Alexandria, a city scoured.

My most humble apologies for not posting this sooner, but life has a way of being hectic when you least need it to be. But anyway, on to THE blog post about our Guns of April game at AdeptiCon 2014.

As we infrequently posted before the event, we chose to tackle a skirmish project for this year. Something that I feel was a double-edged sword. By electing to have everyone only paint 10-12 models (after our 120-150 model efforts the last few years) we could cut everyone's preparation time considerably, but this also meant that there wasn't that big rush of excitement as massive armies neared completion. Additionally, when you zoom in on skirmish action you must dial up the detail of the terrain. Our previous efforts (Salamanca 1812 and Gettysburg 1863) were relatively sparse on terrain, but I had a vision for Alexandria 1801 that I really wanted to see come to life. This meant that Alex Landing, Rob Chandler, and I had loads of work to do to pull it off successfully. When this crunch time  arrived, we were simply too busy doing that we had no time to take photos and actively promote a sense of excitement amongst the rest of the team. That's all really a time management issue that we need to keep an eye on for future projects.

The end result, however, looks absolutely spectacular and completely fits with what I had in mind. I only wish I had taken as much time and care over the gaming preparations as I did the terrain.

Here are some photos from the night, captioned as appropriate.

Two French Hussars duel across the rooftops of Alexandria.

Ottoman Turks (painted by Tim Kulinski) head into a bazaar to combat the French.

Ottoman Turks (painted by Jamie Welling) advance through the "rug district".

More Ottoman Turks (painted by Tim Kulinski) cautiously advance..

Men of the French Dromedary Corps (painted by me) prepare for a firefight.

The French Dromedary Corps (painted by me) lope forward in front of the mansion of a wealthy merchant.

Crewman from the Royal Navy (painted by Rob Chandler) are in place to defend their building.

His Majesty's Marines stand atop another mansion (painted by Rob Chandler) waiting for the French to approach.

Leaping from balcony to balcony, these French Dragoons (painted by Merle Delinger) rush into combat with the British.

Everyone takes a break for some well-earned Chicago deep dish pizza.

A French Cavalry force of Dragoons, painted by Merle Delinger.

A French Infantry force (from the 22me Demi-Brigade de Legere), painted by me.

Crewman from the French Navy, painted by Alex Akers.

Crewman from the Royal Navy and His Majesty's Marines, painted by Rob Chandler. 

Ottoman Turks, painted by Jamie Welling.

Obviously I'd like to thank everyone involved in this game: the members of the Guns of April, Lon Weiss from Brigade Games (for sponsoring the event), Beth Landing (Alex's wife) for creating the rugs and 40+ throw pillows that were scattered around the table (each hand-stitched and filled with sand), and Alex Landing of Ironheart Artisans for all his great work designing the buildings that were the standout feature of the table.

Alex plans on having laser-cut MDF kits of these buildings available from his website in early May. I'll be sure to let you know when they are available.

Cheers
Dave

Coming down to the wire...

I've been terrible about posting photos of all the terrain we've been working on. I know how to shoot miniatures, but never quite get around to shooting the scenery I've painted. I'm expecting to spend quite a bit of time at the show rectifying that problem. In less than a week, the Guns of April group will have played a whole host of games over the spectacular terrain created by Rob Chandler and Alex Landing.

Additionally, some lucky gamer will go home with their very own Rosetta Stone vignette : )

Cheers
Dave

For England, for home, and for the prize!

Well folks here we are back again. Presenting our projects for the 2014 installment of the Guns of April ! As you all have seen we are covering skirmish sized warbands for Napoleon in Egypt. Unlike last year where I posted numerous photos of the ACW project over many months, I decided to just make one post due to the smaller scope of this project.

For this years project I have the privalge to present you with my take on a British Royal Navy landing party with a detachment of  Royal Marines. Below are some shots of the landing parties and Marines. The miniatures I used this year were from a few manufacturers. The Royal Navy officers and Jack Tars are from Brigade Games. The Royal Marines are a combo of Perry Miniatures plastic British Line Infantry with white metal Royal Marine heads from Victrix LTD. 

I hope you enjoy the photos and until next time. Keep the paint flying!

Let's try this again...

Yesterday I tried to post up these photos of my Dromedary Corps, along with their warband list for use with Legends of The High Seas. Sadly, Blogger saw fit to completely mess with the formatting of my "copy and paste" on the warband list and wouldn't let me correct it, no matter how hard I tried.

So, until I work it all out, you'll just get the pretty pictures.

Above is my Dromedary Corps warband (minus the Savant that will accompany them). These models are sculpted by Paul Hicks, and sold by Brigade Games as part of their excellent Napoleon In Egypt range.

For each of the mounted models, I painted up a matching model on foot (just in case their camel gets shot from underneath them). From left to right: The Captain (is his local attire), the ADC (in a dashing red, Hussar pelise), and two Dromedary Corps troopers.

Should they all end up on foot, they'll look something like this. I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I enjoyed painting the models, they were a real treat!

Merry Christmas, and see you all next year!

Cheers
Dave

French Troops in Egypt

Hello everyone. Its seems the Guns of April crew is off to a slow start for the 2014 event but behind the scenes we are working diligently towards our goal. When we completed our 2013 event portraying the first day actions at Gettysburg we all voted on what we would like to do for 2014. As previously mentioned we are going to run a skirmish level game of small warbands fighting it out in Egypt.

I took this opportunity to try a few new painting techniques after experiencing the time consuming painting process I used during our first project of the Battle of Salamanca. I primed my miniatures white rather than black which goes against everything I stand for when painting miniatures but since I was only painting 12 miniatures what the worse that could happen, right? :)

I tried another first by purchasing a bottle of the new Vallejo Model Wash Light Grey to see if it would make a nice wash for the white clothing and leather. After a few experimentations using the wash right out of the bottle wasn't giving me the right look so I added some Vallejo Gloss Varnish, water, and white glue for the desired result.

The miniatures are ready for some clean up but the wash allowed me to shade the white areas and it also showed me all the details on the miniature which was an added benefit. The next steps will be to begin basing all the colors to prepare the miniature for the Army Painter Dark Shade 'wash'.

Until next time.....

My goodness, it's hot in here!

You could certainly be forgiven for thinking that we've all been on an extended summer vacation. Some of us did manage to escape for a bit, while others have been reveling in the joy that is new parenthood. Anyway, as the weather starts to turn cooler, we're about to turn our efforts back to preparations for Adepticon 2014!

Next year, the Guns of April efforts will be split (or doubled, depending on how you look at it) between two projects. The first is one that is led by Joe Krone, a man working on his first set of published rules for fighting in Eighteenth-Century North America. When Joe is ready, he'll jump in with what the project is all about.

The second project (led by yours truly) is all about skirmish battles in the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1800 (or thereabouts). Inspired by a great article by Steve Dake on the Rosetta Stone published in WI294, I've conned Steve into writing even more for us, and worked with him on creating warbands (or "parties") for the turbulent time surrounding the discovery of the Rosetta Stone (and countless other antiquities).

Above you can see the start of my French Dromedary Corp party. Soon, very soon, they'll have camels too!

We've worked up eight party lists to be used with the Legends of the High Seas rules (from Warhammer Historical, and based on the Lord of The Rings rules). These lists are:

French:
• Dromedary Corp
• Infantry
• Cavalry
British:
• Royal Navy
• Army
Locals:
• Egyptians
• Ottoman Turks
• Mamelukes

I'm thinking that as we progress through this project I should post the lists to solicit feedback for you guys. What do you think?

Cheers
Dave