My Forever Project

 Quite some time since I last posted. I have purchased my final 28mm armies, this will be to allow me to fight the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. I have purchased a ton of stuff, as you will see. I am calling it my forever project, as it will probably take that long to complete.

First up a a box set for a starter Roman army, all the minis are by victrix, specially selected for the skirmish game of Clash of Spears. I may well look into this set of rules, but ultimately, this box set will form just the basis for my Republican Roman Army.

The box gives enough figures for the game and is a perfect way to start my collection. You can see the options contained in the box, A little bit of everything to get me going.

The Carthaginian box set is of course very similar, but does emphasise the large amount of allies or mercenaries that Carthage recruited.

As well as Carthaginians, we have troops from Iberia and North Africa too.

This box will allow me to create my first full legion for the Romans. It includes enough models for Velites, out front skirmishing and harassing the enemy. A front rank of Hastati, a second rank of Principes and finally a rear rank of Triarii.

A different set to give a second full legion.

Finally, a unit of cavalry.

This set will flesh out the Carthaginian Army, with lots of options for troop types.

The ranks will also be swelled with some citizen infantry.

Moving onto allies, who they ally with is anyone's guess. Some Armoured Samnites ready to take to the field.

Joined by their unarmoured brothers.

From North Africa and probably allied to Carthage are Numidian Infantry.

Plus some fast moving light cavalry.

Moving to what would become Spain and Portugal, we meet some Iberian Cavalry.

They are joined by a substantial force of Armoured warriors.

As well as some unarmoured troops too.

Quite a haul, I still have to add an elephant or two at a later date. All shields will be decorated with transfers from Little Big Men to really make the minis pop.

The project will begin late September/early October and will run continuously through the winter. A lot of building and painting ahead. I will take lots of photographs and update the blog regularly.

Wargaming Armies on the Cheap.

 Another project, for which I have been gathering resources for the last couple of months. Creating wargame armies on the cheap. I turned to the good old game of 'Risk'

I wanted a set which had six colours, red, blue, green, white, grey and yellow. The later sets only offer five colours and one of those is some hideous lilac type colour! It is a pity as they did have troops wearing shakos. This particular edition, the troops are wearing tricornes.

The five boxes cost me just over £50 including shipping, the figures in two of the boxes are still in their factory sealed bags, never played with.

Next up was the bases and I turned to Warbases here in the UK. 25mm square mdf bases with rounded corners and 25mm circular bases for leaders. They actually cost slightly more than the five games did. I now have all I need to create six decent sized armies. Total cost approx £110.

I shall be basing them as below, with four infantry to a base, two cavalry, a single cannon and one cavalry figure on a round base as command.

Each box contains 40 infantry, 12 cavalry and 8 cannon per colour. Multiply that by five, and well you get the picture.

Now I have a whole heap of glueing to do. I will not be painting the figures nor do I plan to flock the bases, but the latter may change once I see how they look.

Epic Pacific War

 I have some excellent WW2 Pacific War games in my collection. Each is great in its own way, but being a tinkerer, I wanted to incorporate, what I consider to be the best bits from each, into an epic version of the Pacific War.

Starting point is Axis & Allies Pacific 1940 with its map and miniatures.

The beautiful map is just too good not to use for the overall picture. However, I wanted some of the smaller islands to be big enough to place troops upon them.

Conquest of the Pacific is another fine game, its map is very abstract, but does make the islands big enough to fight over.

See here, the Solomons, Gilberts etc. Ideal for my planned purpose.

However, the map, though cleverly designed, is far from accurate enough for my liking. My plan is to create separate map boards to keep off the main table to fight those individual battles. I can easily redraw the islands, plus a few more, place them in plastic wallets with a cardboard strengthener and the job is a good one.

I just recently managed to snag a copy of this very hard to find classic from 1999, it is the final piece in the puzzle to create my epic game. I like various rules from all three games and intend to integrate them into my own concoction. I have plenty of miniatures, so no problem there.

I now need to create those off board maps of the different island chains, work out starting positions and strength of units on the main map. A modified finance system to allow for further purchases etc.

Sport of Kings. Part Three.

The Race. One mile two furlongs at the gate.

The horse in lane 5 'White Lion' moves first, bonus number is 9.

Three horses have 9 as their bonus number, marked with large blue discs to remind me.

End of turn one. 'Sweet Talker' three lengths clear of 'Whistling Sands' and 'Capla Spirit. 'Global Melody a further length back in fourth with 'Robero' and 'White Lion' at the rear.

Turn Two. Horse One 'Sweet Talker' moves first, bonus number is 3. You get the picture.

The huge difference in class is very obvious already. The leader 'Whistling Sands' is far too good for most of this field.

OOPS! forgot to take a photo

The easy winner is 'Whistling Sands' no real competition and has almost lapped poor old 'Robero'

The winner finished on turn 8 and was three lengths over the line. This equates to a time of two minutes six point eight seconds. (2.06.8).

That was an interesting exercise, now to create a lot more horses for future meetings.

Sport of Kings. Part Two.

Having done more research on the Win, Place & Show board game, I discovered a set of magazines produced by Avalon Hill in the early 80's. The magazine was called All Stars and ran for just two or three years, being a quarterly publication. Scans of those magazines are freely available to download on the internet.

Someone far smarter than me wrote on article on how he and his group created a full season(s). Recording all the races, prize money, form book etc. and produced a system to create your own. I copied down the various tables as seen below. Table A & B allow you to create the running strength of every horse.

Using two d6, roll on Table A and place that number in the first box of the horse card. After that you roll seven more times on Table B, follow the instructions there i.e. If you roll 13 on Table A you write in 8 in the first box, next roll on Table B is a 16 which is minus 2, Eight minus two is six, so that goes into the next box and so on, simple and neat.

WPS uses a bonus number for every horse as well, Table C allows you to allocate these. Depending on the class of the horse. You roll three d6 and look down the column of what you rolled and match that with the class of the horse. So rolling a total of 12 for a horse Class 70's would give the bonus number of 8.

He also produced an odds calculator and even a speed time calculator to compare horses from different races.

Using index cards I quickly knocked up six horse cards, took the horse names from the daily paper then rolled as explained previously. With just six horses this has given a very satisfactory spread of Class and speed.

The best of the group is Whistling Sands with a Class of 104 and a bonus number of 7. The class is the total of all eight speed boxes. Capla Spirit is Class 88 and so on.

Poor old Robero with a Class of just 30 shouldn't even be in this race as he is totally outclassed. But with more horses created he will no doubt have company. The elite horses will of course be running in the elite races, so will face each other rather than a poor scrog.

Horse cards laid out in starting positions.

Sweet Talker is in Gate 1, the discs denote this horse's jockey is wearing a black cap and yellow silks.

The next job is to run the race, record what happens as that is important for any form book that is created as each race is run. I am not sure how many horses will be needed to have realistic season, but I foresee two to three hundred!

Well none of us are going anywhere soon are we?

The next post will show this race and the form book page it creates.