Interlude..

I have not posted for a while. I went to Taiwan, Australia and (mainly) New Zealand for 6 weeks over the winter. With preparing to go, being away then back to cold wet UK I have not been doing much (January and February and never productive months for me anyway!) and I have been ill of the last month which has delayed me getting back into things.

I have been concentrating on finishing off a pile of things on my workbench - as I may have mentioned in earlier posts I do suffer somewhat from getting distracted by the latest thing and so end up with lots on the go. After a break I always try to finish all that off before starting anything new and so a lot gets finished in a fairly short time and I will be doing quite a few posts in the next week or so.

By way of a first post in the new year a few photos from New Zealand. An absolutely spectacular place to visit even if you aren't a Lord of the Rings fan - so doubly great for me!

A few shorts of Hobbiton (you get a bear in the Green Dragon Inn as part of the tool - specially brewed for the film, although the actors had it watered down heavily during filming!). A definite place to go if you are a fan or have kids.

The tree above Bag End was off for refurbishing. Apparently Peter Jackson wanted a particular look and so they built a tree - the leaves had faded by the time they came back to film the Hobbit and so he insisted that the leaves all got repainted by had - I forget how many hundred of thousand there were, but it only ended up in a long distant shot for a matter of seconds.

Weta Studios was an interesting visit, they don't allow photos inside but here are some trolls outside:

A very long drive on a crushed rock road gets you to where Edoras was filmed. Worth the trip as the scenery is spectacular with or without the connection to LOTR.

The national park with several volcanoes which includes the one used for Mount Doom is also worth a visit. We were luck enough for great weather and tool a flight over the volcanoes.

Other than Lord of the Rings, the scenery is just generally spectacular and the food is good as is the beer and wine and great value too. I just wish it was not so far away!

Some really vivid colours in a thermal area:

Normal service will be resumed shortly...

Markers for table top Napoleonic games

Since I have been working on some new types of markers ready to use with March Attack rules, I though I would share the various approaches I have tried over the years.

I don't like my games to be cluttered with things on the table so I tend to use roster sheets. Easy these days to design them on the computer, print off and laminate at home so they can be reused. If any interest I can always dig out some of my old ones (haven't designed any for March Attack yet) and do a future post - let me know.

My first set of markers I did for In the Grand Manner rules. I made up a grid of the different marker text in Word using coloured text and printed off on pastel shade paper. I then had it laminated and cut the markers out with a sharp knife. This was back in the days when you had to get laminating done at a printers (wasn't expensive) and the laminate sticks to the paper when cut. It seems to be a bit more hit and miss with home laminating if the plastic sticks after you cut a sheet up.

An unformed marker next to a battalion:

A selection of other markers (please excuse the photo quality, I had a heck of a time getting a photo without too much glare on the plastic!):

Some close ups of the two British battalions while I'm at it:

When playing General De Brigade I printed off the pdf of markers you can get from the website and then essentially based them - stuck on small bases and glued some sand around the edges and painted and added static grass. Helps to blend the marker in on the table. The test cases I did where mostly the order makers for generals but you get the idea hopefully.

I also did some directional arrows, again based like my figures, to indicate which direction a battalion was facing in a built up area (as it is not always possible to orientate the figures in the buildings plus a pain to move them about). I also did some double arrows to allow units to partly face in two directions.

And my newest markers are for March Attack to indicate a charging unit and to show casualties received in the current turn. I decided to do these with figures to further cut down on things that should not be on the battlefield.

For the charge markers I used spare infantry - and doing some with cavalry too (a single figure on the small round base). These will be put next to any battalions that are going to charge in the coming turn. The examples are a couple of French and a Wurttemberg marker. I don't intend to do all the smaller nations and will do something like Russians, Prussians, Austrians, British and French (and their allies; to be used as generic French markers).

Casualties received in the current turn need to be marked for various checks and I decided to do some bases with the Adler casualty figures. My first two are Austrians - a single and a double casualty marker:

Markers shown in use with an Austrian unit taking 3 casualties (which is a lot for a turn in March Attack as that is 3 CV [combat value] and many battalions are around 6 or 7 CV in strength; which does mean I don't need huge numbers of these things and ones and twos are going to be fine with the bulk probably needing to be single casualty markers).

I haven't decided on the more general markers yet but if I need anything with words on then I expect I will do versions like the General De Brigade examples above.

[the round bases are 1.5mm ply from Fenris Games - one of their standard items, 20mm diameter]

My first foray into crowd funding - Historia board game

Just thought I would share this on my blog.

I have been into board war games since I was about 11 (back in SPI days), but more recently I tend to play Euro type strategy games. I also really like civilization games. I have seen things occasionally advertised on sites like Boardgamegeek for Kick Starter but never bought anything via that route - mostly because they are often based in the USA and the postage is high, there would be big import related charges and often the interesting extras seem to come with a big price tag.

I came across Historia in an advert on TMP (the miniatures page). Looking at the video review it looked a really interesting game mechanic and you can play from 1 to 4 people - and so many games need at least 3, which is fine but I need some games that offer other possibilities. It can be funded via Kick Starter (USA), Spiele Schmiede (Germany) and Giochi Starter (Italy) so I was able to buy with postage within Europe and also no extra tax charges etc. So overall seemed a good deal. So I have now joined my first ever crowd funding project. Take a look if you also like Civ type games.

Giochi Starter website


They also provide these 'avatar' pictures to use when sharing information about the game and given one was Napoleon it seemed an ideal fit for my blog!

About the blog

Introduction to the Blog...

I will gradually be adding photos of my painted WW2 armies and my Napoleonic armies, and also the aim is to add some battle reports.

The scales and manufacturers I use:

• for WW2 I use a mixture of 10mm, 12mm and 1/144 models. I use a range of manufacturers in plastic, metal and resin. I will describe the manufacturers as I build up my blog entries and also try and contrast some of the differences in the size of models;

• for Napoleonics I use 6mm and these are all entirely Adler.

I will also cover terrain as I build up my entries. As I work out how to set the blog up properly I will try and add pages to provide links to the manufactures etc. as I go along.

As a starter I would recommend having a look at Perfect Six Napoleonic:

http://perfectsixps.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

And here are a few starter photos:

British Sherman Crab (Pithead)

US M12 155mm gun carriage (Pendraken)

British 25pdr (Pithead with Pendraken crew)