HotT Womanly wiles... HotT Angels

After nearly 30 years, my wife Lorraine finally said.. "if you can't beat 'em.., I want an Angel army". So we spent a number of weeks before Christmas looking for figures she liked. We discussed the idea of a paladin, a knight on a white charger, some foot knights maybe, to give some ground elements. Nope, I want angels. But they would be flyers, and all flyer army will be hard to sue for a first time player. Nope, I want angels.. OK... Someone on the HotT list did point out that not all angels have wings, but these all did, so here it is.. an army of angels (with a couple of fairies thrown in for good measure.. why? She liked the figures!!), and all flyers. Lorraine even did the basing herself, clouds....not bad, eh!! We just have to complete a Stronghold.

So:

1 x Aerial Heroine, the big angel dude!!
2 x Airboats, the large fairy flyers
6 x flyers, little angel babies











Now it seems that husband/wife wargaming may be taking off. Tim of Saskatchewan recently reported his first HotT date with his wife, and made comment on a growing trend reported elsewhere on the web. I'm looking forward to something similar, doubtless with the full range of distractions and other womanly ploys to defeat me....

Volley and Bayonet in action

We played a great little Volley and Bayonet game last night.. a small ACW action using my 15mm armies. The action was unbalanced, but nicely so. I used historical OOBs (Cedar Mountain) on a fictional terrain. The battle as we played it ended in a Confederate victory, but to provide game balance the game really required a time limit. The Confederates outnumbered the Union (both quantity and quality) as they fought over a strategic across roads.

This is only the third game I've played with the second edition of the rules. The rules are still fundamentally great, but there are a couple of changes in this new edition that I cannot justify in my own mind either logically or historically.

The treatment of skirmishing detachments in particular presents difficulty IMO. I am having trouble figuring out how a brigade can detach its own skirmishes, and end up increasing its own firepower and melee ability. I have watched discussion on the Yahoo group, but sadly don't feel confident to express my opinion on the list.. and that's not a feeling I've had on that list before.

We still had a great game.. ... and there will be many more.

Crossfire rules..OK!!

Finally finished the recycling of my old 20mm WW2 figures for Crossfire - well OK some would call it re-basing (the bane of the wargamer's life) but I'm trying to keep a positive spin on this..OK?

The photos below show two completed battalions, both late war: German and British. The photos of the Germans show a range of camouflage uniforms, while the British 'battalion' is made up fROm a company each of standard infantry, commandoes, and paratroopers. This eclectic composition is purely because those are the figures I have, and I like them.. the variety is nice. They will in all probability do service as standard infantry despite their uniforms.

The German were all painted by good friend Gerard D, a dab hand with a brush on those camouflage uniforms. The British were all my own, all from another age when I knew nothing of black undercoats, shading and highlighting etc. I had planned to give these figures a series of washes and highlights to sharpen up their appearance (see my previous blog on the Early German DBA army for an example), but as I mentioned in my previous blog though, I think these have a charm all of their own, even though my painting style has well and truly moved on since then.

The figures are almost all plastics (Airfix, and Esci mostly, from memory) with a few metals mixed in. The metal British commandoes and Paratroopers are Brittania, although I think there are a few FAA figures in there as well.. it really is that long ago that I can't tremember too well where I bought many of them from).

And yes, you aren't imagining things, some of those paras are sheltering behind crumbling brick walls (shades of Arnhem there). Each time we use them we make the jokes about how tiring it must be to haul those brick walls around after them as they go into action....

Now I am looking forward to a few serious Crossfire games.

Recycling figures...

A major new project... finishing two matching Crossfire battalions. I first bought a copy of these rules thinking that they might provide a use for a lifetime's collection of 20mm WW2 figures.

I was right.. I fell for the rules, they are wonderful. The fact that I'm not terribly good at them is irrelevant, I still love playing them.

So I have found a use for nearly 40 years worth of accumulated 20mm WW2 figures. They are in various states, almost none of them up to the painting standard that I aspire to now, but this gives them a charm of their own. I like that.

So, they are partly re-based, just the completion of the scenic effects on the bases required. I'll post soem photos when they are finished.

1944 Germans and British. The British battalion has a company each of standard infantry, paras and commandoes (not because I like super troops.. I'll use them as standard infantry).. I just like the varied look of the figures on the table. The Germans were painted by good friend Gerard D.. a variety of camouflage, and Field Grey, uniforms.. as I said, a charm all of their own.

Then there is the mass of Russians that were always my favourites: standard infantry, black sea fleet marines .. oh, yes, I'm certainly recycling figures.

Commando Comics - a holiday read

A little holiday reading...I grabbed a copy of this from our school library shelves just before we adjourned for the summer holiday, and it was quite a trip down memory lane. I grew up with the occasional read of these comics, hiding them in my wardrobe because my parents didn't approve.

But it has left me thinking about our war-gaming hobby and the perceptions of some of our colleagues. I wonder how many 'gamers, and rules writers for that matter, shaped their perceptions of battle on this sort of literary diet? When I think about some of the rules systems I have read, some of them bear an unerring likeness to the Commando Comic view of battle. On the other hand some don't, some are indeed based on good evidence, and some on hard core academic research.

A good friend showed me a copy of 'Lost Battles', written by Phil Sabin ("Philip Sabin is a British military historian who is currently a professor in the War Studies Department of King's College London. He specializes in air power studies and ancient warfare. He is a member of the CAS Air Power Workshop, a small working group of scholars and other theorists convened by the Chief of Air Staff." - Wikipedia), this is a good case in point. The rules are an afterthought in some ways to an analysis of a number of ancients battles, and are therefore firmly evidence based.

For quite some time I have been a fan of the Spearhead stable of rules, and have been closely involved with the Great War Spearhead set in particular (Shawn Taylor). The original development by Shawn, the discussion of these rules since publication, and their further evolution into GWSHII (currently underway) have been very largely evidence based.

All great stuff, and a long way from the Commando Comic inspired ideas of war-games rules.

Of course, war-games are just that: games, and I guess regardless of their basis, if they inspire hobbyists, then it's all good stuff. Just don't try to tell me that they represent an accurate simulation of command and control in war.

In the meantime, I must hunt out another set of these comic reprints; they are a great holiday read.

Failing eyesight...and hope!!

Hmmm... for the past 6 months or so I have been unable to do any painting of note at all. Why? Failing eyesight. Age catches up with us all, and for me the onset of presbyopia a couple of years ago has meant that seeing  anything close up has become more and more of a trial. I finally succumbed to the need for progressive lenses in my glasses in order to cope with daily life, but still found painting to be difficult. I considered getting special magnifying lenses for painting, and then.. a revelation: try painting in daylight!!!

I managed to move my painting table into a position next to a window, and.. fantastic. I have just been able to get back to painting some long suffering figures (some sample HaT WW1 German infantry.. sorry for the delay, HaT.. but at least I'm back!). That's a far cheaper solution than the dollar cost of magnifying lenses. 

The only down-side is that I used to paint in the evenings, after completing work for the next day etc. Now, painting time will be limited, but.. at least I can get back to completing armies.. oh, yes.. and starting new ones.

There's the British VSF army, the Semi-Historical Chinese HotT army (and the equivalent Chinese historical DBA army), the WW1 Russians, and Austro-Hungarians, the French League of Augsberg (they've only been waiting 7 years).. and then there's the...

Oh dear!!! But at least I can paint again.

Morphing DBA into HotT

Good friends Nick and Stan gave me a simple piece of inspiration on morphing my recently completed DBA Early German army into a HotT army.. and a 'gamer from Temuka (a town south of Christchurch here in New Zealand) kindly offered me a GW Dryad figure for a tree man hero (saving me the purchase of an entire box of 12 Dryads).

And so the initial morphing is completed:
9 x Warband
2 x Lurkers
1 x Hero

I think the army might need a little more mobility though (as does the DBA army) so some riders might well find their way onto the painting board sometime soon. The warband composition makes this quite different to any of the other four HotT armies completed so far, and brings with it its share of playing challenges. I think some war dog "beasts" might be suitably barbarian, but finding dogs in 20m is quite a challenge. Still, I'm not one to give up easily..... morphing is fun....