All quiet on the southern front

The blog has been somewhat inactive in the past month, and one could be forgiven for believing I have fallen off the face of the wargaming world. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but what the silence does indicate is a lack of gaming. Earlier this year I decided that in an effort to keep the blog tidy and make me focus on the gaming side of my hobby more, I would only post battle reports on the blog. So no painting updates and no navel gazing (surely in a wargaming blog that should be naval?).  With John in the process of extensive renovations and my games table covered in bits and bobs a gaming space has been hard to come by, and as regards time, I have been using it to build and paint. However, I feel the urge to write an update and get some decent navel gazing in, as I have embarked on a series of new and exciting projects in the past couple of months.

First of all, the painting:

Spanish Marlburians..

Their British opponents (and sheep in the background...)

Some of the painting that I've done for Craig.

A close up of some of the WWI tanks I've painted for him

A whole paratrooper company along with an SS company and other assorted Flames of War painting have come to their conclusion, and so today I received the next batch of German grenadiers to start on. Not that I'm complaining, as this, as always, is funding my own projects.

So what's he working on now then?

The release of the Pikeman's Lament rules has been a filip to my wargaming ambitions. At first I decided that I would do the Thirty Years War and invest in a battalia box from Warlord Games, which would give me virtually everything that I needed. But while that package was going AWOL I came to the conclusion that there is no reason that these rules wouldn't work wonderfully well for the Wargames Factory Marlburian figures I had lying around. Having bought Nick Dorrell's book on the Allied armies operating in Spain, I decided to concentrate on this theatre as the background to the project. Then I began reading about Peterborough's campaigns. Needless to say I am hooked. Currently I'm halfway through building companies for the Allied and Bourbon forces.

The other thing that Pikeman's Lament stirred in my imagination was that they would be eminently suitable, with very little adaptation, to the second, and rather more famous, Peninsular War. So add a box of Victrix French and a box of Perry British, and that plastic mountain just continues to grow. It therefore means that I have three skirmish scale projects under development all using the same basic rules. Even better, PL is so much like Lion Rampant, that the same rules system is also my go-to for Gallic Wars skirmish. Although I have decided to start calling Eagle Rampant, 'Caesar Rampant', due to the Napoleonic version of Lion Rampant having the same name. And just to maximise the utility of the rules, I also have three boxes of plastic Gripping Beast Dark Ages on their way to be kitted out for the same games system.

On top of this I also have ordered some  Black Hat 15mm Marlburian armies to be used with the Honours of War rules, meaning that these will now form the basis for my Seven Years War, Great Northern War and, (now) Spanish Succession gaming.

Just when I was thinking this seemed like a lot to deal with, Mike announced his intention of playing Team Yankee, Battlefront's World War Three game. A couple of quick messages and my Great War Flames of War were swapped with Craig for his Cold War Soviets and the beginning of a West German army too. 

And as my butterfly like mind refused to settle anywhere for more than  few seconds, a final project has begun to develop in my mind. This is to get hold of some of the Irregular Miniatures 42mm toy soldiers and paint them up in gloss varnish, using dead simple HG Wells/Young and Lawford/Featherstone/Grant style rules. My mind is thinking of British and Germans in the 1890s. Guards in Bearskins, line infantry in home service helmets, Life Guards in crested helms taking on uhlans and pickelhaubed hordes. The sort of thing that would happily grace a nursery floor at the end of the Victorian period.

Will this new endeavour require the growth of a moustache?

So stay tuned, a lot of new projects on the horizon.

And hopefully some gaming. Which will mean blog posts.

Nate