St George's Day.

God Bless Elizabeth, England & St George!!

It's St Georges Day, and at Peeler Mansions we have a new & well proper looking flag pole up & running. After a fair bit of drilling, brick dust tasting and scuffing of knuckles, we were sorted and happily flying a large 5x3 foot St George Cross again. This particular pole is made for easy change of flags, so we're also prepared with a new Union flag for the wedding this coming week.

The same weekend also has our WD3 game at Ayton Village hall, and here's a preview of the not quite finished Lord Peelers forces..

I'm hoping that they perform quite well on the day, as this will be their very first outing. The campaign moves, and preview of the coming 18thC game can be found on the good & very well organised Mr Henry Hydes Blog, here .. http://battlegames.wordpress.com/ and also on the WD3 Forum itself on various posts .. http://wdlovesme.19.forumer.com/index.php. There's also other games on, including Norman's Viking, Tim's Toy Soldier & Bob's VBCW, to name but three. I think it's going to be a cracking weekend ...!

Regards,

A Room & a Change of Scale.

Well, once again it's been a while, made so because of working shifts, changing shifts, doing extra shifts, home life and a rather good week in Sunny Majorca! I think that should be our last foreign holiday for a couple of years as the old bank account is starting to complain. And as the Euro seems a tad strong at the moment, it's home country holidays for the foreseeable I reckon, and perhaps rightly so too, considering the country's current financial problems.
So, I've been getting my spare room sorted out to be .. A Wargaming Room. At long last, as was the original plan when we bought this house ten years ago, after being used as the boys playroom and then the Father in Laws room, I'm finally getting on with it. The room has been cleared, the walls are freshly repainted and the wood flooring is down. A new table has been delivered c/o Ikea, and I just need to decide on the table top board size to buy from the local MKM. That's proving a bit difficult for me to decide on, but will probably be an 8ftx4ft playing surface, to allow a comfortable amount of room around it for the gamers, the room being a good 15ftx10ft size. I may of course buy more than just the one board, to allow various widths & depths for different games. And of course, we'll need space for pie plates, ashtrays and suchlike. Shelves are now going up, books are being gathered up and placed on said shelves, and my gaming stuff has been piled together, from storage in the spare bedroom upstairs, under the bed, the understairs cupboard, the farthest recesses of the garage, and oddly I found yet more in a kitchen drawer.
Probably like yourselves, I didn't realise I had quite so much of it. Some of it I don't even recall buying. Some of it, I wondered just why on earth I had it. So I've had a bit of a clear out, sold a few bits and so on, but the main change is that I've disposed of my 10mm Napoleonics. I looked at what I had painted up, and what I still had unpainted, and thought, "I just don't want to paint that scale anymore". It's an odd feeling, but once you've had it, and it's persisted for a while, then you know it's time to move on to something else. And, I realised, I'd hardly painted any of them for the last two years.
So, wanting to keep it all easy and stress free, I contacted that pleasant Mr Hinds by email, we agreed a price and proportions for swaps and so on, and a few weeks ago I trotted off to Derby to see him. What a treasure trove of figures he has in his house! I was rather taken aback at just how much there was. But, over a cup of tea and a natter, we had a pleasant exchange of figures and cash, all done without fuss and with fairness on both sides. I know these things can be difficult, maybe it depends on who you deal with, but I can certainly recommend Mr H for openness, honesty, and reasonableness. I'd certainly trade with him again. So I came away happy, with a large quantity of painted 15mm Napoleonic Prussians, Spanish, a few French, along with a fair number of painted SYW figures, for use in my newly remembered Village Wars project.
The next weekend it was Derby Show, and along I went with cash in hand. I was delighted to see Mr Grubby Tanks, he of the stacked green boxes full of painted 15mm Napoleonics! The figures are his own production, have a certain style & character that I like, and were a mere 80p each. Painted. Well, I thought, I can't be turning that down really, so I duly bought 8x36 figure Btns, of French Allies, Saxons, Westphalians and the like. Being mostly white uniforms, that will save me a lot of painting pain, as I just don't like painting white. I'll definitely be seeing him again, and buying similar. Whilst there, I had a nice chat with Andy of Old Glory, and could not resist his new 15mm Marlburians, so had to buy just a few, to do a DBMarlburian type game. Nice figures, quite large, easy to paint, and, the same Blue Moon range is rumored to be bringing out Napoleonics in the same style next year. Nice one. This also led to a couple of books on the period being obtained from Caliver books, which seem to have all the info I'll need to get going.
So, with bases purchased from ERM, I've started the task of rebasing all these Napoleonic figures. Now, I want to do GdB, but also in our local group, we do DBN, so there's a bit of a problem as the basing is different. I don't want to be having separate armies for each set of rules, that would just be plain silly. So I came up with the easy and rather obvious solution, which is to base them on 40mm frontage bases to fit in with the DBN, and use 4 bases to a normal GdB Btn, 2 bases for a GdB Squadron, and so on. Sorted. Or it will be, when I've got them all done.
Talking of GdB, I recently ordered & received The Gent's Edition of the updated rules.
To say they are rather nice, just does not do this set justice. Apart from the very playable updated rules, there are pictures galore in this book, mainly of 15mm. That may have been a final deciding factor in my change of scale I think. I really can't praise it enough, it does, to me, set a new and high standard for a set of rules, hardback, neatly laid out & explained, wonderfully presented and with enough eye candy to make your retina's ache. If you haven't yet got one, be quick and speak to Caliver Books to obtain your copy, before they sell out.
So then, gaming wise, our group is getting it together again after the usual summer break, and we were recently treated to a very tightly played Waterloo DBN game put on by Alex at his hotel, along with some rather fine culinary delights. The game went to the wire, and was thoroughly enjoyed. Also, Richard put on a rather fun & quick moving Zombie board game, along with a delightful home made steak pie lunch by Mrs Richard Snr. Frankly, if Mrs R ever opens a pie shop, I'll be in there daily.
A swift welcome to Fran & Angry Lurker, latest Followers, thanks for joining, appreciated, and I hope you both enjoy the Blog.
In the near future, our group has games on at the SmoggyCon & Recon Shows, which are both really good show days out to be looked forward to, and worth attending if you can. Also, a couple of us are lucky enough to be at the large GdB game, Wellington Barracks, this coming weekend. Organised by the good Mr Brown & Co, having been to previous games, I know that we have a quality game & weekend coming up, along with perhaps more than a few beers with some old chums. I'll be reading those GdB rules on the train as we travel down on the Thursday, to take in some sights & museums, and to sample a pot or three of London Pride before the game starts....
Regards,
Peeler

"Village Wars" in 25mm Project..

This is a 'background' project that I'm doing, a bit here and a bit there, and eventually I'll be able to put a game on with it. The idea of it, I have to say, has come from those old wargames books, and Battle Games stuff..'Wars of the Faltenian Succession' and so on. Being largely into Napoleonics, I fancied another period/scale, but I didn't want the effort of historical reference, so...I thought to myself, I like tricornes, and I like Old Glory figures, so I'll use their SYW range mostly, and paint the units up into my local village colours..easy to do, colourful, and stress free..I also wanted a lot of 'civilians'..because you get them in most wars, but not usually on the gaming table.

The benefit of 'doing your own thing', is that you can please yourself..hence there will be units of infantry, cavalry and artillery, as well as Village Mob, Village Idiots, Nuns (yes, Nuns!) and some Monks too..after all, it is the 1700's, and there were a few about back then. Also, you can use figures from slightly different era's, but which 'look right'..I have some ECW 'floppy hat' cavalry to paint up, having recently seen a Hammer House film, (you know, Peter Cushing), with some religious nuts riding around being very pious and righteous..I thought to myself, yep, I want one of those units too, they may be slow moving, but they'll put any non-believers to the sword once they start mixing it.

Also from Old Glory, from the 'Blue Moon' range, I have some smashing wagons and horses, which can be used as 'baggage', or just as locals wandering about, as they do, or as a distraction to certain units. From Hovels, I've obtained some lovely figures, being various farmers, locals on the beer (two of the figures even look a bit like myself and Hairy Dave, which is worrying), stocks, drunken harlots, farm animals, that sort of thing, which will grace the table nicely I think.

I'm heading towards one unit/Regt per base, of about 12 figures, to keep it easy, and I want each unit to have a name..'The Wykeham Foot', or 'The Wolds Regt', or 'The Lonsdale Losers'. Obviously, there will have to a 'Back Bar Forge Irregulars' unit..that'll be using the mob and drunken figures then...rules wise, I fancy doing my own, maybe a combination of bits from DBN/Featherstone/WRG style rules..with appropriate modifiers for all those 'odd' units. Whatever we end up with, the accent will be on having a fun, entertaining game, with lots of dice throwing...

Here's some pictures of what I have so far, and it reminds me that I need to waffle less and paint more..

A Regt of Wykeham Foot..(in the school colours)..

A Regt of HuttonBuscle Foot..(they all wear green up in that village)..

A unit of 'Village Mob'..you know, the local types who are up for a bit of a scrap, but easily distracted by beer wagons passing by..and harlots..and suchlike..

A unit of 'Nuns with Attitude'...try and trash their Church, and you'll have to get past them first..

A 'NorthMoor' Artillery battery with Limber..yep, they all wear brown in that village..with being non-historical, I can use older classier looking gun models too. I have a 54pdr to paint up...

And this is my latest nearly finished unit, in a sort of pink colour..not quite sure what they will be called, I may have to be careful naming this one..

I have a fair amount of stuff to paint my way through, but by keeping the units relatively small, I hope to be gaming it soon.