Almost sort of a progress report....

  I have been a busy bunny as of late, but none of it leading to any solid 'bloggable' stuff, hence the relative quiet around these parts. So to rectify this and to give me the momentum to push me on a bit i thought i would list what i've been tinkering and twatting about with.

1) I have been writing bits and bobs for my 'nottheenglishcivilwar' fantasy faffings, having played the latest battle in the campaign i have decided to re-jigg some of the mechanics to make it far more fun as the game in question being a three sided effort ended up as a bit of a grind as the sides hit several bottle necks on the table, leading me to shelve it as a write up and redo some rules ready to play it again.

2) I have also been playing about with Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames:

  'That's the ones officer!'

 I was looking for a base set of rules for casual games with the Sprinklings so have slightly modified the Medieval rules within (added a moral system and an extra troop type, will be detailed in another post sometime). Having several forces worth of medieval minis loafing about i set to knocking up a couple of forces to give them a whirl. I have to say the simplicity of the rules do allow for some satisfying quick games and the 30 scenarios in the book give plenty of extra depth without cramming the game full of rules to keep on top of. I think i will be building a third army and campaigning with the boys over the Christmas hols if they are up for it. 

......Also i have been rather taken with the basing style and smaller forces/gaming area used in these rules so may be re-basing my forces.......AGAIN!!!!. 

3) As i have several forces to build from my existing minis and lots of re-basing to do as well as rules to write and campaign games to play and write up its only natural for my brain to be contemplating my next project!, hey i'm a wargamer, we do this to ourselves!. The ideas that have grabbed me the most so far are:

a) 

Yep this is still rattling around the ol' noggin!

Ash's battle with the Dead would make a fantastic set of scenarios and as i have mentioned before the minis in the worlds greatest scale would be pretty easy to put together, Medieval blokes are piled high in my 'jobless' mini pile and the Dark Alliance army of the dead are tailor made for the task

The siege would be great to play out and you could play several games as a 'what if' campaign in the same setting.

b) I have been taken by the idea of doing some 19th century steam punk type stuff, 

Maybe some of this (Emhar Prussians)

Maybe these (Waterloo 1815 Anglo-Egyptian)

or even some of these! (HaT British)

They would need the likes of airships, Clockwork walkers, Land trains and....wait for it......

STEAMTANKS!!!!!!!!

(The above are from Ironclad miniatures, clicking on their name will take you to a page full of their steam bases goodies!.

  A setting like this would be great as a kind of colonial campaign with various nations scrabbling for control of the final unclaimed and unmapped landmass they have available to them (that happens to be full of hostile locals and fauna to add to the fun!). Perhaps they are sick of rebuilding cities after their many conflicts and have a kind of government level 'gentleman's agreement' to settle their issues on the only continent that they don't have to worry about maintaining!. It would be cool to collect and game with armies of steam stuff, cavalry, riflemen and artillery chock full of daring do!.

c) I also fancy doing some slightly more generic fantasy (big monsters and dragons, witches and wizards etc). I am toying with a more 'grubby' type of setting, more towards the dark ages rather than the polished high medieval fantasy you see so often.

 Imagine a shield wall full of this lot!.

  So it would be armies of shield walls and warbands, skirmishing slingers and small amounts of  knights in battered armour fighting orcs, undead and other fantasy stuff with as many big monsters as you can fit on the table!!

For example (god bless Reaper bones!)

Would also be a great excuse to get hold of some of these....

  I could always combine settings b) and c) to do a kind of doomed expedition to a new world with a few armies from a mock dark age in the new world. You would have sort of Saxons and Vikings and the like facing off against amazons, Incas, Mayans etc with all kinds of fun creatures involved!.

Try and tell me this mini is not great i dare ya!.

  So thats about it for now, my head is empty of its clogging hobby based mess and you get to come to this point in the post and wonder why exactly you bothered reading this far!. Hopefully next time i will have some game reports or other more interesting bits to post......

......'till then......