5th Column is Moving

Hi all,

After a long time considering what I want to do with my blog and what Blogger can offer I have decided to move over to Wordpress.

https://5thcolumnwargaming.wordpress.com/

The Service offers in my opinion a better integration with my Facebook page and in general allot more options for customizing and providing a range of options for different pages based on theme's etc.

So all those who faithfully have follwed my work here, please head over and check out and follow the 5th Columns new Home.

Cheers

Jon-Paul

Italian Wars, Greek Unarmoured Hoplites, basing Republican Romans and Star Wars

This Last Fortnight in Gaming at 5th Column 

 
Well its the Second of November and I am bit late with this update.

This last fortnight has been filled with some gaming down at the Club, and toe dip back into armada, some musings about republican Romans and reflecting on Star Wars Armada.

So where do we start?

Italian Wars

The Saturday before last the lads down at Berwick convened to continue our foray into the early Renaissance with a focus on the Italian Wars.   Peter, who's venue we use for these awesome days of gaming in his custom built games house (only way I can describe it), recently finished his collection of Landsknechts and other associated troops such as some glorious French Gendarmes.

We have been playing over the last few months a series of games and different scenario's using the Pike and Shotte Rules from Warlord Games.  The Games have been very interesting with massed blocks of Pike clashing into each other and heavy cavalry sweeping all before them.

I have to say the color's and the models fired the imagination and the temptation to charge off into yet another period and buy figures was strong for a while, probably a good thing I have two many other projects going otherwise you know..... the lead pile would grow.

Here are a few shots from last meets game:

This game I was on the losing side.  We aggressively attacked the enemy, however the luck of the dice gods was on the side of the bad side (the other guys), however it was allot of fun.

Next Unit of Hoplites:

This week I was able to finish off the latest unit of Hoplites and then subsequently decided that I want to go back and add a 3rd rank to all these units and future units.

I have also done some preliminary work a scenario to base all this work on and focusing on the 2nd Battle of Coronea in 394BC.  The battle took place between Sparta and her Allies and Thebes and her allies.  In Rex Warner's Translation of Xenophon he noted that Coronea was a double battle, a knock out championship for military excellence.

I am reading the Ancient text, specifically Xenophon and Plutarch and hope to write more on the battle in the next few posts as well as sketch of the army lists and scenario.  In the meantime here are shots of the latest unit.

A Group Shot of the Collection so Far.

On the Ancients Army front I have also begun work on research on my republican roman army, which I hope to start in the new year at the earliest.  The hardest thing is how to reflect the manipular structure of the roman legions of the time.  And that has put a focus on how they really fought.

Roman Legions in this period fought in a checker board style deployment with 3 lines of maniples, however to reflect that, at the next club meeting we are putting a few games on to test a few ideas.

Star Wars Armada. 

After about 2 months of not playing an FFG game Harley and I sat down this afternoon to play a game of Armada. Harley made a list while i took a random list from the Fab Fleet Builder  Link Here
We played a 500 point game as generally we find these games are a bit more interesting at the higher points values, and while Harley is perusing the competition scene in X-Wing I'm more interested in the fly casual games and personally prefer more traditional war-games if you hadn't guessed.

I fluffed the entire game and gave up after turn 4 as i successfully handed ship after ship to Harley's imperials.  However it has me wanting more as annoyed as I was I knew I can do better :P  With the imminent arrival of Wave 2 also I think the game is going to step a whole level. Here are some shots from today's game:

 

 Well thats the lot for this update. 

Catch you at the next update.
 

Greeks, Romans and Blood Rage !

So between my last post and this one Our darling daughter Eleanor was born!  It has been a very full on two weeks with hospital and then sleepless nights but she is just amazing and in allot of ways life will never be the same..... however she does have this in her collection of bibs:

So maybe some things will stay the same :) 


In between the excitement of newborn and nappies I have been able to sneak in some painting and also a few items have arrived in the post which are very cool as well! 

New Start, Updated URL and Hopefully a new direction.

Well Hello strangers !!!!!!

The distance between blog posts has almost spanned a year, I toyed with the idea of starting fresh with a new blog entirely.  I messed around with some ideas that would transfer the work over to word press and I may still do that down the track and I have named that page "Shock of Impact" after a set of rules I use to own. However I decided that a spring clean of the 5th Column was a better approach.

When left the blog back in December I had begun the journey of  building a Ancient Greek Hoplite Army in preparation of Cancon 2016.  I have tracked the projects progress on my thread on the  forum Lead Adventure and I have to say have received and continue to receive  a fantastic level of support and kind words from those folks.

You can find that thread here : Lead Adventure Thread

Since that last post back in December last year it has also come to pass that my wife and I are expecting our first child, due in roughly a few weeks and I have progressed through about half of my masters degree only to put it on hold for a while to focus on the expected bundle of joy:)

So the year has flown by and now with some time becoming available my mind turns back to blogging.  First I have decided to fix something that has been bugging me for a while, the URL for the site.  When I renamed my original blog to 5th Column I did not change the URL and as such "wolftemplars" has been the method of searching for this blog.  It has annoyed me for a long while and with some time and distance between posts I have taken the step to change that.    5th Column Wargaming is the new title of the blog and also has the matching URL.  I am also considering buying the domain but that will come later.  I hope this does reach all those who follow me, however Ill work on getting the blog back out there to those who have supported the blog can still view its updates.

Secondly I want to work on the focus and direction of the blog. I want to really focus in on my current projects and passions in gaming right now, Historical Gaming and FFG's titles X-Wing and Armada.  It is very clear to me that I have now shaken the 40k habit and in general the GW attraction.  They still make great models but I no longer believe that they support the models with great rules, where as FFG and Warlord Games do.

And finally with the posts themselves.  I think the trick with all this blogging is to batch blog posts and match the progress updates of painted figures with some form of opinion piece and or article that revolves around what I'm working on.  I think two posts a month will suffice, with roughly 24 posts a year and that should cycle well with my painting rotation for new units as well as how often i get to game as a gaming father.  In those posts I hope to deliver a few parts, that cover current painting project and other relevant bits about how I see gaming right now.   

So there it is, a new start and hopeful idea's, what is needed now is execution so I hope to have the first post of the new format up in the next two weeks and from there we shall see.

First Unit of Hoplites done now to do More!

 I was able to finish the second stand of Hoplites today and I am very happy with the result, they look great!  I really feel I have improved the application of the LBM transfer on the curved shields and I have to say I like how all the colors have worked together.

More on the way as well as more dark ages stuff! 

Bit of an overhead shot showing how they have lined up with the Ranks and also kept most of the spears length sitting over the base to try and prevent them being damaged.

Have a great week!

Cheers

JP

Its all Greek to me !

There has been some discussion of late about the plan for 2016 for Cancon...... yep we are already talking about 2016 and we haven't even got past 2015.... the sadness is strong in this group!

Secret Weapon- Tablescapes

Way back in the mists of the early part of 2013 I signed up for the Tablescapes Kickstarter by Secret Weapon Miniatures.

After a massive campaign on their behalf and then all the challenges of production a few weeks ago the box's arrived.  I was in the middle of uni so I only really opened a box, had a look inside and then put them away and got back to the business end of uni. 

Well as I mentioned in my last post Uni is over now, and the opportunity for some hobby is upon me!

While the bride was out with the family today I cleared the dining table and laid out a 6x4 table to get a sense of the production values as well as some of the opportunities and things I need to think on.