It's been a while...

I can't remember the last time I was involved with wargaming. I think it may have been 2007 when I borrowed my friend Steve's Vikings for a WAB tournament at Ascot, but I might be misremembering. In any event, it has been a very long time since I put paint to lead, planned a project, or played a game. The wargaming world has changed a lot in some ways in the intervening five years, and in other ways not at all (I was particularly surprised to see how static Games Workshop have been, not that I buy their stuff). When I dipped out of the rat race Warhammer Ancient Battles was riding high, now it looks rudderless and likely to be supplanted by "War & Conquest" or "Clash of Empires." As a largely ancients player this is all new to me, but the change looks good. DBM also seems to have been replaced by Field of Glory which looks beautifully produced and a good change from the grotty white booklets from years gone by. I ordered the rulebooks for FoG Ancients, Renaissance and Napoleonics from Amazon yesterday and will look to be using these with my 15mm ancients. The Renaissance and Napoleonic rules were largely impulse buys. I have an 15mm Austrian 1809 force for Principles of War, and I doubt I will be rebasing, but it is good to know what is out there. Furthermore, I have always wanted to do some Thirty Years War stuff and there seems to be a vibrant FoG Renaissance community which makes it worth collecting.

Perhaps next month I will get around to looking at some ancients rules well suited to single figure based 28mm, perhaps Hail Caesar, War & Conquest and Clash of Empires. Sadly, the Bicester Wargaming Club folded when I went to university in 2006/7 and largely relocated to Brackley, so I don't have a club on hand, but my old wargaming buddies are around, so playing at home is an option. Friend Taff and I used to play DBA, and he assures me he still has his little armies, so at least a few games of DBA, with a view to trying out Hail Caesar and Field of Glory is very much a possibility. 

As for figures, I had a rummage through my stuff, and found most of it damaged, shields broken off, paint chipped, etc. from years of mishandling and bad storage by a clueless family. Still, it can be repaired, so over the next few weeks I will be slowly fixing up my 1st Century A.D. Romans and Vikings. I also found this box amongst my stuff:

I had a look on the Flames of War website and it doesn't look as though these are in production anymore. I bought them at a show many years ago, I think, along with a blister of Finns to do some some Winter War and Continuation War stuff. On the whole I am not keen on wargaming World War II, especially anything to do with Western Europe, but my love of Finnish history, and the country (having been there a fair few times) inspired me to model the brave resistance to the communist hordes. I started painting the Russians as I found a nifty guide online, since at the time the Finns were super new, so there wasn't much about them on the Flames of War website. I have all the riflemen painted up, and started the SMG chaps yesterday, here are shots to give you an idea of what they look like, the centre figure is a finished rifleman, the figures to either side SMG men who are in progress:

The Russians without too much light.

And with a little flash.

Well, that's all for now. I am off to watch The Avengers at the cinema today and will hopefully finish the nine SMG chaps on my desk tonight. I might post a step-by-step of how I paint them when I get onto painting the heavy machine guns next.