In my last post I mentioned some pesky Bersaglieri – so here they are. 1848/1859 and all that………..
The figures in the line are Strelets 1/72 based to Piquet Field of Battle (I use 40mm square bases) – three figures to a base just like Wesencraft and Peter Pig – the rule of three works quite nicely here.
My own preference these days is to have command bases even where the rules don’t require them. Impetus rules tempted me away from the rigidity of DBA and with its larger bases plus the variable figure poses offered by 1/72 I really like the combination.
Yes these chaps are the slightly maligned Lucky Toys which stand at almost 26mm high.
In build along with some Piedmont Line Infantry and Red Shirts, so you know what is coming down the line sometime……..
Read the Plastic Soldier Review, be horrified and then pay about £4 for 30 odd figures which you have to build yourself just like Perry plastics!
These Bersaglieri are meant to represent Piedmontese/Sardinians in summer dress (white trousers) and will work from the 1840’s to 1870ish.
I paint the bases in burnt umber followed by a yellow ochre heavy dry brush and finish with a pale yellow highlight. I prefer the clumps of grass which to my mind looks right even though Lombardy can look just like the bright green fields of England on its day.
I first used budgie grit on my 28mm Perry WotR forces and I liked the surface finish although the dark colour choice – english mud – I never liked. When they get another run out things will be lighter.
And following success with my Normans in the South I have retained the lighter colouring for my Piedmontese who are the first of my Wars of the Italian Unification (WotIU) project.
I use budgie grit as suggested in one of the many Warhammer Historical Gamebooks
I pva some budgie grit around the figures, then give everything a burnt sienna undercoat. Then I use a discontinued B&Q tumeric – yellow ochre I guess. This is haphazardly brushed on. Finally I dry brush with a Valpasar yellowy cream. I found this colour was not so intense as using white.
The foliage is woodland scenics from the USA – I use the bush material and mix an olive green with a brighter green colour.
In the wings
In the lead photo you can see Austrian Artillerymen, Austrian Line Infantry and Italian Bersaglieri.
Well we are at the end of a year that will become notorious.
A year when humanity staggered from the blows of a simple virus. It is perhaps a reminder that nature always has the upper hand no matter how sophisticated our societies have become.
I guess there are plenty of historical parallels to this type of massive societal correction. Not in the same vein but I read recently about how the particularly bad 9th century weather or should I say mini climate change dealt the Carolingians numerous bad harvests damaging their always vunerable Empire. Except even if it were decisive, the roaring vikings is a much more exciting concept of Empire destruction.
Yet right now the Dark Ages have become just that – the Dark Ages as in a box with a lid on it! Right now it is the 19th Century that dominates Wargames in the mind of Norber the Wargaming Erratic.
Before we go and embark on another year there is just enough time to reflect on the fact that 2020 has proven to be rather a good year for my wargaming.
The year got going with a trip to Vapnartak, notable for the fact that it proved to be my one and only show of 2020.
Lithuanian Knights gather to charge the Teutons – figures by WillWarWeb I believe
Playing (LIVE) the Lance and Longbow Society game of Tannenberg 1410 made it all the more important as it turned out. It was my last face to face gaming of 2020.
I was into Carolingians at the time of Vapnartak.
The scary plastic soldier review horses of Carolingia!
so which soldiers marched across my painting table in 2020?
well in 2018 I had managed zero painting while in 2019 I painted and based 32 “normans in the south infantry” and 11 “normans in the south” archers.
in 2020 I managed
12 Carolingians including the man himself – comprising the much maligned (by plastic soldier review) horses which actually give my bases some nice dynamics – in my humble view
10 Anglo Norman archers
24 Normans in the South (NITS – I can’t resist an abbreviation) Cavalry
21 Ottonian foot which look very much like anglo danes or could pass for NITS foot soldiers
43 Anglo Danes were my biggest effort
A fine array of some Anglo Saxons, Anglo Danes and Ottonians
I finished the year with 4 slavs posing as Picts in my “to be” great army of Danes, Scots, Northumbrians and Norsemen which would fight Athelstan again at Brunanburh
And then the proverbial wheels came off the Dark Ages cart.
Right now the painting table has plastic Union Infantry posing as Piedmont Line Infantry along with some venerable Warrior Miniatures French Dragoons posing as – well French Dragoons. And they are metal!!!
Piedmontese in frock coats – shame about the squished stove pipe hats
I must say I had a good year with basing – finally getting a look for my mediterranean NITS – ok Normans in the South project.
Vikings aka Ottonians aka Anglo Danes aka NITS – the beauty of dark ages
In fact I have decided it will work for pretty much everything dark ages.
On the gaming front I started solo gaming with an unexpected purchase. Neil Shuck had recommended War & Conquest shortly before jumping ship with another ancients ruleset.
One of the many offspring writers/thinkers that Games Workshop brought to our wargames world.Sea peoples and desert tribes close in on Libyian bowmen
I gave it a go with my bronze age one hour wargame figures based using my hybrid impetus basing of 80mm x 60mm for 1/72 plastics. Ever awkward – probably just as well I don’t need to satisfy a live opponent. I rather liked the feel of the rules even though the play through was so limited.
And then with Covid19 lock down in full swing and some fine weather I had other distractions including lots of gardening .
I really like simple flowers with a few petalsThe colours are just fantastic
INTERMISSION
Intermission even surprised me – that was not in the plan
INTERMISSION
And of course there is always some track laying to do……………..
Eventually the dark ages gaming started in late August with numerous shieldwall rule tests – I did really enjoy them all. The biggest surprise was playing gridded wargames using Mike Smith’s Table Top Battles.
My lst shieldwall battle took place in late October and many games and rulesets later was swiftly followed by a thoroughly enjoyable game of Dux Britanniarum by Too Fat Lardies.
My vintage Garrison Vikings got a run out.
I fleshed out some campaign plans as per the rules advice and then…………nothing. I was just starting some Pictish Warriors when I read the wrong article.
On the way the renaissance troll introduced me to Faux Napoleonics for fantasy – here is my own 1970’s era Faux Fantasy Orc veering towards napoleonics?
Next minute it is baggy pants Zoaves, Spikey helms and far too much rifling. OK so it is still rather pedestrian Piedmontese – these proto Italians are quite conservative chaps – very un Napoleonic.
Will they really look like Piedmontese or just Union men on the wrong continent?
And since then two battles have been fought – one with Practical Wargaming by Charles Wesencraft and the other using 19th Century Wargames by Neil Thomas.
Whats in the container? – rescued from a dim corner of the erratic’s tardis store………Warrior Miniatures – yes they are metal and yes the brown paint was administered back around 1975!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thats a long time on the paint table – 45 years ish. But probably not a record.
And so I wish you all a graceful end to the year 2020 and hope that 2021 brings you all that you hope for.
So having had a good start to the year painting wise, by August I had enough units to do some gaming. My wargaming has always been predominantly “solo”, so road testing rules on my own is natural for me.
Impetus elements of Anglo Saxons, Carolingians and Normans ready to do battle
I should also say that from my earliest wargaming days I have tinkered with rules.
It is a quirk of fate that the first wargames book I read on rules came from my local public library (remember them?). So being a child you take what you can or rather see. So what did my local library have in the adult section? Well a single Donald Featherstone book. And his book was called “Advanced Wargames”. It was a book about wargames and the advanced bit meant nothing to me.
years after my public library discovery I bought my own copy of this book. It actually contains material that has been “invented and popularised” decades later such as grid gaming
So armed with Advanced Wargames I started rule based wargaming and of course met a big problem. Advanced Wargames is a set of chapters dealing with “aspects” of wargaming. Drawing on multiple sources and authors the book covers most areas of rulesets yet they are not joined up to provide a single useable ruleset.
The assumption was that you had a wargames ruleset/s already and some prior knowledge of the whole idea of rules based wargaming. Then you would cherry pick additions and improvements from the book.
I think this is the origin of my “tinkering” with wargames rules. Give me a set of rules and I will invariably add in some “house rules”.
So back to my road test of the rulesets of Neil Thomas and Daniel Mersey.
I have posted previously about my reluctance to move from seriously thought out but quick DBA into the very simple world of AMW. Yet this ruleset is very enjoyable and is more subtle than you might think.
In Ancient & Medieval Wargaming (AMW) by Neil Thomas there are four period rulesets
Biblical Wargaming 3000BC – 500BC
Classical Wargaming 500BC – 300AD
Dark Age Wargaming 300AD -1100AD
Medieval Wargaming 1100AD – 1485AD
My choice here was obvious – Dark Age Wargaming.
I used his rules without house rule changes on this occasion. Well with one exception.
I use Impetus sized elements having abandoned DBA with its restrictions on depth. And I had settled on 1/72 20-25mm figures on 80 mm wide bases which Impetus assumed would be for 15mm although the rules clearly gave you the option for 1/72 basing.
In fact Impetus rules whole approach to basing was so refreshing when I encountered them. And for me they have set the tone for most of the last decade.
I think they were in the vanguard of “BW” measurement or base width’s. This simple decision meant the end of the need to “rebase” figures when switching between rulesets. Of course if you only have one ruleset it is never an issue.
I have almost as many rulesets as guides to painting figures if not more……..dozens.
AMW assumes you have DBA based figures so uses 4 40mmx20mm bases giving you an 80mm x 40mm element and 8 of these make an AMW army.
In effect you need 32 dba bases which is not so good if you have 12 unit dba armies: And most of my thinking had been on these compact DBA army lines.
table size and figure basing all go together for me. I fixed my maximum table size at 6’x4′ imperial and 1.8m x 1.2m metric. 3 collapsible picnic tables from lidl are the foundationsurface finish is 3 x 20mm thick mdf 4’x2′ (1.2m x 0.6m) boards to minimise warping covered with felt in this case
Then I read an article in the Lone Warrior magazine of the Solo Wargamers Association. There the writer suggested a cheap way to build armies was just use the 40mm x 20mm bases as single elements and/or reduce figure count to just say 1 for light troops, 2 for medium and 3 for heavy troops. Well it was something like that because it was the principle that made the difference to me. It broke me fully away from DBA “figures per base rules” and Impetus gave me the solution of 1/72 figures which I prefer – yet now on a smaller 15mm scale base size I also prefer.
The net result is I use 80mm wide bases and actually a generous 60mm depth for all units. This allows the impetus suggested “diorama” approach, better showing individual figures you have carefully painted rather than their being very squashed together under DBA.
You sacrifice ground scale though. I guess in this I have followed favourably the increased “abstraction” approach on ruleset design. Abandoning figure removal for losses in the 1990’s? was the start of this “abstraction” and for some the descent fully into gaming and away from any simulation. I love history yet I love gaming so the compromise matters.
Neither AMW nor Dux Bellorum require explicit command bases but I like them so here is one – from my much delayed “Normans in the South” project – none other than Tancred d’Hauteville looking at the shield design.
Using single base elements meant that required base removal in AMW rules was not now possible. The fix here was simply to use two dice. The first was used to show the 4 “virtual” bases while the second showed the 4 points value each virtual base could sustain before being knocked out and removed from play. I have also used three dice in other games (18 so showing 6+6+4 at the start). But the rules in AMW use base counts to indicate available attack dice. Unless you like mental arithmetic, showing the two aspects gives a simple visual indicator.
A few years later Neil Thomas used this “one number” technique to good effect in his fastplay “One Hour Wargames” (OHW) rules where units are a single base elements with a value of 16 which equates to all the elements morale/resistance/casualty value and overall strength in one number.
With AMW you need not fear flank issues so the shieldwall has gaps between each element/unit ! you can of course place units in base to base contact – i was reflecting the AMW book diagrams!
So I played two games with AMW. The first was essentially two shield walls crashing together and the second was a cavalry led force attacking a shieldwall.
The mighty Norman/Carolingian or Franks in AMW speak start their assault on the Anglo Saxons shieldwall. AMW give suggested army set ups although you still have plenty of choice in the small army lists in the text
The third ruleset test game was another shieldwall versus shieldwall this time using Dux Bellorum.
atmospheric artwork throughout the Osprey book makes its use feel positively different to the text heavy AMW where a central batch of irrelevant but professional model armies fails to add any real value. The AMW font is bigger so the text is much easier to refer to in the heat of battle though!
These rules are aimed at a narrower period AD367-793 and with a nod to fantasy gaming called “Arthurian Wargaming Rules”. These rules use the “BW” concept, being published in 2012, 5 long years after AMW.
a solid pair of shieldwalls square up for Dux Bellorum. The dice are colour coded for the unit grades such as “nobles”.
Again there were no tweaks for once. Indeed in both cases as I fought shieldwall battles a side benefit was to better understand the design of these two rulesets. Because shieldwalls in both rulesets result in quite a static and very balanced game you can see the effect of a limited number of the author’s variables in action.
Here is an Anglo Saxon Command with to its front my version of a shieldwall in 1/72 Strelets plastics on an Impetus 15mm scale 80mm wide element base.
In my next blog I will consider what happened in each game.
the ring and dice combination solved my AMW rule problem when using only base instead of 4.
There is a blog called “The Waving Flag” blog.vexillia.me.uk. It is run by Martin and from the Vexillia Miniatures stable.
Casting my eye over the blog entries in the 1500 plus wargames blogs site blogs.blogspot.co.uk, I encountered Martins article on super armies for ADLG. Now thats another ruleset I have, like the look of and even played a bit.
Anyhow I noticed his site had some tips and I had a quick browse. And in there was his item on wet pallettes. So it was made in 2016! but so what – the Romans invented pretty much everything we reinvent today including mobile phones of course, not to mention some central american ancient civilisations who had mastered space travel before europe was even dreamt of. Some jesting in there I think.
The point is I have never tried a wet palette – the concept passed me by. I gave it a go and hey presto I got several days out of some acrylic paint I would normal have discarded.
So thank you to Martin at The Waving Flag
The first beneficiaries are my Hatt 1/72 plastics “El Cid” cavalry. More of which in a future post.
Oh and statistically according to Martin there are no super armies in ADLG. So all is well.
My Norman bases have an arid appearance so to offset the desert image I added some planting. I opted to use individual plants rather than “scatter” or “flock”. This ties in better with the more arid look. I did do a few bases with some bush flock and they look ok. I used three product types. Bush flock, grass tufts and plants. I also tried a couple of seasonal variants for the grass tufts.
I used gaugemaster NOCH plants of two types – stalky on left and on the right stalks with heads with large tufts at the bottom.
I used Frome Model Centre small green tufts to add variety of height
I did a couple of bases with US based company Woodland Scenics light green bush material just laid on the ground.
More crumb based than discrete stalks I am pleased with the outcome.
Having explained my latest approach to basing I should say that my wargaming choices are very modest. In fact the whole plastic figure thing was aimed at “keep it simple”. And that goes for painting and finishing – simple acrylics mainly block painting and gloss varnish. my figures are intended to be handled and mostly viewed at 3 feet or 1 metre away.
Even my Wars of the Roses 28mm figures have received such treatment although I did some flesh/clothing washes here and there. And they felt a bit questionable – “was the effort worth it?” well thats more about my painting skills/impatience I think and not the technique being worthwhile.
And when it comes to plastic I seem to have moved to the point where a bad Plastic Soldier Review will encourage me to buy – maybe a paint job can rescue a poor figure. The question is can my painting rescue the figure or actually make it worse? Beauty as they say is in the eye of the beholder.
And I have found to my eye that a base I like significantly enhances my figures – when looked at on the table at about 3 feet of course.
So actually close ups on screen are probably not that helpful in some cases. Anyway here goes.
Strelets 1/72 Normans from a mixture of their boxed range at about 12 inches or 300mm
Essentially I based the figures on 80mm x 60mm laser cut MDF from pendraken miniatures, daubed on pva glue, emersed in a tray of budgie grit, shaken and set aside to dry. A day later, inverted to shake off the last loose material, it was out with the paints.
the budgie grit tray – the grain mix works even for 20mm figures
Then base paint. Now this base is the result of several attempts to get the right colour. I could say at this point I spent hours rerunning the La Vuelta vids poring over the helicopter shots for the right ground look but I would of course be fibbing or maybe not………
trials…….
I found I could get some wacky colour outcomes and actually the ones I thought would be too bright I decided would look better for a mediteranean location.
I discovered an old revell acrylic pot of “rust” was the best base colour (need to source an alternative as I don’t know anyone who stocks revell acrylics now given the dominance of vallejo and citadel).
And the ochre and then either ivory or white highlight came from B&Q and Johnstones sample pots. And then some final decoration.
I finished the base off with some greenery taking a cue from La Vuelta again and using bright green foliage. Lots of railway model suppliers provide a range of foliage plants.
And that wraps it up for now. I think the extra steps taken here are worthwhile and enhance the figures. I plan to do all my mediterranean medievals this way. Next problem is getting the table top to match.
Do bases matter that much when it comes to miniatures used in wargaming? By current standards they clearly do with plenty of trade offerings available and a wealth of DIY advice online.
Also the preference for elements without individual figure removal permits more imagination to be applied around a base. Perhaps the exception is skirmish gaming but even here you have the option of sabot bases providing the individual figure movement while retaining the convenience of the larger element base which can still be given varying levels of decoration.
My basing journey has been pretty basic. Back in the dim and distant past I painted desert or green paint onto cardboard bases. I still have them and they work after a fashion. The figures are 25mm. They look a bit tired though.
I think this figure is a citadel adventurer from the 1970’s when my painting hand was patient and my eyes still worked! note the ageing gloss varnish.
Then I started a 15mm phase and actually paid for painting including basing. The quality was good but somehow they did not grow on me. They look accurate but……
15mm Essex Byzantines professionally painted with matt finish and understated basing!
I did some of my own and I was even less happy!
And then I caught the plastic fantastic bug and returned to simple painted bases for some 1/72 scale figures.
Zvezda Russian Cavalry cruise past some positively ancient 20mm minifig french napoleonics and giant 25mm tradition russians
In the middle of this phase I moved into 28mm figures and thought they needed something extra. As it happened despite all the wealth of offerings and advice in all the various magazines and books I had collected, I stumbled across the humble warhammer guide in one of their rulebooks – maybe shieldwall – where they recommended simply gritting the bases, basecoating and drybrushing once. Somewhere I found a suggestion to use budgie grit. I tried it and painted it up, except no dry brush, but added some static grass and…… I was still underwhelmed. There is no pleasing some people.
Perrys 28mm Continental Burgundian Pike on DBA bases
I then had another surge of plain painted bases when I reworked more of my old 25mm metals.
You can see them next to the Zvezda Russians above – Minifigs French circa 1972? and Tradition Russians from the mid 1970’s. The bases they replaced were very dark green painted airfix box card – the figures have been transformed in my view, although unbelievably garish – they cheer me up!
And then I decided to do some mediterranean normans. Coincidentally I had watched both British cycling, Le Tour and La Vuelta races and the penny dropped. All my scenic basing had generally used dark green/dark brown earth (or grey brown for 15mm) colours – and I had not recognised why I liked the bright green bases beyond their simplicity. British cyclists rode through dark earth countryside with bright greens but La Vuelta cyclists went through fantastically bright coloured soils of many hues and even with brighter green shrubs and trees on top. (well except in the picos mountains in the north).
So I got my paints out and started experimenting – and so I have now found what I want for my Normans. Well until the butterfly lands on the next flower…..
Back to basics or is that basings? Most wargames today have taken from boardgames the token or counter principle and many miniature figures now find themselves stuck to a base with some others of their kind.
Yes there is another strong theme of individually mounted figures although, because of gaming time, this will usually reduce the figure count on the wargames table. So if you want to show lots of figures and still finish a game then multiple figures on one base is the way to go.
First up are some posts on my current struggles with basing style.
The Wargaming Erratic 