SOBH Warbands - The Dwarves

I needed some pics of SOBH warbands to illustrate and article I've written for Rule One Magazine so I had a quick photo session on the garden steps.  Having done so I thought I'd share some pics of the Dwarves.

Three on the left by Alan Slater, two on the right by yours truly.  I rebased
them all to give the feel of a coherent warband.

Mostali Musketeer 1

Mostali Musketeer 2

WIP: Oat Bundles

This weekend's Arc of Fire game requires eight "oat bundles" in a field on one side of the battlefield.  I've taken this to mean bundled together sheaves of harvested crops.  In the absence of anyone making such in 20mm scale I decided to make my own.

Mark 2 oat bundle on the left, Mark 1 on the right. Oat bundle skeletons behind.

I started off by gluing short lengths of dowel to a 2p coin and building up some groundwork around the dowel with my usual tile-adhesive-and-poster-paint gloop.  I then added greenstuff to the sides and scratched in stems with a craft knife.  The tops are more greenstuff stabbed with a wooden skewer to give the texture of the grain.  Finally I added an incised line around the waist of each bundle to represent where the bundle is tied off.

I've decided the multiple heads of grain on Mark 2 (made from balls of green stuff) work better and from Mark 3 onwards I'm building in a cinched "waist" from the start.

Painted photos later.  

I May Have a Problem

Tidying up the games room I started to think about the unfinished projects I have.   I think there may be too many.  Here's a brief (and I suspect incomplete) precis of the current position.

Sharp Practice

I've recently taken the plunge and started reading Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels and really want to try some Peninsula War skirmishes using Sharp Practice.  I've painted some suitable (20mm plastic) figures but need more.  I'm toying with the idea of writing a series of scenarios, each inspired by the events in one of the novels.  

Cold War Commander

I’m working on a Swedish Armoured Brigade and a Finnish battle-group for next year’s Big Game.  I also have George Ashmore’s Brits to rebase so he can use them in the game.

Blitzkrieg Commander / Tac WW2

I like both games and don’t propose to choose one over the other.  What I do want to do, though, is get all my 6mm WW2 stuff based up to the same basing convention I’m using for CWC.  There are also a couple of dozen models still to paint.  Oh, and about fifty WW2 aircraft need magnets attaching to work with my new flight stands.

Axles and Alloys 

I’ve long fancied having a go at this Car Wars type system but have never got round to completing the models.  I need more bits of random weaponry to stick on them.

Song of Blades and Heroes

Not a project as such but an inspiration to get my (relatively few) unpainted 28mm fantasy figures completed.  Also if I do more of this on a Lost World Adventures theme I could usefully paint up my Wild West types to support the Latin American vibe I’ve been using of late.

Border Reivers

The two Hordes of the Things armies are complete except that I haven’t completed the Peel Tower that’s supposed to be the stronghold for the Warden’s Men.

Rommel’s Route to Verdun

I can’t remember why I bought this book from Skirmish Campaigns but it needs relatively few figures and would make a nice focus for a small, 20mm WW1 skirmish collection.  I picked up some Airfix Germans at Gauntlet and will shortly spend some time getting enough painted to do the first scenario.  As things stand I might use Belgians to stand in as French infantry to start with.

25mm Impetus

Earlier this year I rebased my old 25/28mm Wars of the Roses figures on Impetus bases.  Strictly speaking I need another mounted or dismounted men-at-arms unit to enable me to follow the Basic Impetus army lists correctly.  Another issue is that I have a somewhat peculiar mix of retinues.  The collection was originally structured to complement John Ansari’s so I need to add some of the more ubiquitous nobles.  I’ve bought a box of the Perry infantry and so far they have contributed a unit of billmen in Somerset’s livery.  I need to finish the Perry’s and use a small gun and mantlet to make another artillery unit.

I also have an unused 25mm Late Swiss DBA army that I bought from Steve Briddon when he emigrated to America.  I need to sort out rebasing it for Impetus. After that I suppose I’d want to think about Burgundians to oppose it.

6mm Impetus

I’ve been basing up various scraps of ancient, medieval and renaissance 6mm lead on 60mm wide bases with a view towards using them for Basic Impetus, largely inspired by some superb 6mm modelling on a game I saw at Triples a couple of years ago.  I really need to decide where I’m going with this.

20mm Kampfgruppe Odsenzods

This is an attempt to put some structure behind my distinctly incoherent collection of 20mm late war German kit.  I have a few kits to complete and some Wargames Supply Dump figures to paint but I’m not doing any Arc of Fire at the moment so this is on the back burner.  Thinking about it I also have some Museum Miniatures buildings to complete to go with these guys.

20mm Eighth Army

I have a load of Shellhole Scenics Indian troops who need finishing off.  What I’ll then do with them I don’t know.  I also have a couple of Hasegawa Grants and Matchbox Stuarts that I originally painted green to use in an Operation Sealion 1942 alternative history campaign.  They would be more useful in desert colours.

Other 20mm World War 2 Stuff

I have various bits of half-built WW2 stuff.  I’m in the process of finishing a third A34 Comet to give me an 11^th Armoured Division tank platoon for 1945 games.  Not sure where I’ll go after that.

The Bayeux Tapestry Armies

A long-held aspiration is to have HOTT armies for Hastings modelled on the Tapestry – thus coloured red green and cream and having figures in a range of different sizes.  This is on hold whilst I look for suitably crude-looking 25mm figures.

Lunars

The biggest hole in my collection of Gloranthan HOTT armies is the lack of a Lunar Empire force.    I could knock something together if I wanted to but I’d rather wait until the right figures come along at the right price.

Morokanth

My other Glorantha-HOTT ambition is to complete an all Morokanth army.  At the moment my Morokanth are about half of a Praxian alliance force.  The plan is to make sure there are no two identical figures in the army.  I need to convert a few more Morokanth and to get hold of some naked caveman types to use as herdmen.

Route 66

Saturday morning to Chester and the Deeside Defenders' Gauntlet gaming convention.  I say gaming convention because it's definitely got the emphasis on playing rather than shopping.

Jamie and I played in Route 66, Will McNally and Pete Jones's excellent Vietnam War game in which our heroes were tasked with transporting a convoy of supplies through hostile territory to a US firebase.

Route 66 - the red strips are 'blinds'; which may or may
not represent enemy activity.

Will and Pete used a fairly simple set of rules and kept all of the calculation work to themselves making it easy for the the players to concentrate on fighting the battle rather than playing the rules.

The long table was divided in two by a river.  On the nearside of the river was a village with we needed to pass through as it taking the trucks off road was likely to lead to them bogging down.  We decided to send our two M113 ACAVs into a flanking position so they could provide fire support whilst a squad of our infantry dismounted to attack frontally.

Unfortunately, the first blind that wasn't a blank turned out to be a trap.  An unlucky die roll meant that one of our precious two ACAVs hit a mine and was destroyed!  A significant dent in our firepower at an early stage of the game! 

The second M113 ACAV (centre) burns before we even start
to assault the village.

To the left of the ACAV an enemy MG and a squad of VC showed up and we were forced to debus two more of our six squads to engage them.

An NVA machine gun threatens the convoy's left flank.

We dealt with the enemy whilst a medevac helicopter was inbound to pick up the wounded from the knocked-out ACAV.

Suspiciously well-armed for a medevac but never mind.

Meanwhile, the lead squad successfully cleared the village despite it being full of VC.

The Brown Water Navy were a useful addition to our firepower.

Richard Baber and Rob Connolly wonder what's for lunch.

With the village taken to convoy pushed on towards the bridge.

Roofs restored now the enemy are destroyed, Will's hooches are
surprisingly effective for such simple cardboard and crepe paper constructions.

As the convoy reached the river a Loach overhead reported enemy activity in the forest and the Medevac helicopter suffered incoming small-arms fire and went down!

That's the downed Huey in the cloud of smoke by the river!

As the first elements of the convoy cross the bridge, the lead squad again
dismounts to rescue the crew and wounded from the downed Huey.

At this point Jamie was put in charge of the troops manning the Firebase and the cry of 'Sappers!' went up as the enemy launched a major assault.

I raced the one remaining M113 ACAV towards the camp gate thinking the vehicle's firepower could probably swing the battle our way.  Sadly, I hadn't accounted for the enemy's sole RPG-7 and my own ability to throw the worst possible score on a d10 at the crucial moment.  Easy Rider, having made it literally right to the wire, was knocked out by the incoming grenade.

Pete's pipe-cleaner RPG-in-flight zooms past the camp
perimeter defences to strike Easy Rider. 

Fortunately, though, we managed to fight off the enemy assault as the convoy escorts arrived just in time to shore up the camp's defences.

Route 66 was great fun and thanks are due to Pete and Will for putting on a great looking game and to Rob and Richard for having our backs when the gooks were all over us.  

I believe Sunday was to be Hue!  Jamie and I were sad that we couldn't be there.

Friday Evening in the Lost Canyon

We members of Bradfield Dungworth Primary School's Parents and Friends Association cleverly chose  to hold our summer barbecue on the day the Environment Agency issued Flood Warnings to most of England because of the heavy rain.  Fortunately, I'd been volunteered into running a wargame for the kids so I'd be indoors all evening, yay!

A lost canyon, somewhere in Oaxaca Province, Mexico.

We'd made some changes to our plan following last week's playtest.

We used four cards to determine the order of play:

"Explorers" - all explorer parties (including the Mexicans guarding the riverboat) get to act.

"Troglodytes" - all troglodyte units including the hideous unknowable blasphemy get to act.

"Wild Thing" - the umpires dice to see what kind of wild animal or natural threat is activated and all existing animals get to act.

"Siesta" - anyone stuck in quicksand must roll to see if they are sucked under then the turn ends and the deck is reshuffled.  Note if the Siesta card comes out first it is ignored for this turn.

We also made the table smaller; about 4'x3', so everyone got into action quicker and explorers had a better chance of reaching safety in the time available.

Don Luis Habañero and the crew man the barricades.

Behind you!  Millicent Threatener fails to notice the Hideous Unknowable
Blasphemy behind her as Troglodytes consider how to eat her father's mule.  

Later - the HUB prepares to dismember the mule.

Dinosaurs?  They must have survived here, cut off for millions of years!
Meanwhile (left of shot), Millicent, having avoided the HUB has stumbled
into a patch of quicksand.  

The end.  Don Luis stands guard, having rescued Millicent Threatener from
the quicksand.  She is the only known survivor of her father's doomed
expedition, though no-one is sure what happened to Idaho James....

Back From Gauntlet

Jamie and I played in Will and Pete's excellent Route 66 Vietnam war game at Gauntlet.  So that was two multi-player games in 24 hours! Good to see Richard and Rob and all the Deeside Defenders gang.

Details and pics soon.

Serendipity

I like card-driven mechanisms for command control and I've bolted one on to Song of Blades and Heroes for this Friday's multi-player game but I was concerned that it wasn't fast enough having one card per player.

Troglodytes threaten the crew of the Susanna Salcita. 

Then, by coincidence I downloaded the latest copy of the Meeples and Miniatures podcast to find Neil and Co talking about Muskets and Tomahawks and how it uses cards but with a given card triggering the activation of all units of a particular type (e.g. all irregulars).

Our game will have three Troglodyte players, three Explorers and three Umpires!  This gives us an ideal opportunity to run with just four cards:

Explorers - all of the Explorer players get to activate their figures

Troglodytes - all of the Troglodyte players get to activate their figures

Wild Thing - a new animal enters or a figure encounters a patch of quicksand or gets lost.  Any existing animals are activated and anyone trapped in quicksand rolls to see if they drown.

Siesta - the turn ends (unless this card comes up first in which case it is ignored).

I'm hoping this approach (and playing with a smaller table than the playtest) will allow us to get through the game in the time available.