Saturday, September 24, 2016

1/32-scale plastic AWI troops

Work and aging in-laws have curtailed my gaming these days' apologies for the lack of posts. I have been doing a bit of gaming with Jessica when we find a few minutes.


Last week we managed to narrowly lose a game of Pandemic. We then played a game of Small World where some lucky draws meant a lopsided game.


My painting table has been collecting dust. To try an get back into the swing of things, I ordered from plastic 54mm troops to supplement my existing AWI metals.


These are some FIW troops sold by Armies in Plastic. After looking at them, the headgear suggested light troops. The Indian leggings were problematic but, with a bit of paint, they looked enough like cavalry boots that I decided to paint them up as dismounted dragons for the US side.


Overall, the figures are fine. They have some injection marks (see below) that are invisible on the table but really jump out in a photograph. I quite like the kit they carry.


They are a touch beefier than the All The King's Men metals (left below) and a bit slightly than the John Jenkins' Indians I have. The height is about right though. Some of the figures have the weird  compromises necessary to fit into metal molds (lack of undercuts, chunky bits).


I bought some mounted troops (still unpainted) and thought I would represent dragoon units with one mounted and two or three dismounted (as per below).


Up next: I have another eight of these guys that I will paint up as militia. Right now I'm working on a unit of a dozen line troops (another set of Armies in Plastic figures). These next figures are more in scale with the ATKM figures. I'm painting them up for the rebels. Then onto the mounted troops (all with tricornes?). Kind of weird but maybe designed to represent officers, moreso that cavalry.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Club Night September 6

We had a great turn out for our first club night of the autumn with (I think) 16 guys playing at one point. Dave hosted a WW2 Crete game that began with a flaming British plane. Reports were sketchy but the German paratroops spent some time looking for their weapons pods... .


I managed to snap a reasonable panorama shot as everyone was setting up.


I played a game of Muskets & Tomahawks using Stephen's beautifully painted 28mm Imaginations troops. The rules played nicely, with card drive activation to add in some C&C issues.


It was a straight forward encounter to break point with pretty similar forces.


Here I am with everyone in order and looking good.


Things are more complex here with my cavalry charging towards the top of the frame, trying to get around his main body of infantry on the right while avoiding his cavalry and skirmishers. In the meantime, I'm working my skirmishers around on the right (you can just see the smoke from their volley).


And then this happened. It was close for awhile after that but eventually my cavalry disintegrated (really being more dragoons than cavalry). A very fun and pretty game.


There was also some CC (Zama, I think).


Dennis and Chen were getting some DBA practice in in anticipation of the Fallcon tourney.


And Kevin ran another well attended and very beautiful game of Silver Tower.


Up next: Hard to see; my time is pretty tight these days.