Starting 10mm American Civil War

Hi there,

Just a short update today. I've started on the 10mm American Civil War figures seen in my Pendraken review. I decided to start with the Confederates, reasoning that their irregularity will make them slower to paint and thus once their down, the Union will seem easy! With basing I decided on 30mm wide, 20mm deep basing. Infantry will be six to a base, cavalry two. These bases are small so I can use them to play Regimental Fire and Fury. RF&F has artillery based short end to the front unlike the infantry and cavalry however I won't be doing this. The 30mm base width allows me to place two bases side by side to form a brigade for Altar of Freedom - gotta plan ahead with these things! Thanks for reading. :)

Confederate infantry. These Pendrakens paint up so easily! Based the same way I've done my 6mm

An example of how I'll base for Altar of Freedom - the bases are poster tacced onto a 60x30 base, leaving 10mm at the rear for labels.

Commander (left) and cavalry (right). Going two per base with cavalry in my mind suits their role in the civil war (and makes my figures go further too!).

And the rear. The command base is simply the command figures for the cavalry re-purposed as the force commander.

Pendraken Manufacturer Review

Hi again!

Back this time with a manufacturer review, this time it's Pendraken Miniatures from the UK. Pendraken makes 10mm miniatures for a huge variety of ranges, from ancient to modern as well as sci-fi and fantasy. I was looking to do an American Civil War side project and liked the price and style of Pendraken after looking around online. 10mm seems to be a nice scale in my mind for ACW. I'll be basing six infantry/two cavalry/one gun to a 30mm wide by 25mm deep base. I intend on using these to play Regimental Fire and Fury to really focus on those key actions of the war, but this basing scheme also lets me place two bases side by side to form brigades for Altar of Freedom. As I said above, this was intended to be a side project to give me a break from my 6mm Napoleonics, but I'm been very impressed by these figures, so it may become a bit bigger down the track...

Now onto the review! I break my manufacturer reviews into three segments

- Quality and design of product
- How they are purchased/packed
- Service/Cost

Quality and design of product

Pendraken's figures are definitely of a good quality. Design wise the detail is fairly chunky, which makes them very easy to paint. The sculpts have tonnes of character to them, something which I kind of picked up in the bare metal but became very obvious once I started applying paint. Size wise these tend to sit around 12mm to the top of the hat (10mm to eye level). To me this feels perfect, large enough to have plenty of visible detail yet small enough to be easy to paint with simple techniques. I'm not a great painter by any measure but I was very pleased with the results of my first infantry. on the downside, mold lines on some of the figures can be quite prominent and often run along the face of the figure. These are relatively simple to remove as these ACW figures are not covered in equipment. This is perhaps something to keep in mind for more elaborately detailed figures (WW2 British paras come to mind, with helmet detail and plenty of gear). The biggest downside for me came with the rifles, which often have no visible firing mechanism and in some cases were perhaps cast a bit too thin, resulting in weapons that easily broke. The firing mechanism may not be necessary at this scale but the brittle rifles was disappointing. That said I think the pros outweigh the cons here.

Confederate infantry. This is not all the poses included. Lots of character!

Confederate cavalry. Some of the cavalry figures are great. Cavalry is perhaps the forgotten arm of the American Civil War, but Pendraken has brought it to life here.

Great figures!

Confederate artillery. Guns are four piece and look easy to assemble.

Size comparison to Baccus 6mm Napoleonics.

My first 12 CSA infantry. I'm very pleased with how these came out.

How they are purchased/packed
Pendraken has kept their packaging and purchase scheme simple and operates an easy to navigate website. Infantry is packed 30/pack, cavalry 15/pack. Infantry command packs have 15/pack. Artillery is sold 4 guns/pack with crew packaged separately (16/pack to match up with the guns). Personally I think this is a mistake, however it may be convenient for those who wish to make destroyed artillery markers.  Starter armies are available with 150 infantry (including command groups), 15 cavalry and 3 guns with crew. Key generals such as Lee and Grant are available individually along with a broad array of other items such as wagons, sharpshooters, stretcher bearers and even civlians. I personally purchased a starter pack for each side of the war.

Packaging is simple. The package came in a soft post bag. One plastic bag per starter army. Only the artillery is packed separately, infantry and cavalry you'll need to sort yourself! 

Service/Cost
Pricing is very competitive, something which initially attracted me to Pendraken. All prices here exclude VAT.

Infantry pack (30) - 4.38 pounds (8.30AUD)
Infantry command (15) - 2.21 pounds (4.20AUD)
Cavalry (15) -  4.38 pounds (8.30AUD)
Guns (4) - 3.50 pounds (4.60AUD)
Gun Crew (16) -  2.33 pounds (4.40AUD)
Starter Army - 27.5 pounds (52AUD)

Service was very good. Everything was cast and shipped in around a week and came in good condition. I can't comment on how you would go with complaints as I had none!

Conclusion
Pendraken offers characterful figures at a good price, making 10mm a compelling halfway between 6mm and 15mm. While their figures have fairly prominent mould lines and some of the rifles are overly brittle, the figures in general have plenty of easy to paint detail with a variety of fantastic sculpts. Highly recommended.

Napoleonic Russians - Pavlovsk Grenadiers (Павловский гренадерский полк) and Heavy Artillery

Hello there,

A quick update today. I was going to hold off posting until I had a decent bunch of units to put up but as the Pavlovsk Grenadiers are so iconic in the era, I figured they deserved their own post. I've painted the 1st and 3rd battalions (the 2nd in the Russian Army was a depot battalion and often not deployed). After the 1812 campaign the Pavlovsk Grenadiers would be admitted to the Imperial Guard, which they remained a part of until the Russian Revolution. I also finished my 12 pounder guns of which I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

I should be receiving some Pendraken 10mm ACW later this week, so there should be some more variety on the blog soon. ACW is a side-project for me, only 300 infantry, 30 cavalry and 6 guns between both sides. I've got the rules for Altar of Freedom and have Regimental Fire and Fury on order and have a basing scheme in mind that should allow me to play both without any issues. All this side, side-projects often have a tendency to get bigger and I'm becoming really interested in the history of the war...

12 pounder foot artillery.

From the rear

Павловский гренадерский полк, 3rd battalion left, 1st right.

I love the colour on the back of the mitre caps, makes for a good player view!

Fistful of Tows 3 Battle Report - Soviet Union vs West Germany, 1987.

Hello there!

Today I got a game in of Fistful of Tows 3 with Jason. We played in 3mm, which saved Jason lugging down his 6mm Soviets. The game was fairly short notice so neither of us had time to go over the rules beforehand and this was only our second game, so we kept it simple. No airstrikes or helicopters (or tactical nukes for that matter...). I'd hazard that we still made mistakes as it's a reasonably complex ruleset, but we definitely a lot, particularly how terrain effects the game. This will be a short one as the game was called after three turns (FFT3 is usually in the region lf a 10-12 turn game).

The table. I decided to make the table fairly heavily wooded and hilly. Yes, my forests and bridges are not scaled to 3mm, I know...

German panzergrenadiers defending the town with a Luchs screen. Leopard IIs are pushing down the road.

Two Leopard II battalions. The Germans were all rated average for this game.

German recon pushes up on the left

The Soviet right - four battalions of T-80Us! These were terrible troops, rated marginal

The Soviet right. Fair rated T-72B1s

Turn 1, German tanks occupy the left while the T-80U regiment pushes over the ridge. Initial casualties for the Soviets are light.

The main engagement on turn 2. The opening NATO salvos find their mark but the short range of the Soviets along with their numbers will count.

NATO right takes up overwatch positions. These would prove to be too far forward and would allow the T-72s to bring their numbers to bear.

Turn 3. The Panzers have all been eliminated, leaving just the village garrisons. Ouch.

The Soviets had plenty of tanks left...

Overall Thoughts

We learnt a couple of things this game. Use of terrain is essential, NATO needs to keep their standoff to avoid being overwhelmed. Effective use of terrain to screen an advance allowed the Soviet tanks to get their shorter range guns into range without taking early casualties. Setting a table in FFT3 is clearly an important element in achieving a good game.

The basic processes of how to resolve shooting, etc in FFT3 are reasonably complex. Jason and I both agreed that going for a more beer and pretzels orientated, easy to play game would be a better option when just looking to play for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. That said, the game has huge potential. I view it as kind of a tool box where you can build your own game. There's rules for basically anything you could want to do from engineering to chemical warfare. We talked about the prospect of a huge, 1 or even 2 day game played on a 12x6 table with multiple players and objectives to play. Different phases of the battle could be modelled with house rules to allow bases and units that failed quality checks to reconstitute and re-enter the battle. I think this kind of well-planned, deep game is where FFT3 would come into its own. Hopefully more to come! Thanks for reading. :)

Сумские гусары - Napoleonic Sumi Hussars and Russian Generals

Hi again!

Today I've finished my third (and for now final) hussar base, painted up as the Sumi Нussars (Сумские гусары). I really enjoyed these guys, the grey and red uniform was easy to paint and looks striking. I'm also happy with the generals. They do look a little plain but overall I think the character of the miniatures shines through. I've also thrown in a couple of photos of the army's overall progress at the end of this post - it's really starting to look like an army and I'm super happy with it. Overall so far I've painted 10 infantry, 6 cavalry, 2 artillery and 3 general bases. This is maybe a quarter of the project, if that...

Сумские гусары - front

Сумские гусары - rear

My generals

The army! 6pdr artillery to the front.

More of a focus on the cavalry. The first in frame are the Лейб-гвардия гусары (Lifeguard Hussars)

The infantry. These front two regiments still need their second battalions.