Having spent several weeks selling rather heavily as I re-organise emphasis within the collection, it is just nice to STOP doing that and hit calmer waters! 

With the Piggy Bank in healthy form, I turned to e-Bay for a painted treat to bring into the collection.

As you scan through the e-Bay listings, it is surprising how many items there are that are described as ‘well painted’, but don’t always meet that standard. It is interesting to visit Colonel Bill’s web pages as he sells painted figures but categorises them on a scale of A to E, with A being the best.

C and D fall into the category of table-ready figures that are of a painting standard that typically many wargamers will be painting for themselves to get stuff to the table, with ‘C’ obviously being at the better end of that. I have tried using this measure / description when assessing the e-Bay offerings.

Anyway, on eBay, I came across a rather nice French unit and in the final moments of the listings, I got a bit carried away and went for three units in total, winning them all.

The first thing I would say is that since these are nicely painted, I expected each to run much higher than the original listing price, but they didn’t really and I wonder whether this is a reflection of where we are up to as a nation (UK) as money seems to be getting tighter and tighter.

The e-Bay behaviour seems to be that ‘watchers’ see an item that they would like at the listing price and then when final moments of bidding come, the seller can only hope for the bids to raise the opening price by around 10 - 15%, with several of the things that I was looking at actually going for their original list price with just 1 bid on them!

At the end of my spending spree, the three units that I came away with were all 28mm Napoleonic French. There seems to be a general absence of 28mm Austrian units, certainly in plastic.

First up on my buy list, French Chasseurs (cavalry), these have red facings so can be used as 1st, 10th or 22nd Cavalry Regiments. 

For infantry, I was pleased to see the French Swiss 2nd Infantry Regiment on sale. Quite a few army lists allow the French a foreign contingent. I already have some Duchy of Warsaw Infantry, so these will give a nice option.

Finally, I took the opportunity to increase my French line artillery from 1 battery to two. The ink wash on these is rather nice, leaving a warm, rich look and I wonder whether they were washed with a thinned oil paint - used like a pin wash.

Anyway, that’s three units of ‘posh’ for me. None of them match my basing size or style and I am torn between re-basing and leaving well alone. Re-basing would leave some cavalry and infantry spare, which I could use as the basis for building more units and I can get the artillery onto more compact basing to match my own.

I might attempt to remove one of the artillerymen just to test whether I can do it with limited damage, as those bases will be the easiest to repair if I get that wrong - or I might just accept that the joy of the treat is to use them as they are. It will make little difference to an actual game.

These additions, together with the French infantry unit on my painting corks, make my French pocket armies notably stronger than my Austrians, so to keep some sort of parity between the two as the collection grows, some Austrians now need to be rotated into the painting queue.

Either way, I will get these to the table soon to try out a small game with the Soldiers of Napoleon rules that I recently bought.

Since starting the Wars of the Roses collection I have migrated from Sword & Spear rules, to Never Mind the Billhooks to Hail Caesar. Each getting me closer to what I want from the tabletop game.

The Hail Caesar rules are fine and I have just bought the WotR supplement from Warlord Games, which is fabulous, but my eye has caught something twinkly!

Call me shallow, but lovely artwork on a rule book can open my wallet and so it is here. On Bloody Ground is a series of rules written by David & Daniel Toone and published by WiP Games and Miniatures. They already have several volumes out covering such things as Caesar and the English Civil War. Each volume shares a common game engine, but is specific to the period and here we are looking at The Wars of the Roses.

It is an A4 format, softback, glue bound with 64 pages including a comprehensive index. There is a lot of information on army building, with 5 distinct armies being focused upon: Yorkist, Lancastrian, Richard III, Henry Tudor and the Yorkist Pretenders. 

There are no scenarios, but there are sections on choosing ground and deployment. In one way they exemplify the club throw down game, but in another, the army building around points looks like it might take some effort to get the forces and their various attributes recorded, but they will give something with some character and flavour.

The rules are basically held in 22 pages, but then there are another 10 pages of definitions and explanations that support the rules. I like that there is 1 page on shooting, 1 page on movement etc, it gives the air of simplicity and ease, but there is some initial hunting to do. For example, in shooting I could not find the range for weapons, even though it mentions a long range modifier, but turn to the weapons section and we see that English longbowmen have a range of 30", standard bow 24" and heavy crossbow 18".

The only thing that catches my curiosity with this initial browse through the book is that compared to missile range, movement seems quite slow. I'm sure this will work out right during play and when all the rules are assimilated, but it has grabbed my attention and will be a thing that I give early thought to.

I can see these being tested early at the table. As I say, I have no particular reason to move on from Hail Caesar, but for £13, these self-contained rules are interesting and there is something about the non-colour fancy pants contents that just feels a bit less commercial and more like the rules that I had in my younger days .... yes, a nostalgic thing, but that is not to be dismissed too lightly.

I am reminded of 'Flower of Chivalry' by the Canadian Wargame Group, not in terms of actual content, just in terms of joyful charm. More on this soon,

While browsing through the Warbases website, I came across this 6 pdr Napoleonic French cannon. It has an MDF carriage and metal gun.

I wanted a smashed up cannon to use as a game marker and the MDF frame seemed to be an easy way to go about that ..... using side cutters!

I clipped down the right wheel so that it could partially lay underneath the cannon, then part propped it up so that it was not too flat. Basing paste helped it look a little embedded in the ground.

As a French gun, it is painted green. It looks better to the eye than the camera can convey, but I think it would benefit from an injured or dead figure on the stand - perhaps draped over part of the carriage would look right for some interaction between props. Sourcing such a figure might be only possible with a 3D print. 

Anyway, I can see me adding another onto the next warbases order.

The two horse drawn ammunition carriers, also from Warbases are moving across the painting table. I had painted the Austrian one all yellow (with a tint of brown paint to damped the yellow down) only to discover that the lid should be white!

I have also downloaded a nice image of a shire / cart horse to get their colours right.

This is the smallest of three wood bases (the other two are twice as deep). By cramming the trees closer together and fixing them in place on a base, the visual is much better than how I was going about this before. I am also using a mix of heights, with my 28mm type trees meeting the smaller ones that I use for Epic. 

The tree bases have been hidden by paste and flocks and then low shrubbery was added so that at eye level, you don't just see tree trunks with a view out to the other side of the wood. Line of sight is now obstructed by scrub.

For bases, I have been using our previous set of table mats, turned upside down, so the cork liner is upwards and the veneer surface is face down. The mats are a decent quality, so I have not seen any warp. The shapes were cut out with a jigsaw with the blade set at 45˚.

I am going to treat each of these in the same way that a Built Up Area is typically handled in most rules, i.e. a woods base can hold 1 unit. This unit will be held off map, as we can't move the trees!

My selling and re-organising is coming to an end now, so hopefully attention can return back to some gaming. I have a new found balance between servicing the painting demands and spending more hours with games on the table. I will broaden that discussion over the next week or so.

Authored by Christopher Gravett, illustrated by the rather marvellous Graham Turner and published by Osprey (Campaign 120).

Another Wars of the Roses title enters the collection as I breathe some renewed life into my 28mm WotR figures.

This covers the biggest battle of the conflict and so it should be no surprise that the casualty rate was significant. I seem to recall reading somewhere a few years back that as a percentage of the male adult population of that time, that the casualties suffered at Towton and the rout into Bloody Measdow, had an incredible impact at the national level.

Everything here is what you would expect from an osprey, lovely illustations, wargame friendly maps and an easy read text that starts with the action at Ferrybridge and Clifford’s death.

The day is bitterly cold and there is thick snow on the ground ….. the reverse side of my Geek Villain games mat is white …… though nothing else is! But at least the green hills can go under the cloth.

I am trying to re-write / resurrect my old Wars of the Roses rules, so the narrative from these sort of books is helpful when looking for ways to get flavour into rules. At the rate that reading material is presentlu coming into the house, these are likely to have to wait patiently and take their turn in the stash! I am aware of the privilege of being able to buy this stuff.

Through the post today, bought on e-bay, a set of 6 French Napoleonic casualty figures on 40x40 basing. 

This is a nice little collection, which from memory come from one of the plastic multi-part sets - but I don't know which one.

They have been nicely framed on these bases. It looks like they may have been primed blue, as the white and khaki trousers have not fully killed that colour.

To bring them to a closer match to my own collection I will use a bit of black wash and add some highlights. I might use them as Disorder markers.

There is a lot of terrain building going on in the background at the moment, but nothing is ready yet.

My Warbases parcel showed up on Monday and all the bits have immediately jumped the queue and gone onto the assembly line.

There are a couple of ammunition carts (that Iain Cav showed on his blog last week), each with a metal shire type horse, so the French and Austrian Napoleonics will get one each.

A market square cross in MDF is a mini kit, taking 5 minutes to build and makes for a nice cross that will help the Wars of the Roses tables.

As a punt, I added a Napoleonic 6pdr canon to the list. This is a metal gun on an MDF carriage. It is nicely done, but I specifically wanted it to create a damage marker, which is easier to do with MDF .... it is now duly damaged and awaits the rattle can primer department!

And then there is the biggie .... the Napoleonic Prussian Farmyard. This is a lovely 3 building complex on an 8´´ x 11´´ base, so it has a nice small footprint. It was quite an easy build ....... but at the moment I am adding single tiles to the roof of two of the buildings. It is a long process and should we say the result is certainly 'rustic'! But I like it.

The latest video from the Little Wars TV crew examples a scenario based around a napoleonic action near Talavera in which the scenario is entirely created by AI. They go through the design process (easy) and then play the scenario - a fascinating study in its own right.

However …. I say ‘created’ by AI, but here is the rub, the AI at this stage of progress only ‘creates’ by searching for data that already exists on the internet and mashes it out into whatever it is that we have asked for.

Being less polite, it plunders, blogs, books, works of art, opinion etc without regard for Intellectual Property or other permissions that up until now have at least had tacit recognition, in order to respond to the enquirer.

I decided to run a narrow test. I asked an AI program to build me a scenario for my imaginations campaign in the knowledge that my imaginations setting is unique to me - i.e. the AI would not really have many places to go to draw on material.

In this instance, it clearly visited my blog and drew directly on one of my scenario posts and pretty much reformatted it, but replicated it under the guise of its own creation!

It didn’t produce a map, but then I didn’t have one on the blog post for it to take. So I asked for one. Within seconds it had produced a map. It had placed the various commands in their proper places (left, centre, right), so this data had obviously (and cleverly) been lifted from my text, but when it came to terrain, it placed down a bizarre looking double hedge from one side of the table to the other - unrecognisable to anything that I have played.

The first thing I noticed was the remarkable speed at which this was done, it was lightning fast.

The text reformatting was good and generally accurate to my original, in fact probably a better summary.

But where there is no data to draw from (i.e. the map) and it is left to guess, then its weaknesses really showed up. The AI is not clever (the software is) or creative of itself, what it does is done with remarkable technology, but it lives off the back of others, a concern when the internet abounds with misinformation and other problematic content.

In one of my imagination story lines, Margaret of Anjou (a real person in history) visited one of my imagined towns and was forced to flee to an imagined priory 25 miles away when Yorkist soldiers entered the town to search. 

If a student etc was to ask AI a question for say, essay building, as to the life of Margaret of Anjou, would that essay end up including an incident of this Queen visiting a strange place in 1471 and having to flee to a priory and if that essay itself became data for other enquirers to draw upon, how long would it take for my little local story telling to become a widely told truth!

Anyway, until AI becomes more discerning and is able to actually create new ideas, we should be mindful that whatever is produced is essentially made on the back of another - everything has a price, including free internet! 

This weeks face-to-face session saw a return to the Anzio boardgame. It made sense since we played it just last week and the rules were still in our minds.

The game ran rather like the real campaign, turning into a dogged struggle, but with the advatage being with the Allies.

Early on the British closed Campoleone right down, preventing the German reinforcements arriving at that town and forcing them to detour further east. As a consequence the American found themselves facing the bulk of the newly arriving German troops.

The photo here is taken towards the end of the game - the Germans have counter-attacked from Campoleone and given themselves a bit more breathing space, but this had come at the expense of heavy casualties, especially as several German formations earlier had found themselves cut off and were forced to surrender.

Another enjoyable session

The Blind Swords series was originally designed by Hermann Luttmann and published by Revolution Games. The product has now been split into a set of series rules and a playbook for each volume, and other designers have come on board, allowing the series to have now reached volume 12.

Vol 12 covers the first day at Gettysburg. Units are regiments and grouped within brigades. A chit draw system activates the brigades, bringing a natural chaos as the order of activation is most uncertain and there are also event chits placed into the chit draw that shake things up a bit.

I wanted this volume particularly for the opening hours of the battle, which is the part of the battle that interests me the most, with Heth probing the Chambersburg Pike and attacking across Willoughby's Run, pressing Buford's dismounted cavalry, who are desperate for support.

I am hoping that this will become the series that I rely upon for my ACW boardgaming.

I have been here before, having owned volumes I - IV, but each game had a single rulebook and the differences brought to each volume to model the batle, to my mind, became a bit difficult to track. By splitting the rules, so that the series part stays standard and any new rules and scenarios are placed into a playbook makes things much better in that regard.

Through the post today, this lovely Wars of the Roses Hail Caesar supplement by Warlord Games and bought from Caliver Books (UK). 

Again, another purchase based on a YouTube review (this one by 7th Son).

As I bring back my 28mm Wars of the Roses to the table, this is full of background info, loads of actual and what-if scenarios and a rather nice looking campaign game. ….. plenty to keep the collection serviced. 

They have the new ‘household’ formation which combines melee troops and bow into a single unit, but it fights as a linear formation, so it can either shoot or fight in melee. I will have to explore that a bit more before using it.

I agree with the concept, but for my own games I treat the bow and bill as two separate units, with one behind the other, bill in front for melee and the rear archers acting as support and when the archers are in front, they can shoot at range.

Plenty to try out .... an excellent buy.

Through the post box today, A Napoleonic ruleset - Soldiers of Napoleon.

This has been out for a while and though I have been interested, the fact of it being card driven, has always made this seem not the game for me ..... however;

I have been watching a few videos, particularly the one by Wargames Illustrated Magazine, where they interview and game with the author and my interest had been tickled enough to put an order in.

Two headline aspects are 1. Your battle, using 2 - 5 brigades on a side, is actually sitting within a larger engagement and things that are happening off table (i.e. to your flanks) may come to influence your game - the cards bring some of this narrative.

2. The cards are used rather like those in the boardgame 'Commands and Colors' - each card has a value for orders that can be given to a brigade for its various battalions to act OR it can be played for its special event (such as - Fierce Cavalry Charge) OR it can be played for its rally value.

So far, those who I have come across in reviews seem only to have good things to say about it all and I think part of that may be because the system offers something different, plus narrative type rules are becoming increasingly popular.

Anyway, we shall see. The company (Gripping Beast) have two download campaigns that could be used with my French / Austrian pairing, one for Wagram and the other for Austerlitz, so they are on the list.

In the meantime the rules do include stats for the Austrians in the War of the 6th Coalition, so I will do a bit of practising in that setting for now - hopefully I will like the rules. there is a bit of reading and a learning curve to go through, but my enthusiasm is high.

I was pleased that in our latest face-to-face game, to get an opportunity to return to a game that I designed in 2011 covering the Anzio landings in 1944.

‘Anzio: The Bloodiest Beachhead’ was put out as a Desk Top Published kit in 2011 and soon after, a wargame company picked it up and started to arrange contacts.

Anyway, for a couple of reasons it didn't go ahead.

Last night's game saw a pleasing return to the game with both sides continually involved, looking for moments of gaining a manoeuvring or positional advantage or having to block off the enemy attempts at doing the same, on a map that is surprisingly nuanced, mainly because the road net is so important as mech units have a good chance of becoming bogged if they attempt to leave the road, due to the severe  rain / mud problems that plagued the campaign.

I had forgotten how aggressive the Combat Table is. It encourages attacks and the consequences reflect the grinding and attritional nature of the campaign.

Anyway, an enjoyable flash-back and I may start hawking this design around again, looking for a publisher.

Just a few turns into the game and British reinforcements start to arrive in the form of Divisional stacks... (read killer stacks)! They are just too powerful for the Germans to deal with, unless the Germans can get behind them to cut off retreats following combat - not easy.

The British reinforcements enter play from the far side of the map, the west of the UK. They can arrive by rail and travel any distance on rail as long as they don't move adjacent to enemy while so travelling.

The only way that I can see to help counter this during the first couple of turns is to move all of the German Luftwaffe to the western air zone, hopefully survive the dogfights so that German planes allocated to Ground Attack can be used to interdict those rail routes and thus hold back the reinforcements, giving the Germans a fighting chance between the beaches and Canterbury.

This unfortunately gives us big air battles over the west of the country and potentially no air action over the front line - very questionable. Plus once those reinforcing divisions can arrive, they will do so all at once and just overwhelm the Germans.

The Germans did manage to capture Folkestone for its port and Ashford, but a quick counter-attack by one of the arriving British divisions re-took Ashford and the strength of that Division meant that any German attack on it would be futile.

I was going to restart over and try again... but lost the will! I just couldn't find enough pleasure to soldier on!

I am just partway through the invasion turn and the Germans have identified their 5 landing beaches and the drop zones for 7th Fallschirmjäger (near Folkestone) and 22nd glider (near Ashford).

I had considered a more randomised setting up of the German force, but in the end decided to follow the narrative from the Sealion book by Richard Cox, which is based on the original plan.

These proposed hexes are kept secret from the British at this stage. Next the British get a chance to change some positions (a reflection of poor German intel on British troop dispositions), then the paratroopers and gliders check for scatter, then 15 randomly drawn (representing landing chaos) German units will hit the beaches.

It will take a while for the Germans to get their divisions together, which they need to do for effective stacking, but they also need to get going. Capturing a port is essential ...... Folkstone looks the best bet!

Anyway, the game is underway and I will update progress over the next days in a full post.