40,000!!!

As this wee blog has hit the 40,000 mark I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for taking the time to have a look, leave a comment or two and to even decide to follow what is going on.

Here are a few photos of a game I had a while ago but have never got around to posting the photos . A peninsula game with the French defending in front of a Spanish town.

Thanks again to everyone.

ACW signal tower

Inspired by a blog post from Christopher at Bunker Hill back in January I decided to have crack at making my own signal tower.  The tower itself is made from twigs from the garden glued together and then bound with cotton soaked in PVA and then painted.  The figures are all spare artillery figures from Foundry.

Might look at doing a Union group and another tower one day but this would be after our large Gettysburg game.

WW1 Mk IV

 Since the Borodino game we have had builders and painters etc here at home sorting out our house from all the earthquakes. They are still working here but not far from the end now. As a result all our furniture etc has had to be moved around. My books are still packed away, my painting table has been moved and I still can't get to my basing stuff.

I have however set up a Saga campaign for the boys, of which there will be more soon. We have only had one move so far but it did result in two battles.

With the success of the Borodino game, we are organising a 150th anniversary game of Gettysburg. This has meant that I need to paint more troops. I have painted one more unit so far but it still needs basing. So photos of this soon.

I have taken some of this time to sort through the mountain of photos from some of our games and do some catch up posts on the Southern Strategists blog.

I have just posted some pic's from a WW1 game on the Southern Strategists blog. This poor wee tank got taken out in the very first move of it's very first game.

It is a great looking tanking painted by David, one of the Southern Strategists, and I felt a little sorry for him and his tank so I took a few more photos of it and thought I would post them here.

Nice work David.

Gettysburg Refight Blog

Following the success of the Borodino refight in September we are now planning a refight of Gettysburg for 2013.
I have set up another blog just for this Gettysburg battle. If things go according to plan there will be a mix of info about the real battle as well as info from those that plan on being at the refight in Christchurch in 2013.

Many of us need to paint troops for this game and so I have put up a Recruits gadget to record everyone's progress. If I can get photos of these recruits I will be posting them too.

http://refight2013.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/the-journey-begins.html

Feel free to take a look and follow if you want.

Borodino Refight.

This weekend in Christchurch NZ saw a huge Napoleonic re fight of the battle of Borodino. With over 5000 troops and more than 150 guns a large number of New Zealand wargamers converged to play this epic game.
 There is an excellent battle report on Craig's blog
 http://craigswargamingblog.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/borodino-20120-report.html    
with another bunch of wonderful photos.
This was a fantastic way to spend a weekend, playing with the wee chaps and meeting a great bunch of guys.
Below are photos from the game showing just how big this game was.

Looking from the French left after the first turn.

From behind the Russian right.

A view down the table from the Russian right.

The French right flank.

Troops from the French right flank advancing.

French centre and right.

French left wing under pressure

 

The Commanders at the end of the game.

Several of the Commanders had already left by this stage, some had flights to catch back to their home towns and others could not make it back for day two.
An awesome sight to see so many Napoleonic troops on one table.
Thanks to John and co for organising this event.




Chris Packer who was Napoleon over the weekend managed to find time amongst his command responsibilities to shot  some video footage of the game. The link below is for the first part of 9!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nglNHTaYJU&feature=youtu.be

more to come.

Enjoy.

WW1 German SMG's

These guys are another lot that were finished off a few weeks ago. Figures are from Great War Miniatures this time and very enjoyable to paint too.

Flushing out a building.

Aim at him not me!

SAGA countdown

On Wednesday night the Southern Strategists will have their first games of SAGA.
With that thought in mind I decided to finish off these two Viking dudes. Given to me by my friend Geoff last year when I was making the Longboat. They were both originally swinging axes but after a fair amount of carving out lead and drilling holes in their hands they are now hauling on ropes to help beach the boat.

I have no idea what make of figures these guys are.

Axes removed and now with ropes in their hands.

 Last weekend I also decided to have a wee play with Photoshop. The thought of having four separate measuring sticks floating around the table during a game didn't sound like a winner to me. So armed with a download of the measuring sticks I cut and moved and rotated them around until I came up with a one piece measuring stick. The "S" and "M" are also staggered so as to be able to quickly see the distance. With "VS" at right angles it is very easy to measure between figures.

It was then a matter of printing it out and glueing it to some cardboard.

My measuring stick

Checking unit formation.

Some levy checking the range to these Berserkers.

Beserkers on the move.

Looking forward to my first game of SAGA.