Joy of Six 2026

After last year's Joy of six I wasn't convinced that I would stir my stumps and attend again.  This was partly due to the heat and partly due to the low interest shown by event participants in interacting with the attendees.  However, this year's show rolled around and I thought I would give it another chance.  The heat had reduced from the earlier 30 degrees plus to something more British and there were grey clouds on the horizon, perfect.  Of course this being me I set off in a short sleeved shirt, shorts and sandals, without a jacket!  Fortunately the rain held off.

As normal I parked at Nunnery Square park and ride and hopped onto a tram to complete the trip into the city centre.  I went one stop further than in previous years and alighted at Castle Square (a huge 100 metres or so further!) but, and this is a huge but, the walk to the venue is much easier from that stop as it is a straight and level walk along Arundel Gate to Sheffield Hallam University.

This year the entry cost was £6 which I think is a whole pound up from last year.  That still represents good value though.  A couple of traders and games had cancelled and to my mind it was slightly less busy than last year.  Both of which I suspect was due to the heat of the previous few days.  Even so there was still a lot of 6mm goodness to see.  Better yet the game teams and the vendors were more than happy to chat.  Must have been the heat last year then.

I always start the same way at this show, which is to take a stroll around and see what the games look like.  There was the usual range from Mech's firing missiles and lasers at each other in far future cityscapes through to Greeks having a bit of a barney at point of spear, and pretty much everything in-between.  The standard of games was up to it's usual standard with some really nice terrain on display.

Having had a quick look around I turned my attention to the traders and actually bought some stuff, unlike last year. Heroics & Ross provided me with some World War Two tanks and AT guns which I will need for the Fistful of T34s campaign.  True to form I bought some totally useless Soviet light tanks (well marginally better than the German stuff I already have, a couple of KV-1s who will masquerade as KV-1s flamethrower tanks, a couple of Pak75 AT guns and some artillery crew figures.

More pitiful tanks although the KVs are a bit moreof a beast

I then wandered over to Brigade Models to pick up a Gettysburg Seminary and Cemetery Hill gateway.  These will come into play later if I can arrange an Altar of Freedom game covering (yes you guessed it) the three days of Gettysburg.

If you have seen the movie Gettysburg you should recognise these buildings

Lastly on the buying front, after a look at Commission Figurines display table, I bought some of their 6mm MDF Napoleonic figures.  At £2 for 96 infantry its a gateway drug for the period!  I spent a whole £10 and came away with 192 British Inf in stovepipe shakos. 192 French Infantry in Shakos and a pack of 36 French Cuirassiers/Dragoons. I have already painted a sample to see how my usual technique for 6mm has to be amended for MDF figures (spoiler - it changes a fair bit.  but more on that in a later post).

Commission Figurines Display, Napoleonic's closest to the camera

The MDF figures have a fair bit of detail laser engraved on them, more than I expected to be honest.  Oh and as a warning if you buy any don't throw away the little MDF 'pips' that are in the bags of infantry, those are the drums for the command strips.  Don't ask!  Fortunately there are plenty of spares in each pack.

Sorry about the gratuitous thumb shot, but look at the engraved detail.

It was back to the games next and I took a seat in the Cold War gone hot participation game put on by "Gaming at Si's House".  This used the Battlegroup Northag rules and was fairly enjoyable, despite my complete inability to make a comms check to call in artillery on the Soviet hordes!  This was almost certainly the most popular participation game at the show. 

My view of the table, it got busy soon after this with Soviets galore entering at the far end

Other games were there aplenty.  Visually my favourites were The Strength and Honour demonstration game of Civitate 1053.  Terrain was good and the extension to cover the Feudal period worked well. period.  The players were happy to spend time explaining how everything worked and I gained a couple of clever ideas on how they set up the terrain.

Civitate - it's terrain like this that make games in smaller scale 

More Civitate action can you see the grid markers, I couldn't

A lot of games had terrain that I would be proud to replicate.  Here is another good looking table from the Loft of War who put on Langoot 1748.  As with Civitate the ground colours aren't overly intrusive and aren't a single monotone green.  Plus the game looked like it was being enjoyed, which is the whole point I suppose.

Games Ranged from Classical Greece through to a couple of Science Fiction games.  The latter were popular with the younger attendees.  In fact I saw a number of children at the show, and they didn't look like they were unhappy to be there either.

This was a different take on things, one concept over three periods

Above is a set up which took me a minute to understand.  It is urban warfare in three different periods including a future mech warfare set up at the far end.

I was very happy to see a participation game of Alter of Freedom underway.  I like those rules as they put players into a different gaming space by focussing upon the Army commander level where they have to worry about the tempo and timings of the army and also have subordinates who may not be exactly as good as they might like.  The scenario was Gaines Mill 1862 part of the Peninsula Campaign.  Compared to the last AoF game I played this is a smaller board with more troops, so it is crowded.  When I was watching Dave was explaining the priority point bidding system to a player who was coming up against the restrictions his subordinates were imposing on him by the abilities (or lack of them).

Gaines Mill 1862 using Altar of Freedom run by Dave Benton

Overall there was a lot to see and do and plenty of things to spend money on.  I always feel it's nice to see things in the flesh before spending and the option to do that for 6mm stuff is fairly limited.  Players and vendors were relaxed and happy to chat which was a marked improvement on last year.  My doubts have been quashed and I hope to be able to attend again next year.

Last but not least.  As a taster here is a picture of the first Napoleonic's I have painted since my Airfix days.  The pom-poms finishing but I need me to decide how I'm organising them as units before I paint them in the right colours.  Undercoating is a must as MDF soaks up paint and dulls the colour and I can't decide on whether to prime them in black (as below) or in white.

Poor image these little devils are hard to focus on.  My first attempt at Nap's in fifty years!

 

Finding gaming buddies

As I have previously mentioned I'm not really getting as many games in as I would like.  While there are a couple of wargames clubs over the water in Hull they all seem to meet on the days when I am already doing things.  Typical eh!  So I took the bull by the horns and posted on the local Facebook page for anyone interested in historical gaming.  I got one response and wouldn't you just know they live in the same East Yorkshire town Mrs E and I left to come to our present home.  If we were still at the old house I could have walked to their house in 5 minutes!  Even better our areas of interest overlap as he has some Dark Ages period armies.

Still we are both prepared to travel and it is only around 30 minutes drive.  As we are both retired we aren't limited to a fixed time or day.  So I'm going to sort a game out here and he is going to sort one out in turn.  If it works and my contact Paul Dawson over in York is available we could have a small historical gaming group up and running before too long.  I think I will dust off my copy of Altar of Freedom to start with and play the first Manassas/Bull Run game again as I already have the terrain built for that.

By the way I haven't named the new contact for the time being as I don't know his position on social media.

Where did the last few weeks go?

 .....or what's my excuse for not blogging?

To be honest it's because I have been busy on those dratted 'Real Life' things and haven't had a lot of interest to post about.  From a wargaming perspective my early World War Two painting is almost done but my interest in Fistful of T34s sent me down a new rabbit hole looking at what are the best paint colours to use for the various German Camo schemes.  I swear they changed them more frequently than my socks!  I then tried a couple of choices out until I was sort of happy with the look.  More to come on this when I assemble some of the missing kit for late '42 Eastern Front use.

The Real Life (TM still pending) stuff included a long weekend away at the end of May with the Sealed Knot where we did a Seige of Colchester 1648 event.  The SK is to Civil War battles what the Reduced Shakespeare Company is to Richard the Third.  We don't really have the numbers to portray the scale of a major battle, but we try and I enjoy it.  This time out I was doing commentary and after only 30 some years doing guest appearances on the mic, I have been formally added to the commentary team.

The weather having been unseasonably warm after a period of fairly steady rain meant that garden had gone into overdrive.  which in turn means I have been, gulp, gardening.  I know, I did that last year, but that darn green stuff will keep growing.  I have to at least look like I'm trying to keep on top of things.

Last but very much not least, we had family staying with us while they had some heating and water refurb work done on their house over in the next village.  It felt a bit rude to disappear into the man cave while had guests (or so Mrs E told me) so I didn't.  And that M'Lud and members of Jury is my excuse for not blogging.

"Hang on Travellers"

 A line from the great science fiction TV series Firefly.  It's often taken as a clue that Josh Whedon the creator of the series had based the show on the SF RPG Traveller, although he has never directly confirmed this.  A quick dig around on the internet came up with this link Is Joss Whedon's Firefly based on the Traveller RPG he played? - Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange .  The comments strongly suggest it was.  Certainly the mix of weapons and technologies in the show mirrors that available in the game and the stories are the sort of thing that came up in games I played.  Even down to the prior military careers of some of the crew.  You see, in Traveller you rolled up a character who had already had a career, and gained useful skills, before becoming a freelancer, and sometimes they died during character creation,  yes Traveller had some interesting quirks folks (for a given value of interesting).  

I still have my original box set of rules on the shelf behind me as I sit typing this post but haven't played in years as I don't have a group of locals who are interested.  More to the point though for this post are the figures I still have.  These are mostly early Citadel from a range which was, I think, called Spacefarers with a couple of Minifigs and a Ral Partha casting added for variety.  The Citadel sculpts are true 25mm and for their age simply stunning castings, from the talented Perry twins.  The range was launched in 1979 and a full listing appeared in a catalogue in 1980 (it's amazing how erudite you can appear with the help of Google search)!

As nefarious a bunch as any role player could wish for

From left to right Marvin the Paranoid Android manufacturer unknown although as of a couple of years ago the range was still available on line, then two Minifigs followed by seven of the Citadel offerings and finally a lone Ral Partha figure.

I should perhaps have called this post "In the lead pile no one can hear you scream!" as I also found these un and part painted castings lurking in it's depths.

These guys would like the chance to be nefarious if only someone would paint them

A quick trawl through ebay shows prices ranging from £10 or more for an individual figure to £7 for a full set.  I suppose I should at least prime the unpainted chaps to prevent any risk of lead rot, although they have survived in an old OXO cubes presentation tin for 35 years or more so they may be safe.

A foray into Napoleonic's

I have told you before that Napoleonic's are not really my thing.  So of course my most recent gaming outing was a remote Napoleonic game run by Jonathan Freitag.  This was the Battle of Montebello in 1800 part of the campaign that led to Marengo.  It's not that I don't find the period interesting it's more that I don't understand the tactical niceties and can't handle painting the detail of the uniforms to the standard I'd want to achieve.  And yet, I have really enjoyed those games I have played, and so it was this time.  I suppose what I need is to find a set of rules that hit the spot for scale, tactical feel, rules complexity and required figure count.  It's not like I don't have the figures as I inherited some 15mm Minifigs a few years ago (details are here Small but Perfectly Formed: 15mm Napoleonic photos) so all I really need are a set of rules I like.  Shako 2 seemed a decent set but they look to be out of print, the set Jonathan used might be worth a look though.

So on to an after action report?  Sorry that's a bit tricky as I was having fun and neglected to get any screen grabs so you will have to wait for Mr F's write up or for one of my fellow generals to tell all.  The high spots were (in particular order):

• The Austrians overturned the historical result and won quite convincingly
• We poor French players had the most diabolical dice rolling luck
• and, our re-enforcements were delayed until the last possible moment by which time the Austrians were in full control of the objective!

That Bonaparte chappie was not happy with us!  Still it's another game under my belt.

Not quite a tank.....

 .....but certainly a British infantryman's friend.  Yes it's time for a British diminutive tracked vehicle, the Bren Carrier family.  There were two versions of the carrier in the early war years. the Scout Carrier and the Bren Gun Carrier but these merged into the Universal Carrier from 1940  I have struggled to find anything other than the Universal Carrier as a small scale model so it will have to proxy for sit's earlier brethren.  These were the workhorse of the British and Commonwealth forces, acting as mechanised pack mule, rapid MG team deployment system and much much more.  Don't want to carry your pack, sling into a carrier, need more ammo send it forward in a carrier, need AT rifle or MG or mortar support, here it comes in a carrier.

I now have five of these little gems - the Universal Carrier

These little beasts were based upon a pre war tankette chassis and were in production from the late 1930's until as late as 1960.  It's hard to build a World War Two British force without at least a couple of these useful little beasts.  They were not perfect of course, being open topped and lightly armoured but the idea was that troops didn't fight from the carrier but instead dismounted.  Of course that didn't prevent them from being used without dismounting but it wasn't their planned use.

These are GHQ models in 1/285 scale so the casting is oversized in comparison to the German light tanks I have been working on lately, which are 1/300, but  the real things weren't actually that much different in size to a Panzer I.  The Carrier is the same width as the Panzer I at 2.06 metres (6' 9") but is shorter at 3.66 m (12' 0") as against 4.02 m (13' 2") for the Panzer.  Height wise the Panzer is always going to be taller as it has a turret, standing at 1.72 m (5' 8") v 1.52 m (5' 2").

The only drawback I found when painting them is getting in to paint the crew figures other than that they are lovely castings.  Dare I say small but perfectly formed?

More Pathetic Panzers

 My obsession with pitiful Panzers continues.  This time it's the wholly inadequate Panzer I Auf B.  It has everything you want in an early war tank, or rather it doesn't.  Armour you can poke a stick through, weapons only really good against soft skinned targets and a crew of two one to drive the beast and one to do everything else.  On the plus side they had a reputation for reliability and as long as you kept them away from proper grown up tanks they were a useful recce asset and could work as a mobile pill box.

The mighty Panzer 1 Auf B

Still they are quite cute in a strange sort of way and would probably have put the fear of God into the Home Guard if Operation Sealion had actually happened.

The entire Pz1 force, I mean how many do you really need?

Castings are from Heroics & Ros in 1/300th scale so closer to 5mm than 6mm but at 75p per vehicle the price is smaller than average too.