ALY MORRISON'S "BUTTERFLY" ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF WARGAMES AND TOY SOLDIERS

Monday 18 March 2024

Shiny Napoleonics… Prussian Artillery.

Greetings…

It’s time for something shiny…

A couple of Prussian Guns…




Now the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that these a Hinchliffe fighters and not my go to Minifigs…

For some reason Minifigs Prussian Artillery and Command don’t seem to come up on the likes of eBay that often…

However I found these in a box…  I have a lot of boxes at the moment 😁

Now I’ve never been a great Hinchliffe fan ( Nor a Marmite fan either… Just so’s you know)

Peter Gilder made them look magnificent ( As do my my chums Rob Grace and Robbie Roddis ) but they never really did it for me… I prefer the toy like quality of Minifigs… Especially the Intermediate Range.

But there they were… All Prussian and Artillery like… It would have been rude not to.

I did actually enjoy the challenge of painting these … I even painted a couple of command types which I will post later…

The Tunics are… Citadel… Kantor Blue.

The Red bits are… Citadel… Evil Sunz Scarlet.

The Trousers are… Ak Interactive… English Grey AK11020.

The Gaiters are… Citadel… Corvus Black.

The Greatcoats are… Scale75 War Front…Slate Grey SW-42.

Everything was the given a wash of Aly’s Brown Liquid… Then highlighted with the original colours… some of the lighter colours were given an extra highlight…

The paints are from…

Citadel…

https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/build-and-paint-lp

Ak Interactive…

https://ak-interactive.com/product-category/paints/paints-acrylics/3rd-acrylics/

Scale75…

https://scale75.com/en/123-miniatures-paints

The bases are as always…

https://warbases.co.uk/product-category/bases/round-cornered-bases/mdf-rc/

More shiny to come…


All the best   Aly



Saturday 9 March 2024

Crimean War… Russian Guns.

Greetings…

After reading David’s latest post on…

https://talesfromghq.blogspot.com/

I realised that I hadn’t actually posted a picture of my rebased Russian artillery…

So here they are… Squeezing themselves into the photo booth.


I’m having a bit of a rest from rebasing now… But when I have cleared some space on my wargames table I will have that promised parade…


The figures are of course Great War Miniatures… Painted by Dave Andrews.

https://www.northstarfigures.com/list.php?man=20&cat=175&page=1

The bases are as always Warbases…

https://warbases.co.uk/product-category/bases/premier-bases-metric/

Next I have some shiny toys on the way… 


All the best   Aly




Thursday 7 March 2024

From my side of the table… 1672.

Greetings…

A few weeks ago a few of us (Alan, Michael, Nick, John and myself) went round to Rick’s house and wargames palace for a game of Pike and Shot using Nicks fine collection of 1672 Franco-Dutch War toys and the Epic Pike and Shot Rules…

 Various things … both fun and irritating seem to have got in the way of me posting about this fine game… I of course say “ fine game “ because I was on the winning side…for a change 😁.

I did a wonderful flank move… Yup!…. Spent most of the game marching… Which is probably why we were victorious 🤣.

Somewhere in the Netherlands… 


My beautiful brave and glorious flank marchers…


Some villainous types… I painted some of these… And some of the buildings… But I am still going to shoot them if I can 😁.


Some lovely French hikers going for a peaceful walk in the Dutch countryside…Honest.

It would appear that the villainous enemy are also flankers…😳.

They are rather pretty…

Our brave troops show the Dutch how they can lie down and pretend to be dead … Thus distracting them from the fact that I am slowly sneaking around their flank…

It looks like it worked…

The enemy put pressure on our centre…And you can just see our glorious men bracing themselves for the Dutch flanking move ( That sounds like a football term… Or a country dance 😁) 

I honestly can’t remember what they were up to… But it was clearly glorious.

The enemy brace themselves for my (slow🙄) onslaught…


It took a while…But the gun eventually hit something… I think it might have been John.


The action heats up on my flank and despite being well dug in the town’s defenders start to take casualties…

My ability to hit anything hadn’t improved by much…But my saves were well above average.

Meanwhile on the other side of the battlefield ( Under another windmill… It is Holland ) some hot shooting action goes on…


After much hard pounding the defenders eventually have had enough and break…

The Dutch flank attack faltered as did their centre…
It was a pretty close game with the battle lines moving slowly clockwise round the table…

A very enjoyable day indeed…. A big thank you to Rick for hosting the game and Nick for supplying the toys…

All the best.  Aly





Saturday 2 March 2024

Hammerhead 2024.

Greetings…

It was a nice early start today as we set off to Newark Show Ground for this years Hammerhead Show.

I’ve become very fond of this event over the years… Unlike a lot of other U.K. shows this one is all participation games and I think it makes for a ver different atmosphere… 

It seemed to me that there were a lot more younger people and more women … Similar in a lot of ways to Tactica.

People are more engaged with the games and tend to stay longer… Unlike me this time… I only had about two hours to run around like a mad spending fool 🤣.

Here are some pictures of a few of the games that caught my eye… There were actually 38 participation games so I missed a lot but also didn’t get a chance to take a decent picture of others… Due to … ‘shock horror’!… people getting in the way while enjoying themselves 🤣😂🤣

All the tables looked busy which can only be a good thing.



A nice looking Conquistador Game from Like a Stone Wall Wargames Group.


What a Beaver…French and Indian wars… From the Forest Outlaws Gaming Club.








Toonkrieg WW11 Bash.. From Reveille Studios.
Delightful bonkers stuff beautifully presented… Just the sort of game I like.


Just Follow the Rhynes… From the Very British Civil war Forum (I Think).


Kiss Me Hardy 2… From the Harrogate Wargames Club.



What a Cowboy… From The Bunker.
Cowboys and Dinosaurs… What’s not to like.



The Eagle Has Landed…Sort Of! … From the Cowards Wargames Club.
Oberst Steiner v’s Captain Mainwarings Home Guard.

And of course… 


Terrain and Paint…


Books and Rules…

And…


Something good and silly 😁

It was a quick but very enjoyable visit… I also managed to catch up with a fair few people but I know I missed a fair few more…
Hopefully I will have more time at Partizan.

All the best.  Aly


Monday 26 February 2024

Tactica… 2024.

Wow! …

Has it been that long… Yes it has 😁

At the weekend we ( Michael, Peter and myself) made a a trip across what felt like the whole of Germany…to go to Tactica.. 

We went from Birmingham to Munich and then onto Hamburg… And the same on they way back..

Quite a trip really…

But we’ll worth it…

Tactica never fails to please…

I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought I had and some of them seemed to to have vanished from my phone… possibly because of all the X-rays the poor thing had to endure on the journey…

Or because I’m an idiot who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near technology 🤣

Make your own choice…

A lovely WW2 Mediterranean game…
Anders Lassen- A Danish Rogue Hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Lassen

A lovely Warmaster game..
Backlit with Hamburg sunshine.

A splendid Vietnam game from my friend Gunner.
All 6mm figures.

A paintball game…
Yup! A game based on a game…
Love it





An incredible Lord of the Rings game /set up…


One of the many little games set up around the venue… This one was Peninsular War using Rebels and Patriots…



A lovely SAS airfield raid… Hopefully you can see that the lights are actually mini LED’s



Everybody likes a bit of Game of Thrones…




A very nice Napoleonic game from Team for Historical Simulations…












This was my favourite game… 

An Asymmetric Warfare rules game set in a Favela…
Put on by Team Wurfelkrieg 
It certainly looked like an inviting place to live…😳
The little details were wonderfully done and very inspiring…

And did I buy anything…

Of course I did… but I was restrained… There was only so much I could carry on as hand luggage after all 🤣.



The Disc World stuff is a present for my daughter…
The resin toys are some Normans from Brother Vinni..


The incredibly small and detailed Van Dyke WSS figures are for an idea I have had for a long time to do alternative forces for Travel Battle… I was at a weak moment at the end of a long day… They made me do it… 🤣


The book???? Do I really need to give you a reason….

It was really lovely to see everyone and a massive thanks goes out to everyone who organised this splendid event.

All the best.  Aly