British Naps for Sharp Practice 2 (2)

Seven more musket armed redcoats for my Sharp Practice force. This brings me to 24 painted.
So now I have to assemble some more.

Bases still need finishing, but I'm going to leave that and do them all at once.
I cracked and went back and added some highlights to the white on these and I think they look much better so I'm going to go back and do that to the eight from earlier in the month.

40K Birthday Bash

Late last week I became the parent of a teenager.
Weird, huh? I'm only about nineteen myself I reckon.
Anyway the son and heir decided for his birthday to get some of his gaming mates together and play 40K, so a table was booked at Warhammer World (it can be handy living in Nottingham).
At one point Stephen was threatening to attend, which would doubtless have resulted in much beer drinking, but as it was he was indisposed (probably painting Naps) so I had to try and organise and run things myself.

Needn't have worried various adolescents had memorised the entire rule book.

Anyway, chaos ensued with assorted armies running around narrow corridors.

I think fun was had - though my wife suggested mostly by me.

One thing I did notice though. On all the other tables the huge models were much in evidence. 40K has shifted from being a game of troops in the 41st millennium to battling robots with added flying stuff.
That may be a bit of the Warhammer World factor, in as much as there are big nice looking tables and everybody wants to get their big models out, but even on the smaller games everyone seemed to have at least one, and sometimes an entire force of Giant Robots of Death and Skullz (tm) . I've never been much of a fan of 40K the game, but always liked the background, but this seems to have moved away from that into a sort of up-scaled skirmish version of Epic.

First Game of Sharp Practice 2

Steve and I made our way over to the Ilko Gaming Hut last night so that the combined Sherwood Hucknall Ilkeston Team could give Sharp Practice 2 a go.
Both General Ballroom and I have been quite excited and giddy about this ruleset. Though inevitably it is Steve who has done the most painting.
When it turned out Gen. B had painted only a single 8 man group and myself just a further two whilst he had a fully painted force "and plenty more besides". Steve, being a quiet and retiring type, hardly mentioned it at all over and over again for the next three hours or so.

Anyways, we cobbled together roughly equal forces from the Peninsular pre 1812 lists (another failing here - apparently I'd misremembered and suggested Steve only needed to bring six Voltiguers. True to form he hardly mentioned this every five minutes for the next three hours either)

So we set forth, thumbing frantically back and forth and questioning and remembering stuff and then forgetting it all.

The French had a second deployment point (note to self: this was very handy - get one in future) and had most of their force deployed in defensible positions before any redcoats arrived. As a result we spent much of the game pinned in the corner of the board.

The Frenchies deploy

Over the next few turns the rifles pushed up on our left flank and initially shot up the French advance. Meantime the British regulars indulged in a futile firefight with the Voltigeurs behind a wall.

And give fire

Eventually the weight of the French attack fell on the rifles and we discovered how fisticuffs work (in favour of the formed up infantry, not the puny skirmishers as it happens)

Allez mes braves!

By this time the British right had awoken and was advancing on the French, though three command cards in a row turned the field all muddy or something and slowed me right down.

The thin red line gives fire

At this point we ran out of steam and beer and called a halt.

So how was it?
Overall it was OK.
We struggled a bit at first with the rules, but soon had most of the basics down.
The French looked splendid and overall it felt quite Napoleonic and rewarded the better player (Steve) using the better tactics.
It all felt a bit static and repetitive at times, but that is probably more to do with the rapid initial French deployment and failure to use the Command Cards very well. And I suspect that was a bit true of Napoleonic firefighting (though I seem to remember CoC bogging down like that a little at times too).
I think we'll get faster and better and when we work out how to use Command Cards effectively we'll be proper dangerous.
However herein lies my chief concern - the core rules are very simple and effective, but it's the command cards that make the game and I worry that my old simple, straightforward brain hasn't enough space in it to ever master the cards effectively.

I cautiously enjoyed it. I liked it much better than Dux Brit - it's much clearer and easier to understand. From my limited knowledge it looks like it gives a pretty good approximation of Napoleonic skirmishes. In the hands of clever players who know what they're doing and remember all the card stuff I'm sure it'll be great - but I'm not convinced we'll ever quite master that enough to get a really challenging game going. As a rulesset I think it's good, well written, mostly pretty clear and with lots to get your teeth into. It just may be a bit too challenging for what we can cope with.

But I'm certainly going to paint up some more models and give it a good go.

Warhammer Siege Campaign - Test the Defences

High on the walls of Fortress Groznog Snurti Longsight took the telescope from his one good eye and slowly folder the brass device away. 
"Nowt to worry about lads - I've seen spiders bigger than the ones they're riding in mi bath"

Despite the setback of having their war-machine smashed by the desperate dwarf sally  Ruglud has continued to turn the screw. Now, emboldened, he's decided it is time to assault part of the fortress outer defences.
The Orcs would have 1,000 points including a single war machine versus the Dwarf 500 points of defenders. I decided to give the Ironbreakers rocks to hurl on their foes.

 Dawn breaks. How many Groznog dwarfs will live to see another?

 Ironbreakers wave their defiance

Any sign yet, lads?

 The Orc horde advances

Never leave home without ladders. And a big badass Black Orc

Man the ramparts

The greenskin advance began with their spider riders scuttling forward. The Dwarfs shot, but drew no blood

 Scuttle...

 ...creep

 A rather less subtle advance

Soon the greenies were at the wall, though dwarf shooting had whittled the big unit of Orcs heading for the gate to give it a good hard ramming.

 Ladderz!!!!

 Up and over and in!

Kerrrrunnch!!!

Whilst the simple minded Orcs smashed against the door under a hail of fire from the thunderers and crossbows the Black Orc delivery system Night Goblin units raced into combat with the Ironbreakers

This was to prove a protracted affair with at least one lot of goblins running away at least twice. However the Black Orc kept swinging and the Ironbreakers kept killing but with ever dwindling numbers.

 Fleee!

Oh bugger!

In the meantime the spiders had clambered up and over the walls and were seriously distracting the dwarf gunline from its main task of killing Orcs.

 On we grind...

Double bugger!

At some point during this the Orcs with the ram dropped their weapon and fled but the spiders overran the crossbowmen and began properly whittling the Thunderers

Finally it was all too much and the Orcs returned to the fray, picked up their enormous log and thrust it through the vaguely resisting doorway and forced themselves home.

In we go ladz!

And so the outer Bastion of Fortess Lerpak the ancestral home of the Groznog Clan has been breached!

This was good fun, The actual sige rules seemed to work pretty well and the door only cracked on the very last turn of the game. I suspect the full game will just turn into a bit of a grind with endless combats that neither side can win decisively enough to force the issue. However at this size it worked rather well and I'm looking forward to the grand climax.

Gebirgsjäger (2)

After a little feedback from James and another look at the model, here he is again.

Some additional highlights on clothing and face and the base changed to ocher to match better with James existing 8th army and make the figure "pop" a little more.

Gebirgsjäger for Crete

Part of my haul of cheap Perry plastics from Boyes was a box of Afrika Korps.
James and I have chatted many a time and oft about some possible Crete action and it seemed to me that it might be possible to fashion some passable Gebirgsjäger from the DAK set.
Ones at least that would fit in scale-wise with the relatively small Perry WW2 models, rather than towering above them as I fear some other other ranges might.

So here's a test model.

Think it could maybe do with some more highlighting, but it's passable as a Cretan Gebirgsjäger I reckon.
The boots aren't quite right I fear, but at this size who really cares?

I snipped the entrenching tool off as I initially couldn't find reference to them, but some b&w shots of the Mountain Troops boarding gliders and JU52s shows them on the backpack.