A week of 'Chalk and Cheese'

Gaming this week had something of a 'chalk and cheese' feel about it, as the saying goes. It began with a 3000 point ACW game, fought using my 15mm armies. The town sectors use buildings that I scratch built with card, whilke the smaller 'village' sectors used 15mm buildings from the Hovels cata   logue. The Confederate army was outmanoeuvred by the Union forces who managed to slip around their left flank, dislodging them from their position. The game was devised using the Volley and Bayonet Road to Glory scenario system. Just a few 'in game' photos.

A CSA brigade having fallen back disordered from a melee finds itself in front of two still mounted Union cavalry brigades.. ouch

This was followed with three spiffing good games of WW2 Wings of Glory. Two dogfights P51s vs FW190s were followed by a bombing mission with tw B17s escorted by by a P51, taking it to four Fw190s.

A great week of games played in damned fine company.

Volley and Bayonet action for the week ...

 Two Volley and Bayonet games this week, both set in the mid nineteenth century, one during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 (also known as the Seven Weeks' War), the other during the American Civil War (specifically 1862 in this case), and both played using 15mm armies.

This first is the Austro-Prussian War featuring Adrain's 15mm armies.

This second using the Volley and Bayonet Road To Glory scenario system (3000 point armies), fought using my own 15mm civil war armies.

 

It's always nice to get the armies out on the table, and it;'s been a while since these ACW armies saw action. I have in the meantime painted up some extra units. 

Both games were the usual VnB 'goodness'.

Pirates and Dwarves.... emerging from the darkness

We hadn't played ant DBF in a while, so last  night we played a small 80 point game, my Pirates vs Murray's Dwarfs, out from the darkness of their boxes after many months.  As is my habit these days, this is not so much an AAR as it is simply a selection of photos from start to finish.

Dwarven 'light mounted' in the midst of three Pirate Great Beasts.

Pirate Great Flyer (an air galleon of course, what were you expecting?)

Dwarven artillery

Pirate artillery

Dwarven hero on the left, supported by blades

A part of the Pirate deployment, 'bow' (probably should have been 'handguns'), warband and hero

The Pirate Great Beasts tackling the Dwarven behemoth

The game was interesting, but the victim of some of the most one sided die rolling I have seen .. almost all of my combat dice were 5s and 6s, unlike my PIP dice which were a uchg. more mixed bag, explaining why the Great Flyer barely got into action. The Dwarven army was devastated while the Pirates took no casualties at all....  

Our rules knowledge was rusty, meaning we took far longer than we ought to for a game of this size, so we only managed the one game.

Pushing the boundary out a little

Some years ago I experimented with the idea of 'Cold war gone hot', the idea of an armed conflict between the Soviet Union in the years immediately following the end of World War 2. The only real attraction was to get more use out of the WW2 armies while adding in a little of the more modern vehicles and options, largely for the aesthetics. For that purpose I'd bought a box of the Plastic Soldier Company 1/72nd T55s, to be used as look alikes for the earlier T54. 

While I have plenty of other figures up for painting (a DBA Theban army sits on the painting table undercoated and ready for some attention) I just felt like assembling the T55s. It's rare these days for me to get that old school plastic kitset urge.

The PSC kits are quick assembly, with track units supplied complete, which is something of a relief as I dislike that sort of work. A few years ago I had an operation on one hand, resulting in the surgeon nicking a nerve leaving my right thumb with no feeling down the outside. This can make tasks requiring finer motor skills somewhat more challenging.

Anyway.. here are the three T55 models. The rules will of course be Spearhead, with the combat factors for the T54s suitably imported and adapted from the Modern Spearhead set.

Will they ever see service on the table top? We'll see....

Late 19th Century games

 The week's gaming explored the amazing flexibility of the Volley and Bayonet rules. Having recently reviewed the latest scenario book featuring battles from the Nine Years War, this week we began by fighting the battle across the Modder River in the Boer War, the extreme opposite of the Nine Years war affrays. Adrian created some rules modifications that allowed the skirmish style Boers to stand against the British formed units.

The battle was fought using figures from Adrian's collections.

This was followed by a battle set in the Franco Prussian War, using Keith's 6mm armies.

A fascinating week's gaming.