Return to 3D printing

A few months ago my 3D printer (it's an Ender 3 S1 pro) stopped working. Filament would no longer feed into the extruder and application of a cleaning needle wouldn't change that even with the head heated up.

Some searching on line suggested that I had a broken-off piece of filament blocking the mechanism. Unfortunately the same investigation also suggested that disassembling the print head was a really tricky job. When I couldn't find a Sheffield-based company that did printer repairs I began to think my 3D printing days were over.

Last weekend, though, I decided to stop being a wuss and to have a go at the disassembly job!

It turned out that what I needed was this video by The Edge of Tech, a few tools, and a very systematic approach to documenting the process as I went along.

I took photographs of the work at each stage. 

Also each time I removed an assembly and/or some fixing screws I placed them in a specific location with a label keyed to the corresponding minutes and seconds in the Edge of Tech video.

I ended up with about nine labelled piles of tech before I managed to remove the offender; a 3mm long piece of filament stuck in the guts of the hot end.

After reassembly the printer seemed to be working okay and within an hour I was the proud owner of sheet of Roman roof tiles:

Since then, inspired by the recent review of Benghazi Handicap, I've produced and painted two battalions of 1/300th scale M11/39 tanks for the Gabr-al-Ahmar scenario.

This in turn has led to my putting in an order to Heroics and Ros for some British and Italian infantry and support weapons.  I'm just incapable of sticking to a single project!

Some Pliocene progress

The initial wave of enthusiasm from the wargaming-The-Saga-of-the-Exiles idea has carried me though the process of painting (or in some cases repainting) some figures that were already on hand.

First completed was this macrauchenid. It's a pliocene member of the giraffe family. Too slender to serve as a riding animal, it'll just provide some exotic flavour as a background element in games taking place outside the Tanu cities. The model is a cheap, Chinese-made toy I picked up years ago when I briefly toyed with the idea of a 15mm scale Pliocene army for Hordes of the Things.

Another pliocene animal is Stephanorhinus etruscus. Another cheap plastic toy, this one depicts a 4 metre long giant rhinoceros. I enjoyed airbrushing this model. It and the marcrauchenid benefitted immensely from a coat of AK Ultra Matt airbrush varnish.

Stephanorhinus makes a challenging target for a Tanu hunter.

The Tanu is a very old Mithril Miniatures model that's been sitting in a drawer for decades. The product code on the base enabled me to identify it as "32mm Lorien spearman" from their old Lord of the Rings range.

My paint job is a long way from what this quite nice sculpt deserves. It was my first attempt at depicting coloured glass (vitredur) for the partial armour and the spearhead. 

Another old model (I suspect early Games Workshop but I'm not sure) is this Firvulag stalwart in obsidian armour. Nothing much to say about this repaint of a figure that was unlikely to be used in any other context.

Another Firvulag is this troll-like creature. Also ancient, I think it came from the collection of my friend Alan Slater. I've repainted it as its original 1980s paint job was looking its age.

Finally, another attempt at a glass-armoured Tanu. This guy is in the rose and gold colours of a member of the Psychokinetic Guild. I probably didn't choose the easiest set of shapes to try and depicted as glass but practice eventually makes perfect (I hope).

I don't want to spend a fortune on this project - a few additional figures and perhaps one more building to add an alien element should be enough to give me a chance to play-test some suitable rules. At the moment I'm considering a What A Cowboy-based system as an alternative to Song of Blades and Heroes. Although Pulp Alley is another possibility... hmm....

Further into the woods

Production on terrain for The Iron Hand of Mars continues apace. One of the locations in the game is an abandoned Roman marching fort, now overgrown. It was left behind in 9AD when the legions of Varus set out to over-winter back on the Roman side of the Rhine.

Standard procedure would have called for its destruction before the homeward march. That it remains intact serves as a chilling indicator that Varus's men thought themselves in friendly territory. They expected to return the following Spring and reoccupy the place. Instead they were ambushed and slaughtered by the German tribes under Arminius.

By the time Marcus Didius Falco arrived in the forest, the defensive ditch was clogged with brambles and the interior of the fort was a dense thicket of saplings.

Obviously I wouldn't have room to represent a whole multi-legion fort on the table so just a corner of the rampart appears on the table edge.

The base is 2mm MDF rescued from the packaging of a framed picture bought on line. The rampart was built from layers of foamcore and all but the ditch received a coating of brown wood filler for texture.

The brambles are rubberised horsehair (an advantage of being married to a traditional upholsterer) glued in place with matt Modpodge over the black-sprayed ditch. A light airbrushing in burnt umber then gave a suitably bramble-like colour.

The rampart got my usual layering of static grass over fine flock. I deliberately let some areas remain as bare earth. This is not a manicured lawn.

Finally I added some vegetation inside the fort. The silver birches are cheap Chinese-made trees tarted up by painting the trunks and dipping the tops in fine flock after a good coat of Modpodge. A few 2mm clumps in mixed colours and clump foliage bushes complete the picture.

In the book, Lindsey Davies indicates a more substantial structure with a rotting wooden palisade. Given the constraints of table space I decided to go with a simpler (and perhaps more believable?) structure for my abandoned fort.

Review - Command Decision - Benghazi Handicap

Following our recent look at the Rapid Fire book on the Eastern Front, here's another review of a scenario book that may work for TacWWII. Again I'll score the book from 1 to 5 in each of these categories:

• Book Design - layout, illustrations, maps
• Historical Content - does the book provide useful background?
• Scenario Design - are they interesting, challenging?
• TacWWII Relevance - relevance and ease of conversion to TacWWII.

This time I'm looking at Frank Chadwick's Benghazi Handicap for the Command Decision rules.

This is a 170 page, soft cover book, approximately 8.5"x11" (ie slightly smaller than A4) published by Test of Battle Games in 2007.

The book covers the Western Desert Battles from June 1940 to the end of 1941; from the start of fighting to Operation Crusader. The illustrations are mostly in black and white but there are a few colour photographs of games in progress and there's a double page spread of colour illustrations of allied and German unit insignia and Italian uniform collar patches (probably something I can ignore in 6mm scale).

Most of the book covers the organisation of Italian, German and Commonwealth units in the desert. I've previously provided advice on converting these and won't go into detail here. 

Instead, let's concentrate on the twelve included scenarios. The maps are scaled with (rather difficult to see) grid lines defining two-feet squares at Command Decision scale or one-foot squares for TacWWII.  As such, for us most of the games will be playable on a 3'x3' table. They are detailed enough but we will need to convert the accompanying descriptions (shallow wadi, paved road, track etc) from Command Decision terminology to the TacWWII equivalents.

Overall I'm happy to give Benghazi Handicap 4/5 for Design of the Book.

Moving on to Historical Content; we get an excellent overview of the campaign as a whole at the start of the book and each scenario gets its own "Situation" section that clearly sets out the local context. 

In addition a section entitled "Battlefield" provides useful clues as to how to rate battlefield areas in TacWWII terms. Finally the sections "Historical Result" and "Battle Trivia" also help to paint a picture of the battle. For Historical Content I'm rating Benghazi Handicap as 5/5.

When it comes to Scenario Design I have to confess that I haven't yet played any of these; the Middle East portion of my WW2 collection has been focussed on platoon level games in 20mm scale. One day, though, I will do some 6mm desert TacWWII!

When I do come to use the scenarios I think I'll omit the advice given to players in the "Tactical Note" section. I'm not keen on telling my players how to fight the battle and some of the guidance ("Early on you're facing only a single A9 and an anti-tank gun") seems to me to stray into providing excess information.

Noting that the Little Wars TV guys appear to have used a couple of them for their Operation Compass episode, I'm going to give them a provisional 4/5 for Scenario Design.

The twelve scenarios are ideally sized for TacWWII adaptation. Each force typically has two or three battalions and some supporting companies. A couple of scenarios use up to half a dozen battalions on one
side but this should still be manageable.

Each game has overall mission descriptions; "Breakthrough", "Hold at All Costs", "Counterattack" etc and several include a situational addition such as "Capture location X" or "Exit three units of the southern edge". The mission descriptions relate to the number of victory locations that need to be captured or held, as detailed in the CD rulebook but an experienced TacWWII referee should have no problem extrapolating victory conditions.

If we reserve maximum marks to scenarios written specifically for our favourite rules, we are clearly in 4/5 territory for TacWWII Relevance.

Overall, then, we get a score of 17/20 for Benghazi Handicap. If you're in the market for some early desert war scenarios, this may be the way to go. Unfortunately, though, the book is out of print and second hand copies seem to be going for silly money. Get it if you can!

Into the woods

The plans for an Infamy Infamy game inspired by events from Lindsey Davis's novel The Iron Hand of Mars continue apace. First up I've completed the construction of my German force.

Using a mixture of Wargame Factory and Victrix models we have five units of warriors (one of them oathsworn veterans), one of fanatics, one of rebelling former foederati, and one of slingers.

The former foederati represent a group of Batavians led by their former commander Julius Civilis.

I've gone for a preponderance of blue clothing and shields for these guys and given them rather more helmets than the general run of tribesmen. I see them as holding on to remnants of any former Roman army-supplied clothing and/or equipment.

Most of the German warriors are much less well-equipped. They lack helmets and fight with spears and javelins rather than swords.

At least one group of oathsworn warriors is needed. I've distinguished them by means of a more swords and more helmets. In The Iron Hand of Mars they'll represent the relatives of the prophetess Veleda.

Finally for now I've done a key piece of terrain in the form a sacred tree...

This will be the centrepiece of a sacred grove. The tree is sculpted from Milliput on a skeleton made from copper wire and a wine cork! A severed head from the Victrix Gallic cavalry set adds a nice detail.

I'm going to need more trees for the game so I've got a production line underway.

On the road to St Omer

Last night I braved the wind and rain on the southern edge of a yellow weather warning zone to pay a first visit to The Steel City Irregulars. This is a small gaming community that Dex McHenry and Alex Sotheran  are building at The Outpost in Sheffield.

I took along Calais - The Road to St Omer to have a first test of its new dedicated game mat. This is the game I'll be running at Joy of Six in the summer.  I was keen to try it out in its current form. 

I originally designed the scenario back in 2000 for the Blitzkrieg 1940 scenario book. Research was more challenging back in those early-Internet days and the modern version of the scenario is more realistic as a result. 

The group was down a couple of regular players as a result of illness and family emergencies but I was able to meet Dean and we quickly got down to playing. Dean chose to command 3RTR and I ran the recon battalion of 10th Panzer Division.

After a brief outline of how the TacWWII rules work, we got down to action. Dean quickly had the British tanks moving aggressively toward the enemy.

This is a challenging scenario for the British as their TAC rating of 7 makes it difficult for them to get properly organised for the attack. Dean quickly grasped that he needed to get to close quarters if the heavy machine-gun-armed Light Tanks Mk VI were going to make a significant contribution.

3RTR Squadrons advance past the station

Air support would be available to both sides subject to a roll of 1 or 2 on a d10 at the start of the turn. This makes the RAF and Luftwaffe way more present than they were in reality. I excuse myself on the grounds that people like to see aircraft models over the table. In addition, part of the aim is to showcase the TacWWII rules and I like how they handle aircraft. 

On the second (or third?) game turn both sides received air support with flights of Hurricanes and Bf-109s appearing. 

As both were rated "Good Fighter", it was a straight dice-off to see who got the jump on the other. My roll of 7 was beaten by Dean's 9. Given the choice to engage my fighters or get in first with a strafing attack, he chose the latter.

The Hurricanes destroyed an SdKfz 231 but the Messerschmitts then evened the score by taking out an A Squadron Cruiser tank.

In true historical fashion the battle became a confusing melee of close-range tank-on-armoured car action.  Both sides' morale is rated Good and this helped keep the action going despite frequent morale tests caused by losses.  The firepower of the German armoured car companies was much reduced by losses but their six-model starting strength makes them quite resilient in morale terms.

At one point a flight of Me-110s chanced an attack on the 3RTR's Headquarters Squadron but to no effect.

Throughout the battle the Germans continued to receive reinforcements.  Unlucky card draws formed a traffic jam of truck-mounted infantry on the hill to the southeast.

The cards weren't entirely cruel to 10th Panzer, though. A light Panzer company (with a mix of Panzers II and III) swept into action on the flank of 3RTR's leading squadron and caused losses at the crucial moment.

At the end of turn five (of eight allowed for in the scenario) 3RTR was forced to take a battalion morale test. Having lost a squadron and with two temporarily withdrawing in the face of the enemy, the result was "Halt". The British formation would no longer advance without express orders from superior command. Quite reasonably Dean elected to concede victory to the Germans. We can assume that, like his historical counterpart, he would pull back into the Calais perimeter.

With only a single previous run-through of the scenario in a quarter of a century, I was pleased with how this updated version went. 

I decided to remove the "sunken road" as although this is mentioned in passing in historical accounts, it doesn't seem to have played a significant role in the action and would just have served to cramp the British player's freedom of manoeuvre.

I thought the table looked okay but I'll probably lay down more fields at Joy of Six and work on fixing down the railway lines.  I'll probably also move the point at which the lead companies clash further back towards Cocquelles to prevent the whole action occurring at one end of the table.

I have to express my thanks to Dean for being a willing and sporting partner in this exploration of history and to Dex and Alex for setting up the session. I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to pay more attention to their neighbouring game of Chain of Command.

Not another new project?

I tend to have my most creative ideas when out walking the dog over the moors around Sheffield. Recently I got back from such an expedition with the thought, "I could wargame the Lowlives' and Firvulags' attack on Finiah using Dragon Rampant in 28mm scale". 

I'm guessing that sentence will mean very little to most of you. Mild spoilers ahead if that's the case.

The subject in question is the version of Pliocene Europe depicted in Julian May's Saga of the Exiles. This is the setting of a series of four books beginning with 1981's The Many-Coloured Land. 

I read this book and its sequels when I was at university and have revisited them several times since then. The story begins in a twenty-first-century Earth that's part of an interplanetary community where wide-spread "metapsychic" powers make for a prosperous and peaceful, if somewhat anodyne, society.

The only escape for those who don't fit in is a one-way time gate to Earth's Pliocene era (6 million years ago). Unfortunately what these exiles don't know is that Pliocene Europe is under the domination of a dimorphic alien race (the Tanu and the Firvulag), themselves exiled from their home galaxy because of their barbaric battle religion.

The idea that struck me was that, with modern plastic miniatures, I could probably wargame some of the fighting in the book in 28mm scale at a relatively small cost. My thinking was that I'd want to depict the following four types:

The Tanu - tall (2 metres plus) humanoids; I suspect some High Elf miniatures would do the job for these guys.

The Firvulag - stunted, dwarf-like creatures who project monstrous illusory aspects when in battle; pretty much any fantasy model will serve here.

Grey Torcs - human soldiers fighting for the Tanu; described as wearing light bronze armour and kettle helmets and sometimes surcoats in the colours of a Tanu metapsychic guild. The Fireforge medievals should suit.

The Lowlives - free-living humans on the run from the Tanu having an uneasy alliance with the Firvulag. They'll have some through the time gate in a variety of costumes but are increasingly adopting practical buckskin clothing. Like the Firvulag, almost any figure is justifiable though I'd like to have a go at depicting some particular characters.

And there my planning stopped when I realised I couldn't easily source 28mm scale chalicotheres - the distinctive riding animals of the Tanu army. 

And then I went to Hammerhead and discovered the Disain Studio stand selling a 3D printed range of prehistoric animals. I picked up a couple of "chalikos" for a tenner to experiment with.

The additional creature at the back is a cheap Chinese plastic toy I found years ago. It's a macrauchenid, a giraffoid creature from the right period. It was probably restricted to pliocene South America but I won't tell if you don't.

I now need to review the models I own and the ones I can pick up without breaking the bank. I don't want this to turn into a big thing but it might make for an interesting side-project particularly given the half-dozen-a-side scale of Song of Blades and Heroes.