Sunday, October 20, 2013

My Board Game Collection

One of the many nice features of Boardgamegeek is the ability to track your own collection. Here are some screens depicting my own collection. I have done a lot of weeding out over the years and sold many a game on eBay. This is my current collection, most of which I really like. Click on the images to get a readable view.




Saturday, October 19, 2013

Austrian Napoleonic Ordnance


I recently painted one of the very nice 28mm artillery models from Leopold Diez. These are very hard to find outside of Germany. This is my attempt to produce the yellow-ochre colour used by Austria. It is washed in Seraphim Sepia from Citadel to both shade and darken the ochre.

I was trying to match the Caisson painted for me by Leuthen Studios who also painted the 6-horse team and the Perry 6 pounder and crew.

Dr Stephen Summerfield has just posted on TMP that the ochre is correct but the barrels should be unpolished bronze metal.


"Diez" model 3 Pfünder mit Protze-Österreich 

"Diez" model 3 Pfünder mit Protze-Österreich

"Diez" model 3 Pfünder-Österreich

"Diez" model 3Pfünder-Österreich

"Diez" model 3 Pfünder-Österreich

"Dietz" model Protze-Österreich

 "Diez" model Caisson-Österreich

 "Diez" model Caisson-Österreich

"Diez" model Caisson-Österreich




"Perry" model 6 Pfünder-Österreich



Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Sails of Glory

Today I took the plunge into uncharted waters. Inspired by my very recent forays into Wings of Glory/War I decided to pre-order the about to be released follow-on game from Ares Games: Sails of Glory.



Like Wings, Sails uses a card system and a "dash board" to run the game with little reference to rules and no dice. It looks good. Let's see how it plays.

Good bad or ugly, Ares does a great job marketing its product. Simple miniatures manufactured in China and packaged and marketed by a company in Italy never looked so compelling! I have a feeling this is going to be the way of the future for many mainstream board games and miniatures.

A far cry from the brown cardboard boxes and sawdust packing material of my youth. However the core of this game as with Wings is a very clever card-based playing system that allows quick but fairly realistic play without the usual assembling, painting and rules-studying that was the prerequisite for most miniature based wargames in the past.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Gotha G. V (Von Korff)


Last month I started collecting Wings of Glory WWI. I have added a few fighter aircraft and I played a trial game with John and Jack last weekend. I just located a hard to find German heavy bomber from the same series, the Gotha G. V. This looks like a really beautiful model.

Von Korff's Gotha G.V


The Rules and Accessory pack adds a lot of nice features to the game and is well worth buying. It doesn't take long playing the basic game to feel the need to graduate to the most advanced rules. This system is very playable.




The earlier incarnation of Wings of Glory, Wings of War WWI also has some nice models which are fully compatible with Wings of Glory. You don't need the earlier rules but a few of the aircraft look good...if you can find them. This is a very collectible series as reflected in the prices. Even the Gotha G. V from the current range was sold for twice the listed price. Scarcity and collectibility matter.

Friday, October 11, 2013

114th Pennsylvania "Collis Zouaves" a First Look

This is a test figure of the 114th Pennsylvania "Collis Zouaves" painted for me by Leuthen Studios. I think I'm going with this look. The full Regiment will follow next.





Tuesday, October 1, 2013

More Austrians at Leipzig


I rarely buy miniatures that I have not myself commissioned. However I was very fortunate recently to have the opportunity to acquire some excellent Hungarians painted by the talented Andrew Taylor:


I had seen these on Steve Dean and jumped at the opportunity to buy them. The painting and composition is excellent. Andrew has also used deeper Litko bases with rounded edges that allow more room for scenic effects on the bases. 

There are grenadiers from three Hungarian Regiments represented in this combined unit:  IR 2 "Hiller", IR37 "Weidenfeld " and IR 48 "Vukasovich'. At Leipzig, IR's 2 and 48 served in FML Bianchi's Division, GM Haugwitz's Brigade, and IR 37 in FML Weißenwolff's Division, GM von Fürstenwärther's Brigade.

Figures of this quality rarely come on the market so my policy is to try to obtain them when they do. I am trying to build Weißenwolff's Division, hence my earlier posts. However as all of these units fought at Leipzig, I'm fine building Bianchi's as well!





K.K. IR2 Hiller