Another rescued miniature

Another mini rescued from the to-be-melted-down bag has now had a visit to the painting desk.

As you can see, it's a D&D-style druid, somewhat heavily armoured for use in Glorantha so I may stick him on eBay.

Anyone know who he's by? I haven't been able to find an image online. 

A foray into 15mm

I have some self-imposed rules to prevent my getting sidetracked into projects that take up too much space and effort. One of these is that I avoid adding new scales beyond the 6mm, 20mm and 28mm that I'm already heavily invested in. The only exception to this is that I have some legacy Hordes of the Things armies in 15mm scale.

A few years ago I acquired some 15mm English Civil War / Thirty Years War figures. Not sure where they came from, I suspect in a box of various figures that passed through several hands before and after mine. For a while these guys sat in a drawer but after a bit I decided they were poor quality and unlikely to get used so I consigned them to the bits-of-white-metal-to-get-melted-down-one-day bag.

Last week I came across them whilst looking for some scraps of metal to weight down the nose of a jet aircraft kit. I decided to paint a few of them.

I decided to paint them in colours roughly inspired by a plate in the Osprey book on Gustavus Adolphus's infantry - men of an English or Scottish mercenary regiment.

In line with the advice of Dex (who suggested they may be old Peter Laing models) I've based them in 40mm wide elements.

They'll be going on eBay shortly as I don't have any use for them. A few more may follow if I feel the urge to keep painting these little guys.

ACW Sharp Practice gold

A trip to a local antiques centre yesterday threw up this book, Spies, Scouts and Raiders, potentially marvellous source of American Civil War skirmish scenarios.

It's part of a series of 27 books published in 1985 by Time-Life Books. Apparently the series is quite well-known among ACW enthusiasts but I hadn't come across it before.

This book covers intelligence work, codes and signals, guerrilla operations, the damage and repair of railways, and finishes with some notes on some of the more bizarre technological developments during the war.

There are plenty of contemporary photographs that just cry out to be reflected on the wargames table...

There were lots of these books on sale but at £7.50 each I didn't want to blow my budget. I did, however, sneak a photograph of this plate from First Blood: Fort Sumter to Bull Run. 

It depicts a scene during the Union retreat from first Manassas, a situation I've thought for some time could make for a fascinating Sharp Practice game. Now should I start sourcing mule-pulled supply wagons?

First Puebla playtest pics

This weekend Andy, Ron, Mark and Dex came over and we had a first run-through of the Puebla game. 

I don't want to reveal too many details here because chunks of the scenario need to be kept confidential but it was a very valuable experience.

A siege is very much in danger of producing a static firefight. It was my intention to design the scenario such that this doesn't happen. Unfortunately on this occasion by best-laid plans went awry. Mark's in ability to roll more than three on 2D6 delayed. matters considerably and led to a long period of ineffective firing between the two sides.

Mexican defenders of the penitentiary

The Renowned Hero of France Capt Lacharde's
men threaten a front-line Mexican position

The Turcos defend a front-line trench

A Mexican conservative gun crew. Their
commander has been lightly wounded by a 
French marksman

Mobility was brought to the battle by the Mexicans, with Captain Victor Vectra leading his men towards a ruined house on the French siege-lines. Unfortunately, just before they got there, Sergeant Ben-Hammim arrived (unaccountably late) with his group of Turco skirmishers.

Ben-Hammim's men let out a deafening blast of musketry that.... had no effect whatsoever! 

The Mexicans (of the Puebla State Militia) charged into the Turco position and fierce hand-to-hand combat ensued. The Mexicans were marginally beaten but being classed as 'Stubborn' they fought on but and were soundly defeated not least because we forgot to add on 3D6 for a second supporting group.

At this point the historical narrative becomes unclear. That is to say I will reveal no more other than to say that a fortunately timed chapter end brought us to a convenient place to stop the action with the French having made some progress in clearing the Mexicans from the first row of buildings within the city.

I've since, in discussions with Mark in particular, decided on some tweaks to the scenario and the special rules bringing it. In particular I'm planning on some night fighting rules derived from Arc of Fire.

I'd like to get in another test game before Steel lard but it'll depend on finding volunteers and finding a weekend when the kitchen isn't full of family-related junk!

Puebla ready(-ish)

I've reached the point where I'm happy to run a first playtest of the Puebla scenario for Steel Lard. Hopefully I'll get a game in this coming weekend.

The terrain looks like this at the start of the game:

In the foreground are the French siege-lines. To the right is the penitentiary. The rest of the built-up area is divided in blocks or manzana in Mexican Spanish.

I want to add some rubble to the board before it sees action at Steel Lard but it'll do for now.

Back from Scotland

I'm now back from a family holiday in southern Scotland with some pictures of a couple of peel towers.

The first is Hallbar Tower (aka Braidwood Castle) where we stayed for the week.

Then we have a few pictures of the tower within the RSPB reserve at Loch Winnoch. This is only accessible on one side but it has a helpful interpretation board.

I still need to build a peel tower to act as a stronghold for one of my Border Reiver HOTT armies.

Radio silence

I shall be away in Scotland for the coming week so there'll be little word from Stately Counterpane Manor for a few days. 

By way of a teaser for this year's Steel Lard game, Puebla 1863, here's a picture of part of the French forces.

Jijiga has fallen!

Phil G and Richard P came over yesterday and we played out a TacWW3 game based on Bruce Rea-Taylor's scenario The Battle for Jijiga - the WSLF versus the Derg. 

The rules were TacWWII modified by means of stats for post-WWII units such as T-54 tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, and by adding some draft rules for ATGWs and shoulder-launched SAMs.

In general the changes were pretty light-touch; I don't want to move away from the simplicity of the underlying system. 

The game saw Phil's Ethiopian infantry of the Black Banner Regiment closing on on the Somali-rebel-held town as Cuban "volunteers" in T-55 tanks rushed to support their attack. 

Richard's Western Somali Liberation Front forces were backed up by "volunteers" of their own in the form of a company of T-54s that looked remarkably like those used by the Somali Army.

The scenario is somewhat peculiar in that the actual Ethiopian forces can begin right up close to the line of contact with the WSLF defenders of Jijiga whereas the Cuban armoured battalion arrives from the edge of the table a good (scale) 2km away.

Richard had deployed his WSLF armoured company (two platoons of T-34/85 and a BTR-152 mechanised platoon) on the right in a hedge-lined field. They drove off some Derg infantry but then came under fire from the Cuban T-55s and eventually by Sagger fire from the BMP-1s. This gave us our chance to try out my draft ATGW rules.

Phil put the BMPs into Defence Mode and then declared that he was firing on the T-34s. The WSLF tanks made a Tac roll to see if they detected the incoming missiles. They succeeded by one. This meant that they would automatically evade.

An evade may or may not (at the owning player's discretion) actually involve the model being moved. In this case Richard chose to move the tanks because doing so would put them out of line-of-sight and safe from the in-coming missiles.

Our conclusion was the rules appeared to work OK at first testing with the following tweaks:

• The firer declares which company he is firing at and can target any element of the company he can see when the missiles impact, and
• ATGW fire must be declared first in any given Fire Phase (so as to allow units eligible to direct fire in this Fire Phase to do so at the ATGW firer if they make the appropriate Tac roll).

With the T-34s cleared out of their initial defensive position (shortly afterwards they'd rout after taking casualties) the Ethiopians were able to move forward towards Jijiga.

Time was moving on and I wanted to give Phil a chance to try out the air support rules. I made up my mind that if he didn't roll a 10 to call in his airstrike this turn, I'd declare that it was going in anyway. As it happened of course he did roll a 10!

Bruce Rea-Taylor's original scenario calls for a flight of Su-17s with rocket pods to make a series of passes over the table. Looking online I could see no indication that the Ethiopian Air Force ever had Su-17s so I gave Phil a flight of F-86 Sabres instead.

I treated the F-86 as a Good Fighter in TacWWII terms. This meant that its fixed weapons (strafing with guns) are more effective than its dropped ordnance (bombs or presumably rockets) so we planned to use the Fixed Ordnance factors for both of the two passes the F-86 flight was allowed to make. I say "planned to" because in fact Richard, taking advantage of a test-rule +1 modifier when firing from the rear arc of a jet with an early SAM, managed to shoot down the Sabres after their first pass.

Shortly after the air strike, the Somali T-54 company fled as a result of a fatally bad morale roll and Richard decided that the WSLF would pull out of Jijiga. 

In general we thought the Cold War tweaks worked well but we need to do a battle that involves more ATGW combat to properly test the rules. Perhaps the Israeli counterattacks in Sinai on the second day of the Yom Kippur War would be a way to go, although Phil's keen to try some of the early ATGW use in Vietnam.

Terrain test: Jijiga

Tomorrow sees a first somewhat serious attempt at play-testing some Cold War modifications to TacWWII. Richard P, Ned and Phil (chosen because of their relatively recent familiarity with the rules) are coming over to have a go at the battle of Jijiga.

This is a 1978 battle during the war between the Ethiopian government (the Derg) and the Western Somali Liberation Front. I've adapted the scenario from the late Bruce Rea-Taylor's book Battlezones.

I'm mostly using models already in the collection but I've added a few 3D-printed toys including brightly coloured Somali houses...

...an Ethiopian Air Force F-86 Sabre...

...some Somali T-54s in delightfully bright camo...

...and a BTR-152 to carry the B-10 82mm recoilless rifle I've modified from an H&R piece.

Selling my wet palette

I've decided the wet palette idea doesn't work for me. I can see how they might work for some people but I keep finding myself going back to my trusty ceramic tile for mixing paints.

If anyone's interested in trying one out there's one going cheap on eBay right now courtesy of yours truly.

Puebla siege works part two

So, after best part of a week with Kingspan, coffee stirrers, Polyfilla, paints, and static grass, I'm at the point where the French siege works for Puebla 1863 are in a usable state. If I needed to run the game next week I'd be happy with them as they are but doubtless I'll be inspired to add some additional improvements as we go on. 

Some bits to make the place look lived-in would help. A bucket and rope by the well for example.  I'd also like to do more to disguise the joins between the modules. I have some ideas of how to do that. I'll let you know how they go on.

With this work finished and a large portion of the scenario design done, I'm really looking forward to presenting this game. 

As an experienced designer of wargames scenarios I can tell you straight up that this one shouldn't work. A frontal assault on a defended enemy position could be a bloodbath. However, this is Sharp Practice; it's a game that emphasises the narrative and the interactions of the significant leaders on each side. This going to be a game where victory may look very different to what you expect!

Late War Luftwaffe

As a break from building Mexican trenches, I did a bit of 3D printing followed by painting recently. The result was this...

It's a Dornier 217K-2 medium bomber in 1/300th scale, resized from a 1/350th scale model I found on Thingiverse.

The K-1 and K-2 versions of the Do 217 were distinctive for their bulbous nose. They were equipped to use the Fritz-X and Henschel 293 glide bombs. The model is based on a picture of one based in western France on anti-shipping duties in 1944. In addition, though, they were also used by the elite KG200 to target Soviet-controlled bridge in 1945.

Clearly with its visible print lines the model is far from perfect but I'm happy enough to use it in my TacWWII games.

Puebla siege works

With the summer moving onwards I am conscious that I need to get on with the terrain for my planned Siege of Puebla 1863 game that I hope will see the light of day at Steel Lard in November.

I'd done a bit of planning with paper templates and drawn up a rough layout for the French siege trenches on three sheets of hardboard. This week I've started building (or is it digging?).

The parapets of the trenches are sculpted from an off-cut of 25mm Kingspan insulation. I created a card template that I can use to make sure the ends of the parapets are the same shape so the three sections will go together in any order (although there is a specific order for my scenario and the bases are marked "L", "C", and "R" underneath to help with quick setting up).

I wanted to include a ruined building somewhere in the line of entrenchments and "Derelict Adobe House", an MDF model from Sarissa does the job nicely. I've mounted it on a sheet of foam core with a hole cut out to give the impression of a cellar beneath the ruined floorboards.

Each of the three sections will have a deeper emplacement. Two of these are likely to be artillery positions with the third used to keep engineers' stores.

The corners of the emplacements are reinforced using 3d printed gabions from Thingiverse. A few of the prints failed due to print-bed adhesion issues but this must gave me shorter gabions that I could fill with filler and cat litter!

The next step was to begin lining the trenches with duckboards and revetted sides made from wooden coffee stirrers.

The coffee stirrers mostly in place I've started smoothing out the revetments by adding a coating of quick-drying Polyfilla. I've also used thin card to create a paved path leading to the door of the ruined house. I want to find something else in the way of ruins (possibly a small shrine?) to add to the near right corner of this base. Any suggestions gratefully received!

 

The impetus to make a start on the entrenchments had actually come over the preceding weekend when I decided to grab some offcuts of foam core and Wills pantile sheet to make a destroyed version of my venerable "Spanish barn" (previously seen in the streets of Matamoros for the Cortina scenario as well as serving in the Peninsula). It's yet to be painted but I'm pleased with how it's gone and I'm considering adding it to the Puebla set-up.

That's all for now but look out for updates as the sappers continue to do their siege work.