Thursday, 27 June 2019

Playing around with weather and a book arrives

This week I have been spending my free time cutting out Norman paper soldiers and playing a few Imagi-Nations 19th Century games with a bit of weather thrown in. The effects of fog to be precise. The game is a pitched battle (One-Hour War-games scenario 2) but with both forces advancing on a foggy morning. The fog limits both movement and shooting to a range of 6" on the first move, and visibility is increased by 6" with each turn as the fog lifts.

Some photos of the game as troops move forward and encounter each other in the fog.




Then in the post today arrived Airfix American Civil War Waraming. I have so far just looked through all the pictures of the black and white photos of games with Airfix ACW figures and various conversions. What I really like about these game photos is they look like a games you can emulate. Unlike the wargaming photos in current magazines which are far too perfect and amazing detained to emulate.


I have some painted MiniFig 15mm ACW armies which have not seen the light of day for quite a while, and hopefully will get a run on the tabletop soon.

12 comments:

  1. Good point about what inspires. I feel the same about wargame shows, there needs to be some smaller games in the mix that people with limited space can envisage being set up in their own home, otherwise its just all eye candy.

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    1. While I do admire the eye candy and large displays. It does not inspire me the way the smaller games do.

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  2. For inspiration for "mere mortal" gaming, I turn to blogs. Rarely do I ever pick up a wargaming magazine. We band of blog brothers are self-inspiring.

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  3. Your troops remind me of the Gettysburg battle in 'The Art of Warfare on Land' by David Chandler, all the wargames set up in that are really inspirational even if out of reach of most gamers.
    I agree about the current crop of wargames magazines - but I think that's in part because the aesthetic is just one that doesn't work for me. Not sure why, but anything Duncan MacFarlane always hit the spot for me.

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    1. I don't recall this book. I will have to keep and eye out for it. I do like the big battle setups they are truely amazing, but its the smaller games I find inspiring.

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    2. It's rather dated in terms of the history but there are three battles that are illustrated with wargame figures, all I think courtesy of Peter Gilder. There's Belisarius vs the Sassanids at the Battle of Daras, Waterloo and Gettysburg. The first two are with Hinchliffe figures and all beautifully shiny. Gettysburg uses SSMs which is why your game sparked the connection. A Google search would probably bring up some of the images.

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  4. Hi Peter- your Spencer-Smith armies look superb- well done there. I think the attraction of the older copies of model magazines- say from the 1970s- is that they certainly had lots of articles to do with conversions and building things- to help the modeler...to-days crop of magazines seem only to be leaning towards adverts for what you can buy commercially. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. I do like the look of the Spencer-Smith range and I find they are easy to paint.

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  5. Hi Peter, great looking battle going on there. As for the Airfix ACW guide that remains one of my absolute favourites, I was looking at it only the other day. The images certainly inspired me and the rules were just to playable. A friend and I used them with 6mm Heroics and Ross armies in the Eighties, 1 to 10 ratio so units were 40 - 60 figures, we had some great games. The firing tables were so easy to use. Think we made a few additions to the morale rules but we very much stuck to the spirit of those rules and enjoyed ourselves. Look forward to seeing what you do with the ACW's.

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    1. Thank you. I have just started to read through the chapters and the rules do look very straightforward.

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