Salute 2023 – Sharing the Joy of Six, the 6mm Charity Project

On 14/02/2023 By The OneIn 18th Century Rules, 6mm, Charity Project, Shows3 Comments

Last time at Salute Nick Dorrell and I brought the Poltava 1709 game and we had a blast on a 16 feet table and even came back home with an award (more about that here) – this year we will only bring a normal sized 6 feet table. However the loss of width we more than adequately gain in the depth of this project. This time we will bring armies created not by sweat and frustration like mine usually are, but instead two armies that was created by over 50 painters during the recent lock down – a true community effort and we would like show these armies. We have further put these into an Imagination setting where we have the Kingdom of Denswe in a war against the Tsardom of Siarus.

We presented the project at the Virtual Joy of Six in 2021 and will bring the armies to be displayed at the Joy of Six in July (not as a game but for our painters and others to get an opportunity to have a look at it in all its glory).

The idea is summarised above, but there are a fair few previous blog posts covering the project that you might want to check out.

More here:

Lund 1676 and the Charity Project at Virtual Joy of Six 2021 on 4th July

6mm Charity Painting Update no 3

6mm Charity Painting Update no 2

6mm Charity Painting Update no 3

Community effort to jointly paint some 6mm armies for fun and charity!

And here a presentation of the two armies.

6mm Charity Fun – an overview of the Two Armies (first draft)

An old overview of the project

Apart from the armies that were gifted by Baccus (link to them here) and sent to each painter, we have been given a wargames mat from Geek Villain (link to their webpage here) – they produce some amazing mats (I have 5 myself), and Nick will include a copy of his Twilight of the Sun King to the eventual winner of the armies, once we have finalised how we will “get rid” off the project.

However, we would like to include more and ideally the eventual winner will be given sufficient stuff to fold out the mat, put on the terrain and play with the armies. I guess we could throw in stuff we have lying around at home, but if you fancy and find the idea interesting for your business to get some small 6mm exposure and Spreading the Joy of Six then let us know and we might even tell people about it, we would be looking for (with the prefix – suitable for 6mm scale, or size):

Road
River
Hills
Houses / Churches / Wind mills
Trees
Hedges
Any other idea that might fit…

Happy to paint them up/base things to fit the overall look. If you are interested just contact us through the blog.

Anyway, looking forward to see you at Salute if you are going to the show, otherwise at Joy of Six (but just bringing the armies).

/ All the best

Mike Hobbs 6mm Rommel Project

On 12/02/2023 By The OneIn 6mm, Adler, WW24 Comments

I have been given a few things from the late Mike Hobbs (I wrote more about Mike here) and the most noteworthy must be the 6mm collection of Rommel stuff that he was working on every now and then. The collection came with a number of painted items and some unpainted ones indicating that he had some further grand plans. However as we shall see there are more than adequate completed bases to have some grand games. Mike and a few friends had been playtesting the Rommel rules and had used some of these bases during that process.

Today I spent some time going through the boxes and organising the two sides – there are is German and a Russian army. They are based on 70mm by 50mm mdf bases and with a total more than 200 bases (a detailed breakdown is provided at the end of thus blog post) – each base being unique and telling its own story. I and a few others are planning to run some games with these and more than likely bring them to a show at some point next year, in 2024.

Anyway, here are some pictures from today’s inventory exercise (it is a mixture of Adler and Baccus WW2 infantry and Heroics and Ros and GHQ vehicles) – a wonderful collection.

I also got Mike’s Rommel Rulebook with a dedication by Sam Mustafa,

This weekend I have been making some railway terrain to be used for gaming with these and for some other theatres. I used the tracks pieces from Leven Miniatures for this project (link here), they were brilliant.

/ Hope that was of some interest

Here are the details for the German bases:

And the Russian / Soviet army

Zone Wars – Mutant: Year Zero

On 04/01/202314/02/2023 By The OneIn Games played, Mutant 19844 Comments

At the end of last year a Kickstarter caught my eye and got me really excited – this was of course the Zone Wars – Mutant: Year Zero Multiplayer Skirmish Mayhem (link that will take you to the kickstarter, that was fully funded and will probably have a late pledge option once they get the pledge manager up and running. Go and check it out).

The game is based on the Mutant Year 0 universe, and the computer game with the same name, and offers 4 factions in the full pledge of 5 miniatures – these are basically mutated animals, mutated humans, robots and psionic users (PSI mutants back in the day).

As you might be aware I have been a hardcore fan of the Post apocalyptic Scandinavian theme since the Mutant RPG (the predecessor to Mutant Year 0) in 1984. I have done a number of projects with this as a theme over the last few years, if you explore the blog.

The Kickstarter will no be delivered until the end of this year, however it is possible to try out the rules as an early version of the ruleset, with cards and markers, is available to download here (link to a Free League Drop box folder as of today 03/01/23). It required as little bit of work to cut our the cards and to make the markers, but since we were looking for a Christmas Game I thought it would be worth making the effort, and as will be revealed later we had a blast playing it so it was worth the effort.

Further I decided to make a few gangs based on miniatures I had instead to seeking proxies to the models in the actual game at least for this test run of the game.

I created the following four gangs (details on stats etc provided at the end of this post). Are they balanced? – maybe not but hopefully balanced enough.

The Mutants – Top a model from the Aftermath Kickstarter by Mark Evans (I guess you could contact Mark and see if they are still for sale if you are interested), second row a Black Scorpion Mad Jim Jones model (still for sale) and another two models for the Aftermath Kickstarter. Finally a model from the Wargames Illustrated Giants in Miniatures range, looks like it is OOP, it is a of course a model of the amazing Captain Klenzendorf from Jojo Rabbit.

The Feral Farm – All models apart from the Koala are from the NoMAD Kickstarter (look for them on Kickstarter and perhaps you could get some if you are keen). The Koala I do not remember where it originates from.

Heavy Metal – I have no idea where no 1 is from, the second is from the NoMAD kickstarter, the third from CP Models and no. 4 from the first edition of Space Hulk and the final model I have had for some time and not sure where he is from.

Psykers – all thse models where made from the Stargrave crew II set of plastic miniatures.

Also went to town creating some jump off markers, including a flying stand for one of the many memorable beasts of the RPG rules from 1984.

Of course we are talking about the blood eagle that is a model that Mike Hobbs gave to me when I was looking for a great eagle for a project – it works brilliantly for this role and will circle the battle field.

What happens in the Zone stays in the zone.

Some home made counters and I used my Mutant Year 0 Dice.

Activation markers for each faction and red ones for the zone marker – the zone has as many goes as each player.

I have a lot of terrain that can be used for the Zone.

As for the game, it was a blast and we laughed and had a jolly good time. The basic premise was to pick up a number of old tech items and return with these avoiding to get killed by other player or as we found the zone itself. The Zone is more than capable of making life hard for the players in a wonderful way, the zone activates once a round through a marker and normally introduces a potential bad thing of some sort. In addition, as the the game progressed there is a build up of Acid Rain cards that works as a countdown mechanism – as the fourth card is played all the models on the board not returned back to their jump off point dies.

Here are a few pictures from the game:

Set up with Des starting in the upper left corner, Shaun in the lower right corner and I in the lower left corner

I was playing the Feral Farmers – they ended up doing really badly but I had really fun in my suffering.

The table with the Artefact tokens being spread out, each hiding an artefact from the Past – ranging from useless to the magic of Gaffer tape.

The Land Shark attacked early and then remain pestering the players for the rest of the game.

The Old Space hulk model scared the brown out of my throughout the game

The Swedish Tiger was another surprise offered by the Zone

As was the Giant Beetle, another classic monster…

The winning hand of artefacts recovered – well done Shaun.

In summary good fun…

All the best and keep toysoldiering on!

We will continue exploring the zone with some further stuff in the making.

Here are the models and stats we used on the day (apart from the Psykers as we were only three playing):

Far East Campaign 1941-42 – Making a River

On 02/10/202202/10/2022 By The OneIn 15mm, Far East, WW24 Comments

Following on from the last blog post (ages ago, about the Japanese Platoon, here) please find an update on the project. The last few weeks has been spent making some Jungle terrain including recently – a river.

The first thing I did was to cut some pieces of river, I made these 6 inches wide in total, I used White Foamex Board 3mm thick, that is a fantastic material to work with, it is not that cheap but have wonderful non-warping properties compated to say MDF, at least in my experience. Note the additional border added (this is just abut 10mm cut out of the offcut on each side). Be careful here and make sure that each piece fits with the others. You can get 10 A2 boards for about £35 on ebay, I used two boards for the project so about £7.

I made enough for 8 feet (as we occassional might need a longer river). The 2 feet versions will become more fragile as they are a little bit wobbly and might not be strong enough unless you are careful – so worth considering. I went for the longer version. Cut down the sides.

I then added some filler on the outside of the borders.

I then added some sand on the inside of the border

Missed a few steps here, but in summary (i) Paint all of it in dark brown, (ii) paint the middle part with no sand in a greenish colour (this was done by mixing dark brown with yellow), add some highlights, (iii) drybrush the sand with a light brown (spill over a little bit on the green parts, (iv) add Herbs the Provance on the sides (cover with PVA and add the herbs), (v)add some foliage, I used some flock and some plastic jungle plants (let dry at appropriate points).

The final thing is to mix some clear resin and pour it over the boards (I used a clear low odour version from CFS, for this project but some brands can be really smelly), I cut a piece of foamex and applied it on each side with some hot glue, if you add a consistent bead of it on the side the leakage should be minimal but ensure it drops on something you are not precious about. I did a test piece before the big pour to make sure it all worked – and it did. I added some light brown paint in the resin to make it a little bit more interesting. I probably spent the equivalent of say £13 on resin for this project, meaning that the total cost of the river with the boards at £7 (with the cost of the other materials being negligible), so about £20 in total.

Alternatively you could just use a gloss varnish a few times over the boards, but will have a less striking effect.

Ended up with 8 feet of river.

Next time we will look at some of the other jungle stuff built/made to date.

Until then keep on toysoldiering!

Far East Campaign 1941-42 – 15mm Japanese Platoon

On 20/08/2022 By The OneIn 15mm, Far East, Uncategorized, WW28 Comments

Good friend Des has taken an interest in the 1941-42 Dutch Far East Campaign and consequently so have I and whilst he is doing the less common Dutch (in the sense that we do not often see Dutch Forces on the table in European battles and perhaps even less common in the Far East ones) I will be doing some Japanese. This is a short blog just to introduce the platoon and I am more than sure there will be more detailed posts following this one. There are a few options but I narrowed it down to either Peter Pig or Skytrex as they both do really nice ranges that covers most if not all needs, I went with Skytrex on this occasion.

As for the Platoon I have used the Platoon as presented in the Too Fat Lardies Christmas Special 2015, available on their webpage. There is a Malaya 1942 campaign that looks excellent and gives you the basics of a Japanese platoon and a few special rules – these will do until the Chain of Command Far East supplement is released at some point in the future.

I primed them in chocolate brown and used Desert Yellow (vallejo) for the uniforms highlighted in various Desert Yellow/Iraqi Sand mixes (25% to 75%). The Helmet is Brown Violet (again Vallejo).

Platoon HQ – Senior and Junior Leader (yes I added a flagbearer that needs to get a flag)

Mortar Squad – 3 mortar teams (4 in each) with a Junior Leader

Next the first Rifle Squad – LMG team (4) and Rifle team (9)

Second Rifle Squad – LMG team (4) and Rifle team (9)

Third Rifle Squad – LMG team (4) and Rifle team (9)

I also did another Rifle Squad as a support options, as well as some MMG teams and Infantry Guns.

Next issue will be to find some vehicles… but that is for next time. Hope that was of some interest.

/Keep Toysoldiering!

OUSEing LARD 2022

On 10/07/2022 By The OneIn Sharp Practice, Shows, What a Tanker6 Comments

Went up to Bedford with Des on Saturday to attend the new OUSEing LARD event at the Kempston East Methodist Church Halls. In short it was another fantastic day enjoying a wide variety of Too Fat Lardies rulesets playing the period and not the rules. Meeting a lot of new and old friends having a blast.

Games on offer were:

I had the pleasure of playing Charley Walkers excellent Indian Mutiny Game in 1857 in the morning using the Sharp Practice rules in an interesting urban setting, with a mixture of troop types and exotic elements, including random events like holy cows, bombs, etc. The table is very immersive and the wonderful walls really adds to the overall experience.

The walls of Flyzabad had been breached ad the Khazi’s private army and mutineer allies under Subedar Abhinavin Asheet was pouring into the city to crush all vestiges of imperial rule. However, Captain Phil Macludgie and the ageing and rather poorly Sir Richard Fondler, marshal the remnants of the city’s European community in a bid to reach the North Gate of the City which is still held by a small force of Major Flushing’s loyal Sikhs.

I was controlling the Captain and Sir Richard and we did not manage to get to the North Gate but it was a really fun game and I thoroughly enjoyed it, a few pictures from the game here.

In the afternoon I tried John Savage’s What a Gangster ruleset, being an expansion of the upcoming What a Cowboy ruleset. It was really fun and the table was very immersive with John’s beautifully painted miniatures on a very nice terrain setting.

Well I took a few more pictures, so here we go in no particular order…

…and not to forget the nice special edition miniature by Paul Hicks given to each attendee.

The evening was spent at Brewpoint, a local brewery, before we had to dash of to take the train home. I think brilliant was a good summation of events. Thanks Ally for organising this and to all those who put up a game and of course all the people who attended and made it such a great day. I am already looking forward to attend the next one.

In other news I am still behind with some blog posts covering OML and the Joy of Six and some general hobby updates. But that is for another time.

/ Keep Toysoldiering

A Small 6mm Great Northern War Game

On 12/05/2022 By The OneIn 18th Century Rules, 6mm, Games played, Great Northern War, Twilight of the Sun King Rules2 Comments

Some silence on the blog for a while. I have a few drafts posts I never seem to get out of the door. Here is a short one, but I hope it will give you some of that Joy of Six.

Have had the pleasure of playing a fair amount of games with Des, and friends, in his shed of war (more about this later). Over the bank holiday weekend I wanted to introduce Des to the Twilight of the Sun King rules and bringing over some of those 6mm I “used” to dabble with.

I decided to go for the variant of Gadebusch scenario in the Great Northern War scenario book, I put this on at Joy of Six, a few year ago.

However this time I am going for a Summary board and replacing the Danish force with a full Saxon force and making some bespoke river/marshland board to represent the terrain. You can read about the actual battle here.

This the map fromm the book…

I did not feel that the rivers I had worked well and wanted to cover the marshlands as well, so I set about making a small river system for the game, with some vinyl floor planks, some acrylic adhesive mixed with brown paint and sand.

The final set-up, well worth adding the river sections.

Then pack it all up in my Swedish handbag.

Everytime I lay out a table with 6mm stuff I fall in love with the scale again, look at that…

Anyway some more pictures from the game…, this is not an AAR, but in summary.

The terrain tough and will break up the Swedish Advance and timing is important, the bombardment from the Saxons also served another problem to the advance,
The Swedish mobile light guns did a great job as they did in the real battle, and
It was somewhat in the balance but the Saxon morale broke after a successful attack on the left flank.

In other news I finally finished these old Holger Erikssson models, a little bit bigger than the 6mm stuff. They are lacking some detail here and there but an absolute joy to do.

So did Des like it and the rules, well I believe so?

“I had never played anything like them, but once I played a few turns and with Per being a good tutor, I got into the swing of things. The terrain was awful to manoeuvre over so a unique battle to try and fight. Ready for the next game now!”

Go and follow his adventures on Twitter – always tinkering with his collections and sharing some great stuff.

/ All the best, hope that was of some interest.

The Silver Bayonet (or Spurs) in Scania 1677 – Part 2

On 03/01/2022 By The OneIn Scanian War, Silver Bayonet Scania 16775 Comments

Following on from an earlier posting, link here (it could be worth checking that one first and come back here later if you have not seen it), here are some more stuff for the Scania 1677 project. The plan was to play a few games with the family over the Christmas/New Year period but due to COVID etc it did not materialise, however I did finish some stuff. The first this is a new unit, the Black Widows, led by Svart Sara. This is to represent the many casualties in the Scanian region during the war and the population being tired of having to provide contributions to both the Swedes and the Danes. She has swore to wear black until this war is over.

Svart Sara – a Landsknecht from Warlord with a head from the Frostgrave Wizards range, and a sword from the Assualt Group.

The Black Widows (Officer and 7 soldiers) – Officer and 100 points

Svart Sara (Officer), Ailo (A Sami Scout, counts as Native Scout) and 3 black widows (Infantry). Various conversions using Warlord English Civil War plastics for muskets, frostgrave female wizards, green stuff and the Sami Guide is a Compagnies Franches Officer with a headswap from Northstar).

Ulrica (Occultist), Maria (Supernatural investigator) and a Black Widow (Infantry), again various conversions.

I also made some more Danes, Swedes and Freeshooters. This is actually slowly growing to something more like Sharp Practice than Silver Bayonet – perhaps Sharp Silver Pilke?. But that is another story.

Some more Freeshooters from Perry Miniatures and the Officer in the Back from Bloody Miniatures

And some Revenants, well if it is Silver Bayonet we need some strange stuff as well, so I got these from Fenris Games.

/ Hope that was of some interest, just basing up some other stuff at the moment.

Hobby Round-up of 2021 – An eclectic mix

On 30/12/202130/12/2021 By The OneIn 15mm, 2mm, 6mm, Charity Project, Doctor Who, Finnish Winter, Continuation and Lapland Wars, Games played, Great Northern War, Holstein 1700, Ice Hockey, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, podcast, Scanian War, Shows, Silver Bayonet Scania 1677, Stargrave, Sweden WW2, Terrain, WW25 Comments

A few days before Christmas I was invited to speak on Sean Clark’s podcast Gods Own Scale, where I covered some thoughts and reflections from the year that just passed (link below the picture, if you want to check it out).

https://godsownscale6mm.podbean.com/e/episode-40-the-one-with-per-broden-again/

It is always great to catch-up with Sean and it is well worth checking up his back catalogue if you are not already familiar with it.

Anyway as a kind of complement I will do a quick overview of some of the things I did on the hobby front this year (mainly an organised listing of links to blogposts). As always in doing the review I realise that I have been doing far more than expected.

The sections are

More 3D printing
Commissioning some 6mm miniatures
Sweden 1943 Project 15mm
6mm Projects
The Battle of Lund 1676 6mm and the 6mm Charity Project
Terrain Projects
Fantasy Ice Hockey 28mm
Other Projects
An Awarding Year – Caesar Award (Wargaming Blog 2021) and Best in Show at Salute (6mm Poltava 1709

More 3D printing

I continued some exploration of 3D printing and came to the conclusion after a lot of printing that I should stop just printing and just keep things back until I intended to paint stuff, avoiding creating yet another mountain – this time in resin instead of lead. On the whole I really enjoy using the printer and the result it produced – it has not really reduced the amount of stuff I buy but has given me some options for doing alternative stuff. Here are few of the stuff I did do.

I printed a few ships and Max and I had a blast playing a few naval engagement with them.

I also got a battle mat from Geek Villain for naval engagement (or wide rivers).

Some really nice details in these 1/2400 scale ships

I also printed up a company of “Sturmis”, the Stug used by the Finns in WW2

More details on this here

Got a 3D Printer – made some ships and tanks

Commissioning some 6mm miniatures

I also commissioned some 6mm miniatures to be used as commanders for my GNW 6mm stuff. I did 5 minutures in total, the one below shows Stenbeck at Helsingborg in 1710.

More about that here and the other miniatures that I commissioned.

Some Command Bases for my 6mm GNW stuff

Sweden 1943 Project 15mm

Further Progress was made on my Swedish 1943 Project and I added some more tanks and armoured cars (well trucks). I also did a high level army list for O Group, the new game from Too Fat Lardies.

More about this project here

Swedish Infantry Battalion for O Group (1943M Organisation) – Part 1

Davidsson and Goliath – Dalarna 1943

Progress on the Sweden 1943 Project and a new Wargames Podcast

6mm Projects

The only big 6mm project I did start in the year was the Forces in Holstein 1700 as part of the start of the Great Northern War. This offers two very colourful opposing armies and the potential for a very interesting wargaming experience – in reality there were no big field battles, but this project offers some exploration of this.

I also bought some already painted 6mm ancients that I rebased and quickly got my 6mm Ancient Punic War collection substantially increased. I also did a summary blog on a lot of the #6mmtips I have shared on twitter over the last few years. More on these projects below.

The International Force in Holstein 1700 – Part 3 More Danish Cavalry

The International Force in Holstein 1700 – Part 2 The Danes

The International Force in Holstein 1700, a new 6mm GNW project

Rebasing an 6mm Army and another Nightmarish model from Fenris Games

Some Random 6mm Advice – Part 1

The Battle of Lund 1676 6mm and the 6mm Charity Project

This year I took the Battle of Lund 1676 to the Virtual Joy of Six event, I ended up doing a video to present the game and also talked about the Charity Project that was completed last year. There are some links to two video that was produced to support these projects.

Joy of Six 2021 – Roll a One Links to Youtube

Lund 1676 and the Charity Project at Virtual Joy of Six 2021 on 4th July

Lund 1676 – Ordre de Bataille (OdB) and Ratings for Twilight of the Sun King (WIP) at Virtual Joy of Six 2021

Terrain Projects

I did a lot of terrain projects this year most notably I did a lot of clutter, or immersion markers as I prefer to call them, for the 1943 table, but there are some generic ideas you could use for other theatres and scales. I also did a fair few buildings and fields.

These projects has allowed me to create some really immersive battlefields, like this one. Here a little video that Des Darkin did showing off the table laid out using many of the terrain elements produced this year (thanks Des).

A bit of Swedish CoC this afternoon. @Roll_a_one inspirational table.#chainofcommand #spreadthelard #toofatlardies pic.twitter.com/Hfy5XCKwfo
— Des Darkin in the Shed O War (@DarkinDes) December 4, 2021

Re-Clutter your Life (#Terraintober Immersion marker Project) Part 31 – Summary of it all.

More 15mm houses for the Swedish 1943 Project and some easy DIY tiling for your models – Part 1

£3 Door Mat or a Field for your Wargame

Further Explorations with the £3 Doormat -Yellow Fields

Fantasy Ice Hockey 28mm

I did some further work on my Fantasy Ice hockey project and we are developing some alternative rules to use. More on some conversions and some 3d printed models below.

Fantasy Ice hockey – The Lizards of the Coast

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Converting some Blood Bowl Miniatures to skaters

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Getting a Skeleton Crew

Other projects

Those were my main activities for the year, here some of the smaller projects that was done

The Silver Bayonet (or Spurs) in Scania 1677 – Part 1

Would you like a jelly baby? – Doctor Who Miniatures Game Plans

Gloranthan Trolls and Trollkin in 6mm (Saga age of Magic)

Planet Pot soldiers and 6mm Gloranthan Saga Magic Project Starting

Revolution on Planet Pot – first thoughts on a Stargrave / 5 parsecs Campaign

Judge Dredd Miniatures Stuff (Warlord Games) project – some pictures

The 6mm Charity Project and Spawn of Speed’s Tour Bus – The Slaying Hawk – Part 1

Some more Sci-fi and Mutant 1984 stuff

Our first outing of Stargrave

Neo Men for Mutant 1984, or an excuse to get some Ork (Cow)boys on the table

Virtual Grogmeet 2021 – Mission in Mos Mosel

An Awarding Year

I received two awards this year, the Caesar Award for the Blog of 2021 organised by Little Wars TV and also the Best Game in Show (Presidents Award) at Salute for the 6mm Poltava 1709 table.

Here a video made by Alex at Storm of Steel covering the show with an interview with Nick and I discussing the battle.

A Triumphant Salute – Battle of Poltava 1709

Caesar Awards 2021 – Rolled a Six

And of course the sad news about Mike Hobbs passing earlier in the year, miss you mate!

The Brilliant Mike Hobbs

The Silver Bayonet (or Spurs) in Scania 1677 – Part 1

On 05/12/202103/01/2022 By The OneIn Silver Bayonet Scania 167716 Comments

Following the Swedish Victory at Lund in December 1676, the Swedish terror has intensified and the Scanian population are suffering. You are part of a small band of Scanians fighting what you see as the Swedish occupation following Scania being captured by Sweden in 1658. You are not Swedes, you are Scanian men first and Danes second, you will never become Swedes. You are currently operating in the area around Lund and there are whispers of strange events that the locals think are associated with the corpses lying in piles after the battle until the winter had lost its grip on the frozen ground and they could be buried in the ground. For months they were lying there robbed first of their material possessions by greedy locals second their souls taken and ravaged by God knows what. The nights seem darker and the howling of the wolves sounds like the raging frenzy of the Fenris Wolf of the old pagan stories, something has risen, something evil, a Dark Master sneaking in the forest. Trolls, goblins, demons all are now common place words amongst the scared population and is causing added complication to what is now mostly a small scale conflict. Scouting parties on both sides have been attacked, killed and a few survivors often driven to shells of the men they once were speaks of shadow fighters, quick moving beast looking like men but with superhuman strength and speed. One of your scouting parties has gone missing and you sit around your campfire and discuss the recent events. Suddenly one of the sentries appears with his hand on the shoulder of a young girl, perhaps only 12 winters old. She looks exhausted and terrified, she looks at you and falls down on her knees in the snow and clutches here hands together as she would be revealing her soul in front of the almighty himself, she looks at you with strong eyes and for a moment feels mature and focused beyond her young age, “Freeshooters, I am Milda, the daughter of Conrad son of Eskil, I need your help to find my family. Something took them, something that came from the forest…”, she gasps and collapses ….”

The latest game from Osprey is the Silver Bayonet, and is basically a Skirmish with Supernatural overtones in a Napoleonic, setting. Know it really tickled my interest at several levels but for me the Napoleonic era is not one I particularly get too much into at the moment. However since I read a lot about the battle of Lund 1676, in the Scanian War fougth between Sweden and Denmark, I always had this thought about the 10.000 dead after the battle in December that were not put into holy ground until several month afterwards, due to the difficulty in digging frozen earth. If there was ever a time when something ancient and evil could have gotten a hold of something this would be as good a contender as anything else.

So in a nutshell I will be playing game but based in Scania (Sweden) in 1677 as written with the exception of using rifles and treating everyone as having muskets so this limits the choices a little bit. Both sides will have attracted specialists with some occult experience and the Swedes have raised a Cavalry regiment, the Silver Spurs to investigate issues and to deal with them. The Danish have also sent some specialists to support the Danish forces and the Freeshooters (Snapphanar) in the area,

Here my two starting units, I am already thinking about adding a separate unit with Danish Soldiers and a Unit of Scanian Collaborators (Swedish Loyalists) so we could do a 4 player game.

The Swedes – A detachment of the Silver Spurs (Officer and 7 soldiers) – Officer and 100 points

The Swedes (Bauer’s Troops) 1 – Conrad Kånkel (an old Veteran and advisor, counts as Guardsman), Colonel Bauer (The Officer) and Fänrik Tarmvred (Junior Officer). Miniatures from Warbases and Warfare Miniatures.

The Swedes (Bauer’s Troops) 2 – 5 soldiers (3 counts as Regular Infantry, the Standing firing ones as Grenadiers) – Miniatures from Warfare Miniatures.

The Scanian Freeshooters (Officer and 6 soldiers) – Officer and 100 points

The Scanian Freeshooters 1 – Jørgen Spjutspets (count as highlander with heavy weapon), Ryttmästare Blanka (The Officer, former Swedish Cavalry Officer) and Madame Lilla (Supernatural investigator) – Ready to fight the Swedish Oppression and the unknown (Miniatures from Warlord Games, Bloody Miniatures and Warbases)

The Scanian Freeshooters 1 – 4 irregular Freeshooters (Miniatures from Perry Miniatures Fornlorn Hope ECW)

Let us hope we can get a game in soon, still waiting for some stuff I have bought to represent the unknown but I a few things to throw in, in the interim. A series of shots (from when Bauer and his troop got attacked by some Trolls), you could supply your own narrative, the troll are from the excellent Fenris Games (link here).

/ Hope that was of some interest