Wargaming Projects - 4 of 4 - The Pending

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects

Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending

Part 4 - Pending Projects: that have some purchases but are mostly in the lead / plastic mountain or painted in insufficient numbers of a game.  And I'll start with one of my longest running pipe dreams, the Battle of Dara.

25mm Battle of Dara (Hinchliffe)

Back in the distant past of my wargaming days I was heavily influenced by illustrations in some books of historic battles using wargame figures.  The one that always impressed me most was the Battle of Dara in David Chandler's 'The Art of Warfare on Land' - from which the following image was taken.  

For some years now I have slowly accumulated most of the required figures cheaply off eBay, but they are all in the loft awaiting the completion of other ongoing projects - so who knows, mañana?

25mm Roman Britain (Hinchliffe)

Not sure what triggered this on again, off again, project.  Possibly it was fond memories of all the Rosemary Sutcliff books I read as a boy and an idea to do a sort of Pony Wars style game set in the 'Ancients' period, no doubt reinforced by more recent period reading by Simon Scarrow and Adrian Goldsworthy.

Needless to say, Hinchliffe was my go-to manufacturer, and unlike the Dara project above, some of these have actually hit the painting desk over the years but I can't decide whether or not to go gloss with this lot.

And, if get more painted I could also with Sharp Practise, or Lion Rampant (Ancients variant) - perhaps a scenario based on the Eagle of the Ninth?

Circa 1:400 Tudor Naval (Airfix, et al)

Nothing of mine worth showing here, as it consists of a pile of kits in the loft - Airfix Golden Hinds, Revenges, Mayflowers, and similar from a few other manufacturers.  

The 'plan' sees the masts left removeable to show damage as it occurs.  However, the plan frequently changes, and the latest is to use the kits for the contemporary 'First Great Northern War' (1563-70), a.k.a. 'Nordic Seven Years War'.  This war both avoid any in-built prejudices I have about the Armada, etc., and make a rather pretty showing based on this image from that war.

25mm Robin Hood (Hinchliffe)

I have acquired enough of these figures to run a game based on the rules for hidden movement on woods that I use for my 'Breaking of the Fellowship' game (here).  But so far have only painted up a triplet of personalities: Robin, John and Marian.

28mm Three Musketeers (Redoubt)

As I have played a game with these they perhaps shouldn't really be in the Pending post.  

I haven't settled on a set of rules for them, or done anything about the rather large terrain deficit for musketeer adventures.  

1:3000 Napoleonic Naval (Lamming)

This one started when Gallia produced a series of 1:3000 Napoleonic warships which I realised gave one the ability to stage decent sized fleet action on fairly standard wargames tables.  I bought some samples, but found them hard to paint up, and then Gallia folded!  

For a while Square One produced some similar ships but I wasn't as keen on them as the Gallia models because they had cast on ratlines that would make trimming off mast sections more difficult.  Then One Square stopped trading but Lamming produced another similar range, also with cast on ratlines.  But I continued buying a few samples and seeing how well I could paint them.  Not well, was the answer as can be seen below.

But then I found a 'cheat' - the left-hand ship in the above image is not all painted.  What I did was print out a picture of a ship's hull to the right scale, cut it out, and stuck it on.  This, IMO, works very well and so I intended getting it underway at some point.  Unfortunately, as I write this, Martin, who runs Lamming as one-man business, is in hospital and has been for some time - I can only wish him all the best for the future.

28mm Napoleonic 1812 Retreat (Wargames Foundry)

This project was planned as yet another 'Pony Wars' style game with all the players being French seeking to escape from the icy wastes of Russia.

This seemed a good idea as not requiring armies of figures and giving me plenty of opportunity for simple, but fun, conversions to clad the figures in something more suitable for the season.

The Russians, mainly Cossacks, but including others and natural hazards (packs of wolves) would be controlled by the rules.

Even they are not immune to the cold.

Apart from my frustrations with trying to produce convincing snow on the figure bases, I'm not sure why this one ended up more or less permanently on the back-burner.

1:245 ACW Naval (Atlantis)

Yet more unmade kits in the loft.  there's little excuse here as these kits should be pretty quick to do and it only requires two to be able to have a game - I'm considering using 'The Portable Ironclads Wargame' by David Crook.

And I do have a USS Constitution kit to bash into the USS Cumberland, to give the CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimac) something to aim at while the USS Monitor tries to save it - just like the cover on the rules.

15/20mm Colonial Zulu / Dervish (Peter Pig / Newline)

No pictures of figures here, as this project is intended for pro-painting, so I only have a few sample packs of figures from the two manufacturers listed above.  I have been trying out various painters and am awaiting some samples from one at the time of writing.  When I've tried out the likely candidates I will be able to work out whether I can afford to do it in 15mm or 20mm.   If I go with a Sudan option I will be using 'The Sands of the Sudan' rules, in which Carlo Pagano has resurrected the rules used by Peter Gilder in his Wargames Holiday Centre.

If I go with Zulus, it will be a modified version of Pony Wars.

1/200 / 10mm WW2 Tunisia (Action 200 & Wargames South)

This was inspired by an article "Into the Void with Cork Force" in 'Wargames World' #5 Duncan Macfarlane's short-lived (just 5 issues) sister publication to his 'Wargames Illustrated'.  The scenario is set in Tunisia in 1943 and the game is a bit like Pony Wars, with players being British while their allies (US and French) and enemies (German and Italian) are controlled by the rules.  

1:285 WW2 8th USAAF vs Luftwaffe (Tabletop Flights)

This is a planned resurrection project as I sold off my previous 1:350 collection (see previous post covering this here) and have come to regret that decision.  The project uses a set of rules called "MiG Alley" that were published in Wargames Illustrated #54.  These were set in Korea but are easy enough to modify for different periods - this is a fun game, not a serious simulation.

As the 1:350 planes manufactured by the long since defunct Helmet Miniatures I needed another supplier.  After looking around I plumped for a slightly larger scale (1:285) from Table Top Flights in the States.   

1:600 WW2 Bomber Command vs Nachtjäger (Skytrex)

A long time ago, I read about some aerial rules for nightfighters that I thought would make a very different and interesting quick game.  The Triton range of 1:600 aircraft did pretty much everything needed.  But as ever I didn't do anything but day-dream about it until Triton ceased trading.  Luckily Heroics & Ros now market the range so I bought some at Colours, painted them up, and fitted them with magnets to sit on simple flight stands.

Obviously, at this scale, the German nightfighters don't have any radar antennae, so you'll just have to imagine those.

This game if it ever happens will be a closed game i.e., the nightfighter player won't see the table with British bombers appearing on one edge of a hex-grid and hoping to fly off the other edge without being attacked.  The player can use his radar and will get a plot of any detections on his display allowing him to try and steer to an interception.  To make things more interesting there is likely to be a British Intruder flying around, and every time the German nightfighter uses its radar the Intruder will get a bearing on him and steer to intercept.

If anyone recognises these rules, please let me know what they are as I just can't find anything like that at present, so I'm just making up rules along these basic principles.

Wargaming Projects - 3 of 4 - The Present

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects

Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending

Part 3 - Present Projects: which if not complete (is a project ever complete?) are at least currently being gamed with when I can, for which reason many of these have already been featured on the blog.

This post will be a bit different, as many of my projects which have reached gaming status have already been featured on this blog so many will just have one photo and a link to previous post.

This time I'll go in, more or less, chronological order - fantasy comes last on the basis that it hasn't happened yet.

25mm Ancients (Hinchliffe, with a few Minifigs and Lamming)

I started this army back in 70s and, as discussed under 'pre-historic' projects here, were originally intended as an Alexandrian army but became a generic Successor collection, and the above photo shows all my pike, 250 all told, i.e. just enough for a single syntagma, the smallest tactical unit.

These guys have been used for various versions of 'Ancients' rules by the Wargames Research Group (WRG) and while currently based for the DBx rules series they also get used with 'To the Strongest' (TtS), albeit having to provide the armies for both sides.

The TtS rule-set also encouraged me to make special markers.

The latest use of these troops (here) was for a sort of mash-up of DBM with TtS, i.e. using a grid-based movement system like TtS but DBM for PIP activation and combat.  

Although some further mods will be required to handle recoiling troops (a grid square is too far for a recoil) this is likely to be the way I will continue to use these as the game was quick and fun.

15mm Gladiators (Chariot Miniatures)

A quick filler of a project to make an equally quick game to fill the gaps between bigger games during gaming weekends with friends.  This uses the Ludus Gladiatorius rules and has been featured before on this blog e.g. here.

15mm Normans (Essex Miniatures)

An old project that was originally going to be a First Crusade Army, but not too keen on the Essex Byzantines, I decided to switch it to 1066, but couldn't find an Anglo-Danish and Viking range that I liked.  Luckily my friends have suitable opponents so, while I don't have any opponents for them, they do get used.

15mm Wars of the Roses (Minifigs, Roundway, Peter Pig, et al.)

When DBA first came out, I thought that if you used three armies on each side you would get something like the three Battles that Wars of the Roses armies tended to form up in.  Of course, before I'd finished the armies, many of which I sent off to get painted, DBM came out so I've tended to use those instead, albeit the photo above is from a game using 'The Perfect Captain's' A Crown or Paper - Coat of Steel battle rules. 

These troops get fielded reasonably often, especially in Chit games as described in one of my early posts on Chit Game here.

25mm ECW (Hinchliffe with just the odd Minifig, Warrior or Garrison interloper)

These were mostly Lee Gramson's collection from his now defunct 'Going Back to the English Civil War' blog.  We had corresponded via that blog when he said he wanted to sell the collection as he was moving to Spain, I jumped in the car and drove down to Hythe (IIRC) to pick them up.  My incipient OCD forced me to re-base and re-retouch many of the figures, including: head-swaps; replacing Blu-tack modelled elements with Milliput; adding reins to the horses; replacing swords with steel rod; and, painting new aluminium-foil flags.  The latter was triggered by the kind present of a hand-painted Royal Standard from 'Wellington Man' of the 'Hinton Spieler' blog ...

... which encouraged me to get back into painting flags rather than printing them.

What I was surprised to find during this project, was that I found it much easier to refurbish old figures rather than start from scratch with bare castings, and all this work was done in far less time than I had feared.  I have since added several units to expand the collection further, and Hesilrigge’s Lobsters are the only unit left on my 'To Do' list.  I am pleased to say that these have become one of my favourite collections and get regular use and should be familiar to readers of this blog, like their last post here.

30mm Toy Soldiers (Spencer Smith Miniatures - SSM)

My SSM War of Austrian Succession (WAS) collection, like the ECW collection above, is another of my favourites but unfortunately gets less use than I would like.  I'm also waiting on the new owner of the Spencer Smith moulds to put them back production to complete a few loose ends.

The genesis of this project, inspired by the 'Charge' rule-set, was one of my earliest posts (here) so I won't repeat it here.  Several battle reports are also posted, including a five part series on a refight of the Batte of Mollwitz (here).

15mm 1745 Jacobite (Essex Miniatures plus the odd Freikorps)

This project was started after reading a blog on adapting DBA for the '45 Jacobite Rebellion, and seeing the very nice 15mm Essex highlander sculpts.  It stalled a bit when I found that the rules didn't give a very good game but the project was rejuvenated (and re-based!) by the use of Sam Mustafa's 'Maurice' rules for the '45 on the 'Shrine of Sadness' blog.  

They don't get a lot of use and I think this post is the only time they've featured on the blog. 

6mm Napoleonics (Heroics & Ros, with some Adler artillery)

When these came out in the 70s, they were the ideal answer for students short of cash, space and time to paint.  A group of us all picked an army, and I chose the Prussians (post 1808) and now have three 'brigades' (a Prussian brigade was the equivalent of other nations' divisions) each in its own magnetic storage box like the 'East Prussian Brigade' shown below.

Unfortunately, the problem with everyone doing a different army became apparent when the guy with the French emigrated after Uni leaving lots of allies with no enemies so I also started to put together some French.  I now have four French divisions based on Reille's Corps at Quatre Bras plus Kellerman's entire cavalry corps - at a figure ratio of 1:12 for infantry and 1:15 for cavalry.

Better still new wargaming colleagues have built Austrian, Bavarian and French forces, one even built some sculpted terrain for Waterloo.

The rules for these games have typically been home-grown, based on many others, but recently we've been getting good games using Neil Thomas' 'Napoleonic Wargame Rules' (NTNWR) - the latest being here, and it's likely that, with a few mods, we'll stick with these for a bit.

20mm Vintage Naps (Hinton Hunt, Alberken, DK, etc. - mostly copies I fear)

This project is entirely down to bloggers like 'The Hinton Spieler', 'Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargame Figures' and others who seduced me with the charm (yes, I know it's subjective) of glossy vintage 20mm Napoleonics.

I have a long way to go to get anywhere near completing the planned armies, and the number of unpainted castings in the loft is a bit disconcerting, but at least I've now done enough for a game, the last being here.

28mm Old West Gunfights (Guernsey Foundry)

This project was originally built for use with 'The Rules With No Name' by Bryan Ansell, a free download from Wargames Foundry who now produce these figures.  They have also benefitted from being one of the few projects for which I've actually put together a decent amount of terrain - in this case a scratch-built township.

Nowadays, they tend to be used with the Too Fat Lardies 'What a Cowboy' rules, but have so far only made a single appearance on the blog here.

 

1:2400 Russo-Japanese Naval (Panzerschiffe)

Inspired by a campaign system by David Manley published in both Miniature Wargames (MW) and Wargames Illustrated (WI), this project proved very quick to complete with resin ships from Panzerschiffe.  The entire campaign as played has been posted in four parts: Intro; Part 1; Part 2; and, Part 4.

Wings of War (Commercial 1:1444 WW1) 

Not much to say here, as it's a complete game system produced commercially, requiring no modelling or painting so hardly a 'project'.

20mm WW2 Normandy (FAA, SHQ, MMS, et al)

This project originated with an article entitled 'BOCAGE ‘44' by Andrew Grainger in WI#15 with rules for fighting an Infantry platoon in Normandy.  I was drawn to this by the way troops were more often pinned by fire rather than killed or wounded.  For this I put together an infantry company of three platoons (at about 80% strength) and a troop of tanks (3 Cromwells & 1 Firefly).  I then ran games as a 'Dungeon Master' with players commanding a platoon troop and working together to achieve an objective against a motley collection of Germans.  I as umpire would roll to see if any enemy were present every time players exposed themselves to a new line of sight - the games had a real sense of jeopardy.

But then along came Chain of Command (CoC) and the collection is now used almost exclusively for that.

1/1200 WW2 Fletcher Pratt Naval (Airfix)

Although they haven't been used for some time now, I still consider this project active, but it requires a church hall or similar to play.  These very old rules, that had predicted the demise of the Graf Spee if she met a group of cruisers are very simple but give really convincing results.  At my last club we fought every action of the Bismarck's short career and got an almost identical result to history in every case.  Unfortunately, there's a lack of 1:1200 kits, I had to kit-bash an HMS Prince of Wales to make a Rodney ...

... and getting up and down from the floor plays havoc with my knees so, I'm not sure these will get run out again - shame.

 

28mm LotR Breaking of the Fellowship (Games Workshop)

A lovely quick project that allowed me to game with Games Workshop's (GW) delightful Lord of the Rings figure range - I wanted to paint some figures but didn't want to build armies.  I designed a game to just represent the breaking of the Fellowship from when Frodo has fled from Boromir who tried to take the Ring, until he departs, leaving his companions behind, to take on the quest to Mordor by himself or, hopefully, with Samwise.

The use of playing cards for a very simple movement and combat system was stolen from a Three Musketeers participation game I saw at a convention, and the 'hidden movement' system I read about somewhere so long ago I don't recall where.  This was all described here.

28mm LotR Dragon Rampant (Games Workshop)

This project was really just an expansion of the Fellowship project - see above.  I had been picking up cheap GW LotR figures from eBay for a while with view to doing different scenarios when I encountered the Dragon Rampant rule-set.  This fired me up to send off the stored plastic to Fernando Enterprises for painting as I knew I'd never spare the time from my historical projects for this.  The end result, some fun games of Dragon Rampant like that here.

Well, that's all for this instalment of the potted history of my wargaming projects past, present and future, the previous instalment can be found here.