Thursday, June 28, 2012

Lunch project

Making progress; more work on an NQSYW infantry company over lunch.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Lunchtime Libyans

I had some painting time at lunch today. Despite running NQSYW for Historicon, I worked on some Caesar Bronze Age Libyans. Norman is wanting additional mercenaries for his Historicon game, and the NQSYW will be fine even without additional figures, so priorities were clear.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Morning Progress

This ends up being a little hard to see, but I had some quiet time this morning and was able to put in some work on a company of Schoeffen-Buschhagen infantry for the Not Quite Seven Years War. They are still two or three sessions from being finished, but I was glad to be doing something positive for the first time in a while.

I also had the opportunity yesterday to finally finish a batch of magnetic movement stands intended for Charge! I hope to deploy some sample units and take some pictures later today.

(Picture taken with my iPad; not the world's best camera, either for resolution or for ease of handling.)

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Games in a Box

Packing the car for Huzzah! reminded me that I would like to set up a couple of other easy to transport "game in a box" projects, suitable to take along on a trip by plane, or to tuck into some underutilized bit of cubic in the car on the way to a convention. This time around we took the "Big Box of Six" as a contingency item, and ended up improvising a Basic Impetus game. That would have looked a little nicer if we'd had a larger cloth, but the BBoS is usually used for DBA or Hordes of the Things, so a 2' by 2' (or 60cm square for the rest of the world) cloth is all that we usually need. The box is not yet full, so there is room for expansion.

The ideal game in a box would remain self-contained, so that it doesn't have to be reassembled from scattered pieces just before a convention, and occupy 2-6 players for 1-3 hrs to fill odd time gaps. An ambitious one would also be deployable as a convention game, which I'd call 6 players for 3-4 hours. In addition to the BBoS, I built a box with two 6mm Spanish Civil War intro army packs from Irregular Miniatures back in the mid-90s. When it was originally completed, each army had about five battalions of troops plus some support elements, as based for Command Decision. (2nd edition at the time...) That would provide a fairly satisfactory game for 6, perhaps just a little light, and a solid game for 2-4 players. I've also deployed it more recently for playtests with newer rules.

We've tossed around the idea of housing a game in a plastic shoebox. I've been considering ordering something like the Pegasus 1/32 scale gladiators, for which a shoebox should be plenty. Putting a 20mm battle game in a volume that size would be an interesting challenge...

Random Thoughts

Last weekend I had my exciting one-a-year opportunity to get on the ice with my coach at a Washington ice dancing competition. Trying to prepare for this with some extra practice while maintaining the rest of life's activities has been a little difficult. Therefore I was glad when there was a break in my schedule yesterday, which enabled me to get in a couple of games of Hordes of the Things with my elder son. (See http://junkyardplanet.blogspot.com/2012/06/couple-of-quick-games/)

My near-term goals are to get back to painting, with a goal of finishing a few things before Historicon, and to start assessing and clearing some of the accumulated materials for dead projects. We had to dismantle the wargaming table again last week, for household maintenance issues, and that highlighted how tightly packed the war room has become, again. Skirmish games, 6mm, and games-in-boxes are much on my mind this week.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Viking Game

In the catch up department, here's the rest of the pictures from our 29 April WHAB Saxon/Viking game. My son Norman had a battle report up on the day...

Before the action; a slightly reset version of the table for the previous Skype game. Saxons to the left; Vikings to the right.

Little does the simple shepherd imagine what the dawn will bring...

The Viking army advances.

Just beyond the Saxon village ...

the local fyrd awaits the onslaught.

The sheep are hurried toward safety.

Viking commanders

Saxon commanders

A strategic hilltop position is a help...

...but not enough to prevent a contagious rout.