Monday 4 May 2020

Surveying things.

 Yesterday I began to put my flats into units and listed them. I was surprised by the amount I had! The next stage is to write a little background for each one. I find model soldiers fight better if they have an organised unit they always fight as part of, esprit de corps or some thing like that. I will mark the
underside of them so they know who they are. I need to consult the Featherstone book today and see if his ancient rules incorporated ideas of elite or raw troops, something that adds character to an army without over complicating things. Sturdy boxes have been ordered ( along with some to hold my daughters vintage china collection more safely and my lead mountain) to serve as barracks to the

flats. I am currently considering scenery. I like the Faller stuff I have and feel I might just get away with my ruined castle, Church and Swiss chalets for the East Mark and the Great River. Flats terrain will suffice for Lurland but not too sure what will happen in the West Mark. The land of Flowers will have very basic stepped pyramids to suggest habitation.


The basing complete and first coat of paint applied to bases. It was a suitably mindless task for me alone or to keep me occupied when chatting. Time willing I will get in a couple of games this week. The dining table and kitchen table are covered in other’ Craft materials or piles of study books and printed off articles so we are back to the small set up again.  Finally the after tidying picture, actually I am quite chuffed with the new streamlined look.


The Underground print above for inspiration, the screen printing stuff wedged in out the way,tidier shelves , no craft materials spilling forth over the floor and out of sight on the left is Rodney Matthews “In search of Forever” waiting to be flicked through and enjoyed in a quit moment.





16 comments:

  1. Your Painting Hutch looks more stately now Alan- enjoying yore Flats too is good to hear about too. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. A big improvement and more pleasing to work at.

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  2. I'm sure you realise that your belief in the efficiency of written histories for your figures will be taken as evidence of insanity by non wargamers? It is, of course, also true (though some units always perform badly and are best left on the shelf looking pretty).

    I should look back through your postings to see which of Don's books you are referring to (though ancient flats suggests War Games). In that case they will actually be Tony Bath's rules (and I'm not sure if Don ever wrote his own set of ancient rules). I don't think Tony bothered with elite or raw troops, certainly not in those early sets. For his old SOA rules he actually said "Although allowances are made for the specialised values of differing types of troops, they are, generally speaking, taken at their peak values ..."

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    1. Are there such things as non wargamers,surely not!
      The rules are the ones from War Games by Featherstone indeed. I might experiment with plus or minus one on dice to reflect elite or raw, what do you think?

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    2. It’s a very long time since I played with these rules, though looking back I think I preferred them – or other versions of Tony Bath’s rules – to the WRG rules that replaced them; all that bookkeeping got a bore and it was actually fun to have units that did what you told them (at least until they ran away/died). As I recall they were pretty deadly and I think I’d advise against adding one to the die scores for missile fire for fear of creating super troops, though knocking one off for raw troops would do no harm. I know that at one time we experimented by varying the number of points needed for each die thrown: I think we gave guard units a die per four points and low-quality ones a die for every six points. However, the big quality differential was in armour and shields. Give your best infantry armour and a shield and your raw troops neither and there is significant difference in combat efficiency via the saving throws.

      There were bits of the rules that we never did understand but we just did what seemed reasonable without any problems. Also, in the hand-to-hand section the example in the “procedure” shows points only counting for the first rank of a units whilst the rule section appears to say two ranks can take part, and my analysis of the account of the Battle of Trimsos supports the two rank rule. So that’s what we used and melees were accordingly much more deadly.

      And congratulations on the clear out. Our loft and garage storage are still full of the stuff younger son didn't take with him when he emigrated to America: you can't really say please pop over and take this away (even when the planes are flying excess baggage comes into play ...)

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    3. Thanks for the really helpful suggestions, I will post my impressions of the rules after a couple of games if not before. Do you game much these days ( before lockdown I meant)and are you working on any thing currently?

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  3. It's good to spend a bit of time organizing things!

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    1. I feel better for it but am a tad grumpy beforehand.

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  4. You have been busy! I'm looking forward to a couple of grey rainy inside days as a relief from yard and garden chores.

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    1. I’ve been sorting the shed today which has been very useful indeed.

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    2. Weather has been good enough to haul everything out on to the patio prior to sorting. Not too warm just right.

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  5. Well done for the sort out, just remember a tidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind, an empty desk is the sign of...

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  6. I wish I was that organised. Good collection so far.

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  7. I am generally not so but do try. I am pleased with the collection.

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  8. Great work on sorting and tidying!

    I should be doing some of that myself. Maybe some day. ha!

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