About Me

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London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
A mythical beast - a female wargamer! I got back into wargaming in the summer of 2011 after a very, very long break and haven't looked back since. I must admit that I seem to be more of a painter/collector than a gamer, but do hope to correct that at some point in the near future. My gaming interests span the ages, from the "Biblical" era all the way through to the far future. I enjoy games of all sizes, from a handful of figures up to major battles (see my megalomaniacally sized Choson Korean and Russian Seven Years War armies).

Saturday 24 October 2015

Saturday Workbench

Well, it would have been if a household disaster hadn't struck. I'd just started doing the Klear coats on the armoured vehicles before doing washes when I heard what sounded like a drip at the other end of my living room. I went to investigate then heard the ceiling start to go and just managed to get out of the way.







So, I now have a 4 foot diameter hole in the ceiling and rubble and dust all over my lounge. And dust all over me as well - once Doctor Who is out of the way I'll be having a damn good shower to get myself cleaned up.

Tomorrow is going to be taken up with buying rubble sacks, clearing the rubble, hoovering up the dust and packing away anything that isn't needed.

Friday 23 October 2015

Friday Update

Nothing to report on the painting front I'm afraid. Tomorrow will see me finishing the two armoured vehicles and  hopefully making good progress on the Hasslefree figures.

Monday night's game of Gruntz against Simon was a cracker of a scenario. Sadly, I forgot to pack my camera so you'll have to wait until Simon actually downloads the ones he took on his iPad. I think we made a good test of the playable limits of the rules points-wise.

The scenario was a bit involved. I started with an infantry platoon with some attached support elements (250 points) occupying a bridgehead position which they had to hold until a larger mechanised infantry platoon (350 points) arrived - from Turn 4 onwards I would dice for each vehicle in the platoon to see if it arrived on table (6 for turn 4, 5+ for turn 5, etc). Simon had 400 points of mixed infantry, light armour and VTOLs on table.

We did discover a couple of things:
1) Mortars are incredibly effective against infantry, especially when the target is in the open. They're not bad against vehicles either.
2) Vehicle specialists (in my case some hover Mobile Autonomous Weapons Platforms) are very good value

I managed to get lucky with the reinforcements - the first vehicle arrived on turn 4 and it was the missile armed APC. My big mistake was that I forgot to give it the Ack-Ack perk - stupid really, as I had enough spare points to add that. the other 3 APCs came on in Turn 5. I also did well with the activation cards for the troops disembarking from the vehicles so they were able to activate pretty much instantly. Which was handy as the three standard APCs were each carrying a squad and a missile specialist, the latter promptly doing some serious damage to Simon's VTOLs.

We only had time for another turn, but it was quite clear that my reinforcements were on course to destroy Simon's force. Just as well as my bridgehead platoon was very close to being wiped out when the mechanised infantry rode to the rescue.


Last night was something a bit different. I went out for a meal. Not just any meal though - this was a gaming/blogging related meal.

Miles visits London every few weeks for work. On this occasion he actually remembered to let us know in advance and we arranged to meet up for a meal, joined by Ray and Lee. As those two were travelling up from outside London, we went for somewhere near to where they'd be coming in - a Greek restaurant on Coptic Street.

As you can imagine we had a very pleasant evening - good food, good company and lots of chatter about gaming and painting projects.

It was a real pleasure to meet Miles at last and, no, the pleasure was nothing to do with him insisting on paying for the meal.

Edit:

I've snaffled the pics of Ray's and Miles' blogs:

From Miles:

Me. Ray, Lee

From Ray:

Lee, Miles, me

Sunday 18 October 2015

Sunday Update

You know the old chestnuts about plans? Well, my plan for this week went completely to pot. Last Saturday, whilst changing into my dossing-around-the-house clothes after doing some shopping, I felt a twinge in my upper back muscles. It wasn't too bad or I wouldn't have gone to SELWG the next day. On Monday at work, I had another twinge in the same spot, this time much worse.

As a result, I didn't manage to get any painting done during the week, so my 750-post prize draw is postponed again. I did manage to get a little bit of work done on the armoured vehicles last night. I just need to do a little bit of detailing (the lights), gloss coat them, do a wash, gloss coat again, satin coat, then gloss up a few bits and matt coat the tank tracks.



Luckily my back is OK now, so I should be able to get some hobby work done this week. Not tomorrow night though - Simon and I will be playing Gruntz.


Monday 12 October 2015

SELWG - The Games

A bit of a photo-dump, but there should be pics of every game! Unfortunately, it seems that the floor plan in the show guide doesn't really match with the layout in reality, so some games I can't say who was running them,


Upstairs

Gravesend Gamers Guild:



 GLC Wargames - an ECW battle:



TWWS - I think this may have been an ECW game as well:


Shepway Wargamers - Heart of Darkness:




 Streatham & Tooting/Real Time Wargames - early Sudan:


Robert Dunlop & Sons - Great War Spearhead in 6mm:



Society of Ancients:




Downstairs

South London Warlords - Stingray! :





Une guerre civile très français (A Very French Civil War):



WW2 Pacific theatre - POW Rescue:


Watch out for the late night munchies!

Maidstone Wargames Society - James Bond-esque Alpine Skiing:


 Early C11th Skirmish:



The Crush The Kaiser chaps with their new Mexican Revolution rules "Hey Gringo!":




Napoleonic naval game in 10mm - the ships are MDF kits from Capitan and look great:




 First Crusade game:



Malifaux:


Saga:


 SEEMS - Battlefleet Gothic:


 Crawley Wargames - Stretcher Bearer:



Star Trek game:


Not sure who - 15mm Poor Bloody Infantry WW2 game:




ACW Ironclad game:


That fun little Agincourt game I took part in:


Near the end of the game I was in - I was out at this point
 

Simon Miller with an Athens v Sparta scrum using his "To The Strongest" rules:



Quatre Bras I think:
Edit: No it's not - it's Waterloo. I blame my overhearing one of them talking about the crossroads