Back from the weekend

Just checking in before jumping on to the next project. I've been away and my laptop did not get fixed so I'll send it in for a repair. No Facebook and other stuff for four days. 

I have brought a bunch of figures with me and played a 4-player game of Flashing Steel. Based on this experience, FS is probably the best variant of the Song of... series by Ganesha Games. It has a neat point-buy system, something I usually oppose, but it lets you build a very customised force compared to SDS or SBH. 

The four participants in the game were: Turkish janissaries, Hungarian haidus, Polish cavalry and Swedish mercenaries. Each had five to six figures roughly worth 300 points. It started as a free-for-all, but then turned out to be a very exciting one: once the players (none of them played before) got the basics, there was a lot of combat, alliances were made and then broken multiple times, so lots of fighting and betrayal.

The Turks had a chest of gold and a Hungarian maiden the Haidus should have taken. I have created an arbitrary victory score system considering losses and acquired goals at the end of the game.

The Swedes won the first place, capturing the gold and losing only one man, an unfortunate reiter.

The Poles and Turks had shared the second place, the Turks losing only one warrior but also the girl and the loot and the Poles capturing the girl, losing three men but creating enough mischief among the contestants to get off the table with two winged hussars and a turkey (the bird, not the country). Both failed their objectives but held up well, and the winged hussar lieutenant won a Hungarian bride.

On the third place, the Haidus lost three men and failed to take the girl back, however, their Cossack pathfinder managed to tame a goat then a bear, and the rest killed a lot of Poles from a perilous position, so there's that.

My new project is an Austrian and French army for the battle of Raab, I missed the anniversary by a month but my interest in Napoleonics is revived; there is a lot of French and Austrian generals then an Imperial Guard unit for Lasalle on the painting tray. The Blücher armies will be based on 45x35mm plasticard bases and the unit bodies will be made of match sticks. With hard work and research I've converted the OOBs to be used with Blücher so that one brigade roughly equals one unit; there are fourteen units for both sides.