1864 Danish Squadron Finished

I've done a bit of a blitz to finish off the Danish ships for the Battle of Jasmund, minus the Sjaelland but including the Tordenskjold, with only the rigging and flags left to do. I struggled a bit with the strakes on the Skjold and Tordenskjold but they're okay. I also didn't get the exact shade I wanted on the masts and spars but it's not too bad. It's all good practice for the Napoleonic project anyway!

I'll get started on the Prussians to tomorrow including all of the 1st and 2nd class gunboats for the entire fleet, as I might well paint them all in one go. I still need a proxy for the Prussian Royal Yacht Grille but I think I'll just have to manage without, which makes it difficult to replay some of the later skirmishes. I'm also thinking of playing a game of Broadside and Ram tomorrow with the US monitors, as I haven't actually tried them out yet!

1864 Danish Squadron - Base Coat

I've base coated the ships for the 1864 Danish squadron at the Battle of Jasmund and they've now been given an all over ink wash, ready for the highlighting tomorrow. I'm wondering if I should give the hull sides a black ink wash too, to pick out the gun ports along the strakes before I highlight the strakes in white, but I'll decide that tomorrow, once the ink wash has dried properly. It's all good practice for my Napoleonic ships, so I'm killing two birds with one stone!

1864 Danish Squadron - Blocking In

I've started on the 1/2400th scale Danish squadron for the Battle of Jasmund, by blocking in the hulls and masts in Army Painter Matt White and the sails in Army Painter Skeleton Bone. I'll crack on with the decks today using Vallejo US Field Drab, followed by the masts and spars being overpainted in Vallejo Medium Fleshtone and dry brushing the ratlines in Vallejo London Grey. After tidying this all up a bit, I'll wash the whole lot in a Future Ink wash. In the process, I've manged to properly muck up the Sjaelland, which has had to be binned, so I've ordered a replacement model (ASV5) from the Tumbling Dice range.

Air War South Atlantic

I haven't read this book, as far as I can remember, which is a bit of an oversight, as I've read just about everything else on the subject. It's something I've been interested for a while, with an eye on Wings at War: Flames Above the Falklands and also Target Locked On!, so I thought I'd download  copy as it was only £3.99. It would be a simple thing to paint up a couple of Sea Harriers and Daggers for a quick game too.

Back to the Baltic

I spent most of yesterday painting the garden shed rather then painting any wargaming things, so the French Napoleonic ships are still in their overall black basecoat. I'm still trying to think through exactly how I'm going to paint them, so I've decided to move them to one side for the moment and instead paint the Prussian and Danish ships for the Battle of Jasmund, which I've been meaning to do for ages. 

http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.com/2019/07/tumbling-dice-ships-for-jasmund-rugen.html

These are all Tumbling Dice models from the Victorian ASV range, using proxies for the actual ships involved in the battle in March 1864. There aren't many of them to paint and they're all relatively small models, so I am aiming to get them done in about a week or so, shed painting permitting, with an actual game set up at the end to get them into action!

Gladiators!

I've been looking for more skirmish games to play with my daughter, as she really likes that sort of thing, so have decided to have a go at some gladiatorial combat using my old 28mm figures. These were originally painted for the Warhammer Gladiator rules, which turned out to be a bit rubbish, so they haven't been used since, even though I now have at least three decent sets of rules to use them with including Viktus, Sons or Mars and the set by Chris Peers from the Foundry Compendium, Burned With Fire and Killed with Steel. I just need to find the cork board arena that I painted up, read through a set of rules and set it up. For those about to die...we salute you!

Back Garden Bag the Hun

It was a lovely morning, so I set up a game of Bag the Hun in the back garden against my daughter, using the Deadly Pairs scenario as a starting point. She took on the role of the RAF with two 129 Squadron Spitfire Vb's flown by F/Lt Robinson and F/Sgt Blanchard, while I had two FW-190A2's of III/JG2 flown by Lt.Berchmanns and Fdw.Tomas. The sun was in the South East, both in the scenario and in real life, so it was also very hot. As a result, we played for about an hour before escaping into the shade for a cool drink.

It was an enjoyable game but not as much fun as the others we have played recently. There was a lot of manoeuvring for position and some really good tactical play by the sprog, but she found the gameplay slower and the card deck turn sequence frustrating, as she couldn't just do what she wanted. We both had a chance to fire at each other but missed, so there wasn't any turning point in the game that we could use as a way to determine a winner. A bit hit and miss in more than one sense.

It's a shame, as I really like Bag the Hun for multiplayer games, but that's just the way the rules work. I've been thinking of trying an alternative set of rules at some point, perhaps the old Blue Sky / Luftwaffe 46 series, which are similar but not turn card based, or even the free Sturmovik Commander rules which are very straightforward but still quite comprehensive. I might even try Check Your Six! again, even though I didn't warm to it when I've played it before, a long time ago.

Corsairs and Cavaliers Publication Update

I had an email from Paul at Tumbling Dice yesterday, confirming that my Wings at War rules variant for the 1969 Football War is going to be published sometime in the next couple of months. This was on the cards but is now definitely going ahead, with Chris Russell, the author of the Wings at War series doing the booklet and Paul sculpting half a dozen new aircraft to go into the rules bundle and the starter packs. I don't have a publication date yet but I expect it will be out in the next two or three months at some point. I also get a credit as a rules developer, which is pretty cool! 

French First Rate and Third Rates

Third Rates (80) and First Rate (120)

Bucentare class 80 gun Third Rate

It's about time I got started on the 1/2400th scale French Napoleonic ships, so I have base coated and undercoated the first five, ready for blocking in. I've decided to use a matt black undercoat rather than the conventional white, as it's what I've been using for the ironclads and has worked well for those, the downside being that you need to block in with white or a basecoat shade on anything that isn't actually black. The first five ships include a 120 gun First Rate and four 80 gun Third Rates. I haven't decided yet whether these will be for the 1770's - 1780's or the early 1800's, so names are up for grabs. If I go for the latter, the 80's will be of the Bucentare class - Bucentere, Neptune, Formidable and Indomptable, while the 120 gun First Rate will be the Ocean, name ship of the class.

Fistful of Lead - Find the Map!

The kids wanted to play Fistful of Lead again today, so I rolled up two new bandito posses - the Fajita brothers and the Chimichanga Gang - for a 'find the treasure map' scenario. The map was hidden in one of the three rooms in the farm house, required a D10 roll of 10 to be found, which would mark the end of the game. The two rival bandito gangs started on opposite sides of the table - Rico, Chico, Tico and Loco Fajita to the south with Rojo, Django, Filipo and Mongo Chimichanga to the north. 

The two gangs were equal in points, weapons and traits, so it was going to be a tight game. In the end, the Fajitas gang managed to get inside the farm house and up to the top room, where Loco succeeded in rolling a 0 on the D10 at the first attempt. There was a lot of tactical movement and lots of gunfire, with the cover making it difficult to score hits for both sides. It was a really good game but my daughter won again, making it a seven nil winning streak!