Comstars Historical Wargames : Feburary 2021 status update

Monday, 8 February 2021

Feburary 2021 status update

Where I am, and where I want to go, as of February 2021

Posted to the dakka dakka historical fourm

For the last year I've been getting into historical wargaming, for the first time in over 26 years. My very first wargame was playing with WW2 plastic army men and firing sticks via spring cannons when I was 10. I actually started wargaming getting some 1/72 scale Napoleonic figures when I was around 18. I played a few games at a local club but I saw some 40K and WHFB games...and didn't return for 25+ years.

GW and their prices have cured me of that. I started another Imperial Guard army to take my mind of things 2 years ago but paying $40 for ONE FIGURE was a disappointing and discouraging experience. One day I might go back to building my super heavy tank army, but there doesn't seem to be any new IG army ever coming out :(, and the whole GW-nothing-but-Space-Marines-count has got me off them.

I do not recall now what got me interested in it again, but I've gone back to the local clubs for historical Napoleonic wargaming. The first rule I found of historical wargaming is "play what everyone else plays locally". Which is Field of Glory Napoleonic 2nd edition. This came about because after the first edition some locals decided to re-write it and get the local club players converted. As it's pretty much written FOR club and tournament play now, I suspect that wasn't too hard. Local is Australia/NZ. I'm lucky in that one of the co-authors was able to show me how to play the game and loan me an army to play several times. There are other people playing Black Powder and some sort of home grown rules I would like to play at some point.

I didn't progress much in building my own army using 18mm AB figures because painting my first unit of Portuguese line infantry too forever. And my eyesight is not great and my care and ability to paint figures has never been much good. When I discovered Stonewall Figures does painted battalions for 19 pounds each, I was very happy. It's still an expensive habit, but it's worked out to be about $50 AU each month has gotten me a full FOGN Anglo-Portuguese army after a year.

I need to file off the stand to remove flash, base them, wash them and put flags on, but that's 1/10th the time of painting them myself.

While all this has been going on I was able to play several games locally..and lost a lot. I decided very quickly I needed to keep a blog diary of my battle experiences to actually learn from my many many many mistakes. In my first FOGN tournament (still borrowing 1/2 the army) I was actually able to get a full victory, a tactical victory, a complete loss and fight the best ranked player to a minor loss/draw.

Currently I'm basing another 1/3 of the army, but I need to order my bases before I can go much further.

I hope to complete the army over the next few weeks and then start playing some solo games using Charles S Grants programmed solo wargaming scenario's. Then get a proper French Peninsula OPFOR army and a Spanish allied division and then corps.

I also need to get some terrain, which I think I will buy too. It needs to be easy to move and carry to other places, so plastic rubber mats, hills, trees, roads, rivers and buildings will be the order for that, though I might experiment making my own hills, roads and rivers for solo gaming.

Eventually I also want to get back into Oathmark (which got put on hold) and a Black Powder 28mm army, though I'll have to paint them myself...so that's going to be on hold for while.

What I'm currently working on:
https://comstarshistoricalwargames.blogspot.com/2021/02/more-units-from-stonewall-have-arrived.html#more