Happy New Year!

Hello everyone!

Despite what some of you might have suspected I've not fallen off the face of the earth, but rather taken a break from the hobby. Since late August there's been a bit of upheaval on the professional front, as I've gone from working full time to studying full time. While this has been a fantastic experience overall, it's also quite demanding with a steady stream of assignments, projects and reports to work on. Between studying and family stuff, I have virtually no time or energy left for painting or modelling.

So for the time being I have put the hobby on hold, but I'm sure I will return to it in the future.

Anyway, I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year.

Salute 2016: The Battle of Foteviken 1134

Well I'm safely back in Sweden after my visit to Salute this past weekend. I had a very nice time, met up with some very nice people and had the honour of being part of a terrific team. It was extremely satisfying seeing this project finally come together like this.

Thank you to Michael for taking the lead on this whole project and a truly heroic painting effort; to Jan for his stunning terrain and wonderful ships; to Jesper for lovely painting and, as always, being an most enjoyable opponent; to Colin for, amongst other things, his help in setting up the table, repairing damaged models and not least his tireless chatting to everyone who came to see the table; to Steve for helping out with everything, playing and being a thoroughly nice and enthusiastic chap; to Tony for making sure we didn't get in the way of anyone taking photos.

Finally a big thank you to everyone who came to see us, ask questions and compliment the game. We had a steady stream of visitors throughout the day – and a fair few times it was really cramped around the table – and I was truly humbled by all the nice things people had to say about the terrain, modelling and painting.

Here are some pictures of the game. I'll be back with another post with pictures of some of the other games I found while walking around on my breaks. Enjoy!

A modest start.

Starting to come together.

The table and miniatures all set-up.

We had a swanky rollup, designed by yours truly,
to welcome the visitors. 

Close-up of Jan's stunning ships.

Someone saw the trouble ahead and made a dash for it.

Mercenary German cavalry riding through the village.

The Scanian welcome committee.

Danish invaders.

The battle lines starting to close in.

Lots of details to explore on the table.
The fire had a flickering LED-light in it – very nice!

The cavalry making slow but steady progress.

The battle is beginning to take its toll:
soon there will be more models off the table than on ...

Time for some fresh reinforcements ...

... and off we go again.

Merry Christmas – God jul!

I just wanted to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas – or "God jul" as we say in Sweden.

It seems the world is a bit bonkers right now so in the spirit of this holiday, if you have the means, please consider donating something to charity.

I hope you have a great Christmas however and wherever you spend it!

2014 in Review

First off, a belated Happy New Year everyone!

Gosh, is it another year already? Well then, it seems I have to do the traditional report on what has happened during the last year

In 2014 my hobby was of course affected by the arrival of our new baby. This has caused a bit of an upheaval on the home front, to say the least, but I've actually had more time to paint than I thought, when I haven't been too tired that is. However, getting away for an evening of gaming has been more or less impossible since mid October. Up until then it was a very good year gaming-wise though, with lots of fun games and a great mix of periods – from the dark ages through the medievals to the 17th and 19th centuries. Highlights include finally starting our Dux Britanniarum campaign, getting my complimentary copy of Lion Rampant where we've been part of the play testing as well as helping Michael with his splendid Invasion of Gotland article in WSS #75. Another special highlight was of course finally getting to visit Salute in London, which was every bit as impressive – and wallet emptying ... – as I imagined it would be.

For this year, I'm really looking forward to getting back into some regular gaming when things have settled down a bit on the home front.

A quick rundown of my goals for 2014:

Try at least one new period with one new rules set

Achieved! And by somewhat of a margin too: War of 1812 and the Thirty Years War, using Black Powder and Pike and Shotte respectively. Also, the Scanian War using Donnybrook.

Finishing Saxons for Dux Britanniarum

Achieved! Very easy this one, as it was only some 10 models left on this project from the year before.

Bit and bobs

Achieved! I made several terrain pieces – fences, walls, houses and a church – and painted up some loot markers, several types of cattle and domestic animals, medieval civilians, monks and also updating/re-basing my old casualty markers.

Italian Wars French

Fail! Well, what can I say. I lost my painting mojo over the summer, just as I was getting into the groove of this project which meant that even though 10 bases of pikemen were finished, it left me just short of two complete units which is not even close to the goal I set for this year: 2 units of pikemen, 2 units of gendarmes, 1 piece of artillery and a couple of commanders. When I said this was a long term project, this wasn't exactly what I meant!

Romano-Britons for Dux Britanniarum

Fail! Sigh. Not even started.

Instead of painting French and Romano-Britons I managed to finish some other stuff:

Fantasy skirmish

Achieved! To reinvigorate my painting after the "summer slump" I decided to do a smallish fantasy project using Song of Blades and Heroes. For this project I painted up 8 models and made some themed scenery. I really enjoyed doing a quick little project like this, and this is something I could see myself doing more of in the future.

Håtunaleken – Lion Rampant

Partially achieved! This was a club project that was started in November and naturally I had to join in. The first goal for everyone was to paint up a 12 point host for Lion Rampant. I managed to paint up the first unit of 12 foot sergeants and very nearly managed to finish the second unit of 6 mounted men-at-arms too. I'll post some pictures of these units when I get the time to take some snaps of them.

Looking at the numbers, I painted 74 foot and 4 mounted 28 mm miniatures during 2014. These are certainly not very impressive numbers, not when compared to my output from 2013 (137) and 2012 (171). However, in addition to these 74 models I also painted 6 loot markers, 15 animals, 2.8 meters of walls and fences. I also built and painted 5 buildings, including a pretty big church, and painted another 4 pieces of terrain in the form of ruins for the fantasy project. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with my output even though it of course could have been much, much better.

So there it is – the result for 2014. I want to say a big thank you to all you followers who have read and commented on my rambling during the year – it really means a lot to me! I also want to take the time to say a big welcome to all the new followers who have joined during the last couple of months!

I hope you all will have a great year ahead, and that you'll stick around here for some more projects. My plan is to get this blog back on track and go back to the usual routine with updates once a week.

I'll be back with my plans for 2015 in a couple of days.

A New Project

On Wednesday night we could finally welcome the newest member of our family – little Svante – all in glorious 1:1 scale and pre-painted too. Since then it's all been a bit of a blur really ...

I haven't been overly active blogging lately, and obviously this will now continue for the foreseeable future. However, I have a backlog of a couple of posts I'm planning to publish during the coming weeks. After this, we'll have to see what I can manage – with regards to both blogging and painting! – in-between changing diapers and serving the rest of the family.

Hopefully things will eventually settle, and I can get at least some hobby time now and then. But it's still a good while before I'm there.

Have a great week everyone!

Liebster Blog Award 2014, 100+ followers, 25 000+ hits

There certainly seems to be no shortage of things to celebrate lately as the blog has passed 100 followers and 25 000 hits a while back. I have lost track of all you new followers so I just want to take the opportunity to thank all who have signed up – old ones as well as new ones! 
 

Over the last couple of weeks or so, I've also received no less than five nominations for a Liebster Award. I'd like to offer a heartfelt thanks to CLAM (who was the first one I believe) from Clamshells&Seahorses, Rodger from Rebel Barracks,  Søren from Black Powder Games, Mattias from Northern Wargaming and Christopher from Bunker Hill. They all have excellent, excellent blogs of their own so if you haven't checked them out already I urge you to do this right now.

I'm greatly honored and humbled by all this attention, so thank you guys!

Now, originally there were quite a lot of rules concerning this Liebster Award thingy – questions to be answered, other blogs to be nominated and whatnot – but as time went on, people started to ignore most of them so I'll do this my own way.

First off, the questions and answers. Originally, there were 11 questions to answer and then you had to write 11 new ones yourself but I'm a lazy bastard so I've just picked a few I thought would be interesting (?) for most of you.

How did you first get into the miniature/war-gaming hobby?
I got into the hobby through fantasy roleplaying in the mid 80s. Although I was aware of model soldiers before (mainly thanks to the old Prince August moulds you could cast yourself) I didn't know you could actually play games with them.

Why did you start blogging?
Primarily it was to track my projects and by showing them to others a way to inspire myself to actually finish the projects I had started. In 2011 had a period of waning inspiration and too many projects half-completed, so I wanted to force myself to finish them. Perhaps subconsciously I was also looking to get into contact with some local gamers, as I was the only one in my then-current group of friends who was into the hobby part of the hobby (that is, the painting and modeling).

Would you say you are more a collector, painter or gamer and why?
I guess I'm a little bit of everything, but I see myself as more of a gamer. Although looking at the time spent on the different activities I'm definitely a painter, and looking at the money spent (and asking my fiancee!) I'm most definitely a collector – or maybe more of a hoarder ...

Gripping Beast Saxon commanders.

Could you limit your gaming and collection to one period and one size? If so, what?

No, I probably couldn't as there are far too many interesting periods and conflicts to game. However, if for some reason I had to limit myself I would unsurprisingly choose the so called Dark Ages in 28 mm, as this is my absolute favourite period and scale.

If you could only buy from one miniature company from now on, which one would it be?
Well, looking at the answer above it would have to Gripping Beast as they have by far the most diverse range for my period of choice.

Who is your all time favourite miniatures producing company?
There's obviously some great companies out there, producing some truly excellent miniatures for all imaginable (and unimaginable) periods and scales – the afore mentioned Gripping Beast, Perry Miniatures and Pro Gloria to name but a few. But for sheer personality, whimsical charm and well yes, nostalgia, the mid to late 80s Citadel will always have a special place in my heart. Comparing those fantastic old models with the technically superior, but utterly overworked and devoid of any trace of personality, crap Games Workshop is peddling today makes me so so sad.

Do you read Battle Reports and what makes them inviting to read?

I do sometimes, especially if it's a game or a period I'm interested in. I'm looking for a combination of clear graphics, pretty pictures and a well written text. The text should preferably be short and to the point, but not dry. I don't want a detailed report of every turn but rather a summary of the action, and some key event highlighted in more detail. If it's a system I'm not familiar with I'd also like to know how the rules affected what happened on the table, while if it's a game I'm familiar with the text should be more of a summary. Finally, there should be a paragraph or two discussing what happened in the game, the reasoning behind the tactics and decisions made and also some thoughts on the rules and scenario. Quite a lot to live up to and the reason I've not posted more AARs on this blog!

Right, that's the Q&A out of the way. On to my personal nominations. Well, most of my favourite blogs have already received a nomination, but apart from those linked above, I'd like to mention a few that I find really inspiring and a great read:

A Light in the Dark
Lots of pictures of impressive 10 mm Dark Ages armies with some excellent conversions to boot.

Realm of Chaos 80s
Great blog with some serious 80s nostalgia stuff.

Camisado
This blog is mainly about the early 16th century, with a focus on the Italian Wars. Lots of lovely landsknechts, reislaufers and gendarmes and a great inspiration for my own project for this period.

Well, that's all for now. Thank you again to all readers, followers and those of you who take the time to comment – it wouldn't be as fun without you!

PS: I had planned to do a prize draw to celebrate all this, but it will have to wait a while as Dalauppror just launched his giveaway in celebration of achieving an impressive 400 followers and 300 000 hits – certainly numbers to be inspired by! There are some very nice stuff up for grabs, so pop on over to his blog and sign up before it's too late.

Back from Salute

Well, I'm back from Salute safe and sound but utterly knackered after a hectic weekend. I took lots of pictures of some very impressive boards and miniatures, met some nice bloggers for a very (very!) quick hello before I rushed on, and of course did some serious shopping. Against all odds, I managed stay focused and only bought stuff for my planned or ongoing projects, and did not buy into any new periods or projects – although I was sorely tempted a number of times ...

I probably won't have time to sort out the pictures and write up a longer report until next weekend, but until then here is a picture of the haul:

Lots of stuff for my Italian Wars projects – miniatures from Foundry and Pro Gloria, as well as buildings from Warbases – the eagerly awaited The Raiders from Too Fat Lardies, a resin log fort from Scheltrum and some other stuff. The Fire&Sword booklet was a freebie containing some sample 15 mm models. A pretty nice haul overall I think!

On My Way to Salute

The shopping list is written, the show map is printed, the London transportation system hopefully decoded and the suitcase is packed (but with plenty of room for the planned haul). Yes, I'm ready for my trip to Salute.

Hopefully I'll be able to take pictures of some of the stuff that catches my eye – the camera in my mobile phone isn't always that reliable though. In any event, I'll post a report from the show during next week.

Have a great weekend everyone, even if you're not going to Salute!

Salute 2014 – Here I Come

After some hard negotiations (well, not really) the flight, hotel and ticket for Salute 2014 are finally booked. This will be my first time attending the show and needless to say I'm really, really excited.

I'll be traveling with my fiancee and it will be a nice weekend trip for us, although I couldn't convince her to come with me to the show, which may be just as well – it will certainly be easier to hide the amount of money I'll spend ...

I'm looking forward to seeing all the great games on display, all the nice stuff I usually just see on the web pages of miniature companies and of course, all the latest releases. If you know of any exciting new stuff released at Salute, please let me know in the comments below. I'm trying to come up with a shopping list that isn't a mile long but a few more additions won't hurt, right? Right?

Hopefully, I'll also get to see some of you fellow bloggers there!

2013 in Review

It's that time of year again – time to look back and reflect on what's passed, on projects planned and followed through (or abandoned!) during the year.

Overall it's been a very nice year hobby-wise for me, although my colossal workload during the last two months meant it did in practice end somewhat prematurely. However, during other periods I managed to play games once a week for over a month and I've also completed several projects, some of which I hadn't even planned. And as I wrote in my half-time report, I've joined a club which further fueled my drive to game and complete projects, although I do feel it's very easy to get distracted and jump aboard new projects which can lead to painter's burnout or fatigue.

I set a goal of playing a game every two weeks, or 26 games in total over the year. Well, I lost track of all the games played after my half-time report (were the count was 16) which is a good sign I think. When I tried recalling these, I counted at least 10, which means the goal was most likely achieved!

The year started with a nice mix of mainly Muskets&Tomahawks and playtesting of the forthcoming Osprey wargame Lion Rampant, by Dux Bellorum designer Dan Mersey. Speaking of this game – during the summer we did our impromptu testing of three rule sets for the Dark Ages, apart from Dux Bellorum, Hail Caesar and Dux Britanniarum. It was nice to finally get to do some Dark Ages gaming (it's after all my favourite period) and to field my Welsh army.

However, the real focus for the last part of the year was our club project, A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict, and the development of our own rules – were the absolute majority of the work has been done by the ever industrious Dalauppror. We've now taken a much needed break in the campaign, and may pick it up again in the spring.

In between all this Swedish interwar gaming, we managed to get some games in the Kalmar Union War campaign, and also another chance to field my Novgorodians against the Swedish crusaders and finally a short, but sweet, test of the much hyped Chain of Command WW2 rules.

Of course, there's always the feeling of "I wish I've had time to play this game/period more" but overall I'm very happy about the games played during 2013. Well, apart from a game of Saga which I still feel is a rather boring rules set ...

Moving on to the actual painting, I had three projects planned: FIW French for Muskets&Tomahawks, Novgorodians for Lion Rampant, and Picts for Dux Britanniarum. All of these were finished (and two of them even before half the year was over). In addition I managed to paint a unit for the club's A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict project, a mounted warlord for my Welsh army, four Landsknechts casualty markers and most of a Saxon force for Dux Britanniarum (I'm not counting the four or five 15 mm models I added to my Panzergrenadiers for our test game of Chain of Command).

In total: 137 28 mm miniatures, including 17 mounted models. Of these, 73 were painted in the second half of the year, which meant I did meet (and exceed) my goal of painting at least as many models finished up to and including June (which was 64 models).

Compared to last year, when I finished 171 miniatures, this is of course a bit on the low side, but last year was an exception in that I was on paternity leave and had more time to paint. And these last two months really had a huge negative impact on my output – I had planned to have the Saxons finished by the first week of December and then do another Red unit for A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict before the year was over. But, as I said, this year is perhaps more of a realistic gauge of what I actually can manage.

Of the finished projects, I fielded the French FIW force in four games, the Novgorodians in two, Röda nävar in one and the Picts in zero games (still waiting for the Raiders expansion for Dux Brit to be published). A pretty decent result all things considered.

I had some vague plans for painting some steampunk models when I got my delivery of the Empire of the Dead Kickstarter miniatures, but I simply haven't had the time. And to be honest, my interests have moved away from this project and era – much like the Wild West project from last year. Maybe it's time to rethink these "fringe" projects and my investment in them ...

As for the blog, I had my usual goal of updating once a week, and this I think I managed for most of the year. Again, with the exception of these last two months of course. I had some sketchy plans for shaking things up a bit, and not only post my weekly updates, but these came to nothing.

Well, there you have it – another year in the books! Thank you all for reading my ramblings during 2013 and I hope you join me again next year.

Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick post to wish you all a Merry Christmas – or God jul as we say in Sweden – and to show that yes, indeed, I am still here. The past month-month and a half has been pretty crazy at work, to say the least, and consequently I've had very little time and energy for hobby stuff. I've managed a couple of hours here and there, but work on the Saxons has slowed to a crawl.

With all that behind me, I'm looking forward to spending time with my family and getting back to some serious painting. I really want to finish those Saxons before I start my new projects for 2014.

So once again, I wish you all a God jul wherever you are, and however you choose to celebrate it!

2013 – Half Time Report

Half of 2013 is now over and my, was that fast or what? I didn't do a half year report last year, as my hobby time was close to non-existent and consequently I began thinking about quitting the hobby. A lot has happened since then though and I'm now more into the hobby than ever.

So far this year, the biggest thing for me hobby-wise has been joining a club. I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned this before, but I'm now a member of the excellent Little Wars Stockholm along such illustrious individuals as Dalauppror. Despite a long and thorough initiation process I was voted in as a full member in February. Naturally, this had fueled my painting and gaming even more. The only downside is a danger of painting fatigue, as there are so many new cool projects I want to join in on.

In the beginning of the year I made some plans for 2013, and I thought it would be fun to check how I'm doing in the half time break.

Blogging
My goal was to update the blog at least once a week, and except for maybe the occasional slip I think I've managed to do this. I'm now pondering how to make the posts more varied, as I think the usual format of project updates once a week runs the risk of being a bit formulaic over time. I won't change the goal to two posts per week, but maybe I could manage a couple of more each month?

Games played
The plan is to play 26 games during 2013, and I'm happy to say I'm well on my way. Right now the count is 16, and it gives me a nice little "buffer" for the rest of the year. And I might need it as it's notoriously tricky to get games going during the summer months of July and August as well as in December.

The games I've played up until now breaks down like this:

• Saga 1 game
• Lion Rampant (playtests) 5 games
• Muskets&Tomahawks 4 games
• Dux Suecia 1 game
• Dux Bellorum 1 game
• Dux Britanniarum 1 game
• Hail Caesar 1 game
• A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict 2 games

Every game has been fun in its own way, but I do wish we had played some more Dux Britanniarum (and Dux Suecia) as this game continues to be one of my absolute favourites. And it's been a while since we played Muskets&Tomahawks which is a shame because our multiplayer games were really fun. But as always: Too many games, too little time.


Miniatures painted
I wasn't sure how much hobby-time I would get in 2013, and so I only had a very modest three projects planned for this year: M&T French, Lion Rampant Novgorodians and a raider force for the upcoming expansion to Dux Britanniarum. The first two are done, and I've now started on the third (more on that in a week or so).

So far I have painted 64 miniatures, including 12 cavalry models. The model count breaks down like this:

• Muskets&Tomahawks French 22
• Lion Rampant Novgorodians 42 (incl 12 cavalry)

A fairly reasonable result this far I think, for me at least. If I can double that amount until the end of the year I'll be more than happy.
 

Looking forward
When the raiders are done I will do some Reds for our A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict games. I haven't decided yet, but I'm thinking 6–8 militia types and a leader figure. A nice and quick little project.

Dux Britanniarum is a really good game and I hope I get to play it more during the rest of the year. I plan to do all the forces for the game: first a Saxon force and then the Romano-British, and eventually all the forces in the Raiders book too. But I'll only do the Saxons this year, and save the rest for later.

Then there's the Steampunk models from the Empire of the Dead Kickstarter. And I really, really want to build some new terrain – it's been far too long since I did this. And then do some bits and pieces, like markers, baggage, barrels, wagons ... And Dalauppror has mentioned a new secret joint project he'd like to do ...

What was that about only doing three projects this year again?! We shall see how much of this I've actually manage to do at the end of the year – should be interesting!