ACW Teaser

A few models on the painting table for, I hope, some games of Longstreet in the future. We've played a test game so far, and I remain as enamoured of the rules as I was when I first saw they contained abilities like turning an opponent's unit up to 90 degrees off course mid-move, and a "poor cartography" card which lets you place a swamp slap bang in front of an enemy unit!

ACW: Baccus 6mm all-arms Confederate force

As well as the 15mm ACW chaps, I've also been working on some of Peter Berry's 6mm lads. I decided to have a little test run of one of each kind of unit. The cavalry regiment here is twice the size of a normal one, because nine figures to me. So instead 18 men and horses are taking up more space than 28 infantry on the corresponding base. I feel it both looks more visually appealing and it indicates just how much space a horseman takes up compared to an infantryman. The bases here aren't finished, and I need to find out whether I have any Confederate flags for the infantry, but they're mostly done, so I can start rolling out some more units. I think I bought a divisional pack back in the day, so there's one more Union cavalry unit, but a wealth of Rebel and Union infantry and artillery.

Assault on Lead Mountain: 15mm ACW

Some of these models, the larger swisher ones, have been sitting around for a few years, but some of these lads, the small general and the lancers, may have been waiting to be painted for as long as two decades. There was an ad in Miniature Wargames back in the early '90s for both Confederates and Union forces: cavalry, infantry and artillery. I bought them, but I didn't have any paints. I think I made some abortive attempts with Dad's Humbrols, but oils just aren't my thing. They have languished ever since. I'm finally getting to work on them and the more recent purchases. I made a fairly accurate count, and there are about 700 infantry and horse that have no more than a basecoat. This is going to take a long time. Here's the start I've made. I don't think any two of the generals have exactly the same shade of grey jacket. That's the way I like it.

Playing Favourites

Following in the stead of two very fine bloggers, Big Lee and Admiral Drax, I am minded to join in with the fun!

Wargames Period - Probably Napoleonics. There's nowt so fine as a beautiful, extravagantly-tailored uniform. After that would follow quite closely the ACW. I think I'm probably a good choice for a real-life ACW general: y'see, I tend to do dreadfully and I have always liked the Union (nothing moral about it in childhood - I simply liked John Wayne in blue!).

Scale - I find myself a bit torn here. I started with 1/72 plastics. I moved onward to GW's 25/28mm stuff. In the last decade or so I have acquired sizeable 15mm and 6mm forces, which I want to like. I do find the 6mm stuff a bit small for me at my advanced age (31 as of this moment), but I love the 1:2500 (or is it 2400?) Star Trek stuff. the 25/28mm stuff is really nicest for skirmishing and so on, but I am more of a fan of smaller bits and bobs for larger games.

Rules - Shako, incontestably. I drift back to uni, when I used to game against two or three good mates, and one of us would invariably get hammered by the others. They were excellent games.

Boardgame - Imperial Governor is my poison of choice. It was languishing in a cupboard in Greece when I found it. Having drawn it forth, I withdrew with it to England, then sallied off to uni in Wales, whereat I played it with a trio (usually) of good men. It was an interminable game, and I don't think we managed to finish it more than once or twice in several years' time. I would like to be able to say that nobody who played it when I was at uni has died, and happily I can do that. One chap nearly went blind, but that wasn't related to the game. Another fella was a wee bit Irish, but he had that affliction afore the game. Actually, so did I, but I was less Irish. Bloody good game, and I must get everyone back together again for a rematch which we all will lose!

Figure manufacturer - Copplestone has been my favourite fella for years. Those 28mm skirmish lads have just been grand. Musketeer Miniatures have a lovely selection of slender Great War era minis that deserve a solid second place.

Metal/Hard Plastic - I have been a plastic lover (oo-er?) since at least 2000, because the blamed stuff can be glued together with poly cement, while metal requires superglue, which clings tight on my fingertips. Villainy!

Club - I suppose the one to nominate here is my old uni club, Lampeter (which is now St. David's College, University of Wales or somesuch). I have meant for three weeks now to go to the GW one in Macclesfield or to the Macclesfield one which meets in the local 'Spoons, but there hasn't been a good opportunity.

Opponent - Christian, who is, aside from Dad, just about the only fella I have fought in the last many, many years. I think in about '08 I had a game with mark, but it's been Mr C whenever he has been back from abroad in the far-off wilds of Korea. I accidentally gave myself a huge advantage once, playing him at 40K, and he still made a creditable showing. I tend to roll terrible dice, so you can decide whether I was unlucky or he fortunate!

Film - Zulu is probably the leader here, followed by A Bridge Too Far.

Book - Featherstone's Complete Wargaming has long been my wargaming Bible. Even to this day I will go back to it and consider this piece of advice or that suggestion. More important than these modern things, it is the first book I ever owned on the subject, and the first that provided me some wargaming rules (for the ACW, which I dimly recall playing).

Art - I am terrible when it comes to art. I'd like to say that guy who does those gorgeous ACW pictures or the fella who does those beautiful Napoleonic pictures, but you will get what most entrances me, and that's nowt from wargames at all. Pick any picture you like of Audrey Hepburn.

The Interweb - This is tricky, but the place which has given the most to me lately is indubitably Front Line Gamer.

The trumpet calls us to the breach!

I think I have mentioned that I'm trundling through our film library. I've fallen happily on Branagh's Henry V, which is something of a surprise, given how unhappily I was smothered by Shakespeare's seeming tedium in school. Perhaps you presume I was bored by those tedious classroom readings when disinterested teenagers stumble through forgotten and unknown words. In fairness, who doesn't blink the first time they read floccinaucinihilipilification? No, that was not all. We had a few school trips to unedifying plays, too. I do not damn all plays as worthless. Some foolish opinion I read on IMDB the other day said they were good for nothing other than training actors for the screen. Anyway, this is a very pleasant business, although I have just sat in mute bafflement through a scene of McEwan and Thompson addressing one another almost solely in French rather too swiftly for my mind to comprehend, so distanced is it from the days of GCSE French.

On the wargaming front, I have two avenues of progress to report. First, I have been at work still on those 1/72 ACW chaps, Confederate and Union both. The Rebels have received a varied appearance, perhaps too much so. You may judge below. They've had a variety of colours and then a variety of washes served on them. Still none is yet finished, but much is done on about 85 models, half for either side, so conflict may soon be joined to restore the Union or, if you're so inclined, fight for the Bonny Blue Flag. I think Westerns as a child inclined me much toward the Union: dark blue jackets and pale blue trousers: why it's John Wayne in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon! Of course, one later on picks up rather more details - that whole reprehensible slavery business, for instance.

Second, and on a lighter note, I've also been at work on Arachnids. Years and years ago, I invested in the Starship Troopers game, but owing to an accident never got anywhere with the assembly. Two problems presented themselves: I lacked both superglue and the will to invest in it, the plastic being no lover of polystyrene cement. Next, I sat down with a friend to poke at the box, and he attempted to help me. Unfortunately, we had opposite approaches to these things. He detached everything from the sprues for ease of assembly. My face was a picture of horror when I saw it. I didn't and don't attach blame to him for doing it. Everyone has their different way of doing things. Because mine's different, the poor models ended up living in my attic until just the other day. Very little has gone missing from the monsters: just the lower jaw of an Arachnid. Nineteen of the twenty in the set are whole, though.

I did undercoat everything in black years ago, which was a silly idea. I couldn't paint yellow atop it, and gave up. Given everything was falling apart because poly cement was ineffective on that plastic, this was probably for the best! So tomorrow I shall venture forth and fetch myself some yellow paint from Halford's, so I can just paint the black and red atop it. Much more sensible a plan! Until then, dear readers, have a gander!

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!

The lasagna, which I made on Sunday, went well. I'm not sure how others will take to it - vegan cheese, like Scotch, is an acquired taste. Who was it said that an acquired taste is one not worth acquiring? Untrue, untrue! How could one have a taste for Ovid without a little acquisition of knowledge? However, whether the non-cheese would be universally appreciated or not, the appearance of the dish is unquestionably pleasing to the eye.

As well as this successful culinary expedition, I have thrust myself back into going through our film catalogue. Yesterday was the turn of Kiss the Girls,
a flick about Morgan Freeman hunting down a serial kidnapper-cum-rapist-cum-murderer. The ending is rather predictable, and yet one can be denied that small pleasure if one looks the film up on IMDB and their featured quotation reveals the mysterious monster's identity. Tsk-tsk! It was interesting to see the chap who played Doctor Emmett Meridian in Dexter turn up in something else. Today I've put myself through Outrageous Fortune, which was pleasant, but not worth wasting your time over, unless you like seeing George Carlin in small roles. As well as that, I exposed myself to Barbarella. The most peculiar part of the film is that the music seems so often totally divorced from everything else. It's a rather peculiar pile of events, unified only by a skimpy plot and a youthful and scantily clad Jane Fonda leaping on everything in sight. Aside from her amorous adventures, the most memorable scene for me was when she was sentenced to death by being sealed in a cage with hundreds of small birds - budgies and the like.

I dug through an old computer the other day, and ran across an account of a pre-Apocalypse-era battle I GM'd (badly) at uni. I can date the report to 2003/4 thanks to internal evidence. Oh, cunning of me, eh? Not really too interesting to you, though, so I shan't recount it all at length. The main points of the battle were as follows. We used an area 12' by 8', divided into two 12' by 4' strips. We had a designated attacker and defender, and the defender's had an HQ located in a fort my Granddad built for my brother, and which I had borrowed for the occasion. He still has it in his room: it's about 20" long on either side, although the gates aren't really quite wide enough for Chimera models and such, it made an impressive sight.

The events of the game suggest just why the chaps at GW formed the Apoc rules as they did. Our defenders didn't bother to occupy a network of defensive bunkers (and possibly not even the fort besides a single minor special character), and sallied forth to glorious combat. One wing of the attackers advanced so slowly that they took forever to get into combat. Only one player paid any heed to his objectives or to the cohesion and safety of his force. He ended the game on the verge of turfing the scant defenders of the fort out of their positions, so was probably a bit miffed! The fella representing critical reserves for the defender ambled off after turn 2, and the game stalled about turn five after six or seven hours of play. Heh! Then I seem to have gone off to console my then-fiancée who was upset about her post-graduate degree in Cultural Heritage Management. Two battles lost in one day! :-D

I must see if I can dig up some pictures from that battle. I know there are some extant from the era. Pictures of what I've been working on these last few days are right to hand, happily. First of all, there's a delightful Scotch from the Isle of Jura, Superstition, which by some happenstance, I bought for myself at the same time that my friend's sister bought it to congratulate him on passing his degree. So I feel I should congratulate him, too, and feel a bit abashed at buying myself Scotch. I'm sure we're both enjoying this stuff, as it's very "moreish", as the portion I have poured myself shows!

"Why, that's enough sippin' whiskey to bathe a man!" As well as noting that this Scotch is less ruddy than these pictures suggest (does Scotch get "red-eye"?), I'd also like to draw your attention to a friend's blog. He recently had an inspired idea, combining a beloved children's TV character with his Ogre army. I challenge you not to delight in the idea and in his skill with Greenstuff. Here, meanwhile, I have been distracting myself by fiddling about with some 1/72 plastics. I have a large box of these fellas, sat securely on a shelf over my sink, covering many periods. I can remember Romans and Gauls, Mediaeval Knights, Conquistadors and Aztecs, Seven Years War Austrians and Prussians, all sorts of Napoleonics (although mainly French and British), a fair whack of WWII vehicles and infantry, including several jeeps I purchased, intending to run a game based on that Michael Caine film all of you will recognise if I mention these clues: Winston Churchill, paratroopers.

But what I have been working on has been the ACW infantry I have here. I haven't decided what to do with these models yet. Well, I mean to use them for skirmish gaming, as I have only Johnny Reb and Billy Yank infantry. Nary a gun nor horseman is to be seen. I have elected to give Johnny Reb a variegated look, while Billy Yank is getting a somewhat uniform, er, uniform. I started off giving the Bluebellies an Ultramarine Blue jacket, but it struck me as a bit bright, so I have switched now to the Foundation Paint Fenris Grey. Pop some Leviathan Purple or Asurmen Blue Wash over that, and it's just about right. The trousers are Lightning or Ice Blue, I think. I don't intend to throw too many hours into producing these guys, and I always seem to produce somewhat manky-looking 1/72 stuff, no matter how hard I try, so these guys will just get some basic coats of paint then a few washes to tie everything together. Here's how they look so far. Until next time, dear reader!