A nice antique shop find

Our recent trip to the North East included a visit to Owl and Pussycat Antiques in Whitley Bay, one of the Baroness's favourite shops. An advantage of visiting such places with an experienced antique buyer is that by throwing in something small with a larger purchase, you often get your small purchase thrown in for nowt.

On this occasion I found a few packs of Wargames Factory 28mm plastics and decided that some German tribesmen might find a place as mercenary muscle in Gangs of Rome.

The figures are just about the same size as the official Gangs of Rome miniatures from Wargames Atlantic, which is slightly disappointing as I'd have liked to see my Germans noticeably taller than their Roman citizen opponents!

They aren't the best models - a bit wooden in pose. I think I'll probably base them singly for use in Infamy Infamy. 

Looting on the streets of ancient Rome

Today I had a first, solo, go at using the Gangs of Rome skirmish rules from Footsore Miniatures & Games.  

Looking back at this blog I see that I purchased version 2 of the rules at Fiasco in October last year but the serious push to actually play has been on-going for just five weeks. Not bad going!

I set up a 3'x3' area using my Deep Cut Studio city mat (with some plywood and a metre rule defining the playing area as the mat is 4'x4').

The buildings are a mixture of actually-Roman stuff built for Christmas 2018's Dark Ages game, some buildings that looked vaguely believable because of their pantile roofs, and a few pieces knocked together recently.

While the set up was on the table, Postie arrived with a couple of additional MDF building kits; a temple and a granary from Warbases. More on these later!

Having just used the basic rules, I've found them to be fun and quite clever in places. For example. I was wondering why they have separate "Move" and "Climb" activations when the distance moved is the same in both cases. The answer is that the results of failure are different between the two.

Fail your die roll to Move and you just stay where you started, fail you roll to climb and you fall half the height you were attempting to reach and take damage accordingly. Cleverly, though, climbing a ladder is counted as a move so is safer and potentially quicker than shinning up the scaffolding elsewhere.

I used the first scenario in the book in its "Core Rules" configuration. Basically it's won by the side that gets the lion's share of four resource tokens scattered around the board. On this occasion the Green Gang led by Molendinarius were successful.

I think Gangs of Rome would make for a great Saturday Afternoon Wargame[TM], possibly even giving us a campaign to follow the soon-to-be-finished Siege of Hachigata series.

Upgrading the dice tower - Revised!

As things stand my recently completed dice tower is a little plain. 

It was always my plan that I improve the thing to make it sit a little more comfortably among a range of terrain types. Adding a Neodymium magnet to the front wall has allowed me to attach a couple of temporary fixtures.  

This first one goes down the generic fantasy route:

It's a plastic bit, probably Games Workshop I guess, that's been in the spare bits box for years. It's painted in a dark bronze, dry brushed with brass and then covered in my usual home-made verdigris wash.

Alternatively I can bring the tower into a more historical setting with this little window.

It's made from pieces of thin card and an off-cut of Wills plastic pantile sheet.

And, added since the original post, another generic fantasy option is this:

First Gangs of Rome models

Three weeks ago I took delivery of a box of Wargames Atlantic plastic Citizens of Rome. Having spent a fair chunk of the intervening time gluing and painting I'm now very nearly in a position to get started with the rules. In fact I've painted 19 figures; very nearly one a day.

As I reported previously, the box gives you enough parts to make 30 miniatures with the emphasis on gang members in combat poses.

However I did manage to produce a few figures that will pass for less violence-focussed civilians:

The 80mm sabot base identifies these miniatures as composing a "mob" into which fighters may disappear if things get too hot.

The ducks are some white metal castings that were sitting in my spares box awaiting a useful purpose. the racks of amphorae are 3D prints from Thingiverse.

Another mob base is this shepherd and his flock, obviously more relevant to rural games or to muckier parts of the city.

At the moment I don't really have any Rome-specific terrain so this photoshoot features my Warbases villa standing in as a large town house.

A mixture of homemade and Hovels resin-cast walls provide privacy to the senatorial family who live here. It seems they aren't at home as a number of ne'er-do-wells have penetrated the garden.

Fortunately the Vigiles Urbani are on the way:

I've found scribed Milliput to be the best way of making paved bases. Here we see a couple of vigiles bases, before and after painting. Each base gets a coat of Vallejo Basalt Grey before the individual stones are picked out with Pale Grey.

Shadows of plastic

The Gangs of Rome rulebook has been on my shelf for a few months but I've now taken the plunge and bought a box of the Wargames Atlantic plastics that tie in with the rules:

The box contains five identical frames each allowing the construction of six 28mm miniatures. However, there's plenty of variety in there. They are divided at the waist so you can mix and match torsos with abdomens/legs. There are well over a dozen, I think all different, heads per sprue and a fine selection of arms with and without various weapons.

In addition, a quick comparison suggests that spare heads from my Victrix Republican- and Late Romans will match very comfortably with these Wargames Atlantic models. Legionary helmets in particular may be useful in turning some of these guys into Vigiles Urbani.

I've got a couple of figures, built straight from the box, on the workbench now and they seem to go together and paint up very nicely.  

If there's any disappointment it's with the mix of poses provided. My understanding is that a player starting Gangs of Rome will want about ten gang members to do the actual fighting and twenty-odd civilian types on "mob" bases to represent the more-or-less law abiding citizens of the city. 

This set will give you thirty figures in very dynamic, combat-oriented poses. Whilst there are a number of "empty" arms, and a couple carrying amphorae, I'd like to have seen some more statically posed models to represent the crowds of onlookers that play such a significant part in the game.

Given the need to allow for mixing a small number of basic poses, it was never going to be practicable for Wargames Atlantic to provide us with both male and female characters in this set but fortunately they do a fine range of suitable white metal miniatures. I can see another order going in soon!

Haulin' our asses from Manassas

On Saturday I had Ron and Mark come over to try a first playtest of Running from Bull Run with live victims... sorry, volunteers.

This was the first time I'd set up the game on a 6'x4' table. 

Running along the table is the Warrenton Turnpike, at the far end of which is the Cub Run where some Union engineers were working on the bridge.

It turned out that Ron had driven along this road a few years ago. Mark and I learned some interesting stuff about the operation of toll roads in the USA!

The game began with various wagons strung out along the road and among them four clumps of fleeing  Union soldiers. As the Union player, Mark's aim was to organise them into a coherent rearguard. By doing so he might perhaps salvage some personal renown from the disaster and maybe mark himself out for higher command later in the conflict.

Ron's role was that of Fate. He would control all of those factors conspiring to make life difficult for the retreating boys in blue (and often grey too - in these early days of the war national uniform colours have yet to become established).

One such factor that made an early appearance (determined by Ron's drawing Event Cards) was the Black Horse Cavalry. This greatly feared confederate unit caused a couple of groups of Union soldiers to rout in panic before they were revealed to be in fact stampeding artillery draft horses!

Despite this, Mark did manage to organise some Union units into, albeit fragile, fighting stance. This was just in time as Sergeant Dexter Slab turned up with a group of Confederate infantry.

Mark thought the two Groups of Union infantry he'd managed to rally could take on Slab's Rebs, particularly if he could rally off some more Shock before the range closed too much.

Unfortunately at this point the Union commander's status was somewhat reduced when he trod in a pile of day-old racoon shit.

The bandage marker indicates the leader's
reduced status

Mark was some what peeved...

Fortunately Mark was able to get a couple of stragglers from the 13th New York to manhandle over an abandoned water bowser and clean off the crap!

As Mark got his Union battle line formed up they found themselves facing a similar Confederate formation let by Lt Jessop West.

It looked like the Confederates, with an advantage in terms of the amount of Shock taken, would be victorious in the coming firefight but then they fell victim to a "damp powder" random event.

The "fouled barrels" marker doing duty to
show "damp powder".

Another Union group joined in from the turnpike.

Lt West was injured by a stray Minié ball.

In the end, after about four hours of leisurely play (including tea breaks) we reached to end of the scenario with the exhaustion of the Event Card deck. Counting the ratio of routed or dead Union troops to rallied ones, I declared a Confederate victory.

It's very difficult, after just a couple of test runs, to have a real handle on the balance of the scenario in terms of either side being able to win but I'm reasonably happy with the way the victory conditions incentivise play that recreates the historical narrative.

I'll be making a few tweaks to the scenario before the next test:

• Restructuring the game as two Union players versus two Fate players,
• Adding a fourth Union Leader (a sergeant with a special knack for finding stragglers), 
• Reducing the card count slightly by adding one of the late-arriving wagons to the initial traffic jam, and
• Creating some more options for the Fate players when it comes to using command flags.

A first run from Bull Run

Today I essayed a first, tentative, alpha test of my Steel Lard scenario Running from Bull Run. 

It's an exploration of the Union retreat after the first battle of Bull Run in 1861. The emphasis is on the Union players attempting to impose some kind of order on the fleeing troops. An officer who can march back to Washington at the head of a formed body of troops, rather than as just one man among a fleeing multitude, may be destined for greater things in the battles to come!

I didn't lay out the full terrain this time - just enough to get the basic mechanisms tested.

This is quite different to just designing a Sharp Practice scenario. Because I'm dealing with troops who are effectively already routing, I'm pretty much designing a new game. The first contact between what I thought was a pretty good plan and the wargames table has already led to a load of changes!

I wanted to capture the impression of a road crowded with fleeing men and vehicles. I think this worked reasonably well....

At one point a few Confederate pursuers made an appearance. Led by Lt Jessop West, they let fly a volley needing 5s and 6s to hit. Rolling ten dice they could surely expect some success...

...or perhaps not.

The Black Horse Cavalry kicked up some dust. More on them as play-testing proceeds.

I'm reasonably pleased with how this is going. If it proves to be a functional scenario it may also see the light of day at Posh Lard in November. The drive down to Peterborough in the morning is a chore, being directly into the rising sun, but it's always a good laugh and great to catch up with Mike Whitaker and the Posh Crew.  In the meantime I'm hoping to get in a first test with actual players this weekend.

Painting horses - colour recipes

Richard Phillips pointed me to a Youtube channel, I think it was called something like "Loki's Great Hall", that had an excellent series of tutorials on painting 28mm horses. The creator used Vallejo acrylics and because that's the range I mostly use, it was really useful. Sadly the channel seems to have disappeared.

Russian dragoons - a chestnut nearest the camera,
a brown behind it.

Fortunately, though, I scribbled down some of the recipes. I'm sharing them here in case they're of use to anyone and as a bit of insurance in case I lose the piece of paper.

In each case there are three colours in order from darkest to lightest. The technique is to base coat the horse in the darker colour and them gradually apply layers with the lighter colours applied to increasingly smaller areas that are higher up and/or catch the light more. These layers are applied as follows:

• Layer 1 - first colour
• Layer 2 - 50% first colour + 50% second colour
• Layer 3 - second colour
• Layer 4 - 50% second colour + 50% third colour
• Layer 5 - third colour.

My usual technique for mains and tails is to paint them in the base colour and, at the end, dry brush over the third colour.

For anyone who's interested, these are the recipes I captured:

Liver Chestnut:

1. German Camo Black Brown 822
2. Hull Red 985
3. Mahogany Brown 846

Standard Chestnut:

1. Hull Red 
2. Cavalry Brown 982
3. Red Leather 818

Bay:

Paint as a standard or liver chestnut but with black stockings, main, tail, and ear tips. The colour recipe for the black parts is Black, Black Grey, Basalt Grey)

Red or Golden Chestnut:

1. Cavalry Brown 982
2. Red Leather 818
3. Orange Brown 981

Brown:

1. German Camo Medium Brown 826
2. Beige Brown 875
3. Cork Brown 843

Brown (alternative):

1. Leather Brown 871
2. Mahogany Brown 846
3. Beige Brown 875

Palamino:

1. Splinter Blotches II 347
2. Feldgrau Highlight 339
3. Light Mud 315

Palamino main and tail:

1. Dark Sand 847
2. Pale Sand 837
3. Off White

Black:

1. Matt Black 950
2. Black Red 859 or Black Green 980

Black main and tail - black with Black Grey 863 highlights.

Grey:

1. Deck Tan 986
2. Silver Grey 883
3. White Grey 993

Grey main and tail - Pale Sand highlighted with Off White.

Grey horse's nose:

1. Rose Brown 803
2. Beige Red 804
3. Salmon Rose 825

Note that where horses have white markings on the foot, the hoof is paler. I've seen a horse with a tiny white marking on part of the foot and a corresponding pale band on the the bit of the otherwise dark hoof below it.  "Loki" recommended two hoof colour recipes:

• Dark - Burnt Umber and US Field Drab
• Light - Beige Brown and Brown Sand

Tigers 3 and 4

The third of the Louisiana Tigers miniatures is somewhat different from the run-of-the-mill.

This is another in my series of miniatures-cobbled-together-from-bits. In this case Warlord Games Ancient Briton legs and War of the Spanish Succession torso, mated with Perry ACW arms, head and cartridge case.

The aim was to capture the feel of a Zouave who's discarded his blue jacket and is instead wearing his red undershirt and non-uniform trousers.

I'm going to revisit the paint job slightly. The stockings into which his trousers are tucked need to be in a slightly more contrasting colour.

Figure four started out as a stain-painting experiment. His flesh and blue jacket were painted with heavily watered-down acrylics over a white undercoat. 

I applied a mid-brown wash over the whole miniature.

I'm not particularly happy with the result but he'll look OK when ranked up with twenty-odd similar figures.

 

Tiger 2

The second of my Louisiana Tiger zouaves is done! 

This is similar to the first in painting style. I have actually done the jacket using a three-colour approach. The base colour is Vallejo Dark Blue with Intense Blue shadows and the highlights done by adding a little white to the Dark Blue. The result is quite subtle when seen in real life and even more so in photographs.

The trouser stripes are in Intense Blue and I'm quite pleased with the effect. I've used a brown wash on the gaiters and haversack.

Figure 3 was going to be an attempt at using the stain-painting technique (a predecessor to commercially available "speed paints") but the lack of large areas on single colour on these figures means it's not really achieving much. Look out for a significant departure from the approach so far in the next figure!

Tiger Tiger!

Richard Phillips kindly sent me some Perry's ACW sprues among which were some zouaves. In fact three whole Sharp Practice Groups' worth of zouaves (24 figures with a few left over for NCOs and an officer) . I plan to paint them up as Louisiana Tigers. They can be used for my The Battle of Patriot Run game and to play Mark Backhouse's Three Days With The Tigers mini-campaign from WSS issues 91 and 92. 

It occurs to me that with 26 figures to paint and about 26 weeks to go until Steel Lard, I could do one a week and see how my painting changes. I won't say "improves" because I suspect I'll grow to hate painting striped Zouave trousers and start to simplify the process!

Here's the first one I've done.

It's more or less block painted. The only three-colour work is on the face using my usual mix of Saddle Brown, Medium Flesh, and Dark Flesh (all from Vallejo). I think I also highlighted the folds on the jackets but it's pretty subtle.

There seems to be a huge amount of dispute about the Tigers' uniforms. Blue or brown jackets? Or maybe blue jackets that faded to brown because of poor quality dye? Full Zouave-style lacing or just red trim around the edges of the jackets? Fezzes with or without turbans? With red or blue tassels? And was the whole unit in the  Zouave uniform or just one company?

It might be interesting to try some alternative painting techniques. Stay tuned for future episodes.

More ACW developments

With Crisis Point out of the way and with Andy T seemingly well on top of the planning for our Joy of Six game, I find myself increasingly focussed back onto Sharp Practice in general and the American Civil War in particular.

My plan this year is to put on a game at Steel Lard that doesn't require ridiculous amounts of specially built terrain. I don't want to get hyper-focussed on one project to the exclusion of actually enjoying my gaming and I really can't afford the storage space for a large amount of new terrain. 

The plan, then, is to create a game that uses my existing ACW collection and little or no scenario-specific terrain pieces. That game is provisionally titled Running From Bull Run. It's inspired by this painting:

I want to create a game where most of the players represent Union officers struggling to put together some sort of ordered rear-guard in the chaotic aftermath of defeat in the first pitched battle of the war.

It seems like a good idea to take advantage of the space available at Patriot Games and the fact that I now have two very nice Geek Villain mats to create a long table (12'x4') depicting the Warrenton Turnpike, down which the Union troops are fleeing. I already have enough road sections and a river and bridge that can represent Cub Run and disguise the join between the two mats.

Game rules are in development - I'll certainly need to find a different way of handling morale as any reasonable assessment says the Union Force Morale has already reached zero!

-o0o-

The other consideration for Steel Lard is that I don't want to find myself in the position (again) of having to put on an emergency game because a game-runner's had to drop out at the last minute. Inevitably the players in any such game get a little short-changed.

My plan, then, is that Running From Bull Run can be replaced, using more-or-less exactly the same forces and terrain, by The Battle of Patriot Run.  This would be a fictional, up-to-four-a-side battle still using Sharp Practice but designed for minimal umpiring complexity. The presence of a river (the Patriot Run of the title) dividing the battlefield into two halves would allow the game to run as two parallel, smaller games to keep the action moving.

Having said that I don't want to get involved in building loads of new stuff, I do have some unpainted figures and want a variety of troop types either retreating down the turnpike or in line of battle astride Patriot Run.

After a little research I decided to paint some Perry plastics as the 13th New York Infantry, a unit that at Bull Run was in grey uniforms with pale blue trim and dark blue kepis.

Next to the drummer stands a white metal officer kindly provided by Richard Phillips. Obviously they're all yet to be properly based. Some more of these guys and some RP-provided zouaves are also on the list of things to paint.

-o0o-

The final ACW project that I need to work on right now is the Muddy River play-by-email campaign. It got delayed while Richard was working away from home and I need to spend a few hours detailed study to remind myself where we're up to in the story. I do want to get the campaign completed so I can properly report here on how things transpired. Keep an eye out for developments!