African Kingdoms for Congo: AHPCX #7

 

One of the last piles of 28mm lead, I have are the figures I bought for the game Congo, which I have yet to play. I painted up the Explorers box in a previous AHPC, but still had the African Kingdoms box. I have a very small lead pile and to be honest all I think is left is some Perry Samurai figures.

Certainly I have some plastic and resin figures lying around from some games like Mansions of Madness, some Games Workshop figures and a few Carnival figures. Hopefully I will get to play the game soon.

King and Wardrums

Askaris

 

Married Warriors

 

Young Warriors

Scouts

 

Princess and Hostage

 

Hostage

 

Bearers

 

Fanatical Warriors

Witchdoctor

Warhorn

Prince

 

War Leader

Nice to get them done.

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Train Tracks: AHPCX #6

I need some train tracks for several Chain of Command games that are coming up and it has been something missing from my collection for awhile. I could have gone with 3D prints, as I have several STL files which look quite nice but it does take a lot of time to print something like this.

I was going to buy some real HO track but found some very cheap plastic tracks on Amazon and I got some rail bed from a Train Terrain company. The whole thing was less then $30 and I probably have another 8-12' of track materials still left but what I needed was a something to cross a 6' terrain table.

 

 

 

It was a bit more work than I thought it might be. The track was a little too wide for the bed but I plan to improve that when it is set up with clumping foliage. I used PVA to glue the track to the bed which is some sort of foam and then sprinkled the ballast on the wet bed, it was not really the best method but with some repairs I moved on. Once dry, I airbrushed the whole thing with black, followed by a green brown followed by a light brown. I then drybrushed the whole thing with a light sand colour. I then washed the rails with black followed by a drybrush of a dark metal. I then used a brown ink from Scale Colour to paint the wood, which really worked quite well. I finished off the tracks with a rust wash.

Picketts's Charge ACW Campaign: Game 1-Bull Run

 

Last Friday we finally got in the first game of our ACW campaign, our 3rd return to Bull Run!

Starting Forces

The US right flank.

A wider view

The centre attack

 As usual I completely forgot to take photos but as you can see I set up 1 brigade to take the confederate left flank while advancing my other brigade up the centre. It was going to be a difficult victory for the US forces as they had 8 turns to get more undispersed units within the fenced area on Henry's Hill then there were confederates. My initial probes went well and I was having pretty good luck with my firing and initiative rolls but as the game progressed my dice rolling failed and there was not one time when I got 4 possible ADC's out of 4 in the whole game. I believe I got 3 once, but most of the time I had only 1 or 2! I ended up taking a pretty good pounding and as you can see below I lost quite a few troops.

 

I have to say that I really enjoy playing this ruleset, it is a lot of fun and once you get going the game goes quite quickly. I think we finished 8 turns in less then 3 hours. I am already looking forward to our next game.

Click for a downloadable pdf of our ACW Campaign.

Shieldmaidens for SAGA: AHPCX #5

 

These figures have been on my desk for over a year, I paint "to need" now and I have not played the Viking faction in SAGA for a while so I had no need. But of course this is why the challenge exists....to clear the lead, although in this case we should say resin.

These figures are from Brother Vinni, who really has a superb line of Dark Age figures, his Viking line is largely based on the characters from the TV show The Vikings, but that is OK as they are beautifully athromorphic casts.

I painted up a Shieldmaiden unit from a fantasy line a couple of years ago, they were nice but these are much nicer, so I will suppose the old figures will go on TMP (it really is not much use for anything else).

These were primed white and painted last week in Montreal where I only had, I believe, 12 colours! I did touch them up a bit when I got back to the US and where I also finished the basing. I mostly used glazes here with minimal uses of washes to finish off the recesses. I am improving but still a long way to go. I am pretty happy with the figures aside from the faces which are a little weak.

 

 

 

 

Black Seas-Pitched Sea Battle

 

Last Friday we had a game of Black Seas at my apartment. We decided to play scenario 12 from the book, a 2000 point per side battle. This was a pure open seas battle with no terrain with each force lined up on their respective sides on the long axis of the mat. My mat is slightly smaller then the recommended 6x4' by about 6" per side so I believe it played out ok.

I played the Spanish while PY took the British.

 

I do not have the actual British list but it did comprise a 1st and 3rd rate as well as Nelson, I think there were 1 or 2 frigates and several brigs. We lined up our ships and diced for the wind, it was blowing Northwest. I will not bother to write out an actual battle report but I did take some photos to deatil the action as follows.

 

 

Purisíma Conceptíon

 

HMS Victory

 

We got 10 of 15 turns in but by then the Spanish fleet was severely tried and I decide to withdraw. We totaled up the points and it was a 20 to 7 British victory. The British are a tough nut in this game and they have a built in advantage because of the modifiers on their skill tests. Essentially with the HMS Victory on the table with Nelson in the third rate, with both ships having veteran crews, they only fail skill tests on a d6 roll of 1. The Purīsima Conceptíon was able to pound the Victory to below it break point but to get the crew to surrender was almost impossble, the Victory shot back and the Spaniards surrendered.

This is a great game and the first from Warlord Games that I have really enjoyed. It is going to take some time to learn how to effectively play the  Spanish as they have some inherent limitations. But that is what gaming is about. I had a lot of fun, as I think did PY.