Sunday 20 July 2008

First at the Post

This is an occasional blog for my wargame projects, most of which never get finished. The aim is to push them all along, and maybe get encouragement and advice from anyone else who happens to drop in. Presently, I've six major projects:

World War 2: Flames of War: Foolishly, in our house we have WW2 models in just about every scale you could name. But the focus is mainly on 15mm Flames of War at the moment, with 1944 Brits, US and German forces under construction. I'm in the UK, but my son, Owen, in the US is also building two forces (Panzer Lehr and US opponents) so we're hoping to develop some sort of cross-Atlantic campaign.

World War 2: Blitzkreig Commander (10mm): I've only come across this recently. I really like Warmaster, so am keen to try this. We're starting with the Russian Front, c. Winter 1942 (ish). Again, I'm painting both forces, so it's slow going. This has introduced me to Pendraken's 10mm (really 12mm) WW2 models, which are great, and a good price, so already plans are underway for a Desert War campaining, too. And, hey, if that means we need different models, well, so be it.

Field of Glory (28mm): I'm not sure if I like these rules yet. I bought them because I needed something to read in hospital recently, where I couldn't game, and the release of Warlord Games Celts gave me a great army to paint for them once I was discharged, at relatively low risk whilst I recovered. It was going to be a fast, fun project, also testing out the Army painter "magic" washes. But this has stalled somewhat due to eyesight difficulties, though this might improve soon. I'm also really waiting for Wargames Factory in the US to produce their Celts, so I can get a really good mix of figures, but they've been having development problems.

Imagi-nation: this is what really excites me at present, and where most of my painting time goes. As what we eumpemistically might call a veteran gamer, I've become interested in the Old School Wargaming idea. It seems like putting the fun back into historical games. So I'm building an imaginary Eighteenth Century army, and a country to go with it, like many people before me, following the models of some of the ancient heroes of wargaming, Charles Grant and Peter Young. (You can find the begininnings of this project at a separate blog at http://majorwittering.blogspot.com/)

As with most of my other projects, I'm painting both sides here: the Landgraviate of Mendelstadt is vagely Prussian in origin whilst its suspect neighbour, the Freistadt of Pelarcona (run by a lady very close to me) appears to admire Austria. Figures are to be Minden as much as possible, though to start with I'm using any and everything I've been able to lay my hands on, so we have Minden, Front Rank, Foundry, Hinchcliffe and Minifigs all working together. This is one of the advantages of a fantastic approach to wargaming, you can get away with anything you like, as long as you enjoy it.

Napoleonic (10mm): The grand plan is to refight the 100 days campaign with all brigades represented (I'd like to get down to battallion level, but probably could never field the figures required, even in 10mm). I'm mainly using Old Glory figures, though most manufacturers of 10mm also have a look in. So far the armies of Wellington and Napoleon are well developed, but Blucher is a poor third. As it stands, there's probably around 2500 figures committed to this project, but it's on the back burner for a while. (Long term, I'm hoping to get around to Leipzig, too. My plans are nothing if not grand!)

Hundred Years War: in 28mm. The aim is to use mainly Perry Miniatures, and Foundry's "Medieval Warfare" rules, but in order to get a game soon, I'm recruiting all odd medieval figures I can find in the lead mountain. I'm painting up both sides, so that slows things down. Despite the superficially high production quality of these rules, there seem to be some flaws in them, so I'll be interested to see how workable they are.

I'll be posting pix of the state of play of each project from time to time. Here's some from the Russian Front for the time being:






3 comments:

Bluebear Jeff said...

Good-looking figures.

I have some friends (where I used to live) who really like the "Field of Glory" rules . . . but I've also read a lot of disappointing criticism of them on TMP (The Miniatures Page).

I've also seen a lot of very positive comments on the "Impetus" rules . . . and "Basic Impetus" (plus nearly 200 army lists) is a free download from their website:

http://www.dadiepiombo.com/basic2.html

Certainly it is worth a read.

I look forward to reading more of your gaming adventures.


-- Jeff
http://saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com/

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

...another Blitzkrieg Commander/10mm fan - me too... though I've gone for the Desert Campaign and with the Minifigs 12mm range... lovely painting on the vehicles, but I'm most taken with the snow effect, what is it??

Major Wittering said...

We plan to do desert war next - but need to halt the Wehrmacht at the Ostfront first.

The snow is a GW product called, imaginatively, "snow". It's expensive, in my view: £5 UK for 15grams, though that goes quite a long way. using dilute white glue one coat of "snow" gives you a sort of icy semi-transparent effect, like snow that's melted and re-frozen, whilst two applications gives you nice furry snow, and you can obviously build up a little more for drifts etc.

Another firm makes a similar product, at roughly half the price, I believe, but I've not found out who or tried it out yet.

Noel