Innehållsförteckning för November 2024 från Miniature Wargames

So: what do we have for you this month? Quite a lot! There’s Dark Ages action (and the question of how dark it is); Victorian Adventures; an exploration of 3d printing; a Quartermaster special with an in depth test of Fanatic Paints; a visit to the Colours show; an exploration of scales and their relevance; a scratch building double with a picturesque well plus some spaceships from an unusual building material; plus a Cryo Volcano scenario and a trawl through hidden YouTube avenues. That’s a whole bunch of stuff in a busy world. Meanwhile – and as Freddie Mercury sang – “You say coke, I say ‘caine, you say John, I say Wayne, hot dog, I say cool it man I don’t wanna be the President of America”. Well indeed.…

Mr Kinch has taken another trawl through the online morass for your delectation and elucidation. Read on… Ed. YouTube – like most things in life – is a mixed blessing. There are absolute gems in there, but there is an Everest of garbage as well (unboxings, AI content, influencers, etc) which make finding the gems very difficult. It probably doesn’t help that the algorithm does not appear to care very much for long form history content. the wheat from the chaff. Checking my notes, the last time I wrote one of these was in 2019, which is an eternity in internet time, but if you like these suggestions, you can certainly go back to my previous article, I’ve checked on them and most of them are still active. OPERATIONS ROOM youtube.com/@TheOperationsRoom…

INTRODUCTION In this article, I hope to enlighten many of the readers on the pros and cons of 3D printing for tabletop gaming, or – at least – my journey through them. Firstly I will explain what 3D printing actually is. I am not going to go into the technical aspects, mind you: rather I will give you a ‘lay mans’ view of the process. The reason for this is that I believe that the technical side and scientific names are irrelevant to us the wargamers: what is relevant is the products and their suitability! BACK TO BASICS Firstly: what is 3D printing? There are essentially two different types of printer used in the wargaming world: one uses hot streams of essentially liquefied plastic exuded out onto a base plate…

In a previous article (a few years ago now) Jeremy showed us some interesting approaches to making gaming models from ‘found items’. This time he’s really nailed it… Ed. BOLD NEW FRONTIER There are some really gorgeous looking starship miniatures out there, but it’s probably the easiest genre of miniatures for scratchbuilding opportunities. After all the most famous starships ever designed were scratchbuilt from kits of second world war tanks and navy ships. This is confirmed by the number of youtube video’s and wargaming websites showing gamers doing exactly that. What is very noticeable is the ships being built using that approach are often ‘junk’ style designs, with lots of bits added to make it look very cluttered, or more often built as a one off or a fleet made up…

Colours was back to its usual self this year. And that’s a good thing. GETTING THERE The organisers – Newbury & Reading Wargames Society – kept most of the elements of last year’s show: entry was via a (for want of a better term) off site portal (a sort of gate house some 50 metres from the three floor show building itself) and was £5 per head. TRADE There were around over 60 traders present with a large selection from different parts of the hobby including a lot of 3d terrain printers meaning you could buy their wares without owning a printer yourself. They seemed to be doing good business throughout the day. These vendors were spread over the large ground and slightly smaller first floor. Also present on these…

Each Command Decision usually aims to offer a series of playable options in timeless military scenarios. Command Decision is designed so you can read the situation and figure out your own command decisions if you were leading the troops on the ground. You can either work through the various options or use the mechanics to create the precise circumstances of the table top engagement. The scenarios may have particular historical themes and settings, but you can easily adapt the mechanics to suit your own preferences and collections. STORMWATCH A close friend of mine dismissed Dark Age wargaming as being “just a mob of hairy blokes trying to push one another over in the mud.” I think what he was trying to get at was that our stilted perceptions of Dark…

Welcome to a post-apocalyptic version of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan. In my imagined future vision of this fascinating world, Titan’s hydrocarbon industry once fuelled the solar system and beyond. Nowadays, the remnants of the Ethan Frontier Corporation fight through raging swarms of xenomorphs or endless hordes of shambling undead to salvage valuable items in the hope of rebuilding their fallen Empire. THE MIGHTY TITAN A sci-fi version of Titan provides a cinematic backdrop for any wargamer. It’s a world of mountains and oceans, albeit far removed from the ones we know here on Earth. Titan is also thought to have volcanoes, though instead of erupting rivers of molten rock, these blast out chunks of water ice and freezing ethereal gasses. They’re known as cryovolcanoes. Recently, I was reading through a…

With others to help me, I recently took a Sci-Fi armoured action Hammer’s Slammers game to a pair of shows: Broadside and Joy of Six. So what? You might retort, but the reason I mention it is that the first was in 15mm scale (okay 1/100th) and the second (as the show title implies) was in 6mm or roundabout 1/285 or so. These are science fiction games with near future AFV combat but the thoughts that sprang from those two games are, I think applicable for many other periods. Whilst not using identical forces (though there were some similarities: there were lots of Slammers (and allies) in both games fielded versus several other mercenary companies. However, what I did use was the same rule set and identical measuring and ground scale…

As he indicates below, this scenario is designed to tie in with an impending supplement by the Author available from Caliver Books. Ed. Victoriana is a supplement for Tales of Derring Do which is a set of one to one skirmish rules designed to capture the perils and thrills of the stories in the Penny Dreadfuls and Scientific Romances (the Victorian’s version of Sci-fi) and any radio, film and TV serials and movies which sprung from them. Victoriana takes the players to an imagined Victorian world where machines powered by galvanic and steam energies have been created, helping to expand Victoria’s Empire across the globe and to other planets in the Solar System. The rules and the supplements have been written in collaboration with Mike Blake and Ian Colwill, two of the…

ARE YOU A FANATIC? ◗ thearmypainter.com ◗ £312 This in depth review is by Paul Mackay. Ed. I have had several of the Army painter Warpaints for a number of years and never thought they were terrible paints. However the brand often attracted a lot of negative reviews which were hard to disagree with. The paint had a tendency to separate in the bottle and – no matter how hard you shook it – a lot of gel-medium was often what ended up on your palette first, even when you added some mixing balls. I also thought some of the paints could be quite gritty. With many other paint manufacturers upgrading their already superior paints and new ranges like Two Thin Coats appearing, The Army Painter’s range was beginning to look…