U-Store IT

This is probably one of the larges banes of my life how to store war games stuff so it do sent get damaged
and more then one or two of us have had this issues in the past.
when you start at game-workshop you be told that the army case is the best way to do or thats what i was told at about 16 or 17 some 12 years ago now.

Theirs a few ways of storing army's one way i have seen which makes me cringe is paint the models really nicely and then literally just throw it in a open topped box and hope it do sent break or chip.(you know who you are)

there the foam case system of Game's workshop or KnR cases they do work for large skirmish games like Bolt action, the warhammers, your more smaller games like warmachien, mailfaux and others.

So what do you do about smaller scales stuff  or games were you have large bases like kings of war or impetus?

well you can go down the foam case route  again or you can try a really useful box's (RUB's)
RUB'S with some non-slip matting glued to the box (use a hot glue gun and watch your fingers i can count how many times i done this ....every time and i have 4 coners in each box to remind me)
the figures done move around much and if you can keep them flat/level thy will stay safe and undamaged unless your a tit and forget this load them up on a motorbike and ride like you stole the bike.... guess what i did again.

last but not least is the old metal tool box's called cantalive box's with bases games and magnets sheets.
so you put the magnet sheet on the modles base and stick it in the metal box it dose work but it will get some heavy weight.

I use all of these storage methods I have a goblin army for kings of war that i gave up hope on and thorw  in an open toped box and just said F*** it I come back to it 4 years latter its still there.
I have a large collection of 15mm Fantasy in the metal tool box's which is the way all my 15's are going except my flames of war stuff.

In 28's for impetus I have really useful boxs so I use the 10L and the 4L box's as they have enougth space for infantry all thou you need the 20L box's   for cavalry which i need to buy 3 of soon for my 28mm projects rebulicon romans.
crusaders and muslim armys

how you store your army is up to you but RUB's have helped me save a lot of space especial with epic 40k and my 6mm collection for moderns. i do some photos later.

When most people play a war game we generally play a scenario out of the book we have at hand.

For most of us this is 40k, Bolt Action or what ever you have army's for.

Now there is lot's of different styles of games out there and not all of them you will get the best out off by just playing the scenario out of the book games like ospreys In her majesty's name, rouge stars, or even frost grave do better for a narrative game.

Others could be Historical again ospreys Poseidon's warriors Bolt Action or flames of war these game offer the ability to play scenario battles or historical Re-fights so for example if you do your research you find out how many people were at the battle of water loo and lots of napoleonics players over the years have replayed this. Poseidon's warriors has a re-fight for one of the Roman naval battles that hannabile was involved which I had my dice handed to me by the Romans but historical he lost that battle so I was happy even thou I lost and it did help that the game was a good solid game for me fun rules and quick enough to play not much refraining sheets of modifiers and so on but am rambling so back to my point.

So the first question is what's a narrative game

A narrative game is a game were instead off wiping your opponent off the table you are meant to play to an object I played many a game of FUBAR like this and I do have photos to add about it which I will later another blog post

This game here and sadly these are the only photos of that game I have is a bolt action game based in the
Ardennes so Germans vs Americans instead of it being a historical re-fight we had a narrative are objective as the Germans was to cut off a part of the table from the enemy and hold it basically reinforcing the German line. In the end we had almost completed this objective but the Americans had a sneaky group help in reserve who were out flanking us form behind and sadly due to time constraint we had to pack up and call its before we all could get an end result at the end of the game it looked shaky for both sides if am honest if we could have turned are force's around dig in on both fronts we would have run that being said the Americans only had to blow away 1 or 2 squads of men to get the win so it was close.

(Faces are blocked out because I never asked for there permission to use them. if the lads get in touch and say its ok i unblock faces later. )

The idea of this type of gaming is just relaxing fun how ever it takes some one to run it,

so whats my first narrative game I am plaing on runing well that's a good question I have a campien idea for a fantasy battle with all my 15mm Fantasy or I could drag out my rouge stars wargames rules and run a campien based on the Anime Outlaw star or cowboy bebop.

When I know what I am doing I post up about it till then you know as much as I do

quick project. Irregular miniatures 15mm fantasy warrior woman

Painting a few figures is all ways an easy thing to do before you have a game generally one of the things all wargamer's do is arrange to play a game then crack out the paints to finish what ever needs finishing in time for there game and I am no exception.

Trouble is I needed to do 45 models in 4 days! I did it and here is how and the results.

I started by tiding up the models filing and clipping of flack metal and from my chosen manufacture sadly there was a lot at the end i had 100g's for white metal left in a bag to melt down.
After clean up and spraying i looked at my army to do as i was adding on to an army i had to have a think about how was the quickest way to do this.

When I released the only way to paint this army in time was to batch paint the army  i wrote my self a note with a time line.
My note had my colour pallet so i didn't expanded it and add more time to the task at hand.
so Tuesday was prep,Wednesday was spray and stick on lolly pop sticks that i got off Ebay a while ago.
Thursday was to paint and Friday was to paint and base finally Saturday was to base. at the time i thought that was a very tight scheduled and that if i wasn't careful i would miss it completely.

When you pick a pallet try to wright it down some were if you ever come back to adding on to that army.

After checking my old figures to my paints I pulled them out form the paint rack and put them to the side.

So this is the start of batch painting use lolly pop stick and PVA your model's to the stick with enough space to paint in between each model and you find if a little finicky at time's it will speed things up.

Then you pick a colour and you start do every figure in that colour and then move on to the next in hath an hour i had started the burnt umber base cote for there flesh and gone over the top with a drybrushed flat flesh tone.

The results are here the army looks childish in its painting but its matching up to my other figures which i painted Before i learned how to do a better job at 15mm figures.

This is the army just before its gets fully based.

Basing the army goes in 4 stages cover in Jarvis fine cork chippings wash with a ink wash and then dry brush a beige and then add some green flock. 

 This is the end result as they have all been batched up at different times the who army matches in.

Hordes of the things

Old Rules are sometimes best left to the sands of time and a thick layer of dust which they gather on the shelf, To a lot of people DBA and Hordes of the Things are among of thousands sets of rules.

From what I have been told about these rules from my friends, who are older and wiser (debatable), back in the 70's you had Wargames Research Group and that was it. Then sometime in the 80's Games workshop released Warhammer ancients and people jumped to play that for a while, as a new fad, or so I've been told.

Well a year ago I was introduced to Hordes of the things, it started with a conversation about wargames rules and that you find a historical rule set and then the same guys do a fantasy version and the fantasy version is better. So far I found this to be true, examples are Great Escape Games with Sword and Spear Fantasy (yet to play this but it has strong recommendations and from guys who refuse to play the historical version). Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampant, published by Osprey, are good games using the same core rules. I have Dragon Rampant on order, currently I have played Lion Rampant, all Dragon does is add more troop options and magic to the historical game and frees up more creative choices.

Back to point where does Hordes of the Things come in, well Hordes lets you pick your army were as DBA gives you very narrow options for your army,  although you will have variety of units you won't be able to have a full army of only one type. For example, with DBA I could play my Samurai army and I have a choice of about 7 types of units with 12 stands on the table, with Hordes of the Things I could have 3 types of units with 12 stands on the table. So I have more choice not a "take it or leave it" situation.

In the end, games are meant to be fun and I enjoy DBA and Hordes.

 So this is some of the models form my Hordes Undead army

The 28mm figure is a DND miniature that i got off a friend he was a mind flayer who I painted green and made in to some Cthulhu death god.

The Start

So this is my first blog of my own this is all a bit strange I have generally worked with other people on side projects for blogs but I have never done this for my self.

The blogs going to be about my war games projects that I have on the go and that I need to finish so what do I have on the go? like all wargamer's I have a few projects and also in different scales.
The List is as follows

28mm
WW2 Russians and DAK,
Crusaders and Arab states
Batman
Frostgrave
Zombies/zombiecide


20mm
I have modern Russian forces to finish.

15mm
I have Irregular miniatures fantasy warrior woman (which are actually 20mm as i found out), Norman, Samurai and finally Undead. all based up for DBA and HOTT (De Bellis Antiquitatis and Hords of the Things both rule sets by wargames research group)
polish army form the 30 years war time
Team yankee Russians.

10mm
more Crusaders and Arabs and a repair job on a lot over very chipped miniatures.

6mm
Samurai
Modern Russian.