Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment
Austrian Jäger
New additions, 28mm Austrian Jägers. This is a group of 9 figures, based in 3's. This basing was a last minute decision, as I was going to base in pairs.
The three table campaign that I am presently running has jägers in one of the flank actions, so their arrival to the collection is timely.
I started them on 5th April and have just plodded with them. Before the winter, I had decided that now that both the Wars of the Roses and Napoleonic 1809 collections were large enough to field a game, that I would just add to them at a slower pace.
That plan got a bit derailed with the Winter Painting Challenge, where I had to up my game to meet the painting goals that I had set. It was very useful as it moved the collection on to a better place, but I really don't want to be painting as a forced activity anymore - so getting back to 'plodding' will be re-instated immediately :-)
There are a couple more photographs over on the blog that show the front and backs of all nine figures.
Link
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/04/28mm-austrian-jager.html
The first 10mm roll off the painting desk
A couple of posts back, I mentioned some 10mm from Pendraken arriving and the intention to knock up a small test force to see how basing might work and whether I could pick up painting speed.
I have based and painted the infantry (but already might want to re-base!) and have based up the cavalry, artillery and commander, which I like.
I have put some photos and commentary up on the Battlefields & Warrior Blog if interested.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/04/gathering-10mm-forces-how-to-base.html
Fighting the first battle
The first battle from the 'three table battle' was played out yesterday. This is the fight for the centre. I am in the process of doing a write-up for that, so will not add too much here.
What was apparent was that considering the scenario was artificially built by the battle creator, it gave a very good game, with some interesting moments arising.
The photo here shows the Austrian 1st Brigade moving down to assault the fields.
Big 3 table battle - not!
I have been working on a corps sized battle, played over 3 tables or rather the same table three times!
The idea is to create a thrown down set of games that are tied in to each other, but with the scenario generator adding a bit of structure while also mixing things up a bit.
Each corps has 3 divisional sized formations and each of those is allocated to one of the three tables. The tables offer the centre and the two flanks / wings of the engagement.
I am setting this in 1809, between French and Austrian forces.
There is a write up with more detail (scenario generator and diagrams) over on the Battlefields & Warrior Blog.
Link
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-three-table-battle-not-part-i.html
A third party ASL module
Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) is a WWII tactical boardgame published by Multi-Man Publications (MMP).
The Steelworks, Colombelles, France, is a historically based ASL module published by Lone Canuck Publishing, who produce quality 3rd party material for the ASL system.
The package includes a very nice 35” x 27” map showing the dominance of the steelworks in the centre. Main features are the steelworks, rail lines, a canal and fields - a mix of ploughed and wheat. A counter sheet with additional units (all marked as LCP) is also included, together with back story, special rules and scenarios.
I bought this in 2019 for £19, I note that Second Chance Games (UK) still sells it and that it is now £25. A universal truth about ASL stuff is that it goes out of print and I think this is a module that is worth grabbing while still available (it is also showing available on Canuck's site).
Colombelles is an industrial town northeast of Caen, with a large steel factory and importantly, very tall chimney stacks that dominated the landscape, giving the Germans significant observing positions.
So began ‘Operation Stack’, the Allied attack to deny these structures to the Germans.
Our module gives us five scenarios, covering actions involving both British and Canadians, between 11th July and 17th July 1944. There is plenty to delve into here. The map is particularly attractive and is reminiscent of the East front ASL modules such as The Factories and if you want a map that does this sort of ruinous cityscape, then this seems to be a good price to get something similar.
The 10mm have arrived
The Pendraken figures mentioned below have arrived. I have taken one bag each of Austrian infantry, line command, heavy cavalry, artillery and a couple of formation leaders, plus a sheet of flags for the infantry unit.
I'm thinking of this as being a bit of a back burner project for now, but the first thing to do is to work out what sort of basing I want.
Should a line infantry unit be multi-based, so that I can show differing formations such as line and attack column? I think so, because I only want a handful of units per side, so bringing things down to the tactical level will be for the best.
I have some Kallistra 40 x 20mm plastic bases. Once the figures are cleaned up, I will see how many line infantry (2 ranks) I can put on one base. I am looking for things to be shoulder to shoulder.
For artillery, perhaps all three guns can be deployed out on a single 80mm MDF base, or a 60mm plastic base and just see which looks best.
Cavalry, hmnn, not sure. I am thinking of a single base, roughly 2 ranks deep, but not in straight lines, so they look like they are in motion. There are 15 horses in a pack, so accepting that each rank will have 7 horses, I will see what size base looks right with that.
More to follow!
Revenue, Spend and Changes
For the UK, 6th April is the beginning of the tax year. Starting last year, Inland Revenue allowed people to continue selling on platforms like E-Bay and Etsy freely, but anything that accrued sales over £1000 would be subject to tax and the seller would be sent self-assessment forms from the tax people.
The various platforms are now obliged to submit client sales figures to the Inland Revenue and that of course will include PayPal receipts. I can’t actually work out how much of selling your old things like clothes or say a loft clearance can avoid the tax, however someone like me, who only sells wargame-related things, can easily look like a trader and my understanding is that the ceiling will kick in straight away.
The past few weeks have been a bit costly with various pre-orders and purchases, so it is nice to have reached a new tax year, with my allowance zeroed and seeing something going out of the collection to bring some funds in (above parcel).
The collection is a bit of a living thing with regular tweaks and nudges to keep it current with whatever fad I am going through, but playability, streamlining and an eye to storage are generally constant themes and now, increasingly, persistent back and leg pain problems are also taking their part in tailoring what sits on the shelves.
Two mapper-type board games become an easy target, as not only do they generally require a lot of bending and stretching across, but by their nature (bigger), they take longer to play, adding to the amount of time spent bending and stretching etc.
I generally sit at the dining table to play 1 mapper and smaller boardgames, while figures and larger boardgames are taken to a higher table that is 40” off the floor, at which I stand and it is the prolonged standing that exacerbates my back and leg pain. So bringing more games back to the dining table makes sense and the games at the other table need to be shorter games for less standing.
I was recently having correspondence with another gamer regarding this sort of thing (Hi S) and he felt that the smaller affairs such as Neil Thomas-sized games are looking increasingly attractive compared to trying to re-create full battle games. I entirely concur. I have plenty of boardgames that can cover the ‘big battle’ and so I am happy for my figures to be doing something different and I seem to favour the divisional-sized game and lower for them.
Why mention this? Well for a while, I have been dithering about getting a smaller scale army for smaller games to take to the dining table (for a 4’ x 2’ mat). I like the idea of the Epic figures, where you get lots of ‘heads’ in the unit, but I don’t like their formulaic method of ranking up in shoulder-to-shoulder strips, where it looks like each figure is welded to their neighbour …. So I have ordered some Pendraken 10mm, just enough to do an infantry unit, a cavalry unit and a gun battery, so that I can look at the practicality and result of basing the figures up tight, but lose that ‘welded’ look.
I want to get off the treadmill of painting, so buying into yet another project has me wary, but I plan to base them, then spray black primer, a quick light dry brush around the outer facings and exposed areas, then just dabbing on colours where the brush can quickly reach, which will mostly be on the front of the unit and rear of the unit, everything else stays black.
It will be a bit rough and ready and I know, initially at least, I will not be happy with that, but it might be time to get over it and it is radical enough (for me) to make a break on how I do stuff. The figures have been dispatched, but already, as I paint a group of 28mm Austrian Jägers, I am cooling on the idea - we shall see. Also I really don’t want to get the smaller lads and end up with project creep with more units and bigger games, that would totally defeat the purpose.
As for the boardgames, I thought that I had pretty much nailed that, but it too has an appointment with Mr. Change!
Anyway the point is that my collection is frequently in a state of flux and that as things leave the collection, this site regularly gets a little weeding, that totally strips out the stuff that has gone, so that the content stays relevant to what is actually going on and keeps me true.
The size of both figure and boardgame collections are kept quite tight and concise, so things generally have to earn their place to stay and by that I mean have a reasonable prospect of getting to the table. A few things might get kept just for the pleasure of owning them, but with storage at a premium, not many things will find ‘favours’ granted to them :-)
Anyway, a word to the wise, if you are planning to clear out the collection, in the UK, it might be better to space this over a number of years than doing it in one go, if the tax implication bothers you.
Face to Face with Antietam
For me, this would be the third playing in little over a week and Mike's first re-visit to the system for many years and it did exactly what we want from a game like this. It sat easily in our evening session with a break part way through for a coffee and chat about recent games bought etc. Most importantly, the rulebook came out just once.
Anyway, this battle gave us an early crossing, followed by a repulse and significant Union loss at Burnside Bridge, while for most of the first half of the game, the Confederates were able to build up a defensive crust that pretty much stalled the Union.
Then Dunker Chapel fell, followed by the Sunken Lane being breached and then taken as a significant Union penetration closed in on Sharpsburg.
We ended up with one of those last throws of the die moments. The Confederates held off at Sharpsburg, but with Mandatory Combat and the winner of a combat (includes defender) being able to advance after combat, in the Confederate part of turn 10, they were obliged to attack, they got an Attacker Retreat result, fell back and the Union target unit advanced into one of the Sharpsburg hexes!
Sole control of Sharpsburg gives that player 15 Victory points at the end of play, so this Union taking of just one own hex denied the Confederates those 15 VP's and the game ended as a Union Marginal Victory.
Had the Confederates held the town in full, they would have been able to claim a Confederate Marginal Victory. So all in all, the game lived up to expectations and delivered a pleasant evening of gaming.
This is an expensive game, but with 8 battles in there and this likely being an easy and frequent visitor to the table and solo friendly, I think it will pay its own way.
Second Chance Games ... Easter Bunnies!
Over the weekend, Second Chance Games ran a fun thing. They had eight items of Easter egg clipart hidden over various parts of their web pages. If you found one, you clicked on it and it revealed a voucher code for a discount. Nice idea.
It was 'first to find' gets the voucher, just to add a bit more of a race element to it.
Anyway, I did find one and so now have something in the post on the way to me :-)
Ticking over
I replayed the AI scenario again today and had quite a reversal, in keeping with my comment that as soon as the dice are rolled a dynamic occurs that will take the game off in a variety of directions.
This time the artillery breached the wall as soon as it was deployed (turn 3) and so the French Line infantry made their attack earlier and cleared the farmhouse, with the Austrians not being strong enough or of sufficient quality to be able to counter-attack with any effect, so it became a bit of a one-way scenario, with not much else going on.
This result (rather than the first result) is what I was initially anticipating when I first examined the AI scenario. If I were creating a scenario with this background, one of my principal considerations would be that villages and hamlets often changed hands several times in a fight and I would likely have built in some capacity for the Austrians to do that or to at least give a flavour of that possibility of a counter-attack being a real threat.
Regardless, the first playing gave a good game, the second playing less so, but still worth playing out.
Counters from the Blue & Gray Deluxe game for the Shiloh scenario are being punched an clipped, so I think that will be getting some early atention.
Also, I have dragged out my Soldiers of Napoleon rules for the 28's, just to see whether I want to bring these rules back to the table.
These rules and my AI games have shown my collection of figures to be short of skirmishers. So today, I put nine Austrian Jäeger onto the painting corks. I don't want to lose the painting discipline that was built up over the Painting Challenge.
Playing the AI game - Napoleonic
A couple of posts ago, I described an AI attempt at creating a Napoleonic wargame scenario.
It looked interesting enough to have ago, so today I did a run through. Would it work? Would it be balanced, I had my doubts, but there was enough there to intrigue.
The instruction to the AI was to create a Napoleonic French attack against an Austrian held farmhouse. It called the generated scenario ‘The Kaiser’s Kitchen Garden - 1809. It gave me general instructions, an order of battle and what it called a map, but which looked like a photo reconstruction of a gaming table.
I have put observations and replay notes up on the Battlefields & Warriors Blog. Link
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/04/playing-ai-game-napoleonic.html
Repeating Antietam
A second playing of the Blue & Gray Deluxe scenario and getting a different outcome.
Casualties were significantly higher than in the first game for the Union, losing 81 strength points compared to the Confederates losing just 30. Also, the Confederates fully held all four hexes of Sharpsburg at the end of play, worth an extra 15 points, so when all is added up, we come out with a Confederate Decisive Victory.
Some highlights;
From the outset, the Union took heavy casualties. In the photo, the Union have pushed over the Middle Bridge rather successfully, but a counter-attack cut into their ranks and the Union (strength 7) unit in the photo is about to be removed from play from getting a ‘Defender Retreat’ order and not being able to comply due to being cut off.
The Sunken Lane fell to the Union, but Dunker’s Chapel didn’t.
The Union got over Burnside Bridge and broke through the Confederate line, for a short time threatening the Ferry Crossing over Antietam Creek, which could have seen the whole Confederate army trapped and captured… but the Union just didn’t have enough strength on hand and despite getting close, their attack fizzled out.
Finally, in the last turn (like in the last game), the Union threatened to take one of the four hexes of Sharpsburg. There was essentially a 50/50 chance of the Union winning the attack, but they were repulsed by the town’s defenders and then defeated in detail by A.P. Hill’s Division counter-attacking from outside the town.
Again, we are in the region of a 25-minute set-up and a 2-hour play time, giving a fun and engaging game. The scenario is looking a little uphill for the Union, but there is a compulsion to keep on trying :-)
Playing Antietam
The Blue & Gray boardgame mentioned a few days ago has started to see some table time.
First up is the Antietam scenario and I though it played rather well, making for an engaging game.
I have put an AAR up on the Battlefields & Warriors Blog, link below, which has a closer look at turn 1 and then just gives an overview of the rest of the game.
As a starting experience, it certainly makes me keen to a) replay Antietam with some of the optional rules and b) to get the other scenarios to the table.
Just good old fun.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/03/antietam.html
AI generated scenario!
I asked Google's 'Gemini' software to create a scenario for Napoleonic French forces attacking Austrian forces located in a farmhouse. I also asked for a tabletop map to support the scenario ....... and this is what it gave me.
Amazing on first inspection, but it raised the question in my mind as to how much of that image was created / mashed-up by the software and how much of it was an actual lift from someone's table.
Anyway, I have written a piece about it over on the Battlefields & Warriors Blog if this sort of thing interests you.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/03/thinking-aloud-ai.html
