26 April 2014

Some thoughts on the Poll

First up, thanks to everyone who has voted and I appreciate your input.
Interesting results so far, which I thought warranted a little expansion:
FPW 6mm - a conflict which has long fascinated me and I have 3 sets of rules for.  Bacchus has some lovely 6mm options for figs. 
Prussian Infantry battalion from the Baccus website here
But despite having long been interested, the concerns I have with going this way is that every action seems have only 3 outcomes:
- Excellent Prussian Krupp guns soften up the French sufficiently for the Prussians and/or Allies to break them up in assaults; or
- Prussian Krupp guns dont soften up the French sufficiently and the Prussians and/or Allies get massacred by the excellent French small arms; or
- a bit of both ends up in a stalemate
Potentially, this sounds like it will not be highly endearing after the first few games.  Bit hard to get excited about being French too, given that they didn't win any Victories during the war.
SciFi 6mm - I have a large stash of 6mm figs from a wide variety of manufacturers, including a stack of old GW Epic figs.  I recently heard Ken Whitehurst talk about his Polyversal project on a recent Meeples and Miniatures episode, and it sounds excellent. 

You may remember Ken from a few years back when he ran the podcast "This Week in Wargaming".  Anyway, it sounds great (see his blog here: http://www.polyversal-game.com/) so I'll be waiting for that to appear before I go back to the future, so to speak

19th Century Naval (1/1200) -  I had intended for this to be a pre-dreadnought era ironclad style and hadn't considered Napoleonic era ships.  I dabbled in that a bit about 20 years ago when I was mad keen on Wooden Ships and Iron Men (which I still have plus masses of articles and other goodies for).  In fact, I even have a fleet or two of tiny little 1/2400 scale ships which fit in the hexes for that game and which allow fleet actions.  Not nearly as nice as those Langton models though of course.
Massed Ancients - this was clearly a popular poll choice, emphasised by one email suggestion that I even go with 28mm sized bases for 6mm figs - that would look awesome indeed.  The problem I have is is that having made a delightful looking Legion, probably in something near 2:1 ration of figs, the problem of painting masses of celts, Britons, Gauls or seems rather appalling.
This is the reason this genre gets so many votes: wonderful massed 6mm Romans by Geektactica (see his blog here)
6mm Napoleonic - a wonderfully expansive genre to enjoy, of course, but more than a little daunting also for the array of information and frankly the OCD grognard button counters too.  Massed ranks of 15mm figs looks lovely, but I think you'll agree that there is something special about the wonderful diorama bases one can use in 6mm.  Have a little at these from Ian's Blog with No Name as examples of mouth watering possibilities.

Some of Ian's wonderful French infantry from his blog here
   And more such awesomeness form my mate Bish's blog here


RCW - I think this could be a lot of fun also as an ongoing campaign, but on reflection I think the sort of characterisation I want to achieve would be best at the skirmish level.  I might put together a Bolshevik and White Russian companies for In Her Majesty's Name instead.
Boer War - the early war period (such as these sounds pretty interesting and one certainly doesn't see it often.  Some of the mobile actions in the early days could be good fun, but like the FPW it might likely be a little too niche for the effort involved.
ECW 6mm - At level pegging with other options this doesn't seem a stand out leader. Until one considers the possbibilities again with the lovely Baccus range of figs;

See more of Lee's Fantastic ECW bases here
And now that cad Dux Hormunculorum (now to be known as Dux Insidious!) has not only procured a starter set with two armies but offered to paint me an army of stout Royalist gentlemen.  In the meantime, he has finished his first test base and its looking splendid as you can see here.
The Dux does it again!
In the meantime, the classic movie Ben Hur was on the telly over Easter, reawakening long held dreams of Galley warfare.  One always needs a distraction here and there... The Analysis Paralysis continues!

9 comments:

  1. which manufacturer would you be considering to buy from for 1:1200 pre-dred' please, if i may ask?

    i got some 1:3000 late victorian ships from navwar, but the small scale really doesn't do the quirky designed ships justice, in my honest opinion. i saw there' an american company that sells 1:1200 but i'm always wary about buying outside of the UK.

    obviously, i voted for the naval [oh, and the langton ancient galley rules are free to download off their site, if you weren't aware] = )

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  2. Have you seen the Hotz Artworks paper galley? Called Roman Seas, from memory. Pretty lovely, and I think people play them with 6mm figures, which certainly appeals to me.

    I'm happily painting away with the 6mm ECW....They look pretty nice. They could be yours......

    Mwahahahaha!

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  3. Do them all you know you want to mwuahhahahah

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    1. Exactly - why restrict yourself to just one of these? *evil grin*

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  4. Sorry Paul, I couldn't rightly vote on anything smaller than 25mm. :-)

    I hope to do FPW myself someday. The wargaming battles I've seen or read about have all been very close and enjoyably challenging for both sides to play. The main factor is that you are replacing the French command with yourself or a friend, and unless you're reenacting a certain battle, there's no need to totally handicap the French with poor leadership values.

    For me after the initial interest in a certain period, it really takes discovering a miniature line that wows me to get into it and then choose your favorite set of rules. Case and point was North Africa during WWII. It's always been my favorite theater, but it wasn't until the Perry Bros' came out with their miniature line that finally equipped me, and Bolt Action is just waiting to be played.

    By the way, look for the Vikings to be making a comeback on my blog in the near future. ;-)

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  5. I guess somethign that has to be factored in is what you will be doing for the next two years. Busy times do not make for easy army building eh? Honestly makes the ECW even more of a favourite?

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  6. I agree with Chris's comments above, the only rationale choice is to "do all of the above". It's also the choice that will provide your son with the highest amount of historical education - why constrain his budding historical knowledge by adhering to the hackneyed concepts of "practicality" or "economy"?

    You know it's the right thing to do.

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  7. It's not either/or, it's in what order. I.e. which first?

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    1. So it first comes down to who I can find an opponent for what games - Alan is forging ahead with ECW so I have thrown my lot in there as a starting point. I used to play a lot of 6mm SF (Epic, and DS2 mostly) so I know that once I have regenerated a set of 6mm terrain that that scale is going to be difficult to resist doing further genres in.

      And at the same time, I am also enjoying 15mm WW2 and SF...

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