Roman Seas

This is my latest distraction.

A great set of naval rules that can be played either as a boardgame using 1" hexes or as a miniatures game using 5" hexes.  Eric even produces a range of 6mm scale cardstock ships for use with the game.  Don't let the scale fool you, these boats are big, I'm talking around 12cm long for the smaller ships such as the Hemoila and 22cm long for the bigger ships such as the Hexeres.  And I havent even seen any of the flagships let alone anything from Marc Anthony's fleet.  The rules look pretty good, nothing complex and the hex based system makes for a fast game with none of those "discussions" over ranges or movement.

The suggested build time for a ship is around the hour mark although the first one took me around two hours as I took my time trying to work out the best way to cut all the fiddly curves without bending the card too much.  The ships come together quite easily and look great for a cardstock ship.  The price is around $10 for a navy set and most of the ships come with multiple colour variations and optional parts.  I don't even want to try and guess how much a resin ship would cost in this scale, let alone a metal one.  So the great thing here is that your navy is only limited by the number your print and build.  And they come pre painted!

I'll need to purchase another game mat for this one, probably get a double sided one with 5" hexes one side and 1.5" hexes on the other (Bag the Hun).  Won't get too many 5" hexes on a 6x4 mat so I may end up ordering two and I'll leave the other side of the second one blank in case I uhhh... *checks to make sure his wife isn't in the room* buy any other games that doesn't need hexes.

Almost Ready for Painting

An afternoon of gluing and basing and I was almost ready to start painting. I was double checking the army list with the mini requirements when I noticed that the Imperial Biker Company needed a CHQ stand and a Commissar stand. The problem is that we don't have any of those minis, nor am I even sure that they actually exist. Well ok I'm sure Forgeworld would have something but at those prices I don't think we'll be placing an order any time soon.

I tried a few variants of CHQ and Commissars standing next to a bike or between two bikes but nothing really looked right.

So I decided to start cutting up minis and see what I could come up with. The CHQ stand was simply a case of cutting off the bikers right arm and sticking on the chainsword arm from the CHQ infantry mini. Then I glued the standard to the rear of the bike, simple and effective. I also glued the bikes onto the stand in a staggered pattern to help differentiate them from the other bike stands.

The Commissar was a little more work. I cut away the original bikers head and shoulders but left the chest and arms in place. I was a slow and careful process of cutting the Commissars upper body to fit the body of the biker. I really wanted to have his jacket billowing out behind him on the bike but I think it would have been a lot of work for such a small mini. So just to give him that something extra I decided to cut the base away and have the bike rearing up almost like it's leaping off the base. I'm pretty happy with the results.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I've recently started a small side project for a friend the requires me to shift away the teeny tiny 1/600 (3mm) scale of Tumbling Dice for Bag the Hun aircraft up to the lofty 6mm scale of Games Workshop's Epic. 5,000pts all up and I'm really looking forward to this one, although I'm a little nervous as this is the first time I've painted anything substantial for someone else.

Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.


Some close up shots of the army.

I've done most of the major clean up work: removing flash, smoothing mould lines and drilling out the barrels of the bigger cannons. I think I'll start with something small to get my eye and brush hand in and then I'll try to break the back of the 60 or so stands if IG troops. Once that's done I'll get into the fun stuff: tanks, tanks and more tanks.

Back To The Drawing Board

Well after all my procrastination and eventual hard work pinning my 1/600 Tumbling Dice planes it turns out there was a slight flaw. A plane on it's own sat still and didn't shift when you picked it up and moved it around. Put it on a table with a dozen other planes (and magnets) and some planes would always turn to face the largest group of magnets. This amused my youngest no end but it wasn't something I wanted to have happen in a game. So I went back to my original plan of magnets on the stands and on the planes themselves.


To do so required two things:

1. I had to remove the pins that I had put into most of my planes as they stopped the magnets from sitting flush with the plane.
2. The bombers required that I carve out a flat area for the magnets to sit on. Not so easy to do on a small mini, especially while keeping my fingers safe.

It took a lot of time, effort and fricking around. But what I ended up with was this.


I'm really happy with the results. I'm even thinking of making a small goose neck to go between the magnets for the Stuka's to show when they're dive bombing. I also need to strip the paint on the Spitfires as it's too thick from too many test coats. I'll spray them next time to keep the base coat nice and thin.

Oh and yeah I know I should have had most of the planes painted by now but I've been sidetracked again, with these little fellas.

I just love Epic but sadly had to let mine all go. A friend and I are planning an epic game of... Epic... and this is the start of the Squat forces. I'll blog the progress of the army and put up an AAR of the eventual battle.

Russian Napoleonics

While cleaning up some space in my cupboard I found a few packs of 6mm Russian Napoleonic that I've had hanging around for almost 15 years now.

And here's the rules I bought at the same time, I think I've played them maybe 3 times.

About a year ago I set myself some ground rules for all games and miniatures that I had. The first rule was that I had to have a complete game. That meant I had all the rules and at least two full armies. The second rule was they all had to be based, prepped and painted. The only exception to that rule is my DBA army, but that was given to me so it's exempt... for now.

So if I'm to keep these I need to get another army, it shouldn't be too hard to source some French. I'd like to use the rules I have, simply because I already have them but wargame rules can come a long way in 15 years. I would really like to get some rules based on the GW Warmaster system.

I think some research is in order.

Timbo