Seven Years War

Some of you out there are going to roll your eyes to the heavens in a mo, I am thinking of giving Chain of Command another shot, there I have said it. Why, well I am not sure, I watched a couple of videos the other night and what went on looked a lot easier and less horrendous than all my other attempts to like this game. Now I could just have been utterly useless and stunned by my previous attempts and I will admit to not being the best WWII player around, but I am a wargamer of some experience and the situations I found myself in were terrible and not a lot of fun. They were also multiplayer games and like Bolt Action at the end of the day these are designed for 1v1 play, maybe that was a problem, maybe not.I also cannot get away from the fact that I think the Patrol Phase is one of the best mechanisms I have ever not used, in fact I am surprised it has not been adapted for other periods, maybe with a bit of tweaking but it must have potential. When, now I have to read the rules first then either sort out a

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Saga campaign game again at the club, one of my two defending games, Saxons had invaded the empire and I had to sort them out, they had obviously heard of the fabled wealth of Byzantium and came to grab their share.Once the preliminaries were out of the way we had five turns to play, in a line I had Hearthguard, Warriors, Warlord, Hearthguard and archers, I cannot not take archers as far as I know, I had decided this time to plonk them in some terrain which helped their defence if attacked. The Saxons (Dan) put most of his men on my left and at when it looked like his hearthguard might suffer from some archery (yeah right) he turned these towards his right as well. So I moved the archers forward as you would do, but this was a mistake, back came the Hearthguard at the trot and smashed into the archers, shades of Manzikert again.Byzantines But this time the archers did not die in droves, well they did but enough remained to fall back, this opened up some opportunities for me, I ran my cavalry into the Sax

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I finished my second French cavalry unit last week, the Apchon Dragoons, a nice red coat with light blue facings, this gives me two cavalry squadrons for each side now. It was time to order up the next batch of SYW figures and I drew back from the Grenadiers I wanted to get two more cavalry units, one each. Now I am not a big fan of painting cavalry and have reduced the squadrons from twelve to eight figures so I came up with a brilliant idea, you get two cavalry flags for the one regiment from GMB and if you just continue to add different squadrons you end up with a lot of flags left over, so why not build two squadrons instead of one. Now the really clever part is that if I ever do need a large unit of cavalry I can combine two eights for sixteen, voila!The not so clever bit comes next, instead of ordering basically the same figures I made a mistake and ordered up a new set for the British, these will not fit as the 10th Dragoons second squadron so I had to order up another set of flags as this lot will be

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Right, what with one thing and another it has taken me ages to get the grenadier battalion finished. I had thought of doing one stand from each of the regiments I had already done or was planning to do but decided this was too labour intensive. I therefore split the battalion into grenadiers from only two regiments, ironically two which I do not have.Anyway I chose the 55th (green) and the 23rd (blue) regiments, the latter being the Welch Fusileers I am not planning at the moment to add either of these to my forces. Quite a bit of lace work and I just noticed on the photographs that one guy has slipped through with a bare left sleeve, need to get that done asap. I am pleased with the look and after one more British cavalry regiment I will have to make up my mind to do more British or move on to the Hanoverians etc.Complete battalion.23rd.55thI have quickly managed to get my 75mm howitzer done, it was not a complicated paint job, I tried to reduce the camo colours to show they had faded but it is hard to do wi

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Another bunch of Scots for the Seven Years War with more to be added later, I had a look at the Perry AWI Highlanders and think they would do for a couple of battalions and fit well with my Front Rank figures. There is also one more Scots battalion I can add to the French. So the long term plan for the rest of the year which has just come to me, is the Highland battalions for the British, Scots and Irish for the French along with another artillery battery and cavalry regiment for each and we will see where I am after that.You really have to fit the uniform to the figures with SYW, and I think the only thing with these troops was the missing shoulder tab, which I could have painted on but didn't and the cuffs which I did paint properly with the blue slash. I get all my information from the Kronoskaf site which I take to be correct in most details and is a fantastic research site for wargamers, I even gave them some money.I have got the Bolt Action bug again and having got the Tiger I cheap I decided as you kno

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My Vapnartak post got more comments than anything else I have done, at the end of the day any show is what you make of it, I always enjoyed the wargames but I am harking back to my days at the McClellan Galleries in Glasgow or Claymore in the building across from the Museum of Scotland, back when CND picketed we armchair generals. I can get everything I want online so the wargaming side is more important to me, but I think I am barking up the wrong tree there. The issue of being ignored is another matter entirely but I will let that rest, maybe it is me, my classic good looks tend to scare people.Anyway, I have finished the Rubicon Tiger 1 I treated myself to. The kit was pretty easy to build and had options for early, mid and late war, I am not a rivet counter here and would be quite happy to pay a couple of quid less than get road wheels and such I have to throw in the bin. The only thing I was not entirely happy with was the tracks, to my eyes they were just not very detailed, and the bottom layer which th

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It has taken me a couple of days to get around to this report thanks to the incompetent doctors at my local surgery, I have had an infection which has made my life miserable for almost four weeks now, they said it was gone, I said it hadn't, so a week without medication and it got worse. Then they give me penicillin despite what I suspect was a big red warning across the screen as I am allergic to it, thankfully I noticed it before I took any. The sorry saga continues.Due to the above I toyed with the idea of not going to the club, but Stuart and Rob had brought 'Cruel Seas' for me to try and I couldn't let them down. As you know this game seems to be sweeping the board in popularity at the moment, you can't walk the streets now without searching for torpedo wakes. I do not have the game and will not be getting it, three people at the club have it and I have my Seven Years War project to throw money at. Despite not getting the game I have been following developments as it is produced by Warlord Games, it woul

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I won't bore you with the details of my ills over the festive season, suffice to say I am 95% back to normal and I already have three bookings at the Docs to kick the year off. I have now finished my French cavalry, I did not manage to base them last year so they are the first to be completed this year. They are the Royal Roussillon regiment dressed in a nice blue with red trimmings, they were supposed to wear a cuirasse but trying to get figures to correspond to all the uniform variations is impossible, thankfully it does say that they wore their tan waistcoat over the cuirasse at times so that was fine by me. I am now going to cut my cavalry regiments down to eight figures, I may still do the odd twelve man but I want to cut down on painting and expense.I bit the bullet and ordered up my next four infantry battalions, this should keep me painting until Easter as I am away for most of March. I have the 51st Foot and Grenadiers for the British also Grenadiers for the French and how could I resist the Royal Ec

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Just a very quick update, only one unit of Russian Cuirassiers, Prince Fedorovich.Again the standard Russian Cuirassier uniform.

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I have not painted 10mm Seven Years War for ages but a few packs fell in to my hands out of my 'lucky dip box' (I bag my figures for my ongoing projects into units and put them all into a big plastic tub and blind pic what to paint).  It just so happens that I got three bags in a row this time around.The whole batch.  In front are 5 Russian Generals. The Novotroiskiy Cuirassier, now all Russian cuirassiers in this period look the same.  Buff coats, red saddle cloths and black cuirass.  The only thing that marks the regiments apart are the colours of their standards, this regiments colour is green.The 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Observation Corps Grenadiers.  the Observation Corps wore standard infantry uniform except for their boots, they had been issued with black dragoon boots, the dragoons where being reorganised at the start of the war. All figures are from Pendraken, my only (very small) moan, more of a exhale is the cast on flags and this is only because I am no

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I have just finished basing up my first cavalry for the Seven Years War project, naturally they were British and just as night follows day they are Scots.The figures are Wargames Foundry, I went for these because Front Rank don't do an officer in a mitre nor a standard bearer, unless my eyes are worse than I think they are. The horses are a decent fit against FR but the figures are a bit chunkier, although I don't think this will be too noticeable in the fog of war. As nice are FR are I do admit to liking the dashing poses of these troopers, which leaves me with the difficult choice of do I get more?These figures represent as best as possible the 2nd (Royal North British) Dragoons (Scots Greys), I say this because no one could possibly make a SYW range with all the little nuances of uniform and equipment which abound in this period, especially for the cavalry. The main colours of the regiment are there as are the grenadier caps, also the flag is authentic, other pieces I fitted in as I could, for instance the

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Club night and Bolt Action, a very dreich night too, cold and miserable but we can't complain it has been an excellent year weather wise. Rob brought his Para's and an Arnhem scenario, a British blocking force is attempting to slow down a German push against the main Para position, at first the Germans only have infantry, as the game progresses the German forces begin to build up with armour arriving.Rob was the Para's with Simon and I having the Germans between us, we had to capture the roads leading off the table, there were three, two houses dominated the central area and the Para's had claimed these and were happy to sit in them, a couple of other squads held the extreme flanks. It looked like we could overwhelm one flank and then attack the houses, Simon sent his halftracks racing up the road into the British position, the first was hit by a PIAT and burst into flames as the passengers disembarked to hug the ground. I was a little more cautious and approached through a large cornfield.Simon races up the

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Whilst at home I managed to play a large game of Seven Years War in 10mm at PAW.The field was occupied by a Prussian Army confronted by a combined Russian and Austrian force.We used the new edition of Black Powder, BP2.The table was 8 foot by 4 foot and the armies numbered over 50 battalions, with over 1000 foot figures.  Then of course we had the cavalry.The long view, AustroRussian on the left and Prussian on the rightMass Russian cavalry on the right wingLine and lines of red coated RussiansThe Austrians on the leftPrussian left wing cavalryPrussian centerPrussian right cavalryAustrians and Prussians clash in the centerOverview of the centerRussians on the hillAustrians and Prussians clash over the hedgesThe game came to an end too soon, so a marginal victory for the AustroRussians but it was a great game to play.BP2, with army list additions from Olicanlad (check out his great blog http://olicanalad.blogspot.com/)I love playing large games, to me this is what wargaming is all about....hence my aim of

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The legendary Anderson Wargame Fortune turned a corner recently so I found I have some spare shekels for wargaming stuff again so took a leave out of Mrs Nicholson's book (for non British readers or readers under a certain age Google will help). As you know I got several Charlie Foxtrot  buildings for Bolt Action along with a small Norman church from Dark Ops (still waiting for this).Adding to this I replenished some of my paints, about half a dozen colours and got my friend Julian to pop into GW and get me Balor Brown, I am still on the lookout for something which matches the old Snakebite Leather. If he is at the club on Tuesday night I will pick it up, fingers crossed. I also jumped the gun and got some gravestones off Ebay for the upcoming churchyard, they arrived very quickly but were huge, they would have suited 54mm figures not 28mm. My own fault really as I did not look at the side pics, only the main one which did not give an idea of the size of the pieces. I have therefore ordered more headston

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Whilst home from work I managed to get a game in, yes an unusual occurrence but a very enjoyable one.Having never been used my 10mm Seven Years Austrians, me and Russians, Clive needed to see the light of day.  I did not quite have enough Russians so they were ably assisted by the Reichesarmee, although they were treated as Russians.  No army lists were used, we just made up brigades with what I had and put them on the table.I'm sorry about the quality of the pictures I took them on my IPad. Austrian right wing, a brigade of hussars and cuirassier with an infantry brigade advancing to the front.The Austrian line, four brigades of cavalry and four of infantry.The Russian left flank, a large brigade of Cossacks, who proved to be quite useless so may need to adjust their stats.  Inside them are a brigade of hussars and a brigade of cuirassier.  Unfortunately for Clive he never managed to get the hussars and cuirassier into combat. A closer look at the Austrian right wing, hussars and cuirassi

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