Ladies Night - or "Martha pass me another loaded musket"

One of the reasons I like playing Muskets & Tomahawks is the game involves side missions and quests that mean it is unlikely you will play the same game twice. One scenario will have you trying to protect the Colonels Daughter while the next you are tasked with defending a civilian outpost. The flip side is you need to have some less mainstream models - ie the said lady and a certain number of armed civilians to be threatened by Philip Madoc and his band of roaming Hurons (from the Welsh Valleys)

Don't tell them your name!

So we shopped around a bit and I picked up a few different female figures to fill the roles of supporting the men fighting, and swooning on cue. This also gives me a shameless excuse to watch the new series of Poldark on the BBC - just to see what the BBC costume dept have come up with that I can copy for 18th C dress colours I can copy - it's research!

First up is a nice rather well to do young lady who is going to represent the high class love interest. She is from Redoubt Enterprises "Bodys Bits" range. I had a bit of an issue cleaning the flash from the figure, and I cant work out what she has in her hand - I assumed a fan but it could be a flower? Anyway here she is - looking a little paler in the pic than in the flesh.

 Next is a more working class lady - actually the other half of the "posh totty" set from Redoubt - this is the ladies maid, but she will do as any female civilian.

More from Redoubt. Unlike the Lady & her Maid set these are armed - in fact they are busy loading muskets either for themselves or their menfolk. They're part of the French Indian Wars range - pack F&I 25 which has some interesting poses including loading and passing muskets around - useful for armed civilians defending their homes. The male parts of this pack will make an appearance later I'm sure.

Last is this older lady, again handing out muskets. This one is from Conquest Miniatures , available in the UK from Warlord Games. Pity that for some reason the Conquest pack has 8 figures in there but the Warlord one only has 7 - no idea why.

Here's the group shot - as you can see the Redoubt ladies are certainly more "robust" than the Conquest one, but a bit of variation is no bad thing in skirmish games.

So that's it for the Ladies. I'm still looking for some more female settlers, armed or not, so if anyone has any suggestions please shout out

Civilising the Natives (well that's one point of view)

One of the earlier posts mentioned my efforts at painting Wargames Factory Militia for Muskets and Tomahawks.

That unit was supposed to be the more "backwoods" types in hunting shirts to represent Canadian Militia. As I mentioned, the box is split 50\50 with troops in buckskin and others in civilian dress. I've finally got a unit of civvies painted, but it was a bit of a slog.

That is not to say there was a problem with the figures - far from it, they were fairly easy to assemble and the detail is good as previously stated. The problem was me, and my kitten Roxy.

My problem was I just couldn't seem to make progress or get a them painted to the point I was happy with the result - in the end I decided I had wasted enough time and declared them "done" 

The other problem was Roxy. She's five months old or so and seems fascinated with toy soldiers. When I say fascinated, what I mean is she likes to pick them up in her mouth and run away with them - but so far just these Militia. She has stolen several - one officer discovered intact on the bed, a second rifleman found behind the sofa with one arm missing, and another on the stairs minus his gun. Much repairing was called for.

Having said all that, I was rather surprised that they did look ok when they got on the table at last.

Here is that officer, who seems to have survived his encounter with Roxy with only minor injuries and no doubt some recurring nightmares

As I mentioned before, these are very versatile figures and will be called into service as civilians, British, Canadian or American Militia. There are a few more to paint, but as far as the Muskets & Tomahawks project goes, it looks like I'm getting close to declaring "job done"

Sometimes I think if there is any value in the narcissistic process we call blogging, it may be that it gives you an opportunity to vent to the anonymous and amorphous "internet".

Here's the thing - why do we (wargamers) accept and do things that are in "the rules" when they are patently counter to history?

A couple of weeks ago I was playing my second game of Muskets and Tomahawks, this time against a player who plays regularly at another club. M&T is a skirmish game set in the French Indian Wars. They're a fun set of rules with a healthy dose of flavour.

Line of sight and line of fire are blocked by other models unless it is a friend from the same unit in base to base contact pretty standard fare so far. They also have a formation rule for the trained troops that fought in firing lines - basically they are easier to hit but get some morale bonus. Anyway we set up and I was somewhat surprised to see my opponent and his Woodland Indian troops formed into units two ranks deep. When I queried this he said the rules allow it, and its a good formation that maximises firepower while at the same time keeping the unit compact and easy to control - which of course it is.  In fact it exactly replicated the firing line formation of the formed regulars, but with none of the restrictions or disadvantages. It is also not disallowed in "the rules". This is true, but the end result is a game that bears no visual resemblance to the historical record or even the pop culture impression of the war in the woods and forests of North America - in fact it looked much more like a bad 1:60 ratio Napoleonic game. It has been bugging me since.

So whats the solution?

"Its only a game" - sure, but its a game about something real. Not sure what the solution is, probably just need to be less uptight :-)

I think I'm going to have a bit of a tinker with that in our games to discourage Indians and irregulars forming ranks. If it works I'll let you know,

If you go down to the woods today you better not go alone - 'cos theyre full of Rangers

Just a quick update - I realised when posting the earlier piece about the Canadian Militia that I hadn't shown the completed Rangers.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I bought a "British Wilderness" starter force from North Star Miniatures. It consisted of 16 Rangers, 6 Indians, and an Officer, supposedly enough to build a 200 pt force.

I was pleasantly surprised at the figures which had a lot of character and painted up well - at least by my standards.

Here is the finished product - advancing out of the forest with the Indians scouting ahead

and a closer shot of the Rangers.

I'm quite pleased with them - more so when I discovered that by upgrading the Rangers I can actually stretch a supposed 200pt force to 300pts. Another positive is that although technically a French & Indian Wars unit, they can also double up as Queens Rangers for the American War of Independence, another bonus.

I'm enjoying building a force and playing Muskets and Tomahawks - just completed our third game now and all have been fun, which is a very good sign. Recommended

CentreParcs it's not - FIW Buildings

Still tooling up for Muskets & Tomahawks.

In addition to the normal troops the game requires a number of buildings to defend or burn down, and sometimes some civilians to get in the way.

We have been checking out the buildings options. As usual nowadays there is a plethora of laser cut mdf buildings. I don't like laser cut mdf. With a few exceptions you seem to get buildings that look like square boxes, and no end of dressing them up helps. If you want to get a really good result you have to do what Richard Clarke of Lardie fame does, and use the mdf as a shell to be detailed. I appreciate they are fairly quick and easy to build, but they seem to me to be disproportionally expensive for what you eventually get - unless you do a TFL special on them, in which case you would probably be better off starting from scratch. Compare the Perrys plastic buildings with similarly priced mdf options and you would have to be a very big fan of the omnipresent smell of scorched mdf to choose anything other than the Perrys.

Then we stumbles across a rather nice, if a bit esoteric choice for early American Colonial architecture - 1:72 Russian log houses from Pegasus Hobbies.

Ok I had to admit being a bit sceptical when I first read on line about their suitability, however we have bought some and they're really good. Although supposedly 1:72 they fit well enough with 28mm figures. The detail is good and the plastic is a nice and sturdy, no nonsense thickness. Here's the contents laid out for inspection.

This is the largest of the Pegasus options - a 2 storey "Ibza". The kit went together very smoothly and without incident - I've left the roof unattached so you can place figures at the windows. I'm considering adding an internal floor to the upstairs. The walls are well detailed outside, with some rendering on the inside too rather than your usual blanks.

Here's the kit complete, with a Wargames Factory Militiaman for scale.

Cost including p&p through ebay was less than £13. Hopefully I will get this painted up soon. The only issue I have is the little flourish on the roof ridge beam, but I think that will not be noticed or will be easy to fix.

So I'm looking at the other two sets in the range, plus the Perrys buildings, and they should see us through.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today....

My weakness of mind was again highlighted last Saturday at the Battlefront Show in Stockton. I was helping out doing demos on the Hawk stand, when I was suddenly taken by a stupid and irrational urge to start a new period.

Typically the seeds had been sown by an old gaming friend Mark Hadman as we talked about gaming trends, and generally bemoaned the state of the gaming world. High on our agenda was the problem of finding opponents and opportunities to play games we wanted. Both of us had come to the same conclusion by different routes - that we had to diversify and play games that are popular, even if we don't particularly have a lot of enthusiasm for them. In passing Mark mentioned he had played Muskets & Tomahawks, and that it was a good, fun and easy to play game.

I never held a lot of enthusiasm for the black powder period. To me, Napoleonics may as well be a funny sort of three coloured ice-cream. the American War of Independance & French Indian Wars also were low on my hit list, although I did enjoy playing Andy Callan's superb "Loose Files & American Scramble" rules. However, Mark's comments also happened to coincide with another club member (John) wanting to play AWI. John has been trying to whip up interest for a year  or so without success. It seemed like maybe I could tie both these threads together, so after some cajoling I also roped my regular opponent Paul in, and we set of to see Dave Thomas to do "a deal". After the usual horse trading cash changed hands and we walked away with a couple of boxes of Perrys AWI ,  some Wargames Factory AWI Militia, and a North Star British Wilderness Starter Force for the FIW. Clearly our planning and coordination were not what they should be as when we finally sat down to assess our haul of plastic and lead we discovered we had forgotten the French!

Part of the plan is to get these painted and on the table fast, so I immediately got to work on some Indians, assisted by loaning a copy of the BBC series "Last of the Mohicans" with Phillip "Dont tell him your name Pike!" Madoc playing Magua, and here they are ! Not the greatest paint jobs but they'll do for me

Six down - still need basing etc bit not a bad start. That leaves me with 16 more British Rangers and an Officer to paint, so watch this space