A quick update

Still on holiday but we come home on Thursday. While I've been away I have managed to keep in touch with goings on at home and also managed to buy a few bits and pieces off eBay and a couple of manufacturers, which I trust will be waiting for me when I get back. I picked up loads of painted Russian Crimean  figures off  eBay over event weeks and these will need rebasing, as will the British I bought off Foundry's sale a few months ago; the latter have been sent off to be painted by a pro figure painter as a treat to me from me, at very reasonable prices as I have more than enough to keep me busy.

My last post alluded to a forthcoming battle in the SYW campaign being run by Nigel at the Durham club. Apparently, well according to Dave the French C in C, the French gave the Hanoverians a damned good thrashing, which is great news but a shame thatI was away in Portugal basking in the sunshine and going on suicide dolphin cruises.

Yes, a bit of advice for anyone going to Vilamoura in the future. If you choose to go on a daytime dolphin cruise in a glass-bottomed boat take the following advice:

1. Make sure boat has a glass bottom. Ours didn't as once at our destination we were decanted into much smaller boats with glass bottoms,  in a 4 to 6 foot swell that made getting into and out of them quite, er, exciting. Best of all was that we had to put our life jackets on AFTER leaping into said small boat and takes off BEFORE making the return leap!

2. Take a sea sickness pill as the Atlantic is not friendly like the Med. Half the passengers spent most of the cruise throwing up their breakfasts, beer, pop, ice cream etc all over the boat and the crew spent most of the time swilling the puke off the decks into the scuppers and lower cabin. Lovely. NOT. The crew passed black bin liners round so I guess they thought we could share sick bags and give them back when they were full. Urgh.

3. Decline onboard hospitality. To top it all off the crew then even offered us all a bacon butty which not surprisingly was declined by most and precipitated another bout of vomiting by many. The lunchbag came in handy though. Killing us with kindness as one Aussie holidaymaker said!

4. Dont expect to see any dolphins.

Anyway, should be back in time to go to the club Thursday. I think we are starting a refight of day 1 of Gettysburg. Whatever, it'll be good to be home to the rain and cold and affordable alcohol :o)

Polish commanders

Below are three of my newly-completed commanders for my 17th C Poles. All the figures are by TAG. I have no idea where I'm going with this army. Very haphazard approach, just adding what I like rather than sticking to any plan or historical orbit. Currently being painted are 32 Krackow militiaman, dressed in very natty western style dress. I guess I could do with more Pancerni and Cossacks, regular and irregular. My 'plan' was/is that the army can fight my Swedes immediately prior to Sweden's entrance to the TYW. 

Bad timing!

Last night I went down to the Durham club as we were due to carry out some more map moves in the SYW campaign. It turned out to be quite an interesting evening. In short, the Hannoverians retreated to Munster after their defeat at the hands of the French, who managed to shake off their 'demoralised' status. The Prussians advanced steadily into Austria, capturing the fortress of Brunn ( I think) before investing Vienna. The Austrians in the meantime had stripped their capital's garrison to the bare minimum to have a chance of holding out and combined it with another Austrian field army near Prague. The Prussians failed in their siege attempts, were hit by an epidemic of dysentery and were harassed by Austrian light troops so much that they were cut off out of supply, helped by the handy placement of an Austrian army across their lines of communications. Frederick was not a happy man, brooding over what to do next as a sat on his field potty. In the East the Russians were demonstrating outside of Konigsburg, trying to get the Prussians to face them in open battle. Maybe next month. Meanwhile, the Hannoverians failed to rally from their 'demoralised' status so the French attacked them. Too good an opportunity to miss we thought. Dave threw to see how many of the Hannoverians would be downgraded as a result being demoralised and threw a 9! That's 90% of the enemy army downgraded from line to garrison status. Minuses on shooting, morale, combat and hard to manoeuvre. The armies are quite even numerically. In terms of foot, there is a very slight advantage to the French, but the French have significantly more horse. The Hannoverians were nevertheless up for a fight, which will begin next week. They will be on the defensive  and as usual will probably cram all their troops into one half of the table, but if the French can't win this one decisively well...........and the bad timing? Yes, very bad as I am away on holiday for 2 weeks and will miss it all! I expect I shall have to keep in touch via text!

Finally, hello to my 60th follower Neal Croudace and to John the Red who made the trip to the Durham club this week and has been coopted into the French army for next week's game.

More 17th C Poles

I need to finish the bases off but being impatient I thought I would post a couple of photos of my newest Polish units, namely 24 Pancerni and 12 Cossacks. The figures are all TAG.

New project for 2013......a clue perhaps?

I bought these FIW buildings off 4Ground a few weeks ago and am quite pleased with their look as well as, in my case at least, the ease and relative speed at which they go together. I don't plan to do FIW 'proper' as in Last of the Mohicans etc, but to expand my already too large AWI collection to cover actions between Loyalists and Patriots (rebels) on the frontier, e.g. Like something out of the 1939 movie 'Drums along the Mohawk'. I have plenty of as yet unpainted settlers, militia, Indians and loyalists so this might do as a side project while I finish off some last elements of my TYW and SYW armies. I have already put an order in with Eagle Figures (now in the NE under new management who is also in the Durham club) for some Shaumberg Lippe Carabineers in order to kick start the imaginary army of the Bishopric of Prunz und Kurstadt, located on the Baltic coast between Prussia And Russia but with Swedish influences. As if I didn't have enough stuff unpainted.....well actually by most wargamer's standards I guess I have rather less than the majority.

Durham Wargames Group Show 2013

Yesterday I attended the DWG show as a member for the first time in about 10 years. As usual it was small yet friendly and well run, with a good range of trade to meet almost anyone's taste and/or need to spend money.  That said, apart from a bacon buttie I didn't buy very much, just a tin of primer and some dead Cossacks from Dave Thomas' bits box, oh and a painted unit of Irish in French service. Nice paint job and only £35 for 30 figures! I also collected a bag of RSM SYW Prussians off Robbie that I think I sold to him last year! I have some flags for a Prussian Garrison regiment so these chaps are destined to start their wargaming lives as second rate troops. I would have spent more but Ian didn't have the ones I wanted from his newly-acquired Eagles Figures range with him. There were only three games on this year. IMHO a couple more would have been better for the punters but the ones that were on show were all very good. The club put on a WW2 Russian Front game to Battlegroup Kursk rules which looked very nice, as well as a representation of the French invasion of Dahomey in the late 19th century staged by Conrad Cairns. This has rekindled my interest in Darkest Africa and I spent some time today scrabbling around under my gaming table trying to find my very large collection of Belgians, zanzibaris and stuff. Andy from OGUK put on a good looking modern game set in Iraq. I took a few photoes but the light was as bad as my photography skills so they're not wonderful. I had to leave before lunchtime so don't know how any of the games turned out.

Back to the SYW campaign on Thursday evening.

Seven Years War triumph for the French (Honest!)

This week at the Durham club saw the end of the latest SYW campaign game. Unbelievably, or perhaps thanks to the excellent execution of an excellent plan, or more likely through utter blind luck and good dice scores, the French defeated the Allied army after an epic three-week struggle. The French right held off a series of assaults by a much stronger Hanoverian force which was repelled after being unable to break through, all the while allowing time for the centre and left to swing round and crush the Allied left. Man of the match must go to Shaun and his (sadly wiped out) cavalry brigade which held up the Allied advance on the French right, buying time for the French attack to develop, followed by some amazing dice rolling.

Its the Durham Wargames Group show this Saturday, and although I have domestic and parenting committments I hope to be able to drop in for a couple of hours to help out if and where necessary and buy some stuff. Here are some rather grainy photos off my phone of the French victory. Almost all of the figures are 40-odd year old Garrison figures from Conrad Cairns' collection.