Friday 10 May 2013

Keep Calm....


Two parcels arrived this morning. In the first is my "Bloggers" Tee shirt. Pictured to the right. AS you can see it is fairly straight forward with no gimmicks or bells or whistles. Just simple and straightforward. I will admit it took me ages to decide on the exact wording but in the end I am very happy with it. I overthought it! Dice or Die (singular), 1D6 or 2Dc, Roll or Cast, The dice or some dice... you get the idea. I am not saying I considered EVERY combination but I did come up with about 25 possibilities. In the end I went back to the very first one.
 I had already decided that I did not want black because at shows pretty much everyone wears black or faded black. The company had a choice of about 15 colours for tee shirts and as many if not more colours for ink. Some combinations I just knew I was not going to use Pink tee shirt with leopard skin ink for example. Perhaps I could have been a little more adventurous, without going that far. Maybe next time I will.

As you can see I finally settled on Navy blue shirt with white writing. Very safe, conservative and not likely to hurt anyone's eyes! I hope it will both blend in with the other bloggers and yet among that crowd next year at Salute be slightly more colourful than the average "black clad blogger".

  Across the back at shoulder height a simple and effective reminder of the blog name and still in keeping with the message on the front. "KEEP CALM AND ROLL THE DICE.......anything but a one" Overall I am very pleased with how it came out. I think the colour is right for the slogan as is the type face on both the front and the back.


The second parcel was far more interesting to all you wargaming types. It contained figures. Not only did it contain figures but they were the right scale, period and make. All this is normal you would think. And so it would be IF and I do stress the IF I had ordered them. The truth of the matter is that David Crook at A Wargaming Odyssey very kindly and generously sent them to me. I think I have only met David once or maybe twice in real life so I feel the gift was a fantastically generous act. It has made me realise what a kind and wonderful bunch we are in the wargaming community. Therefore the important point I wish to make today is how great it is to be in a hobby where people support each other. It does not matter what scale or period you play, and let's be honest most of us will play anything/everything, what does matter is that we all support each other sometimes with gifts or kind words or information or encouragement. I am a wargamer and proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of you.


Thanks David (here's the swag!)

Until Sunday and I write this again have fun

KEEP CALM AND ROLL THE DICE
anything but a one.

All the best Clint.


Wednesday 8 May 2013

No obvious film tie in at all! Honest Guvnor!


As mentioned in the title this figure seems to have been film inspired. It is another figure from Ainsty Castings Weird West range.  I just can't think where they might have gotten the idea from. I wonder could it be film inspired? Yeah I thought so to. It is the figure that did attract me to the whole range in the first place. Obviously he's not limited to the weird west and will no doubt get used by me as a contemporary zombie hunter. Having not watched the film I am unhindered by preconceived ideas so I went for the most obvious colours. There are a total of 3 different greys and a black base on the clothes. Brown shoes obviously as only a braggart would wear black shoes and a black suit in this period. Nowadays anything goes, even trainers! Standards are definitely slipping Gentlemen.


The last figure in the range is what I thought on first inspection to be some kind of wild west mage. but a closer look revealed it to be a vampire. So I had to repaint the face a lighter shade of flesh which has left is a little messy, but it will pass the two foot test so I won't dwell on my inadequacies any longer. As it was now a vampire I went for a very dark purple hue to the suit with the hope that it might look a little more "exotic". As mentioned above I have not seen the film so the colours are my own choices and not that of the films wardrobe mistress. I don't even know if this figure is part of the film but given that it is a vampire in the west I think it likely. Maybe someone can let me know.

That's it for today. Next update to my wargaming life in two day. So with luck I'll see you then. All the best Clint.



Monday 6 May 2013

Sundays game at the club

Yesterday at the club I had a game of "Bloody Barons" against Graham. For those not in the know "Bloody Barons" is a set of rules by Peter Pig for fighting battles in the War of the Roses.

Graham supplied all the figures and the scenery. Lazy of me but there you go!

We both randomly selected our armies from about 30 that Graham has already worked out. And we went quickly into the pre-game. I love the pre-game sequence as it completely disrupts your army and gives a reality check that the forces are not at all equal. If two armies were equal and you only offered your men a 50-50 chance of coming out unscathed a lot would not be around when the battle started. So we worked through the pre-game sequence and I was to be the attacker. Graham then had to set out the scenery and I got a chance to move some of it. Bad dice rolls meant that all I could move was one hedge. Darn!

And then the luck came over to my side. Graham then had to roll to see how many of his troops would make the battle in time. The dice rolls determined that he would either lose troops from most units or they could turn up intact but late. Rolling for Each unit he started the game with only 3 units on the battlefield and the rest would arrive when they could. (One unit never did roll high enough to arrive at all despite being tested for each turn.) So I took a bravery pill and decided to act rashly! I moved everything forward at it's level of motivation as far as I could. My plan was to take the fight to him and make him react to my actions as opposed to reacting to his. The picture above shows my mad dash on the first turn. As you can see some troops were more enthusiastic than some others.

Lady luck then punished my rashness and 2 of my three commanders failed to issue order on the second turn. They were obviously distracted by something in an "Oh look pretty flowers!" moment. As this is where the plan faltered. My elite household unit was peppered by accurate longbow shot at short range making 3 of the 8 stands no longer combat effective (or dead if you are called Graham!) Graham had managed to get some more troops on the board and his left flank now had some being previously empty.

I only just motivated my left flank but not sufficiently to attack the village and its defenders. So I had to stop my attack with my other unit of Household troops and my unit of Irish Kerns, 1/2 inch shy of the village boundary. My longbow peppered Household unit was on no advance orders due to the casualties so had to suffer yet more black rain as Graham got his reinforcements into the fight and managed to bring on more. My right flank was struggling to get through the wood or in the case of my levy there failing to move at all.

So I was stalled by terrain on my right and by archery and casualties and no move orders in the centre and unenthusiastic troops on my left. Yet somehow Graham was having problems of his own and the turn swapped back to me again without him being able to deliver any crippling blows. So on my turn I managed to attack the village. This led to a rout of the troops inside and no advance orders to grahams reinforcements who were hoe shooting at my poor arrow magnets the household unit in the centre. So I took the village, and while the fighting unit reorganised themselves my Kerns swept through the buildings and fields and took one of Grahams retinue units in the flank while I managed to hold them in place with one of my retinue units. This melee was swiftly resolved in my favour just as the Irish were about to contact. So they never actually got to fight but had assisted in two melees so far and were thus still "fresh".

Graham had a unit of mounted knights who cut down my arrow ridden household without loss and left my centre hanging in the breeze as I only had some bow armed levy troops who had more brains than bravery and were more than happy to let everyone else do the work.

On my right the troops managed to get through the woods and engage Grahams foot troops in some long range arrow exchanges. My levy had just about skirted the wood and I had a retinue unit heading to support the centre section. Which meant I would have two retinue units and 2 levy units in the centre against two household units 1 retinue unit at about 2/3rds strength and Grahams last levy unit. My left flank had managed to rout everything on that side that graham commanded. And then both the game count down and time at the club ran out.

Graham worked out all the victory points and I started packing up. The write up makes this seem far more one sided than it was. Throughout the day other club members would pop over and see how we were getting on and ask "Who's winning?" To which the only answer was "If you ask him he'll say I was winning and if you ask me I would say the opposite!"  Until we worked out the victory points it really was anyone's game. The result was a "Minor Victory" for me. But incredibly close. If I was being generous I could claim it was the Irish being so close to the other board edge that tipped the balance in my favour. (Scored me extra VPs for within 5 inches of the enemy base line at end of game). Having said that it could have been any of the units as they all played there part.

Overall a very good game and a Victory against Graham is always to be savoured! (Graham is a very good player with strong level of cunning and about 30 years of club experience!)

Happy May Day and next post will be Wednesday, Cheers Guys catch you all later.