Blogger is still giving me fits on uploading images. I'm afraid this is the best I can do.
These resin terrain pieces were a Christmas gift from my friend Kevin. They are the perfect size for 15mm guns, and I think they will work well for any period from the dawn of gunpowder through Vietnam.
The sculpting is first rate, and the resin casting is very crisp. I would love to order more pieces from this company. Do any of my readers know who MBT&T might be?
My current commission is moving along nicely. Today I finished these 95 War of 1812 British for William. They will soon be joined by another 144 Americans.
I was a gen-X kid, and the Vietnam War seemed a very recent event growing up. Many of my friends' fathers had served in the war. One of my childhood friends was one of the "boat people" who escaped the communists by sea in 1975. When I served as a soldier from 1991-9, the training seemed focused on the guerilla war in southeast Asia.
The US's misadventure in Vietnam was too recent and too personal for me to want to game. Over the past decade, my attitude has softened a bit, thanks largely to two books: "Vietnam: the Necessary War" by Michael Lind and "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" by David Hackworth. Both of these books forced me to confront some of the myths that surround the Vietnam War, and both got me thinking about the conflict in a more critical way.
A few years back, Jon Freitag gave me "Front Toward Enemy" as a Christmas gift. It was the first Vietnam War game that I actually enjoyed playing, and I started to envision converting it to miniatures.
The figures I will use are from Orion in 1/72 plastic, and I like the sculpts quite a bit. These were block painted and followed by the dip.
The next box I am painting is Viet Cong. I hope to have enough to play a small scenario very soon.
The last bits of my Gallic army are the medium cavalry and the commanders. The cavalry are some of my oldest completed figures, dating back to 2005. I had the perfect amount of figures to field the three units needed.
The generals are all recent paint jobs, completed this summer.
And that is it. The Gallic army is done!
The Commands and Colors system rewards a general who can make good use of his skirmishers. They are highly mobile, with the ability to move and shoot AND evade close combat. They cannot provide a killing blow, but they can wear down the enemy with missile fire and slither away from most attackers. I consider CCA's treatment of light troops to be the best I have seen in any game system.
The Gauls have a variety of light foot troops. Archers and slingers act just the same in the rules, with a range of three hexes. Javelinmen and light cavalry have a range of two.
The slingers were the only light troops I had painted for my first army. Everyone else here has come across the painting desk within the past two months.
My old Warhammer Ancient Battles army had four chariot models in it. Commands and Colors does not call for many Gallic chariots except for one scenario, Caesar's landing in Britain, when the Britons field seven units of chariots, or 14 models!
The first picture shows chariots that I painted away back in 2005. To my eye now, they look too dark, and the paint does not have enough contrast between layers.
The models I finished this summer pop much better.
