28mm Great War Gaming, saturday's battle report

Forget the Ministory, take me to the gallery right away: PRESSME



Finally. A game again. It has been too long since our group got together but saturday it finally happened again. Next thursdaynight another game so we are back on track actually gaming. We decided on 28mm WWI using Through the Mud and the Blood by TooFatlardies. I said it before but these our so much fun to play that we actually paint figures to play it.
Unfortunaly the player with most British painted could not make it in the so we had to go for a scenerio with British defending a German force over twice the size.
Rob prepared the scenario and gave both forces three objectives. I was on the German side and we had too find and capture a hidden observer, secure the bridge and as ultimate victory objective take the houses across the bridge. The British needed to defend the bridge, houses and had to secure presence at the other side of the bridge for them.




Game set-up



Germans deployed south on the table with the British on the other side of the bridge and some hidden units on the south side. The use of blinds and the fact that all places you can hide in can suddenly become an enemy is one of those aspects of the rules that makes the game exciting from the minute you start.

We played 7 turns (we like to take our time) and the Germans did mot make it in the end. They found and captured the observer but could not take the bridge. If we should have continued another three turns or so they probably would have. We stopped when the British HMG section was severely hurt and about to lose their bottle. This section did so many damage to the Germans because Sam brought some dice that were blessed by god knows who. He had so many 6's I think he killed 9 Germans with 6 dice...And no, he didn't bother for shock points. Next time Sam...We will somehow make them disappear:-)

So a well deserved vicory for the British and time for revenge next thursday.

British forces:                                                              Germans:

3 sections (1 hidden over the bridge)                            8 Inf sections

1 HMG section (3HMG)                                             1 HMG section

1 Field Gun                                                                 1 Field Gun

1 Cavalry                                                                    1 Mortar

1 sniper/observer

Figures from Renegade, Great War Miniatures and Brigade Games. British by Rob and Sam, Germans by Marc and Jacco. Highlight was the Jacco's Big Bertha (from hlbc) with entourage. Did not have a role in the game but fantastic to have on the table....

Reminder I need to do some sections myself. I did have some Great War Miniatures figures but did not paint them. They are good figures once painted but I think there are better alternatives. Maybe unlucky with the packs but I will switch to Brigade Games or Renegade now who are the better castings in my opinion.

Picture Gallery of this game 

And as a reminder not to mention football results in emails:

Game spoiler in action. What! is there a 5 between all those 6's?!









 







 

 

28mm WWII Desert. LRDG, DAK and Italians

Today some pictures of  games and models painted about three years ago. Some were on my old website but I found many others on my computer as well.

For 28mm WWII we use the the rules from Iron Ivan Games: Disposable Heroes.
Our group really like the rules and we played many games using it. Not only desert but also Early and Late War. But now we have reached some point that we are on the lookout for some new platoon level rules. I guess we played it too many times and things got predictable.
We have tried TW&T from TooFatlardies since we are a huge fan of their other rules. Unfortunately we did not feel it had the same strengths as the other games they designed and left it with one try. We are hoping now that they will soon release a version of Through the Mud and Blood, their WWI rules and maybe our all time favorite wargame rules to date.
Any suggestions?




The Italians in the gallery are painted by Rob and manufactured by Bolt Action which is now in the hands of Warlord Games
DAK is done by Jacco and these figures are a mix of Black Tree Design and Artizan.
LDRG finally was done by me. Artizan as well and being shot to pieces every single game.
All Vehicles are from Chieftainmodels. They have a new owner now and this range was sold and now available from Company B I believe. Original owner Ian Crouch specializes in 28mm Early WWII now and has some excellent miniatures and models available. Highly recommended.
And Jacco, Rob, Marc, Sam and RobvS: Get some pictures online at photobucket or some other site and we can use them in the galleries and on this site. Will give you access to post here as well if you like.

Some previes pictures now. The Gallery contains many more.

I might look tough but never win a fight

Want more pictures? Visit the Gallery

Next saturday we have a game again. WWI. Will post some sort of report next week. In the meantime I will get some more periods up the blog if time permits. Don't know which though, plenty of choice. Any favorites to start with?

My iPad killer app for wargames

Untill this day I used my iPad for all the usual things regarding wargames. Browsing, rulebooks, uniform guides, movies and I even tried to create maps and update my blog. This is defenitely handy and useful especially for all the pdf rulebooks and supplements we use from TooFatLardies. 

But not really, really spectacular so far.

Until today.

I discovered that my favorite app Flipboard has the ability to create magazines from folders in Google Reader. So what, you think.

Well because of this I now have the best looking wargames magazine on my iPad with content from blogs and interesting wargaming related websites I choose. It updates itself and you can interact with the content in many ways. 

This is like getting a personal Wargames Illustrated every day, but better.

For those of you who don't know Flipboard, this is an superb application that turns info of the internet into a personalized  magazine. It also has tons of social media features to twitter, email, facebook, comment etc but you can check that yourself  here

If you have an iPad, this is a free app you should have. Certainly now.

Will tell you how to do this after the pictures break:



Flipping the pages..



For this to work you need to have your subscriptions (feeds) in Google reader. I did not find a way that

works with other RSS programs at this date. If you don't use Blogger or Google reader you can import your subscriptions following this instructions: import

If you have them available configuring Flipboard is really simple.

Navigate to the Contents section again and press Add a Section. Once there, tap on the Google Reader item. You will be prompted for your Google account credentials.

Once you have signed in, a new content square will be added called Google Reader. Tap this square and it will bring you into the Google Reader main view. From here, you can browse all of the latest news from the RSS feeds you subscribe to in Google Reader by simply flipping through it.

To get only your wargaming content (assuming you have other)  tap on the Google Reader text in the Flipboard menu bar. Now go to subscriptions and pick the folder you use for wargaming feeds . It now generates your new magazine and takes you to that section. Now tap the + sign on the left to save your magazine as a section.
Done.
It probably is quicker to do than to read this.

Note for Google Blogger users. You will have a folder Blogs I am following in Google Reader. This folder for unknown reasons did not work for me. I created a new folder and put all my subscriptions (including blogger ones) in there. All subscriptions will go to that folder in the future...

For me no more clicking through websites using favorites or struggling with unusable RSS readers to stay on top of the wargaming news. I have my own beautiful wargames magazine now!

Now what is you killer app?



28mm Napoleonic Peninsular British

First ones up here are some 28mm British units I painted to join my little Spanish army. 3rd Buffs in units of 12 for Sharp practice, our favorite set of rules for Napoleonics now by TooFatLardies.

The first ones I did were plastics from Victrix. I liked them a lot and there is plenty of room for variation in the box. However I found the time it took me to assemble/glue them very time consuming. I think and hope the newer ranges are a lot easier now.

So I tried the Perry box. Easier to assemble and they make a nice firing line.




Ok these are different poses but what happens if you mix them..Judge for yourself but I must say that it is different from behind. The backpacks differ in size. A lot.


I wanted to expand these to units to 24 but I ran into Offensive Miniatures and wanted to give those a try because of their marching poses.


So I end up with three different units from three different manufactures. I plan to paint some more of them but you guessed it, which? Not sure yet.

Last ones up are the Big Men. Testing the use of thumbnails as well...

I went for a pretty clean look with these units. For red I used a base of GW Dark Flesh. I mixed in more GW Blood red with each layer until pure and i think I ended with a final Foundry bright red. For white I used Foundry Arctic Grey triad.
The gallery for the British is here if you want larger pictures.

Introduction, who cares for another wargaming blog

Just me probably....but that's enough for now.

Time for a change! After a couple of years struggling with a static website MiniMike I decided to modernize my web presence and start a new site from scratch. So far, things look easy to manage on this blogplatform so no excuses on that part anymore.

Inspired by lots of good and bad websites and blogs I will do an attempt to share something of my interest in miniature toy soldiers. I not only buy way too many of them but I also try to paint them, and try to paint armies even. And if that succeeds we transform some plain tables into battlegrounds, read some rulebooks to argue over and even play games with them if we can agree on a date...

Don't know if I will get any readers here apart from some of my gaming friends of De Koopclub maybe but I decided to just don't care. It's for me. Because I forget. I forget all the time what I did, how I did it, what colours I used etc..You know what I mean, painting an extra unit for an army you did some years ago and can't figure out what colours you used for basing, and did I mix that nice red?
By putting some personal notes and pictures online I not only help myself but also showcase my models and those of my gaming club, De Koopclub. Maybe they will do some posts as well and inspire or help the occasional reader as many of the other blogs do for me when I am researching another period.

So, first note to myself. This is the plan for this content now:

• Transfer MiniMike site photo's to blog period by period 
• colours and paints used
• basing methods
• snow tutorial
• reviews of rulesets we play
• comparisons of manufacturers 
• review of terrain
• my camera settings
• battle reports, pictures
• Koopclub calender
• Painting style examples, does each army needs a different
• Progress on current project:  28mm ACW
• Koopclub member posts and pages

Now finding out the easies way to publish photo's. Not sure yet but I will start with a little preview to see how this Imageloop tool works...All 28mm from different periods and manufacturers.
EDITED.
Imageloop looks cool but often kills the browser. Try another one...