What to expect over the year (perhaps...maybe)

The first thing for you to know is that I am so easily distracted that anything I say here may be complete fantasy by the end of the week - so as to render this as just another blog post - useful only to increase my post count.

So in no order (because that is even more fanciful if you believe I could be held to an order or priority):

• Punic Wars - I'll continue with the build up of forces for the 28mm Punic Wars.  With the exception of some additional Spanish and a few extras special pieces, I have all the lead that I will need.  I'm about 30% of the way through this project and expect the coming year will see Numidian, additional Carthaginians and Gauls done.  Perhaps a Roman cohort may also see the light of day.
• Seven Years War - as I said last year, John Ray's AMG book and forum have led to a significant change in how I spend my hobby time.  For those of you who aren't familiar here is a link to John's Blog so you get a taste.  A lot of my reading time has given over to the SYW, I am searching Abebooks and similar places for old manuscripts and my time on-line has shifted almost completely from WWII and the Guild over to the AMG forum.  Building up the armies will be a multi year project and will see me busy hopefully long into retirement.  This year I will continue recruiting for my Saxon army with the wonderful figures from Nic at Eureka.
• Italian Wars - I will keep going but not sure yet whether they will be more Landschnechts or if I will get some Swiss on to the scene.
• 6mm - Work has contnued and will continue on finishing my 6mm WWII armies and the Adler Napoleonics.  Terrain will also finally see the light of day.
• 20mm WWII - I have done nothing on this for a few years.  I really enjoy the period and the games, and I still pick up the odd piece here and there.  Some notable purchases over the last year were from the great ranges that Simon Ford has been getting sculpted and which are then cast by Mathew at Wartime - especially the late war US and the British Commandos in smock which you can see Here.  One thing I can say for certain that I will do this year is purchase the new Russians that Tony Barton at AB has sculpted and which will be available from Eureka around April.  I have seen the first few in the flesh as well as the entire list that is planned.  Out go my PSC plastics and in come the ABs is all I can say.
• Lastly, I expect to commence and perhaps finish a small playable force for Baroque of the great Totentanz 15(ish)mm Thirty Years War.  These are amazing sculpts and are superbly cast - as good as the 15 and 20mm AB in my opinion.

One thing I am sure of is that what will occur over the year will include things that are not in the list above .... it is a wonderful hobby.

A return

Well it has clearly been far too long since the last post and far too few posts over the past year for anyone to take this blog seriously.  It has taken me a while to decide whether I would continue with the blog going forward - but I have decided to continue to do so.  If for no other reason than it gives me a record of what I have been painting so I can review it periodically.

So it is probably worth starting off the new year with a review of what I got up to gaming wise last year.  Activity at the Goulburn club unfortunately dropped off during the year for a few reasons - but there is a renewed hope that it will kick off again in the new year. 

Gaming has primarily consisted of periodic ones with Ralph, Richard and few others as well as playing in a few Impetus competitions during the year with a pretty good bunch of mates.

The games with Richard, Ralph and others have mainly involved Impetus. 

There was also the memorable Stalingrad game over a whole day at Ralph's which I showed here.  We also played a few games of Napoleonic Naval with wonderful looking 1/1200th Langton naval ships.  The miniatures were mainly from Yaki and Richard and we gave the Kiss me Hardy rules a run. 

We also had a few games of Baroque - one of which I posted about back in March.  These rules are great fun, have a few concepts that we hope will find their way back into Impetus and give a good game in a few hours.  I intend to paint my 28mm ECW armies for Baroque and have recently acquired some of the superb 15mm Totentanz 30 Years War figures that I will again use for Baroque.

On the Impetus comp front, I played again at Cancon in January, Wintercon in July and MOAB in October.  These are all great weekends spent in the main with a great group of friends - good food, wine / gin, lots of lies being told and a few games along the way.  As you may have seen from the blog, my focus was on getting a Carthaginian army painted up and I played with this in all three comps.  They did well in all three.

On the painting from most of the time was spend doing the Carthaginians and then adding to them as the year went on.  But more on painting in the next post.

New Carthaginian army gets out

These guys were painted over June and July and made their debut at the Impetus Wintercon outing. They did pretty well. 

They are mostly Crusader figures with the Veterans being  from Aventine and the elephant from A&A miniatures.

 

Stalingrad in 15mm - FOW



A bunch of us met at Ralph's house for a great game set in Stalingrad.  This was using his very nice (and extensive) collection of 15mm WWII minis.  Also, it was the first time I had played Flames Of War.  Now, I have had a 'view' of FOW for many years that has been fostered by seeing the walls of tanks and uber [unrealistic] competition games of FOW.  But this game absolutely changed my mind.  I really liked the way the battles for the buildings was a see-sawign struggle.

 

Anyway, a few photos along the way.

 



The table from the Russians end

Brave sewer rats just before descending

One of the two Rifle coys

An SMG coy lying in wait to support the successful Rifle coy

Other Rifle coy and support at the start line

A fierce struggle as the German tunnel rats popped up behind us

Was enough to turn my tanks around to support an attempt to retake it



Right hand Rifle coy advancing 

It took a lot of punishment

SMG coy advances in support

German armour advancing

Saxon SYW - IR6 Prince Maxmillian

These have been done for a while but only had photos taken on the painting table. So here they are on the field so to speak.  Again they are Eureka figures and they were beautifully cast with little to no flash.

 

 

This was my first unit painted and when I saw them in line like that I realised it needed to have an odd number of bases so the command base would sit in the middle.  So I have gone back and acquired the extra figures to give me 5 bases of 6 for the infantry regiments.  I am tossing up whether they should be 2 figure wide and three deep.  This would give me greater space on the table top to deploy them.

Saxon SYW - Price Karl Chevaulegers

Finished my first Saxon cavalry unit - the Prince Karl Chevaulegers.  These are Eureka figures with home printed standards.  I have bought some more to do a third squadron.