Earlier this year Grey for Now Games announced they would be publishing 02 Hundred Hours, a new set of rules for night-time raids during World War 2. It sounded like an interesting topic, so I pre-ordered a starter set. The starter set includes the rules, gaming cards, custom dice, counters, and 36 figures. The figures are multi-part plastic from Wargames Atlantic. I haven't had a chance to assemble my figures yet, but a few of us wanted to try out the system with stuff we already had. We decided go with our North Afrca figures and do an intelligence gathering mission by Long Range Desert Gro ..read more

Earlier this year many of the guys in my gaming group began working on a World War I project, focusing on the early months of the war. The plan was to use the 1914 rules from Great Escape Games. Since Great Escape Games only had Western Front figures (German, French, B.E.F. and Belgium), they planned to use Kallistra figures too, so they could do Eastern Front battles.  While I was willing to play a game, I was not planning on painting up any armies for the project. However, after one gaming day, I found a pile of Kallistra Belgians abandon on my doorstep (okay they were really abandon o ..read more

After a little time away from hobby stuff to deal with some medical stuff, I wanted to put up a quick post to show some work I've been doing. Here is the completed version of the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Salt Lake City. Port quarter view of USS Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, and her sister ship Pensacola, were originally designated as a light cruisers (due to a lack of armor), but were re-designated as heavy cruisers when the 1930 London Naval Treaty said that cruisers with 8" guns were now heavy cruisers. Salt Lake City fought at the Battle of Cape Esperance and Battle of the Komandorsk ..read more

After a bit of a hiatus from gaming and painting, a few of us got together on Saturday for an International Naval Wargaming Day game. For those of you that are unfamiliar with International Naval Wargaming Day (INWaD), in 2017 David Manley, well know rule writer and naval gamer, kicked off the first INWaD as a day to "Celebrate the birth of the father of naval wargaming, Fred T. Jane, by running or taking part in a game of your own!"   Our INWaD game this year covered the 1866 Battle of Lissa. We used 1/600 scale ships and the Sail and Steam Navies rules with the optional gun group rule ..read more

In my last post I ran a tease about me getting back to painting some ships. I'm working with my friend Kevin on some 1/1200 scale ships for some small night battles. As part of my contribution I ordered some 3D printed ships from XP Forge. I started off with a small order of resin printed ships, picking the American cruiser Salt Lake City, the IJN cruiser Agano, and some American destroyers. The main reason I chose the cruisers is that they aren't available in 1/1200 scale from Superior (through Alnavco), but they seem like useful ships for Pacific battles. Kevin would like to do the Battle of ..read more

On Saturday a group of us got together for the first big battle with our Mexican - American War figures. We started the project late last summer (I talked about it some in this blog post) and there was a smaller battle in February (from Kevin’s blog), but this was the first time most of us had gotten figures on the table. We were using the Rebels and Patriots rules from Osprey for the game.  U.S. Dragoons charge Mexican artillery at Resaca de la Palma (U.S. Army in Action series from wikimedia commons) I set up a game area loosely based on the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. We had ..read more

We played the first of the two mini-DANG (Dave’s Annual Naval Game) games today. I had postponed both games after the snowstorm made travel difficult. We set the date after things had thawed out, but due to weather and health issues, half of the crew had to cancel for today. But the other half decided to press ahead with the game, which gave me a chance to play to even out the sides. Normally I just referee things because it is a mini-campaign and there are a lot of behinds the scenes moving parts. But the small one-off scenario allowed me to jump in on this one.   Today’s game was a hypo ..read more

With the start of 2022, I'll take an obligatory look back at 2021 and look forward to 2022.    From the hobby standpoint, 2021 was a much better year than 2020. I finished more projects and had more chance to game.    Starting out with the gaming side, in February, we wrapped up a Play by Email Spanish-American War naval campaign I ran using David Manley's Splendid Little War game and the Fire When Ready naval rules. I didn't do a write-up for this, but you can see Kevin's blog for the whole story.   In early June, we had our first lawn game. It was an Ironclads game ..read more

I had been planning to save my final 2021 post for the planned DANG games, but the winter weather intervened and I had to postpone the games.  My front yard after the snow We had a snow storm on Sunday, with more scattered snow showers over the past few days. But what really killed my planned games was the temperatures. Since Sunday our high temperature was 28 degrees F (that's around -3 C for those outside the US). The low temperature prevented the snow from melting and made the roads a mess, so I decided to postpone the games. I'm looking to reschedule for sometime in January ..read more

As we roll into early December, I wanted to post a quick update and talk about the return of DANG. First up, my recent project. After one of our late summer games David Sullivan (of the I Live with Cats blog) brought up the idea of a group project for the Texas Revolution of 1835-36 or the Mexican - American War of 1846-47. He was really wanting to do the Texas Revolution, but the group headed off in the direction of the Mexican - American War and I jumped in too. I expected this to be a slow progress, Winter project. But in a flurry of action, everyone else started making orders to 1st Corps ..read more