A small AAR

Hi again

We tested the rules Alter of Freedom this afternoon. I had only read the rules and never played them and my friend Fredrik had not read the rules so the first hour was dedicated to walk through the rules so both of us should have an idea of how they played. After that we took command of our forces. Fredrik commanded the confederate forces and I took command of the union.

I was to deploy my force on table and the confederates that was attacking should be moved on the table. There was rules that made me deploy thin to cover more space since I couldn't know were Fredrik would strike. The first turn he moved one division on to the field and I was responding to the threat.

Soon we realised that the board was to big for the rules so the movment was a bit to short. We decided to continue the battle despite this. But since a large part of the battlefield was covered with wood the going was really slow. We fought for some time and I lost a brigade so we called it a draw and agreed that we would try the rules again but on a more open battlefield.

As I usually use Volley and Bayonet for my civil war wargaming it was fun to test a new rule system. I was not convinced that this was a batter system than Volley and Bayonet but it had some interesting mechanics in it. The priority points bidding was nice. You have a number of points to distribute amongst youre divisions. The more points the more likely the division moves. I also liked the turn clock. The player that own the clock for the turn can dictate the pace of the turn. But the rules lack in explaning situations that can arise during a game. And the modifiers for shooting and close combat could have been better explained as when they was to be used and if it was for the defender or the attacker. The rules was all togheter fun and quick and I have to try them again to see if I can get some more tactics in. Now it was a lot of move and fight just to get a hang of it. 

Still I do prefer Volley and Bayonet!

Keep rolling those sixes/

Conny

Hopefully a comeback

Hello to you all

The last six to eight months I have had a hard time to find motivation and inspiration to get anything done that had to do with miniatures and wargaming. I have dabbled with Deadzone, Frostgrave and started up a project regarding the tv-show Strike Back. I have stod and glared at my painting table and the thought to remove it all crossed my mind. 

Today I am trying to kickstart it all up again by returning to my beloved American Civil War! Today I am to test the rules Altar of Freedom for the first time. The battle is Corinth since I have made a board to that battle a year ago for Volley & Bayonet. 

Wish me luck!

Until next time (hopefully not to long) keep rolling those sixes!

/Conny

Alter of Freedom

Now I have moved back in to the Bunker. I have started to paint some more miniatures again and that was real nice. I have missed it a lot. I have also started to read thrue the rules Alter of Freedom again and also set up the Corinth scenario for named rule set. Me and a friend will try to have a go this week at the scenario and rules. I will then make a AAR of the event. So here are some pictures of the bunker and the set up.

My painting space. Here I try to spend at least 30 min a day.

The shelves with my games. I have sortef out some of the games I own for the sake of space. 

The rest of the room. At the moment I am looking for a new table. 

The Corinth scenario...

The union force and...

... The rebels!

 Now I only need to learn the rules and have a go at it, wish me luck ;)

Until next time keep rolling...

Sixes!

/Conny

Still here

Well hi there

Things are sadly going slow here in the bunker. I am now painting at a larger scale since the bunker needed some new paint as well. 

And since work and family takes its time it goes slow with painting miniatures. But there are some light in the darkness! I am done with the miniatures for the Corinth scenario for Alter of Freedom and hopefully I will be able to play it soon and do an AAR of the game. I have also managed to do some work on the bases on my HHR miniatures.

I will make a slight change to the blog also. My intention was to make this blog only about my ACW projects but... I am a wargamer and when I get a new magazines or find a new rule set or whatever inspires me I change focus, its sad I know but there you have it, just like a child in a toy store… So I will start to write about the project at hand is the idea here.

I will show you all what I have been doing soon. It has with Westeros to do and is in 6mm.

Now that DBA 3.0 are coming I will probably fall for that one to… :) I have some armies all ready but I am very tempted to make new armies in 6mm. I have also started some Austrian Generals and officers for the Napoleonic wars in 10mm. They are from Old glory grand scale. I like these miniatures a lot. They are easy to paint and look good on the table.

So there you have it. I will try to blog more frequently again but to be honest I need to get done with the Bunker so things start to spinn again in the hobby world of Conny.

Until next time keep rolling…

sixes!

/Conny

Keep the cows in the corral

Well now I have seven soldiers a side for my little skirmish project. Plus one rider for the south and a special character. On the painting table I have started one more rider for the South and a cannon with crew for the union. The cannon mostly fot the fun off it. But I will be able to use it in a game to if I want. So now that the troops are getting ready I need something to fight over and so the project goes in to another stage, the terrain. I started out with some simple wooden worm fence. My thought here is to make all the terrain myself and only buy the trees if I don´t find a good, simple way to do them to. I will make fences, stone walls and hedges. Then I will also make two to three buildings of varying size. Roads and small streams always piff upp the table a bit. Some hills or more elevations also needs to be done so the table wont be all flat. So you can imagine I have a lot to do but I won´t stress this and work on it to much since there are more things to do in life…

A standard worm fence.

I have now made six of them and it took about one hour to do them. Now I only need to base and paint them... I plan on make four more. I think ten will be enough to work with for now. I will make some picked fences and some rail fences to.

Here you have a enclosured field and some fences lining a road. They take up a fair bit of space on a table. But it is better to have to much terrain then to little.

Two more soldiers are done, one for each side. The confederate soldier are supposed to have a uniform in butternut. I think it works rather well but will try to not get that hard change in color from the base to the highlight.

The union soldier are a sharpshooter so I gave him the green uniform to make him stand out a bit from the ordinary union soldiers. He has a sharps rifle that are classified as a good rifle in the rules and don´t misfire as easy as a springfield or an older rifle.

I have also made some more cards for my the skirmish games. More soldiers are added and some reference cards for the players.

Soon the HQ:s for the confederates will be done for Alter of Freedom so soon I will be able to test the rules out. But HEY you scream only write HQ on a pice of paper and have a go at it! True, true I could do that but I don´t want to ;). I want to do it right whit all the components there so I get a nice experience when I test them. But I will make some rule amendment to the rules. The first one is to change the scale from inches to cm. This because my bases to Volley & Bayonet RtG are on bases that are 3x3cm. The base for a brigade in Alter of Freedom are 6x3cm so since my bases are nearly half the size I think I can do this without damage the rule system to much.

I hope that the rules will appeal to me. I like Volley & Bayonet a lot but the rules are poorly backed up by the author or anyone else for that matter so if you want to play ACW with the rules you need to do a lot of research by you're selfs since the rulebook don´t have any scenarios for ACW just for Napoleonic. There is a scenario book for ACW for the first edition of Volley & Bayonet. Old Glory in the US have the book for 18$ wich seems like a fair price to me. So I went there and put the book in the cart and pressed checkout. Then There were 3$ extra for handling. Ok 21$ I´m fine with that, no problem. Continued true the system and wrote the destination for the book, Sweden. And then I saw it… shipping 59.95$. So for a book that cost 18$ I would be made to pay 80.95$ for, nope I did not finish the buy… And I can´t find the book anywhere else either so I leave it at that.

A rather expensive book…

I leave it at this for now and I hope you all will...

Roll sixes!

/Conny

No time for the summer time blues

O well, same thing every year. Vacation and I always think that, now, NOW! I will get a lot done with my miniatures project. And every year are realize that it is not going to happen. The family goes on day trips and I own a house and there is always things to be done. But now and then I get to go down to the bunker and put some paint on the miniatures. At the I am working on some things that are not ACW. When I do paint some ACW it has been 25mm miniatures. I am doing some character miniatures that I can use in some skirmish gaming. Sadly I don´t have any terrain for 25mm yet and will have to do some to get to game with them. I have a scenario in mind and will do it as fast as I can. I will play the same scenario with three different rule sets and then present the results here.
I have completed the re-painting of one confederate cavalry miniature. It was fun to paint but the horse have strange proportions. But they are Dixon both of them so here they are.

The naval project slowly make progress but it was more difficult than I thought it would be. The first misstake that I did was to put the masts in place before painting. Now they are in the way all the time.

I have started to do the HQ bases for Alter of Freedom rules and hopefully I will be able to test them out in a couple of weeks.

Here are some pictures of my 25mm that are done for now.

At the painting table now with my 25mm in mind are some characters in the form of officers. One for each side. I also have some civilians that I will paint. They are from The Foundry but will do as special characters before I get hold on some civilians from Dixon. The one to the left will be a confederate officer and the union will get the one to the right. They were both painted about 20 years ago.

Until next time...

Roll Sixes/

Conny

Sail on the horizon

At the beginning of last week I got a small box in my mail box. I had ordered some boats from Peter Pig and hoped that it was this order that had arrived, and it was :).

In the box there was four ships, USS Hartford, USS Cairo, CSS Drewry and CSS Selma. 

I have also begun to read the rules, River Wars in earnest to get a grip of what I needed. If I had been an organised person I would have read the rules first and chosen ships that there was stats for in the rules. But no... I had to buy ships that there was no data cards for in the rules. O well, I will figure it out some day. USS Cairo at least was in the rules. At the moment I have contacted a Scott Mingus that has a blog were he writes a lot about the rules and I hope he may have some advice for me, http://scottmingus.wordpress.com/category/civil-war-wargaming/acw-naval-gaming/ .

I have started to assemble the USS Hartford since it was such a nice model. No bigger problems to put together but I have 6 guns, 2 large and 4 small that I don´t really know were to put on the model.

I have also, like so many of us in this trade, started a bit to many project at once. But I am slowly working my way trough them. On my painting desk there are at the moment three confederate Dixon miniatures and four bases that are supposed to be HQ bases for Alter of Freedom so I can play test it with style.

That was all for now but I will return, soon I hope, with more pictures of soldiers and ships that are done. But until then keep on...

...rolling sixes!

/Conny