[Bolt Action] Gebirgsjaeger infantry completed

As I was deciding on my major and minor projects for the next year a month or so ago, I decided to try to get my Gebirgsjaeger painted and based for Bolt Action before the end of the year. There weren’t many figures, after all, and it meant that I could put BA in rotation in the games I play regularly. I have an aversion to playing with unpainted miniatures, and try not to do so. When a new game comes out, I’m ok with using either flat bases or unpainted figures for a test game or two, but if I decide I like the game and want to continue playing it, it’s painted minis only for me. I’m generally ok with facing an opponent who doesn’t yet have a completed force, as long as they’re taking steps to get their miniatures painted up. Here is the result of my work:

Gebirgsjaeger completed!

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[Muskets and Tomahawks] 15mm Blue Moon figures are here

Thanks to Mark at the club, who ordered a load of Blue Moon stuff for several of us using his army card, I have a load of figures to use in our M&T games now. Intrepid readers who follow this blog will have seen some pics of these figures in my last M&T post here, but they’re nice in the flesh (metal?) too. The Blue Moon figures are quite nice, though as with all Old Glory figures, they’re a mixed bag. There are quite a variety of figures (10 different poses in the Rangers, about 18-20 in the civilians bag, and all 30 in the Woodland Indians bag – definitely the best in my opinion. Some of the poses are a bit meh, but most are good, and there was some flash and a couple of figures with mould lines, but they were easy to clean up – it took about an hour or so to do so. Some of the Indian poses are very similar – the head feathers are different, or the loincloth is sculpted differently, for example, but the variety of poses is excellent for skirmish games like M&T. I’m firmly in the “as many different poses as possible” camp when it comes to wargaming. I know some people prefer all their figures to look the same (and I can see that for games such as 18th C or Napoleonic games, where you want them to look uniform), but I prefer a variety of poses – the more variety the better. If I have 12 different marching poses, each base has figures doing the same action and so look uniform and regular, but they also look like individuals rather than clones, which is often the case with uni-pose offerings from some companies. For other games, such as my Longstreet ACW Union army, I want a variety of actions going on too, and as many varied poses as possible, so that when I base the figures up, I have a ragged line of individuals. The same goes for my Hundred Years War English Impetus army, and really any ancients army too. If I ever revisit my Vikings, I want each and every figure to be different (which is probably possible, given the number of manufacturers out there). For skirmish games (Saga, Bolt Action, M&T etc), I want as few copied poses as possible in my force, and preferably all individual poses.

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That wargaming survey that’s going around

Had a fun evening at the club last night playing Wings of War (the original version, not the unfortunately acronymed Wings of Glory – seriously, did no-one there spot that their TLA is an offensive racist slur and consider that they ought to come up with something else?). Managed to get 4 kills before I went down in flames, as did a couple of others. It was the first time we’d played it in probably over a year, but it’s still a great game. I didn’t think much to the WW2 version, or to club fave Check Your Six!, in which games you spend far too much time manoeuvring around trying to get a shot in. Bleh. Too boring for my likes, I’m afraid, and too reminiscent of the Napoleonic Naval rules I played about 25 years ago in which we spent at least 3 hours trying to get into position before anyone managed to fire a shot. Which then missed.

 

Anyway, since this survey was been doing the rounds, I thought I’d put it up here too. It may be one of those “slow week” posts (as Markus opines), but at least it isn’t that Leibster award chain letter thing…

 

This is the extra long version, including the second set of questions and the additional questions that were posted to The Wargaming Site.

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More 10mm ACW goodness

My order from Pendraken came through (thanks to Anthony at the club for doing a large order on behalf of several of us), so I have more l’il 10mm Union soldiers ready to fight for the cause. I ordered some cavalry and some Zouaves (one pack each of their firing and advancing line, both of which came with the same command figures). I have a few spare to make up some more bases, if need be, and with enough figures for two command stands, I could do two units, though I’ll probably only do one, and use both the standard bearers on the one base so I can have a state and US flag on there. I;’ve a feeling I’ll have to buy some more command stands so that I can have enough standard bearers for two per unit, though I may just convert some likely looking riflemen by cutting off the rifles and sticking flagstaves in their hands instead.

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