Review: cheap trees from China

If there is one thing you need for any gaming table, it are trees.

Wether playing historical, fantasy, sci-fi, large battles, skirmishes... it seems you always need just that one forest more.

And face it, trees are in general not that cheap at all, wether you go to a dedicated wargame scenery creator or a train models store.

Now, for 6mm, the Z scale range works really well, and I was strolling through eBay (though they are exactly the same on AliExpress, Wish and more as well) and stumbled upon whole ranges of 1/300 scale (and for that matter, larger as well) trees.

So I decided to try them out and order some various sets, the first one already having dropped on my doorstep this week.  I guess it made the boat right on time, as I usually calculate around 2 months for those sorts of Free Shipping things to arrive from China.

The lot is a bag of 50 trees in 1/300 scale, and costed a "hefty" 5.02 GBP, and free shipping.  So I immediately ordered 5 bags of those, under the idea of "fool me once".  They arrived as I said really swift, and they actually don`t look half bad.

The trunks will require perhaps a bit of ink to make them look less plastic, but the flock ratio for the leaves is pretty good.  Just take care opening your bag, some flock will be lingering around in it.

The trees do not have flat bases though, so take into account a bit of work might be required.  Either base them on isolation foam or some cork board.  I personally am planning on the latter, and then attaching the bit of cork to a 3d printed base or so, I will have to look that over.  Of course, green stuff and the likes is also a solution, but for 250 trees that would mean a lot of clayrolling...

So yes, these are definitly good trees for a table, dead cheap and well scaled.  They are on eBay under the name "50 model train trees scenery landscape 1:300" when I bumped across them, from various sellers (though I suspect it is actually all the same company).

Now to base up some woods...

Barrow Wight

The latest MESBG model to leave the paint desk, is this Barrow Wight from the old Fog on the Barrow Downs (the Tom Bombadil set) set.

They now have found their niche in the ghastly Angmar list, but I actually painted him up for the monthly Frostgrave community challenge.

The model itself was painted on my green bases as are all my forces, think of it as a thawed out area of Frostgrave, but I tend to play Frostgrave / DnD / Rangers of Shadow Deep drawing mostly from my huge LOTR collection, so meh.

Anyways, it was a fun in between model to paint, but now it's back to scenery for me hehehe...

Strategy & Tactics volume 1 nr 1 - January 1967 !!!!!

Recently, I came in possession of a heap of scanned PDF's of an old wargame magazine, and I mean OLD.

Because this very first issue of Strategy & Tactics - A Journal of American Wargaming is over 50 years old now.

The 12 page long magazine is nowwhere comparable to today's magazines, first of all of course being all black and white.  Produced because back then, under the "push" by Avalon Hill, wargaming began to boom.  Now, it wasn't like all miniatures and such, we are talking the card counter type games, but the seeds of our hoby where laid down back then.

But there is a section on wargaming with miniatures in the magazine, detailing battles on 6 by 6 tables, with 40 to 50 models of 54mm per side as back then rather standard, because the HO train scale provided excellent scenery for the games.  And it contains a "how to" to build your own Regulation Wargames table

Using variant rules on Avalon Hill's Battle of the Bulge is tackled as one of the main articles in the magazine, to provide more "correct" positions of units, as well as rules for Remagen bridgehead...

Surely a fascinating read to see how it all went down half a century ago, and I'll post about the issues in the coming month as I'll scroll through them!

The Haul Report 234

So, some nice stuff arrived this week, starting with these cheap trees from China.

I`ll do a full review on them one of the coming days, so watch this space, but for the price they costed me, you can't go far wrong.

Dark Realms has been releasing it's first buildings from this months Patreon, and Umbar is the location.  I really love how those turned out!

Furthermore, as work continued on prepping the glassplated printer now, some things have been churning out already for Project Far Side, but normally by next week I should be back up to big speeds and volumes, IF work doesn`t call me in just yet...

Finally something not figure related, but after the series, it's time for the book which is apparently totally different.

So that's all there is to be seen this week, a nice stack for sure!

On the Painting Desk 148

Another week of painting 6mm has gone by and some good progress was made!

As you could see earlier this week with the finalising of two more units of french Musketeers.

Now, for the coming week it'll be all about terrain again, though I really should finishe the last touches on the bases of those flyers.

And after that, it's time for some work on a genuine army for Blitzkrieg Commander in between, so that it can get pushed to the 1k barrier and face the russians in ww2.

See you all next week for some hopefull good updates!

2d6 Sword & Sorcery

Produced by 2 Hour Wargames, this rulebook begins with "Sometimes I just want to play an easy game", and that is what this is all about.

Easy and yet fun, challenging, for those times you just don't feel like crunching numbers and flick through heaps of rulebooks, but just want a quick, laid back fantasy game.

And calling this a Beer & Pretzel game is perhaps the correct term for it, as instead of endless types of models defined by their weapons and armour, the figures are just classed by their role on the battlefield.  And it allows for solo play, needing no more then a 12 by 12 area!

Your band consists of a Star (aka, you) and the Grunts (your minions so to say, but also the enemies, and are controlled by the game mechanics).  And then it all comes down to the most important stat, the Rep or Reputation.  Ranging from 3 to 5, these are the skill level of your warriors, against which rolls are made.
A band in this game is generally small (the max starting size being 5 models, and the grunts are generated randomly...) to fit the small table area, so you won't need to paint heaps of models!  And then the bashfest starts, as this is basically an arena style game, unlimited move on the board included.

There are some army lists at the back of the book for generic creatures and races as well if you want to add a tat of detail to your games, and that is about it for this fun looking gamesystem.

I'll definitly want to try it out one day as a solo game, just for the fun of it, so expect a BatRep somewhere down the line!

Regiments de Clare and Aunis

And so it comes that I completed the last two bases of the Wars of the Sun King pack I ordered for the AHPC.

The final two bases of Musketeers, and to be honest, I got quit hooked on painting them, in that I will be expanding the force over the coming months and, probably more likely, years.

These two regiments are the Regiment de Clare, which was present at the battle against the League of Augsburg, and consisted of irish volunteers.  It was an auxilliary regiment reduced to batallion size after the treaty of Limerick.

I also admit I made a boo-boo, because I switched banners around.  These are the actual banners of the Piemont regiment I did a while ago, and send them into the world keeping aloft the Clare banners, mea culpa.  I misread the Baccus flagsheets, thinking it was a up towards down listing instead of a left to right one... which would have been to obvious with three names and three flags for each line x-D

The second base is the Regiment de Aunis, part of what would later become the Languedoc regiment.

I really enjoyed creating these little regiments, and with my next order at Baccus 6mm I will be ordering some more packs to expand on them and make them three base units each for starters.

This is also what I love about 6mil, I now only painted up a single pack of models, good for 4 bases (aka units) yet they already start to look like a very solid battleline as they number 96 models now. 

Building MESBG Armies: the delayed campaign Battle Companies checklist

This would have been it, where it not for a nasty virus throwing everything into disarray, the final checklist before I start my campaign through Middle-Earth for the Battle Companies ruleset.

I have been painting a lot of the models in the new man-cave, using the AHPC10 this year again to paint up Lord of the Rings figures amongst others and get more companies into the fray in a bid for glory.

If you go to the bottom of this blog, you can find a list of previous posts, and in there for May 2019 and december 2019, the previous checklist as how my forces stood once the book was released, so you can see if you like the evolution made on them.  The key for the models remain the same, in italics are the completed bands, the (B) means which models I still need to buy, and the (P) means which models I have, but still need to paint up...

Good Battle Companies

Minas Tirith: completed

Osgiliath: completed

Fiefdoms: (B) Knight of Dol Amroth on foot, Man-at-Arms of Dol Amroth (P) 2 Blackroot Vale Archers

Rohan: completed

Men of the West: (B) 2x Knights of Dol Amorth

Dead of Dunharrow: completed

Arnor: (P) 5x Warrior of Arnor, 2x Ranger of Arnor

Rangers of the North: (P) 2x Ranger of the North, 2x Ranger of the North with Spear

Lake-Town: (B) 3x Lake-Town Guard, 2x Lake-Town Militia with Shield, 2x Lake-Town Militia with Spear, 2x Lake-Town Militia with Bow.

The Last Alliance: completed

Erebor and Dale: (B) 2x Warrior of Erebor with Shield, 1x Warrior of Erebor with Spear, 1x Warrior of Dale with Shield, 1x Warrior of Dale with Shield and Spear, 1x Warrior of Dale with Esgaroth Bow

Lothlorien: (P) 1x Galadhrim Warrior, 1x Galadhrim Warrior with Spear and Shield, 1 Gladhrim Archer

Rivendell: completed

Halls of Thranduil: (B) 2x Mirkwood Elf with Shield, 1x Mirkwood Elf with glaive, 1x Mirkwood Elf with bow, 1x Mirkwood Ranger

Iron Hills: (B) 2x Iron Hills Dwarf with shield and spear, 2x Iron Hills Dwarf with mattock, 1x Iron Hills Dwarf with crossbow

Durin's Folk: completed

Moria Expedition: (B) Dwarf Ranger with bow, Dwarf Ranger with two-handed axe, (P) Dwarf ranger with throwing axes

The Shire: (P) 8x Hobbit Militia, 4x Hobbit Archer

Wanderers in the Wild: (B) Dwarf Ranger with two-handed axe, (P) Dwarf Ranger with two hand axes, Hobbit Militia

Evil Battle Companies

Mordor: completed

Cirith Ungol: completed

Minas Morgul: (B) 2x Black Numenorean

Isengard: (B) 2x Uruk-hai Scout, 3x Uruk-hai Scout with shield, (P) 2x Uruk-hai Scout with bow

Warg Riders: (P) 2x warg Rider with shield, Warg Rider with bow

Dunland: (P) Dunlending Warrior with two-handed axe, 2x Dunlending Warrior with Shield, Dunlending Warrior with Bow, 4x Wildman of Dunland

Sharkey's Rogues: (P) 3x Ruffian, 2x Ruffian with bow, 1x Ruffian with whip, 3x Wildmen of Dunland

Moria: (P) 4x Moria Goblin with shield, 4x Moria Goblin with spear, 3x Moria Goblin with bow

Goblin-Town: (B) 10x Goblin Warrior, 2x Goblin Warrior with two-handed weapon

Angmar: completed

Gundabad: (B) 2x Gundabad Orc with shield, 2x Gundabad Orc with spear, 4x Goblin Mercenary

Dol Guldur: (B) 2x Hunter Orc, Hunter Orc with Bow, Hunter Orc with two-handed weapon, 2x Fell Warg

Denizens of Mirkwood: (B) 2x Mirkwood Spider, 3x Fell Warg

Harad: completed

Karna: (P) Watcher of Karna with twin blades, Watcher of Karna with bow

Far Harad: (B) 2x Mahud Warrior, Mahud Warrior with blowpipe, 2x Mahud Warrior with spear (P) Mahud Warrior with blowpipe

Corsairs of Umbar: (B) 3x Corsair with shield, 2x Corsair with spear, 2x Corsair with bow

The Easterlings: (P) 2x easterling with shield, 2x easterling with pike and shield, 2x easterling with bow

Khand: (B) 4x Khandish Warrior, 2x Khandish Warrior with bow, (P) Khandish Warrior

So yes, that is a nice amount of Companies now ready to be played during the campaing, as players will be running multiple bands in the game as a result if they like.  For the expanding options of bands and the likes, I also have figures ready, or will be painting them up once the advancements are rolled, though it might be at times I just don't have the model.  But if that is the case, we will work around it as we come to the point, because in the first place it's all about having some fun in the gamesystem and tell epic stories... which you will be able to read here of course. Unless Corvid 19 keeps ruffling it's ugly feathers, as it looks like the campaign will be moved back for a full year to 2021 instead...

So this list will reappear once more, in about half a year's time when I'm all set and ready to start running the campaign for Middle-Earth, and show which forces by then will be able to participate!

De Bellis Antiquitatis 3.0

Written by Phil Barker and Sue - Laflin Barker, DBA has been around in the hobby for as long as I can remember... and I`m at year 25 now since coming into contact with "historics"...

And version 3.0 is one big fat baby, with a TON of army lists and all for in essence rather easy to learn rules.

While you don`t need much, as every army is consisting of 12 elements, I recently decided to finally go for it and start my 6mm ancients by building a force for DBA, picking list II/52, the Dacians, as the army of choice.  No idea why further then some very old wargame magazine where I remembered the look of the Falx warriors and really liked that.

The rules themselves only take about 20 pages, and all a player needs for the game is a force, a single d6, and a ruler that uses BW (Base Width) as sizes.  And for 15mm and smaller, that is 40mm, usually 20 deep for most infantry units, or as we know those at the club as a "warmaster base".  Every type of unit comes with base depth for larger and smaller scales in a handy diagram, as well as the number of models to go on it (double them for 6mm, but as I`ll be using Baccus, I`ll probably end up counting a strip as a 15mm model).

The rules as such cover all the aspects a game needs, like movement, shooting, combat, and combat results, and how games are won and lost, as well as detailed rules for flanking, recoiling... the usual.

But then we come to the bread and butter of the rulebook, the army lists.  And there are HUNDREDS of them, divided into 4 sections: The Chariot Period, The Classical Period, The Early Medieval Period and the High Medieval Period.  For example, my Dacians are numbered II/52, meaning they are the 52nd army list in the second section of the book...

Rounding out the book are some indexes, geographic and alphabetic for the armies, as well as for the rules, so it is a truly great tome to have, and once my force is done I can`t wait to try and get a game in of it!

Now to look for some printable terrain to lively up my generals base and the camp...