Paint Table Saturday - I have no idea what number this is.

It's been some time since I've done one of these.

Although I have been painting, it's just rarely on a Saturday. 

Tonight, I  primed the 1/32 WWII figs in the back 2 rows. I cheated and included the Great Northern War Swedes I started last night. Shhhh! Don't tell!

I haven't done white primer in ages, but I thought, what the heck? Mostly, I was inspired by the painting tutorials over on All the King's Men..

For the Swedes, I'm totally changing my painting approach to follow along with the tutorial at ATKM that I linked above - although, I'm not doing washes I mean the order of what gets painted first. That explains why they are ghosts still (normally I painted like they are getting dressed). These 12 figures represent the 4th battalion to be painted. I really need to get some artillery and cavalry done after this.

I won't be changing the painting approach to the 1/32 guys, since I block paint with no black lines. The WWII figs are the first I've ever run through the dishwasher prior to priming. They feel VERY different than when i hand scrub and soak them in detergent and it's for the better. There are definitely little or no oils or mold release left on them when they finish the regular cycle. 

These 8 figs will allow me to field three 7-figure units for the US and Germany. That equates to a 21-figure platoon (three 7-figure squads, sans HQ), or, for the bigger games (like Blitzkrieg Commander,say), a company of three 7-figure platoons (1-figure platoon HQ, 3 x 2-figure squads). 

I think, for this scale, 7 figures looks right for a section in a platoon sized game, and I already play 1/72 with 7-figure platoons for a company sized game and think that looks fine. I might try to paint up a 30+ figure platoon in 1/32, but I'd probably have to reserve using that many figures for the living room floor.

Paint Table Saturday #4

After stumbling on a blog that gave some ideas about painting 1/72 fast, I decided to give it a whirl - it is definitely faster than I've been doing, but at the sacrifice of my beloved black lining. I am already planning to go back and add the line after, as it won't add that much time. Unless i totally botch it!

Here are 6 Swedish infantry from Zvezda for the Great Northern War after an hour of painting - they started out as black primer.

Like I said, definitely faster than I've been doing them. Another hour and they will be done.

And here are some 1/32 Germans I am working on to complete phase 1 of my WWII collection (the flame thrower was something I found in a box of primed items, so I decided to finish him too):

I believe the flamer thrower is Matchbox, while the officer and SMG are both Airfix.

Paint Table Saturday (just a day late)

So there's this community on over on G+ where people share what's on their painting table on Saturdays. 

I painted last night but then forgot to take a picture, so without further ado, here's what's on my painting table:

Most of my painting time last night was spent on the officer's sash - so frustrating! But he's done now.

I also slopped yellow paint on the Swedes in the background, and today I took a brief moment to touch up the three left-most of those figures - mostly adding the black lining for the yellow. They "just" need their coats, pistols, pikes, ammo pouch, straps, belts, and hat lace.

You may have noticed the primer flaking on the Russians. Don't even get me started on that.

2014 Goals: Great Northern War Project Planning

The other day, in a fit of "productivity", I spent some time going through the Tabletop Teasers by Charles Grant, presented over at Steve the Wargamer's Tabletop Teasers page.

Although I intend to play historically-based scenarios with respect to the Russian-Swedish portion of the conflict, I know full well, I'll play fictional encounters more often. I have Programmed Wargames Scenarios and Scenarios for Wargames, but both suggest a rather large number of units for any given scenario. Eventually I may complete that many, but in the meantime, I want to play. 

What can I say? Patience is not my strong suit.

The Teasers from Battle and Military Modeling on the other hand are a good bit more manageable - several could be played with 4 units or less of cavalry and infantry, and 1 unit of artillery. So that's my starting point.

My original plans included 12-figure units, but that's still a lot of painting before the Swedes can take the table (the painted Russian infantry is 72 figures strong).

But, reduce the size of the units and voila! On the table sooner.

Really small units (like 4-figures per) can look odd though - unless they're on a grid. And there is the first goal - enough figures to play a grid based game where 1 unit = 4 infantry, 2 cavalry or 1 gun and crew. 

For an example of what such a thing might look like, see Fitz-Badger's Sowitzer League posts here, here, and here.

The next goal is to expand either into larger grid games (larger units or larger grid spaces for more figures) and grid-less games. For this, 8 figures per infantry unit and 4 cavalry figures per unit, in my mind, works quite well for this.

 If you question the aesthetics of an 8-figure unit, again, Sowitzer League provides: here and here.

Finally the large table (for me) game, using 12 figure units of infantry and 6 figure units of cavalry. Each unit would also have an ensign + NCO per All the King's Men's rules.

Based on what I've completed already, here is a painting schedule for 2014 to get me to the 4 infantry units-2 cavalry units -1 artillery unit + 1 officer (with extras sprinkled in):

• Jan - 6 infantry (Swedes), 1 gun + 4 crew (Russian), 4 cavalry (Russian), 1 officer (Russian)
• Feb- 6 infantry (Swedes), 1 gun + crew (Swedes), 4 cavalry (Swedes), 1 Officer (Swedes)

By the end of February I should be able to play grid-based games.

• March - 6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes), 1 gun + crew (Russian)
• April- 6 infantry (Swedes) , 4 cavalry  (2 Russian, 2 Swedes) , 1 gun + crew (Swedes)
• June - 6 infantry (Swedes), 2 officers/ensigns (1 Russian, 1 Swede)

By the end of June, I'll be able to field 2+x as many 4-figure units or four 8-figure infantry units, two 4-figure cavalry units and two guns each.

• July -6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes)
• August - 6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes)

By end of August, if I stick to this schedule, I can field four 12-figure infantry units, two 6-figure cavalry and 2 guns each.

• Sept - 6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes)
• Oct -  6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes), 2 officers (1 Russian, 1 Swede)
• Nov  - 6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes)
• Dec - 6 infantry (Swedes), 4 cavalry (2 Russian, 2 Swedes)

By 2015, theoretically, I will be able to field: 

Six 12-figure infantry units, three 6 figure cavalry units (I'm not even sure I have enough boxes to do this!) + two guns each

OR

Nine 8-figure infantry units, five 4-figure cavalry + two guns each

OR
Eighteen 4-figure units, ten 2-figure cavalry units + two guns each. Might need some more guns!

The Swedes are Coming!

These took forever, despite the rather simple color scheme. My colors (particularly the shade of yellow) might not match everyone's conception, but I based my paint selection on a number of sources, illustrations and photographs of actual uniforms (which have undoubtedly faded quite a bit over time). 

Most of the regular Swedish infantry regiments wore blue coats with yellow facings by the 1700s. I will probably paint all of mine this way:

One issue I had was the blue coat over the the black base - it was very dark. I painted white over the coat, and then blue, and the result was marginally better. From a time perspective, it adds substantial time per figure and I'm not sure I'm willing to do that. 

The next 6, I'll do without the white and see what the result is with multiple coats of blue.

Great Northern War Phase 2: Swedish Infantry

On Friday, a copy of Terry Wise's Introduction to Battle Gaming arrived. It took about 30 seconds of skimming through and glancing at the pictures to become inspired, especially by his focus on 20mm plastics.

So, with that bit of momentum to carry me into Saturday evening and today, I started getting my Zvezda Swedes ready for painting.

The figures are very clean and despite my hack job freeing them from their sprues, they needed little other than a clean up of the bases, from my perspective. 

Others may want to go around looking for mold lines and such. I have done that, but usually at great peril to the figures - not to mention it's time consuming, mind numbing and completely deflates any bubble of enthusiasm I may have for the entire painting task.

This time, I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.

And here they arrayed for priming:

 

 This represents two boxes of figures, 43 per box. 

Notice the paltry number of pikes - odd, considering Zvezda is a Russian company, and they should know better. Of course, their Russian set suffered the same disproportion. 

They also inexplicably give you nine of the marching pose per box. Most everything else is in 6s, which works great for my 12 figure units. Nine, not so much.

Combining the pikes with the marching pose, however, does give me two 12 figure units, with 25% pikes per unit. That works for me, although the remainder of the unit will be pike free for the time being.

Unlike the Russians, who still need their officers and standards painted, I'll be priming these by hand and painting them in small batches and including the officers early on. I intend to mix cavalry and artillery for both sides in between the completion of every 2 units, with the intent of being able to field very small engagements, with 1/2 size units (6 figures) using some variation of Bob Cordery's various grid-based rules, or using as 1:1 for various skirmish rules for 18th century.

Great Northern War Russian Infantry Complete! (sort of)

Last night, I finished the Semenovski unit and that completes the infantry - sans basing, officers and the 6 grenadiers that I have. Here are some mediocre pictures of them (I really ought to work on my photography a bit):

 This represents two boxes of Zvezda's Infantry of Peter the Great. You'll no doubt notice a paltry number of pikes for an army that continued to use them longer than their European counterparts. By the way, the Swedish box has the same issue.

So, for now my units will be very unhistorical without any pikes at all - save one unit that will be made of 50% pikes, also unhistorical.

I'm torn on picking up some Irregular Miniatures 25mm pikes (the Irregular Minis seem to play nice with Zvezda), the Strelets box with tons of pikes (although the figures look chunky compared to Zvezda), or buy more Zvezda boxes.

 For now, I'm not worrying about it - I'll wait (so I tell myself) until I figure out whether or not it bothers me in an actual game. Which, given that I have the same number of Swedes to paint, plus horse and gun for both sides, won't be for some time yet.

WWII Germans and Rainbow-Brite?

Where I work, this time of year is chaos, and it lasts until mid-July. Consequently, I've had virtually no time to game this week. 

Neither The Ever Expanding Dungeon (Labyrinth Lord) or the Mission on Mithril (Classic Traveller) saw any progress. Even Zorkon had to stay out of Stone Hell (Labyrinth Lord) this week, although that was thanks to Young Lord Shadowmoss. The only time I had, I ran Session 4 of my USR Wastelands game, and frankly, I feel rather "meh" about the session.

But, don't cry for me, Argentina!

Normally, I ride my skateboard on my lunch break (I'm 41 going on 17), but the weather has been working against me on that front. Ordinarily, this would bum me out, but, on the positive, it has meant that lunch has become my hobby time.

In the past, I've run some *very quick* dungeon crawls on my lunch breaks (using USR and Risus, and they were quick because I TPK'd so quickly), as well as broken out some wargames. This week, it's been painting.

I'm not sure what possessed me to start painting my 1/32 WWII figures when there are piles of other figures in the queue ahead of them. But, what a pleasant change of pace it is to not need to wear my magnifying goggles to paint!

The Blue M&M says "Hey, how YOU doin'?"

They aren't quite finished but they do paint a good deal faster than the smaller figures, I find. It's far easier to avoid painting over previously painted areas than it is with the smaller scales, so touch-ups are minimized. I'm still only shooting for "wargame standard" and I have no intent on doing anything fancy here, in spite of the fact that the folds in the uniforms beg for some highlighting/shading.

The book they are standing on, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough has me fired up to finish my guard unit for the GNW Russians, the Semenovski  Regiment aka The Rainbow-Brites of Imperial Russia:

Seriously.

Apparently the person in charge of their color scheme was a 4 year old. Despite, their ugliness, I'm inclined to finish the whole unit this way - solely because I love the light blue coat.

Recent Arrivals!

After a long day of staring at the screen all day, I start to get really excited when I hear the mail truck coming and I know I have packages on the way.

The book on the left arrived today, the one on the right arrived a few days ago:

The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough will accompany on an upcoming trip. I'm hoping to learn more about the period to inform my future GNW games.

The Player's Handbook is 1e, but the 2nd cover. I used to have the 1st cover and got rid of it a few years ago. I decided if I was going to reacquire those books, they had to have different covers.

Consequently, I also acquired the special edition re-issue Monster Manual, and I've got a 1st cover (efreeti) DMG on the way.

Kievski Regiment aka Proof I Still Paint Minis

Well, they aren't my best work, but they look OK from a "wargame distance" (although, in the picture below, I see some spots I will touch up) - 1 AoR/AtKM battalion of Kievski Regiment:

The red is Privateer Press Khador Red, the yellow is Ceramcoat Pale Yellow.

I have one more 12 figure unit to paint, which will be a guard unit, and then 2 companies of grenadiers.

Officers and standards will wait until I get some Swedes painted up.

One of Those Updates Where I Lump Stuff Together

In addition to contemplating the death rates in The Ever Expanding Dungeon, I've been working on a couple of other projects, one of which I've mentioned before, and one I haven't (at least not on here).

The first is the Great Northern War project. The Kievski battalion is coming along, albeit slowly.

I haven't been happy with the last few painting session results.

Part of it is my brush - I switched brushes between the last batch and the start of the Kievski unit. The feel is dramatically different than the Army Painter brushes I had been using (which I was trying out to see if they were any better than my usual brush choices).

The bummer is that I have used this brush (well, not this specific brush, but this brand, model and size) before, for my USMC and Japanese infantry last year, so I like them, but it's taking more time than I thought to get used to them again.

The frustration is hindering my enjoyment and I'm tempted to order another set of the Army Painter brushes (they fell apart after the 4th regiment was finished).

The second project is taking a lot of my spare time, and hence the (relative) silence here.

When I was contemplating what I wanted to do in 2013, generally speaking, not hobby focused, I realized that I really wanted to make a dead-tree zine.

This has been something I have wanted to do since I first encountered zines in the mid-90s with titles like Dumpster Diver, Dishwasher and the very well known, incredibly long-running Cometbus.

A feeble attempt was made in 1996, which I had dubbed Bored, but it never saw the light of day because I was bored and the content reflected that, i.e. not very interesting reading for others.

I continued to collect zines and even incorporated them into projects when I was in grad school for my MSLS. The idea of publishing one never died, but I could never figure out just what the focus would be.

Until I stumbled upon the RPG zine renaissance last year and became totally inspired.

So yes, I'll be putting yet another game-related zine out there, hopefully by the end of May.

It will likely have a "punk rock" or "lo-fi" asthetic, cut and paste with scissors and glue, hand bound with dental floss and illustrated crudely, as that's what I like and feel expresses what i want to express, but hopefully the content will appeal to people even if they don't like the way it looks.

As I plan to give it away for free (at least a limited number of copies),  I'm not worried about the effect on sales.

Oh, and Saturday night, I finished painting up the MDF for my new wargaming setup. They might need a second coat, but frankly, I'm too anxious to push some plastic or lead across them to do that!

It Got a Little Too Quiet Around Here!

We've been busy the past week with the first real cleaning the house has seen since our son was born (he's 18 months old). We also picked up a roommate which necessitated some rearranging of furniture and belongings and such. Consequently, I've had to choose between blogging or actual gaming related activities, and I went with the latter.

Earlier in the week I read Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering cover to cover. I stand by my earlier assessment of it. It's got good advice, but nothing that merits the prices used print copies are advertised for on eBay and Amazon. It is explicitly geared towards individuals with GM experience, unlike Gamemastering by Brian Jamison, which takes a GM from character generation through running a session.

One difference which I may place a little more importance on than most, is that Robin Laws at least seems accepting of the dungeon crawl, whereas Brian Jamison seems to have an obvious disdain for the style.

Never the less, the latter's book has already proven immensely helpful, and, since the PDF is free, of the two, it is probably the title I'd recommend if anyone asked.

I also finished reading Poltava 1709: Russia Comes of Age which has me  fired up for my Great Northern War project. On Tuesday night I had a little time to paint and work proceeded on the battalion of Kievski Regiment infantry.

Tonight, I had planned to run the first session of the post-apocalyptic fantasy game for Lady Shadowmoss, but those plans have fallen through (hence the time for blogging!) which means  more time at the painting table this evening.

Finally, tomorrow night I'll be playing Session 13 of The Ever Expanding Dungeon in which our heroes return to the underground to finish mapping the 1st level.

Wargaming or the Absence Thereof

Looking back over my posts for January, I notice a distinct absence of miniature gaming. 

Ditto for December. Not since November have I played a wargame!

I did do several "play tests" of Morschauser's modern rules (inspired by this post on Two Up, One Back, and Featherstone's simple WWII rules from  War Games: Battles and Manoeuvres with Model Soldiers using my TSSD  GIs and Germans, and Airfix Russians and Germans. But this was mostly of the set up a situation and see what the result would be variety, not a true game.

I have an idea for a Pulp-themed WWII mission for my attempt at my own Wampus Country Under the Tree Challenge I mentioned in my goals for the year, but I have yet to set it up an play. The TSSD figures and Featherstone's WWII rules will be the rules of choice in that game since they were, in fact, under said tree this year.

I will definitely put something on the table in February!

Finally, and not unrelated,  I picked up these: 

Actual Dead Tree Copies

Both issues are cited for their Marlburian rules by the Junior General site's scenarios for the Great Northern War. Hence my interest in them. 

Issue 92 contains Featherstone's Marlburian Wargame Rules, but they seem incomplete to me even when I reference his rules in his War Games.  

Still, I'm happy to have acquired a copy - I've been looking for these since early 2012.

Neither issue is available in PDF from Don Perrin over on Wargamevault.com and my guess is, they probably won't be, since issues before and after have been available for awhile.

This brings my collection of possible rules for GNW (and other Horse &Musket games I suppose) in dead-tree to:

Individually Based:

• Featherstone's Marlburian Wargame Rules
• Pat Condray's Wargaming the Age of Marlborough
• Chalres S. Grant's The War Game Rules (will need modification for early 17th century)
• G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. (I'll wait for the purists to stop choking. Yes, I do think it's possible to modify G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. to handle this era. Possible. Is it likely I'll do it? 50/50 and roll on the Mythic Fate chart)

Multi-figure Basing:

• Warfare in the Age of Reason
• Volley & Bayonet (with modifications for GNW from MWAN 81 and a website I found on the subject)
• Corporal John - Rules for Large Marlburian Battles

I also have a handful I found on PDF, but I have to sort through them yet. I have plenty of time for that; the Russian infantry including officers and grenadiers should be finished in February.

Osprey's Peter the Great's Army 1: Infantry

This weekend I had a chance to read through Peter the Great's Army 1:Infantry (Osprey Men-at-Arms Series) by Angus Konstam and David Rickman.

Some Osprey titles I've read have been the book equivalent of dry toast. Maybe it's my interest in the army in question, but I found this one an easy read to accompany my coffee and lazing about with my cat.

Like all Osprey titles, there are color plates to inspire the painter as well as black and white images of maps, battlefield depictions and equipment.

I found much inspiring and often stopped to pull out my laptop to look up smaller battles and skirmishes of the Great Northern War mentioned in the text (wargame scenario ideas, of course). It also got me thinking about picking up a box or two of Cossack cavalry.

The great difficulty with anything related to Russia tends to be the fact that the bulk of source materials are written, as would be expected, in Russian. Thus, I can't really speak to the accuracy of anything contained herein, but I trust that the work is at least factually correct with respect to the time of publication in 1993.

The only real downside to this title is that the bibliography is contained in the companion volume, Peter the Great's Army 2: Cavalry. If your interest is strictly infantry, or you're having a bit of difficulty locating the cavalry book for a reasonable price, you're out of luck if you hope to use this to identify primary sources.

With respect to uniforms, every source I check seems to differ (ditto for number of pikes per battalion.). It isn't helped by the fact that during the period of 1700-1720 uniforms changed multiple times, until standardization was enforced in 1720.

I made a judgement call  to utilize this book as the definitive source for the uniforms of my miniatures and barring something contained in one of the more expensive uniform books available, I have yet to find sufficient reason to conclude that was a bad decision.

One thing I am considering, however, as a result of this read through ,is sacrificing my plans to paint up the two remaining battalions as Narvski (green coat faced blue) or Kievski (red coat faced yellow) and instead, paint one that could function as 3rd battalion of Ingermanlandski/Astrakhanski/Byelgorodski, and one in the style of a battalion of guard infantry: Preobrazhenski (green coat faced red) or Semenovski (light blue faced red).

There's no rush to make the decision, although I intend to finish the 2nd battalion of Ingermanlandski/Astrakhanski/Byelgorodski tonight.

Some New Recruits

My last post generated a good amount of discussion, thought and inspiration - the results of which I hope to put into play this week sometime.

I still need to write up my thoughts about JF's 9Qs for solo rpgs as well, but in the meantime, I got in some painting last night. I moved the next unit of Great Northern War Russian infantry one step closer to completion and when they are complete, I'll be over half-way done with the infantry, not counting officers.

And more troops arrived today:

1/72 Plastic goodies!

The dragoons bring my me up to two boxes for the Russians (at one mounted and one dismounted unit per box, I'm not likely to build up a large number of them). The US Marines were purchased primarily for the MGs and the mortars to supplement my existing force and replace some of the paper flats (I love my paper flats, but the Marines have given a good account of themselves and I thought they could use a reward). The remainder will be painted, eventually.

This recent burst of crass consumerism is the result of my efforts to turn some of my Christmas gift money into gaming fun.

With a little effort, I was able to stretch those dollars pretty far - I've got two boxes of Swedish dragoons on the way, that I picked up for a great deal ($9.98 a box and free shipping!), as well as a copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics (eBay for just $30 delivered) and SkirmishCampaigns' Red Guards at Kursk (found used via AbeBooks, at 40% off of retail).

In addition, I put in some on the Tunnels & Trolls kickstarter. I swore off Kickstarter just a few weeks ago - two of the three projects I supported seem to have disappeared -  but it's hard not to believe that Flying Buffalo and Ken St. Andre and crew will deliver.

I still have a little  gift money left, and with my birthday not too far away, I'm contemplating what to put it towards. I'm considering one or more of the following:

• Charles Grant's The War Game - in fair to good condition it turns up for around $40 pretty frequently
• Two Hour Wargames Nuts!2.0 Supplements - Peiper at the Gate, The Big Hurt or Stalingrad: Heroes All
• The Purple Worm Graveyard, possibly with the How to Host a Dungeon game as well
• Pat Condray's Wargaming the Age of Marlborough.
• GA PA:Age of Marlborough and Great Northern Wars
• 1/32 heavy weapons infantry for Germany and either US or Russia
• 1/32 WWII armor - CTS vehicles, though a limited range, are reasonably priced, or I could buy a 1/35 model kit, or perhaps 1 piece of 21st Century / FoV armor if I do some shopping around.
• 1/285 GHQ WWII Germans and Russians infantry and support - I can't explain this, it's just one of those wild ideas that gripped my brain after I saw some painted German infantry in this scale.
• 1/1200 ACW Ironclads (completely out of left field I know)

There's clearly no rush and I have ample projects to occupy my brain for some time, but I thought I'd throw the ideas up there in case anyone has strong recommendations or warnings about anything I'm considering.

Newest GNW Russian Unit

Last night, I finished the first unit of Russian infantry suitable for use as Byelgorodski or Astrakhanski regiments:

The usual blurry photo apologies apply!

I'm not totally happy with my painting of the facing on the coats, but at a wargaming distance, they look fine.

The figures are 1/72 Zvezda.

As a side note, this puts me 2/3s of the way to completing my December goals. Next up is to update the card-based dungeon generator with some changes for room dimensions, and then make it into a PDF. 

October Wrap-up and Looking To November

Happy Halloween! 

I hesitate to call it a treat, but here for your viewing pleasure (?) the results of my October painting:

Two Brigade Games G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. 15mm figures:

The completed 15mm Khurasan Salamen archers and shaman (1 of them fell behind the table before this photo was taken. Rest assured, he's painted):

And finally, two units of GNW Russians suitable for use as Pskovski (Osprey), Smolenski (Osprey), and Belgorodski (Condray). This is also the color scheme I think of for this period, but of course, I'm probably a victim of marketing, as it's the color scheme used on the Zvezda box:

Basing won' be done until all the units are complete. That's just my preference.

I also managed to get in a few wargames and even advanced my Tunnels & Trolls warrior, "Crazy" Joe (cut me some slack, he was like the tenth character I  sent through the The Blood War of Saxon adventure and by then, I had run out of name ideas!) to 2nd level.You'd think I'd bump up his DEX of 5 to 6, but I decided instead to bump his strength from 12 to 14.

For November:

• Finish reading A Wizard of Earthsea
• Paint one 12-figure unit GNW (red facings, leather breeches) 
• Play another T&T solitaire using "Crazy" Joe or a wargame
• Design and play a complete game from start to finish, and blog about the experience,for NaGa DeMon

Painting Progress! + Loot Left on My Doorstep!

First up, a unit of Great Northern War Russians - they aren't done yet, but that's why the post title says "progress" and not "finished.":

I'm rather happy with how they are turning out. The green may or may not be too light - either way I like it. It's Americana Forest Green. It's a little thin and, of course, I thinned it more before I realized that, so it's almost a glaze over the black undercoat. I'll go back and hit the green with an even thinner second coat  tonight, when I finish the muskets as there are some spots where the black shows through a little too much.

And these were in my mailbox (and on my doorstep, two different packages):

Is it me, or does Volley & Bayonet look like an Evel Knievel related product

Although I've been through B2 as a player many times, I've never run it. I've never played or run B1. I'm looking forward to running both for my local rpg meetup group in 2013, as I try to spread a little Old School love in the Atlanta area. I'll probably use Labyrinth Lord rather than B/X properly speaking, just because it's probably easier to get LL.  If not, then maybe Basic Fantasy, The Searchers of the Unknown or even Microlite OSS.

Why Volley & Bayonet? Because there's an article in an issue of MWAN that details using it for the GNW (and I have a PDF cooy). Sadly that's all the justification it takes! 

Great Northern War Basing Resolved!

Thanks to Bluebear Jeff, my basing dilemma for the Great Northern War project has been put to rest.

The plan is to acquire a pile of 1/2" diameter (outside diameter) washers for infantry, probably 1" OD for the cavalry and then acquire and cut magnetic sheet to the desired multi-fig base size.

I'm using Warfare in the Age of Reason as my de facto standard for multi-fig basing,but this approach will allow me to quickly and easily re-base the forces for all of the rules I've been looking at : Horse, Foot and Guns, the simple rules on the Junior General site, None Shall Pass, Age of Musket: Tricorn and Musket, or individually for use with Woodland Warriors, GASLIGHT, Sacre Bleu and other skirmish games. 

Wow. I just noticed how many sets of rules I'm considering and that's not even all of them!

A Plan! (for the Russian regiments)

Last night, I pried the little buggers off their sprues and spent the next two hours playing with different arrangements of the figures until I came up with something that will work for now (please pardon the picture quality, my camera batteries are dead):

The sprue in the background is a closer depiction of the actual figure color!

In order to allow some flexibility in choice of rules, my ultimate goal will be 12 figure battalions (regiments of 24-36 figures). However, in the short term (until the 8 boxes of stuff is painted), I will go with 6 figure battalions (regiments of 12 to 18 figures).

This works out rather well, save for that fact that I have a regiment remaining without officers and a battalion of grenadiers also sans officers. For the regiment without officers (and standard bearers for that matter), I am trying to find metal figures that fit the scale or if I can acquire some loose Zvezda figures.

The other option is to use them to bring one regiment up to two 12 figure battalion strength: probably Byelgorodski / Astrakhanski since, depending on the rules, officer figures don't always matter and then I could field each regiment in the short term.

With two more boxes, the grenadiers can become a regiment unto themselves, and I would reach the 24-36 number for the other regiments - plus have the necessary officer figures (I'd still be short some standards though).

Tonight, I'm running another session of Labyrinth Lord, so I'll get back to cleaning up these figures on Wednesday or Thursday. There's not much to do except trim down some of the points where the sprues met the tricornes. Worst case, I'll bring them with me to Hurricon and spend some time in my hotel room prepping them.