L'Art de la Guerre - new Ancients rules, reviewed...

A short battle report and review of the "new" (well, new to English translation, but actually the third edition) of L'Art de la Guerre Ancients rules is now on this site.

Hopefully it will give you a bit of a flavour of what seems a very enjoyable, familiar-yet-different set of rules.

Gettysburg

I was recently lucky enough to get some spare time in the US and took the chance to do a quick visit round Gettysburg battlefield. 

I've taken a load of photos, (rather unusually) as a pedestrian tramping across the park on a gradually brightening up Saturday afternoon in October. They have already appeared on the Madaxeman facebook page, but not everyone sees that, so here they are again:

They start from around Meade's HQ on Cemetery Ridge, follow Picketts Charge (in reverse - or retreat I guess), then go along the woos on Seminary Ridge, recrossing towards The Peach Orchard and Wheatfield and up to the Pennsylvania Monument back at the top of Cemetery Ridge.

What surprised me a little was how shallow the slope was at Cemetary Ridge that the Union chose to defend, but also just what a bloody long way across the terrain Picketts Charge was too. Big and Little Round Top looked like proper "impassable" hills as well, although I didn't have time to go up them. 

My first ever game of Malifaux

There's a vague possibility that there are lots of DBx-based historical miniatures/Malifaux crossover gamers out there, but for those of you who aren't in that (probably small) demographic, I've posted a match report from my first ever game of Malifaux on this website.

Malifaux is a Steampunk Gothic Horror skirmish game with card-driven mechanics and some rather nice models. It appears to be a lot of fun, which is a great relief after having bough the rules and the figures and then spent plenty of time painting and basing them up.

For my (and my opponents) first game we set up an over-ambitious Mei Feng vs Sonnia Criid 50 SS matchup that we managed to get through in about 5 hours, which is not too bad given neither of us had ever played before - some of the combos were rather complex.

A brand new "Steampunk Hannibal" makes an appearance as well as the usual poor jokes and irrelevant video interludes.

But this time there's also a clunking great robot who's almost a train and who hits people with an enormous metal bar as well.

What's not to like?!

The matt varnished Shermans & Churchills

As promised in the previous post, the finished articles are here:  Plastic Soldier Company 20mm Shermans, 15mm Churchills, and Battlefront Bren Carriers all painted in Halfords cammo green.

This really has nailed that "bronze-green" effect I was hoping for!

PSC US infantryman based on a penny for scale.

Not quite sure what's gone awry with the varnishing on this flank of the tank, it's not as obvious in real life as on this photo.

The top decks look great to me - the "puddled" Army Painter varnish on the one in the foreground's read deck is something I'm quite happy about actually - maybe it could have been brushed out a little though?

And the Churchills... again a great result IMO

I am toying with the idea of a final drybrush, but the details already "pop" so much I'm not sure if that would be too much..?

The colour that's been achieved is pretty much perfect IMO

The early version turret AVRE. Several of the transfers have ended up showing their edges, which is annoying as this normally doesn't happen with my "two layers of clear gloss" technique - maybe my gloss poly needs replacing - or maybe they were just old transfers?

For essentially a one-piece casting these track assemblies are fantastic - well done PSC!

The drybrushing really picks out the stowage boxes too.

Morer slightly odd effects on the big blank flanks of the Shermans here - but again, not as bad in the real world, and in some ways quite good to have it so irregular (ish). The driver's face has done really well here.

 With a PSC infantryman in the foreground

The Battlefront bren carriers.

A final close-up of a rather smug chap - probably waiting for his cup of tea! Make sure you saw the first post too in this two-part series.