Follow this link to take you to the Baccus 6mm homepage with a link for signing you up on the discord server so that you can attend the Joy of Six event!

I will be presenting my Lund 1676 game at the Joy of Six through a Video that will be released shortly before the event, there will be an opportunity to engage and to ask me questions between 11.30 and 12.30.

But before then I will also do a presentation of the Charity Project where more than 50 painters signed up and we ended up with two small armies, it will start at 10.15 (GMT+1) and will include a presentation of the idea, how it worked, the background to the armies we built, pictures of each unit and some action photos.

Here is the high level programme of things going on,

Here are some of the videos already loaded up on the server, it is looking great.

Follow this link to take you to the Baccus 6mm homepage with a link for signing you up on the discord server so that you can attend the Joy of Six event!

As I have said before I started Rollaone.com as a thank you for all the contents that is being provided by so many people out there that has helped me over the years in getting inspired, learning techniques, finding out more about various periods and frankly getting a little bit of an escape from it all. I also did it to record the works I was doing for my 6mm in Saga project five years ago.

I mentioned in a previous blog that the good people at Little Wars TV had nominated this blog for their Caesar Awards 2021 as Wargame Blog of the year (see more details here).

Having spent a long Friday evening (and early Saturday morning) with mates online drinking and remembering the brilliant Mike Hobbs (more here), I was not sure whether I should watch the ceremony or not. However I did fall asleep during the evening and woke up an hour before the start of the award show, being broadcast on Sunday morning at 01.00 due to the time difference between the UK and the States. You can watch the show by using the link below. I really enjoyed the intro and the special song (a proper Broadway number) and of course the show itself. Then the first award given was the blog award and he did say Roll a One, didn’t he?.

Friends of the blog Too Fat Lardies got the award for best Podcast (in hard competition with other friends of the blog Gods own Scale and Battlegames) with their Oddcast, Alex at Storm of Steel Wargaming won the painting video awards and Sonic Sledgehammer Studios for his fantastic how I paint Republican Romans. Well done tot the Lardies, Alex, Sonic and all the other winners.

There was a lots of entries and I was chuffed not pull the shortest straw, or if you wish roll a one, this time.

Thanks to the Judges and the Little Wars TV Patreons!, and to Little Wars for all the good stuff they do for the hobby.

There is a lot of stuff produced for the historical wargaming hobbyist and this kind of acknowledgement is really important and encouraging, I hope not just for myself, but for others to perhaps consider starting a blog, recording a video and sharing it with others, or otherwise getting engaged in creating some content be it serious analytical stuff or light entertainment.

In addition, and whilst I have your attention there is an important thing you can do even if you do not want to produce content yourself, that actually plays in your favour, and that is to let the people who are behind wargaming video channels, blogs, Facebook accounts, etc know that you appreciate what they do – perhaps leave a comment, send them a like, or share the link to others, or follow the blog/channel or whatever it is called.

I have to admit that the small occasional comment from one of the Roll a One regulars or someone just passing by really cheers me up and keeps me and the blog going.

If you do not like what they do and you honestly think that you ought to tell them perhaps you could do it in a nice and constructive way or perhaps move on to something else. I very rarely feel upset having to read a short text or watched a video even if I did not like it, especially if it was free.

The passing of Mike Hobbs last week have really made me appreciate the positivism that someone like Mike spread and how he built bridges between different hobby islands and made it a better place. So whilst we can never be Mike, we can try to be like him – making it more inclusive and fun!

Anyway really humbled by this award, and I am more than sure Mike would have been proud of us too,

/ Take care

This is the fourth painting Guide supporting the 6mm Charity project that has now started (you can read more about it in a previous blog here). There will be a total of 4 painting guides, covering Horse, Dragoons, Foot and Artillery of the Baccus Wars of the Sun King Range. Here some links to the other ones.

Painting Guide 1 – Horse

Painting Guide 2 – Artillery

Painting Guide 3 – Dragoons

We will start this one at Step 5 – which is the painting stages (I highly recommend that you read Step 1 to 4 in the First painting guide as it covers some things that are important in preparing the miniatures and yourself for the challenge, a link is provided here).

It is fairly straightforward and it is my favourite type of unit.

Step 5 – the Painting (depending on how you access this you may just see one picture, but it is a slideshow with the steps)

/ Hope that was of some help, moving on updates on the project will focus on units as they get completed. In writing this I know that two painters have already completed their miniatures.

The other day had a game of Chain of Command with a Swedish 1943 platoon fighting a German Infantry Platoon and I realised I had forgotten to do some Jump Off points – they are, as you may know, a key feature of the game.

In reality this could simply be a round marker with a symbol identifying whose marker it is. However, I prefer the opportunity to do something more and instead create a little bit of immersion.  For the Winter War set-up we have been using the following markers – I especially like the Finnish ones with the skies – they are just strips of plastic slightly bent – and the poles -some cut pieces of brass rod. The idea was that the Finnish ones symbolised the swift and agile Finnish force, vs the more desperate and hopeless Sovietic one.

I also did some suppression/pin markers using some material from a filter trying to give the effect of flying debris from bullets hitting the terrain.

I think they worked well and you can find the full collection here(link).

Back to 1943… To do the Jump-off points I decided that the Swedish markers would have a bicycle on it – symbolising the good old Swedish Airconditioned Person Carrier (APC).  I got the bikes from Peter Pig (link here). Other items came from a pack of German Stowage from Plastic Soldier Company (link here) and some Lorry Loads from QRF (link here). Some items came from the kit box (full of old crap) and I also cut a few helmets from a few spare figure to further Germanise the German jump-off points.

After a little bit of sand, paint, grass and some tufts, the look really well and will blend in on your table.

Using the same approach for the suppression / pinned markers, and using some brown material, dead branches from the garden and stones from the yard, we got the following collection.

Simple and cheap! – and if you do not have Stowage and other small pieces handy (I have bought many of these sets over the years for tank projects) use some green stuff or even a little bit of blue tac (you can add some superglue to protect it, if it is a not to big chunk) to make some rough shapes and then paint, wash and detail – it will look good.

/ Hope this was of some interest

I have had a busy start of 2020 – not the kind of busy I would have wished for but that is how things are sometimes.  The lack of blog posts is as a direct consequence to this but I have decided to force myself to pick it up and perhaps publish something every second week as a minimum.

Gosh, the last blogpost was on the 26th December, back in 2019 (If you still remember that year). Although I have been silent here I have actually made some significant progress on the hobby front – so there is a backlog of stuff to write about on the various projects. We will start with the current Big(ish) project – Lund 1676.

Swedish Infantry at Lund 1676

Today we turn back to the Scanian War and the Swedish Infantry that fought at Lund 1676. As for all my Scanian War models I have used the eminent book, Scanian War 1675-1679, Colours and Uniforms, by Lars-Eric Höglund (2002), as my primary source for colours and uniform details – it is not complete but covers most of the detail you may need.

Most of the Uniform detail in the book is straightforward, or in some cases not known, however the entry for the Gestrike-Hälsinge Tremänningar was interesting as it stated “1676: 19 men had yellow coats, 63 green, 50 gray, 53 brown, 38 musk-colored, 15 blue, in addition 2,240 alnar gray pjuk was issues to sew uniforms”. The reason for the different uniform is that this was not a standing regiment and had been raised because Sweden was at war – it is likely that they were issues with spares until they got their uniforms (possibly grey based on the information). So at Lund, late 1676, they may all have been dressed in fresh Uniforms, or maybe there was not time to get that sorted… Well since every other regiment will be in uniform uniforms I thought I go for the latter option.  I simply painted the 24 unit base in the same ratio as the different colours above – I think it looks smashing.

We are rushing away… Sorry, the following infantry regiments were present at Lund.

Here some pictures of these…

Flagging up your infantry

This is the method I use to attach the flags/standards to the unit.

I needed a few more Villages for the Poltava table and bought some of Total Battle Miniature’s houses and scenic tiles (link to their webpage here).  I normally make my own tiles but thought I treat myself. I like the concept of a separate Village tile because it makes the village more defined than just placing some houses in a cluster on the battle mat. The tiles are made in a rubbery material and it is not recommended to use spray primers to paint them.   These small tiles costs about £4 each and works well with their very extensive range of houses, etc.

I painted the rubber bases with undiluted brown acrylic and then dry brushed them and added some static grass, flock and a few tufts.

I really like these. / Hope that was of some interest.