Long blog update this time, here is a summary:

• Pikeman’s Lament in 6mm – Planning and Buying Stage
• Another batch for the Towards Moscow Project from Marching in Colour
• Mutant 1984 for Scrappers, some more “terrainish” stuff – a Citroën, oil tanks and some old Trucks

Pikeman’s Lament in 6mm

I bought a copy of The Pikeman’s Lament by Daniel Mersey and Michael Leck a few months ago.  It is, as the title hints, a Pike and Shot period skirmish level game and in the sample companies provided it covers the Thirty Years War (TYW), English Civil War (ECW), the Deluge (Northern War 1655-60), Scanian Wars, King Williams War (the First French Indian War) and the Great Northern War (GNW). Being a Osprey book it has the typical style and layout of their other wargames books.

The rules are derived from the very popular Lion Rampant rules created by Daniel Mersey (who also wrote the Dux Bellorum and Men Who Would be Kings that the Little One and I really enjoy playing having had a few goes, see here for our first game) and on a quick read these rules caught my interest sufficiently to get me thinking about trying them out.

Michael Leck is, perhaps, more famous for the fantastic stuff he presents on his Dalauppror blog (here) and his articles in the Wargames, Soldier and Strategy magazine where he has presented snippets from the rich Swedish military history and how to adapt some popular rule set to play in these, more than often, unknown theatres.  You may recall that I put up a picture of his fantastic, and award winning, game at Salute in the last blog update (here).  Michael, and I, used to roll dice and use our imagination in the same role-playing club many moons ago.

There is a comprehensive review of the rules on the “I live with Cats blog”, that I found useful (link here). I wanted to give them a try doing two small starting forces in line with the Men Who Would be King stuff I did before.  I just needed to find a period – a pleasant problem looking for a solution.

Last week Nick Dorrell, and I, were talking about some (far) future projects and we discussed the Russian Pruth Campaign. This was whilst we were running our Salute Game (more here).   Nick has a book soon to come out called Peter the Great Humbled: The Russo-Ottoman War of 1711.   Nick’s book tells the story about this campaign that led to the surrender of the Russian forces near the Pruth river.  It also presents the forces involved in the conflict, their size, actual composition, and tactics used. It is not a very well known conflict but due to the natural link to the Great Northern War I find it very interesting and I am looking forward to read the final book (I pre-ordered my copy of Nicks book from here).

Although the engagmement were mainly attacks on fortifications some “what ifs” or special scenarios could be played – but then I thought why not do a few units from this period and try out the Pikeman’s Lament Rules. Following on from this I went ahead and actually bought a few miniatures from Baccus at Salute that will be perfect for a very small diversion to try out the Pikeman’s Lament rules. Arguably more shot than pike as the Russian left their pikes at home for this campaign (if my sources are correct), but why not?

Miniatures

I got the following packs from Baccus (pictures taken from their Webpage, as I have not yet even opened the packs):

Ottomans

OTT02 – Janissaries, musket – firing and loading

GNP05 – Hussars –  to represent Ottoman Sipahi cavalry

From this I will do:

5 Veteran Shot @ 6 points each (Janissaries; may form Close Order)

4 Trotters @ 4 points each (Sipahis cavalry, the Polish Hussars without wings being used as a reasonable proxy)

Russians

WSS03- Grenadier (Tall Mitre)

WSS08 – Dragoons

WSS12 – Dismounted Dragoons

Forces

From this I will do (note the models are from the WSS range not the GNW Russian Range, as these works perfectly well for Russians of this period. I also wanted to get a chance at seeing these):

4 Dragoons @ 4 points each (these are Dragoons in a traditional dismount to fire role as per the rules)

3 Forlorn Hope @ 6 points each (Grenadiers)

4 Raw Trotters @ 3 points each (In reality also Russian Dragoons but to simulate a more active cavalry role classified as Trotters. The Russian Dragoons did practice some all out cavalry attacks and by this time it seems reasonable but still classified as raw).

This gives me 46 points for each side (starting size is 24 points so should be more than plenty to give me some variety in size). There is also enough to do another few Shot units and Trotters for the Ottomans and some more Trotters and Forlorn Hope units for the Russians.

In summary:

Ottomans	No	Pts/ unit	Total Pts	Unit Size	Total Models	Baccus Pack
Veteran Shot	5	6	30	12	60	OTT02
Trotters	4	4	16	6	24	GNP05
Total	9	–	46	–	84	–
Russians	No	Pts/ unit	Total Pts	Unit Size	Total Models	Baccus Pack
Dragoons	4	4	16	6	24	WSS12
Forlorn Hope	3	6	18	6	18	WSS03
Raw Trotters	4	3	12	6	24	WSS08
Total	11	–	46	–	66	–

Basing and Notes

These will based as I did my Zulu war stuff based on the 1-2-3 method discussed in a previous posting (see here).   I have had a few questions about where I get bases of small size like 9mm etc. Basically I order Penny Washers from ebay, here is an example (I have no association with this seller) but I have successfully bought stuff from them.

In the detail provided the following list is given, we can see the diameter we may need (outer diameter). Just pick the one you want.

With regards to the little hole in the middle I put a magnet inside and cover it with a sticker on both sides (see here to get the idea, Step 6 in the “Shock Marker” tutorial). I think the washers are also sometimes referred to as fender washers.

Another batch from Marching in Colour

As discussed in previous blog posting I have decided to use Marching in Colour painting service (link to the background to this decision here and to the Marching in Colour Website here) to help me with the Towards Moscow Project and Chris sent me through the pictures from the latest batch the other day. I have to admit that my experience in using this service have been second to none. I am looking forward in getting these and complete the miniatures needed for this and next years Joy of Six. I will get to this in the next few weeks (as I have to!) and will post updates as I progress and also discuss the next stages of production to final based units.  Here are the pictures (Russians and Swedish), I let them speak for themselves.  Although it is a little bit of a luxury this is the best decision for some time I have done with regards to my hobby time (and budget!).  Thanks for your help Chris!

More about the Towards Moscow Trilogy (TMT) Great Northern War project can be found here.

Mutant 1984 for Scrappers

I did a few more pieces for the Mutant 1984 project inspired by three recent purchases (see more about this project here).

Muddy Car

When I went to South of France a few weeks backs I went to a French Market and found one of these for a few Euros.  It is a Citroën ID19 and is in 1/43 scale. I love the look of these cars.

I thought it would be weird to make it into a military vehicle and found this little pack with two plastic (28mm) miniatures given out for free at some show a few years back.

I carefully opened up the car and added one of them as a driver and the second one standing on the top. Then I painted it in three colours and gave it a Sepia Wash.

Then I put the two pieces together and applied some mud. Job done and weird enough.

Oil Tanks

Our Salute table was next to a demo table showing some oil tanks from Bandua wargames.  I convinced myself that I needed some of these. You can buy them from Wayland Games (here).

These are ready painted and the looked great with the other ready painted terrain on the table. When I had assembled them I got some second thoughts and decided to modify them slightly. I cut out some plastic (from a DVD box) and added this on top and then did some detailing on the hatch (a little piece of plastic).  This created a little more detail to the piece and took 5 minutes.

Then I dry brushed it with Gunmetal and added some dots of rust (light rust from the Vallejo range) and then applied a light wash with Vallejo rust effect.

Poundland Trucks

We (I and the little One) bought some grey spray paints from Poundland here in the UK. We noticed some trucks and thought we could do something with them – we splashed out and bought two of them.

And turned them into two terrain items (good value indeed).

/ All the best, have a good week