Serious wargame planning

that looks like playing with toys....

At least that's what my wife says. Anyway, work being very tough at the moment I have had little time to think, let alone progress any of my projects. So I took a little time out yesterday to ponder the battle board.

This is not yet complete but I have managed to do some more painting and its coming along nicely. Another couple of goes and all of the basic colours will be complete. I then need to think about whether I outline the hexes and whether I spay with varnish. Both could quite easily send me back to the drawing board.

First, I used some of my A&A miniatures (the older style 12-15mm size). They fit quite nicely into the hexes and overall I think look quite good. The board with two Panthers about to hold off a couple of Shermans and an M24 but with an airstrike coming in.

Here comes the Tempest, I believe the term is dakka dakka dakka...woosh bang might be a bit childish!

Close-up of a surprisingly nice Panther.

I'm seriously considering whether I can use Norm Smith's Into Battle rules using the minis and this hex grid.

Next up is to deploy the 6mm ACW armies. With a river/sea board edge this might be Shiloh. Rebs converging on the Yankees.

 

I quite like the visuals, it looks rather neat but a couple of things occur to me. First, the base colours are darker than the board (i.e. the darker green which will be the colour for all full land hexes). Second, its hard to tell the sides apart from a normal distance from the board. I may need to colour code the bases. I'm still planning to use Neil Thomas' 19th century rules for this in a heavily modified format.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around, sorry, seriously planning. I was therefore delighted to see Mr P Aspic has also been blogging about his battle board. I was interested to learn that his hexes are 7" across. Mine are just short of 54mm side to side. Whilst I would love to have a bigger battle board this size has been scientifically selected. It will allow me to play any of the Command and Colours games, the hex grid sizes for which vary slightly. I therefore have a gully between each hex to allow for size differences. I also have a very SECRET plan for the board which will make use of the gaps between the hexes, although this is on the back of an envelope for now.

Achtung Spitfire!

Well, two out of three ain't bad...

I set out two weeks ago to ruthlessly pursue some summer wargaming activities. I immediately managed to go into displacement mode when I found a completed Revell Spitfire Ia lurking in the study awaiting a paint job. I then, ahem, painted it.

In fact I have just finished it and I'm quite pleased with the result. I painted my last Spitfire 43 years ago and time has improved my eye even if my hands shake quite a lot and my fingers are the size of bananas!

I didn't put on all of the tiddly decals and I think I made an error painting the prop boss white, at least in photographic terms. For the record, the top surfaces were painted in English Uniform (Vallejo 921) and Catachan Green (GW and now called something completely different) with Pale Blue (Vallejo 906) under surfaces.

So, having completed arsing about, I have applied my mind to some actual wargaming. In fact I have been playing Into Battle by Saxon Games. I haven't had time to play through a full scenario but I have started to play through one of the four that comes with the game (Scenario 3: KG Sivers). This is a Russian front WWII tactical game with squads, individual heavy weapons and individual tanks. This is the package, compete with random event cards, play sheets and turn track.

 

 

 

What I really like about this is that it uses squares (great), has a feel like Squad Leader to play but without the endless complexity and shows a really good understanding of the technicalities of some of the weapons (the ratings of the Panther tank for example chime very well with some of my recent reading about Normandy).

This is a Print and Play game (PnP to the aficionado) and was really nicely designed for easy assembly. Feeling very cocky after nailing the Spit I proceeded to try to chop my thumb off with a sharp knife and a straight edge. Never mind. It has stopped hurting and I'm ready for a full game over the weekend.

Check out the Saxon Games website, Norman Smith has another three games available one of which (Anzio) I have already purchased:  http://mistersmith.magix.net/public/

So, why only two out of three? Well it has been too hot for "numbers" type thinking, so this may well be the objective for my Autumn offensive.