Early December Update

As we roll into early December, I wanted to post a quick update and talk about the return of DANG.

First up, my recent project. After one of our late summer games David Sullivan (of the I Live with Cats blog) brought up the idea of a group project for the Texas Revolution of 1835-36 or the Mexican - American War of 1846-47. He was really wanting to do the Texas Revolution, but the group headed off in the direction of the Mexican - American War and I jumped in too. I expected this to be a slow progress, Winter project. But in a flurry of action, everyone else started making orders to 1st Corps for figures. I had decided to go in a slightly different direction by getting figures from Old Glory (although I did order some American Volunteers from 1st Corps, because Old Glory doesn’t really make them). I decided to get figures for both the Americans and Mexicans, so that I could play games in the future without having to worry about an opponent showing up with an army. We are going to use the Rebels & Patriots rules for the games, so the number of figures needed to field an army isn’t too huge.

A U.S. Sgt leads some troops

Compared to the others in the group, I am a slow painter (you can see many painted figures for the project on David’s blog and Kevin’s American and Mexican blog posts). Being more used to painting ships and planes, I often find people figures more challenging to paint. After man discussions about uniform colors, the purchase of a book with lots of pretty pictures, and such I finally got to work on my Americans (the Mexicans will come later). Here are a few photos of my first couple of infantry units. I’ll be posting more photos as I finish more troops.

A group photo

And from a more overhead angle

Overall, the Old Glory figures work well for the period. The 1st Corps figures are nicer and have more variety of poses. The Old Glory figures are either marching or advancing but have there are different heads, so they don’t all look the same. I do like the sergeants that are included in the Command pack. I think they have good poses and add some character to the units.

Marching poses

Sergeant figures

Flag/Command figures

The figures are turning out okay. I expect the later ones will turn out better as I get the painting down a little more.

The Return of DANG!

For those of you that aren’t familiar with DANG (Dave’s Annual Naval Game), the paragraph at the end of this post has links to older games.

With all the restrictions and uncertainty of COVID I had cancelled last year’s DANG. But with things looked somewhat better this year, I decided to bring it back. However, instead of the large, full-day mini-campaign, this year I will have two smaller (single scenario) games. That allows me to keep the gathering smaller (per recommendations from local Health Departments) and the games a little more manageable.

I did give the players a choice of scenarios (as I normally do with the mini-campaign) and the winning ones are a World War 2 coastal force action in the Black Sea and a hypothetical pre-dreadnought Franco – American battle off Haiti. The games are planned for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I’ll post some updates and the game recaps later.

DANG started in 2002. Since I’m doing two games this year, I’m going to say I am getting to DANG XIX (nineteen) and DANG XX (twenty). Here are links to recaps of DANG from before 2010, the 2010 Lepanto game, the 2011 American Civil War river game, the 2012 War of 1812 Lake Ontario game, the 2013 Operation Landcrab game, the 2014 Cogs of War game, 2015 The Shores of Tripoli game, 2016 The Big Stick game, 2017 Seastrike game, 2018 Siege of Charleston game, and 2019 WWI The King's Ships were at Sea game. It is a little surprising that I’ve been able to keep things going for 20 years.