6mm🤔

I have a mate who comes to visit and go to a couple of wargame shows. I have a good time and I enjoy the company. One of the shows is the Joy of Six. A show mostly aimed at smaller scale gaming.

I am not adversed to 6mm gaming. It's not really my thing. Some years ago my mates talked me into buying a French Napoleonic army, mostly so they could gang up on me. I started painting. About the same time, I was talked into buying a GHQ American army when I already had a Heroics & Ros army. The figures are prettier. Neither have ever made it to a table.

So I kinda gave up on 6mm. So I turned up to the show whilst my mates went on about their stuff. So I sat down, had a brew and I ended up talking to John Treadaway for half an hour. Seems like a decent bloke. Which for me is high praise indeed.

Don't worry, he didn't get round to gnawing his own leg off. I did note he seemed to be with his now almost obligatory stupid hat. 

Over the years I have come to see that there are two types of gamers and they are summed up by the two main wargaming magazines, setting aside White Dwarf of course. Wargames Illustrated is about big battles or very expensively painted miniatures or both. This is about people who invest time and resources to make something beautiful. I used to write it off as style over substance but if you are going to put all that effort in, I am sure you want the substance to. It is a magazine for the more serious gamer and I don't see as much fun in amongst the pretty pictures.

Miniature Wargames, John's magazine, has always been more my thing. There is a lot more of the joy of the hobby in its pages. Maybe the games are not as slick but you get the feeling that people are playing a lot of games. More about fun and less about spectacle. Now I think John thinks you can have both and that his magazine is trying to offer that, at least some of the time. It does feel more professional since he took over, I will give him that.

What I am talking about is something a little different. WI seems to offer games that might not have taken a life's work, but maybe just a half a decade or so. For me, I would sooner be able to play ten smaller skirmish games to a good standard than one game of big battalions tons high one. I don't know, maybe I just have a short term memory problem. Er, well, about that....

1:2 Scale Miniatures Day

Not really been on here much lately. Long COVID or that damn vaccine has really laid me low.  Some days are better than others. So today was a good day. 

I started my 1:2 scale miniatures collection about five years ago. I've only got the one. I can't imagine anyone fielding an army of them, it's more of a skirmish scale. If you have ever been in soft play, you will know what I mean. It took nine months work to get it ready for play and I had to get a lot of help with it. This one is totally lead free although you wouldn't think it if you drop it on your foot. I couldn't find any Osprey books on them or even one of those jokey Haines manuals.

More Freakin Hexes

About ten years ago I had this idea for terrain hexes. About five years ago I started making some when i got my first laser cut. Then I had a thirty five litre RU box full of them. Then there was two, then there was three now there is a fourth box, overflowing with blank tiles.

My name is Jacko and I have a problem.

So I started doing table top gaming again this year, after what is about a five year gap. Not my choice, just, errr, circumstances and stuff. I still think I want to do more. And more. And more. And, well you get it.

For me I would be happy with a 2' x 2' or 60mm x 60mm. Well ish. Hex geometry is more complicated than it looks. However a lot of games and most gamers want a 3' x 3'or 90mm x 90mm table (ish again" thanks to the way hexes work. So...I had enough for what I call my most apocalypse board to do a 2' x 2' so time to upscale.

I wanted to use the hexes to replace battle mats and give me something more variable. No two games should be the same. That means a lot of variants. The post apocalyptic table also had a lot of extra requirements to improve the character. This meant a lot of junk, some bits of resin and a lot of scrap material to give the tiles more character. To add a bit more character there are actually four different textures on the tiles. Not sure they have any meaning in game terms but they make the game look pretty.

So this board is getting on for being finish. I reckon I need to finish what I have and do about another dozen tiles. 

Now I am looking for what's next. I like the mud tiles and think I will make more but not sure I want this as the next project. So right now I am thinking either desert or a ruined futuristic city tile, which I am calling Paradise City Lost. I am also thinking in terms of snow

Getting Things Done

So back in 2019 in the summer before my daughter was born I went to Salute. The big plan was to start playing This Is Not A Test. It kind of hits a lot of buttons for me.

The game uses a lot of counters and as of today, I now have them. Designed cut and stuck to bottle cap stickers as per Guerilla Miniatures Games.

I may even get a game in.

Thanks for your help Ross.

The BIG PROBLEM with historical wargames

I've just watched a video on YouTube, I am not going to mention who it is because I don't want them getting any more traction. As limited as that might be from this page. If you are that desperate, look at the title of the post. It's made me so angry that I am posting for the second time today. I have never seen such a judgey, self righteous video on YouTube. By a wargamer, about wargamers.

Just to cover some basics and tell you a bit about me. My politics are left of centre. I support equal rights. I am, in general, very egalitarian. I've even been on anti Nazi rallies in the past. Is there something I feel passionate about fighting against, it would be the far right.

So...This video has just told me that the big problem with historical gaming is that there are Nazi armed forces being played out on the table top. That some of the people that play them are Nazis. This is why historical gaming does so badly and GW does so well. Did I mention the fact that whilst painting a couple of tanks they were schilling for a WW2 computer naval warfare game, which has Nazis? I have some WW2 Russian troops. Does that make me a communist? I wonder?

The guy that got me into wargaming was a WW2 veteran. I have mates who a serving soldiers that play WW2 games. I was brought up on war stories by relatives who fought in the war. One of them asked me about running a Dieppe game as it was someone who had been there and had been wounded. I played with a guy who wanted to be on my team because we were playing the Parachute Regiment. A Regiment I have some personal affinity for. This was so he could connect with his grand dad, who had been at Arnhem who had died the month before.

I own some German figures. Nothing I would call an army. Mainly stuff that the the good guys could shoot at in a WW2 RPG I ran. I have known plenty of Germans too in the real world. I recall one of them being extremely upset by the Death Corps of Krieg. Mostly annoyed by the poor history and the critique of the German people as a whole.   

Even if you accept the criticism about using Nazi forces, the title smears all historical wargaming. Real war is not good. Nobody in their right mind would argue that it is. I would argue that from time to time it is necessary. But this is rarely the case, WW2 and the defence of Ukraine being two example in relatively recently history that I think of as just. Gaming links us to that history. It allows us to learn from it. 

Just recently I have seen all sorts of attempts to change our view on history. Don't get me started on the subject of bankers in the recent, ish Mary Poppins film. This video feels like an attempt to airbrush out certain elements of history. That feels like the kind of thing that authoritarian countries do. I can see it happening in Russia now, a Germany during the rule of Hitler. Pulling down a statue of a man who made money off slavery, does not change history. It deprives us of a reminder of how bad things can be. There was an exhibition space in Leeds named after Jimmy Saville, They didn't  pull that down but they did rename it,

Apparently GW does so well because it has no got any Nazis in it. But apparently as long as the Imperium of Man is a fictional entity, it's fine. Nazism is bad, end of story. But suggesting it should not be played because of its fascist history? Right now, GW is doing more than any other company to justify fascism. Which is in itself a meaningless statement. It's just a game. An amalgamation of books. Having played a fair bit of Warhammer FRP I can comment on what a fascist, violently religious, bigoted state that most of it is too. I cannot think of another game where I have seen people burned at the stake.

I'm not a big fan of GW. Not sure is anybody I know is in doubt of that. 40k is not about fighting the good fight. It might have been back in the rogue trader days. Now its mostly about power gaming. All sides are bad. Some are worse than others. Well ish. They are all pretty bad, but at least they are preaching at me from a position of ignorance. If some of the people that play Nazis in historical games are Nazis, because why would they be anything else, are not some of the people who play 40k also Nazis? I cannot think of any book I have ever read that has glorified Nazis. I can think of many that glorify it in 40k. Both are just games,

So, apparently historic fascism is bad (which I think most would agree) but fantastic fascisum, that goes beyond anything that has ever happened in reality is fine, Yet I recall a school kid who was reported to the police as a potential terrorist because he had a British Union of Fascists force for A very British Civil War. Which is fiction with some historical elements. I can draw parallels between VBCW and 40k if you like.

The author of this video should take it down. I mean according to him its not going to be monetised anyway. But what the hell, I am sure the sponsorship will help him out. 

Welcome To My World

I guess I am having fun. Not quite sure as I seem to have forgotten what that was. So here I am in the new workshop, working. Would say working hard but I am enjoying it so I guess that things are generally enjoyable. Most of my time has been spent in front of a laptop or laser cutter but I have a TV in front of me and a cup of tea in hand.

Right now I am even contemplating doing something for me. I need some release. That has been running which has helped me lose some weight. Well its that or the stress. I have lost a quarter of my bodyweight since Christmas. I could do with something that is a bit more fun. So I might actually pick up a brush. One for acrylic rather than emulsion. Maybe I need to put some MDF terrain together.

I did finish some figures this year. Some Star Wars Legion Imperials. These are currently sat on eBay if anyone is interested. I have the matching Rebel force to finish too. I watched The Force Awakens which nearly killed my love of the films. Again. Not sure why I punish myself like that. Even the Caravan Of Courage was a better movie. Come to think of it I would have sooner watched the Christmas Special rather than The Force Awakens.

Rather than avoiding work and typing, I am going to post this and get on with it.

Brand New Plan

Today is not actually the start of a brand new business plan but it is a major step. I got my first proper business sale today. If I can get another sixty just like it this month, well maybe I can make a living out of it. 

I drafted a post back in October when I truly thought things were going to go a different way. I had a huge expectation for 2023 and to be honest, things have not gone my way quite like I thought It has been a rough six months. Outside of parents dying, I would say it's probably the worst I have gone through. Given what is going on in the economy right now, it's maybe not the best time, but I had to do something.

There is an upside though. Through all the c^4p I actually think I am happier. A lot of stuff has gone on in my personal life over the last seven years and the last five years, I seem to have volunteered for really bad stuff. And that is now over. So a place to move on. Poor but happy. Still got a lot of stuff to deal with.

So I now have more own business. I have my laser cutter and a lot of other toys to play with. So I am making scenery, bases and gaming aids. That's not going to make enough so I am doing anything that I figure I can make money from. The days aren't getting any shorter but they are a lot more fun.

The only thing I am trying to make sense of right now is how I am going to get my daughter a dog.