10mm Dark Ages

I love all things 10mm and for many years I've been tempted by the Old Glory Dark Ages range. I had purchased a few packs many years ago but I never painted them and they ended up being sold off in one of my many lead purges. 

Recently the amazing Little Wars TV crew posted videos of their refights of the 1066 campaign involving Harald Hadrada's Vikings, Harold Godwinson's Anglo-Saxons and William's Normans. They used a big battle version of their Ravenfeast rules. In their games, they used 6mm Baccus figures and the masses of small figures really gave a big battle feel on a small table. 

All of this motivated me to copy their Ravenfeast big battle project but using 10mm Old Glory figures. Below are my first few bases of Viking bondi. Many of the Old Glory 10mm come in strips and the bondi are no different; I ended up clipping some of the strips and staggering them. Since there is only one type of strip in the bondi bag (the Old Glory 10mm ancient celts have different strips for their infantry allowing for more pose diversity), I could reposition the poses so its not always a helmetless viking on the end of the base.

Here are my first three bases. I went with 30mm square bases (Litko) 3mm thick  with rounded edges. I am pleased with the end result, and look forward to tackling the rest of the Vikings and Anglo Saxons. I will have to order up the Normans at some point.

 

Palo Alto Test Run

Went over to Huzzah Hobbies to run through a solo play thru of Palo Alto with Piquet Field of Battle 3. All figures are from the exquisite range from Cracker Line. I plan on gaming this scenario with my friend Alex but wanted to do a walk through of the rules to gain familiarity with everything beforehand.

Here are the opening battle lines with the Mexicans in the foreground. The center is a swampy area which would play a major factor in how the battle developed (and didn't).

The Mexican left, a cavalry brigade under Torrejon. Two line cavalry regiments (7th and 8th), some Presidials and a bunch of rancheros in reserve.

The Mexican center. These guys didn't really get as involved as they should have, my brain treated the swampy areas in the middle of the table and treated them like they were a landmine. As a result, this was essentially a battle of the flanks.

The US right flank. If you are a student of history, you may be wondering where Taylor's baggage train is.The simple answer if I don't own one yet. If you zoom in you can see Ringold's Flying Artillery in thier pretty uniforms up on the front line.

A rather dramatic photo showing the (second) Mexican charge on the US 5th infantry. This time it was led by the Presidials; They fared no better than the line cavalry.

The final disposition of the battle when I called it. To summarize what occurred, General Taylor (D12) won big against General Arista (D8) in the leadership rolls. The first turn yielded 6 card draws per side and the second turn yielded 5 card draws per side. The Mexicans lurched forward with their flanks as the center brigades ponderously navigated around the swamp area (they should have just pushed through).The Mexicans never really got the center brigades or their artillery into action.

On the Mexican right, the Zappadores and Light Cavalry took some horrendous casualties and routed. The Mexicans nearly won the battle when the 2nd Light Infantry and the Tampico Coast Guard unloaded a withering volley into the 1st Artillery (dismounted as red-leg infantry) causing them to rout.

On the Mexican left, I decided to re-enact an east Texas version of the charge of the light brigade with even less successful results. The 7th routed, the 8th was driven back, both with heavy casualties. The Presidials and Rancheros surged through with another charge only to be turned back with grapeshot and musket balls by Ringold's battery and the 5th infantry.

At this point the Mexicans had lost all of their Army Morale Points (and then some). I knew the loss was inevitable for Arista's army so I called it. 

Lots of fun. There are some rules I need to go back and master (do routing units continue to rout away?) and some things I need to remember (read thru all modifiers and don't pick up the die results before I look to see if I rolled an even). I really enjoyed FoB3, very easy rules and the card decks and different dice really seemed to capture the variance in command, morale and combat effectiveness well. The Mexicans were many but they were very brittle; Once they routed it was difficult to get them back in the game.

 

2023 Begins...

 Its been a few months since my last post. Sometimes real life gets in the way, been trying to keep up progress with painting. I've painted some more 15mm stuff for Krapistan (mortar teams, tanks and carriers) and am nearing completion of that project where I can game it (I imagine I will continue to add to the armies). I painted some 10mm WW1 Belgians, some Blitz Bowl Skaven and continuing to make progress on my 10mm French Revolution project. Here are a few photos of them:

My first Austrian unit. These guys are from the same range as the French but are a bit more static. I like them, they look like they are fighting for the Ancien Regime. I used a combination of GW contrast paint and drybrushing to paint the white uniforms. I like how they turned out and look forward to painting more.

These are French dragoons, likely the only cavalry regiment I will paint up for the French. I used American AWI dragoons in French helmets to depict the French cavalry. I love the green and pink combination.

Lastly is a French mounted officer. I painted this fellow up as an homage to Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. 

I have painted up more that I didn't snap pictures for (more Les Bleus, Les Blancs and some artillery). I am gearing up for a game with one of my friends at the end of January. A refight of the Battle of Palo Alto using Field of Battle 3 rules...look out for more updates on that!

Fall In Convention

I try to make it too all of the big HMGS-East conventions: Cold Wars, Historicon and Fall In and for the past 25 years, I've made nearly all of them. Occasionally I cull the lead herd by selling at Wally's Basement. The last time I sold was during Cold Wars 2020; It was a strange experience because the Covid-19 pandemic was starting to grip the United States and counties in Pennsylvania were starting to shut down large events. I sold among a mass of people not really knowing if I'd get Covid and what it would happen if I did get it. 

Fast forward to this Fall In, I decided to revisit Wally's and sell a lot of my abandoned projects I listed prices very discounted. I sometimes find myself stifled and frustrated when I acquire too many projects that I know won't ever be completed. I managed to have a successful Wally's both in terms of making some extra hobby money and moving on from a lot of my excess hobby stuff. 

Lots of stuff here, almost all of it has found another home.

The rest of the convention was lots of fun. I played in my traditional Friday night naval game with my best friend Rob, GM'd by my favorite game host Brian. Rob and I commanded some Athenian ships and managed to sink heaps of Spartan ships en-route to victory. I am a big fan of the location (formerly The Host) and had an extremely pleasant experience with all aspeccts.

I didn't buy much, just a book on the militias of the Sedgemoor campaign from On Military Matters and some discounted GHQ packs of VAB and M113 APCs for my Ukraine modern micro armor project. Now I need to figure out how I will spend the proceeds from my Wally's sell off!

 

al-Kebab's Growing Army

As previously reported, I have started my fictional country Krapistan for AK-47 Republic campaigns and battles. I initially called my rebel fashion al Jabar but have opted to rename them al-Kebab. I've had fun designing their flag but it's not quite ready yet. I have been slowly building the al-Kebab army. 

Here is a picture of the full army thus far. 

The grunts of the army form three units of infantry armed to the teeth with rusty AK-47s, battered RPKs a smattering of DShKs and lots of RPG-7s. 

Closeup of a command stand. You can tell it is a command stand because there is a gent pointing in a commanding nature. His friend is on his cell phone talking to a telemarketer. Khurasan sculpts.

A couple of al-Kebabis, you can tell who is a follower of al-Kebab because they wear bits of black clothing. Sometimes its just a vest and turban and sometimes its a completely black ensemble. Flashpoint and Khurasan sculpts.

More followers of al-Kebab. I believe both of these sculpts are Khurasan.

More black garb, the guy on the left is ducking and running although it is hard to tell from the angle. Flytrap and Khurasan.

Here we have an elite unit of diehard fanatical jihadists. The fact that they are in very serious-looking all black pajamas lets you know they are elite. These sculpts are CP Models with some Old Glory's FireForce range (command figures and DShK). All of these figures are enormous and don't really mix well with the other ranges in the collection. I was originally going to sell the sculpts off but I opted to paint them up and make them a separate unit.

Another command stand (see the guy pointing?) that includes the spiritual leader of al-Kebab. He's holding a small booklet with all of his favorite recipes for skewers of meat and veggies.

The al-Kebab MartyrCycles Brigade has been documented before but here's another picture of them.

Some of the al-Kebab technicals gathering for another "cars and coffee" event.

Toyota: the choice of warlords around the globe. 

Lastly, the armored fist of al-Kebab, a dusty, greasy BMP-2 aiming its gun right at you, the reader. I think I will add a T-55 to the al-Kebab army.  More to come. Now I need to finish off the Krapistan pro-government faction. 
 

10mm French Revolution

I've always been intrigued by the armies of the French Revolution. 10mm is my preferred scale and years ago I was able to pickup some of the Pendraken French Revolution packs at discount on eBay.  In 2019, I painted some up and based units on single bases, I even made a blog post about it! Last year, I ordered some more of the figures from Pendraken as well as some figures from Magister Militum to fill in as proxies for some of the gaps in the Pendraken range. Recently, I decided to rebase those previously painted figures for Maurice. I think Maurice is the most ideal choice of rules for me to portray the tactics of the French Revolution (more on that). My armies are based depicting the restructuring made by Dubois-Crance prior to the almagamation.

First up is a former Royalist battalion in their not so splendid white uniforms and tarleton caps. I gave this unit pink facings because one should always use pink when one can when painting historical miniatures.

Here is a closeup of some former Royalists skirmishing. There are two poses skirmishing (one firing and one loading). I experimented with GW contrast white paint on the uniforms, I like the result which is good. I will need this for when I tackle the Austrians opponents.

Here are 3 battalions of French National Guard, "Les Bleus", in attack columns. I plan to rate the National Guard as conscripts but will allow them to use massed formations to replicate the assault columns and allow them to form "groups" with battalions in line formation.

Closeup of a stand of Les Bleus showing some of the chaos in their uniforms. Bicornes worn fore to aft and side to side, phrygian caps, bonnets du police, and lots of striped pants in national colors!

Closeup of the command base for a National Guard battalion. More caps and more striped pants. I drilled out the flag staff on the standard bearer and added brass wire so that I could fit the slightly oversized flags. 

Here we have a battalion of grenadiers. Bearskins, bicornes and more striped pants to show off revolutionary fervor. 

Closeup of some grenadiers, I really like these sculpts. So much character. 

Another closeup of grenadiers but here we have some former royalist grenadiers showing off those white uniforms and pink facings.

The last unit shown is a unit of skirmishers also known as "irregulars" in Maurice. I will probably allow them to form movement groups with regular infantry units.

And a closeup of the French skirmishers. Neat little poses.

 

Wings over Ogaden

I'm a big fan of Tumbling Dice's 1/600 aerial combat ruleset series Wings at War, and a few years back I picked up the Africa at War book Wings Over Ogaden which covers the war between Ethiopia and Somalia back in the late 1970s. Since there was a significant amount of aerial combat in the war, I thought it would be fun to game with a modified Wings at War. Tumbling Dice made the aircraft but the big hurdle was a lack of proper decals for the roundels of the two belligerent nations. Recently Flight Deck Decals released Ethiopian and Somali roundels so I was in business! Here are a few snaps of the aircraft.

First up is an Ethiopian F5E, I used the aforementioned Wings Over Ogaden as a painting guide. I think it came out fairly decent. I only have one desert style flight base finished so it will be in all of the photos in this post.

A few snaps of the F5E firing off a pipecleaner Sidewinder. I copied this technique from Jim over at Jim's Wargames Workbench blog (great site if you are a fan of aerial wargaming or really any wargaming).

Next up is an Ethiopian F5A, these aircraft were relegated to ground attack in the war because they weren't wired for missiles. One of the F5As was painted in a light grey scheme while the rest were painted in the same scheme as the F5Es. I opted to paint all of my F5As grey to differentiate them.

Ethiopian Canberra, apparently these retained the rather unsuitable grey/green RAF camouflage scheme.

Next up is a Somali Mig-17, these were used in the attack role during the war. I did not bother to align the stars on the roundels in the proper position. 

Another snap of the Mig-17. Its one of my favorite aircraft as far as aesthetics are concerned,

Here we have the Somali Mig-21. It should have been a nice matchup with the Ethiopian F5Es but there was a big difference in pilot skill level favoring the Ethiopian air force. 

A slightly different angle of the Mig-21,

Lastly we have a Somali Il-28 Beagle. The Somalis only had three of these and I don't believe they didn't play a big part in the war (other than a half-assed bombing run in the early stages of the conflict). This particular model required alot of work. The engines were cast slightly asymmetric so I did alot of surgery on one engine and wing to make it more even. When it came time to paint I couldn't find a single image of a Somali Il-28. Not one. With the help of The Miniatures Page, I found an account from Tom Cooper himself where he confirmed a Somali he interviewed stated they were painted in a metallic color. Talk about some effort for that Beagle!

I will probably use Wing's at War's Thud Ridge rules for this conflict, need to paint up some SAM sites and some ground targets.