My daughter didn't want her office chair any more, so I now have a swanky, evil genius style swivel chair in the garage to replace the knackered old one that I was donated by the middle sprog. That's a nice way to end the year and, hopefully, I'll be more enthused to sit in a freezing garage in the depths of January, now that my backside will be luxuriating in padded fake leatherette PVC comfort.
I spent the morning basing up the last units for my 2mm English Civil War Parliamentarian army. I've added a couple more bases of artillery, three more pike and shot regiments, a unit of dragoons and a regiment of curassiers, representing Sir Arthur Heselrig's infamous 'Lobsters'. I've also based up a commander and his officers. This lot will now go back into storage while I focus on the Cornish Royalist army, for which I need to texture the bases then start painting.
I pushed the button on the 6mm Winter War project this morning, ordering two opposing armies from Heroics and Ros, one Soviet and the other Finnish. This will be my land project for the start of 2025, once the figures arrive in a week or two, so the 2mm English Civil War project is going to be postponed until later in the year, although I will crack on with it in the meantime.
In Winter Hammer each stand represents a platoon, with heavy weapons and tanks based individually representing two or three actual guns or vehicles. In most scenarios there are no more than half a dozen units per side, although you can scale up for larger battles.
I have ordered a variety of infantry, heavy weapons, guns, vehicles and tanks, including ski troops for the Finns. I now need to think about terrain, especially fir trees to build some forest templates, but also a few rural buildings, bunkers and trenches, not to mention wire entanglements and minefields.
I have a new project plan for 2025, going back to an approach I used to take before I decided to make a 'list of things to do' each year in advance. This worked at first, but in recent years I've found myself editing the 'to list' as I went along and as new 'ooh, shiny!' things popped up to grab my attention. Instead, I'm now going to have a 'What's on the Workbench? tab on the home page of the blog, from which anyone desperate enough to want to find out what I'm up to can punch through to a list of my current projects.
I am going to limit myself to a maximum of one air, one naval and one land themed project at a time, the idea being to switch from one to another as I go along. It may well be that only one of these will be running at any time and I'm deliberately going to prioritse land based projects for a change this year, rather than air or naval things.
Each of these projects will be small enough to be completed in a few weeks, rather than months (or even years!), and will be self-contained but part of a larger, on-going effort. The aim will be to knock off parts of a project as I go blundering along, rather than attempting to complete the whole damn thing in a drawn out slog.
It may not result in many games being played but at least I will be able to get some stuff shifted in the right direction, while hopefully keeping my hand in rather than throwing in the towel half way through. As always, the emphasis will be on stuff I can play solo rather than club gaming, so it's very much up to me whether or not I get some games on the table.
I ordered some more of the excellent Brigade Models Small Scale Scenery fortifications before the holidays, this time focusing on medieval town defences for potential siege assaults, or just as scenery in the background of set piece battles. The idea is to use the various components to construct lengths of curtain walls including both square and round towers, gatehouse and destroyed sections, alongside siege works and other defensive features, inspired by the siege of Plymouth.
I have been looking for a set of simple rules for land based wargaming focussed on the Winter War, to complement my recent air wargaming projects. I was thinking of Five Core Company Command for this but while browsing Nordic Weasel's rules in the Wargame Vault Winter Sale, I bumped into Winter Hammer. I assumed this was a 'skirmish' style set of rules for 20-28mm figures but I was very interested to discover that it works with 6mm figures on multiple bases.
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| H&R Finnish Reindeer Teams! |
This is great as I have also been looking at the excellent Heroics and Ros Finnish and Soviet 1/300th scale ranges which feature lots of options including ski troops, reindeer teams and very funky early war Soviet multi-turret tanks like the T-28. I have given the rules a quick read through and I'm enthused by the scope and content of the system, which in usual Nordic Weasel style, seems to cover just about everything you could possibly want. It's looking like a very strong prospect for 2025 at some point!
As always, I started a few things this year that ended up being shelved or shoved aside by other projects, although quite a few of these are definitely not dead in the water. The shelf of shame includes a 28mm Nyamwezi / Tuta army for DITDC, a load of 1/300th Soviet aircraft for Bag the Hun, some 1/2400th Argentinian pre-dreadnoughts extras, a 1/2400th Turkish WW1 fleet and the remaining 1/3000th battleships, cruisers and destroyers for the Norwegian Campaign. Some of these are now slated for 2025, so all is not lost and I just need to get them finished at some point next year, having made a good start on most of them.
I had a couple of things published this year, which is a bonus given my lacklustre output at the workbench. After several years the Wings at War Corsairs and Cavaliers rules were published by Paul at Tumbling Dice, which is pretty cool. I wrote these as a lock down project and then offered them for free to Tumbling Dice, as I just did it for kicks and its not my system anyway. They were given a thorough check by the original rules author, Chris Russell, and have his stamp of approval, so I'm just happy to have a credit. I also had my Bag the Hun article published in this year's Lard Mag, which apparently makes me a Top Ace contributer, at least according to Richard and Nick, which is a nice way to wrap up the year. I don't really have any firm plans for rules writing in 2025 but you never know?
This year has been even more of a washout when it comes to painting stuff, once again due to work and illness sapping my time and energy. I did complete the 1/3000th scale heavy units for the Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy early war fleets but not the rest of the British forces which are still waiting to be tackled. I also completed the 1/2400th scale Royal Navy Napoleonic fleet, which I really enjoyed painting albeit stretched out over several months, although I still haven't played any games with them yet.
The Soviet half of the 1/600th scale aircraft for the Continuation War project were finished but not the Finnish contingent, or the 1/300th scale Soviet aircraft either, despite making a good start on the latter. I also built a 1/72nd scale Bristol Scout for Knights of the Sky but had to drop out of the actual game due to illness. A handful of 1/600th USAF aircraft were also finished for MiG Alley. To wrap up an unspectacular year, I painted three test bases of 2mm English Civil War infantry, cavalry and artillery, then ran out of time to do any more before the holidays. I think my report card for 2024 will read 'must do better!'
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| HMS Hotspur |
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| Cerbere |
I bumped into an excellent online article about the French coastal defence rams of the 1860's and early 1870's the other day, which led to the inevitable Xmas bonus buy from Big Jim Prints. These are two Cerberus class coastal rams and HMS Hotspur, from the Long Face Games range of 3D models, designed by David Manley. I ordered these, as well as a Royal Navy gunboat model, in 1/1200th scale to complement the mid-Victorian ironclads I was gifted this year. The plan is to refurbish and rebase the models, which need a bit of tidying up and repainting, then add some of the Red Eagle ex-Skytrex ships and a few of the Long Face Games models to fill out the collection. It would be a shame just to leave them in a box after all.
https://tribord-amure.fr/2023/01/25/les-garde-cotes-de-la-generation-1865-70/
A post Xmas lunch walk on the beach this afternoon, so I took the opportunity to check out a crew bunker that I hadn't looked over before, as well as a machine gun bunker close by covering the coast road. Both have been sealed up and fenced off so there was no way of looking inside, which is a pity but just as well.
