Back to Hacking and Slashing with Command and Colors: Ancients

Being the self-styled 'Historical Miniaturist' plainly states that I delve into miniatures and history. It also implies that I'm a gamer (primarily historical) and like most gamers I'll play anything provided that it has drool-worthy eye candy.

'A Viking we will go, a Viking we will go...'

A diorama of my Roman Cavalry being supported by allied
Numidian Elephants sometime during the Punic Wars.

Since I like well designed board games and the 'look and feel' of miniatures my gaming group's latest foray into this hybrid gaming world has led us to the Command & Colors family of games. After a few games with the actual board game we were hooked. It was only a matter of time that we would substitute the game blocks with our minis played on a larger 4" hex map from Hotz and terrain features.  

 

Vassal screen shot of an epic scenario: Battle of Dertosa.
This classic Punic War matchup between Hasdrubal (Hannibal's brother)
and the Scipio Brothers make a fine minis conversion 
as all the battles in the C&C boardgames.

I can now reuse my Republican Romans (built for Field of Glory and was gathering dust) and game this army to my heart's content. Of course, I have to supplement this army by acquiring a few more units and some repainting of the shield colors to represent unit types used in the game (see pics at the bottom of this article).

Numidian Elephants from Corvus Belli bringing up the rear with
the blue shielded Triarii and green shielded Hastati in the fore.

A Roman Fort from Baeuda is the backdrop for the Hastati with
more Corvus Belli Iberian troops in the fore.

Corvus Belli Iberian troops

Corvus Belli Numdian archers painted as generic Greeks
screening the Iberians.

Someone tell me what manufacturer these Velites are. It's been a
few years since I've put this FoG army together and the brand eludes me.

A Roman Fort from Baeuda with Numidian Elephants and Numidian light cavalry both Corvus Belli. 

'The Elephant of Surprise.'

Roman Cavalry from Corvus Belli and another forgotten manufacturer. 

My command stands featuring my two favorite Consular Generals: 
Nefarious Purpose on the white horse with Crismus Bonus on the black.

All you need to play is to follow this recipe: 

One box of Command & Colors (Ancients or Napoleonics)

One 4x6 Hotz Mats w/4" hexes (your choice of green fields or dessert)

Obligatory terrain: trees and hills

6 mm or 15mm miniatures (6mm for Napoleonics and 15mm for Ancients in our case) 

My re-purposed Republican Romans with repainted shields and ready to go:

Rear rank Legionaries: Triarii and Hastati Heavy Infantry (4 per base: RED)
Allied Italian States as Auxilia Light Infantry (3 per base: GREEN)
Velites Skirmish Light Infantry (2 per base: GREEN)

Coming soon: Roman Medium Infantry (4 per base: BLUE)

Incursion 3d Board Components

Since some of you have been asking here's the components that I used to simulate industrial items, etc. from an earlier post:

http://thehistoricalminiaturist.blogspot.com/2011/01/incursion-3d-board-actual-progress.html

Industrial lights from Plastruct.

Pipes: drinking straws spray painted with rustoleum.
Pipe elbows and valves from Plastruct.

Bent pipes: soldering wire. Stains on the floor: watery and runny paint.

And here's how I did the door frames.

Click to enlarge.

Incursion: SNAFU Action Shots

Back in May of 2011 here's what I had...

Fast forward to August 2012 and I'm finally done with the SNAFU miniatures and ready to play. But first some posing... 

Panzerraffe center stage having a shoot out with 'The Hurricane' with 
Gracie coming down the corridor for an  assist. 
Meanwhile, Bazooka Joe's lining up for a rear shot.

Drohne with a couple Sturmzombies in tow to engage Bazooka Joe.
And the Panzerraffe gets some more SturmZombie backup.

Might as well bring in the Blitzhund Mark II into the mix.

Now Ilsa ,the other Blitzhund and more Zombies have joined the rumble. 

Taking a breather...

So in between working, working, working and not blogging (notice there's no mention here about gaming or tinkering with my many umpteen unfinished projects) I serendipitously found this cool quiz...



Gamquistu - Games, Quizzes and Stuff.
 


Yeah, baby! Score!!!


Sigh... now back to work...

Toe in the water, Part 2: Stalingrad with Rail Yard in 15mm

Ohhhh, SCREW IT! Toe in the water, WTF!!! Geronimooooooo!!!!

Just dive right in!

Nice entry, no?

I've been gathering and acquiring more HO scale buildings and weathered boxcars from ebay sites.

My earlier acquisitions. Mostly from the consignment shelf of my local train store.

I've also added more to my Stalingrad collection by acquiring ruins from JR Miniatures. Please excuse the funky hues these pics are in. I've been experimenting with lighting and the key thing here is to ignore the color and concentrate on the content more than the end result.

JR Miniatures Stalingrad

Not that you can tell but all these resin models from JR have been black primered and dry-brushed with an off-white, sand color.

I love how brilliantly designed these ruins are complete with removal floors.

JR's Train Repair Shop with downed crane and other details come out perfectly when dry-brushed.

Godzilla and Asteroids!

Ahhhh... late spring and almost summer, at last...

The pause that refreshes. No coke in this cocktail
to spoil the pure, dark rum goodness. As I contemplate
my drink whilst basking in the sun in my backyard,
it hit me. Egad, shouldn't I be blogging...

After a looong absence and a break from travelling, I felt the need to get back into the swing of things with my much, alas, neglected blog. Without getting into any details suffice it to say that life gets in the way of the more important things: lusting after miniatures, collecting (or amassing) new miniatures, painting your miniatures and playing with your miniatures. Of course, not necessarily in that order.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend one of our local Houston gaming events held this past April 14-15 in New Caney a tad north of H-town. 

I got to sample a few wacky games. Two of them are worth mentioning because one) someone finally made this game that I dreamt of after seeing Monsterpocalypse and being disgusted by this wanna-be and two) this other game got my imaginative juices flowing and will put me back on the road to creative pursuits (i.e. making terrain).

BBG will do a much better review that I can so read all about it here:  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38694/godzilla-kaiju-world-wars   

First up is Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars. Now this boardgame, that comes with *gasp* ubercool miniatures is truly after my own heart. This no gimmicky, ripoff, collectible, miniatures game, thankyouverymuch! This is the real deal with the original Japanese monsters and every thang!! Andy Blozinski hosted and ran the game for 6 of us lucky and wacky gamers.

I got to play as Godzilla with Mecha Godzilla in the background!

Like some gamers (myself included), Andy supplemented the original game with added 3d components for the eye-candylicious 'look and feel' that counters just can't do justice to (e.g. jets, APCs and tanks). Some of you might recognize the ubiquitous Gale Force Nine flame markers, as well. To be fair, the original game comes with four pre-painted, drool worthy miniatures, the iconic: Godzilla, Gigan, Rodan and King Ghidorah (better known as the 3 headed, long necked dragon from Monster Zero). It's ready to be played right outta  the box. Then Andy (God bless 'im) found and included Mothra and Mecha Godzilla to this monstrous rogues gallery for the ultimate showdown and city bashing destruct-fest! 

This is more like it. Pick a monster and be
the monster. Fight with the puny tanks and
jets of the Japanese Self Defense Forces, other
Monsters and wreck Tokyo! Oh no!! 

A few games later Mike brought out Full Thrust. This is an old miniature game set in space that's simple and fun and reminded me a little of Silent Death. Incidentally, many of you know my obsession with eye candy on the gaming table. I mention this b/c we played this game as a test lo those many months ago and without a star map as shown below, I just couldn't get into it. What a difference a star map makes...

Mike West's EM4 space ships on a
star map by Hotz Mats. 

So the part that got me (which isn't pictured above) was a planet and asteroid field that Mike added to this mat thereby enhancing my gaming experience. Four of us played with a pair of ships each and within an hour only two ships remained amongst a litter of space debris and wreckage floating against a backdrop of asteroids... 

As I pictured this, I then decided to make some
asteroids for a quick and easy project. Main
reason being: start creating again.

Asteroids coming soon to a space mat near you...

  

  

OwlCon 2012

Last weekend was our local gaming convention here in Houston: OwlCon. Held in beautiful Rice University this annual event is named after its mascot. This has been going on awhile and just celebrated it's 31st bday.

This year I decided not to work the con and sponsor an event. I just wanted to attend and play, play, play. So I walked around snapped a few pix and enjoyed myself tremendously.

Friday night was opening night where I got to play a Western skirmish game: Gut Shot.
They were testing our the latest expansion called 'Night of the Living Deadwood'
where humans and zombies went head to head with each other. Last thing standing.
Sorry, no pix of the actual table and minis. 

Meanwhile in another room of the con, a great game was being held in the
same time slot . I couldn't be in two places at once, gol darn it! Great table and minis.

Using Gaslight  rules this was a VSF (Victorian Sci-Fi) table filled with lots of eye candy. On the eve of WWI, it's a city fight circa summer 1914 where the Mahdist clash with Euro powers.

And walking thru the dealer's area I spied some Dungeon Stone. Pretty good stuff and made in Texas.

 

Aerodrome

Another great event GM'd by Brian Weathersby.

He never disappoints and I always love playing on his table. 

From the con catalog write up:

"It is April 1945, and Berlin is in ruins. As the Red Army advances into 

the heart of the Reich's capital, it is finding that the German defenders 

may not be numerous, but they have no shortage of determination and courage." 

Ambushed T34-85 by a Panther. 

Sunday was a major fleet action. The Battle of Calabria was brilliantly put on by
Stephen Kastensmidt using War At Sea minis and rules.

I did spend some time in the Steve Jackson room where I played and bought my own copy of Frag!

Sigh... Back to work.