This week in wargaming at WSS, May 4

It’s remembrance day in the Netherlands today, and I’m sure World War II commemorations will be much in evidence here as elsewhere in the world. Wargaming projects for the Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy team seem to be particularly focused on the late 18th and early centuries though.

Guy: This week hasn’t seen much gaming. My usual Wednesday night game was cancelled. Thankfully (you know, so I can avoid withdrawal symptoms) I managed to roll some dice on Friday playing Black Ops. Painting wise, I started the challenge of painting a box of French light infantry on the occasion of reaching 6000 Facebook fans. This became a bit of a nightmare as I had several major interruptions which left me out of time. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow showing how they are getting on. Saturday I visited Legionary in Exeter, a much smaller show than Salute, which provides an interesting contrast. I can see the advantages of the very biggest shows, and those of the smaller local shows as well.

Mark: I’d managed to pick up a copy of Simon Miller’s To the Strongest rules at Salute and was keen to give them a proper run through. The game was nearly aborted at the club when we forgot we needed four sets of cards to play it! So we hopped in the car to scour local supermarkets for a couple more decks. Nearly giving up we stumbled across a late night toy shop and struck gold as the card packs were half price! Luckily the game was quick to grasp and the lost time didn’t prevent a fun game. I played the mighty Persian Empire against my friend Andy’s Macedonians… I’ll write a proper review for the magazine. Suffice to say the outcome looked very historical! His phalanxes did well, and his companions decimated my left wing. All jolly good fun though!

Christy: With a looming deadline approaching for my mystery project, I’ve had to go into a bit of overdrive this weekend to get things done - and I am almost done! As promised, I’m enclosing a picture of the diorama. There’s only one figure missing now from the scene. Can you guess who it is? To find out, you’ll have to wait for this little scene to appear on the cover of the next WSS (79) and read the corresponding article. Or maybe I’ll just spoil it. I haven’t decided. Besides going nuts painting pre-1798 Austrian cavalry this weekend, I also cranked out a video tutorial on painting 10mm redcoats . I’ve had a bit of an 18th century overload, but there’s no break until I get that diorama finished!

Jasper: Salute always leaves me with a mix of exhaustion and enthusiasm for too many different projects. As I reported last week, I’m supposed to work on Piré’s division of the 100-Days campaign for our upcoming Dutch Miniature Wargaming Group Waterloo day. I haven’t got any other Napoleonics yet (boo-hiss, I know…) and I didn’t want to end up with cavalry only, so I took a page out of Guy’s production book and started on my own battalions of French infantry. I’m trying to get a technique down that’ll allow me to complete units faster, but at a standard which will still please me too. If it works, I’ll do a video on it for the WSS YouTube channel.