A Slight Change of Plan

I had sort of a plan at the start of the year for what I was going to try and get painted, but it looks like the plan is changing, as the Wyrley Retinue have now decided on our demo game for next year. Unfortunately for me, it doesn't involve Wood Elves, Skaven or LotR figures! 

I'll give more details soon, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with a couple of clues...

The Interlude

By way of an interlude between more updates on the game boards, here are those pictures of the European Mercenaries I put together a couple of weeks ago. I now have 40 pikemen (arranged in two units of 20), 20 handgunners (in two units of 10) and 12 crossbowmen. I have a few bodies left over, so they'll likely become more crossbowmen depending on what parts I have left to use.

These most certainly won't be painted for a while, at least not until 2013. I still have to do sufficient research into colour schemes/uniforms to reassure me that I won't get them "wrong" once I start painting...

In other news, the PDF rulebook for DreadBall: Season 1 was made available to the Kickstarter backers yesterday. I've yet to read through it all properly, but I'm planning on making a "rules summary" post at some point to share a little about how the game plays. Until next time...

Condotta!

Over the past few nights, I've been busy assembling the European Mercenaries I picked up at WMMS back in March. Just an hour or so over three or four evenings has seen 12 Pikemen, 8 Handgunners and a Command group assembled, so they're coming together pretty quickly. I've still not completely decided on how to paint them - I've narrowed it down to Venice or Milan. I'll probably go with Milan (as the "purer" Italian army - no foreigners for me!)


Anyway, here are a few snaps of the figures so far:

As always, click for bigger images. I've got another 6 Pikemen part-assembled, and I'll make the final 4 Handgunners as well. I'll probably assemble the second box to max out the Pikemen (another 18 for 36 in total) and make the Handgunners up to 20 (two units of 10). Out of the remaining bodies, I'll probably make up a unit of 10 Crossbowmen and a second Command group (depending on how far the bodies stretch - I've not done the maths yet!)

That's all for now. I'll be updating on the progress of the Napoleonics campaign later in the week, as well as trying to write up a Tomb Kings army book review (once I've had time to sit down and read it properly).

Until then, TTFN!

Update in Record Time!

This must be the shortest time between updates ever - two updates in two days! You lucky devils...

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, today was the Alumwell wargames show. We headed up this morning to find the Stalingrad game in the midst of setting up. I didn't manage to get any pics of the table unfortunately, but the guys really pulled out all the stops to make a great looking board.

We were lucky to be positioned as the first demo game inside the doors, so we attracted a lot of attention from everyone coming into the hall. There were a lot of great looking games, including one right next door which was a reenactment of the Battle of Towton - two huge War of the Roses armies facing each other across a snow-covered field, and one of the bloodiest battles fought on English soil. I couldn't hang around long enough to find out whether history repeated itself unfortunately, but it was set up to be an excellent game from what I did see.

It wasn't all about the games though - there were plenty of trade stands, as always. Naturally, I took the opportunity to splash some cash. Windwind Productions had no Saxon Archers again (second year running...) so I may have to resort to buying them online after all. I managed to pick up the Napoleonic cavalry I was after though: more Dragoons, Cuirassiers, Bavarian Cheveau-Legér, as well as some Voltigeurs. I have enough Line Infantry for the whole army, so it's time to start getting some other infantry to add in.
Of course, there were the usual temptations of new projects, shiny new figures for bright new periods of history. Yet again I lacked the willpower and resolve to resist, and I am now the owner of two boxes of these:

I've been a fan of the figures since they were released, so it didn't take much to overcome my resolve (in truth, I've been looking for an excuse...) The great thing about the European Mercenaries is that they are incredibly flexible; they can be used to form the backbone of pretty much any medieval European army - War of the Roses mercenaries (for both sides), Italian Condotta, Swiss, Burgundians, French, Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries and even late 15th Century Spanish. 40 figures for just £18 works out at just 45p per figure - absolutely fantastic value, and brilliant quality figures as well. Buying two boxes also got me two free Mounted pages, so can't complain about that! Now I just have to decide exactly what army I want to use them as...



In other news, a surprising amount of progress has been made with the Clanrats:

That's the two main colours complete. Now to start on the details.