Sharp Practice 2 plans

The limited edition Sharpe
off the cover of SP1

Well... I originally wasn't going to invest in any new forces for SP2, and rely on various folks down the club having assorted fun stuff in various periods, as well as my own Imaginations force (the Duchy of Elland - note to self, must update site :D )...

But I have to confess, for all its historical flaws, to being a big fan of the man who gave his name (with a letter filed off for copyright purposes) to the ruleset, and I have just lucked into a set of the Harper and Sharpe from the limited run that went with the original Sharp Practice rules, as well as having enough credit burning a hole in my pocket with Reuben at PE2Collectables for a box of the Warlord Chosen Men as well as probably a few sprues and/or metals of someone's Peninsular light infantry...

A loverly pair of chaps :D

I'm considering following Hobbsy's example and blowing a bit of my bonus on getting ADC or similar to paint them for me, since I know I won't do Napoleonic uniforms justice, not on 'hero' figures in 28mm, anyway :D I will still, I think, base them myself though.

Question for the readers: does anyone out there have the (sadly now ceased trading) Alban Miniatures "Sergeant Shakewell & Corporal Hammond" pack (BR1)?

Just the odd picture or a hundred

I had way too much fun in Ayton, not just wargaming with the guys but getting used to the new DSLR. I now have a Canon 700D with a couple of new lenses - an 18-55mm and a 55-2050mm, both of which are image-stabilised (which means they're very handy for taking pictures in ill-lit wargames venues) - actually one of the neater features is that its automatics include auto-ISO, so it's one fewer parameter to tweak, Given the ISO range goes up to 12800 (compared to 1600 on my old camera), it's pretty awesome in grotty light,

Anyway: here's a rather large slideshow of the stuff I was taking:

Apologies to readers on iOS - full Flickr set link is here.

Ayton 2014 day 1 - teasers

I'd upload more, but the hotel wifi is sloooooow. Anyway, here's some shots from today's games....

Imagi-nations campaign

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm off up to Ayton the weekend after next for a weekend of old school shot, steel and sword :D All done bar painting the horses, and ordering some Renedra 60x45mm bases to stick them too. (As these will only be used with Shot, Steel and Stone, I'm quite happy to base them in a non-standard, non-WABby way :D)

If you want to keep track of what's afoot, as well as watching here, you can enjoy the GM's (Henry Hyde of Battlegames/MW fame) public accounts of events in the warm-up map campaign via the pages of the Pescadrix Sun on his blog.

Battle Report - 21 Apr 2014 - Shot, Steel and Stone

As a warm up for the Ayton game this coming May Day weekend, I attempted to refresh my memory with Henry Hyde's Shot, Steel and Stone rules - these are the set in The Wargaming Compendium, although we were working off the PDF set from Ayton two years ago.

The Vth (Careleton's) Regiment of Foot, flanked by
Johanesson's Native Horse (ok, ok, my Numidians
pulling double duty!)

Mine are painted and part-based for SSS (infantry on 45x40mm, although the cavalry are currently on 25x50mm singles and need rebasing). For those wondering? I did get both the guns and cavalry finished in time, although they all need varnishing and the latter need the horses painting something other than black undercoat :D


We picked some roughly equal forces, and had at, as it were. Grahame, as is his wont, sat and waited for me to come to him, barring a cavalry distraction on my left flank. It's probably a decent demonstration of the rules that penny-packet attacks against a line of infantry backed by heavy artillery gets you very dead. :D

The Guild of Barrelmakers medium guns, Jones' (IXth) Foot
and Byter-Legge's Jaegers. 

However, the aim of the game was to remind me how they worked in time for next month, and so they were a success on that score. They also served to remind me what not to do, so I guess that's good too :D

More WIP - Wargames Factory WSS Cavalry

No photos this time, as there currently isn't space on the workbench :D

I picked up two boxes of the cavalry a while back, and in fact I've used about half a dozen to make various officers and standard bearers. The rest I've been meaning to turn into a cavalry regiment for a while, and today I finally got started.

First off, the bad - same complaint as the artillery horses: there is no way of fixing the horse to its base bar two points of glue and a prayer.

On the good side, this box is amazingly versatile - 6 identical horse sprues, 6 identical and seriously loaded rider sprues. I can do no better than quote the manufacturer's blurb:

[It] can be made into 12 horsemen and comes with 12 horses, 12 sets of legs for riders, over 50 torsos (including armored torsos for cuirassiers) and over 60 heads (including tri-corn, helmeted, grenadier and dragoon headwear).  They can be armed with a brace of pistols, muskets/carbines and/or swords.  Heads and accessories are interchangeable with the WSS Infantry set for even more options!

I'm not even sure one couldn't fiddle a set of ECW cuirassiers out of this box, to be honest. There are certainly enough spare heads/torsos/arms left over from the average infantry build to produce mounted standard bearers, etc. as well. Again, EMA Plastic Weld works much better than the Humbrol/Revell stuff, which at least meant I didn't wind up with a headache after assembling 18 horses and riders.

 As I have guests for the weekend, painting them (other than the undercoat, which is done) will have to wait till Monday.

WIP - Wargames Factory WSS Artillery

Finally got cracking on my Imagi-nations cavalry and artillery for the May Bank Holiday (with the added motivation of a game with Grahame at the club on Monday).

I got started with the artillery: they're actually pretty nice, as are a lot of Wargames Factory's more recent sculpts.

Om each of the two identical gun sprues you get 4 crewmen, with a choice of half a dozen heads, plus one mounted officer, and a selection of arms of various sorts. In addition, the gun carriage comes with a choice of 8pdr or 12pdr barrels.

Assembly is pretty straightforward - standard 'multi pose' plastic 28mms, although Wargames Factory have switched to a non-keyed head/neck joint compared to their earlier figures, and they've, rather annoyingly in my book. made the figures simply glue on to their supplied bases by their feet. (Compare the WSS infantry, which have their feet stuck to the usual small manhole cover.) This is even the case for the mounted officer, which has a pose which means its horse will only have two points of contact with the base: not convinced by this.

They'd have gone together better if I'd remembered my discovery from the Parthian marathon, namely that the usual Revell/Humbrol 'yellow tube' liquid poly is NOT the best glue for WF plastics, but in fact the EMA Plastic Weld applied with a brush.

I've also started to discover that the 'yellow' liquid poly gives me a headache after about 10 mins, so unfortunately, these half dozen figures is as far as I got today.

Another busy Sunday ahead...

Having spent today being "Dad's Taxi Service", as usual for a Saturday, tomorrow's a wargaming day, once i get back from playing bass guitar in church.

Specifically:

• we're finishing off the boards for the club game at Salute - mostly this involves edging them so the blue foam doesn't show, but I'm also going to add a little more variation in the grass (some dandelions etc), and maybe build some front gardens for the buildings. I also need to assemble two more buildings, which I'll probably try and get a start on before church.
• As I have a game of WAB with Andy on Monday, I really need to finish the repairs on my Saxons!
• I'm off to Ayton for another round of Henry Hyde's Imagi-nation campaign on May Day Bank Holiday weekend, and I have 18 cavalry and 2 guns to build (from the good folks at Wargames Factory's WSS range). I may see if I can at least get them assembled.

Wargames Factory WSS Artillery - final images

Remember a while back I knocked together some artillery for my imagi-nation? Wargames Factory WSS infantry, with arms, equipment and guns from a (slightly out of period) set of Victrix Napoleonic British Artillery.

I did kinda promise a picture of the finished result, so here we go:

Bank Holiday weekend fun

The good guys' jumping off area.

Back from (surprisingly) sunny East Ayton (in N. Yorks) for a remarkably fun couple of days with the WD3 folks, participating in a sprawling two day Imaginations battle, with over a dozen players and (at a rough guess) well over a thousand figures on a 24'x6' battlefield (plus an extension on the second day due to us over-achievers on the right flank).

I had an absolute ball, and many thanks to the organisers, as well as everyone involved - made to feel very welcome, and really enjoyed the game.

In-character details will follow on the Duchy of Elland blog, but here are a few pics to whet your appetite.

The Duchy's VIth Jager Regiment take cover behind
a rocky outcrop

The traffic jam on the right flank, which took most of
two days of gaming to unsnarl.

The Duchy's forces spearheading the advance on the
far right.

Wargames Factory WSS Artillery

Yes, you did read that right.

I need some for my Imagi-nation army, the Duchy of Elland, and (despite the title of this post) Wargames Factory don't yet make any.

Now, I could have bought some metal artillery, but to be honest, I couldn't be bothered :D So after a little research, I acquired a box of Victrix British Napoleonic Foot Artillery, and (at Salute) a spare sprue of Conquest Games' horses (for the aforementioned nefarious purposes).

Now, I'll be the first to admit that the guns are probably well out of period, but ... hey, it's an imaginary army, so I'm not going to get that worked up about it.

The image on the right gives you a rough idea of what I managed: gun, limber, arms and tools from the Victrix box, onto WF WSS Infantry bodies and the heads with floppy hats. The limber horse is from the Conquest Games sprue, because a) it doesn't have a saddle to speak of, and b) they actually make a horse that's only walking. Missing from this shot is the extra bit of harness to affix horse to limber: not quite sure how I'm doing that yet, but a spare rifle strap from the WSS Infantry set is being eyed up.

I've in fact made two sets of guns and crew, and the final painted versions will be on the Duchy's blog in the next week or so.

As an aside - the Duchy of Elland blog is reserved for (for the most part) in-character updates and battle/campaign reports - modelling activities will continue to be posted here, with a link to and from the other blog.