Is 31st January too late to wish everyone a Happy New Year? I hope 2025 has started well for you all, anyway. As may be obvious from my lack of updates, this month has been a slightly 'Dry January' in hobby terms ( and as a wise hobby friend said, don't try to write blog posts when you've got nothing to report ) - but I am determined not to reach the end of a month with no updates whatsoever, especially in the run-up to what I believe may be called the 'fiftth blogoversary' of this stream of inconsequential nonsense ( I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he did, either... ). And so, in the dying hours of this bleak midwinter month, a quick summary of recent hobby-related happenings, and a few thoughts and ideas for the future seem in order.
I may not have run any actual games myself, but I have been lucky to have been involved in a few: many thanks to Jon Freitag, as ever, for inviting me to join in with two of his remote gaming extravaganzas. First up was his fourth iteration of the Italian Wars period battle of Agnadello 1509; something of a nail-biting game in which Tony (MS Foy) and I as the Venetians came quite close to holding off Mark (Jolly Broom Man) , Chris ( Nundanket ) and Dave ( LiverpoolDave )'s French, partly by going against what seemed to have become the accepted wisdom of the previous three outings. A learning point from this - I think I had assumed we would lose, but if I had kept a closer eye on the scores we might have seen a chance to actually win! Never assume.. Click on the link here for Jon's excellent report. I did smile at Jon's writing at one point : By now, Alviano's attacks have run out of momentum - what in fact had happened was that my Heavy Cavalry Men-At-Arms had pursued a badly-damaged French light horse unit, striking the routers from behind and rolling eleven dice against the French one - and then I had rolled no hits with my eleven dice, and seen my brave knights slink away in disgrace! A moment to remember. As you can see , the game was a really colourful affair, with some mighty struggles as the big pike blocks collided across the Venetians' defended ditch.
The second offering from Jon was earlier this week - a complete change of theme, The Gunfight at Adobe Wells Station ... yesirree, a rootin' tootin' Wild West Gunfight! Tremendous fun was had as (by coincidence ) the former Venetians Tony and I became Pinkerton Agents, defending a stash of weapons against a gang of lairy-looking desperadoes who strongly resembled the French nobiltiy of 1509. My character 'The Accountant' managed an initial coup by fatally drilling Chris's 'ZZ Hood' right between the eyes, but then fell to a rain of bullets and clubbed pistols from Mark's villainous 'Wild Bill' Briscoe. Meanwhile Tony's 'Careful' McMinn had been anything but careful, and took a whole lotta lead from 'Daring Dave' McGinty, and the Pinkertons were unceremoniously rubbed out. A great game, with Jon reviving his version of 'The Rules With No Name' and figures after 25 years disuse - you did a good job of remembering them, Jon! I liked the simple card-driven activation which sometimes gave a player two or even three actions on their turn, hence allowing a deadly 'reload - aim - fire' sequence, and the use of a 'joker' card to end the turn randomly - which quite often saved characters who had got into a very tight spot, by denying their opponent the chance to finish them off! Alas, The Accountant ran out of luck in the end, and his books are now closed. I borrowed the following pic from Jon's blog - the moment my man went down, in a close-quarters rooftop fight..
Chris aka 'Nundanket' has featured quite a lot in my hobby January - as well as the above we met in real life a couple of times. First was at the National Army Museum for one of their excellent Friday lunchtime talks, this time on the Saratoga campaign of 1777. Chris has posted a report of the talk here - note that if you can't make it in person to the talks, you can book in to watch them on-line, and well worth it they usually are. Secondly, Chris and I were involved with an evening of board wargaming in a London pub, playing my venerable (1983!) Soldier King game. Very much a 'learning the game' exercise for all concerned, but interesting, and we are arranging another try with the same group - in which we will hopefully move a bit quicker and get stuck in to some proper battles! Here is a picture (thanks again Chris!) to give you an idea of the look of the thing
So that's a summary of most of what I've been doing hobby-wise - you may have noticed that this does not ( shock, horror! ) include any painting.. Well, I have managed a few painting sessions on my 1859 Risorgimento Piedmontese and Austrian 6mm armies, and they are 'getting there' but by no means complete, though I have been enjoying the process. Here is a 'work in progress' sort of picture - Austrians mainly in white, Piedmontese in blue. I like the simple, semi-flat format of the Commission Figurines models, which are a mix of their Napoleonic and ACW ranges.
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| on the workbench - just not often enough! |
For the future, I have a couple of ideas knocking around, plus an invitation , as follows:
D-Day Dodgers as a Mini-Campaign?
I was intrigued and inspired by a couple of posts from the always excellent Norm Smith on his Commanders website and/or Battlefields and Warriors blog ( and by the way, if you haven't already, do yourself a favour and download his brilliant 2024 Christmas Newsletter ). In these he highlighted a piece in Matt OIrsik's 'Warning Order' free downloadable wargaming magazine, issue no. 58, which in turn is inpsired by a very old series on 'One-Day-Campaigns' which appeared in early issues of Wargames Illustrated back in 1987! I remember those 1980s articles, too - quite inspiring. Norm is using the concept to set up a WW2 campaign for his 'Old School Tactical' boardgame collection, which you can read about on his site - he calls the campaign Krosnogord 1944, and excellent it is too. I have been thinking that something similar might be a pretty good way to use my D-Day Dodgers 1943-45 Italian Campaign collection, having now painted a few units for Rapid Fire Reloaded, I need a framework for putting together game scenarios, and the 'linked maps/tables' format of the mini-campaigns suggested by Norm and Matt look like a pretty good idea. I am giving this some thought..I hope Matt won't mind too much if I show a screenshot of part of his Warning Order article :
And of course, if you have not previously seen Warning Order, do have a look, it is an amazing piece of work and well worth supporting!
Thirty Years War with Portable Pike and Shot ?
I have got a bit tied up with painting figures for projects in the past few months, and it occurs I should change things up a bit and vary my routine by remembering the armies that are already painted, and could be used for actual games with very little effort.. in particular I've been thinking of my 15mm Thirty Years' War forces. I chanced upon some blog entries by Archduke Piccolo, who has tried re-fighting battles of the Thirty Years' War using Bob Cordery's The Portable Pike and Shot Wargame - an example being his Portable White Mountain from June 2024. It made me think - I wonder if I could do that? At around the same time, I noticed that Helion have published a book about the battle of Fribourg 1644 :
Being a bit of a fan of Marshall Turenne ( slightly morbidly, I think I once saw the cannonball that killed him, in the Invalides museum in Paris ), this could be a good one to try gaming, and my armies are supposed to be French and Imperialists ( OK, maybe it was Bavarians at Fribourg, but we'll overlook that! ) . The book will I assume have decent orders of battle, and they can hopefully be scaled down to the limited table and forces at my disposal - a sort of 'bathtub Fribourg', perhaps? Actually I don't think the armies involved were all that large, at this late stage of the war, which may make it easier. So that's another book for for the wish-list - but it should be well-worth reading, Monsieur Thion being the expert on French armies of the period.
A PBEM Seven Years War Campaign?
Chris 'Nundanket' strikes again - he has kindly invited me to join a 'Play by Email' campaign he is planning, based on Frederick the Great's invasion of Bohemia in 1757. We talked about the idea when we met at the NAM (see above), and the discussion and some ideas batted around gave him the impetus to get started on it, I think. He has a bunch of willing generals lined up and an interesting co-operative/competitive format in mind, whereby we may be all playing Prussian commanders versus the umpire-driven or automated Austrians - it looks like it should be quite in interesting excercise. Thanks yet again, Chris, I look forward to it..
What with getting the 1859 armies completed and hopefully a game on the table soon, I think I have given myself plenty to be getting on with! I've also rambled on quite long enough here, so I will call it a month and hope to come back with some actual progress in February ( which is tomorrow, of course- maybe not quite that quickly, then!). Meawhile I hope everyone out there is enjoying their hobby time, and until the next time keep well, everyone.
