On the workbench (March)

Following my last post on "Eking out the supplies" here's an update along with some other productions from March.

First up is a second PVC board off-cut recycled as a paved village base with a 20mm Russian para for scale.

An even smaller piece of the board has provided this little vignette of a cockerel on a dung heap next to a brick wall. The wall is from foam-core with the paper layers removed. The bird was, I suspect, from the old Airfix Wagon Train set; I acquired a number of elements from that set as part of a mixed second-hand lot many years ago.

This latter piece can be used on its own or alongside the previous one.

And here they are serving their intended purpose with one of my old Middle Eastern buildings...

And finally for now, here are some Andreivian road signs identifying the villages (and the routes to the airport) in the game coming up in a couple of weeks' time.

Bases from left-over MDF pieces, signs from cardboard and bits of paperclip! They should help the players remember which houses on the table correspond to which village on their scenario maps.

Eking out the supplies

When I was gainfully employed I had access to an on-site print shop that produced a large amount of public information material printed onto expanded PVC board. I managed to blag several quite large "off-cuts" that were otherwise unwanted and they make great bases for wargaming models. Much easier to work with than MDF.

Now that I'm retired I'm having to eke out the remaining supply. I've even gone as far as recycling the base of one model I decided not to retain.

This first piece is just such. I'd built a 20mm scale French maison on a hill for my Menton 1940 games but I was never entirely happy with it and it look up an enormous amount of storage space so it's been demolished and all but the base went into the bin.

This offcut from the original base will form a generic village base onto which I can place some Middle Eastern buildings, again in 20mm scale.

The edge was already chamfered and I've engraved irregular paving slabs with an old ball-point pen. Some traces of old hot glue and areas of crazy- rather than rectangular paving will add a lived-in look to the thing.

And here's one I made earlier to show what I'm aiming for as the final result.

A small, unbased house should look better on this rather that being plonked straight onto the terrain cloth. While I could have permanently based my Middle Eastern houses, based houses take up more of my valuable storage space. These pieces can just be thrown into an old shoe box with the houses.

Construction (such as it was) used the usual terrain gloop (Quick Drying Polyfilla stained with brown acrylic paint) on the irregular edge with the straight edges kept plain so they can butt up against straight road pieces. 

Speaking of straight road pieces, a couple of long, straight sections of 5mm MDF that came in the packaging of some Ikea furniture seemed too good to throw away so I painted them grey as tarmacked road sections. To link them to my existing glooped-hardboard roads, I created this jointing piece from more of the left-over PVC board.

Crisis Point 2025 - places still available

This year's Crisis Point gaming weekend takes place 12th and 13th April this year at The Old Band Room (aka Dungworth Village Hall), Dungworth, near Sheffield.  This year we have three games all taking place in the 1990s during our fictional Andreivian Civil War.

Battle in the Northern Hills

A multi-player Arc of Fire action that sees the Russian forces moving to destroy Andreivian-Armenian artillery pieces that have been shelling the Russian-occupied Tcherbevan International Airport. Run by Richard Crawley, this game builds on arguments made during a Matrix Game more than a decade ago!

A Hilltop Village

A Force on Force game run by Mark Kniveton. Troops loyal to the Andreivian Government (or at least one faction within it) are attempting to clear an hilltop village of Andreivian-Turk militia. UN Peacekeepers may have something to say about this! <ark's 20mm models are lovely and the game is sure to be visually impressive.

Landing at Mdinar

The 6mm fans among us (Richard Phillips, Andy Taylor and Neil McCusker) will be running a Cold War Commander scenario in which the Russians attempt to reinforce the assets previously landed from the Black Sea Fleet and establish a secure land corridor to supply the airborne troops holding the International Airport. 

If you'd be interested in joining us for what I'm sure will be a splendid weekend's gaming, please contact me by commenting below or by email to crawleystorrs<at>gmail<dot>com

A Warwick! A Warwick!

Baroness Counterpane and I had a couple of days away in historic Warwick over the weekend. Lots of interesting historical stuff to look at. 

I didn't get to visit any of the three regimental museums in the town but Lord Leycester's Hospital is well worth the entry price.

The central courtyard immediately had me thinking of duelling musketeers and cardinal's guards.

In the main building there was a display of muskets, sent up from London so the Brethren (retired soldiers resident in the hospital) could defend themselves from Chartist rioters in the mid nineteenth century. 

There may be a Sharp Practice or What A Cowboy scenario in there somewhere.

Another happy find was Metropolis Vintage Toys. I'm a sucker for an old Matchbox kit and this one caught my eye.

It's not one I remember from my childhood and it turns out that's because it's a 1983 kit. It came out after I'd gone to university and long given up making aircraft kits. Scalemates indicates that this is the original 1983 boxing of the kit. 

I'll have a go at building it using the decals in the box. If they've degraded badly I'm sure I can create a fictional scheme using some from the spares box. Either way the aim is to finish it as a display model but I might have a go at including a rare earth magnet so it can appear in a game using one of my flight stands.  Could be ideal if we ever do a "Sink the German battleship" game in 1/72nd scale!

Napoleonic Prussian officer backgrounds

It's been a while since we first came up with the idea but I'm still hopeful that Richard P and I can get a chance to play some Sharp Practice set during the 1812 French invasion of Russian Livonia (modern Lithuania and Latvia). The idea is for me to play a small Prussian force in French service.

Not this small but you know what I mean

I've said previously that I find the Sharp Practice Officer's Breeding Table a bit too "British" - great for the officers Sharpe encounters in the Peninsula but not quite appropriate for a campaign where all of the characters are Germans or Russians. 

After a little digging through the biographies of Prussian officers I've come up with the following suggestions for adding personal backgrounds to our Sharp Practice Prussian officers. First up we roll 2D6 to see where our officer originates:

Then another 2D6 determines his family background:

Next we can we work out how he first joined the army:

After that we can use the usual Sharp Practice tables to give us the officer's personality traits, skills, physique, looks, and charisma. The exception I would specify is that I don't see any reason to treat all of our officers as "Foreign Johnnies". I'm therefore going to add an additional D6 roll. On a 1-3 the officer's character is rolled on Character Table A and on 4-6 on Character Table G.

I need to determine the character of Leutnant von Hitwunde, the commander of my small Prussian infantry force.

I start off by rolling 10, 6 and 9. So von Hitwunde is from Pomerania; let's say he was born in Rostock. He's the son of a diplomat or courtier so he's not going to be penniless. He joined the army as an officer candidate or Gefreiterkaporal in his current infantry regiment.

A 1D6 roll of 4 indicates that we'll be rolling on the "Foreign Johnnies" table but the following roll of 11 means he's an honourable sort.  He has no particular skills but a 5 on table D means he's a strapping fellow who'll get +1 on tasks requiring strength. 

Finally, rolls of 8 and 2 reveal that he's fair of face but thoroughly dislikable as a character. Given the reputation of the Prussian Army, I'm going to interpret this as meaning he's a rigidly-by-the-book disciplinarian.  It looks like there's a good chance his men will leave him to his fate if he gets knocked out on the battlefield!

I'd appreciate any feedback you'd care to give on these tables. Please drop a comment if you think I've got anything wrong.