Thinking out loud in the Staffordshire moorlands

My turn:

My biggest problem with both blogging and reading blogs is getting distracted by other periods in history. Unfortunately, Colonel Bill the writer of the excellent scenario guides for Age of Eagles keeps adding fuel to that fire and so I am trying this year to be disciplined and get one period absolutely nailed down.

So for the rest of 2018 my main focus is on the continued development of my American Civil War armies in particular my current lack of cavalry units for gaming Fire & Fury. The aim is to be able to put on the battle of Sharpsburg or Antietam ( depending on where you loyalties rest) in spring 2019 ,with scenery boards of a higher standard than Bull Run ,with a view to fighting it again at Joy of Six 2019. This should also enable me to build the forces of significant strength to put on an operational game later this year. I haven’t shelved the plans for Gettysburg but the fact that Gettysburg took place over three days ,means that fighting a one day battle where you get a result might appear to have more appeal. To support this I would like to put on some small Thursday night clashes so that we can get used to the 2nd Edition rules. The more time I have spent reading them the more I feel that all the unanswered loose ends of the first edition have been nicely tied up. ( bridge assaults, morale , divisional, corps , army break points ,charging etc)

Project 2 is my modern spearhead West Germans and fortunately I seem to be able to turn these out very quickly so should be able to field a full panzer division , plus air assets , territorials and an attached para brigade to counter Russ’s russians later this autumn. I definitely  have enough troops painted now, that could team up with The Brits or French to fight an operational game.

Project 3 is to fight some small Thursday night battles with the Napoleonic Age of Eagles rule set and the American war of Independence amendment for fire and Fury. I have enough scenarios to see me to old age. It won’t require much initial painting effort on my part to get a couple of my divisions done particularly if I use my new painting buddy to do the base colours for me.

Finally the process of rebasing my GQ wwii ships and aircraft has begun. They were a bit rushed to start with for the arms race that was VAS and I did a lot of tinkering which has made the bases inconsistent. I also need to add more cruiser ,destroyer  and small ship variants to the fleet to meet our scenario/campaign aspirations.

2019 will mean a panzer grenadier or mountain division for the modern West Germans , the final completion of my acw armies to allow me to put on the largest one day scenario ( 380 infantry stands per side, imagine that on a table on a Saturday morning) ,  and ( don’t wet yourself Mark) the battle of the Little Big Horn.( not just Custers stand but the full campaign with the the attack on the Indian villages etc ,) I have the Fire and Fury scenario and it’s been reverse bathtubbed to company level.