CANCON 2012

 ABOVE: My first game at CANCON 2012. My Brits V French Marines.

BELOW: Prussian Landwehr V French Line.

 Hi All
Well I attended CANCON this year and I must say it was a hoot.
The three day event normally sees me playing all three days, (in the past DBM).
This year I just wanted to relax a bit more, so settled one day (Day 1) of shopping and 'looking around' and then playing 'SONGS OF DRUMS AND SHAKOS' (SDS) on the Saturday and DBA V2.2 on the Sunday.
SDS was a lot of fun. I'd only played a couple of games before, so the whole experiance was a bit of a learning experiance.

ABOVE and BELOW: My Brits give those French scoundrels a bit of a touch up.

All in all I found SDS to be quite a bit of fun. I'm not sure if SDS is as good a game as SHARP PRACTICE, (SP) but they can be played at a tournament, where as SP can't.

BELOW: Egged on by Colour Sergeant Thompson, my Riflemen dispatch some Frenchmen

On the Sunday I played in the DBA comp. I was hopeful of doing well, as in the last two comps I played in I scored a 3rd and 1st place.
Trotting out my trusty Tojans I managed to finished 9th out of 30. On handicap I apparently came 3rd, so not a bad result.

I lost in Round 1 to Early Hebrew, (thanks a lot to dismal dice rolls in combat)
Rd 2 saw me victorious over a medieval Cypriot army. Rd 3 and we defeated Alexander's Macedonians. Rd 4 and we defeated Sung Chinese. Rd 5 and Free Company got the better of us, but a Rd 6 victory over Goths restored honour.

BELOW: The DBA comp in full swing.

BELOW: The shortest DBA gamer I've ever seen. It was great to see so many youngsters playing a 'Historical' game.

BELOW: Travel buddy Stan does battle in only his 2nd ever DBA comp with Sub-Roman Brits. He finished 10th. Not a bad effort!

As usual for CANCON the trade stalls appeared to be busy.

BELOW: Dragon Painting Service (DPS) with Carlo at the helm appeared to have sold a swag of beautifully painted miniatures. I purchased the best part of a new 7 Years war Prussian Army ( all Front Rank miniatures). I suspect Carlo could sell Pork Sausages to Arabs.

BELOW: Between DBA games, a view across one of the game halls.

BELOW: A CANCON regular! Nic and EUREKA MINIATURES. As usual Nic was a pleasure to chat to and always had something new on offer. For me it was 28mm Saxon Guard du Korps Cavalry 1812! (I'll post a review of these magnificent miniatures soon).

And now for some photos of my DBA games!

Below: My Trojans envelope Alexander and his Macedonians.

BELOW:  The 3 photos below are of my game agains the dreaded Goths. This game gave me one of my best results, with the loss of only one element of Spears I got the better of the hairy Germans. My opponent had horrible pips.

BELOW: The following photos from my battle with the SUNG CHINESE commanded by the talented David Lawrence..

The Sung Artillery was of great concern, but by sending my 'Lukka' Blades, 'Hittite' Auxilia and an element of 'Trojan Archer' Psilo through the woods (green felt), I managed to destroy the Chinese bow on David's left flank, sweep through and capture his camp and attack his artillery in the flank.

BELOW: End game for the SUNG.

The results of the DBA COMP were as follows, (and Directly from the Organiser Greg Kelleher) :

"Well DBA at Cancon has come and gone for another year. This year there were 30 players with 6 being juniors. The major prizes went to:
1st place Marcus Treganza
2nd place Stephen Hopkins
3rd place Chris Burg
Junior Champion: Bas Braham
Executioner award Chris Hersey

As can be seen from the list of armies below there was a great spread across the four books. Certainly the Early Hebrews proved to be the surprise army of the tournament.
As always I would like to thank our very generous sponsors Essex Miniatures Australia for providing trophies and prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, Baudea for providing the junior champion prize and Hall of Ancient Warriors for providing the prize for the executioner award.
And thanks to you all. Without your participation there would be no tournament.

Player Army Score Count Back


Marcus Treganza IV/03 Anglo Norman 44 202


Stephen Hopkins IV/66 Later Polish 44 186


Chris Burg I/27 Early Hebrew 43 218


Peter Bismire II/03 Classical Indian 41 201


Jason Dickie IV/13a Medieval German 38 192


Brad Del Munns IV/74 Free Company 37 221


Darryl Hills III/04b Early Byzantine 36 194


Bas Braham (J) IV/83b Wars of the Roses 36 194


Scott Driscoll I/26b Trojan 36 189


Stanley Crabbe II/81c Sub Roman British 34 170


David Lawrence III/61 Sung Chinese 32 176


Sam Braham (J) II/07 Achaemenid Persian 32 164


Gavin Bowman IV/75 Timurid 31 215


Jon Willacy III/39 Later Tang 31 173


Chris Hersey IV/83b Wars of the Roses 30 199


Bruce Bell II/36a Graeco Bactrian 30 170


Jerry Hearn IV/83b Wars of the Roses 30 156


Alex Filewood III/05a Middle Frankish 29 207


Ken Filewood II/39b Ancient Spanish 29 158


Peter Braham II/43 Maccabean Jewish 28 199


Greg Kelleher III/14c Early Bulgar 28 179


Brenton Searle IV/26 Lusignan Cypriot 25 200


Patrick Hersey (J) III/66 Hsi Hsia 25 155


Michael Chellew I/52c Early Hoplite Greek 24 168


Alexander Bell II/12 Macedonian 23 181


Steve Jones IV/09 Eastern American 23 165


Ryan Blake (J) II/47a Early German 21 150


Ronan Hersey (J) II/15 Alexandrian Imperial 18 169


Sebastian Carraro IV/01a Komnenan Byzantine 16 160


Lysander Carraro J II/49 Marian Roman 16 149

Cheers,


Greg"

In summary, CANCON was excellent.

As usual the DBA was great fun, and I'm very interested in seeing Version 3 of these brilliant rules released.
You can find more photos and comments on CANCON 2012 here: LINK! (the very nice Storm and Conquest BLOG)

That's all for now.

Cheers! 

On The Work Bench: Too Much!

Hi Guys

Above: This is what a work bench looks like when you have too much on the go at the one time.

And this is only about a 3rd,..

What you can see here is VICTRIX French 1804-7, French 1812-15, PERRY Dutch Belgians for the 100 days (1815), VICTRIX and PERRY PLASTIC British for 1808-12, REDOUBT ENTERPRISE Trojan War Personalities and some FRONT RANK Personalities for my Inagi-Nation and my friend.

But I am making headway. Just starting to base my Romans and Successors. See below:

The Romans and successors are mainly Foundry Figures, with some OLD GLORY Phalangites added to the Successor's ranks. 

 Finally, I'm continuing with my friend Arnaud's Duke of Marlborough. The horse needs to be transformed into a Grey, and the whole set will be dipped. He's a nice FRONT RANK miniature.

Successor Elites: Alexander's Foot Companions.

 Hi Guys

A break for a moment from Napoleonics.

I thought I'd share a few photos of my recently completed Hypasapists. I've got six 60mm x 20mm bases. 28mm Miniatures. Mostly FOUNDRY, (insanely expensive but very nice) with some OLD GLORY command Figures for a bit more variety. 

 I based them for DBA but will also use them for IMPETUS.

The Shields are all hand pained.

 My favorite figure is the Officer on the right (above). He's an OLD GLORY miniature, and seems to be 'breaking ranks' to urge the lads forward (as seen below):

"Follow me Men"!

I should add that the miniatures (including shields) were painted by FERNANDO ENTERPRISE to their 'SHOWCASE' standard. I wish I could paint that good.

UPDATE:
I thought I'd addsome photos of my recently completed Companions. Four bases of these Elite Cavalry will help secure Victory for the Foot Companions, (I hope). The miniatures are OLD GLORY. I added lances from my left over WARGAMES FACTORY 'Amazons'.

Back to work on my Dutch Belgians for 1815,...

Dutch, Belgians, French and a Duke!

Hi All

My first posting for 2012! I was hopeful I'd have this post up before the new year but alas 'twas not to be.

Anyhooo,.. What am I working on at the moment you might ask. Well I'm working on a beautiful FRONT RANK miniature of the Duke of Marlborough as a late Christmas gift for a friend of mine, (see above). This is the first FRONT RANK miniature I've attempted to paint, and I must say FRONT RANK miniatures are very nice.

I'm also painting some cracking good PERRY MINIATURES Dutch Militia. Long story here. I purchased some Belgian Line Infanrty online and the guy sent me half a unit of Belgian Line and half Dutch Militia. Anyway after an email or two the mistake was acknowledged and the other half of the Belgian unit was sent. What to do with half a unit of Dutch militia? I placed an order to the PERRY's for the other half of the unit and started painting. One of the 12 painted figs I was sent is on the left. My attempt (thus far) at replicating the paint style can be seen below.  

 I recently received back from FERNANDO ENTERPRISE a swag of EUREKA MINIATURES 28mm French Revolutionary War French Infantry painted to a 'Collector' standard. The are quite nice, but I wanted them to look a little more 'campaign' worn so I've started 'Dipping' them in ARMY PAINTER STRONG TONE dip. about 140 done thus far, with about another 80 to go.
Results thus far can be seen below:

 I have a unit of 24 figs in the old 'White' uniform. I've included a picture of one of them below in amoungst the Blue Coats for comparison.

 Also, below are two pictures of FERNANDO ENTERPRISE work prior to dipping. As you can see quite nice and at about $1.65 AUD for the painting good value for money IMHO.
They sport a very nice MAVERIK MODELS material flag.

I'll eventually issue all my French Revolutionary Demi-Brigades with these very nice 'Material' flags. They produce a very nice 'wavey' effect once attached to the staffs and are very reasonably priced. Highly recomended!

More updates soon. Cheers!