One Year Ago

Via the ever-inspirational PhilB, a meme:

Simply look at the date (so 13th March for me).  Go back 1 year and link to the post you put on your blog this day last year (or the closest one you can find to that date).

So, I did. Somewhat embarassing, since I just narrowly missed it being A Horse of a Different Colour part NINE (part ten came out last week!). It is in fact a slightly belated battle report from a Principles of War game that was part of Gavin's first Penninsular campaign (the second seems to have stalled rather). Interesting fun, as I recall!

Thanks, Phil, for a neat idea. It is still the 13th in Seattle when this gets posted, too!

Bus stations in Helsinki

I've been thinking, there being not a lot else to do when you're awake at 3am because your body clock thinks it's 10am...

Mostly, I've been thinking about why I do this blog, which was in part inspired by something I read yesterday on the Helsinki Bus Station theory. What, you might ask, is that?

Well - it's a metaphor for creativity and art. The article summarises it better than I do, but in a nutshell: Helsinki bus station has a number of platforms, and all buses from a given platform pretty much share the same route as each other for the first bit of their route. This is kind of like the first steps in blogging, painting, whatever: you find inspiration in 'I wanna do something like so-and-so', but for the first few stops you think 'but everyone's doing this / I'm so unoriginal / I suck...'. And if you're foolish, you go back to the bus station, and you pick a different platform, and the same thing happens...

The secret is, to stay on the bus. To keep on doing whatever it is you're doing.

Because eventually the routes diverge. And you find you're on your own bus, going your own way, for all it may have started out like several others.

There are some stupendously brilliant figure painters out there. I'm not one of them, and (given I have next to no depth perception, eyes that make in-store opticians go 'what????', and am generally not the tidiest or neatest of painters) I never will be. I'm not by any means the best tactician or strategist: a look at the results of the last two WAB GT's should demonstrate that pretty quickly. And so on. And there's a part of me thinks 'who the hell do I think I am, trying to teach my readers that include people like RayR or AndyH how to paint horses?'

I think I figured it out from a comment on one of my Analogue Hobbies painting contest entries (which I still submit with a degree of trepidation! - 'here, have an entry. it's not very good'):

I really like how you have described the process. For wargaming standard (my standard) the AP products are really impressive. I am still developing my technique with them, but I have learned a lot from your post as well. 

Well, duh, Mike. (And thank you, John.)

See, not everyone's Kevin Dallimore. Not everyone's Martin Gibbins, or Sidney Roundwood. Sure, we all would love to be. But it's a surprising truth of the universe that you don't have to be that good at something before you acquire your own style, your own way, and you actually have things you can do that not everyone can do as well as you can.

So, no, if you've read this far, I'm not fishing for compliments and affirmation. I'm Joe Average gamer, looking at the figures and terrain my friends and opponents produce and wishing I was that good, but taking pride in the fact that I can put a painted army on the table that I'm not ashamed of. And maybe the thing I can do, because I do seem to have a knack for writing proper, helpful, joined-up English, is to help other folks, the ones who like me just wish they were Andy Hawes (stop blushing, mate!), figure out how to do that, and things like that, too.

Welcome to Trouble At T'Mill. Hopefully, there's something here you can learn from.

Those Parthians

I should, I think, share the end results of my painting marathon with those of you who don't subscribe to Curt's blog. Once I'd got these assembled, they basically took me a Sunday plus a week of evenings, and I was quite pleased not to be varnishing at 6 am on the day of the tournament.

As I'm sure I've said before, I am not the world's best painter: if it wasn't for Army Painter, I'd be too embarrassed to show my handiwork. :D


First up, we have 23 cataphracts, being a mix of Old Glory Parthians and Palmyrans, with some A&A Miniatures Palmyran command figures. (Old Glory UK didn't have enough of the Parthians, and they basically said 'will the Palmyrans do, they're very similar'. Since they're going to double as Palmyrans before I'm done, I didn't have a problem!). Horses were undercoated in Army Painter Matt Black, and dry-brushed with Army Painter Plate Mail (or, for the unit leaders, Weapon Bronze). Riders, to provide a slight contrast, were undercoated in Plate Mail spray, faces, hands (AP Tanned Flesh), metal kontos (Vallejo US Field Drab), leather work (Vallejo Red Leather) etc painted, and then washed with AP Strong Tone ink and the faces retouched with AP Human Flesh (a lighter shade).

For an encore, 72 (yes, really) horse archers, being 6 complete boxes of Wargames Factory Persian cavalry, which turn out to fit almost perfectly in a Really Useful 7L box.

Horses were undercoated in AP Matt Black, then given assorted shades of brown (AP Oak, Monster, Fur Browns, Vallejo Flat Earth). I went with the 'mostly bay or black' approach for what's probably a set of fairly inbred mounts, though there are half a dozen pale enough to be duns or roans. Saddle blankets in Vallejo Khaki, and one of AP Red, Ultramarine Blue or Angel Green detailing, and then harness in Vallejo Red Leather. To be honest, I rushed these, and there'd have been more coat variation if I'd had more time.

The riders were undercoated in batches of twelve in AP Daemonic Yellow, Desert Yellow, Bleached Bone, Uniform Green, Ultramarine Blue and Necrotic Flesh. After that, I snapped them on the mounts (they're a tight enough fit not to need glue, actually!), did faces/hands (AP Tanned Flesh), headgear (AP White, which covers *superbly* well), leggings (AP Leather Brown) and leatherwork (Vallejo Red Leather), and bows (Vallejo US Field Drab). Final stage was a wash of AP Soft Tone ink which dragged back and evened out the overall 'look' of the different colours, which was remarkably effective, if you contrast these pictures with the shot of the un-inked and basically just undercoated ones from the previous Monday.

Basing was Tamiya textured 'Desert Sand' and then dipped straight into Javis Desert Sand mix: left to dry, a few dabs of PVA and a sprinkle of AP Winter static grass. Varnished with AP Anti-Shine.

And there you go.

For Sale - assorted RPG books

I'll be popping these on eBay when I get back from Seattle, if none of my readers are interested.

We have:

• the Champions rulebook
• the Vampire: The Masquerade rulebook and Clanbook: Tremere (yes, I'm ashamed!)
• TORG (there's a system to conjure with!) plus the Living Land and LA Sourcebooks
• The Car Wars compendium
• GURPS: Space

Offers for the lot or individual bits entertained.

Battle Report - 04 Mar 2013 - Judge Dredd prog 3

A battle against Rob, who was playing a lone vigilante - who may look oddly familiar if you like certain snarky Marvel heroes - as a single 500+ point force against my Judges. Brilliant fun, and I had an absolute ball creating this battle report.

Reflections on Battletech

[Administrative note: I'm on a plane to Seattle this lunchtime. With a bit of luck I may get to meet up with Pat and Dean from the Historical Wargames podcast, but mostly I'm there for a work conference (and to catch up with a few other friends). I've been doing my damnedest to get enough posts scheduled to keep my posting streak going: I should have access while I'm out there, but this is insurance against a combination of potential jetlag and a busy calendar.]

My attention was drawn to a post by Ashley - actually on the subject of the last ever issue of Battlegames, in which (go her!) she has an article on the subject of one of my favourite boardgame/RPG/wargames, BattleTech.

If you've followed my first podcast, the one thing BattleTech had going for it that set it head and shoulders (on a frodding big stepladder) above most of the competition at the time, was that it had context. Oh, boy, did it have context! The basic game was, pretty much, about moving 'Mechs about on a hex map, and as such it wasn't that different to any of a number of other games. But it had the might of FASA behind it, who weren't just a games company. They also published RPGs (Shadowrun, Traveller supplements, EarthDawn etc), and as a result, had a bunch of experience in world, or in this case, universe, design. Of course, it didn't hurt that they quickly managed to get a bunch of halfway-decent authors (say what you like about Michael Stackpole, he was a dab hand at tie-in novels) to create fiction in the universe, as well as a RPG (MechWarrior).

And it was, at least to start out, a quite brilliant setting. The core Houses were all shades of grey, with different things that would appeal to different players, and there was massive scope for all manner of interesting political interactions. Equally, you could (and the setting basically made it canon and fun to do so) just play a bunch of mercenaries. The whole concept of lostech, that the Star League of three centuries ago had the cool tech, and that what was left was nowhere near as good, was cool, and in general it was a fantastic setting to play in, if you wanted to extend your game beyond just 'Mechs on a hex grid. Several online games sprang up around it - I was a faction co-leader on BTech3056 MUSE, which tried to handle the whole Inner Sphere on a MUD-type text-based game, complete with ASCII-rendered 'Mech combat using the game rules, and there were many other similar games.

On top of that it was a nicely balanced and intriguing board game. Those who've played it will remember the interesting challenges of heat management - something like a BattleMaster had more guns than it could actually fire at once continuously, without cooking the pilot.

And then they had to go and spoil it.

You can, I guess, understand it. FASA had to produce new stuff to keep the range of minis and books selling, so they introduced the Clans. It's not a spoiler after 25 years of the game to say that the Clans are the descendants of the Star League, but unfortunately, to my mind, they came with munchkin-grade tech. See, the original game had balance - there was pretty much nothing that could blow your 'Mech's head off outside short range, and the things that were a risk to life and limb at long range generated enough heat you had to be careful when using them. The 3050 additions, to my mind, just blew this out of the water, and completely ruined the careful game balance. Ok, to be fair, they made for some interesting stories, but there's a part of me that so thinks FASA weren't in any way done with the pre-Clans setting...

I loved... I still do... the setting. I and a couple of friends on BT3056 wrote and submitted a novel outline to FASA, set on one of the lesser known worlds, a tale of one of the lesser mercenary units... It wasn't that bad, but let's face it, by the the time we were playing in 3056, the FASA campaign clock was already moving on inexorably, and moreover the FASA planning clock was probably several years ahead of that.

I sold my Battletech stuff not over long after I got married - it was taking up space, and I had no-one to play it with. Kind of wish I hadn't now, and I'm definitely looking forward to Ashley's article.

Battle Report - 04 Mar 2013 - Judge Dredd Prog 2

The second encounter on Monday was against Dan's robots, who were an entirely different ball-game: his team's basically one seriously heavily armoured kick-ass Terminator type and several minions. Let's just say I lost and leave it at that.