2011, year of the rebs

It's that time of the year again so first of all: Fijne Kerstdagen en een gelukkig 2012!

On the wargaming front it was ACW only this year and since I quit the project for half a year or so I thought it was a good time to do a little overview. For the first time I only did one period with the benefit that I can clearly see what I produced in a year, which is about 250 figures. Not bad, not overly impressive but I'm very happy with it.

Strangely enough it was not difficult to stay with ACW for a full year. There were three main things that really helped keeping the focus on the project.
-Start with skirmish gaming to get the painted units on the table asap. In our case we started with the excellent Terrible Sharp Sword rules to get going. After each game we always wanted to paint more. When we had enough we start using Guns at Gettysburg for Brigade level games. Now, we have a choice..
-Blogging. I started blogging early 2011 which really helped as well. All the encouraging comments, new cyberfriends and reading a lot of your good blogs are a good boost to stay productive and stay engaged in the hobby.
-The koopclub. As everybody in the club got the ACW bug it soon became the norm to paint ACW Regiments and have some new stuff ready for each next game. In the OOB for our new year's game are 18 Regiments and 4 Batteries per side. Starting with zero I think that's quite an achievement for such a small club with so many interests..

Anyway,  Couple of overview pictures from the 2011 painting. Battle reports will follow in 2012, and some new additions of course...All details, close-ups etc are in this ACW Gallery

Next week the start of a SAGA Viking Warband here as they enter the 2nd Annual Winter Painting Challenge over @Curt's blog. Should be fun trying to avoid the bottom place.
Merry Christmas.

 

Conferderate skirmishers & casualties 2

That's it. Done. After a year of painting ACW I have enough troops ready for a decent game and it's time to move on to different projects. I will definitely return to the ACW in a couple of months or so.

The skirmisher are a mix of Foundry/Perry and the casualties are Sash and Saber. The casualty using the -count the tufts- system is Steve Barber I think.

All ACW stuff can be found in the gallery. Need to find a different place for this soon as apple decided to drop the mobile me galleries in iCloud. Idiots.

Recently I played a game with Marc and I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of some of the excellent things he works on. He painted an impressive battery to shoot my rebs off the table.

Confederate Regiment No 9

Steve Barber miniatures again this time. With these painted the second Brigade is now finished as well. Only a couple of skirmishers and some casualties to go before I stop painting ACW for a (little) while.
I've sorted out a Viking warband for SAGA yesterday and they are in front of the painting queue for now. But first vacation so no posts here for the next two weeks or so.

Added to the ACW Gallery

7th Armoured Division in 15mm

Couple of pictures of the 7th AD Battlefront box painted back in 2008. I played two or three games but was bored with them pretty quick. Lot of tanks and little infantry.
After weeks I finally got inspiration again and started some painting. Next week, some fresh troops will arrive...

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180 Crisis

OK, I'm not much of a celebrator on this blog and I've got my Oprah moment a couple of months ago but this one I could not resist. So thanks to all who pressed the follow button and all other readers out there for visiting this site...

Last Saturday I visited Crisis in Antwerp. As always the show was well organized, there were plenty interesting traders and some nice demo games.
Lazy as I am I stored my camera in Jake's bag in the morning to take it out again at the end of the day when we got home. So without permission I steal two pictures from the man on the right here:

The man is Sidney Rounwood of Roundwood's World, a blog with some truly exceptional work from which I get lots of inspiration. His show report with the pictures is here and his blog on the TFL game (best participation game) here. It was a real pleasure to meet you Sidney.

My favorite demo game: 1830 Leipzig by Team für historische Simulationen

As usual we bought a lot of stuff which we hopefully will use at any given time. Many (rule)books were taken back home as well as some nice new figures. They even convinced me to buy some 10mm packs for grand scale games..I'm not sure about that but we'll see. Also some Hurons from Galloping Major which I will definitely paint soon. SAGA was a no brainer, there is a real hype around that game and my Viking warband is ready to be painted. The SAGA demo game was disappointing though from a visual perspective, a real small table with clutter all over and I would not have given it any attention if not everybody is so enthusiastic about this. The game itself looks very interesting though and I look forward playing them.
Many more interesting things but you will see those here in the near future. No large new project for me for a while. I will focus on several smaller ones picking the one I feel doing at that time. So Winter War Finns, F&I, Vikings and WWII are amongst the periods to be expected here over the next months.

At Crisis we also met Rene, who will join our group and gets his first action in January. Unfortunately he lives a two hour drive away so is limited to our Saturday games. The scary thing is he also runs a blog ...Anyway, here he is, practicing his painting skills

Lastly I just won this piece on ebay here a couple of minutes ago...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270847988870

WWII 15mm desert game, IABSM3 and a bit of Crisis

Another week without painting unfortunately. With Crisis11 next Saturday most of my spare time is spent on Google investigating new projects.
About two years ago I spent several months painting a 15mm DAK army while Jake took on the task of painting the British. I had so much fun painting these but since only part of the group joined the project they never got action until recently. Jake was visiting, we had only two hours but we decided to unbox our troops to get them on the table. With limited time it wasn't much of a game. We deployed and when we started turn one we looked at each other...How does Fow actually work? Is it You Go I Go?  We had forgotten the mechanics.

IABMS3?
As a fan of Lardies rules I ordered this new ruleset. I now have the iPad version and waiting for the hardcover book and playing cards to arrive. My plan is to give them a go and replace FoW since I feel they better reflect our playing style. My only concern is if we can simply use our FoW style basing. I noticed IABSM 3 uses campaign strength sections of 8 figs while some of our FoW armies are five on a base. Anyone experience with this or suggestions?

Crisis
Next Saturday our group will be at Crisis making friends with some of the traders and bartenders. Should be good as usual with some nice demo games as well. Anyone else going?

Anyway, some pictures of our desert game. The terrain boards are from Encobertura. We bought lots of those two years ago and they got their first game as well. Nice boards, especially for 15mm. The houses we picked up from Last Valley at Salute last year. We just need some palms trees and other bits to liven up the table.