've got various flocks, static grasses and shrubbery to apply to finish it off.

I've also started cleaning my first Commonwealth Platoon.  Sadly I didn't meet my goal of having the whole platoon primed before I leave - I've just been too busy!  I have really got back into the bug over the last week and I guess the opportunity to do some more painting is something to look forward to for when I get back from my holiday.

I've made a few more purchases towards my NZ rifle company over the last few weeks.  My 2nd and 3rd Commonwealth Rifle Platoons arrived, along with a pack of snipers.  I've subsequently ordered and received a blister of Royal Engineers (with the intention of incorporating them with the sticky bomb figures from the commonwealth platoon to form the company pioneer section) and another pack of PIATS.  I should have enough to really flesh out the infantry part of my company as well as some of the optional choices.

In other news, in a moment of weakness I went and ordered Infinity: Human Sphere while Maelstrom still had it in stock.  It arrived about a week later which is pretty impressive!  I haven't had the chance to look at it yet; it's now waiting for when I return from holiday, after which I'm heading straight to Wellington for a work seminar - perhaps I'll take it on the plane.

The only thing I'm waiting for now is my order from Warhammer Historical.  Garth's has arrived; hopefully mine hasn't gone astray.

Anyway, I'd better go and get a bit of sleep before the long flight tomorrow.  I've just returned from a dinner at a great Japanese restaurant, complete with Sake - so I've got a bit of a glow on so I probably need the sleep, and a bit of hydration!

Take care guys, cheers!

Despatches

It's about time that I reported on my wargaming goings-on.  I've had a busy few weeks around work and trip planning.  Unfortunately my painting output has been very low; I hope to remedy that and get at least something done before I head on holiday in two weeks!  So what have I been up to?

I've been acquiring the necessary materials for basing my mortar platoon for flames of war.  This has meant purchasing various types of basing grit and flock from Waylands, as well as grabbing more mundane items such as PVA glue and Selley's "filla".  Now it's just a matter of plucking up my courage and having a go at it; having not used the filla material before I'm a wee bit nervous about how easy it will be to apply and fearful about ruining the miniatures.  Probably nothing to worry about!

I made some progress with my read-through of Waterloo over the weekend (though not much).  So far I'm finding it very easy to follow.  It's got enough of the Warhammer mechanics to make it familiar while at the same time being very reflective of the period.  Definitely a bit less of a mouthful than General de Brigade to begin with, and I look forward to trying the rules out.  I'll post some more detailed thoughts when I've finished my read through; though my comments won't be of much value in respect of its worth as a ruleset given my relative inexperience!

The courier man has been busy on my behalf over the last two weeks.  The Flames of War supplement "Hellfire and Back" for early-mid war Africa/Mediterranean has arrived, and I must say I'm very impressed with the quality of the book.  It is beautifully hard bound and not much smaller than the Flames of War core rulebook, which is a bit of a beast in itself.  I haven't really taken too much time to look into it yet as it won't be providing the list for my first Flames of War army (I'm going late war Cassino for that).  I think the book will provide the list for my second army though - either an adaption of my late war kiwis into early war Div Cav, or a British Armoured Squadron for the desert.

The first of the Commonwealth Infantry platoons I ordered from Wayland Games has arrived, with two more and a sniper blister still on the way.  I haven't done anything more than unpack them and arrange them into their stands.  I'm very happy with the sculpts; they're very dynamic and characterful, and I'm glad that I decided to go with them over the late war Rifle Company miniatures.  I've been playing around a lot with the list on Easyarmy.com, and I'm just not sure what else I'm going to take.  This is the difficulty in not having played any games yet (well, no proper games) and not having a firm idea as to the relative strengths of different units.  At the moment I'm thinking of keeping things fairly balanced, with some mortars, HMGs, AT guns, artillery, recon (armoured cars or carriers - I'm quite enamoured of the Staghound) and an Armoured Platoon of Shermans.  I'm a bit worried that this is spreading things a bit thin though.  I think I'll get this army together, run it, and then make changes accordingly.  That way I'll have the full range of options right from the get go and so will have plenty of flexibility.

My order of Infinity from Maelstrom Games has also finally arrived!  It appears that the parcel was missent to Vancouver.  Not sure how Vancouver could have been confused with the Maori name of my home town or with New Zealand; I'm just glad it got here!  It'd taken quite some time for the items to get back in stock with Maelstrom, and when they shipped Garth's order of Nomads shipped at the same time.  His arrived 2-3 weeks ago, and I've been watching the post anxiously ever since.  I've taken a look at the miniatures but little else.  Once again I'm impressed with the level of detail and the dynamic poses of the miniatures "in the flesh".  I don't think I'll get to painting these in a hurry as I'm trying to prioritise my Flames of War so that I've got something on the table to game with.  The temptation might get me over the summer though, we'll see.  I've had a private message from a kiwi on the Infinity Community Forums about having Infinity at the next Battlecry.  Sadly I'm unlikely to be in the position to play in time for the tournament, but I'd very much like to attend just to take a look at Infinity in action as well as seeing the other games that people play.  I've had very little exposure to other gamers yet other than Garth given where I live, so I'd definitely like to take the opportunity to "get out".

I've also been caught out by a 50% off sale at the Warhammer-Historical website!  The sale popped up just after I'd bought the Waterloo book for $80.00.  Typical!  I couldn't really resist though, and picked up Trafalgar, Warmaster Ancients and Warmaster Ancient Battles all for half price.  Garth picked up copies of Waterloo and Legends of the Old West (he's since gone and bought some Black Scorpion miniatures - they look cool!).  I bought Trafalgar because I'm a sucker for the period and because Garth already has a copy.  We're pretty keen to give the game a go in the future, though it will be a while before it makes it's way to the top of our priority list for miniatures.  I bought Warmaster Ancients because I'm in love with half a hundred historical periods and I really doubt my ability and attention span as far as painting them all in 28mm goes!  Hopefully at some stage in the future Garth and I will be able to branch out into some 6-10mm wargaming.  I'd love to do War of the Roses to begin with!

Garth is looking at Legends of the Old West as a campaign skirmish game to replace his old love Mordheim.  We played a lot of the game in high school; sadly we let all of our miniatures and the original terrain go.  I remember enjoying the system a lot, though we did think that there were some limitations to the rules.  I like the idea of getting back into this kind of "progressive campaign" skirmish gaming, though.  To this end I went back to the Warhammer-Historical store a few days later to consider purchasing the rules; sadly they were only taking phone orders for them as they'd largely sold out.  Oh well.  I'm not sure I needed to buy another rule book - I've comprehensively failed in my resolution not to purchase any more!

So what else is on the cards?  No more miniature purchases, for a start!  Garth and I are planning on picking up a bit of terrain for Flames of War when I get back from holiday in mid-November.  I should come home with plenty of change, so I'm going to divert a wee bit of it towards a gaming mat (I'm thinking from theterrainguy.com) and some pre-made terrain.  That will give us the foundation of the board, and we can work on making anything else we need from there.  Given my slackness with painting over the last 2-3 weeks (I've just been exhausted after work and weekends have been busy) I've decided to set myself a realistic goal for the two weeks before I go away.  I'm going to base my mortar platoon and have them finished, as well as clean and prime my Commonwealth Platoon ready for painting when I get back.  This is a little bit of work, but shouldn't get in the way of my trip preparations.

Speaking of priming, and as a closing note, I popped into one of Games Workshop's Auckland mall stores a few weekends ago to pick up a spray can of black primer (unfortunately no one will ship these to me, and I don't often get the chance to go wargames shopping in person).  While the lovely A stood outside and stared in horror, I negotiated my way through the melee and managed to reach the counter.  I sympathise with A, I really can't stand those stores and couldn't even when I used to play Warhammer/40k.  I think it's something to do with the concentrated teenage enthusiasm.  Anyway, when I was going through the motions of paying $30 for a can of black primer (when did things get this expensive?) I had a yarn to the GW staffer and he was a really nice guy.  We talked about the Waterloo book that had just been released (I think I sold it to him, haha!) as well as a wee chat about Warhammer-Historical's Kampfgruppe Normandy rules (he tried to sell these to me as an alternative to Flames of War for the WWII period - failed).  It goes to show that while I'm not at all a fan of the company, they do employ some nice people!

A few musings on the New Zealand Division

Just a few quick thoughts while I'm waiting on my dinner to cook.  My first awareness of the battle for Crete was through a painting that hung in my highschool library.  I think that it had been donated by the RSA (Returned Services Association) and I expect that it was a print, though it may very well have been the original.  The painting depicted troops from the New Zealand Division fighting off the descending Fallschirmjager.  I enjoyed that painting very much; I always get a little bit moist-eyed when I think about how magnificently brave all of those who participated in the war were, but I also think that my appreciation for the painting was also because it displayed New Zealand's place in history.  It's hard not to feel sometimes that we are so very far away from the important things that are going on!  Not a particularly forgiveable feeling given that I am well aware of New Zealand's history, and that I have an undergraduate degree in History!  I couldn't find any images of the painting online, I'll do some further digging and try and post one if I can.

Back to the basing for my Commonwealth Infantry, if I am to model them taking cover behind rock formations, then I'd also like to model a little bit of battlefield detritus along with them - perhaps some ammunition boxes, water bottles, discarded magazines, et cetera.  I haven't done any research into any miniature lines for these things yet, but I expect that there will be something along those lines being sold somewhere!

Garth and I have been exchanging a wee bit of banter while we've been planning our forces for Flames of War.  He thought that I should model flames onto my Churchill tanks to save time and hassle during our games.  My delighted riposte was that he should probably model his Fallschirmjager hanging from trees!

In other news, my copy of Hellfire and Back has shipped, as have a few other things.  I'll post an update and perhaps an unboxing when they arrive!


Cheers!

Commonwealth Infantry

Well I've made a decision in respect of my British infantry dilemma for Flames of War, largely due to seeing the pictures of LintMan's Commonwealth Infantry over at lintmanswarblog.blogspot.com.  I ordered a blister of the Commonwealth Infantry today, and will be using them for my Mediterranean British/New Zealand Infantry.  The plan is to save the Rifle Company Box for a Turning Tide company later on in the piece.  Garth impulsed purchased a Panzer Lehr box (cheap, it must be said) a while back, so it'll be nice to have something to face him with, though I imagine I'll get sick of painting infantry!  I've also got the Hellfire and Back book on order.  In the meantime, I'll finish off my British (Italy) Mortar Platoon and get to work on my British (Italy) Machine-gun Platoon.

Lintman's photographs have motivated me to consider doing some kind of scenic basing.  What I'd like to do is base the infantry on quite rocky terrain, for them to take cover behind, with patches of arid grass and the odd olive tree.  I've got a vision on what I'd like it to look like, it'll just depend whether I can find the right trees to go with it, or manage to whip them together myself.  If anyone knows of any such products please get in touch!

I've been looking at pictures of Cretan landscapes so as to get a feel for what the terrain is like (I'm hoping that the basing will pass for Italy, Crete and Greece).  I'd like to use somewhat spindly and asymmetrical trees to try and capture the look from the pictures above.  I get the feeling that slightly wind-swept trees (in one direction or another) might be easier to position on the bases as well.

From these next two photos I can see that there is some variation in colour in the shrubs and foliage.  To recreate this I might a greater mix of shades of static grass/flock.  The photo below shows that Cassino may be more lush (though this may depend on the season, this isn't exactly thorough research), though I think I can probably get away with a slightly more arid Italy (and the photographs from the war may not show a whole lot of forestation).

Cheers!

Infinity reinforcements and a British mispurchase

Well it seems that Infinity products are back in stock at Maelstrom, as my last two orders have been combined and shipped after a delay of three weeks.  I wasn't at all worried as I have plenty to do in the painting department, though it's always nice to have a reason to check the mail in the morning.  Damned addictive internet purchasing.

Djanbazan with Heavy Machinegun

So a fair few Haqqislam reinforcements are winging their way towards me as I speak.  Once this order has deployed I'll have the following miniatures:

• 3x Ghulam with Rifle and Light Shotgun;
• 1x Jannissaire with AP Rifle;
• 1x Naffatun with Rifle and Light Flamethrower;
• 1x Hunzakut with Sniper Rifle;
• 2x Naffatun with Rifle and Heavy Flamethrower;
• 1x Djanbazan with Sniper Rifle; and
• 1x Djanbazan with Heavy Machinegun.

Naffatun with Heavy Flamethrower

As a "WYSIWYG" list without any proxying, this comes to the following:

 HAQQISLAM

──────────────────

 GROUP 1 (Regs: 9/Irrs: 1):

  GHULAM Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (13)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

    Lieutenant

  2x GHULAM Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (13)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  NAFFATÛN Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (10)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  2x NAFFATÛN Rifle + Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (12)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  HUNZAKUT  Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (25 | 0.5)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:12  WIP:14  ARM:0  BTS:0  W:1  

    Irregular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

    CH: Camouflage, Infiltration, Deployable Repeater

  JANISSARY AP Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, CCW (45)

    MOV:4-2  CC:15  BS:13  PH:14  WIP:14  ARM:4  BTS:-3  W:2  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

    Religious Troop

  DJANBAZAN Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW (33 | 1)

    MOV:4-2  CC:14  BS:12  PH:11  WIP:14  ARM:2  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube

    Multiterrain, Regeneration, Multispectral Visor L2

  DJANBAZAN HMG / Pistol, CCW (36 | 1.5)

    MOV:4-2  CC:14  BS:12  PH:11  WIP:14  ARM:2  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube

    Multiterrain, Regeneration, Multispectral Visor L2

 212 Points | SWC: 3

ARMY CODE: eNozMVQ1VbNQM6wxVTOAk4ZQ0hBBWkIoE4iMoZoRhAJCAOWYDnw=

Army Infinity v.3.0. - http://www.devilteam.com

Hassassin Fiday

I'm unlikely to play a game at 212 points and I want a little more flexibility in my  options for 200 points, so I think the above will give me plenty of options to try out for 150 points, which is the limit that Garth and I are looking at starting with.  I'm not really interested in fielding a Hunzakut with Sniper Rifle as I'd much prefer to go with the Light Grenade Launcher option which will be a proxy.  I also have little interest in fielding a Naffatun with Light Flamethrower as I'm told they're much less effective than a Heavy Flamethrower at a small increase in points cost.  However, it is a 10 point miniature that I could slot in as an afterthought if I have 10 points leftover sometime.  Its also a nice model, and I'd be comfortable proxying it for a Heavy and using it.

Hassassin Lasiq

As for additions from here, I'd like to add a Muyib with Light Grenade Launcher (for a regular replacement for the Hunzakut, with higher BS), a Fiday for the brilliantly nonchalant pose and the potential for some close combat fun, and a Lasiq for the great sculpt and the supposedly deadly Viral Sniper Rifle.  I will also pick up the Khawarij miniature as I absolutely love it; I understand that it isn't particularly effective in the game at the moment, but I'm willing to give it a try purely because of the aesthetics and the fluff behind them.

It will be quite some time before Garth and I manage to get some Infinity on the table; I doubt we'll have had a full game by the end of February judging by the way I've been going with getting my Flames of War army painted (though I'd like to try out the rules mechanics with unpainted miniatures and slapped together terrain much sooner than that).  It's not just the painting though, it'll take me quite some time to get sufficient terrain together.  I'm also a little worried about the quality of my painting when applied to such lovely sculpts; I very much want to do them justice, so I'd like to get this 15mm Flames of War army under my belt, and hopefully some other 28mm figures, before I slap anything onto these miniatures.  I'd be grateful if anyone could point me towards some painting tutorial resources!  I'd like to carefully plan how I'm going to paint my Haqqislam miniatures.

As for the other half of the title, I fear that I may have made a bit of a misjudgement in my Flames of War purchases.  You see, I ordered the British Late War Rifle Company box and the Royal Artillery Battery box as the basis for my British Rifles force in the Italian theatre for Cassino or Fortress Europe.  However, the Rifle Company sculpts really are intended for Normandy/France rather than for Italy.  Indeed, Battlefront do produce British infantry for the Italian theatre in blister.  I was prepared to paint them in the Italy colour-scheme and just live with it; however, given that Battlefront has announced the release of the book "Burning Empires" covering the early to mid war periods in the Mediterranean, I think that this theatre will become the main focus for Garth and I in Flames of War, so I'd like for things to look right.  I will be patient, though.  On the off chance that Battlefront will release new sculpts in support of this book, I'll paint my British (Italy) MG Platoon next and hold off on making a decision on the late war company box.

The Games of War website has the following product for the Burning Empires book:

Burning Empires, The Battle for The Mediterranean, is a 184 page hardback book that includes:

• The history of the Early War battles in Greece, Crete and Syria;
• Italian Briefing: Fucileri, Blackshirt and Alpini forces;
• Greek Briefings: Mechanised Battalion and Infantry Company;
• German Briefings: SS, Gebirgsjager, Fallschirmjager and Luftlandesturm forces;
• French Briefing: Infantry force playable as either pro-Axis Vichy or pro-Allied Free French;
• Rules for Airbourne Assaults;
• British, Italian, French, German and American Raiding and Garrison Forces for Early and Mid War raiding battles;
• Four Raiding Missions and the Seize Outpost Mission, featuring the new Desert Fort; and
• Painting Guides and inspirational colour photographs.

I'm pretty excited!  I'll go into the reasons for my interest in this theatre in a future post, but suffice to say both Garth and I are very keen to take a look at this book, and fortunately it ought to pit my British/Commonwealth Infantry against his Fallschirmjager again!

In addition to this blog, I'm also considering starting up a google group for our gaming group so that we have somewhere that we can keep each other apprised of progress, have a yarn, and organise ourselves for games.    If anyone has experience with using google groups and has any comment as to whether this might be worthwhile, I'd appreciate a chat!

Lastly, you'll note that I've been a little bit more creative with the placement of pictures in this blog post.  With the consequence that some of the picture margins aren't quite right and are encroaching onto the text.  If anyone knows an easy way of fixing this, please let me know!  I'm new to blogging (indeed, I'm new to anything but reading webpages), so I'm willing to take all of the help that I can get!

Cheers!

Painting progress and reconnoiterring the old boot

Well it seems that I made a bit of a boo-boo and the 30 strong mortar platoon of been grinding my way through is actually a fair bit less strong.  I checked the unit composition in the Cassino and Fortress Europe books today and my two-section mortar platoon blister pack has a total of 19 wee men.  The error stems from Garth and I proxying flames of war miniatures for moderns when we were having our first run through of the Force on Force rules.  Stupidly, I must have put the HQ blister and Mortar blister all back in the same bag.  I'm not particularly worried about it, and to be honest I feel like I've made a lot more progress with my painting now!  I wasn't intending to use the HQ blister as I have other miniatures for it.  It's also opened up the possibility of using the light mortars from the HQ blister as the third mortar section in my mortar platoon.  I'm in no hurry to use a third section yet, but the option is there (if you can comment on the appropriateness of using the light mortars in this way - they're slightly more slender - please do let me know).  

Once I've made the finishing touches to the 12 figures I started on the weekend it'll be time to move on to my first lot of basing.  I've obtained various shades of static grass (green, parched, dead/winter) and some medium basing grit of Gale Force 9 origins.  The next step will be to obtain some kind of filler to build up the bases with. If any of you kiwis have any product advice in this regard I would be very grateful!  The scheme that Garth has used for his bases so far (he's a fair bit ahead of me in painting) is a base of green ochre with a heavy dry-brush of the palest flesh tone on top.  Bearing in mind that this is for the Italian theatre, I'd also appreciate advice on base colour schemes or any sneaky tricks you've learned along the way!  Hopefully the basing that Garth has completed isn't too premature, given that we've yet to build our board.  I would like for my basing scheme to be consistent with his.

I'm going on a holiday to Vegas and Mexico in late October - early November so my funds will be fairly tied up until I get back.  I expect to have a fair bit of cash left over (with a couple of pay packets arriving with my bank while I'm away - the novelty of this pay thing really doesn't wear off!), so we're planning on making a start with our terrain board for Flames of War.  We've earmarked the following purchases:

• A 6'x4' "Brown-Green" gaming mat from theterrainguy.  Described as a heavy duty flocked game mat, canvas based and rubber coated with permanent flocking embedded in the rubber.  I've read very good reviews of this product on TMP.  The "brown-green" option (picture below) should be suitable for a semi-arid Italy.  Alternatively we could go for the "Dryland" mat which is much more brown than green.  We will have a think about how arid Italy actually is, and go from there (an advantage being it might be usable for the Desert also).

The "Brown-Green" gaming mat

• The Battlefield in a Box - River from Flames of War.  This box comes with 5x 30cm river sections, 2x 30cm river sections with fords, 1x wooden bridge and 1x stone bridge.  We should be able to get a hold of one at a price substantially lower than that on the Flames of War store.

Battlefield in a Box - Rivers

• The Battlefield in a Box - Rural Roads from Flames of War.  This box comes with 6x road sections (I'm not entirely sure of the section lengths, Garth has this stuff noted down).  We may get two of these so as to get sufficient road sections for a 6'x4' board.

Battlefield in a Box - Rural Roads

• The Battlefield in a Box - Italian Monastery from Gale Force 9.  This is reasonably priced and versatile, and we hope will provide a good objective on our gaming board!

Italian Monastery

• Italian Buildings from Games of War.  These haven't been released yet, but going by the prices for other such products on their website, they will be very affordable!
• Hills: for this we'll make our own out of some kind of polystyrene.  

And there we have it!  I think that these will make a pretty solid start to our gaming table.  Now, we could probably make many of these things ourselves, but as I have stated in an earlier post our aim is to have painted armies ready to go as soon as possible.  We're willing to fork out a bit of cash to get a playable table up and running in short order; I expect I'll be exhausted by the time I've finished painting the little men!

That said, we are very willing to take advice.  So if you have any product recommendations or comments as to how we could do things differently, please let us know!

Mustering the smart way

My life has changed a lot since I last took a look at wargaming; as a school kid I had plenty of time for painting, list building and playing, even around lessons and sport after school and on weekends (it helped that almost all of my gaming buddies were in the same football team!).  I even think that time moves slower the younger you are, perhaps something to do with the distance you are from the ground and the effect of gravity.  This theory is probably easily disproved given that I'm still the 5'6" I was 10 years ago!  

Fast-forward to 2011 and I have an 8-5 job (with roughly 40mins commuting each day), two football trainings a week for about 8 months of the year, a football game each Saturday afternoon (generally requiring from midday to 6pm) and a trip up to Auckland to spend time with my much better half.  With football and late nights, and an hour and a half drive back from Auckland on Monday mornings before work, I'm often too tired even within my time constraints to devote much time to painting or the idea of wargaming.

Thankfully, my HTC Desire HD smart phone has come to the rescue!  Having a smart phone has really changed the way in which I interact with technology, though I confess with both positive and negative consequences.  I do practically all of my web-browsing on my phone now, from anywhere I go.  

The HTC Desire HD for Android: a bit of a beast!

My computer at home is a desktop PC that I built for myself about 6 years ago.  While it's lasted the distance very well (it runs recent games such as Shogun 2 Total War just fine), I've been thinking about replacing it for quite some time now.  The first thought was to buy a laptop given that I'm far more mobile these days and it would be useful to be able to take my computer with me when I go places.  The other reasoning behind it was that I'm into computer gaming much less than I used to be, so I'm a little less concerned with the better price/performance ratio you can obtain with building a desktop PC.  If it wasn't already clear, my smart phone has turned all of this on its head.  

I use my phone for pretty much every purpose that I might have used a laptop for while travelling.  I don't really play enough games now to feel the need to play them when I go away, so the things that I might have needed a laptop for - browsing, communications, music, audiobooks, ebooks, even movies/tv shows in .avi format - I can now do on my phone.  Hell, if it wasn't for my 24/7 internet access, I certainly wouldn't have got into blogging.  The Google Reader app means that posts on all of the blogs I follow are delivered straight to the home screen of my phone in a low-data format.  Google Listen provides the same functionality for podcasts.  I even draft blog posts using the Blogger app, and monitor traffic using DroidAnalytics.

The flipside is that all of this functionality isn't great for my wargames addiction or my habit of digressing.  I have the maelstromgames.co.uk and waylandgames.co.uk websites available at my fingertips, as well as product reviews and the adventures of other bloggers introducing me to new products and ideas all of the time.  I probably wouldn't have it any other way, but I sure have had to work on my self control (this also isn't very good for garth, as I send him links daily with new and interesting wargames info that I know he won't be able to resist!).

But to get down to the real subject of this blog post - what the smart phone has done for me in wargaming.  As well as having all of the above functionality available wherever I go, the smart phone has definitely provided options for me in respect of wargaming.  I now have access to online resources such as forums and rules wikis (in particular the excellent InfinityWiki) as well as up to the minute news information for the diverse rule sets I'm interested in.  

The thing I'm most in love with, though, is online army generators.  These are nothing new; I used Army Builder a lot back in the early 00s.  It seems that since then the concept has really taken off with many systems supported.  While its probably not too good for my productivity, I can now theory-craft and tinker with my wargames interests wherever I go.  Since discovering these resources I've actually spent much more time looking at lists than I was before hand, largely due to my inability to sit down and look through rulebooks for any length of time at the moment.  I'm finding them a great aid to my re-entrance into wargaming, and they're certainly helping to keep my enthusiasm up.  I'll discuss the programs I'm using at the moment below!

As I've gushed about at length in an earlier post, Corvus Belli have produced an official army builder program for use with Infinity.  Infinity Army is a very slick program with great production values and aesthetics very much in keeping with the Infinity setting.  They've also made it available as a downloadable application for PC in addition to the browser version.  This is a good thing as the load time on the browser can be excruciating.

Infinity Army

  

A bit of digression: the thing that impresses me the most about it is the fact that the games company has produced this product as a player aid, an act made possible by the fact that they make the Infinity rules and army lists available for free on the internet.  Its a different business model to the one I'm used to from my teen wargaming days (Games Workshop), and it looks to me like it is quite successful.  It means that entry into the system is essentially effortless and they let the quality of their products do the real work in selling their miniatures.  Its nice to have the feeling that the games company isn't working against you, as is so often my impression with the business models and policies of other gaming companies (a not so veiled reference to an outdated business model (in my opinion) with consequently high pricing and an international sales embargo).

Unfortunately, the program doesn't appear to be fully functional with the Android operating system on my phone just yet.  I understand that this might have something to do with Adobe Air.  However, all is not lost!  A webpage army builder has been made by the folks at Infinity Pool for use with Infinity.  This army builder does work on my phone, and I've had quite a lot of use out of it.  It is slightly more cumbersome than Infinity Army, given that the page loads each time a change is made, but the interface is relatively straight forward and its pretty functional without being too clunky.

I've also found army builder programs to be useful for my other tangible wargaming interest of the moment, Flames of War.  This is another browser based army builder, available at easyarmy.com.  While it isn't particularly pretty to begin with, persevere with it.  The layout is detailed and very functional; in my opinion it gives a clearer indication of how the lists work than the rule books do!  Easyarmy provides quite an extensive collection of the flames of war lists for the periods and combatants, though I don't know that it's exhaustive.  Some of the newer lists are available after a "donation" of $1US is made to the website.  Personally I didn't have a problem with this as it's spare change and the advantage you gain from having all of the lists available online is huge.  I do wonder about the legality of such a site though, and whether there are copyright implications there.  I imagine that if there are they'll be caught up with eventually.  Until then, I think it's $1US well spent!

Easyarmy: I think I've spent more time creating lists from this
than I have from the hard copy books! Procrastination probably. 

Now, all of the above said, I do think there is still a place for rulebooks.  Firstly, I find reading things in print to be much, much more enjoyable than reading things on a computer or smart phone screen.  There is also the satisfaction of possessing a beautifully produced and bound book and being able to flick through it and enjoy it tangibly.  I love books far too much to ever really consider doing without them, and I think its important to purchase rulebooks from games companies even while these resources are available online.  They've produced a product and they deserve to be paid for it, after all.  For this reason I intend only to use Easyarmy (and any other army builder programs I might use in the future) for lists for which I actually own the print copy.  I think this is fair, and I don't think I'll have a problem with sticking to this rule given the quality products that many companies are producing these days.

If anyone has any suggestions for other army building programs, whether application or browser based, I'd be very interested to hear about them.  I'd be particularly interested in dedicated applications for use on the Android operating system.  While its great to have browser-based resources available, they do use data and I'd much prefer to be able to use them offline.

Cheers!

Ruleset Roulette

I have a habit of becoming intensely interested in new projects on an imaginative level; after all, one of the central attractions of wargaming to me is the visual way in which you can give life to those imaginings.  The problem is, I have an interest in so many different subjects that I tend to move from project to project very quickly with nothing overly tangible to show for it!  Suffice to say, the only thing I have from my first six months back wargaming is a pile of rule books and reference material.  I can spin this in a positive light, of course; I have been very deliberately trying not to buy more miniatures than I can realistically paint!

A history of digression

I had piles of unpainted miniatures in my teenage wargaming years from army and game system "false starts", and I currently have two boxes of Perry British Line Infantry sitting in my closet from Garth's and my "postponed" Napoleonic efforts of last summer.  I've since acquired 1500pts of Flames of War miniatures for my British Rifle Company, as well as the Haqqislam starter set, Djanbazan Sniper, Djanbazan Heavy Machine-gunner and the Naffatun blister for my Haqqislam force in Infinity.  Probably enough to keep me painting into 2012.  Garth's and my planning for a Italy-themed Flames of War terrain board in 15mm has already got me contemplating its use in 15mm Napoleonics using the General de Brigade ruleset.  As you can see, my "fear" of lead hasn't really stopped me so far.  To this end, I've come up with a couple of guiding principles for my re-entrance into wargaming:

1. Stop buying rulebooks (!); and
2. Get a painted army on the table as soon as possible so that I can actually start participating properly in the hobby.

I'm doing okay with #1 in that I haven't bought a rule book in a couple of months, though I have had a couple of close calls (I also don't count my future purchase of Corvus Belli's Infinity: The Human Sphere as I've already invested in this system and the only reason why I haven't bought it yet is that it seems to be out of stock everywhere - I'll convince myself of anything...).  The reasoning behind #1 is that I'm going to have to be realistic and honest in order to achieve #2: I don't need distractions!

Given the amount of painting required in order to field a reasonable army of Napoleonics in 28mm, I've strategically redeployed my British Line Infantry into reserve as a "long-term project" (hopefully by then the Perry brothers' 28mm plastic British cavalry will be out, if their French cavalry are anything to go by they will be gorgeous).  Instead, I've decided to focus on Flames of War for my first tabletop army and rule set.  Without delving too deeply into my desire to game World War II, my reasons for choosing Flames of War over my other options are:

• I've had a lifelong interest in the Second World War, an interest I have in common with Garth;
• The game is popular so there should be no dearth of opponents, and as Battlefront is a New Zealand company it is well stocked and supported here;
• It is the one game that retained my interest when I quit wargaming Games Workshop games 10 years ago; and
• It's in 15mm so my very rusty painting skills won't be overtaxed, and the painting time should be lower.

To be honest, bullet-point #4 is the fundamental reason why I chose to run with Flames of War first.  I really do want to get gaming as soon as possible, and 15mm should definitely be quicker than 28mm.  The decision to build Flames of War first might have been different had I discovered Infinity earlier - with 7 figures in my starting 150point list I think that I could have had them painted much more quickly than my Flames of War British.  On the other hand, I'm not sure that I would have been willing to inflict my very raw painting skills on Corvus Belli's beautiful miniatures!

Even with focusing on 15mm, I'm finding painting to be very slow going.  It's taking me a while to get back into the swing of things, having not painted in so long, and I'm finding that with work, football training and family during the week as well as football matches and commuting to spend time with my partner during weekends, I don't actually have a whole lot of time left for painting.  I suspect that starting this blog might not have been the brightest idea in terms of my painting progress!

His Majesty's lead pile

The only truly tangible project I have on the go at the moment is in Flames of War, the miniatures game set in the Second World War.  Being a romantic chap and a sucker for the land of hope and glory I'm rolling with a late war British Rifle Company for the Italian Theatre, for use with the Fortress Europe and Cassino source books.

I may very well use these miniatures as New Zealanders which is perfectly acceptable given the identical colour schemes, though there are some very nice Commonwealth Infantry produced by Battlefront.  In terms of ease of painting I should perhaps have chosen the mid-war desert theatre or late war France for British Infantry, as those theatres would require a more limited palette and therefore require less of my very scarce painting time!

I picked up 1x Mortar Platoon and 1x HMG Platoon of late war Italian theatre British quite cheap on trademe.co.nz about 5 years back, so I've made a start on the Mortar Platoon as you can see below.

As you can see I need to practice photographing miniatures, and they could do with some matt varnish over the top of the gloss!  I'm pretty much block painting on bare colours and relying on the Army Painter Quick Shade "strong tone" to pick out the detail and provide shading (it also varnishes which is handy).  While I think that I could fairly be the target of criticism for my use of Quick Shade as a "cop out", at this early stage of my painting career I don't think I have the skill or the patience to shade/highlight manually, and I also have very little inclination to do so on 15mm miniatures!  I'll explain my reasons for this in a future blog post.

I'm actually pretty happy with the results and I think that the Quick Shade has worked quite well with the Italian theatre palette.  I'm hoping to pick up the pace with my painting a bit by batch painting larger groups at a time.  Fairly shortly I hope to have accumulated enough bottle caps to be able to "working base" a whole platoon at a time.  By utilising a wet palette successfully (I've found it to be a useful technique so far) I ought to always have something ready to paint without having to wait on an earlier coat or an adjacent colour to dry.

Reinforcements

With the pace I've been setting so far, the prospect of what I have left to paint for my British is quite daunting.  I have something in the order of 140x little men, 4x 25 pounders, 3x Churchills and 1-2 as yet unselected and unpurchased support options to go before I can field 1500 points in flames of war.  Italy may have to wait a season or two for liberation, I think...

His Majesty's obvious intention was for stiff upper lips when faced with a lead pile

Team Effort

It looks like Garth can't help himself and has "impulse bought" the job of contributing to this blog!  Expect updates and photos of the painting of his Flames of War Fallschirmjager and musings on his newly purchased Nomads for Infinity the game.

Welcome to Digressive Maneuvres!

The nature of wargaming is such that you spend an inordinate amount of time imagining, conceptualising and painting; at least for me, far more time than I've ever spent maneuvring about a table.  Its fortunate that so many of us enjoy talking about our hobby.  Without rich imaginations projecting finished projects onto the table and the pleasure we take in designing forces and "theory-crafting" the metagame, I think only the most patient of us would see light at the end of the tunnel (and e-bay would see a whole lot more lead less enthusiastically painted than purchased).  I'm hoping that this blog will help to sustain my enthusiasm whilst I try and get through the painting in front of me; I suspect that some of these miniatures will see another winter unpainted.  However!  One of the advantages in digressing all over the place is that I'm unlikely to get bored anytime soon!

A little bit about myself.  I hail from New Zealand and currently live in the Waikato.  I started gaming in early highschool on the usual GW fare.  More games were had with paper than with pewter, though by the end of it all I'd flitted from option to option and managed to accumulate a fair amount of paper-weight.  Come senior high school and university the miniatures were sold in favour of drinking, cafes, girlfriends and an unfortunate dalliance with massively multiplayer online gaming - you can probably guess the one.  I studied law and a Bachelor of Arts in History.  Law was the meal ticket, History the mental health relief.  I'm now graduated, qualified, gainfully employed (though that was a wee journey in and of itself), and have time (limited) and money (some) available to me.

My love of the Napoleonic period as brought alive by O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of novels and a common interest with my old high school mate Garth rekindled my interest in wargaming.  I can afford it, I don't particularly care what people think, so my reasoning is why not do something that I always enjoyed!  A "postponed" attempt at Napoleonic wargaming has lead onto various other projects, all of which I hope to talk about here.  I will digress from time to time; be patient with me!  I've very much enjoyed reading others' wargaming blogs; I hope that you will get something from mine.

As well as a wargaming I'm a keen (though not particularly competent) amateur footballer, hunter (fowl and bigger game), fisherman (fly-fishing preferably) and food critic (with more enthusiasm and practical experience at the business end of the fork, rather than qualification!).  I hope to also comment on these topics as well as my support for the Liverpool Football Club in the English Premier League, books, film, and even a little bit of travel - some not too far over the horizon!  I probably won't talk about work much though.

As for wargaming projects, I'm working on the following in descending order of tangibility:

1. Flames of War - I'm working on a British Rifle Company based on the Cassino and Fortress Europe lists for the Italian theatre.  Its a bit of a joint project with Garth - he has gone and impulse-purchased about 2500pts of Fallschirmjager for Italy and 2500pts of Panzer Lehr for Normandy.  I've got (optimistically) 1500pts of British Infantry in front of me; I must have learnt something since my teens as I have little desire to add to this until these are painted!  Being my first painting in 10 years, things are going pretty slow.  I'm using Army Painter's Quick Shade on these miniatures in the hope that the method will help me get them table ready much quicker.  And to be honest, I don't really have the energy or inclination to try to manually shade and highlight figures in 15mm!  I'm about half-way through my first platoon at the moment, and hoping to be done with the painting early next year.
2. Infinity - this is a very recent interest for me, but it is definitely consuming!  This is a small-scale sci-fi skirmish game with something of an anime (should that be spanime?) aesthetic.  The miniatures are probably the most beautiful I've ever seen, really stunning stuff, and the rules look to be tight, fast paced and hopefully good fun!  The rules are based on an active/reactive concept where the active player orders his units (from a limited pool) and the reactive gets to react to those actions with appropriate miniatures.  Apparently it leads to a fast, realistic game with a very cinematic feel.  I've decided on the Haqqislam faction based purely on the appeal of the miniatures.  Apparently this is a strategy that works okay in Infinity, as the game isn't so much about the metagame of force composition, but rather depends more on how you execute squad level tactics on the table.  I have a miniature already, and I'm waiting on the Haqqislam starter force to arrive.  Very excited about this one; for more information see http://www.infinitythegame.com
3. Force on Force - published by Ambush Alley Games, this is a modern theatre skirmish wargame based on similar action/reaction mechanics to inifinity and suitable for both symmetric and assymetric warfare.  The rules are lovely in hardcover published by Osprey, and it looks like the game is gaining quite a following.  I've got some grand ideas for building my Infinity table with modern desert terrain with removable sci-fi modifications so that I play both Force on Force and Infinity on the same (almost) table.
4. General de Brigade - this is where Garth and I got back into wargaming, with 28mm Napoleonics.  We didn't get anywhere with it, by the way, though we do have a fair few miniatures sitting there needing started (in my case) and finished (for Garth).  We've come to the realisation that we really want to have fully painted and decent sized armies before we attempt at playing this genre - especially with the General de Brigade rules.  This is always going to be a project ticking away in the background for us, but it is definitely going to be a long labour of love.  We'll see how I go at getting a 15mm army painted so that I'll have some idea as to how long it'll take me in 28mm!
5. Warhammer Ancient Battles: Age of Arthur - This is a particular interest of mine that Garth hasn't been anywhere near yet.  Bernard Cornwall's Warlord Chronicles really get this period going for me, and I'd love to game it one day.  Gripping Beast are releasing some lovely plastic miniatures in 28mm so it might well become a reality in the future - though I've got a few projects ahead of WAB in the priority line.

Things I'm watching:

1. Saga -A Dark Ages skirmish wargame by Gripping Beast, I'll be interested to see how this turns out.
2. Mantic - mass battle fantasy and sci-fi miniatures, sold at a substantially cheaper rate than GWs.  While I refuse to go anywhere near GW because of the rediculous pricing and service, I do miss their style of mass battle game at times - perhaps this might be an option in the future, though I do have my doubts.
3. Command & Colours: Napoleonics - This may be the alternative to Napoleonic miniature wargaming for me, at least until I have the time and the painting experience to dedicate to it!  I've been watching the game quite closely on the blog Joy and Forgetfulness and it looks like a fair bit of fun.  Perhaps if Garth moves up this end of the country I'll get into it.

More to come later in the week, cheers!