Road Trip! KEGSCon 2023

I took a day trip to Chatham yesterday with Mikey, Big Dave, and Dave's son attending his first gaming event, to attend a little gaming convention organized by my friends Keith and Brian. 43 attendees came to play 17 games over the course of the day.

Brian's 15mm ACW game

The 2+ hour drive, and being unwilling to get on the road at 0630, meant arriving after the morning session had started. But that gave time to visit with people, get caught up, and buy some Ospreys from the single dealer, who had everything on clearance pricing.

Lardie games were well represented. Dux Britannarium ran twice. Plus 6mm Charlie Don't Surf, 15mm They Couldn't Hit an Elephant, What a Tanker, and Seven Spears, the Samurai variation of Dux Britannarium. 

Dux Britannarium hosted by Frank Kailik

Star Wars Shatterpoint ran twice. One friend thought it too slow moving, another thought it was "not a good tactical skirmish game, but a good objective control game." So take that for what you want.

Interesting to note that Shatterpoint is all Clone Wars era, and bigger scale, compared to Rebellion era Star Wars Legion, to keep you from combining the two sets. Because how else is Disney going to make more money?

Friends Rico, Pablito, and Joe ran noisy VSF games. One on the fictional continent of Euronesia using The Men Who Would Be Kings, and the second on Venus, using Xenos Rampant. 

Charlie Don't Surf

They Couldn't Hit An Elephant, 15mm ACW

Five Men At Kursk, 54mm

Battletech 

Charlie Company in 20mm

When the heck did Axis & Allies get so big?

Seven Spears 

I was happy to sit in on this and give the rules a try. The card play is interesting. This was also the young GMs first foray into being a convention GM.

I guess I'll need to buy the relevant special and print off Seven Spears now, and see how I can break them with my eclectic figure inventory. 

Purchases. A deal at Cdn$15 each. Some inspiration for the Quar.

We didn't stay for the evening session which was going to be What a Tanker and I'm not sure what else. But getting most of the way home and dropping Big Dave and his boy off in London just before the sun went down was a Good Thing.

Bacon was eaten. Friends were seen. A game was played. Fun was had.

Sick Day Samurai

A raging headache arriving like the Bells of Doom in the small hours caused me to call in sick Monday. 

But after sleeping in, followed by a few rounds of tea, drugs and Magic Bags, I felt well enough to finish these chaps. 

I guess I should count these as a Support Option.

I'm ready for my drum solo!

Shooters

Couple more yari

Couple more mounted Samurai, bringing them to three in total, so far 

The Daimyo now outnumbers the Ikko-ikki/Ronin/bandits. I suppose I can balance this out by making the rebels higher quality. 

I think I'll move a couple of samurai on foot over to the rebels as well. 

Samurai SITREP

A few different things going on with my "Sharp Katanas" project this past week. 

A blog reader very kindly sent me his never been played copy of Dux Britannarium. I'm not keen on the fixed force sizes, or tactical options being limited to a hand of cards, but it has some interesting ideas to mine nonetheless. 

I should probably try it straight up with my Middle Earth figures. Or the fan-made Dux Arda variations. 

Cards aren't even unwrapped!

Now that I'm done the bandits, I'm trying to get the regular troops built to roughly equal numbers. Getting paint on figures I had already primed 9 years ago will roughly balance the sides, and give me something to play with. 

A while back Pasha Dan gave me a sprue of Warlord Games plastic ashigaru missile troops that he'd gotten free with a copy of Wargames Illustrated. 

I figured I'd try making some commanders and ammunition carriers for the archers and matchlock squads. 

Oof. The separate legs seem a bit much. And some of the torsos come in two halves.

At least there are pegs so you don't inadvertently select 2 left feet

Two piece torso? Really dude? Note large arrow quiver for ammunition carrier.

The details are very soft compared with modern plastics and figures are also missing the waist sash to thrust their swords through. The observant among you will notice an important detail: no base!

The ammunition carrier doesn't look too bad. But the teppo no gashira (commander of a musket squad) just looks.... odd. The way he's waving his staff just seems awkward. 

Since Wargames Factory designed the sprue to be part of a box with multiple sprues, there is only one pair of arms for holding the straps on a heavy ammunition pack. Poo.

Part of my mind says "just bin them!" The other part says "faff around and see if you can get anything useful out of them, what have you got to lose?" Maybe I'll play around and see if I can cut some other arms to have them holding pack straps. 

Back when I started this, I had megalomaniac dreams of a second contingent for my Daimyo. Same mon, just different colours. 

So I did a basic 100 point Ronin buntai of 1 samurai, 2 ashigaru with yari, 1 bow and 1 teppo with lovely red armour and coordinating yellow clothes and sashimono. 

Now they rather stick out. And I'm not thrilled with the yellow sashimono either. 

I hate the idea of stripping and repainting them. I also rather like the red lacquered armour. I am going to repaint the sashimono to match the others and reinforce them with a few more figures to make a personal guard for my Daimyo and his great banners. 

Bandit Teppos

Some Perry Ikko-Ikki with teppos are added to my bandit/ronin/wako/Ikko-ikki force, bringing their strength to 33. I'm going to have to crack on with painting more troops for my Daimyo to even things up! Of course I last added to that army about 9 years ago. See them here.

Pretty simple. I've gone back to my brown undercoat with these fellows and things went much faster! For one of them I experimented with Windsor & Newton "Deep red" ink over the brown undercoat to get a red lacquered effect.