Operation Hiatus - Complete

Well heck.  The last few months have been busy.  You may not care ... but if you are curious ... read on ...

I left my previous company back in January and started at a mid-sized startup on February 5th --- and while it is a great company, I really needed to "hunker down" for the first three months to make sure I hit my stride/pace of productivity.

At the same time, my 9 year old son plays competitive (year round) soccer and the Spring season lasts from March to May.  Whamo!

So between work, soccer, helping my son with homework, etc. etc. I just didn't have the time to spend out in my man cave to do wargame stuff.

Now, all this isn't to say nothing has been accomplished in the last couple of months ... so, in no particular order - and with horrible pictures from my phone ... here is some of the stuff that is in progress ...

Blood Red Skies arrived from Warlord Games.  I've been looking forward to this game.  My only issue with it is the flight stand ... it rotates forward and backwards to indicate advantaged/disadvantaged aircraft positions.  It looks stupid on the tabletop IMO.  So, I will be looking to instead use an adjustable peg with three different altitudes to indicate the same.  This is also add more of a visual "third dimension" aspect to the game for me.

I have some new terrain as well.  I've been buying the new hybrid (MDF + 3D printed) buildings from Crescent Root Studio for my middle eastern stuff. They keep outdoing themselves with their products ... love the new range (they just released even more of these buildings ... more $$ to send their way!).

The stumps and logs are from Ebay - Grabblecast Terrain.  They have some great generic scatter terrain that you can get pre-painted or as raw resin.  Recommended.

I participated in the Lost Islands Kickstarter that was for a bunch of 3D printable files for the Caribbean - very pirate ready!  This is offered by Printable Scenery.  Believe it or not ... I'm very close to getting Blood and Plunder on the tabletop!  Above you can see I'm printing a lighthouse along with the completed model - picture from the Printable Scenery website.  I have to say, it nice to be back to 3D printing ... I have a large backlog of things to print.  My printer has been going nonstop - say and night - for 1.5 weeks now.

I have a new portable Blood Bowl table for my Chaos Dwarf team.  This was done by Tannhauser Gate Studio.  Love the tables he makes ... they are awesome, portable, easy to store, and look great!

Believe it or not, I did actually host a game.  French and Indian War.  We played using my new variant of Brother Against Brother.  The game worked out great - I was really happy with the result.  Unfortunately at the moment I've misplaced the pictures from the game ... all I've been able to find are the two pictures of the forces staged before the game had begun.  Hummmm ....

The super talented and generally awesome dude that is Steve Dake was able to finish my SAGA 6 point Milities Critisi warband and the baggage train set from Gripping Beast.  I have some basing work to do and need to add the spears/flags/pennants and such ... but that shouldn't take too long.  He also painted up my generic farm animals and other wildlife which I'm looking forward to using as additional scatter terrain.

I also have plans to finally get my Lord of the Rings miniatures on the tabletop.  I've been slowly collecting a shed load of stuff for this --- some in order to get bad guys on the table --- but also mostly to get it before it isn't available anymore (not that it is going away right now, but eventually).

I have some new cavalry units from my French Napoleonic army.  A new unit of Carabiniers and a unit of Hussars.  Both Perry Miniatures plastics.  I have to base them and get the standard bearers completed.  These I will be adding to the pile of stuff for Waterloo ... speaking of ...

The KublaCon game convention is mere weeks away (May 24-28).  We have some AWESOME games lined up for this annual event.  Our Matt Hilzendrager is running AWI Bunker Hill using my modified Brother Against Brother rules on Friday.  I'm running Waterloo again on Saturday (I wasn't planning on this, but the guys talked me into it).  Then on Sunday our John Lantz is running WW2 Bolt Action Krusk!  I am SOOOOOOO looking forward to this event!

ZULU!  Yes, this has been done 1000 times by 1000 people ... so make it 1001.  I've been slowly building out my Zulu forces ... mostly for Rorke's Drift but now for Isandlwana.  I have most all the figures ... just a few purchases left for extras/camp stuff.  Originally I had collected most everything from Empress Miniatures - but now - where possible - I've shift all my stuff over to Perry Miniatures.  The pictures above are of the Warlord Games sets --- which I will use since they are painted - but everything else that I can use Perry Miniatures for I will.

I'm currently writing up my scenario for both Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana ... so I'm looking to have those published on the blog shortly.

So there you have it.  Getting back in the saddle and gearing up for a summer of gaming!

DundraCon 2018 and Waterloo

DundraCon 2018 has come and gone.  Friday was an easy day with us essentially making our way to the convention, playing some board games, playing in an LOTR miniatures game, then playing more board games.

Early Saturday morning I woke up, made my way down to the miniatures hall and started setting up Waterloo.  I knew it was going to be a full day of gaming. any Napoleonic rule set I had played or read before would require 2 days if not a week to play this size of a game.  That being said, I knew we could get through the entire battle in one day using Empires at War.

The game had 10 players and everyone powered through the entire game.  We kicked off at 10AM and - with a couple of breaks for food and such - we had a result by 10PM.  12 hours.  Add about 1/5 hours before for setup and about 1 hour for cleanup and that makes for a long day.  This is by far the largest wargame I've put on or played in.  More than 4,500 28mm figures and 12 hours of gaming.

You can see the table setup below ...

8 foot wide by 18 foot long.  A monster of a game!  I was shocked by how close to history this all played out.  The French darn near broke the allied center.  Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte changed hands several times.  The Imperial Guard has to be committed to try to break the allied center before the Prussians broke through at Papelotte.  All across the table it was intense action on both sides of the table.  Lots of pictures below ... while I took lots of pictures with my phone, John Lantz and Federico Casali also sent along pictures they took.

A quick video below shows the Volleyfire lights in action ...

On Sunday Matt Hilzendrager ran a fun AWI game using Brother Against Brother.  I played on the British side.  I had a lot of fun playing through this game.  While the British has some successes early on, ultimately the Americans managed to pull out a victory.

Well, I can say I had a great weekend of gaming.  I'm left with a lot on my mind for KublaCon.  I don't think I can run Waterloo again so soon - I need a break before running it again.  As such, for KublaCon I'll be likely doing one or two other games - right now I'm thinking of a French and Indian War game and perhaps a Bolt Action Modern game (Europe - Russia Resurgent).  Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the pictures.