Some blogs I have been looking at lately

There are four blogs I have been watching lately and probably will be keeping tabs on.

Sound officers call is a blog mainly set 15mm and 20mm more modern stuff but he has some interesting ideas for doing war gaming rules. His initial ideas for converting epic rules are what really caught my attention recently.

20mm Gamer covers a wide range of periods and scales and has done battle reports, kit reviews and even comics. I have been enjoying digging through his backlog and looking at stuff hes written.



I see Lead people is one that I often return to time and time again. At the moment the blog is reviewing some 3d printed ships that hes reviewing which is great for those of us who may want to start up or augment such things as BFG forces.


Finaly, I have been keeping an eye on Little Legions. He has done some great ancient armies in 10mm I believe and has recently decided to focus on epic this month.


So check them out.
Aruki

lack of post

Sorry for lack of update today. I got sick a few days ago and the kids are sick as well. So no posts till next week.
 Injury wise I am style out for at least 2 more weeks according to the doctor. Then on top of this I am also on the job hunt after my company went bankrupt.
So some hobby updates in the future but no idea on what besides book reviews and kids gaming for the near future.

Aruki

Napoleonic's: how to get started

The purpose of this series is to walk you through the steps that I went through to create my 6mm Prussian army,

For me it began with seeing a friend of mine painting up some of his 28mm Napoleonic's from warlord games I think. He has two forces for Black powder. I went cool and then it just sat there in the back of my head. I started looking at models and rules from various companies. I had already settled on Black powder as the rule set since most people around her that I have met play it. With models I was immediately hit by the many options in scale and company wise.

After searching around for awhile, reading forums and then talking to that same friend I found out about Baccus. I went for 6mm even though no one here has it for two reasons. First I want a full force based off of a mostly historically based one. I say mostly historical because I am not basing the force off of a specific force at X battle. Second, I really wanted to be able to have the grand army  view when playing. In 28mm its cost prohibitive to build said force and the space it would take would be enormous. In 6mm I can easily build 2 different forces that will take up half the space of a single 28mm and cost less than half as much.

After that I started readying to decide who I wanted to build. I had already decided I didn't want a French or British force because most people do them. I ended up picking Prussians after reading Napoleonic Armies: A wargamer's Campaign Directory 1805-1815 by Ray Johnson. After that I started tearing through the net trying to learn more and diving into my Osprey book collection.

I have easily spent 200+hrs researching these guys everything from army structure to uniform colors and names of units. While doing this I settled on 1812 as the period I wanted to focus on. 

So things to consider if you want to do Napoleonic armies.
1. Rule set: there are many out there (some easily scale, some don't)
2. at the same time scale (6/10/15/28) 
3. who you are going to play with and what they want to play as
4. More specific time period (this can alter your armies composition quite a lot)
5. $$$- ie how much time and money you want to spend on it.


Hope this helps other people if you need help let me know and I will try. I will start reviewing the osprey books I used in the coming months.

Aruki

Osprey Reviews #1

The first book I looked at after Napoleonic Armies: A wargamer's Campaign Directory 1805-1815 was Osprey's Blucher's Army 1813-1815 from the Men at arms series.

Now even though this book focuses on 1813-1815 it includes a lot of background info thoughtout the book which is excellent for helping new people understand what happened up to that point. The book also covers the history of not only Blucher but others as well. The greatest resource in my opinion though games at the end of the book in the notes section. They give a great list of books that was used as references which gives you a nice place to start from for further reading.

Now in point notes here are some of the usefull things in the book:
-background info on 4 other major influences during that period
-explanations of how things were different under blucher for
         -staff
         -cavalry
        -infantry
         -artillery+pioneers
- page 24 has a great chart for the lance pennons for the ulhans and landwehr cavalry
-other points of interest are
         -the wounded (how they were dealt with)
         -music
         -honours and awards
- there is also a great explanation of the order of battle for June 15 1815
-The plates, no Osprey book is complete without these and there are a good number of units covered in here
         -staff
         -hussars
         -dragoons
        -uhlang and staff
        - line infantry
        -landwehr cavalry
        -landwehr infantry
        - artillery 

Overall, I would recommend this book if your looking for more details on how and when things change. However, there are better books for more details on the units themselves which we will cover in other reviews.



Aruki