Sunday, April 30, 2017

6mm Russo-Swedish war 1808: New units complete

The Russo-Swedish war project has been on hold for a while now, but we've scheduled a couple of scenarios to late may so it gave me a good deadline to take things forward. Here are the units I've finished so far:

Karelian Jägers

The Karelian jägers were a part of the Savolax Brigade I painted earlier. They were not present at the Battle of Leppävirta as they were further out on the eastern frontier guarding the town of Joensuu, another potential avenue of Russian attack into the Finnish interior.

Karelian jäger battalion.

After the Savolax Brigade left Leppävirta and retreated towards Oulu, the Karelian jägers also retreated from Joensuu and rejoined them before the Swedish army began its counterattack.

Closeup on the Karelians


Häme (Tavastehus) infantry regiment and jägers
 

The Häme regiment is one of the core infantry regiments in the Finnish army and was heavily engaged throughout the war.

From left to right: Uusimaa (Nyland) jäger, Häme (Tavastehus) regiment, Uusimaa (Nyland) regiment
Painting the flags freehand would have proved beyond my skills so I used printable decal paper and did my own decals for all the flags. Really fiddly but the end result is much nicer than a freehand smudge in 6mm.

Häme jägers


Uusimaa (Nyland) jägers



The Uusimaa jägers lost a lot of their number in the surrender of Viapori (Sveaborg), so they will have little more than a token force in most of the scenarios they're in. I reckon this is enough for them.


Turku (Åboläns) infantry regiment



Another core regiment. Both the Turku and Häme regiments were present in the western theatre of the war.

Turku (Åbo) infantryman.


Note: All uniform plates are from Staaff, C.T: Taflor till Fänrik Ståls sägner. Figures are Heroics and Ros 6mm.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

A quiet winter of games

I've had a very slow and quiet winter hobby-wise. I didn't get any painting done for months and apart from visiting Kinkkucon 2017, didn't play anything either. That means there hasn't been much to write about to the blog either but I'll pick up the slack now that spring is here and things are picking up. There's a bunch of figures on my workbench and there's a game to prepare for in a month or so. Here's a few notes of the games I did play this winter for the blog archive:

Kinkkucon 2017:


I've looked forward to finding a reasonably priced copy of Up Front for a while now and bought one from Germany (The box art of Up Front has a prominent SS soldier with his insignia showing clearly. Isn't it illegal to own stuff like that in Germany?). I got to play a couple of test games in Kinkkucon and it feels like an interesting game, but I have to learn it a bit more first.


I played a game of Twilight Struggle. I've bought both the board game version and the PC game version of it. The PC version is a great way to learn the basics and get to know the deck a bit!



We resumed our Warhammer Quest lair of the orc lord campaign from a couple of years ago! We played the third deep and was all fine until there was an attack by suicidal rats which took out most of the party. The final survivor met his end at the hands of a random orc encounter. We also tried out the new card game version which really captures the essence of the game well in my opinion.


My "main game" for Kinkkucon was Germantown of the American Revolution series. Excellent stuff as always. The rebellious colonists suffered badly from command confusion but still gave the redcoats quite a fight. In the end the English managed to consolidate their line in a way that made it all but impossible for the Americans to reach their goal so we called the game a couple of turns early.


After Kinkkucon I didn't have any gaming activities until a last weekend when my friend invited me for a game of Modern Spearhead. It's a 90's ruleset with a grand tactical perspective. One model tank equals a platoon of AFV's, you have to pre-plan your attacks on paper and so on. We played a cold war scenario twice during the weekend. Quite an interesting system and I'm looking forward to playing it more. I have the WW2 version and I've also preordered the new edition of Blitzkrieg Commander. It'll be interesting to compare the two systems and see which scratches that WW2 microarmor itch I have best.





So, that's pretty much it. I suppose we all have those quiet times in our hobbies so I don't take any stress over it. The next big game will see us return to the Russo-Swedish War of 1808.