New Books and New Basing Ideas

   I'm not much for Facebook; however, I do follow quite a few wargame pages, including "The Portable Wargame" page.  Looking at the games played, I finally broke down and ordered the rest of Bob Cordery's  Portable Wargames series (I had the original volume).   Unfortunately they were ordered right as the country started reopening, and UPS was swamped with packages. Based on tracking, my books sat in the local terminal for two weeks, then made it on trucks 4 times, only to be returned to the terminal 3 times! I did finally receive them, although the package looked like it had been through a war, the books were undamaged.

    One thing about each volume is that he introduces new ideas, such as making campaign maps and random terrain placement.  Right away in "The Portable Napoleonic Wargame", for an example of his Brigade Rules, his scenario uses the American War of 1812 for the example of play. As the War of 1812 s one of my favorites, and recently having bought two packs of 2nd generation Minifigs US infantry in felt shakos and coatees, I am now thinking of basing a Brigade of Americans and British.

   In my last post, I mentioned the based Airfix Romans. They were mounted on thin plastic bases, using white glue. When debasing them, it was easy to bend the base, instead of the figure, making separation easy, without damaging the paint job of the figure. This made me think of basing my metal figures with white glue, instead of super glue. Then rebasing figures would be easier; separating metal figures from plastic bases that used super glue is extremely difficult. I did a quick base of Peter Laing ECW in plastic. I am happy with the result and will try basing single figures the same way and see if they would work, too.

The new 2nd generation Minifigs War of 1812 Americans. I got a total of 48 figures.

The newest addition to the wargame library.

The sample base of Peter Laing ECW mounted on a plastic base. No, the hex is not what they are glued to. I put them onto the hex to see how much ground the base covered. If I proceed with basing the ECW figures, perhaps the units will be on larger bases with more figures.

No Brain Roman Wargame

  When I started wargaming some 20 years ago, it gave me an excuse to dig out the thousands of plastic Airfix and Esci figures that I collected over the years. Among the Airfix figures were some Romans. I managed to find a couple more boxes, and started to base them for games. Eventually my interest switched to15mm metals, and the Romans were consigned to storage drawers.

    The other day while looking for some other figures,  I came across the Romans and on a whim, decided to use them for a game. As they were glued to the stands using white glue, they were debased quite easily.  For rules, I decided just to use No Brain Wargame rules. There would be no modifiers for the armor of shields. The goal was to use some nice figures that hadn't seen the light of day in many a year.

One of the Airfix Roman units based.

The unit from the front.

The Romans advanced in checkerboard formation. While in most No Brain Wargames,  I don't put much effort in any kind of maneuvering, in this game the Romans would try to keep some kind of unit cohesion.

The barbarians hit the Romans hard.

Instead of a blow by blow account of the battle, I will just show the pictures taken during it. It was a back in forth battle, where it seemed the battle could have gone either way. I became quite engrossed in it, and the battle lasted longer than expected. 

In the end the Romans retreated off the field. When I based the Romans 20 years ago, I also based  Airfix Celts to battle the Romans. I am now thinking of taking them off their bases to do battle with the Romans.

More Semi Flats Games

   In the last couple of weeks I tried different rules with my semi flats. I used Stuart Asquith's CHARGE! rules, Bob Cordery's "Portable Wargames", and using a One Hour Wargame scenario with "Horse & Musket 2.0"rules.  I will continue to try to find proper "Old School" rules for these figures.