Games with Norman; DBA and Neil Thomas 19th Century

 My son Norman had a random day off yesterday, so I took advantage of my retirement to head on down to his house for a visit with the grandchild and a bit of gaming.  The original plan was to start with some Dux Bellorum, however …. While it is a game I enjoy, we don’t play it often enough to remain comfortable with the rules, so when I put the boxes on the table, I suddenly realized that I should have reviewed the rules in advance, because I wasn’t up to relearning them on the spot.  Next time, do better! (And that may be as soon as this coming Saturday…)

We dug into Norman’s collection and decided to put his recently expanded collection of dwarves on the table against their traditional foes, the orcs.  While this was a fantasy game in appearance, we followed Norman’s recent custom of deploying the armies as historical analogues from the DBA 3.0 lists.  Thus, the dwarves were based on the Tudor rebels of the late Wars of the Roses, and the orcs were based on the ancient Britons. 

Wars of the Dwarves and Orcs

I took the dwarves, since their track record to date has not been good, and I wanted a handy excuse for why I would be losing.  Much to my surprise I pulled off a victory in the first game, despite being hampered somewhat by a difficult hill in my deployment zone.  So we racked up the forces again, with the orcs attempting some revenge with a raid into dwarvish territoy.  (As DBA works, both armies have the home terrain type of “arable”, so the difference was that I got to choose the pieces that were semi-randomly deployed.) Although it was a close game, the dwarves pulled off another victory, so we decided that it was, perhaps, time to play something else … 

Norman is a more sensible gamer than I am, so he has managed to restrict himself to three gaming projects stored at his house, the collection of 1/72 scale plastic DBA/Hordes of the Things armies, a collection of 28+mm fantasy figures suitable for Frostgrave or D&D, and the 1/72 scale Proxia collection of 19th century imagi-nations figures that we typical play with the rules from Neil Thomas’s Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe (19CE)  We are scheduled to be playing a 19CE game with all three of us, including my son William, this coming Saturday, so we thought that it might be a good idea, after the Dux Bellorum problem, to revew those rules.  

Norman dug out his H.G. Wells-ish toy inspired scenery, and we turned to the book for a generic scenario to be played on a very compact 2x2 battlefield. Norman has recently completed a couple of units of militia for one of his Proxian armies, so we decided to get them on the table with an 1848-ish battle between a rebel army and a monarchical old order army.  I immediately volunteered to be the rebels.

Some of the new militia

Some random rolls (from the book’s scenario description) left us with a few twists; a third of my army was late to the battlefield, arriving on the 3rd turn (of 10), and Norman’s artillery was also bogged down and never made it at all.

Initial position; victory was decided by control of the town and the hill

Norman’s troops enjoyed a quality advantage.  In the 19CE rules, failed morale rolls result in the loss of an additional troop stand, units having four to begin with.  I don’t think his professional army failed a morale check and I am pretty sure that my rebels never succeeded in one.  This did seem to bring the right level of brittleness to my army.  Once all of my troops were on the table I enjoyed a numerical advantage of 6 units to 4 units, but with the quality difference, I needed it.

Rebel skirmishers in the woods

I was also allowed to deploy a band of poor quality skirmishers in the woods at one corner of the battlefield.  Norman decided to take advantage of his qualitative superiority and surged forward to attempt to seize the town.  He seized it, was thrown out, and seized it again in the course of the short game.  While their morale never cracked casualties mounted on the government side.  The battle for the hill was also a seesaw, and, as night fell, the last intact rebel infantry unit reached the otherwise empty hill, while the government forces held the crucial town.  Overall, it ended as a draw.  We both felt that we had lost and that we had it in the bag at different points in the game, so it seemed pretty well balanced overall.

I don’t think that either of us has written up a review of the rules, but now that we have a half a dozen or so games played over the past several years, I think that we could manage a fair one. (Positive, too; we do keep coming back to them, although we also have a game using the Whitehouse and Foley rules  A Gentleman’s War on our extended agenda…)

2026 in Gaming; An (almost) Mid-year Day Report

July 2nd is Mid-year day, with 182 days behind and 182 days ahead.  I didn’t really want to add a third post to the blog yesterday, but I did want to comment about how this year has been going before we get too far away from the middle of the year. While I did write up an overview of last year’s activities, I didn’t get as far as writing up anything about a plan for this year.

HAWKs Game Day on 30 May; Charge! and a ‘red book’ scenario

Schoeffen-Buschhagen and Stanzbach-Anwatsch cavalry clash on the bridge

As of this week, I have been in 27 miniatures games, so I’m somewhat behind the pace to match last year’s 67 games.  In fact, I’ve just ahead of where I’d want to be to make my goal of 52 games.  

I’ve played those 27 games with 19 different sets of rules so far this year, which may be somewhat ahead of the pace implied by the 30 sets of rules used last year. Given that I have been thinking that I am plying with too many rules to have a good grasp on any of them, this may be of concern and bears some watching.  Unfortunately for consistency, I also have an agenda item to try out some fantasy mass battle rules (particularly Midgard, Hobgoblin, Age of Fantasy Regiments, and Warhammer 1st edition) and revisit some older sets (particularly Chainmail and Knights and Magick) that haven’t been out in several years, so that may keep me from concentrating on the more frequently played rules.

By the end of the year last year I had used figures from my own collections in just 17 of those 67 games, and I resolved to spend more time this year getting my own figures on the table.  Given that I have 16 collections of figures in playable quantities, that was just an average of about once a year per collection, and most of those games didn’t come anywhere near using every figure in a collection.  It would not be hard to argue that the totality of my figure collection is underutilized.  This year, 11 of the 27 games have been with my own figures. That’s better, but there is still room for improvement. 

It has not been a good year for painting.  I did a handful of fantasy figures as a test of the Army Painter Speedpaint Pens (and might do a report on that after one more little test project) and the two dozen 18th century Indians for Armies for Kids (AfK), but that’s all I’ve finished so far.  I did get new prescription reading glasses recently, and they were helpful in the AfK painting session this week.

Muster of Minifigs ME Orcs and Goblins

Muster of Minifigs ME Free Folk

I have a lot of things I’d like to have painted, such as the retrogaming Minifigs ME (Mythical Earth) project, so I need to concentrate more on that.

So, not a bad year so far, but with room for improvement.

I’m thinking that next year’s goals are going to be to do more with less, and that will probably entail concentrating on some revisits to the gaming of the 1970s and 1980s. But more about that later …

Dusting Off A Song of Blades and Heroes

It’s been a long time since I posted twice on the same day, but it made sense to me to split the Armies for Kids post from the report on a recent game.

Our roleplaying group has been playing the current edition of RuneQuest for the last 18 months or so, and we have been considering the question of whether it might be time to switch things up a bit.  We know that we are looking for something with a tactical combat system that can resolve fights fairly quickly, and my list of possible candidates includes Tales of Blades and Heroes, which is based on the Song of Blades and Heroes fantasy skirmish rules.

Ultimately, I’d expect to run some sort of one-shot adventure with Tales before we make any final decision, but I thought that it might be a good idea to dust off Song to remind myself of the basic mechanics.  Therefore, I volunteered to run a game this past Monday. 

Battlefield overview; the objective was the town on the far right

Most of the action ended up centered on the bridge

I decided that I would use the 1/72 Portable Fantasy Game box for this one.  The backstory of the scenario, drawn from the campaign map, is that an orcish raiding part in boats landed on the west bank of the river and hurry inland to raid a small town.  I set up a simple mat, with the river on one edge, and the town in one of the far corners. Two warbands were organized for each side, of a notional 300 Song points. As things worked out, the orcs were having a terrible time with their activation rolls, and eventually the defenders of the town slew the orc’s troll and routed one of the orcish warbands, so we called it a day. 

As expected, it took a little while to become fluent with the rules again, but we eventually did, and things moved along more quickly.  I was reminded that one of the things I like about the rules is that you can read the situation from the board; you don’t have to remember anything about how you got to this point in previous turns (e.g. no need to remember that some figure ran on his previous activation and is therefore entitled to a dodge modifier).  I was also reminded of a recent discussion I was part of regarding points systems; while I used the game’s point system to speed up the set-up of this scenario, I will note that the orcs have a considerable losing streak against the humans.  This is attributable to the humans’ “quality” advantage (a game statistic that governs how successful a figure is in taking actions), and I would suggest that the point system does not accurately account for the difference (i.e., a balanced game would seem to require more points for the orcs than for the humans).

In the interest of getting home quickly I did not pack the game properly back into its box, so I finally got around to getting it all properly stowed away this morning. 

Handling the troops, I wondered just how long it had been since they had been on the table, and how long it had been since I had played Song.  I reviewed the game log and found that the 1/72 fantasy individuals hadn’t been out for a game since May 2023, when they were used for a test game of Knyghte, Pyke, and Sworde  while accompanying my wife to a singing competition.

The last time I had actually played Song of Blades and Heroes turned out to have been in December 2022, when I took the boxes on the road and staged a game at a friend’s house as a demo for his college-aged son.

It was nice to get the rules and figures back on the table.  It probably would make sense if I spent more time playing and painting fewer projects (i.e. gaming minimalism), but that is a post for another day…

HAWKs Armies for Kids Painting — That’s a Wrap

Seven HAWKs gathered yesterday to finish painting the figures for the 2026 Armies for Kids (AfK) giveaway. Historicon is now just two weeks away, so I suppose one might suggest that we cut it a little close, but even a simple paint job on American War of Independence figures has taken a bit longer than last year’s Spanish-American War figures.

We save the best for last; the final batch was a mass of American militia (mostly the old Accurate figures) painted in a very non-uniform way.  The project coordinators can now finish up the basing and load the figures and other gear into the boxes.  Next year’s AfK project is expected to be 1/72 American Civil War, so that should be a little easier to paint.

Getting Re-Organized

 I have not been doing well with my resolution to blog more, but, here we go …

The HAWKs have been busy painting 54mm plastic American War of Independence figures for the annual Armies for Kids give-away event at Historicon, now just a few weeks away.  We are giving away six army sets, each consisting of 6 American units, 6 British units, plus a gun and crew and a mounted officer for each side.  Units are just four men, so every kid is due to get about 55 painted figures this year, including one Indian unit in each British set. We usually get together as a group for the painting, but I wanted to give the Indians a little extra attention so I volunteered to do the 24 of them as homework.  I also had extra spray paint and volunteered to do the six 4’x6’ground cloths.  

The Indians; project organizer will do the basing

As of Friday, I finished this task up after much procrastination. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I am procrastinating on a particular task (e.g. painting) I usually will fill time with something completely unrelated (e.g. bicycling), because I feel too guilty about almost doing what I am putting off.  

Three ground cloths starting with tan felt

Three ground cloths starting with green felt

The ground cloths, by the way, turned out to be more of a challenge than I had expected, and I can tell that I am getting old, as my forearms were sore and fatigued the next morning after a couple of hours with a succession of spray cans. Nevertheless, by Friday morning everything had been dropped off to the Armies for Kids coordinator and I was free to paint whatever I felt like without guilt.

I noted to the painting group assembled on Friday that I have been spending too much time watching hobby videos on YouTube rather than actually doing hobby activities. (There’s probably a blog post in that …) One of the channels I subscribe to is the Medieval Wargamer, and he posted a video last week debating the perennial topic of whether this hobby is getting to be too expensive.  (That’s probably a post by itself too … ) I was reminded that Uncle Atom of Tabletop Minions had posted a video back in 2023, and I had taken up the $100 challenge, deciding to build a medieval skimish project starting with an Italeri 6108 “Medieval Tournement” (sic) set. 

The figures I’d finished in 2023

I had only finished 9 of the figures, but had left another batch on tongue depressors in various stages of painting. 

The next batch, left in progress

In an uncharacteristic fit of organization, I had sequestered all of the materials for the project including the paints, brushes, and bases, in an 11-liter Really Useful Box. I remembered that I had put the “in progress” tongue depressors into the RUB later, but not all at the same time.

The sorted project box

Enjoying the lack of guilt over the Armies for Kids I pulled out the Tournament project box yesterday and decided that it would be prudent to count the miniatures and make sure that I had actually gotten everything stowed away properly back in 2023.  According to my blog post (linked above), I was looking for 55 foot figures and 20 cavalry figures, and I could only find 51 of the foot figures.  Three hours later, after moving and looking into every RUB full of half-completed miniatures in my basement, counting four times, and comparing the sprues from the box with an intact set of sprues twice, I concluded …drumroll please…that I had miscounted or mistyped back in my 2023 blog post, and the real answer really was that I had 51 foot and 20 horse.  So, the good news was that all figures were present and accounted for, but that bad news was that I had run out of energy for the day to actually do some painting.  Oh well, better luck today…

French and Indian War

I'm behind on blogging, as usual, but I've gotten the 40mm French and Indian War stuff out today for a trial game using A Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles.

2025 Year in Review

 I retired as of the 1st of January 2025, so I have been fortunate enough to have some extra time on my hands this year, as planned.  My wargaming goal going into the year was not to turn down any offer of a game unless absolutely necessary.  The HAWKs have had a regular retirees group for some years now, and I was happy to be part of it, starting with the first meeting in January. I’ve also gotten games days with my sons, and made it to a few conventions this year.  As a result, as of the 15th of December, I’ve logged 67 game sessions this year, with only a slender chance of getting any more in before the 1st of January.  That is a new record, and has been the best part of the hobby year.

A Fantastic Battles Game with My “Myzantine” Forces

As gleaned from my log, which I keep on paper in a notebook, being somewhat old school, here is a complete list of those games, arranged by frequency:

Miniatures Games of 2025

9 x Combat Patrol (7 20mm WWII, 2 25mm WWI)

6 x DBA (20mm)

5 x Fantastic Battles (4 6mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Dragon Rampant (3 20mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Look Sarge, No Charts (10mm WWI)

4 x 15mm Napoleonics home rules (3 different sets)

3 x To the Strongest (10mm ancients)

3 x Fistful of Lead (F&IW, 2 40mm*, 1 25mm)

2 x Fantasy home rules (1 25mm, 1 wooden “crafties”)

2 x Charge! (40mm NQSYW*)

2 x Square Bashing (25mm WWI)

2 x Chain of Command (20mm WWII)

2 x Medieval home rules (54mm*)

2 x Neil Thomas 19th Century Europe (20mm)

2 x Chosen Men (25mm Napoleonics)

1 x Rebels and Patriots (40mm NQSYW*)

1 x Turnip 28

1 x WWI home rules (10mm)

1 x British colonial home rules (25mm)

1 x Vauban’s Wars (15mm SYW siege)

1 x Don’t Give Up the Ship (Napoleonic Naval)

1 x Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles (25mm British colonials)

1 x This is Not a Test (25mm post-apocalyptic)

1 x Star Schlock (25mm SF)

1 x Thalassa (1/300 ancient naval)

1 x Battletech Alpha Strike (1/300 SF)

1 x De Bellis Fantasiae (20mm fantasy)

1 x Lion Rampant (54mm medieval*)

1 x Blood and Swash (25mm early American)

1 x Tanks for the Apocalypse (20mm post-apocalyptic)

——-

67 games

30 (+) different sets of rules

*17 games involving my own figures; 50 not involving my figures

Someone asked me recently on a hobby Discord what I typically play.  This year, there really was no “typically” about it.  Due to my acceptance of whatever was on offer, the most frequently played game was Combat Patrol, one of the many games designed by club member Buck Surdu. I played it both in the standard WWII version and modified for WWI. I personally only have one 20th century project in my collection at this time, a 6mm Spanish Civil War set which, according to my records, has not been used in a game since April 2005, over 20 years ago.  Due to club interests, I suppose I do end up playing a lot of WWI and WWII, but I enjoy the opportunity to play something without having to build up a collection myself.

Only 17 games involved any of my own figures this year using figures from 6 projects.  By my count, I have 16 projects that have “playable” levels of figures. I would have to say that my figure collection was a bit underused this year.

With 30+ sets of rules played this year (the uncertainty being how to count the home rules Napoleonics) it has been difficult to gain proficiency with any new sets of rules, and I have a stack of rules that haven’t been tried yet, particularly Hobgoblin and Midgard for some fantasy mass battles.

Some 40mm Prince August Infantry for the Not Quite Seven Years War

It has been a bad year for painting overall. I have scarcely picked up a brush since I finished a few Prince August semi-flats for the NQSYW in September. Other than that, I finished about 10 stands of various 6mm troops for Fantastic Battles and a handful of 25mm fantasy figures (also Prince August home cast).

I have been wanting to get back into blogging more regularly, and I can’t really say that this year was a success.  It took until September to actually buckle down and write something, and I did not match that pace for the rest of the year.  However, I did do some blogging, and I had three times as many posts as last year, so perhaps we’ll call that a draw.

I have usually done some solo gaming in the course of a year, and I have a solo campaign in progress, although it has been stalled since I played out the Battle of Newkeep in January of 2022. I know why the solo campaign is pending: I am stalled on building some buildings I want for the next scenario. However, I have not done a single solo game this year. I could have tried either of the new fantasy rules mentioned above solo, or done any number of other one-shots.  I would suppose that the availability of opponents this year has reduced my craving for more games, at least a bit.

Overall, though, it’s been a really good year for the hobby, even if some areas could be improved.

I haven’t actually written down my goals for 2026 yet, and I hope to blog a bit when I do. There are several ideas on my mind. March 2026 is the 50th anniversary of my involvement with Dungeons & Dragons, and I would really like to dust off the original rules for some retro-gaming. August will be

the 30th anniversary of the first NQSYW game, which is an occasion I will certainly wish to mark. I also want to play some games with some vintage rules. I haven’t had Knights and Magick (Heritage Models, 1980, review minus pictures here) on the table in a few years. We have always played K&M as 

“miniatures agnostic”, but a couple of years ago I thought that it might be fun to see if I couldn’t assemble a couple of forces using contemporary Heritage figures (currently available from Classic Miniatures), either vintage or new castings, and I have acquired more miniatures for this recently. I acquired a set of

Warhammer (1st edition) rules during the pandemic which I still haven’t tried, despite the recent release of a video series on the topic. I’ve been accumulating Citadel Dark Ages figures to provide a couple of appropriate armies, just for fun.  Never having been a Games Workshop fan, the Dark Ages figures and the early Citadel ranges such as Fantasy Adventurers and Fiend Factory, which were licensed to Ral Partha for production in the US, are the only Citadel minis in my collection, so I decided I’d try to build on that a bit.  And…if I’m going to dig into Warhammer, it might be fun to break out Warhammer Ancient Battles for a Dark Ages game or two. More to follow on those ideas…

Meanwhile, I wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!