Planning My SELWG Purchases

It's that time of year again, so this Sunday should see me traipsing down to Crystal Palace on Sunday for the SELWG show if all goes well. I'm not planning on spending much, but as we all know no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not that the traders are the enemy. Except of our bank balances. But you know what I mean, don't you?

I've been looking at the sprues of the Perry packs I bought on Monday (and the European Mercenaries pack I bought on a whim at some point) and have been working out what units for FoG I'll be able to make from them and what extra I need to order.

Luckily for my purse, I will only need to buy one more pack of the WotR Infantry and a few metals figure packs (commanders and light guns) to make up a 600 point army. If I ever want to expand the army, it will be relatively easy to do so by buying a couple more packs of infantry. I might also pick up a second pack of the mounted men at arms, which would allow me to make up 4 bases (12 figures) as knights and 4 bases (12 figures) of curreurs.

I also want to pick up a couple of packs of GZG's new NSL power armour troops. However, that damnable Mr Tuffley is always very good at persuading me to part with more money than planned so I suggest waiting to read my loot post on Sunday to see what else I bought.

I imagine there will also be some impulse buys.

Oh Dear, What's She Planning Now?

So, two weeks since my last post - they're getting closer together! I still haven't painted anything. My fatigue is improving, but I've done something to my right shoulder and need to rest it until it stops being sore. I'm hoping that this weekend will see me back in painting mode, finishing off the warehouse and corner store at long last.

For a while I've had a silly idea about doing a 28mm army for FoG, but wasn't sure what era I wanted to do, let alone what army. Then this weekend my brain suddenly had a moment of inspiration. I still haven't been able to identify the source, but I have a crack team one the case.

Whoops, my mistake. It appears I have a case team on crack. I guess I'll never find out.

This evening after work I did a little shopping trip to obtain some research materials. The advantage of working in central London - lots of useful shops. Here are the fruits of my shopping trip.

Well, that's it for today's post. I'm sure my next one won't take two weeks.

What's that? You want to know what is in the bags? Oh, since you asked so demandingly.

Yup, I'm going to do a Wars of the Roses army. Thanks to those great guys the Perry twins, I should be able to do the army relatively cheaply thanks to their plastics. I will need to complete the army with a few metals, but not many (just the commanders and artillery). Another factor that will keep the costs down is that FoG in 28mm uses smaller armies (500-650 points) and the troops for this army are relatively expensive points-wise.

Foyles didn't have the MAA145 book in stock, so I ordered it on Amazon when I got home.

Part of my research involves discovering what the sprues contain, so it was necessary to buy one each of the packs - WR1 Infantry, WR40 Mounted Men at Arms and WR50 Foot Knights.

Infantry:

The pack contains 3 infantry sprues of 12 figures, 2 command sprues of 2 figures, a sprue of plastic bases and an information leaflet which has some examples of livery and some banners and standards.

Mounted Men at Arms:

This pack contains 3 sprues of men at arms of 4 figures, 4 horse sprues to make up 3 horses each, a sprue of plastic bases and an information leaflet which has some examples of livery and some banners and standards.

Foot Knights:

This pack contains 6 sprues of 6 foot knights, 1 command sprue of 2 figures, a sprue of plastic bases and an information leaflet which has some examples of livery and some banners and standards.

Given my family background, my army will be Lancastrian - apologies to any White Roses following my blog. However, all the retinues will be of fictional knights and lords so that I can do them in whatever livery colours I want (within reason!). Deciding on the liveries should keep me out of trouble for a few days until my shoulder heals.

Recovering Gradually

Well, it's just over 3 weeks since my last post which is a much smaller gap than between that and the one before. I am steadily recovering from the fatigue, but still not 100% there. Hopefully I'll be fully recovered in a couple more weeks.

I still haven't managed to get back to painting, but I have in the last few days managed to get in some games. Both times I thought I'd put my camera in my bag, but discovered I hadn't.

On Thursday Simon and I played a rather large game of Full Thrust - roughly 4000 points of ships each. That equates to the Mega Fleets from GZG - a few capital ships, a bunch of cruisers and a small flotilla of escort ships. Simon had his NSL; I finally got my NAC out for a game.

Simon had split his fleet into 3 squadrons. His SDN squadron was coming in from one corner, the other 2 squadrons were coming in from the other corner, so were effectively 2 squadrons. I split my fleet into 2 squadrons as well. My main squadron had the capital ships plus the heavy and escort cruisers. The other squadron had 2 light cruisers, 2 destroyers, 2 frigates, 3 corvettes and 3 scouts.

My capital ship squadron decided to take on his SDN squadron, while my escort squadron acted as a sacrificial delaying/distraction sacrifice force against Simon's other squadrons.

My plan worked out quite nicely, or rather it would have done if we'd been able to play the game out to a conclusion. Unfortunately we only managed to play out 3 turns due to the combined effects of having so many ships on the table and Simon having to field calls from a project team at work.

However the probable result was quite clear at this point. His SDN squadron was just about to die gloriously with my capital squadron being largely intact. The remainder of his fleet would take several turns to be in a position to take on my capitals, by which time I'd have got myself into positions where I could take advantage of their reduced firing arcs by getting behind them. Admittedly I had lost all of my sacrificial delaying force and 1 heavy cruiser, but they had done a decent amount of damage to his remaining ships before being vaporised.

It was definitely interesting to compare the pros and cons of the 2 fleets. The NSL are able to put out a lot of firepower and can take a lot of damage thanks to their armour and strong hulls. The NAC can also put out a lot of firepower, perhaps not as much as the NSL. The screens on everything cruiser class or above helps to offset the fact that they have less armour and slightly weaker hulls. Speed and agility are the other major difference between the fleets. The NAC have a higher thrust rating which makes them more agile (more rapid acceleration/deceleration; can turn through tighter arcs [in Full Thrust, ships can use up to half their thrust points for turning, with each point of thrust so used giving a 30 degree turn]).


Sunday saw another big game of FoG run by Gordon. This month's battle was Brunanburgh, which saw the Saxon armies of Mercia and Wessex take on the combined might of the King of Dublin with his allies the Kings of Strathclyde and of Alba. This game saw us using Gordon's rather impressive collection of 25/28mm figures, some of which hadn't been played for over 30 years.

You may recall that during the Analogue Painting Challenge I submitted a figure of Egil Skalagrimsson? Well he was there at the battle. The man, not the figure! At the time he was in the employ of Aethelred of Wessex.

I ended up taking the role of Constantine, King of Alba on the left wing of our army. Our initial plan was for me to sweep out onto the right flank of the Wessex army. However, when we got back into the room we saw that they had deployed a substantial reserve force on that end of the table, so my plan went out  of the window. A quick discussion determined that I would instead just try to delay them enough to expose the right flank of the Wessex force for the Strathclyde Scots to exploit. Unfortunately Constantine took some tactical advice from Owain of Strathclyde. This entailed various manoeuvres which delayed my troops getting into action. When they did get into combat, they didn't fare too well. Mind you, it seemed to go very badly for the whole of our army and we were very close to being routed by lunchtime. Most of the losses were to the Scots and Irish troops. Rather than finish the day early, we decided to call the result as a massive victory for the Saxons and play the battle again after lunch.

For the second battle we cut down the number of troops on each side, with the two overall commanders pruning their lists according to some formula they had agreed. This battle went much the same way, with the Saxons wiping out almost all the Irish, the Viking mercenaries and a large proportion of the Strathclyde Scots. My Alban Scots were actually faring quite well and were getting close to taking the Wessex army's flank and rear.

All in all it was a good day of gaming, accompanied as always by excellent food from Gordon. Whilst I'm not sure that FoG are the best rules for recreating this type of warfare, Gordon's special rules did a good job of compensating by trying to force shield walls to stay solid - units with exposed flanks suffered an additional minus per exposed flank on cohesion tests and if they failed would suffer a double drop (eg from steady to fragmented rather than the normal steady to disrupted).

Another special rule was that commanders who were attached to units in combat had to fight in the front line. That meant they wouldn't be available to rally other units until their combat was over. We also had a handful of warlords who acted as generals only for the specific unit they were attached to.

A Memory of Blogging

Well, the post title seems appropriate given how long it has been since my last post and the title of that!

I have had a few emails (and comments on the blog) asking me if everything is OK. This post is to let you know that I am alive, haven't been in hospital, haven't been in prison, haven't been sent on some super-duper-top secret mission or anything like that. For those who did get in touch, thank you for your concern.

It's quite simple really. For the past few weeks I've been suffering from a return of my chronic fatigue, which has left me without the mental or physical energy to do anything hobby related in the evenings after work. My weekends have been spent trying to sleep as much as possible.

I believe that I know what has caused this extended period of fatigue (I occasionally have brief flare-ups, but these only last a few days). At work we have had some major refurbishments taking place. Unfortunately these works have been directly above and outside the office I work in. The noise from this appears to have affected my sleep, leading to the fatigue building up.

Luckily all the heavy drilling, demolition and other very noisy work is finished now, so my sleep should start to return to normal shortly and I'll once again have energy in the evenings and at weekends for painting and gaming. At that point, you can expect me to be actively blogging again.

A Memory of Paint

I do apologise for the lack of posts this week. I had hoped to get some painting done during my extended weekend, but this didn't happen as I was feeling somewhat under the weather. Not ill, just a little bit off, enough to not feel like painting anything. I did pick up my brushes, but that was to clean them.

I have been feeling fully recovered since Wednesday morning, but I still haven't done any painting. There is a reason for that. Ian and maybe some others might have guessed where this post is going from the title.

Pic from Orbit website

You see, a good few years ago I bought a book. And then I bought all the following book in the series. In March I finally found out that the paperback version of the 14th and final book in the series was out and snapped it up. Yes, you did read that right - the fourteenth and final book. It turns out it had actually been published in paperback several months before, but I'd never seen it on the shelves of any bookshops I browse in until March. It has been a long and bumpy ride with one moment that set all the fans into a panic.

For those of you who don't know by now what I'm talking about, the books are the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. The panic moment was that he died in 2007 with the final book still to come. Fortunately before his death, Mr Jordan had sketched out (in quite some detail) "A Memory of Light". His widow found a great young author, Brandon Sanderson, to complete the series. However, it soon became clear that the final volume was too much for one book or even two books (most of the books are about 900 pages long). Thus "A Memory of Light" ended up as three books - The Gathering Storm, The Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. Luckily for the fans, Mr Sanderson has done a superb job of these books.

And now we return to the reason for me not having done any painting over the last few days (and probably not this weekend either!). Over the past few months I have been re-reading the series from the start. On Tuesday evening I finished reading the 13th book. I couldn't resist starting A Memory of Light and proceeded to read the Prologue.

Oh

My

Dog!

I had a major nerdgasm just from reading the prologue and have been in nerdgasm territory ever since then. I'm currently about two thirds of the way through and finding it very hard to pull myself away from reading. I should finish it this weekend.

Ohmydog! I've just realised I probably won't finish it this weekend as on Sunday I'll be out for most of the day doing a big FoG game of Tannenberg.

Once the book is finished I will get back to painting.

Eureka 1920s Jazz Band

The moment you've all been waiting for is here. Pics of the finished Jazz Band.

First of all, some shots of the whole band:

And some shots of halves of the band:

These were great fun to paint - I can't wait for the next "special" for this project.

Paint Table Saturday #35

It turns out last week was indeed #34, so that makes this

#35!

Having gone all the way through spraying with matt varnish then touching up parts with gloss and satin varnish for the cops, G-Men and gangsters, I had a horrible thought a couple of nights ago. Part of my plan is to use these for participation games, so they'll probably get handled quite a lot. Will the spray varnish be enough to keep the paint jobs safe from handling? Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided to play it safe and give them a coat of Klear. Of course, this means that I'll have to go back and repeat the matt spray and brush-on gloss/satin for the 36 figures I've completed so far.

Well, what's on my paint table today? The Jazz Band are almost done now - just metal highlights left to do and the "stage" part of the base. They will get a coat of Klear as well.

Tomorrow I will start work on some collateral damage civilians for gaming. As there are twenty figures in that pack from Blue Moon, I've split them into two groups - male and female. A while back Fran and Ray were asking where their "molls" were, so I'll do the ladies first.

I'm also hoping to finish the corner store and warehouse this weekend (it's a long one for me - I've booked Monday and Tuesday off work!). I might also make up a stage for the band to perform on.