Hi folks, sorry for the long delay between posts. I have a number of excuses - being busy with real life, then being ill (I've got a stinking cold this week, following on from some sort of 'bug' last week), but really, a great big dose of 'can't be bothered' has been afflicting my wargaming life. But I seem to be recovering from the latter, gradually.
I have, over a period of several months, been working on a couple of additions to my 'AVGVSTVS to AVRELIAN' rules. The first covers the use of what we might call 'field engineering' - ditches, palisades, caltrops and other such obstacles, designed to hinder an enemy's advance. The second, slightly more controversial, addition concerns religion. Now, whatever our own views on religion, it would be hard to deny that the ancient Romans and their contemporaries lived in a very different era, one in which gods, demons, spirits were the subject of fervent belief and superstition. Whether or not they really exist(ed) is beside the point - the simple fact is that people believed that they did, and good and bad 'omens' could (and did) have a big impact on the way people acted. With this in mind, I have written some simple guidelines to how the use of omens or auguries could be used to influence your games.
These two additions are available, bundled together as a single zip file, containing both 'tablet' and 'printable' versions, from here.
I've spent quite some time re-reading the stuff I read about Rome before going - it all makes a lot more sense now that I've seen the places, and understand better their relationship to the city and each other. It's been an interesting exercise.
I've been struggling, as you're probably aware, for quite some time, with my 'painting mojo' - basically, I haven't been enjoying pointing very much. I have also been struggling to find my next 'big project'. In the meantime I have been working, on and off, on some buildings for my 3rd century Syrian town - these are coming along quite nicely; I'm on to the stage of detailing them. Originally, I had been going to leave them very plain, so as to be useable for a variety of settings in which 'adobe' buildings would be appropriate, but I didn't like the plain versions, so I've given up on that idea, and am making them look 'plausibly middle-eastern'.
As for the next 'big' project, I am going to do some western gunfighting! I've loved westerns since I was a small boy, and have 'dabbled' on and off for many years - buying and painting the odd figure here and there, reading rules, etc. But somehow I've never felt able to take the plunge and get started properly. Here, for example, is Billy the Kid, which I think may have come from North Star (free with the late lamented Warhammer Historical's 'Legends of the Old West'?), and was painted, if the date on the original digital photo is anything to go by, in 2004. Clearly, at that time, I hadn't started using Army Painter and, to judge by the 'gritty' slightly shiny appearance, I was struggling with finding decent matt varnish too!
One problem which always held me back was buildings. Gunfights 'out in the open' aren't of much interest - you need a decent western town. Whilst there were some resin buildings available, they were either solid, so you couldn't place figures inside (vital for gunfights, in my opinion), or they were horrendously expensive - and, lets face it, resin isn't, perhaps, the best material for representing the relatively 'flimsy' board construction of typical western buildings either. I could, I suppose, have scratch-built some using balsa and card, but scratch-building a whole town is a pretty daunting prospect, particularly with very little good reference material in the form of plans, etc.
But recently, a number of new manufacturers of 'laser-cut' MDF buildings have sprung up. I have built a few - the Roman watchtower from 4Ground being probably my favourite so far - and really enjoyed them. Several firms are offering laser-cut 'Wild West' buildings - notably Gamecraft Miniatures in the USA, Aetherworks in Australia, and Sarissa Precision and Battleflag here in the UK. So, for my birthday I am, hopefully, getting the jail and gunsmith's shop from Battleflag. That should keep me happily building and painting over the Christmas holiday. For terrain, I'll probably use my 'desert' cloth, with some trees and bits of greenery to make it a bit less of an 'uninviting' place to establish a town.
Western gunfight rules… Hmm! I've got several sets. Legends of the Old West for one, and Foundry's 'The Rules with No Name' for another. I'm sure, if I dig through my files, that there are others too.