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Sunday, April 25, 2021

Project Work has resumed

 

With work of refitting the basement pretty much done, time has been freed up to return to more important tasks - painting miniatures.


Next up in the queue are some 15mm US Vietnam forces for an upcoming club project.  These mini's are all from Battlefront and need to get painted over the course of May.  There's some light terrain work for the project.


It's nice to be able to have sometime to get back to the painting bench!

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

New Top for the Game Table

 

The venerable game table has a new top and some sporty wheels.  The old table was really beat up after 11+ years of gaming and high school robotics teams and just didn't look that good.


I remove the top and replaced it with 2 laminated sheets of 3/4 inch plywood with a nice walnut edge treatment.



I also ransacked the crap - I mean - treasure I had crammed inside it and have a lot of new storage space to work with.

Despite getting a nick walnut edging while carrying the top down to the basement, I think it looks grand and cant wait until I can host some games on it.  The nick is in the corner in the third picture/. Im thinking of using a bit of epoxy to cover it up. 

While carrying this top was a bit of a challenge, it's dead flat and will be a great play surface.

The old top looked like this.  The original design concept had the top on piano hinges so it could be opened to use as a drafting board and have storage underneath.  It might have been a sound idea in theory.  However, in practice it was never used as the top was awkward to lift and usually the table is covered in umm stuff.


The table is 41 and 1/4 inches high so just a little shorter than the previous version but a nice height to game at.

Next I want to build to extensions and bracket mounts to be able to have a larger than 8x4 playing area.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how this came out!


Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Stalingrad Project: Third Test Game


Last night up at the club, I we ran a third test game for Stalingrad.  For a change we used the Southern end of the board so this was the first time that section has seen in "action".  This first picture is taken from the Western (German) edge.  


A second shot looking on from the Volga river bank.  The overall table is 17 columns of 18 hexes each.  It took less than 30 minutes to set up - putting the hex column and row #'s on the back of the hexes really proved useful.  I realize that seems like a very silly detail to remark about but this game is designed to travel to conventions so set up complexity and timing are important factors.


The full table if 30 columns by 18 rows!

We had a light turn out so only two players for me to torture with my draft rules.  Both Greg and Ed were very gracious in letting me continue my self delusion that I am a rules writer.  


Artillery lands from both sides and causes havoc.  The artillery rules seems to work well. It pretty devastating when it lands!

We managed to get five turns in - the forces I laid out were likely to big to be handled by only two players

Greg's grenadiers launch a two platoon assault supported by a pair of Panzer II's.  The cleared out the building.

The Univermag Department store is very strongly defended by a Guards Rifle platoon plus a heavy machine gun section.

I tested some new aspects of the rules, some of which worked, some of which not so much.

Stuff that worked:

Command Cards:
The turn sequence is based on players alternating activating platoons.  I made up a deck of command cards for each side.  It proved to be very useful to keep track of who's moved what and each card had a minot special ability that a player could elect to use instead of moving a platoon.  They were limited to one special ability per turn.  I'll do a future post on the cards but it seemed to work really well.  The trick will be to refine the "special abilities" to be usefull and fun but not too powerful that they determine who wins.

Removal of the Auto Rally Phase:
Previous games had a separate rally phase were every unit that was either Shaken or Routed would roll to rally - that proved to be too effective.  Now, the only way to Rally is when the platoon activates so it cut down the rally rolls by half.

Game Pace: 
We only got in 5 turns over 2.5 hours but these were very big forces for two players to control and they were playing with new rules.  Each side had 14-15 maneuver platoons between their 3 infantry companies and support elements.  Urban environment terrain is also very complex with all of the line of sight checks so running 30 minutes per turn felt OK - I think it can get down to 20 minutes with some rules refinements and a lower unit "work-load" per player.  Most participation games run in a 4 hour time slot, of which the first 30 minutes are dedicated to introductions and a rules overview so you get roughly 3.5 hours of play time.  If I get it to 20 minutes a turn that will allow for 10-11 turns which should be plenty.  

Stuff that needs to be improved:

Movement: 
Currently Infantry has 4 Movement Points per turn and the terrain is pretty simple - 1MP for a clear / road hex, 2 MPs for a building / rubble.  The table is 18 hexes deep so it will take 5 - 6 turns to traverse without interference from the enemy.  I think I need to bump Infantry movement up to 6 MPs/turn and make corresponding adjustments for vehicles.  Games need to have a sense of movement to keep the pace up.

Close Assault Mechanics:
The current draft rules only allows units to mount a close assault (move into a defenders hex) if they start their activation adjacent to the target hex.  That is proving cumbersome and there are already rules for overwatch fire as units move.  I'm thinking of adding a feature to allow units to mount a "Hasty Assault" while moving or a "Deliberate Assault" is they start in an adjacent hex.  The deliberate assault would get some form of attack benefit which I need to figure out.  To be honest, this is a suggestion from Greg but I am more than happy to take credit for it.

Defensive Saves:
Fire combat is pretty simple - the attacker rolls a pool of D6 "Fire Power Dice" based on the type of units that are attacking and every 4+ is a hit, the defender rolls saves on those hits, with the 5+ base save augmented by terrain and entrenchment.  Their is an ability to stack these modifiers so defenders dave on anything but a "1" - I think I need to back that off to make any 1 or 2 rolled on a save a fail.  Ed played the Soviets and he is a natural burrower and dug in any chance he could get.  Ed is a very thematically correct Soviet player.  This one will require some thinking, which as you can surmise from my tortured prose is not something I'm all that good at.

I really do want to thank Ed and Greg again for being lab rats for my little passion project.  They are both very experienced gamers and provide great feedback and did so in a way that didn't make me cry (that much).  This  game is getting close to being "convention ready" and now all I'll need are some conventions!

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Weekend Basing Fun

 

Saturday afternoon and then Sunday morning was an epic basing session for both the Soviet and German Stalingrad armies.  The figures were purchased from GAJO Miniatures and look way better than what I can muster (and did for the most recent Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenger.


Two base scenicing methods were employed - my bog standard "country side" basing which uses a Vallejo texture gel - as pictured on these Soviets. 


Once the gel sets (about 8 hours) I mix up some craft paint to look kind of like Vallejo USA tan Earth.  The mix is roughly a quarter sized dollop of "Country Tan", a drop of "Burnt Umber" mixed with the same volume of water.  It's a pretty close match and way cheaper.

The bases are then painted and set aside to dry (takes about an hour.

The next step is adding some ground foam - i work with a pallet of 4 types of ground foam.  Each base receives a coating of Modge Podge matte medium applied with a brush, and then a sprinkling of ground foam.  I then hit the base with a spray of water to draw up the modge podge and then set aside to dry.

Here are some Germans all done.  2 full German infantry companies plus supports where based for the countryside

and some Soviets.  This session I added 2 full Soviet Rifle companies, which augment the 1 I did during the most recent Painting challenge.

The second method of basing is dead easy and used for urban / rubble bases.  The picture shows the 2 German infantry companies if prepared with this method.

The process is simple - layer the entire base with modge podge and then dunk the base in a mixtures of colored sanded tile grout and different types of model railroad ballast.  My came from the debris of making the hexes for Stalingrad.

Shake the bases to get rid of loose gravel and then take a soft brush (I liberated one of my wife make up brushes) and dust most of the tile grout powder that may be on the figures - leave a little as it's a nice form of weathering.  Once the figures are dusted, hit the entire base with a few water spritzes from a spray bottle and set aside to dry.  Once the grout sets, it's rock hard.  The bases look great and there is zero painting!

Here are two additional Soviet Infantry companies with urban bases.

I'm pretty much done with figures for Stalingrad - especially when I count the fantastic minis Tony painted up .

I've got 7 full Soviet Infantry Companies and 4 german plus Tony has another 3 German companies.

There still are some specialty figures to finish up.  I do need a few extra guns....








Thursday, April 1, 2021

New Tabletop for the Game Table

With the flooring done, the next project is to revamp the gaming table.  I've removed the old top, which was really, really beat up and am working on a nicer looking replacement


I want to reduce the height of the table back down to 41 inches.  The old table top was 47 inches high after the casters were installed.


Here's a shot of the old table top (and the awful old carpet)

Lots to do this weekend!