Projects Update - August

I don't recommend that you hold your breath for regular updates, but I will try…

So, in historical order, this is some of what is on my painting table right now:

SAGA
Played a game of SAGA: The Crescent and Cross against Whisperin' Al last weekend and that reminded me that I have several SAGA warbands to finish or more likely actually start! One is Vikings, but anyone who knows me will not be surprised to hear that my Viking warband is a little bit "different" and not exactly historical in that it is entirely female and made up from the Shadowforge Valkyrie range, which are sold by Fighting 15s in the UK. Being fantasy figures the ladies were of course somewhat more expensive than typical historical ranges, but I was lucky enough to be able to pick up the core of the warband on sale, which was nice.

Empire of the Steppes
Even though I do occasionally paint figures for other people, as someone who can paint to, what I am told, is a reasonable standard, I generally consider buying painted figures myself as cheating! However, I have broken that rule a few times in recent years and in particular have picked up painted Song Dynasty Chinese and Mongol armies in 28mm, both from The Assault Group. My excuse is that I would never have got round to painting large ancients armies myself, which is probably true, and I have at least totally rebased them and am slowly adding a bit more detail to the figures as well as painting up a few more to complete the armies. As the title implies, my current plan is to use them with Chris Peers' Empire of the Steppes as I am not a great fan of the various generic ancient rule sets and prefer rules that are a little more specific as to time and place.

6mm Moderns
Circa 1985, this was my first proper wargaming period, i.e. with metal toys and army lists, and, though I am still struggling to find the perfect set of rules, it is probably still my favourite period and scale and I consequently have a number of 6mm moderns projects on the go at the moment. One of which is rebuilding what was, back in the day, my favourite Challenger army, the American 9th High Technology Light Division, much of which I stupidly sold off a decade or two ago. Fortunately, the FAV and HMMWV variants, the former being the signature vehicle of the 9th, are still available from Scotia. This particular organisation was originally developed, in response to the Iranian Revolution, for rapid deployment in the Middle East and I thus already have plenty of suitable opposition for it having armies for the Arab-Israeli and Iran-Iraq Wars.

15mm Moderns

Another setting that Whisperin' Al and I played recently trying out the new, and currently free, Rapid Deployment rules from Sabresquadron. In spite of my failed attempts at creating a balanced scenario, the rules worked well and it was good to get my, now quite extensive, 15mm moderns collection onto the table. My main supplier for this period is of course QRF, but I have also been picking up some of the old Roskopf 1/100th scale plastic models, see photo, which can occasionally be acquired quite cheaply.

28mm Moderns
Actually not for me, but have another batch of the excellent and, unfortunately, now very difficult to get hold off Mongrel BAOR figures in progress. As someone who was an army cadet in the eighties I find these figures very nostalgic to paint, even if painting DPM is a bit of a nightmare!

Infinity
Finally succumbed to buying into this recently having, in spite of loving the anime inspired look of the game, resisted for some time, primarily because of how expensive the figures are! It was actually watching a demonstration of the game being played that finally tipped me over the edge as it sounds like a decent set of rules. Having said that I am not a tournament gamer so chances are that I will never actually play Infinity itself, but the figures at least should make it onto the table using another set of rules, which brings me on to…

Five Parsecs from Home
I had spotted a number of favourable reports regarding Five Men in Normandy, but as I was not in need of yet another set of WWII skirmish rules I pretty much ignored them. However, when I subsequently saw a post for an SF variant that sounded exactly like my sort of thing, in particular the "people with collections of strange scifi characters will have a good time here" comment, I was intrigued enough to want to know more and buy Five Parsecs from Home. Have subsequently also bought the WWII set too and, if I can finally get my games room tidy enough to be able to use the table, am planning to certainly run a solo SF campaign and possible a WWII one too. Will try and report more on the rules once I have had a chance to actually do more than read them.