Minnow At The Oasis

Some enterprising folks (not me) have been busy organizing a weekend gaming convention in Halifax at the end of September and I've volunteered to run a semi-historical miniatures game. 

Minnow drives off the Mamlukes by using her silent stare.

Its a long boring story, and the bar is shut, so let me just say that, in essence, this week I realized that I missed the ease and smooth of the gridded games I had been largely playing until I decided that I needed to go off grid for Huzzah. So I set up the game I plan to run,  hauled out my Square Brigadier rules, and..... yup, that works for me. I think it'll be easier to learn and understand for many non-miniature players.

A battle report on the play test will follow and soon after, a copy of the updated rules, or at least a Quick Reference Sheet if the full thing is taking too long as I keep adding things, trains, balloons, amphibious ops, etc etc.

Answering the Call

A couple of energetic Halifax gamers (not me) have organized a small weekend wargame convention, hopefully the first of many.  Its been decades since the last small one that I can remember so I figured it was my duty as well as to my possible long term benefit, to support them so I'm going to run a game and hopefully play in something new to me. 

Newly cast and painted gunners for an upcoming local convention game.

However the real point of this post is that my friend Paul will run a 25mm ECW game. For the scenario he is planning, he needed some more Scots gunners. Knowing that back in 2010 I had sculpted and cast up a regiment of Lowland Scots ( one figure in neutral pose with open hand), he asked if I could cast up and paint 6 gunners for him.  Job Done! (see above)

About life size. 25mm, Sculpted, cast and painted 2010

I do like not having to find quarters, pay and rations for new figures! 

Annnnnnnnd....We're BACK!

August has been 'that sort of month', so far. A little bit of time here and there for thinking, reorganizing, converting and painting/repainting a handful of shiny 54mm toy soldiers and so on. Hopefully (knock knock knock) some gaming will follow shortly. 

In the meantime here is a shot of the result.

The Dominion of Faraway (Red) faces the Oberhilse Free State (Blue).

The Fusiliers on the right were one of my 1st homecast units, cast and painted late in the 1990's. At the time, I was using my 'With MacDuff To The Frontier' rules so they were organised into battalions with a command group and 2-4 'companies', each of and 6-8 officers, ncos and privates. That worked OK on my 6'x10' table for a game lasting 4-6 hours, but I no longer have either the room nor the stamina of those days. So, one of my goals for July was to determine a final organization and rules to let me play 1-3 hour 54mm games on my 5'x5' table.  Over the last dozen years, most of my games were played on a grid, originally using Bob Cordery's The Portable Wargame, then later, various versions of my Square Brigadier. I have decided to keep the grid as an option but to also be able to use the same armies off grid or on grid as the situation called for.

2014: My first 54mm Portable Wargame (I think), loosely (very loosely) inspired by the 1885 battle of Cut Knife Creek during our Northwest Rebellion.

I took two runs at the scenario in the previous blogpost, using different rules and organizations. The one posted saw the troops organized as 1 stand=a"company" grouped into 3 company 'battalions', and since the game had played well, I started thinking about reorganizing both armies, and expanding them. Luckily, life interfered with hobby as sometimes happens, and by the time I got back to it, I started seeing some issues such as breaking 3 stand units into 1/2 units as called for in some scenarios, fitting a unit into a house, or a grid square, that was only designed to hold 1 or 2 stands, what to do with leftover figures or the need to add figures to most units..........

I started looking back over past 54mm blogposts......

August 2016. The armies begin to form, ready to do battle under the Square Brigadier. 

and decided that units with 2x60mm wide stands, each stand holding 3 infantry or 2 cavalry figures, had been in use both on and off grid (5" grids) for some years now, and had served very well.  

I'm about to experience a long, long, weekend home alone (not counting 4 footed occupants) and will be surprised and disappointed if I don't get a couple of games in.