This is Norman, that's Norman, and have you met Norman and Norman?

February is the shortest month, so I was cutting it fine by giving myself the target that I did - to paint my existing Very British Civil War force, the Handsworth Volunteers, paint a unit for my new Saga Norman army, and add some sort of wild card too.

Well, you can see the Handsworth Volunteers posing in the last update - they need varnishing, and I'd like to touch up a couple of places, but I'm happy that they're done.

And now, for your delectation, a unit of Normans!

That "they're all called Norman" joke might be weak, but it's basically compulsory

The more eagle-eyed and Saga-rules-aware of you will have spotted that there's actually nine models here, and a unit need only be eight. There just happened to be an extra one on the desk as I was painting and he got swept along in the crowd. You'll also notice that so far they aren't based - that and a little more shield detail is all that remains on them, but I'm pleased with how they're looking now.

This leaves me just the wild card to do, and I already have plans there. With half the month left, things are looking good, but! A note of jeopardy has been introduced in the form of a hastily arranged business trip to Los Angeles next week (it's a hard job but someone has to do it, etc. etc.). This will cost me two weekends and all of the evenings next week, as well as forcing me to rearrange a club game, so things become a little harder again.

I'm enrolled in the Wargamers' Free Company Saga campaign with the Normans, and have a VBCW game planned for the beginning of March, so I'll have to turn something around. Stay tuned to see how I do.

In the meantime though, I'm feeling very good about the new year's resolutions! Don't think I've broken any just yet...

The Handsworth Volunteers

In the last post I talked about a game I played recently using my Very British Civil War force, the Handsworth Volunteers. Since we're now tracking our campaign on the Wargamers FC website, I thought it high time I wrote something about the background of this faction.

After the Great War of 1914-18, the few survivors of the Sheffield City Battalion returned home. The disastrous battle of Serre in 1916 had destroyed the battalion and caused the withdrawal of its remnants from the front line, and the men that had seen this were keen to avoid fighting again.

When Moseley's Fascists came to power, and trouble flared around the country, the Great War veterans now living in Handsworth were determined to stay out of it. This was soon to prove difficult though - as the Sheffield Peace Council declared that the city's factories were open to all that could pay for them, Handsworth's position near the edge of the defended city centre meant that trade convoys passed through regularly, drawing attacks from other factions in the area and threatening the safety of Handsworth's citizens. Those men that had travelled to Europe to defend liberty twenty years earlier could not stand for this and, led by George Baxter, made the call for volunteers to defend their homes and families.

Amongst those to answer this call were the Handsworth Sword Dancers, and so the Handsworth Volunteers adopted the locked swords as their symbol to mark themselves as separate from the different forces fighting each other in the area - it was their hope that the symbol would come to identify them as a group who would defend themselves but were not out to attack others.

Unfortunately this was not to be. As the newly formed Volunteers met on Handsworth's outskirts, and distributed the limited weapons and uniforms they had available (a mixture of old equipment they had kept from the Great War, and the few they had been able to scrounge and trade for food with Sheffield), a BUF recruiter knocked on the door of the cottage they were sat in. As she caught sight of the weapons and uniforms she turned to run, and making a split second decision, Baxter placed her under arrest.

The BUF had troops nearby who staged an immediate, yet unsuccessful, rescue attempt. The Volunteers had won their first battle, but had made an enemy of the government of the land in the process.

A few weeks later, they were attacked again by Royal Navy forces moving an armoured column through the area. Despite destroying two of these vehicles, the Volunteers took a mauling, and found themselves with limited manpower and unable to defend Handsworth alone.

George Baxter (who had now taken to wearing an officer's uniform and referring to himself as Brigadier Baxter) looked around for allies in this time of need and found them in the form of the Swallownest Socialist Brigade. As members of the Peace Council, the Communist Party of Great Britain wasn't able to directly take part in fighting in the area. To oppose the BUF, they instead sent weapons, uniforms, and funding to socialist groups in the area, and asked them to take and hold whatever positions they could.

The Swallownest Socialists were therefore well armed, but lacked the experience and leadership to effectively take on the fascists. The Handsworth Volunteers lacked men and weapons, but had the experience and skills to fight. For Brigadier Baxter it was a double edged sword - he could use the Swallownest weapons to protect Handsworth as he had promised, but to keep the Swallownest men on his side he would have to commit to a more aggressive campaign against the right wing factions in the area - putting Handsworth on the side of the left, and possibly bringing more attention to those he had intended to keep out of the fighting.

Keeping the roads clear

As promised in the last post, I played a Very British Civil War game last night, using my newly painted buildings. Here they are in a quick snap before we laid out the rest of the terrain:

 

Notice the door to nowhere halfway up one of them - there's more work to do there to add a staircase to the side of the building, that'll follow in good time. Here they are from the other side, not that they look much different...

These worked really well during our game. 

We were using 40k rules, with some simple stats for the weapons and vehicles and basically treating all but commanders as imperial guardsmen.

There were three factions playing - my Handsworth Volunteers, with a single squad holding the buildings and a roadblock, and two more squads and a commander off the table in reserve (so I wouldn't know where they would come on or when). My troops were there to try to steal some vehicles from...

Brian's Liverpudlian Sailors, who were trying to get their armoured vehicles home to Liverpool from Hull. Along the way they would have to pass the Handsworth Volunteers and also get through...

Kieron's British Union of Fascists, who had their own roadblocks further along the road, lying in wait for the sailors once they had smashed through the Volunteers' barricade, which we all confidently predicted would happen quickly, leaving me to try to get my reserves into position to snatch a vehicle or two where I could.

This view was reinforced as soon as the sailors moved onto the table - Brian had no fewer than six vehicles (in a game with around 20 fighters a side), including a van with an anti-tank gun, and an old offroad-capable Rolls Royce armoured car with a vickers machine gun. 

However, nothing is ever certain, and in the first turn my lewis gun was able to wreck the Rolls, turning it into an additional roadblock and causing the sailors to leap out of their vehicles.

 

Most of them then started firing up at the Volunteers, causing a few casualties but leaving the lewis gun firing down at them, killing their commander's signaller and wounding the man himself. This machine gun nest would pick off a few more sailors over the course of the game. 

My first reserves arrived nearby and started an exchange of fire with the scouse infantry, but eventually the outnumbered Handsworth squad was wiped out in the woods behind the building. 

By this point the BUF had heard the firefight and decided to send troops to investigate - a van set off from their roadblock loaded with fascists...

... only to be blown to smithereens when my van arrived from the opposite road, and another lewis team disembarked and opened fire, downing all but one of the blackshirt passengers.

My squad then saw its own van detonated by the navy boys' anti-tank rounds, so moved towards the fight by the buildings and opened up on the offending van, hitting its magazine with a lucky shot and blowing it to pieces at the front of the column. 

It was at this point that my commander finally showed up, unwisely appearing next to a large BUF SMG squad, who were easily able to wreck his car, severely wound him, and take him prisoner. 

The sailors weren't too happy either, and sent a squad into the building, suffering a couple of casualties but eventually taking out my machine gun nest there. We ended the game at that point, so the sailors hadn't got very far at all but had now managed to hole up in the buildings, the Volunteers had suffered some major losses but taken out a couple of dangerous vehicles and a fair few of the BUF, and the BUF had captured a prisoner but taken some losses themselves.

There'll definitely be more to come here - this was a very enjoyable game, made more so by the fact that there are no points values, the scenario wasn't at all "fair", and so we all played to have fun rather than to win, and always with an eye to what made more sense in the overall picture, not just this particular engagement. More games like this please!

Stumbled Across the Line

That's the end of January then! I honestly can't say that I've done as well as I would have liked, but I didn't get a lot of time to do painting this month (excuses excuses).


I did manage to complete my target - the two buildings are painted! Unfortunately I can't be bothered to get them out of the box and photograph them tonight, so I'm hoping to get photos of them from a game I'm playing on Thursday night. That'll be quite good, it's the first time they'll appear in a game. There's still work to do on them, but for the VBCW game we're playing on Thursday I don't think there'll be much going on inside them and I'll get away with it.

To keep up with my resolutions for the year, I need to do an extra to go with the target of the buildings. The problem has been that I've fallen prey to the wargamer's constant enemy, a lack of focus. I started painting an extra warlord for my Anglo Danes...

Then, before I finished painting that, I put together my new Norman Knights...

Before getting sidetracked once more by my Very British Civil War force, the Handsworth Volunteers.

The end result is that none of the extras were finished, but at least I didn't feel like I was breaking my own rules by working on them. Working on some "wildcards" each month is still a good idea, I think, but maybe the original target wasn't enough, or maybe since I've not played any Flashbang this month I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Anyway, it's another month gone, so I need another target. Looking to the wildcards seems the obvious thing to do, so...

My targets for February are to finish off the Handsworth Volunteers in the photo above, and to paint the first unit for my Normans. Again, I'll be aiming to do a wildcard as well.

I need to get cracking with the Normans as there's a campaign starting at the club in March, and I'll need 4 points for the start. I can, if need be, use units from my Anglo Danes to fill the gaps, but it means giving up the tactical advantage of the Norman cavalry, so getting those painted helps my chances of doing well!

Normans and Buildings

I tried to come up with a pun or something for the title of this post, but nothing would come to me...

Anyway. A bit of progress to report on. First off, I've finished (more or less) the exterior of my buildings, so I've started on the inside. I'm working on the "bank" first (I keep thinking of it as a bank even though it'll probably start off as nondescript offices). I bought some tester pots of matt emulsion from Wilkinsons, reasoning that the best way to get the colours of interior wall paint would be to use interior wall paint. I needed two coats to get the right level of coverage, just like painting a real wall, and the end effect is pretty much exactly the bland office interior that i was after.


Then, moving on to the floors - for the upper floors, which I imagine will be the offices of the bank, I wanted carpet so I went to Hobbycraft and bought some doll's house carpet. This was self adhesive, so it was a simple matter to cut it to size and stick it in.

On the ground floor I want a tiled floor, so I'm using some textured plasticard. I think I'm going to try to get a wood effect there, but I'm not sure yet, I might still change my mind. We'll see.

Having worked on the buildings for a while I fancied doing something else, so I've assembled some plastic Norman knights. These are the Conquest models which I think have been very popular.

Notice that there are 15 complete knights here, from a box that supposedly makes 12! A fine bit of Cheaphammering if I do say so myself. Basically the pack comes with 3 spare knights to make command figures, but there are only 12 horses, and 12 kite shields in the box. There are round shields as well, but that just doesn't say "Norman" to me, so I've raided the bits left over from my Anglo Danes and found enough shields and arms to give everyone the kite shield. To provide the horses I did a bit of begging and Aneurin kindly gave me four Lord of the Rings horses which are basically the right size.

So now I have 15 knights ready... 16 would make two units of warriors for Saga, and 17 would allow me to use a model as a warlord too. I still have the metal models I won to put together as well, and I've got a set of Norman dice for the playtesting we did before the game was released. Which means that, if I can find a couple of spare knights from someone else's Conquest pack (I have two more spare horses), I can field a complete Saga force which has cost me £2 - for the two packs of bases the knights will stand on. Not bad that! I do want to get some crossbowmen for these too, so I'll be keeping an eye out for anything appropriate.

Building the city of the future (or past, or present...)

To keep up with the resolutions I listed in my last blog post, I need to keep blogging, make more terrain, and work towards a "Triples ready" version of Flashbang, amongst other things. So, to that end, my target for January is to paint my two Sarissa Precision buildings. I'll still have more work to do on them after this, but getting them painted is the first stage.

As we're almost halfway through January already I've got these underway, so let's have a look at what I've done so far.

I started by laying out all of the interior walls, then I used the paints that Andy had mixed for me to paint them and add two layers of drybrushed highlights. This took a long time but was very easy, so I was able to watch a couple of films while doing it...

The walls laid out

Walls with a basecoat

This picture shows the levels of highlight I used - the basecoat is at the front, with the two layers of highlight behind.

Having done the external walls, I moved onto the windows - using a basecoat of grey followed by a white drybrush.

Grey basecoated windows

Windows with white drybrushing

The internal walls with the windows painted were then glued into place on the external walls, and the overall effect looks pretty nice (even though it's ruined here by me lazily using my phone to take the pictures).

The residential building

Since I'm lazy, and i wanted a textured but even effect for the flat roofs, I used black sandpaper cut to size and then glued down. I'll need to go around the edges to fill those in, but I like the look of these. I've also begun painting the outsides of the floors to finish off the wall exteriors - for some reason two coats of paint are needed on the cut edges, even though a single layer seems to work ok on the flat sides.

The "bank"

I still need to do the interiors - I'm not sure what colours to use, because I want to keep the buildings appropriate for as many time periods as possible. This is actually going to cause a problem with flooring - a modern carpet will look out of place in the interwar period! Worrying about this too much is going to lead to madness though, so I think I'll just go for a modern look (to suit Flashbang) and pretend it isn't a problem for other times (which will probably be focused outside the buildings anyway).

I've got some ideas on how to make the outside looks of the buildings fit different games, but I'm saving those for another day...

New Year's Hobby Resolutions

It's that time of year, gyms are packed, Nicorette flies off the shelves, and people furiously try to convince themselves that they don't want another drink as their New Year's resolutions kick in and they spend January sticking to them, before giving up and returning to their old habits on about the 6th of February.

I don't see why I should be any different, so let's go through my wargaming plans for 2012. Read on for a thrilling tale of high minded ambition and unrealistic goals!

1) I will get Flashbang to "Triples Standard"
If you've been reading this blog at all, or have been anywhere near me in the last few months, you'll be aware that I've written a skirmish game called Flashbang, and I've been industriously putting models and terrain together for it. The impossible dream is to one day see it published, but this year I'd like to get to the stage where it would "fit in" at a show like Triples. That means having terrain, rules and models that could stand out on a table at a show and draw people in - in the way that we did for last year's Triples with the Vikings vs Saxons Saga board. I don't intend to actually demo Flashbang at a show (this year at least!), but the resolution for 2012 is to reach the point where it would be possible.

2) I will only buy models and books when I need them (or when faced with an offer I can't refuse!)
This is probably the first resolution that will fall by the wayside, but as with all resolutions I'll try to abide by it and see how I get on. In the past, like most wargamers, I've tended to buy things that I like the look of or am interested in at the time, with no real thought to getting them painted. Since Wargamer's Free Company has started up, with a "no unpainted models" rule, I've been forced to be a bit more sensible - there's not really any point in buying scores of models that I can't get painted, as I won't be able to use them at the club, and that's where I do at least 90% of my gaming anyway. Knowing that my opponent will be bringing a fully painted force encourages me to try and bring something that looks pretty good myself, and I've found that playing with painted armies on the very nice tables and terrain at the club really enhances the games.
So, given that I prefer to use only painted models, there's no point in buying models long before I'm likely to be able to paint them, and my resolution is to not do that! However, I'm giving myself the opt-out clause of still being able to buy models that are an exceptionally good deal. This would apply to the 2 M18 Hellcats, copy of Hell's Highway and copy of Fortress Europe that I bought for Flames of War at the weekend! This was after a tipoff from Andrew that Hobbycraft were selling off their Flames of War stock - I bought everything I could find there and got £50 worth of books and models for £30, not bad going at all. This resolution is eminently sensible, so I'm going to counteract it with...

3) I won't be afraid to spend money on wargaming
This one might be a bit controversial! What I mean by this resolution is that I won't be afraid of buying the things I want, provided I can use them in a reasonable time. In the past I've tended to shy away from things like the lovely Warehouse from Sarissa Precision because it seems like a lot of money to spend, even though I know I'd get a lot of use out of it once I painted it up. From now on, I'm planning to get these things when I think they'll get enough use to justify the cost, provided I'll have time to get them ready.


4) I will get my Napoleonics started!
When I first took out a subscription to Wargames Illustrated, I got a box of Victrix Highlanders as a free gift. Since then, I've bought some more bits and pieces, and the Black Powder rules, but painted precisely one highlander and had something like three games of Black Powder. I actually think it's a very good game, and 28mm Napoleonics look extremely nice on the tabletop, so this is a pretty poor show for 2 1/2 years and I intend to finally do something about it! Also, if I do get this army painted, I could finally return Kieron's book of Napoleonic uniforms...

5) I will prepare at least two armies for each of the games I play
There are two reasons for this idea. The first is just to give me some variety in the armies I can use, but the more interesting reason is so I can try to lure more people into playing these games against me! This will mean preparing another army for Saga, Impetus, VBCW and Black Powder, so watch this space.
I'm even hopeful (although perhaps not very) that I can convince one or two "normal" people to start playing wargames if I can provide everything that's needed to get them started. Which leads me into...

6) I will build up a collection of terrain
Since I have limited space at home, and WFC owns some very nice terrain, there's not a great need to have my own terrain, but I have a few pieces already. I need some specifically for Flashbang, and have a few pieces for Flames of War that I haven't yet painted. I want to build these up so that I can add something a bit more unusual to games at the club, and also have some terrain available for games outside the club should they come up.

7) I will keep blogging and setting targets
Maintaining this blog, and having my work marked out of ten every month, has given me a massive productivity boost! I'll definitely carry on with that, but I've decided to slightly alter the format of it. Over December I had a big list of targets because I didn't know quite what I would work on, and I enjoyed having a bit of freedom (even though I mostly worked on the same thing, on which more in a future post), but the targets are a big motivatory. So, I'm going to keep setting targets, but I'll make them slightly easier to allow myself time to include a "wildcard" of some sort so I can vary what I'm doing. So from now on, my target for each month is whatever I say I'm going to do, plus something else...

There we are then - a list of 7 wargaming resolutions that I'll be trying to keep in 2012. Come back on the 6th of February to see which I failed with!