Archive for July, 2004

Painting and Black Hat Miniatures

Tuesday, July 27th, 2004

I’ve had a sudden burst of painting this month. Spurred on by finishing off some Norman Knights, I have painted another 10 Norman Archers and then switched to painting the Wars of the Roses stuff for our forthcoming campaign.

I started with a bunch of Brettonian Archers that I picked up on ebay as a cheap source of troops. This is the first time I have painted any of the Games Workshop mainstream Warhammer figures. I’ve got some LOTR stuff and Warmaster but have never been tempted by WHFB or WH40K figures. I was slightly disappointed in them, finding the faces particularly difficult to paint - which may just be my technique.

Also, I hadn’t realised just how large and chunky the GW figures are. They dwarf my Foundry WOTR figures, so I’ll use them for now but will probably swap in Old Glory or Foundry archers at some point.

I have also painted 20 Foundry Men at Arms and started on 20 Billmen. I had forgotten how nice Foundry figures are to paint. They just seem easier and quicker than most other 25/28mm figures that I have. And their faces seem to come up well with my technique of 3 shades of flesh.

I hope to play a WAB WOTR game in the next couple of weeks as we now have enough troops painted at the club to run a game.

Other news, which I have hinted at in the past, is that I am starting a miniatures company with the intention of producing a few ranges of high quality 18mm figures that fill some gaps. The idea came out of a discussion about importing figures and then the realisation that I could produce my own figures instead.

So, Black Hat Miniatures is now a going concern with bank account and empty website.

The first range will be an 18mm range of Victorian SF called Martian Empires. This will cover The War of the Worlds and ERB Barsoom style martians as well as VSF characters and vehicles, etc.

The first figures have been sculpted - see here for an example and I am hoping to have figures to sell sometime in October. The range will be launched at Warfare in Reading on November 20/21st. At the moment, we are waiting for the blanks to be cast and these will then be sent back to the sculptor to produce the final masters.

Along with the figures I have been working on a set of Martian Empires rules to provide a fast-play set of 15mm VSF stand-based rules. These will (hopefully) be available for playtest soon and I’ll be looking for playtesters in the next month or so).

More news on further ranges when we have something to show.

Posted in , | No Comments »

Still Here!

Wednesday, July 21st, 2004

I’m getting better slowly but haven’t had much time to update (various) websites or write up many of the games.

Valhalla was a success, with our Four Musketeers participation coming together into a very good looking and enjoyable game. Lots of comments on how good the scenery looked and the players seemed to enjoy themselves.

The funniest incident was in the last game where the Cardinal’s Guard were desperate to prevent the Musketeers from reaching the Queen with a necklace, so they shot at the lead Musketeer. They missed and killed the Queen instead! Not quite the method I had envisaged of them achieving their objectives..

See the Guildford Wargames Site for pictures of the game.

Now that Valhalla is over, I have been able to get on with other painting and have made a start on my Wars of the Roses stuff for WAB. I’ve settled on Hastings and the Yorkist cause for my initial troops. There are a lot of figures being painted at the club at the moment and quite a number of completed units now -some 10 or so people are raising troops for the proposed Kingmaker campaign. We have yet to try out the War of the Roses lists and Armies of Chivalry rules for WAB, but I’ll report back when we do

We played a few games of the WW2 Ultra Simple Skirmish Rules (USSR) from Bolt Action Miniatures at the club a few weeks ago, assisted by one member Andrew who had a hand in writing the rules. The premise of the set are interesting as they are designed for a very small number of figures and represent a small section lead by a sergeant who are carrying out a minor action. There can be more victory points in making sure your troops leave the field alive than in getting to your objective.

The game starts with a setup where you choose a corner of the board then randomly place 3 objective markers in the opponents’ corner on the other side of the board. One of those markers is genuine; two are dummy (you can look at them after they are placed). You then place your squad at a random distance from your starting corner.

You chose an objective card, which will tell you what you have to do with the objective when you get to it. This might be destroy it, recover it or simply occupy it for five turns.

The game system is very simple (as the name suggests) and plays quickly. The game rewards people that keep to cover. Once a figure has been shot then it is down and you have to administer first aid. This will reveal if the figure is injured, okay (and just scared) or dead.

The first game I played had fair amount of cover, but half my squad was caught in the open by some opportunity fire and each man I sent in to administer first aid subsequently ended up as a casualty himself.

In the second game, I learnt my lesson and split the squad into two fire teams. One half went for the objective via a flanking move, whilst the other gave supporting fire. This worked very well with the enemy pinned down between the two fields of fire and too scared to dash into the open. I managed to recover the objective without a single loss.

We played with 6 figures a side, showing that you don’t need many figures and I’m already thinking of getting the rules and playing with my 20mm figures. Recommended.

Posted in , | No Comments »