To London!

 I have been a bit quiet over the past couple of weeks, mainly because I have been overwhelmed with priority map projects which took up a lot of my spare time. I have managed to finish the most pressing and although I am still busy the pressure is off. Also the club was very quiet due to all sorts and maybe people taking advantage of the spell of good weather, I was not up to a fully fledged game so settled for Blood Bowl with Simon, we had some fun and the Lemmings won 1-0 in the closing moments.

"It's a must win game for the Lemmings Jim"

"Or happy with a draw Bob"

My Italian Wars project is well and truly off the ground, in the next day or so I will finish the first pike block of Swiss in French service at 72 figures, it can easily be split into two 36 man units if needed. I can see a bit of a difference from the first figures to the last as I gain more experience painting the slashed fabric and colourful garb of the period, subtle but it is there. Now as far as I know the Swiss started the slashed sleeve fashion after or during their wars with the Burgundians, this could be utter rubbish of course, no matter as the Landsknechts of the Empire took the fashion to new heights of, eh, ridiculousness springs to mind. 

The Landsknechts are the darlings of the Italian Wars and every company does them to the detriment of the Swiss, French, Spanish and Italian infantry, now the former two at least are supposed to have taken the lead from the Germans but I am unsure that the latter two did. In order to differentiate I have not gone overboard with colours for my Swiss mercenaries in Landsknecht clothing, this might change when I get around to an actual Swiss pikeblock under Cantonal banners. I am aiming for the 1520's for my initial collection.

 As you know I want to make my own flags and was slightly unhappy that having put shadows on them it dulled the colours a bit, I wondered whether I should just do the flags plain and have them brighter, I mulled this over and asked whether people preferred the shadowed or unshadowed, the former proved the most popular. I was still not happy so tinkered with the shadows again and will do so again today to get a halfway effect which I will stick to.

 I headed north yesterday to the town of Penrith, which to enter you have to negotiate one of the most diabolical roundabouts in the realm, I got it wrong of course and was thankful looks could not kill nor the honking of several horns. I had been invited by Matt Crump of Wargames in the Dungeon to play in a Bolt Action Operation Sealion game, one of a campaign Matt has been playing for a while that takes place as the Germans push inland from Folkstone. The game was set near a crossroads at Six Mile Cottages, the Germans had to capture it and of course the British had to hold at all costs, I was the bad guys and had a couple of tanks, an armoured car, some motorcycles, an infantry gun along with two squads of Fallschirmjager and three of infantry. I was up against four squads of British regulars, and one of local defense types supported by an anti-tank gun, an anti-tank rifle, an armoured car, a heavy machine gun and two tanks.

A beautiful table, makes all the difference.

 I decided on a pincer movement and a quick advance, the motorcycles and Pz38(t) along with two squads were on my left flank while the rest with a PzII and the infantry gun were on my right. The British held the objective with a dug in anti-tank gun and the locals, the rest of the troops turned up and made for the front lines, the tanks approached my left flank and my armoured car opened up on the least armoured tank stopping it in its tracks but failing to knock it out, the enemy tanks stayed in the area and the two of them dueled with my armour eventually knocking out both the 38(t) and the 222 but it took time. I fired over 30 shots at the local volunteers expecting to wipe them out and managed to kill one and dish out several headaches on the rest, it was going to be a short game as returning fire took out both my motorcycle machine guns. Meanwhile my right flank was still attempting to get into position while the British began to build up a defence around the crossroads.

My Recon troops.

Recon run into trouble.

British armour.

 As my dice luck plummeted in the face of Matt's good luck I stopped rolling on the hard road surface which tended to stop the die roll dead and switched to the adjacent field, the dice now began to roll better and my attack began to whittle down the defenders with some excellent results, helping with this was the fact Matt's AT gun twice ran out of ammunition so was unable to help the defence, a few of his units now gathering pins also failed to carry out their orders, a boon for Jerry.

British move on German right flank.

German infantry push for the objective.

At least they held the British armour up for a time.

 With the German infantry now closely supported by the PzII and the infantry gun (which managed one good shot all game, happily at the right time) it only needed a final push to gain the objective. With the game balanced on a knife edge and both sides exhausted the Germans sneaked in a minor victory, it was just in time as my assault squads were down to around 50% and carrying quite a lot of pins while the remaining British tank was now bearing down on my survivors.

Much needed support moves to the crossroads.

The final straw.

 There you have it, a very good game on a lovely table, the rules were V1 of Bolt Action but in the end it did not really matter much as I play V2 and Matt quickly cleared up any confusion. The figures were also very nice, the whole set up was perfect to be honest. And he really does play in a 'dungeon' in his basement, a dungeon where every piece of space is filled with wargaming paraphernalia and what must be thousands of troops.

Chain of Command on Tuesday night and a return to the Eastern Front I believe, I also have the third and final large Napoleonic game on the 8th of May in Grange. At least that is the plan.

My latest purchase, pre-ordered in fact, has helped put the excellent Douglas Murray straight to the top of the bestseller lists around the world.