The Re-Mystified On Tour :: Walkden 2013

Last Sunday saw my second visit to this year's Northern League competition. This time I took an Italian Wars French army from about 1523 which was very different from the highly mobile TYW Danish army I used in the spring.

I've been playing Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) for a full year now and felt I was ready to try a heavy foot army although I anticipated the games would be slow. I was proved right: neither of the games finished within the allotted time.

For this competition report, and all future tour reports, I've decided to switch styles and focus on recording just the key details and will try and avoid writing a narrative in the comments section. Interesting, blow by blow accounts are very hard to write. I'll leave that sort of thing to Tim Porter (aka The Madaxeman).

Field Of Glory Renaissance - Artillery

In January I wrote an article wondering why wargames rules are so complex. In it I used a table from the Field of Glory Renaissance (FOG R) rules as an example. Well this month I've stumbled across another inconsistency in FOG R that has me stumped.

It all started with a thread on the Slitherine forum (no longer online) about the impassibility of captured artillery to mounted troops. Feel free to read the thread but here's the situation in a nutshell. In FOG R:

• Unlimbered, and unsupported, battle groups of artillery are immediately lost on contact with the enemy.
• The lost battle group is not removed because it can be re-crewed and turned against its previous owner.
• Lost artillery can only be captured by pike and shot units either immediately, if they have assaulted the guns, or later in the game.
• Mounted troops assaulting artillery face an insurmountable [sic] obstacle because they cannot interpenetrate artillery, captured or otherwise.

FOG R Mini-Tournament

Yesterday saw a small scale, informal four player mini-tournament at MAWS in Walkden. We played two games each using the Renaissance variant of Field of Glory (FOG R). Everyone had a great afternoon and said they'd like it do it again.

I'm pleased to say the organiser (me) came last with two loosing draws whilst Robert (Mac) McCelland came first with his horde of armoured Japanese warriors. They did really well on their first ever competitive outing:

Latest Addition To The Painting Desk

Ever since I started using talc to matt my acrylic paints I've run into a problem when using my paint palette. I place a small bottle of talc in the centre so I can dip my brush to matt paint as I go along. This means I often catch the bottle as I reach across it to the other side of the palette. I thought "wouldn't it be nice to get a rotating palette"; with one of these I could just spin the palette.

Finding a commercial rotating palette proved impossible. I found lots of rotating Lazy Susans for cake decoration or plant stands but they were all either too big, too expensive or both. Yesterday I solved my problem: