Baby steps to a brighter tomorrow!!!

 Just a quick update to let you know what i have been busying my child like brain with when im not babbling on here. There have been several Y.E.P (Yay, Evidence of Progress) moments over the past week:

 Y.E.P #1:  I have been thinking about my new fast play pike and shotteeee(ish) system and have made some progress in putting the rules together. The test games have been positive and i have gone down the 'simple is always better than 10000000000 rules to simulate the same thing' route which is going well, but i am attempting to leave enough 'meat' on the bone of rule (which is not a thing i know before anyone starts :-)) to add character to the troops and shires without loosing the core of 'good tactics over spammy list gaming*....god i hate spammy list gaming!).

Y.E.P#2: I have almost finished basing up my first shire force:

A little pic of the Fossestershire force as it stands, i had to do them first as i already had the troops to do the curmudgeonly old bastards (they are stuck in the past so i had a good excuse to use up some medieval bits for the militia troops). Mr Philotep made the suggestion of using flags which got the ol' brain (such as it is) ticking over. Paint was a no go considering how small the flags would be and an experiment with sharpies left rather a lot to be desired!. So in the end i went with the old standby of tape. The flags are strictly table top standard but they work ok for what i'm after.

Y.E.P#3: The recent ebay haul has payed for the following:

 A big thank you to all who had a cheeky bid on my sales page (more delightful bargins finishing Monday if your interested) and Mr Otep who relieved me of a large quantity of El Cid goodness (thank you sir!). This gives me all of the basic troops i have been needing to sort out the Shires (and a few other bits too).

 So, all good at the mo, onwards to basing Crivenshire methinks!.

.....'till next time....




* Spammy gaming: Pouring over army lists looking for rules loopholes and combinations of troop types that will give any advantage in a game with no regard for game balance, your opponents fun or the tone and flavor of the force you are picking.

Dragging Olde Albilande into the future!!

 I mentioned in an earlier post that i was going to move the setting i'm working on into a kind of mock 17th century setting. This has given me plenty to ponder over the last few weeks, some things i am set on:

     - The mappe will not change.
     - The campaign will continue as if nothing has changed, all events will still have happened!.
     - The protagonists will remain, no shire will be harmed by the process of change (well                            Fossestershire wont bloody like it)!.

   What i have been mostly thinking about is how the shires armies will look in the field. Now as a part of the same (until recently) united nation it is fair to say the shires forces would have been part of a royal army and therefore fit the pattern (more or less) decided on by the powers that be acting on behalf of the crown. This says to me that the basic troop types for each force will be almost (but maybe not quite) the same.
As its the (not) 17th century the main troops will be pike or musket armed soldiers. In olde Albilande the royal generals have spent time 'encouraging' each shire to raise a trained professional core of these troops to be called on if and when. These will be the spine of a field army (known as 'regulars'). Along side these troops various unpaid militia regiments exist, which will be organized and sponsored by the local lord or merchants in some capacity and the quality of their training and equipment will depend on their sponsors generosity. Some of these groups sport armour with the sponsors logo on or that have had their naming rights bought and paid for by merchants in order to ensure a fresh supply of lead shot!. It is therefore not uncommon to see regiments like The Olde undercrackers scrumpy irregulars or the Nightingales night soil removal experts musketeers for example!.

The march of the much feared 'fwffwykinnes reusable nappiee system irregular company'!!.

Some mini ideas would be:

Red Box Landsknechts with heavy pike.

And their Spanish pike and bills

Revells amazing 30 years war troops

A call to arms great ECW range

Anything but Mars 30 years war range really:

God, please....

.....make....it.....

....stop!!!

(all pictures taken from Plastic soldier review, which is great!)

  The upper class still put their faith in polished plate and a powerful warhorse betwixt their legs!. The nobles still clad themselves in a full suit of armour and ride as heavy cavalry. They tend to band together on the battle field to 'give the unwashed what for!'. Most armies of a reasonable size will feature a unit of either mounted or dismounted knights.

'WHAT HO JOHNNY COMMONER, FANCY A TASTE O' ME LANCE...NO WAIT LET ME  REPHRASE THAT!'

  The cannon will also be in mass effect across battlefields as an extremely desirable war time accessory, all armies will have some amount of them on display.

'Ere, you eyin' up me gun???!!!'

Skirmishers will be in use, either trained regulars or lowly irregulars or even one of the few elite ranger divisions (such as the Crivenshire Royal Storm Badger corpes or the Fossestershire Roughland penetration Company). These troops will normally be missile troops armed with muskets, crossbows or even hunting bows.

 Where the differences will come in is in the specialists and odd troops native to the shires for which they fight, from mercenary companies to stream tanks, political activist collectives to unsanctioned wizards to grumpy old codger cults they will hopefully bring some colour and character to the field.

   Which is cool because i have most of what i need to do this and i have started basing the minis already!. But i still have to get some bits and bobs....which brings me on to my ebay sales page i'm using to fund the project. Now most of the lots will end Sunday afternoon, at which point i will be posting the next round of lots, here's a sneaky peek for you lovely people:

 Lodsa Normans!

 Lodsa Macedonians

Loadsa Sea People

Even Ratskin Scouts!.

Have a browse tomorrow if you fancy a bargin!

 All thats left is to welcome AKI to the wonky wold of Wronghammerness. AKI produces the rather brilliant Too much Lead which is well worth a peruse at your leisure. Welcome sir!.

....Anyway, 'till next time....

Back to base

A couple of posts ago i mentioned that the mass battle rules i have been using for my campaign are not particularly compatible with my current working hours and time to game was suffering because of it. I have decided to alter the rules to a multi based system to make gameplay (as well as set up) far quicker, aiming to get a game set up, played and put away in about 90 mins.

Just not doable anymore (*sniff*).

 The rule changes are coming along well but the re-basing has taken some thought. I have decided that a table top unit will be 3-4 bases of troops for a regular sized unit, 5-6 bases would be a large unit. So as the units wont be using too many bases i will be using roughly 6 or 7 infantry and 2 or 3 cavalry on a base, so an average sized unit of infantry will have 20-27(ish) minis in them. This should allow me to maintain the spectacle of a mass battle but speed up play.

   This got me to thinking, How to do the bases?. As you may have already grasped i'm not the 'painty' type. There, i said it, i'm not going to be painting the minis and have to this point used coloured bases to tell the sides apart. I wanted to use the bases in the new system in the same way and was going to go ahead as normal when a not altogether stupid thought struck me (i know, it shocked me too!).

 Towhit:

 Each shire and faction has its flag as shown on previous posts, the forces of the for shires are these ones 'ere:

Crivenshire

Fossestershire

Burkenshire

Offenhammeshire

So i got the ultra high tech super expensive basing equipment out:

Oooooh fancy!!

And came up with these little fellas:

I think they work o.k. Here's them in use:

Crivenshire pikemen

Burkenshire pikes

Offenhammeshire S.S.T.U.B.* Horse

Fossestershire Billmen

                                                                       Horse vs pike.

 I think in practice they will make it easy to tell who is on what side in the heat of an AAR. What do you guys think?.

Oh yeah, you can still grab a plastic based 20mm bargin over on my sales page so please feel free to have a browse.

....Till next time.....

(* State Sponsored Thuggish Uneducated Bounders)

Sprinks independent Traders!

Theres been a whole lot of thinking going on around these parts, which normally spells either work or trouble for yours truly (or both!). I have been pondering this new setting and stuff for a while. One of the rules i imposed on myself when i went through what i'm referring to as The Changination was no new minis would be procured to build the new lands nations. This is o.k. and all as far as it goes but when i started it i had in mind some late medieval style forces, im a fan of the pikeee and shottttteee era (i think thats how you spell it) and would like to move the forces into the early to mid 17th century. Along these kinda lines:

(image from Art of Warre)

(image from Quora)

(image from honour and the sword)

So most forces would be based around pike blocks and musketeers with artillery support. I will add militia forces for interest and i want the nobility to still trust in plate armour and horse barding in the face of these advances. With this in mind i need to get hold of some new minis!!. Stuff like:

(all images from the most holy text of Plastic soldier review)

I already have some of what i need but will have to get more to make this happen....so whats a pillock to do?. Well, as i am not spending out on new minis i thought i would sell off some now unsuitable bits and bobs to fund it. To this end i have dipped my toe into the vortex like black hole of all things consumerist that is Ebay to try to raise the cash (you can see my sales page here. For now i have listed some lots to see how things go but if all goes to plan i will be putting more lots on in the near future (whispers of Hat El Cid Spanish, Caesar sea people and Revell Normans carry on the breeze....). Feel free to pop over for a browse if you have 5 mins to kill.

...'till next time.....

Moanhammer.

  Sooooo....... Last time i posted it was to have a right old moan, this post is not much different!....Sorry in advance!.

   Stuff is much better here at chez Sprinks, Sprinkling 2: Son of sprinks is healing nicely while Millie the wronghammer Dog no longer rocks the cone. Thank you all for your kind comments last time out, they seem to have done the trick!. However work is as busy as ever bringing a particular hobby related quandry along with it.

See the clock, see how he mocks me!!!!..........twat!.

Work is as busy as ever and working 'out of area' means late finishes a lot of the time. This means that time in the evening to do hobby related stuff just ain't happening!. This is mostly down to my insistence on playing games with several hundred minis at once, the thought of setting up and clearing away such masses of minis at stupid o' clock is not too great, and i want to spend what time i have with the amazing Mrs Sprinks and the Sprinklings where i can. So whats a toy soldier fiddler to do?.

Not quite so viable......

 As my regular readers will know i have been working on some mass battle rules for some time now but as things stand it will be very hard to use them in the kind of windows for gaming i currently have.......which is poo!. So having been indulging in some of this 'thinking' stuff people enjoy so much i have come to the conclusion that i can change the basing for the game while making a few rule changes to allow for said changes while keeping most of the core mechanics in tact (which is good, because i have worked bloody hard on them!!). So i will be turning the mass battle rules into a fast play mass battle system that should allow me to play through a game in double quick time!.

The key?, MULTIBASING!

Like The Duc uses. Picture stolen from his fine blog (grovel grovel!)

Not sure what size bases or groupings of bases per unit but i reckon i have an idea that will make it work smoothly.

 On another tac, has anyone seen what the good folk over at Dark Alliance have been getting up to?

ooooohhhh!!

aaaahhhhhh!

eeeeehhhhhhh!!!

Looks like they are covering the post apocalyptic, zombie holocaust sized gap in the 1:72 market in fantastic fashion!. And if thats not enough.....

 Now in my opinion these are proper Goblins, real nasty looking little shits!, they are some of the best goblin sculpts ive ever seen, 1:72 or otherwise. They would also work as some kind of canablistic mutant types for a post apocalyptic setting too. You can find the whole range at the Red Box web page over here.

All that remains is to welcome Steve63 to the world of twattery, blither and such that is this very page!, he clicked the follower bit like many lost souls before him, is there any hope for him left?!!. Welcome along sir, glad to have you. Im not sure if you blog but if you do please pop a link in the comments it would be great to see what your getting up to!.

.....'till next time.....