Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment
It is just a bit hot!
The UK (together with the rest of Europe) is entering its second heat wave. The problem with our heat is that it is accompanied by high humidity and so 35˚ feels like 41˚ and everything south of me is a goodly amount hotter than that. Poor old France is seeing base temperatures at 44˚ today.
These are all record-breaking temperatures (tomorrow hotter) and we don't really have the infrastructure or practice to deal with it well.
Anyway, the point is, it tends to dampen down hobby activity, so not much is going on here.
(ABOVE PICTURE) Flying in the face of that, this morning, I took some of my purchases from the show at the weekend and primed them with rattle can primer before the temperatures started to rise and they seem okay.
White primer has gone onto the two blister packs of Perry Napoleonic Voltiguers that will build into a few skirmisher bases.
The black primer went onto the Wars of the Roses figures from Athena and the 'Ravens' pack from Warbases. The black will help the plate armour, but I think the two religious figures will need a heavy dry brush of white before their colours go on.
Matt varnish catch-up
My figures get brushed on matt varnish once painted and then once fully based and flocked they get a quick swipe of a rattle can matt varnish .... but that is a job for the better weather and never over winter.
So, these are the Napoleonic Austrians that I have painted since the end of last summer and includes the batch that I did for the winter painting challenge and they were brought together a couple of days ago for their spray varnish.
They have now cured and are back in barracks. The French figures that need a rattle can coating have taken their place on the spray tray. We are entering a 4 day heat wave, so I either need to wait until that has passed or get lucky and get a cool early morning.
Its actually nice to see them all together because it really shows the progress that has been made since last year and despite me almost resenting the hours poured into painting time, seeing them together like this is the reward to that effort.
Phalanx Wargame Show
I visited the Phalanx show (UK) today at St. Helens and had a very enjoyable time.
I may have discovered my 'go to' rules for the Wars of the Roses games and I picked up some bits that will help both the Wars of the Roses project and the Napoleonic 1809 forces.
There is a write up on the blog, together with some photographs.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/06/phalanx-wargame-show-uk-2026.html
A face-to-face outing
For last night's game I returned to the ASLSK The Guards Counterattack scenario, simply because I have been intensely looking at the rules and they are still at the front of my memory.
Mike has not played a Squad Leader based game for a while, so this game was just about doing the rounds of re-familiarisation.
The Soviets threw themselves into the attack and the first half of the game can be characterised by the Germans getting a run of unusually good dice results and that hurt the Soviet attack, to the point that the German defence started to look like a series of unassailable stacks of powerful firegroups. On their right, the Germans were encouraged to go over onto the attack and advance into an enemy held stone building.
Then, almost out of the blue, everything flip-flopped the other way. Cpt. Denikin had been broken and had falled back into a hex at the rear of a building with three other broken 6-2-8 units.
He is a powerful 10-2 leader and in the Rally Phase, he recovered to good order and so did the three units with him, the Soviets made a broad attack across the entire board, initially resulting in three separate successful Close Combats - suddenly there were broken and DM'd German units everywhere, falling back into a shrinking perimeter.
The Soviets took their second stone building and it was pretty much over - a Soviet win and a very dynamic game.
Above all, the play had done its job of getting Mike back up and running with infantry combat. The depth of the possibilities as much as any complexity, makes this an unsuitable game to fully explain to a person before play, they would just feel bombarded by information. Better to explain a couple of key things and then learn by play as the various nuances pop up over play.
I just very loosly covered First Fire / Defensive fire and the moving in the open / non-assault move penalties and we were off.
Back to painting!
Well my painting discipline has collapsed and these French Voltigeurs have been idle on the painting corks for a while now.
They are primed white and as a set of 9, these will give me 3 skirmisher bases, much like the Austrian Jäger that I did back in April (see the painting tab on the left menu).
They are metals (hence the rattle can primer) from Eagle Miniatures and come with bayonets attached, which I have nipped off.
My French forces are in desperate need of these chaps and really I could do with another three bases, whether to repeat with metals or go via the Perry plastics box is still to be decided.
The Guards Counterattack
It has been many years since I put the 'Guards Counterattack' scenario down on the table.
With my renewed interest in Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kits, plus the purchase of Beyond Valor, I have been able to get this scenario back to the table.
Once again, I am in the streets of Stalingrad trying to decide what to do with the 37th Guards.
I have done a bit of a write up over on the Battlefields & Warrior blog for those interested in an ASL scenario being played with ASL(SK) rules.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-guards-counterattack-aslsk-ish.html
