When Life Gives You Lemons

Otherwhen in its Current Full Glory

This year has tossed me several unprecedented changes one of which is having my eyes rebuilt. For the most part this is a wonderful improvement allowing me to see better than I have in over a half century, but it came with a major unforeseen issue that I can not see up close the way I have in the past, even with corrective eye wear. What this means is I must relearn how to paint. Complicated figures or painting patterns are outside my skills for now, so I went back to the simplest figures I had to recover with, these being my Toy Soldiers.

New 12 Figure Otherwhen Unit in Line

Having made this decision there are two unexpected effects with which I am now dealing. First is this painting will increase my “Collection.” I chose this word deliberately as I discovered that my formally “Practical” force, which being enough figures to play normal size games I host, was going to become larger purely for my own gratification, thus changing from being just gaming to collecting. The second was if I want to ever use this many figures in games, I needed to simplify the rules I use. Neither of these is a bad thing, but both require me rethink goals.

New Otherwhen 12 Figure Unit in Column

Organization: I am now looking at going from games of three to four players per side to ultimately nine players per side. The new organization for this is going to be in steps, the beginning being to switch brigades from four regiments down to only three, then adding a Light Cavalry Brigade of six squadrons of lancers and hussars and rearranging where artillery was allocated. This would bring me to three full infantry brigades and a light and heavy cavalry brigade along with Corp artillery for six players per side.The full future expansion was to bring all six infantry brigades up to four regiments of infantry and a battery of artillery, with each division adding a light cavalry squadron. A Light Cavalry Brigade of four squadrons, which would go from six figures to twelve and a Heavy Cavalry Brigade of six squadrons. Both cavalry brigades would also be gaining a Flying Battery of horse artillery. The Corp Reserve would go to three batteries of heavy artillery and two flying batteries of horse artillery. Commanders would increase to ten with six infantry, two cavalry, a Corp artillery, and a Commander-in-Chief.

Nodd 3 Regiment Brigade With Artillery and Hussars

Rules: These need combat simplification and command restructuring. Combat will likely combine with morale something like Command and Colors systems, while command will likely change to limited unit activation per turn with players still having a reserve order pool to improve results. C-in-Cs will likely add command improvement cards that they can assign or hold to implement themselves. I have many general thought but few actual rules right now. Critical to my thinking is that players will still be able to do more rather than less as I retain my view of game design being that players want to be rewarded, not penalized in their game play.

Otherwhen 3 Regiment Brigade With Artillery and Lancers

New Nodd Division

New Otherwhen Division

Back From the Dead...Kind of

19th Century ImagiNation Army

 After nine month of fighting with it I have finally convinced Google that this is indeed my account.

So what have I been up to these past months? I just returned from Gen Con and what a strange show it was. I don't think I have seen this level of attendance in over 25 years. Still waiting on official numbers but my estimate is 20,000 per day and 25,000 unique. That's way down from the 60,000-65,000 of 2019. Despite that, it was a good show. I especially enjoyed seeing old friends again.

The rest of the year was work, personal issues and some gaming. The biggest part is working to start up a Mid Nineteenth Century Unification Wars Campaign. I have the tactical rules done, a good deal of the campaign rules and a few of the armies complete. Now that my schedule is open again progress should move quickly. More detailed reports will follow soon.

Detail View of Line Unit

THE DOG WARS WORLD

For this world, I had a few basic requirements. First, names would be in English or simple German. I wanted everything to be pronounceable. Second, personal names were going to be based on dog sounds as much as my imagination would allow. Later I went with breeds and activities when I ran out of steam on sounds. Third, locations were going to be local as this was my personal game. This required me to change some names to English from their French, or Native American ones. It also required me to find original street names as I was not about to use things like Martin Luther King or Eisenhower.

Wolfenstein Empire Forces on Parade

The Union of Pacts of the Commonwealth Forces

The Principality of Mutt Troops

DOG WARS: THE BEGINNING

For a very long time I have wanted to play the Programmed Wargames Scenarios by Charles Stewart Grant. I have owned the book for decades along with the companion Scenarios for Wargames, which for decades I have used in many periods, but I had never played the solo version of these. Last year I decided that I would build a force specifically for this purpose and, after many rules and figure debates, decided on Honours of War (HoW) for the rules and Alternative Armies Pudigrochumsburg dogmen in tricorns for my troops. This was going to be an ImagiNation world.

I chose the HoW rules because they use a dice activation system for Command and Control that provides additional constraints on possible actions. This was important to me in solo gaming. I also simply like the rules and the results they give, especially the opportunity to reorganize spent units, as for me the more command options in a game, the better I like it.

I picked the AA figures because I really like what the company does, even if they are nonhistorical. Additionally, they provide a painting service that is very good and priced right. Given the size of the project of around 900-1000 figures, I did not want to wait years for other services, or decades for me to stay motivated long enough to paint all of these. I have worked with them for decades and I knew they would also get things right. I do have a personal set of figures I am doing for this project, but that will be for a later post.

With rules and figures decided on, I next needed a campaign idea to set the scenarios in. My idea is to use a simple ladder campaign of taking the results of the last game to decide on the scenario for the following game and who would be attacking and defending. I can then go through the scenario book and pick an A or B possibility for the next game based on the winner. The rest would all be story arc to keep me entertained by what was going to happen next.

To get the best use out of the figures, I decided on three factions. The first would be the largest having the biggest concentration of all arms. The second would be the primary opponent having nearly as much infantry, but only half the artillery and cavalry. The third would be the forces used to augment the needs of the other two forces in any scenario. It had half the infantry of the others and an equal amount of cavalry and artillery as the second force. Each force was named and a general uniform was chosen. The primary is the Wolfenstein Empire in white uniforms loosely based on Austria. The second was the Union of Packs of the Commonwealth in blue uniforms. The third is the Principality of Mutt in red uniforms based somewhat on Hannover.

The Wolfenstein Empire

The Union of Pacts of the Commonwealth

The Principality of Mutt

A New Year and New Projects.

Well 2019 has come and gone and I did get some work on older projects done. Now with the New Year I am adding a few more games to my list of goal.

The National Flags for Dog Wars

The BIG PROJECT: The Dog Wars for Honours of War (HoW). This is my 28mm Seven Years War ImagiNation project. This one is really big with twenty-four battalions of infantry and an additional four full battalions, or seven small of converged grenadier. Along with them will be eight regiments each of cuirassier, dragoons, hussars, plus eight batteries of artillery with their limbers. This was supposed to be done for the Holidays this past year, but inevitable delays came up. Things are well on track now.

 

A Very British Civil War 15mm Vehicles

Next up will be A Very British Civil War in 15mm. I found a bargain on some early war British and French tankettes, armored cars and tanks. I will be ordering figures to go with this sometime this Spring. This is a project I have been working the rules, campaign and organization on for several years. Time to pull the trigger and make this a game.

 

6mm Byzantines

Close up of the 6m infantry

Later in the year I will be revisiting 6mm ancient. Primarily this will be the Byzantines and Sassasnids, but it is just as likely to get a Tony Bath Hyborean treatment. I will most likely be writing my own rules for this. I also suspect that 28mm ancients will also rise like a phoenix with two companies creating new lines for Archimedean Persians.



Games Workshop will be dipping into my wallet with the release of the reimagined High Elves, the Lumineth Aelves. I have always had a fondness for the pointy eared troops and the new sculpting for this line is amazing. Everything but my back account can’t wait.  

 

Song of Ice and Fire Lannister Halberd

The rest of the goals are to continue, I never complete any of these as I am always adding on, with the main project of last year. These being adding to the Toy Soldiers, adding vehicles and infantry to my WWII 6mm forces, along with finishing play testing my rules. Painting up more of my medieval period 28mm thing, Lord of the Rings (LotR), Song of Ice and Fire (SIF), and 12^th century medieval. I have no delusions that all these things will get finish. They won’t. Nor that these are all my new projects. I know there will be things coming out throughout the year that will sing their sirens song and tempt me down another path.



Now back to basing 28mm figures.

I Have Not Been Idle

Even though I have not posted in a few months I have been regularly painting and witting for my games.

Games Workshop has been my big distraction/bane this summer. I have purchased and worked on four new games, Age of Sigmar, Kill Team, Adeptus Titanicus and The Lord of the Rings. In the case of the later it is not so much new, as a continuation on my collection. So far all I have really done with most is assemble models and terrain. My Warlord Titan did get some basic painting done, with only Lord of the Rings getting figures finished. 

I finished my first mounted knights of Gondor. Hard to believe, but I never owned any before this release, even though the collection started over seventeen years ago. They will serve double duty as both troops for my Good Folks for Lord of the Rings and as knights for my medieval campaign.

Knights of Gondor

My gaming buddy Bob reminded me of another project that I have left sitting for nine years. The Quar. These are best described as World War I anteaters. Yup, you read that right. Anteaters. He finished his troops years ago while mine have hit the painting cue numerous times I never did start them. His threat to sell his off got me off my butt and painting. More on that project later.

Quar 1st Section

Close up of Coftyran Rhyfler

On the writing end I have added more rules for the Medieval Campaign and will be posting them soon. I also had a major epiphany on colonial gaming campaigns. I am creating a whole matrix for operational choices for both natives and empire builders. These will lead to a combination of scenarios and unique victory points. The key goal here will be winning Heart and Minds. I expect to be able to use this in both my 1890s campaigns and Twilight 2000.

 My painting should be moving ahead at a good pace again once I am past the big auction here and my own personal post auction clean up. My painting table is a nightmare of projects and I need to clean space and get myself focused for the finishing projects by the end of year.

Back to No Good

I am finally back from Origins. It was a great show, and outdoing our wildest expectations. With it out of the way all I have left for the summer is planning for GenCon, and lots of painting.

 Having returned I am finding myself fighting NOT to get excited and involved in the new GW Age of Sigmar. This is a real challenge as for the first time in years I really like both armies in the starter set. Wait, I hear you say. But those are undead, and you hate undead. True, but they are wraiths. Celtic mythology and Lord of the Rings both include wraiths and I love these works. So…

This now brings the projects for 2018 up to 4 remaining. Medieval, which I really need to get back to painting, Age of Sigmar 2^nd Edition, (No, no no, but…), Adeptus Titanicus and either my Twilight 2000/AK47, or America Civil War 1968 (I really can only do one of these at most). Medieval I am on the hook for, so just need to refocus and get the paint brush working again. Adeptus is likely unless the Secret project gets accepted. AK47 Twilight, and ACW 1968 are running neck and neck, but are the most likely not to make it. Ancients may sneak in, but that is really my 2019 goal (Wait! Ancients? Where did that come from). I can likely get 2 of these done, if I paint every week. Only time will tell.

Title Picture

What are all those games on the top of the page I hear you ask. Good question. These are several my favorite things to play. 

Slaughterloo

I have a very special place in my heart for Napoleonic uniforms and tactics. I also love the odd and off the wall. Alternative Armies caters to both with their 28mm Slaughterloo game. In this world humans are all gone, but the Elves (French), Orcs (English), Rats (Scotts), and Dogs (Austria) fight on. Some day I may take the plunge into historical Nappies. Well at least paint a few French Cavalry figures. 

Rommel

Strategic WWII by Sam Mustafa via Honor Game. These are 6mm Australians defending against the German Sea Lion invasion campaign I ran. Sam is a name you are likely to see on here a lot. I like a lot of his designs.

Flames of War

Yup, the popular WWII miniatures game. This is a 15mm very late war battle I ran. US forces assault a German occupied town. I have played these rules since first edition. These are the armies that have seen the most time on the gaming field. Over the years the rules we use change, but the troops carry on. 

Toy Soldiers

One of my biggest figure collections are the 28mm Eureka miniature. I have well over 400 hundred of these painted and I keep adding on. Originally designed as my catchall force to play all black powder period games, they have evolved into a period of their own. Using my own rules, the armies of Nodd and Otherwhen are at perpetual war.

Bucket List

Over the years, and there have been more than a few, there are miniatures projects I have thought about, started, stopped, and completed. Now that I am nearing my golden year, with retirement not to far around the corner, I have been thinking about the projects I absolutely want to finish. All of these are using 28mm figures. 

•      Medieval Armies – Enough to run a good size campaign.

•      Ancients – Carthaginian, Pyric, and Republican Roman. Enough of each to put on multi-player battles.

•       ACW Confederates to match against my Union forces for Longstreet.

These are the big three as everyone of these I have either done in 15mm and now want bigger figures, or more accurately I want more spectacle. I am of the opinion you can always play with more figures.

The problem with all my games is I hate to paint. I’m rather good at it, but I never enjoyed it. I would always rather write rules, create campaigns, or best still, play games. The question then remains, “Will any of this ever get finished?”