Lord Chelmsfords Expedition (1)

'AETHER    The final frontier. This is the voyage of Her Majestys Star Ship Prince Albert. Its five year expedition to explore strange new worlds and claim them on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (God Bless Her) , to seek out new species and civilise them in the British way, to boldly go where no Englishman has gone before.'

TELEGRAM
From - The Earl of Kimberley (Secretary of State for the Colonies)
To     - Lord Chelmsford (GOC Imperial Forces South Africa )

Sir
By command of Her Majesty the Queen (GBH) I request you to take all expediancy in raising a military and scientific expedition to our new empire across the solar sytem and beyond.
Her Majestys Aether Ship Prince Albert has been allocated for your use. Your mission is twofold, to consolidate our existing territories on Mars , Venus and Mercury giving assistence to our forces stationed there against aboriginal and earthen powers and to search out new planets  so far unknown and claim them on behalf of Her Majesty. Particular  attention should be shown to procuring any valuable mineral rights in the new territories  and to prevent access to them by other earthern powers such as the French, Germans, Belgians, Russians , Americans and Japanese (particular the Belgians!)
Due to the continued commitment of our forces across our colonies the Imperial troops available will be few in number but they will be equipped with our most up to date weapons invented at our secret research laboraty at ****** and manufactured at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. To provide extra firepower some troops from across our colonies on earth will be provided. You will also be accompanied by some of the leading lights in the military and scientific world. Some political , industrial and social factions will also be with you in your travels, be warned that the  insufferable woman Lady Busbridge has the ear of the Queen and elements of her reactionary supporters will be with you.
The aether frigate HMAS Swiftsure will bring reinforcements to your expedition as and when available.

Troops Allocated
X Company , 2nd Battalion 24th Regiment of Foot (commanded by Lt Bromhead)

17th Steam Lancers

Clockwork Engineers

Godalming Ladies Armed Militia



Martians seen again in Surrey

What have the Martians got against Surrey? First Horsell Common, now Cranleigh.

Here is a picture of my back garden this morning-

Last night Mors Junior and myself braved the snow and went to see Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds at the Brighton Arena   -  http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com/default.aspx

Normally less than a  hours trip, due to the massive 1/2 inch (sic) of snow it took almost four hours! Thankfully we left with plenty of time to spare and got there five minutes before the start. Two tee shirts and the very nice programme were bought. I have some Martians on order from RAFM which are based on the Space 1889 role playing game, these will be added to my Parroom Martians which I hope to start painting in the new year (which new year? I hear myself asking).

A Martian tripod advancing down my street

A flying machine attacking Mors Junior and Poppy

These images were created using my iphone and a new app available here - http://www.zgames.com/twotw

They have a game coming out soon too, cool.

Housework

Finally after months , maybe even years, of thinking about it I have finally tidied  my games/hobby room. Its still pretty congested but in a organised way, at least I can walk to the painting table without treading on something , although I normally paint downstairs in the kitchin but this involves lugging everything up and down two flights of stairs.

I have also organised my Victorian themed books , this bookcase contains all my uniform guides, steampunk novels , classic Victorian literature, rules and anything else which relates to the period and hobby I post about on this blog. Mors Minor did claim that the Picture Book of Dinosaurs was actually his but I set him straight!

Hopefully I can get going on my painting again, I have lots of partially completed units that I can get stuck into both for colonial and VSF. The lack of posting on my blog has not been due to a lack of painting (or indeed buying!) of miniatures and terrain but just time pressure. I intend to start posting again regularly as it acts as a spur to complete units. More to follow shortly.....

Such a long time

Its been a long time since I posted anything. Real life has taken up a lot of time during the summer, however I have been doing a blittle bit of painting. From a VSF point of view I have some German Marines close to completion, some mechanical men need basing , I have finished a section of Hinterland Lady Hussars. I have also bought rather a lot at Salute and Colours , I shall post some pictures soon. Africa seems to be taking my mind up at the moment and I have started a Zulu project , I will probably start a new blog for my African miniatures and leave this one to just VSF.

Atlantis Report One

An Imperial Japanese Force has landed on a island off the south east coast of Atlantis. Land was spotted during morning roll call and consequently it has been named Tenko Island.

After a circumnavigation General Yugo selected a bay on the south eastern coast to be a base for further operations.

 A few days later a black ship was seen steaming northwards a few miles out to sea. Mad Jack Hargreaves , a renegade scientist of dubious character, had also decided to explore this island.

General Yugo spent a few days establishing his base then began to push patrols out along the coast.

The force heading north was led by Kinokaruta Taro and consisted of a unit of the famous smoke stalkers, a Bishi steam armoured carriage and a Mitsu steam powered walker. After three days travel there scouts reported evidence of human occupation, namely a huge statue of a head , KK decided to investigate, not knowing this led him to a confrontation with a force of masked troops sent south by Mad Jack led by Commander Riley which included an almost identical strength force.

The noise of the steam contraptions converging upon each other had also alerted some huge native creatures.

Control of the area around the statue was the aim of both forces.

The Japanese armoured carriage soon ran into mechancial problems

Meanwhile KK on the right of the Japanese advance decided to attack an encroaching monstrous Dinosaur creature (AK).

Eventually KK overcame AK and decided to start chopping it up for rations for the troops

Mechanical problems persisted for the Japanese force and another Dinosaur (Steggy) took advantage and rammed the walker.

Nori , the pilot of the walker , impatiently leapt from his machine and took on the Dino with his sword.

This proved to be a mistake , as the dino flipped him over  with his powerful neck and and killed him with a crushing blow from his swinging tail.

The Japanese steam carriage had eventually got started and made good speed flanking round the back of Rileys defences. Riley had so far played a very defensive game with his rifle unit and his steam walker holding the centre of the battlefield.

The steam walker killed quite a few of the smoke stalkers after a futile charge , the minion rifle unit charged the remnants and cleared them from the battle. 

The scout steam tank he had sent out ahead of his forces, whereupon it got rammed by Steggy.However no damage was taken by either contestant bar a headache or two and Steggy wandered off and took no further part in the battle.

The Japanes walker was toppled from the combined fire of the minion walker and the minion steam tank which after its brush with the dino had got to the rear of the Japanese forces.

KK decided this was an opportune moment to report back to General Yugo, so he ordered the steam carriage to follow him and hot tailed it off the battlefield , leaving Commmandr Riley in possesion of the statue with a force that had taken surprisingly few casulties.

Rules-Standard G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T with a few modifictaions.

Players - Mors (Dinos and Japs and Umpire) , Mors Junior (Masked Minions) , Mors Minor ( Japs till his bedtime)

Defeat for Imperial Japanese Army (Not glorious either)

Had a great day yesterday playing my first game of GASLIGHT with some of the chaps from LAF. I remembered to take my camera tripod, it would have been a lot better had I remembered my camera too!
I took a few pics with my iphone but Im sure a battle report will be up on LAF soon and I will post a link.

Here is a picture looking down the table

My forces started at the far end on the left hand side opposed by the British , the nearer side in the picture were ither forces including Americans, Khosindan Pirates Sanwar. The centre of the table was occupied by an Atlantean Temple which was the main objective of the game , however I completely ignored that.

Thanks to Bullshott for lending me some of his Japanese army (and for helping me sort my army list) some of which can be seen here http://www.displacedminiatures.com/Bullshott/gallery/1952/

My force consisted of my stalkers, line infantry , imperial guard, tank, walker and tatsuhiro suit led bt KK Taro ( General Yugo was a onlooker). To these forces were added 3 small tankettes , a steam samurai , a unit of line infantry,a unit of mecha (stalkers) , a unit of Japanese sailors made by Pulp Figures  and various characters.

Japanese start positions

Looking across the table towards the British positions.

American forces.

The central Temple

I will not comment to much upon what happened during the game, suffice to say after some early successes in particularly against the The Black Watch and the BRAS ( balloon cavalry)  it all went pear shaped after a beer break.Some of my units including my crack Imperial Guard got involved with some Atlantean units defending the temple and didnt move more than 6 inches all game until they got wiped out, to make matters worse I had a steam tank in the jungle nearby and forgot to move it a couple of times. The Japanese Naval unit performed particularly badly and  at one point ran away , however I will be ordering a unit of these for my force soon!

On my other flank the steam tanks did well but were eventually put out of action , although the crew after exiting the smoking remains of there vehicles carried on the fight and in fact had some remakable success before succumbing. My central forces moved forward to within range of the British and basically got shot to pieces. General KK Taro spent the game runnning around like a headless chicken. The steam tank I had forgotten about a couple of times eventually got involved but incurred a damaged gun barrel in its first engagement and proceded to ram any vehicle it came into range of, with limited suceess.

My thanks to the other players for a enjoyable day, thankfully I knew neither the England rugby result nor Chelsea footy result till I got home.

EDIT- A far more complete report is available here

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=16828.0

Atlantis Campaign

The nice chaps from the VSF message board at Lead Adventure Forum are in the early stages of a campaign based on the Lost Continent of Atlantis, set circa 1890 . I was quite keen to take part when it was first mooted last year, in fact its been the major spur to get some painting done. I have been allocated a small island just off Atlantis to game on rather than the main Island. This suits me as I hope to get Mors Junior and even Mors Minor involved, I have created a map so that we can see how the exploration of the island develops. The Imperial Japanese Army under the command of General Yugo are the first expedition to land. They will soon be involved in a skirmish with a  so far unknown quasi military force. Later other forces will be involved, including most of my DA miniatures. This coming saturday I have been invited to game for a day at a pub in Twickenham by the other members of the board so I have been trying to finish off as many Japanese as possible. Here are my finished units so far.

C-in C General Yugo

Kinokaruta Taro

Eagle Eye Sakamoto

Imperial Guard Infantry

Line Infantry

Smoke Stalkers

Major Nori of the Imperial Guard

Tatsuhiro Mechanified Infantry Suit

Bishi Steam Walker

Mitsu Scout Steam Armoured Car

We will be playing Battles by G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T rules , which I have been reading through this week. I will try and post some pics of the game next week .

First DA Battle

As usual I did not achieve what I wanted to during the week ,I am just too tired to get the enthusiasm up to paint when I get home from work. Both orders of Abyssinians are here now and I have based them today , hopefully will start painting them soon but I need to do a few things to my Japanese VSF force first , this will take priority for the next couple of weeks.
This afternoon I finished the 3 white men each for my FP and for the Karl Peters expedition -

Karl Peters

German Officer?

FP

Belgian Sergeant

This afternoon I had a quick game of HoDA with Mors Junior using my lightweight movable board , I controlled the German force and Mors Jun the FP, Mors Minor was involved with a randomly moving lion and helping with the dice throws!

We only had the time for three turns  and simplified the rules as it was our first time although the rules are fairly simple anyway.Here is the table with all my figures that are  painted on it.

There are too many figures for for our first game and the size of the board (4'x4') , so we cut them down to

this-

The FP consisted of two 9 man soldier units , 2 white man units , standard bearer , scout and c-in-c.

The german expedition was a 9 man soldier unit , a 10 man heavily armed askari unit , 15 man musketeer unit, 2 white man units  , standard bearer scout and c-in-c. Roughly about 640 points each, as HoDA has a reccomendation of 720 points as a max it was a bit ambitious, especially starting the game at about 7pm on a sunday night!The soldier units are very very expensive points wise.

Here is a picture of Mors Minors lion getting his din din during turn 2-

Thats it for now, hopefully more to report next week!!