Local Buildings for Local Games

I did promise that I would put up a few pictures of the buildings which HACME built for me for use with our VBCW chain of command games. Now that they are all finished, including the church, here they are. They are all based on local buildings here in Fulbourn and Teversham. You may note that there is also a small telephone box and post box which add to the distinctive British look. (The post box incidentally is based on one just across the street, rather than the traditional red all-over design.) Next up, I need some more walls to match the church for the churchyard.

And here are a couple of photos of them with their friends which are 4-Ground buildings.  I hope you will agree that together they should make a very respectable English village.

Finally, thanks to my tame in-house photo-shop wizard who kindly volunteered to remove extraneous off-table 'clutter' from these shots.

End of Year Round-Up

A final post to round up what I've been doing in 2014 and what I have plans for in 2015.

First, though I do hope that everyone has had/is having a good Christmas/New Year break. As regards Xmas presents, a couple of my gifts this year were wargaming related. The most obvious one was Andrew Field's new book on Quatre Bras: Prelude to Waterloo.

I really enjoyed the author's book on Waterloo, so I am looking forward to a chance to read this through. The other game related gifted I had was Command & Colors Napoleonics: Austrian Expansion. I've tried the first scenario and that was quite jolly.

In all I played/umpired a total of 11 games in 2014: of these the most numerous was Chain of Command for VBCW, which I've run a total of 5 times. This was definitely my main project this year. Other games played included 2 games of Sharp Practice at OML2 and a most memorable a trip to Peterborough to play in their Bloody Omaha, IABSM game.

I've also played several napoleonics games, including Quatre Bras using the Age of Eagles rules.

As for painting, I'm pretty pleased with what I have achieved. I reckon that I have painted about 180 15mm figures this year, plus 7 vehicles and a few buildings. The majority of these were for VBCW Chain of Command: the figs for this are all Peter Pig though from a mixture of periods (SCW, WW2, or WW1). I am pleased to say that this project is now just completed. There was also a fair number of napoleonics painted, mainly for the Quatre Bras game.

I've also painted 30 28mm figures this year. These were mainly for use with our RPG group (commonly known in our circle as 'Pixies') but I also painted a very few 28mm Victrix British Infantry. There aren't many pictures of 28mm figures on this blog so here are a couple:

The thing I am most pleased with this year are the set of 4 local buildings for use with VBCW which I commissioned from HACME. Three of these were used for the first time in my last VBCW game. It has been my Christmas project to paint the fourth, a church. It is still a WIP, but is quite splendid:

As for 2015, gaming wise, I am sure that there will be more VBCW Chain of Command. I am also keen to do another version of Quatre Bras this time using the Le Feu Sacre rules, (at about 1:2 battalions). That will be my first priority for painting in the New Year; there are only about half a dozen units I need to complete. After that I hope to do either the French & Indian Wars (using Muskets & Tomahawks or Sharp Practice) or a Wars of the Roses skirmish game using a rules crossover of Sharp Practice/Dux Britanniarum (I could use the church!!). Of course there's lots more stuff I want to play too. I also hope in 2015 to make a trip to the Waterloo battlefield.

Happy Gaming in 2015 to everyone.