Hundred Years and Waiting...

At an HMGS convention long ago, I purchased a bunch of 15mm Donnington battalion packs for the Hundred Years War. I had envisaged me basing them on unit bases and using Kings of War Historical to game with them. I think the driving motivation was the fact that I really liked the look of the Genoese crossbowmen with the butterfly pavises strapped to their backs. Such a cool sculpt. I bought more and even added some packs of the Corvus Belli sculpts. 

Anyway, I painted and based up some units of English longbowmen and a unit of the aforementioned crossbowmen. I started on the mounted French knights with their caprisoned horses and I stumbled on the project and it never recovered. 

Here's a few pictures of the crossbowmen. The discerning eye might see some Corvus Belli figures who have pavises added to their backs. 

The plucky English longbowmen. I even add arrows in the ground and stakes to fend off pesky French knights.

I have a healthy sized collection of these figures but haven't had the heart to move on and sell them off. When I was in Scotland, I purchased the recently released Test of Resolve variant for the Hundred Years War and flirted with the idea of using these 15mm figures for the project. This was quickly scrubbed when I saw Wargames Atlantic was planning to release 10mm plastics for the HYW. Now as the release is likely mere weeks away, I have decided to share this failed project. Perhaps it will spur on the successful embarkation of a new project that will hopefully be completed. Fingers crossed. 

Modern Micro-Amor Musings

This post is delayed several years but as I was going through my old photos I noticed a few pictures of things that were meant to be in a blog post that never occurred. 

Several years ago, I invested in a mountain of 3mm micro armor. Some were WW2 North Africa and some were post-WW2 items. For the former, the plan was to build up armies for Sam Mustafa's Rommel ruleset and refight various campaigns in North Africa. Everything has been purchased, figures, bases, etc. I had planned to make a Rommel variant for the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, complete with customized Ops Boards...this despite never having actually played Rommel. Anyway I just never got around to the project beyond acquisition and research. 

For the latter 3mm endeavor, I purchased a bunch of O8 3mm stuff to refight various battles (historical and hypothetical) for Operation Modular during the South African War in Namibia against Angola. I planned to use the ruleset Tank Wreck! and other than painting up a few bases of Angolan BTRs and infantry, this project also stalled. 

This is one of the 3mm BTR stands I painted up for the Angolan Motorized Brigade I planned to put together. I was pretty pleased with the results. It's something I need to get back to doing. Some day. 

The other item I meant to post on the blog was a battle report from the Russo-Ukrainian War. 

In 2021 or so I picked up a bunch of GHQ micro-armor for the 2014 conflict and soon thereafter the conflict resumed (as we all are aware of). Anyway, I painted up the figures in the summer of 2022, showcased here. The rules were Pz28's quick-play modern rules, my friend Rob and I played at Historicon 2022. . 

In the scenario, a Russian force of T-80s and MTLBs with infantry and ATGMs (commander by Rob) was tasked with taking a small village in the Donbas that was situated along a tree-lined road cutting through a plain. The village was defended by Ukrainian forces (me) equipped with T-64s, BMPs, BTRs and some ATGMs. 

Here is a layout of the table before the start of the game. Russians are on the left and the Ukrainians are on the right. I used "blinds" for the units as well as some dummy blinds to replicate some fog of war.  They were removed if successfully spotted, if the blind fired or if they came within a certain range of an enemy unit. 

From this view we have the Russian forces initially deployed on the bottom of the table. The village is about halfway up the table with some Ukrainian infantry defending and armor behind. 

I don't recall all of the details but the carnage was intense. Ultimately the Russians seized the village after heavy casualties. I really liked the simplicity of the Pz28 rules and planned to add some house rules for conflict specific flavor (drones, mud, etc).