Robin Hood, The Gladiatress and more 54mm

 The eye catching title to this month's post is reference to what I've mostly been doing this last month, besides the mundane real-life stuff- celbrating my wife's birthday, her retirement, #1 son's birthday, a trip to my consultant (who now doesn't want to see me for a year !) and so on. 
In the early part f last month we played a couple of Gladiator games, but that has gone dorant as we await version 1.7 of the rules to playtest. The rest of the month I have been assembling all the bits I need to play the Game " The Legend of Robin Hood by Avalon Hill way back in the mists of time.  The 1st photograph is the board itself , but note the 30cm ruler at the top to give an idea of the board size (if you can't imagine the size of an A2 piece of card).

The map/board is made of 10 sheets of A4 spliced together. and glued to the A2 sheet of cardboard.

Home-made, two sided counters

A bag of plastic coins, one of two I bought in the 90s

Two qrs sheets laminated

The two qrs sheets are also two-sided.

The rules too, of course, a mere 6 double side sheets.

All that's left is for me to pick out a single die to play the game.

To keep me in the mood for gladiators I watched a film released in 2004 called Gladiatress (sic) and that's one and a half hours of my life I'm never getting back ! It was also about half way through that I realised I'd seen this before, but even then I couldn' stop watching as the horror that was this film unfolded before me.

 It's far worse than even "Gladiator" (which is bad enough) and is rather your typical British farcical 'comedy' film.  

I've also decided to show you some of the last bits of 54mm figures from Historex that I still wish to be rid of. I looked for Historex on the Interweb, found their website and discovered that acsimple 54mm figure can cost upward of £16 !  So take a look at the stuff below and guess how much it's all worth !

Random Labels amongst the collection

About twenty bags of legs, torsos, arms, armament, heads, hats and lots more.

A close-up of a single bag

As I get annoyed just having to glue a 28mm figure together, these would drive me demented.

All the various work has now finished on our house and I'm hoping to get atleast a couple of gaes in next month.

So that's it then for another month, thanks for taking the time to visit  and as always your comments are welcomed and appreciated.

Yet More 54mms

 Whilst I may not be posting anything of particular interest, namely more 54mms, I have had another few gladiator games whilst still play-testing Frank Sultana's "Blood on the Sands" gladiator rules. No news yet of a publisher, nor the final version of the rules - we're up to version seven now !

As per last week's post all these 54mm models need a new home and are free to anyone willing to pay postage  or they may find a very different outcome.

Here's this week's models, which are all metal:

 

Those who know will be aware that there are a lot of Napoleonics in his collection, more so when you add in all theplastic (Historex ?) packets of unbuilt modesl. In the packetsbelow there are horse cloths, tack, weapons, torsos, a gun liberetc. etc. the list goes on and on. There is another similar box of  various other packets too !  

I think with these two boxes, I'm about half-way through the collection, surely someone, somewhere would be delighted with these ?

 

My time at a computer these days is limited as typing is becoming very painful arthritus, old age, grumpiness and lack of alchohol probably.) , so even this relatively short post was done in two halfs. A hour photographing and editing the photographs and a similar time on the post itself. 

Likewise I have been very lax getting around to all the blogs I normally cmment upon, which of course I will try to rectify.

So thats it from me for another month, thanks for taking the to time to visit and of course you comments are welcomed and appreciated.

54mms

 

Medieval Chaps

I inherited a large collection of 54mm models, several years ago and with the, seemingly continuous, disruption in my house they've been unfortunately neglected. They were given to me by the wife of a dear friend for disposal in whatever way I desired. So everthing you see here is available for anyone that 's wants on or more, for the price of postage, even if it's just to melt them down for- mainly historex their lead content (just don't tell me). They could be used, I guess, even as 'trophies' or awards at games clubs . 

For the next week or so, I'll be showing off allthe models currently in my possession, both lead and plastic (many Napoleonics - mainly Historex as far as I can tell.)

 Here's the first box-worth of models:-

It's all Greek to me

French Poilu

Austrian?

Napoleonic in plastic - Retreating from Moscow ?

Another plastic Napoleonic

A familiar model. (plastic)

Johnny Reb and a surrendering Yankee -plastic

In addtion to finished models there are packets of bits:

Three of about a dozen similar bags of bits and full models (probably)

The collection spans two thousand years of history and to my eyes is well painted.
Thee are packets of Historex figures (Napoleonic from what I can tell) which still need assembling and at least one figure of a Japanese Taisho (general) that needs putting together and painted.

That's it for this month, I have been trying to catch up with blogs, but I tire very quickly on my computer, it's getting to be quite a strain reading and typing.

That's it then for another month and if you can think of anything I can do with these models, please do tell - there will be more next time.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are welcomed and appreciated.

Playing Games

 Currently any bobby-related activites have been put on holdf everything and I can't get into my games room without a struggle. The problem is that my time has beentaken upp conforming to the wishes of SWIMBO and we have had to go out, select new living room furniture then removing the old pieces until they can be whisked away, Un addition tto this, newflooring, carpets, lino etc. are being laid meaning that entire rooms and hallways have had to be emptied of everything (guess where to!).

 Nevertheless I have had access to sdome spacec in the living room and during the Easter school holidays had the delightful grandfatherly duty of keeping two of my older granchildren amused.
First up was the game "Mastermind" by Invictus, which plays a lot like 'Wordle', but with eight colours rather than letters.

We started with five coloured pegs from the eight available, but reduced it to four for simplicity. Once they had the idea of the game and had both played against me, they wished to play against each other, which suited mefine.

Two hours of bliss later they discovered they couldn't score properly.But a great time was had by all.

 

 

 I had another opportunity to play a game with my #1 grandson after an emergency at his mum's work meant we could have another game of somehting. I settled for The old classic "Space Hulk", my version being the orignal v1,0. Whilst the Terminators were nothing to write home about, the genestealers were excellent and I had them, undercoated and painted (with inks) in no time flat.

We played the first game in the mission book, he being the Marines first time around and we then swapped around for the second game. Needless to say I spanked his bottom both times, but he'll learn.

On the other gaming front with my console, I'm still playing Bannerlord, my Character is now 66 years old and his marriage has been childless, but I am the Khan and have around 5 million gold in the bank.

So, whilst surfing the online store, and with the happy memories of Space hulk playing in my mind, I came across this:

A console game, costing around a fiver, it was worth a punt.
The game is clunky, showing a lot of age and should b re-done, but for all its faults it's a decent enough game and far better then the "Amiga" version I wowned all thise years ago (Space Hulk came out about 1990 iirc). 

Here's a couple of screen shots:

Your initial squad

The initial campaign map

The "normal" viewfor playing - you can zoom in and out - the detail is excellent.

You can also go into a first person mode - scary as feck.

I had no photographs of my own for this post, as my camera is safely tucked away in my games room whist the various work activities are carried out (next up is decorating - ^Yay^) 

But that's it then for another month, hopefully I'll remember  it's a Monday next time, before our evening meal !.
Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always, your comments are both welcomed and truly appreciated.

Painting

 So, feeling slightly guilty of not doing anything wargame related for at least a month, I decided toget my arched building (for my Magnificent7 project) out of storage and paint it. Well that was the original intention,until I got the big boy paint brushed outs (size 2's and over) as this is a big model some 18" long, 12" deep and  6" high (45cm x 30cm x 15cm).

Before I'd even sorted out the paints and brushes I was going to use,  the photograph on the right shows some of the tools I used first.

Filler for the small surround wall at the base of the building that hadn't been done. 

Scissors to cut card for key stones that I'd just spotted when checking colours.

Door frame support/bollard things, has also been missed.

Two sets of matche, used as bricks had also to be sawn off

Finally a lot of filing of excess plaster had to be undertaken.

The door's key stone (left) and the door bollard things (right)

The photograph above I was using for colour reference when I spotted the omitted features and note the lower wall of dark stones that surrounds this building, that had to be plastered too.

Doors, now with the relevant additions.

One of two sets ofMatch sticks that had to be sawed off

Once all the 'extra; bits of work had been done and dried out overnight I started on a quick paintjob, that took 2hours or so a day for three days,

This was only the base colours that will have two more colours added, a lighter wash and finally highlighting.
Here's how the model looks with all the base colours done (very similar to the way I painted my Sudan builings).

The building with all its base colours more or less finished,

Rear of the building (pretty boring huh?)

The roof  (equally boring)

Well, what I thought would be an easy job has turned out to be just the start of a marathon painting and modelling seeion. Hopefully I'll find the enthusiasm to continue and try to finish it off before its once more put into storage.

That's it then for another month and just in case you think I was having fun, just to be clear - I wasn't !

Thanks for taking the time to visit and of course your comments are still welcomed and appreciuated.

Bannerlord

 Well, February came and went, I'm another year older and I attended four hospital and clinic appointments rather than the three I had anticipated, but all went well.
So I hear you ask, what have I been doing with the rest of my time since my last post ?

Well, I've been almost continually playing 'wargames' on my game console, namely "Bannerlord" or to give it its proper name "Mount and Blade II, Bannerlord", a fantasy medieval-type fictional world.

As I have a games console, rather than a PC, I've had to wait two years for it to appear, but it was, imho, well worth the wait, 

Like any cross-over from PC to any games console there are still minor bugs to be sorted, all of which have taken hours of downloading 'patches',    

So what exactly is "Bannerlord" ?

Here's a look at the world and bit of what goes on in it.

The huge world map on which your character will interact

A zoomed-in image on the map above, beautiful terrain imo,...

...and zoomed in even more. The single horsemen are 'armies', the chap across the river has 263 men

The action leaves the main map to fight on a large version of the terrain your force is in

Infantry, cavalry and your character fight as individuals, man to man (and it's brutal)

It's not all open field battles either...

..and all the towns and castles aren't all made from wood.

It's not all fighting and sieges, you can take a stroll around the streets too...

...or maybe take your chances in the arena.

There is so mych more to the game than just fighting, there are bandits camps to attack, looters to ride down and a whole economy you can interact with and of course any castleor towns you own , have to be run too. The whole world is alive with activity and there are a lot of villages that feature on the map along with all the activty of the villagers, the trader caravans etc - it just goes on,

 

Battles take on average about about 3 to 5 minutes, but are generally very bloody and over fairly quick, so much so that you can fight many of them in single hour long session. (or you can just sned your troops in without your character and watch the casualty count come in, in table form.

 

And this is what has been occupying my time over the last month or so (and probably much of the next month too). 

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit  and of course your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.