Don, Scott R, and I joined Scott M. for the christening of his new house to wargaming. Scott set up the Battle of Iuka in his living room and we gathered for a day of good gaming and camaraderie. The battle was played using Scott's figures and Regimental Fire and Fury. A nice recap can be found on Scott's blog at http://macpheesminiaturemen.blogspot.com/. As in many of our games, it takes a few turns to reacquaint ourselves with the rules. One aspect that we didn't pick up on in this game was leader casualty checks. I wager that at some point during the game, 80 percent of all units engaged rolled a '10' and went "low ammo". With all of the low ammo forcing 10’s we rolled, we should have had a number of leader casualty checks. In the heat of battle, we may have forgotten that a leader w/I 4 inches of a unit hit with a ‘10’ takes a leader casualty check. Given that, our Iuka game may have seen the ground littered with killed and wounded leaders. May not have impacted the outcome but it might have had local impacts.
18mm SYW Project: Work progresses on two Austrian dragoon squadrons. These two squadrons will muster as squadrons 5 and 6 of Dragoon Regiment #7, Batthyany. Also on the painting table is battalion #2 of the Swiss regiment, Diesbach. The dragoons are Eureka and the Swiss foot are Blue Moon FIW French. 15mm Narvik Project: In the recent Warweb order were two bags of 15mm armor. Both bags were from the recently released Command Decision French armor models. I ordered one bag each of three French Panhards and three Hotchkiss H39s (with the short barrel). My goal for this weekend is to assemble and paint these models and complete the three Panzer II's I've had sitting in a partially finished state. Since the picture I have of the H39 in Norway shows a solid light color, Scott recommended Panzer Dark Yellow for the French paint scheme. A trip to the local discounter, White Elephant, yielded only Afrika Mustard. That color will be close enough for me. Oh, I cleaned out WE's supply of Dullcote as I often do on my resupply runs. The guy behind the counter quipped that I must be the one that messes up his inventory by buying all of his stock on a periodic but infrequent schedule. Working on these models got me motivated to pull six bags of Peter Pig French alpine troops to prime and place into the painting queue.
Still awaiting a refight of Albuera but below is a picture of the game table with the battlefield setup. The first picture shows the battlefield deployment viewed from the north while the second picture shows the battlefield from the east. Both pictures depict the deployments around 0930am at the time of the French assaults against the Spanish.
Orders from Renegade, Brigade Games, and Warweb arrived. Renegade sent an e-mail stating that prices are rising (once again) and that orders paced before June 20th will be at the old rate. New rate for regiments may be up to BP19.95. That is a substantial increase from the current BP14.95. Just last year regiments were offered at BP11.95. Still, including shipping Renegade offers a good value. I recently calculated the post-paid cost per figure (on a 24 figure basis, before the price increase) as:
Renegade: $1.43
Crusader: $1.90
Aventine: $2.03
Given the unit cost above, Renegade would get the bulk of my business with Aventine running second. With Renegade's proposed price increase, I may look more towards Aventine since their models are quite stunning. Eliot from Renegade says that shipping rates to the USA will likely drop with the price increase. The current shipping rate to USA is 40% of order value which usually is quite close to actual shipping charged. After much too long, the group is finally meeting at Scott's new house for a RFF game of Iuka on the 18th to christen the game table. Rumors are that Don and Scott R. will be driving up from Nez Perce for the weekend festivities. 15mm Second War of Italian Independence Project: Two battalions of Austrian foot are finished. Now, the 7th regiment musters its full complement of four battalions and IR17 has battalion #1 completed. 18mm SYW Project: Two more Prussian cavalry squadrons are on the painting table. Again, I will be fielding the 5th squadron from each of Dragoon Regiment #2 and Dragoon Regiment #4 . 28mm Ancients (2nd Punic War): One 24 figure unit of Renegade Principes have been completed with LBM shield transfers. The Renegade figures are slightly chunkier, heftier, and a bit taller than the Aventine Romans but even with close side-by-side scrutiny, the two manufacturers' figures work nicely together. The Crusader figures are about the same size as Aventine but the body proportions are less anatomically pleasing. To my eyes, the arms on the Crusader Greek hoplites appear too short. Aventine and Crusader could be mixed within the same unit and perhaps Aventine and Renegade too. I will likely keep them in separate units and from a tabletop perspective all three will look good.
