Sergio's blog: hints, ideas, pictures and news about SDS (and more) from the author

Monday, March 29, 2010

Roberto's new Bavarians (with pics)


Roberto was so kind to send me the pics of some of his Front Rank Bavarians.


Here is the full squad, the bold Officer and a couple of Schuetzen with their Rifles.
A close-up on the drummer and 2 Light Infantrymen complete this gallery.
Again - thanks to Roberto for sharing...



Sunday, March 28, 2010

A call to Arms!

Well, I've been posting quite a lot this week (and more pictures are coming, together with a battle report of our friday night Big Battle - 1200 Vs. 900 points) and have received and posted pics from some italian players. Now it's YOUR turn: this is a call for all readers of this blog and players of SDS to send me pics of their squads, so that we can share them here.
Don't be shy and send your pics to my address
sergio.laliscia@yahoo.com

Thank you in advance

The Old Guard is here!


The second Squad sent by Marco is his French Old Guard.
It is a super-Elite squad with the addition of a Dragoon (just 5 models!).
Here it is....
It is composed by an NCO, 3 Guardsmen and a Dragoon , for total cost of 401 points. Marco chose not to deploy an Officer (legal) counting on the Q2 of the Old Grognards....

Voilà the 3 Old Guard: Q2 C4 Musket, Fear

3 tanks on the battlefield (for 93 points each).

The NCO follows...




And finally the Dragoon, a mounted guest in this squad.
Good job Marco, and thank you for sharing!

Roberto's new Bavarians

Roberto from La Spezia published his Bavarian squad on the WASP (Wargame Spezia) website.
It's a really excellent job (faces details are astonishing!). Hope we'll see this squad fighting very soon (maybe in Arezzo Tournament on may 9th??).

Grazie Roberto

http://www.wargamespezia.org/le-armate-del-wasp-the-armies-of-wasp/song-drums-and-shako/roberto/

Saturday, March 27, 2010

A French squad from Marco


Marco sent some pictures of a couple of his french squads. I'm very happy to post the first one of them here.

Here we go: a mixed Garde National + Cavalry + Line Infantry, with Officer, Drummer and Standard Bearer.

The full Squad...


The Command Group: Marco uses 2cm. square bases for his squads, with an excellent flocking on them (I always envy him for the way his grass stands upright, while mine goes down helplessly...).





And the 6 National Guards (I guess they are Perry plastics) that Marco uses as a "cannon fodder". 2 of these guys cost less than a "normal" infantryman, but they still have a musket!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

A brief Gallery



As promised, here are some pics from the "latest" releases of my working bench (some of them are not yet finished, but this morning the sun was shining so brightly I could not resist..).
Let's start with some cavalry: 2 French Hussars (3rd reg.), an elite Dragoon and an elite Chasseur.
(OK, I have to flock the bases...)

Cuirassiers and Carabiniers (Perry plastic)... a bit overexposed I think.










My new ITALIAN squad (2nd Line rgt., Front Rank miniatures) with 1 Light Infantryman in the front line.... and my British Marines (Steve Barber Models), soon to be joined by some ship's crew for a landing.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Let's give 'em a face!


I found some pictures from the SDS day in Arezzo and would like to show here the guys who are helping me a lot with the Tournament Rules for my game.
We had 2 tables in Alessandro's "taverna"...

On the left, Filippo deploying his squad (with my hands in the foreground).





Marco (twice Italian DBA Champion) thinking about his next move, with some of my Austrians in line formation...







And finally Alessandro (our host) playing against Max (sorry Max, no pics of you....)

Stibix strikes again! (Bassano)


Stibix (aka Stefano) organized a SDS demo day at Bassano del Grappa (Northern Italy) and sent me the following pics. A classic Spanish Guerrilla vs. French Légère and Dragoons.
Left to right Maurizio and Armando.




A close up on the table, with the French taking cover behind a low wall protected by Dragoons...











And the group after the battle (Stibix is standing in the middle). There were also other players but - as Stefano said - "one cannot help in doing everything" :))
Next meeting will be in Este on april 25th..
Great job Stibix!

Painting schedule

During the week-end I finished my Italian squad (from the 2nd Line Regiment). I painted 1 Officer, 1 NCO, 1 Standard bearer, 1 Drummer, 2 Voltigeurs and 1 Light Infantryman (2 Grenadiers were already painted - see my previous post with pictures). Yesterday night I started a British Marines squad (miniatures from Steve Barber) of 8 Marines, 1 Officer, 1 NCO and a Drummer that I hope to finish tonight :)
Next in line are 4 French cavalrymen: a Dragoon, a Chasseur a Cheval and 2 Hussars.
Pictures as soon as my camera will work again (i.e. as soon as I'll buy fresh batteries........)

Thursday, March 18, 2010

My new Russian squad



Here it is. I had to post these pics earlier, but it was a really busy week....
All figures are from Mirliton: it's a "slim" range but I enjoyed painting the miniatures.
Next in line is my first Italian squad, I hope to paint it during the week end.


An Officer, an NCO, 2 Cuirassiers, a Standard bearer, a Drummer, 2 Pavlov Grenadiers and 8 line infantrymen, with 2 scratch-built buildings.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Some pics from Fumetterni


Here they are....






Andrea proudly shows our roll-up

Me (left) playing SDS with Diego (right) and Andrea playing "Song of Armies and Hordes" (skirmish large battle in beta testing) with Marco.







Our space in Fumetterni, with many of our Games on display and our beloved "Callie" right in the middle of the table :))


Sorry for the bad alignment... I am no good at this.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Ganesha at Fumetterni (march 13-14, 2010)

Next week end Ganesha Games has been invited to "Fumetterni" a Comics convention taking place in our hometown: Terni.
I'll be there on saturday and sunday with SDS demos, and Andrea will bring some other game probably Flying Lead and the "classic of the classics": Song of Blades and Heroes.

Now that my new Russian squad is painted, I was wondering if I'll be able to paint (tonight???) my British Marines squad. Or maybe my Italian infantry? ...... BTW, I must take some pictures of the last models I painted and publish them here.
I promised to do it........ :)

Stay in touch!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Tournament Rules Main Facts

Now that the Rules are "solid", I want to give you some general information, before the english translation becomes available. 99,9% of the basic rules are in effect but something had to be modified to reflect the competitive nature of a Tourney.
1) The Morale test for losses is after you loose more than 1/3 of your figures (instead than more than half) this comes from the need to reduce the playing time and squeeze a game in 1 hour. There is a table for those lazy people who don't want to make calculations :)
2) There are 2 Groups of Nations (the French Group and the Allied Group)made following historical alliances. Each player has to bring 2 squads to the Tournament: 1 Main and 1 Secondary. They must be taken from different Groups, so that you have 1 Main squad and 1 which is an enemy of the first. This guarantees that no a-historical engagements take place. While asking a bit more to players, I felt that this solution was better than the "anyone vs. anyone" of other competitive sets.
3) I wrote several pages of clarifications, with diagrams, to explain some of the rules that come out quite often in the Forums (LOS, Group Orders, Fleeing moves and the like). Very little new rules have been added.
4) The official base size is 2cm diameter (if round) and 2 cm side (if square) for infantry and 2 cm frontage and "enough to arrange the base" depth for cavalry (therefore a rectangle). Tolerance is restricted to 0,5 cm from the soldier's foot. In any case tournament Organizers have the ultimate word on this matter.
5) Standard scale is 25/28 mm, but you can organize a tournament for 20 or 15mm, changing table size and measurement sticks.
6) In order to be valid for the records I'll keep (and for the Italian Championship) a Tourney must be on 4 rounds and with 8 players (minimum).
7) All the lists in SDS, MDS and Free Hack e-zine are valid tournament lists. Plus, we'll publish new lists as separate free add on. Next in the pipeline are French Marines of the Guard and British Marines.

Any comment is welcomed, as is any question.......

My new Russian Squad

Not yet finished painting, but my rebjata wanted to fight yesterday :)

1 Officer, 1 NCO, 1 Standard Bearer, 1 Drummer, 5 Line Infantrymen, 1 Conscript infantry, 1 Pavlov (Elite Grenadier 58 points) Total: 400 points

I played against a "classic" Bavarian Schuetzen Squad of 8 figures, (see pic) all armed with Rifles. The beginning of the game was terrible for my boys: being fired upon (aimed shots) from 2Long range, I lost 2 soldiers after the first enemy fire (and 1 went down) and 2 other after a while. I was desperately trying to close but the Schuetzen did their job very well (go out of the wood > fire > back into the wood) and I had to test Morale for losses few turns afterwards. With a little luck none of my guys left (they rallied toward the flag) and I saw an opportunity: the Bavarian Officer was in the open, covered just by the heroic Drummer. I then risked a little using 3 activation dice for one of my infantrymen (3+ being in command), got 3 actions and fired an aimed shot to the Hornist. The unlucky musician was wounded, and the Officer was now exposed. It was time for my Pavlov Grenadier to close for hand to hand combat, which he did successfully, killing the Officer. Double Morale test for the bavarian player (Leader loss AND half squad) and the game was over...

Busy week end

I've spent the week-end with my group of friend playtesting the Tournament Rules and painting my new Russian Squad (Mirliton) and 4 french Carabiniers (Perry plastic).
Friday night we made a small 2 rounds tournament (6 people) and the rules seem to be OK. I had to watch carefully if the 1 hour round was too short to come to a definite result, and it did even if a couple of gamers were not familiar with the rules.
When an unclear situation occur, I take note and update the "Clarifications" page of the Tournament Rules so that we should cover most situations during competitive play.
I wrote the rules in Italian, as the first Tourneys will take place here, but as soon as we'll have them tested in a real life environment, I'll translate them in english and they will be availbale as a free download somewhere. More about this soon, and also some pics of my new (painted) figures!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

+7000 !!!

According to my today's calculation, with the arrival of the last lot of painted 15mm figures, my Napoleonic collection is now slightly over 7000 figures.

Next target is at 8000!

Origins 2010 Columbus (OH) june 23-27

I'm planning with Andrea the trip to Origins 2010. Our program there will be very tight (we'll run games of SDS/MDS, SBH, Flying Lead and other Ganesha games) from 9 AM to 5 PM every day excluding sunday (the day we'll leave).
We still don't know if More Drums and Shakos will be nominated for the category "Best historical miniature game supplement", but we decided to go anyway.
So if any of you plans to visit Origins this year, be sure to pass by and say hello (or play a game with us :). There will be also 2 important previews on friday and saturday: Andrea will demo his Fantasy Large Battle System (Song of Armies and Hordes) and I will do the same for my Large Skirmish ACW game, whose name is "Sixty-one Sixty-five". The die is cast. I hope to see all american friends at Origins (and even non-American, but I know it's not so simple.....)

Declaring actions

I noticed - while demoing SDS - that many player "declare" what they want to do before rolling dice for activation ("this soldier tries to reload his musket!").
Note that this is NOT required by the rules and should be avoided. Just declare which model you are going to activate, roll 1, 2 or 3 dice and then decide what you want to do. The same applies to Group Actions: each model in the group gets the number of actions you generated and then each model can perform that number of actions. What each model does is up to you :)