Back To The Foundry Once More.

I've started casting up 40mm Prince August figures again for my SYW-ish collection . There has been a longish gap since I did any due to  running out of Calor gas and giving up on the mounted figure on the right of the photo , This mould was a right swine to cast from with a high rate of miss-casts and I'd given up with only four cast . The drummers on the left are one of the older Prince August moulds and are very 'semi-flat' but gives excellent figures every time  and these are to be drummers for a regiment I'd bought in already painted but needs reorganising . Today the gods of toy soldier casting were smiling on me and I also got the other six cavalry done as well , so this will be a squadron of irregular Ulhans , here seen cleaned up and based ready for undercoating .

Grrrr ! .

The first batch of my mammoth re-basing project for my 'Age of Arthur' . The foot figures will fit onto the new bases and only need the edges tarting up , then I found I had run out of suitable bases !!!!! - I have a plastic carrier bag full of various MDF bases and NONE of the right size ! - 'Rats' ! , I could have sworn I had enough - but no ! , so an order has been dispatched to 'Warbases' . 

Age Of Arthur.

I blame Bernard Cornwall !!! , I noticed that his Viking series of books is appearing on the BBC later in the month - I thought 'I'm sure I've got a copy of those I need to read !?' , so I hunted around but couldn't find it ! (think I may have lent it to 'S'?) - but what I did find was the first book of his Arthurian trilogy , the problem was that I sat down and started re-reading it - and was hooked ! Oh dear ! 

It's a jolly good read and got me thinking - I have a Romano-British army and various opponents already painted up in 28mm and have not used them for years , mainly due to the lack of suitable playable/rememberable rules and I had thought of selling them - but how to use them ? .

I sat pondering this - well actually whilst walking the dog - then the idea came to me - I'd seen somebody adapting the 'Lion Rampant' rules for the 'Dark Ages' and am sure it would work for the Arthurian era slightly earlier, so I gave my figures a looking over and found a lot of them were on multi-bases - Hmm! they would need re-basing (sigh!) . But it would mean I would be able to use them again and not have to paint anything ! . Rather pleased with myself I sent off an order to 'Warbases' for new single MDF bases, then I found a bag of unpainted figures for the period in my 'box of shame' under the wargaming table - so I will have a few figures to paint up - but not many ! . A progress report to follow .........

Piedmontese Versus Papal Army 1860 .

This battle was originally played between myself and 'A' last week , unfortunately my camera batteries ran out mid - battle . 'A' commanded the Piedmontese Army who's task was to stop the Papal force crossing the bridge and exiting the board . This he did in short order , I then decided to replay the game as the toys were on the table , here we see the Piedmontese force with Hodge overseeing their deployment .

Here we see the Papal troops move onto the table down the road , their progress was slow due to the poor command abilities of their generals .

The Piedmontese decide to counter attack and move forward.

The Piedmontese Lancieri Di Novara prepare to charge the enemy .

The Piedmontese Bersaglieri in skirmish order open fire on the Papal column - this caused much disorder and as the game was only going to last 8 moves this was not good for the attackers .

The first Papal Line Battalion forms into line .

Hodge takes command of the Piedmontese and orders an all out attack !.

The Bersaglieri roll a 'blunder' and advance on the second Papal Brigade who deploy and shoot them to ribbons ! , however this sacrifice holds the Papal forces up even further .

The Papal first Brigade form line and open fire on the enemy cavalry - time was running out for them to capture the bridge . 

The Lancers charge home and are repulsed with heavy loses - but time had run out and the Piedmontese had held the bridge for required length of time .  I used 'Black Powder' to play this game as I can easily remember the rules , in both games the Papal forces were let down by their command and were hampered by the skirmishing of the Piedmontese and never really got their act together .

A Trial Game .

With the absence of my wife and dog on a scent training day (for the dog not my wife), after I had finished the list of jobs she had left me, I thought I would try out my new gaming cloth . This was made from a 2'x2' piece of 'teddy bear' fur sprayed green and has been designed for the Song Of Blades And Heroes rules with my 15mm figures .

Gorthe of the Northemen and his Druide advance past the Sacred Pool of Life to attack Conan and his warband.

Conan's Warband hurl abuse at the Northemen.

Battle is joined ! (the trees are from an Aquarium shop) .

The Northemen are defeated and the survivor's flee the wrath of Conan ! . The game only took about half an hour and the rules worked well and are easy to learn . This has encourage me to paint up some more of the very nice 15mm Copplestone figures . I'm going to take this game to play on our weekend away at the Reading Wargame show in November.

Humour ?

My wargaming colleagues mock my idea of writing my own rule set !.

A Video Of My SYW 30mm Collection .

This is a video I did quite a while ago on my now defunct blog , showing my 30mm Spencer Smith Seven Years War figures - I hope it works !?.....

Doing The Worthy Again And Piedmontese Generals .

I've moaned about painting up limbers and teams before - I hate doing them ! , there's quite a bit of work goes into gluing them up (they NEVER fit properly and there's NEVER a method of fixing the limber to the horses !),  BUT when they're done I think they look good and add something to the game and I can point them out to my wargaming colleague 'A' and humiliate him as he never paints any for his armies !. Here is the one for my Piedmontese Artillery .

As 'A' is calling round for a game tonight I had to crack on and get some Piedmontese Generals done . Here we see a Brigadier and the CinC with Aide de Camp . Hopefully I will remember to take photos of the action as this is the first outing for my Piedmontese and Papal armies .

One Of My Five .

A chap I used to work with was a photographer in his spare time - weddings etc and he used to say that everybody had five good photographs in them . Now I'm no photographer but at times you get lucky as in the above shot of Charlie stood on a prehistoric burial mound on Sizergh Fell . It was taken with the camera on my phone and I didn't think it would come out very well - but to my surprise it has , click on it to enlarge .