Battery Command

Slowly I am finishing the current batch of Confederate commanders. The regular readers might be aware that my battery haven't yet seen action despite playing three games. Maybe it helps if I give them a officer to lead them to the table. If that still does not work, I will do a limber next to just ride them on the battlefield.

Three more bases of commanders nearly done but I need to wait for new flags to arrive. I ruined one while in a hurry to open the door and for the Brigade General I decided to use a Georgia State flag which I do not have. I was not sure what flag to use for the BG but decided on the State flag since all regiments are Georgian anyway. Next week a game. Napoleonic organized by RobP with the new scenery from Hovels that arrived last week. Looking forward to it.
Minis Redoubt, flag from GMB.

'Allo 'Allo

A change from the ACW theme today with a couple of French resistance fighters. I painted these a year ago for a scenario created by Marc that we should have played last summer. The game was cancelled unfortunately so these minis joined the ever growing group of 'painted, never used'. So Marc, we are waiting for the new invite...














Have to go to Belgium for work the whole coming week but next weekend I will finish the first figures from the ACW batch I am currently working on. Lots of Officers, Generals and dismounted cavalry to come. Also this week our order of painted Napoleonic Hovel scenery was delivered and we are planning a game in june to see how beautiful that is.

Terrible sharp sword report 3

Slightly delayed due to all the Blogger problems of the last week I can now post the pictures of the TSS game I played with RobP over a week ago. We had a little more time so for the first time we decided to use the Campaign system in the rules. We diced for our forces and ended up with two complete different armies altogether. I'm not sure if we did it right (anyone knows?) but we threw for every unit in our army. Fun, and we got a range of different troop types on the table. Polished, good shots with Fowling pieces to rabble poor shots with the rifled musket and many more variations. We had to think how we used the troops now..
 
Only rules challenge we had was how to handle this differences in formations but a bit of common sense got us through it.
We set up a table like the example in scenario five of the rules.  After that, we decided to play scenario two and the dice decided the Rebs were  attacking again. They needed to get the troops over the bridge and move them of the table in the area of the barn. The Blue uniforms were patrolling the area and unaware of what is about to hit them.  And they got hit hard this time...Yesss

set-up with the new river we got from The Last Valley at Salute

All is still quiet

Early deployments, moving in on blinds

Patrolling

Initial attack

smart move around the house that won the day. drawing union firepower away from main attack

More or less how it ended, we played two turns after this: Six groups of rebs intact, all union except for one lost their bottle. we decided the Rebs could now easily march up the road

Some extra pictures of the game and the new bridge.

Again lots of fun playing TSS. We could have finished the game but we spent quite some time on the campaign system and marking all units and big men. Complete gallery of the day is here.

Terrible sharp sword AAR 2

Rebs moving in on blinds

I had a very nice week. Not much painting done but the group came together for an evening battle and I also did a full day of gaming with RobP only. Two in a week, that never happened before.
Today's report is the evening game with our small group. If you've seen reports here before you know that our evening games are more social gatherings for the like-minded than a forced attempt to finish a game in under four hours. That would be impossible anyway because we allow everything that people just painted on the table, (with the strange exception of my artillery that have not seen action after three games) resulting in too many units. But who cares, once we have set up a table, deployed and had a small beer we consider the night a success.

We picked scenario 5 of the TSS rules for this game and again the Rebels were in their favorite role; Get in contact asap and capture back the important maps Captain Suchet lost the night before. Wonder what he was doing? The game had some extra flavor due to the fact that all Blue command had a meeting at the time of attack and needed to move to their resting and unaware men once the alarm was raised.

The guys did not bring sentries so I provided them with a suitable mini from my Old west collection

But he did his job: Spotted

Union officers caught by surprise

Reb cav charging through confused Union ranks

Another view of the early success, just because I like it :-)

Ouch, they do have artillery..

Actions on the right wing. Lt Marc has found himself some fences again.

The left wing, Captain Suchet (RobvS) on the attack

Rob Suchets Rebs

Part of Jake's newly painted and impressive Iron Brigade

One of Marc's nice units, easy to find, just spot the cover on the table :-)

RobP's artillery was on a little hill. At one point they wanted to fire canister over own troops. Good or bad idea?

I failed to shoot pictures every turn so I will conclude telling you we decided on a draw for this game. We simply did not have enough time to finish the game but had great fun playing only the first phases. Another couple of pictures of the game and the complete gallery of this game is on photobucket.

Nice view on Rob's Renegade minis

Yes, those are Marc's, ..... Ok I stop now Marc

years ago I bought RobP some casualty markers for his birthday. Now he gets back at me placing those hideous things on top of his figures. Not that he looks very happy at the sight of his almost broken units though.

The other two Union officers, Jacco and Marc. They just discovered Rebels are allowed to shoot in this ruleset

That's it. I had a defeat before, a draw now and a game just played. Looking forward to make the AAR for that one. I also cleaned my camera lens. Pretty annoying to notice the lens was dirty so that's another thing to think of.
And looking at the pictures I've added some casualty figures to the painting line as well...

ADDED (for Paulalba:)
Flags
Comparison shot of GMB designs, shaped by me, and The Flag dude. One is first silk with yellow edges but you get the idea. Actually not all Union flags are Flagdude(see comments), there is also Flags from the lads (yet another) shaped by our master shaper,RobP...
Everybody has a different favorite and both deserve it. I picked GMB for ACW. Might do a post soon with some shots of many different brands....

left flagdude, right GMB
click to enlarge

The cavalry rides in...and an Oprah moment

'There is no army if you don't have cavalry'. Quote from Rob, member of our small group, with whom I fight most my battles with. Since his union troops do not include cavalry I will have an easy day tomorrow as we have planned a game.

The miniatures actually were a gift from Marc who is also on the Union side. He figured they looked better on the table than in his drawer so to my delight he kindly gave them to me at our last game. I was very impressed with these Foundry models (I actually tried to order them from Northstar three days before but they were out of stock) so I started painting them the next day. Yesterday they have seen action for the first time and with good success. The report will follow soon. Again, thanks Marc, you will regret it.

The unit is not really part of the Brigade I'm painting but will be cool for our Terrible Sharp Sword games. Next up are the dismounted models.
Flag by GMB Designs, my default choice for this army.

More pictures of the individual models in the ACW Gallery.

Today it's also time for the first and last Oprah moment on this little blog.  Yesterday the 100st follower subscribed, the painting confederates post has well over 1000 views and if I have to believe google analytics today MiniStories reaches 10000 hits.  It's been fun the last few months so a BIG Thanks to all the readers and followers.

Stylish Blogger Award
The chain letter reached me as well and I got a couple of nominations for a stylish blogger award over the weekend. I see a lot of discussion on the net about the value of the reward and the nature of chain letters. As I see this is just a little of harmless online fun, a nice way to promote other blogs and learn a bit of the person behind the blog.
But these things need to stop at a certain point, the fun is over because the award in itself is a topic now. So i decided to thank the fellow bloggers who nominated me because I really appreciate it and leave it with that. For a uberOprah moment I think all blogs are stylish in their own way and I respect the effort everyone makes in sharing their experiences online. Ok, you can put away the tissues now as this was my one and only Oprah moment.

Thanks:
http://av-priest.blogspot.com/
http://christopher-bunkerhill.blogspot.com/
http://kingsleypark64.blogspot.com/
And check their blogs, they are more than worth it!

Back to the original post:

Now where is Oprah