Friday, May 24, 2013

Bull Run to Gettysburg


Last night the Baron welcomed us into his cave to enjoy a night of 25mm ACW bliss (especially Jay). Jason and I had been looking forward to an opportunity to run Foundry's ACW ruleset - Bull Run to Gettysburg. The book includes some great pics of Kevin Dallimore's outstanding work, however we quickly discovered the rules to being the equivalent of a deep-fried turd - a nice taste on the surface but soon discovering what we had just bitten into. First, the QRS is sadly lacking in information that would be better utilized at one's fingertips rather than being buried in the book. Second, as the game ground on, we also discovered that failing a morale check is nearly impossible. I will use the excuse that while still being fairly new to wargaming, I did a half-hearted job of explaining the rules (Jason did a great job of picking up the slack and the other more experienced fellas were able to quickly figure out what was going on).  After last night's game, we are all the more looking forward to Sam Mustaffa's release of Longstreet in the fall. With all that said, all was not lost in that we took some nice pics.

The armies converge on the farmstead of Old Man Wiley



Rebel cavalry storms the farm to beat intel on the land out of the old geezer

"Git off me proptee ye dirty basteeds!"



Two Reb artillery batteries deploy


Reb infantry drives across Wiley's property while the Federal line forms






Rebel infantry hits the bloody angle








Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Roma Victa!

Okay, I robbed Maximus' line from Gladiator for my title, but it sounds cool.  When I last left you I promised Romans. Well here they are - or at least four units of legionnaires. A few months back I got a wild hair to paint up some ancients. As I quickly found out with my 25mm ACW project, you can't paint just a few. With there being a pretty good variety of Romans on the market, I decided to go with early imperial (some of my fellow wargamers will disagree, but I think the opening battle sequence in Gladiator is outstanding).  I proceeded to place healthy orders for several packs of OG 15s and Corvus Belli.  All in all I probably ordered more than needed (all told I will have 11 units of legionnaires, 4 units of auxilla, 4 units of archers and 4 units of cavalry. I have found these to be a bit more tedious than I thought, but fun to paint.  I am basing them to work with DBA rules, but as long as I own them they will probably only see Hail Caesar play.

After completing 3 units of archers I will probably jump back to my ACW project for a while.  Keep an eye out for some homemade hedgerows I made last year.