A River Flows Through It

Last week I popped over to Staffordshire to see how Richard Phillips was doing. We hadn't managed to get together in person since his health scare meant that he couldn't attend Joy of Six. It was great to catch up and see him looking so well.

I passed on to Richard some terrain that I no longer have a use for but that can potentially be useful at his wargaming venue, The Unit. I also took over some of my 3D printed TacWWII makers for Richard.

In return I was delighted when he presented me with a pontoon-ferry that would work really well with my Woebetides collection.

In fact thinking about it there's no reason it wouldn't also work for the American Civil War or the Second French Intervention in Mexico. Ooh, or the Napoleonic Wars in Livonia!

It fits nicely on my larger (9" across) river sections and would, with the addition of suitable ramps, work fine as a pontoon bridge too.

Other riverine work had gone on at Stately Counterpane Manor. 

When setting out the terrain for the playtest of "Ambush" or "The Princess Bride (not that one)", I'd realised I needed some more curved, 3" wide, river sections. 

Fortunately I had some offcuts of hardboard that could be made to do the job nicely. I had also started a couple of straight sections designed to allow a river to enter the table on a diagonal.  

My usual approach of raised banks made from filler with black paint and varnish for the water gave me over a metre of gently meandering river or, if the curves are rearranged, a single sweeping 90 degree bend.

Then with rivers on my mind I decided to revisit the replaceable ford modules. I wasn't entirely happy with the relative lack of visual difference between the second and third modules. I added a bit more in the way of Milliput paving sloping down into the water and repainted.

At the risk of giving away slightly too much in advance of the Steel Lard outing for the game, I'll reveal the effects of the progressive flooding of the ford. I'm sure you'll promise not to reveal this to any potential players won't you?

Stage 1 - Units crossing the ford roll 2D6 for
movement discarding the lower-scoring die.

Stage 2 - Units crossing the ford roll 2D6 for
movement discarding the higher-scoring die

Stage 3 - The ford is now impassable to wheeled vehicles
but a Leader may try to carry the princess across on foot.

Stage 4 - The ford is now completely impassable.

No scenario designer worthy of the title could refrain in such circumstances from designing a "Carrying the Princess Across the Ford Table".  Such I have done but, alas, revelation of the details is a step too far at this stage.

Upgrading past endeavours

Getting Steel Lard (and the associated mad rush to prepare and test a new game in too short a period) out of the way has freed me up to do some modelling purely for the fun of it. 

The French 1940 artillery tractors have already appeared here and some upgraded US HMMWVs were recently seen over at Andreivian Tales.

Inspired by how well those two went, I pushed on and did two more as well as an M113 armoured personnel carrier.

I've also upgraded some very long-in-the-tooth Char B1 bis models that have been in storage for far too long.

I'm in no danger of winning any points with the local IPMS chapter with any of these but I think they'll improve the overall appearance of any games I use them for.

This has got me thinking about past triumphs (and disasters) and how we really ought to revisit some of them to get best value out of the sweat and treasure invested in them. The Prague Summer, Andreivia and the Woebetides are three settings that I'd like to resurrect and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

I suspect a Crisis Point 2027 is going to required. 

Ambush!

Mark and Jamie came over on Sunday and we had a first go at the Infamy Infamy game that I plan to run at Steel Lard. I'm using a scenario originally presented by C S Grant in an issue of Military Modelling magazine article in the late 1970s!

The idea was to come up with something that would meet two design objectives. It should:

• be faster to run than The Iron Hand of Mars, which was great fun but not ideally suited to the typical Lardy Day time-slot, and
• focus the players' minds on completing their mission rather than just fighting until one side or the other runs out of Force Morale.

In this case the pacing is driven by in-game time pressure. One side is escorting a valuable cargo and if they don't make good time, they will find that their only path to safety is across a ford that's no longer passable due to heavy rains.

The Dubrisians must march from the near table edge
to the ford in the distance. The ambushers will emerge
from the left of the road.

In this first playtest Jamie took on the role of the Roman-like Dubrisians. They were tasked with escorting Princess Zenobii and her dowry to her betrothed, the emperor Osbosis of Dubris.  (I've kept as much as possible of Grant's original background events, names and places.)

The princess's cataphract guard led the march

Mark was in charge of the fierce hill-men determined to capture the princess and the wagonload of gold and jewels accompanying her.

I'm going over to multi-based figures rather than sabot bases for Infamy Infamy. With so much close combat in the game, it's a real faff to cope with loose models when two or more units are in close proximity. Dice holders with yellow dice allowed us to track the units' strength points, avoiding the need to remove casualties.

Before the ambush - a Dubrisian watchtower
overlooks events from the other side of the river

Mark had chosen to put some of his ambushing forces in an area of low, broken ground beside the road. This entailed some risk that the ambush could be detected prematurely but the dice gods were kind to him for once.

A horde of fierce warriors dashed out of the rocky area and slammed into the flank of the Princess's cataphracts. Despite their heavy armour, the latter were soon pushed back, retreating through the narrow gap between the road and the river.

The Dubrisian legionaries deployed to the side of the road.

Mark is intimately familiar with the idea that sometimes the dice gods spit in your eye. On this occasion he managed to get his massed warriors into a position where they could co-ordinate an attack. The timely play of an Infamy card gave his men a sudden burst of movement just where it mattered. A subsequent conventional activation would see them crash into the enemy legionaries.

Mark's warriors would normally get 2D6 inches of movement but in rough going they'd drop the lower-scoring die. I'd just suggested that with about 3cm to cover they were bound to get into contact when Jamie piped up with "He could roll two ones!"

Needless to say that's exactly what Mark then did. His warriors were agonisingly short of contact giving the legionaries a potential chance to respond violently to the charge!

The fighting continued for some time. In fact we all lost track of how long the game had gone on; an indication of a fascinating scenario but not ideal for my play testing requirements!

The Dubrisians had sent some allied light cavalry forward to examine the ford and they soon announced that it was now passable only by wading - the vehicles would have to be abandoned. 

Cavalry commander Andred Vertegree picked up the princess and attempted to carry her to the ford...

 ... but unfortunately they were caught by the pursuing hill men and Jamie was forced to concede defeat.

I was pleased with how the game went but it was still a bit slow. Since Sunday I've come up with a couple of mechanisms to speed up the start of the game. We should now be able to start in media res with the slow march of the convoy having taken place beforehand. 

One more playtest is probably called for but I reckon I've got a game that will nicely fit the Lardy Day template.

French transport, 1940

Given a bit of spare time yesterday, I dug out an old toy and converted it into some transport for my 1940 French in 20mm scale.

I started with an old Lesney die-cast Scammel recovery vehicle with a broken towing arm. Some carved balsa wood and glued-on tissue paper gave it a canvas-covered rear platform. I think it looks like a reasonable approximation to a French artillery tractor, perhaps something from the Laffly company?

As you can see, there are two. The one on the left, above, I made about twenty years ago by a similar method. The colour matching isn't perfect but I'd think canvas tilts in particular would vary in colour.

I've no plans to use these at the moment but it's nice to know the second toy is no longer sitting in a box waiting for me to do something with it.

Sorry, which dice?

Just over a year ago I had a go at using The Pikeman's Lament to recreate a typical action from the Russo-Turkish War of 1711. This was a first attempt at using my 6mm Great Northern War collection with the Osprey renaissance large skirmish rules.

I used some of my home-printed dice holders to keep track of casualties but it was a bit of a pain keeping track of them and making sure the right one stayed with the right unit.

With a bit of time on my hands I thought I'd have a go at designing something that would keep the die with the unit.

I designed a sabot that's 1mm thick and 3mm larger than my standard 30x60mm base in all directions. I then added a 1mm high wall around the edge and a 2mm high socket for a D6.

Adding a unit of Cossacks and a 7.5mm D6 we end up with...

I'm thinking that maybe a white D6 could be used to indicate strength points from 6 down to 1. A Green die could be used for strength 12 down to 7 for these Russian infantry of Sweden's Regiment, replacing it with a white die when they reached half strength...

I can also use other colours to distinguish between unit qualities. Perhaps these Tartars are "Elite" with their blue die...

And in this case two 30mm squares fit fine as well.

The next step was to paint the bases and add a bit of flock...

I'm happy with these; tempting me to have another go at The Pikeman's Lament (or of course they'd also work for Lion Rampant).

Transiting the ford

A spurt of post-Ebor-Lard creativity has seen me design a new Infamy Infamy scenario for Steel Lard. 

Based on a C. S. Grant scenario from  47-year old copy of Military Modelling magazine, it involves the escort of a princess and her dowry to meet her husband-to-be. I'm calling it "Ambush" or "The Princess Bride (Not That One)" so you can imagine that things will not go according to plan for the escort.

One of the things I wanted to build into the game was time pressure. This is to be achieved by the river, which has to be crossed by Blue, the escort, rising as a result of recent rains. If they don't cross the only available ford in time, the princess will be unable to join her intended. This will probably have fatal consequences for the commanders of her escort.

I decided that the ford should become progressively harder to cross as the waters rose. In fact I identified four stages to the process. I won't reveal the details at present but it then occurred to me that it might be fun to swap in different models as a visual indicator of the situation.

A quick Google of Roman-era fords revealed several images of irregular stone paving sloping down into the water.

Wanting to create modular pieces I could slot in in sequence, I decided to use some old cork and melamine drink coasters as bases. I chamfered the corners and added earth texture, where required, using quick-drying Polyfilla coloured with cheap acrylic paint.

The result is four stages of flooding:

Stage 1 - we can see the stone surface of the ford on both banks
and in the centre of the river

Stage 2 - the centre of the ford is now fully submerged

Stage 3 - a log is floating downstream
as a tribesman wades across

Stage 4 - fully flooded and clearly dangerous!

Another addition required by the scenario is the Princess's cataphract escort. I've had these Warlord Sarmatians for years since I saw them going cheap at the Penkridge tabletop sale. I've now rebased them on one of Simon Miller's "Bat Bases".

I've decided to adopt 12cm wide bases for all of my Infamy Infamy units; they were far less fiddly in use at Ebor Lard than were the sabot based miniatures. They'll also do nicely for To The Strongest, Basic Impetus or in future Midgard.

Keep an eye out here for further developments towards the Ambush.

Ebor Lard Report part two

I was so busy during the day at Ebor Lard that I had virtually no opportunity to observe the other games in progress.  However, here are the pictures I took:

Joe Bilton's "Montcornet"
28mm Chain of Command II

More of Montcornet

Charley Walker's "The Full Nelson"

Jeremy Short's "The Sword in the Stone"
28mm Dux Britannarium

Ian Hemmingway's "What a Scaver"
28mm What A Cowboy variant

Simon Walker's "The Hills are Alive..."
28mm Sharp Practice

John Savage's "Escape to Dhuran Duran"
29mm Sharp Practice

Ken Welsh's "Never Greater Slaughter"

28mm Midgard Heroic Battles