Jungle Terrain 2.0: 1st Test Piece

 The 1st test for my new Jungle terrain concept is done.  I'm very pleased with it.  The vines were a last minute addition.  I did two trees with vines and one without for comparison and the I think they are really worth the extra effort.  I'll be adding them to all the trees.

I still need to wash the rock (which is made of cork bark) and dull coat and wash some of the plastic plants but this is a promising method.

Some flowering tufts will be added to provide a bit of color variation - it can't always be a "green-hell".  Making jungle terrain is a lot of fun as there is a great deal of creative freedom and green is still my favorite color.

While the lightings poor, here's a comparison to my previous jungle terrain.  The new method (left) is a lot less dense plant wise and that's one purpose.  I noticed in game play with the old jungle terrain, players would treat it as impassible terrain not because of the rules but because the terrain was so dense it was hard to manipulate figures in it.  The game table essentially became a curved maze with the borders of the jungle terrain acting like the walls.  It was a classic case of form over function. 

I'll be redoing the old jungle scatter terrain to match the new concept.  It shouldn't be that hard and I'll likely end up with a lifetime supply of tiny plastic plants.  Win-Win!

I just need to figure out how to pack some of these up and send them to a certain snowlord in the great white north.

Please give me some comments on the new-style jungle.  I'll be entering "production-mode" soon.....

Finally Back to the Workbench: Jungle Terrain

 It's been a very hectic and harrowing time the last few weeks but I did get sometime back on the work bench Saturday morning.  I wanted to take another go at making Jungle scatter terrain.  I made a bunch back in 2018 that were actually pretty nice but after seeing some videos from the You Tube channel T-T Lenny's Terrain & Gaming Tables, I knew what I had done in the past could be made sooooo much better using the same materials.  The first picture shows the progress on some test pieces.

The bases for the terrain are made from my new goto terrain material 1/8 inch (or 3mm) PVC sheet.  It's cheap, light, very durable and doesn't warp.  One does have to score the tops to ensure ground texture and glue adhere but after that it's a no brainer to use.

 I'm going to need a lot of trees.  These are  plastic palm trees I picked up on Amazon.  They very cheap at less than $0.35 per tree and range in sizes from 3" to 10".  They do require a little work to get into shape which I'll outline below.

This is about half of trees I've painted up.  Why so many?  It seems I need to make terrain for both myself and a certain snowlord, who shall remain nameless.  He keeps texting me saying "It puts the ground foam on the base". 

Kind of creepy.

Another new tool in my hobby arsenal are these "camouflage" spray paints from Rust-Oleum.  They are intended for outdoor use, cover plastic and metal well and have very nice, matte earth tone colors.   I was hoping they would spray camo pattern which would be useless for modeling small scale stuff but pretty much a 100 on the "Cool" meter.

A comparison of two of the Palm trees pre and post base painting with the camo sprays.  The one on the right is unpainted and how they arrive "in-the-box" and the one on the left has been spray painted.  The palm leaves pop right off and its important to separate them.  The trunk was sprayed tan by holding the bases mounting pin and spraying up along the trunk (bottom to top).  The Palm leaves were spray from the top down, which left the darker unpainted plastic side unpainted.  It gives a nice shadow effect.  I think the fancy name for this effect is zeniful painting or some other overly complex term.

 Once dry, the trees get a nice ink-wash.  The trunks were washed with a brown umber.  The leave got a forrest green ink wash.  The two left most trees have been washed while the one on the right has not.  I think they came out looking great and it wasn't very hard to do.  This is also a project that is well served by doing things in big batches.

Safety tip (or marriage protection advice):  make sure you're wearing old clothes and an apron or smock when washing the leaves.  The brushing motion pushes down on the leaves and then they spring back flinging tiny but visible droplets of green ink.  When the ink hits unprotected clothing you have created a permanent "clothing tattoo" of your hobby experience.  Normally such artistic discovery is something to be celebrated but, strangely, a spouse can frown upon such things - especially if said article of clothing is brand new.  Of course, I can not disclose how I came to know such information.  It's all very hush-hush - I'm sure you understand.

Some ground texturing tests on the PVC.  I use pre mixed flexible tile grout as a basic ground texture.  For the elevations I'll used some sculptamold with brown paint as an under layer and will eventually cover with the tile grout

So here's where we are at the moment.  The next step will be to finish texturing with tile grout. 

The Palm trees cam with a bunch of small trees that will be perfect for 15-6mm stuff.  I know of a certain wargaming campaign that just kicked off which will need some bayou terrain....

NOLA Campaign Kicks Off

With things around the house returning to normal, I've had some time to finally gets my campaign rules organized and kick off the NOLA campaign at the club.

I was very fortunate to get 8 club members signing up to play in the campaign.  These test subjects -oops- "players".  The are 4 French players: Napoleon, Lannes, Soult and old baldy himself Davout.  Opposing them is an un easy alliance between the US (Jackson and Scott) and the British (Wellington and Crawford).  The sides are roughly equal in size but there are a lot of minor allies they'll be trying to influence to join their cause.  Both sides have roughly 100K troops to deploy and the sum total of all the minor allies can add up to 30K troops in total.  Given how the diplomacy system works not all those troops will come into plays and the sides should get maybe 5-10K each.

While an invasion of US by Napoleon is a rather silly scenario, during the war of 1812 there was a furious diplomatic effort to woo different Native American tribes and even the Baratarian Pirates (Jean Lafette) by each side.  For this campaign there will be 4 Native American tribes, the Baratarian Pirates, Texicans and even the Spanish that each side can try to enlist over the course of the campaign.

I'm really happy with the rules but this is the first time they'll be used on the table top.  I suspect there will be a lot of opportunities for improvement.  The rules may actually get published of assuming I don't get tarred and feathered by my players.   The risk of that form of retribution is non-zero, so I enter this campaign with some trepidation.

One thing I added at the last minute was personality traits and a set of secret objectives for each players characters.  These rules are completely optional but playing along with them will earn the player personality points which will be used to award the highest scoring general with the coveted MVP award.  MVP stands for either the "Most Valuable Player" or "Most Vile Player" depending on the personality traits of their character.  Some of the generals are not the most reputable of characters.

The majority of the traits are structured to encourage the players to get into tabletop battles.  One thing I've noticed when playing a campaign is that a player who is normally very aggressive in a single battle style of game can suddenly become rather timid in a campaign as outcomes matter for the next turn.  Your's truly has that affliction.  Hopefully these rules get the guys to mix it up a bit. 

Reporting on the campaign will be hard as there is a lot of hidden movement but I'll keep the blog updated and do a full turn by turn report and also list out all the things that need to be improved in the rules.  I suspect that will be a very long list.

Turn 1 order submissions are due soon!

Fistful of Tows, Dice Rolling Woes and Superior Terrain

 Despite a fairly awful last few weeks, I was able to get up to the club for a game last night, which was a welcome respite.

Tony brought the troops and rules, which in this case was 6mm micro armor and the rules were the ww2 version of Fistful of Tows.  We brought the terrain which is his stunning hex based terrain using the GHQ 4" wide terrain tiles.

Despite a spectacular looking game a and good rules the dice rolling on all sides was atrocious.  I rolled 3 1's while rolling 3 D6 (1's are bad in this rule system).

The dice rolling was so bad that all parties agreed to never speak of the game again but we can still marvel at Ed's wonderful terrain.

Yeah, I think a new terrain project is in the offing for me.....

Wings of Glory

 I played my first game of Wings of Glory, a WWI aircraft combat game.  It's a very intuitive game with simple mechanics but a lot of fun to play.  It's like X-Wing for WWI, but I think it plays cleaner and has a lot more maneuver options.  Each type of plane has a deck of 25 of so cards that have different types of maneuver options.

I really liked the game and its one I think I can get my son interested in playing.

A very fun day

New Campaign at the Club

With our Waterloo campaign coming to a close (and likely defeat for the French, who have me as Grouchy), it's time to start up another Napoleonic Campaign.

I've always wanted to run a campaign, so have volunteered to do so.  This campaign will be focused on a rather silly idea of Napoleon invading the US and will use a set of campaign rules that I've been working on.  Pray for my fellow club members who are now subjected to my whims dreams of rules writing grandeur.

Why the silly scenario?  Well, last summer at Historicon, my hypothetical invasion of Britain game (To Catch a King) proved 4 out of 5 times that Napoleon would have won so naturally he would attempt to re-possess Louisiana as his next move.  Seems logical to me.  Then again, I'm a moron.

In reality, I'm hoping to run the campaign relatively quickly - (within 6 weeks) to refine the rules and see if it's feasible to run a campaign during the course of Historicon's 3 days where the details of the battles are based on how the campaign plays out.

Pictured above is the campaign map, which is based off a period map of the British Gulf campaign during the War of 1812.  This scenario has the french invading from Port-au-Prince (the bottom center box).  Napoleon will have an army of 75,000 men to invade the new world.  Opposing him are two separate forces - The US army under Jackson and the British Exile Force, or BEF, under Wellington.  For game play purposes both sides will be fairly even which implies the US built up its armed forces prior to the campaign.  It's a stretch, but I'm making this thing up anyway.

The campaign will also feature 7 potential minor allies that both sides can try to woo with diplomatic actions.  These allies include:

The Spanish
Jean Lafitte and his Baratarian Pirates
Texicans (cause why not?)
4 different Native American Tribes
- Seminole
- Upper Creek
- Lower Creek
- Choctaw

I'll use the blog to report general progress of the campaign but because there is hidden movement will wait until it's completed before going into detailed moves.

I really do want to get this done is six weeks, which means tight deadlines for turns.  One of the biggest problems with gaming campaigns is they start off with great enthusiasm but players can loose interest if things drag on and/or their position appears hopeless.  Let's see if we can avoid that.

Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge X: Three weeks of Painting

It's been a productive three weeks.  My first submission for the Challenge was these 3 Russian generals from AB Miniatures in 18mm scale.  As I've said many times before AB makes the best 15/18mm Napoleonic miniatures around.  Old Glory's Blue Moon line is a close second and may pip them on value but AB's have stolen my heart. 

 Next up some 28mm WW1 Sailors formed into a Landing Party.  These are for to use with both the upcoming Blood and Valor skirmish game plus a convention game concept I'm working on that may see the light of day at Fall In 2020.

Next up Some Austrians and Russians.  From left to right for the Austrians are 2, 24 figure Austrian infantry Battalions, 10 skirmish stands, 3 batteries and 6 generals.   These are almost all Old Glory figures.  Next we have some Russian command stands and 12 artillery batteries, all from AB Miniatures.  When the Challenge is over I'll do a review of my entire 15mm Napoleonic collection, which now has forces for the French, British, Spanish, Portuguese, Austrians, Russians and US (War of 1812).  Sadly the Prussians are missing - I suspect that will be remedied over the course of 2020.  The club is thinking of doing a Napoleon in Egypt project so there may also be some early French and Ottomans/Mamlukes joining the ranks.

 A space Marine for one of the "X-Marks-the-Spot locales.

 Some 28mm Aztecs, cause I had them on hand

Another X-marks the spot submission in the form of Swedish Dragoons from the wonderful "By Fire and Sword" game system.

Lastly, some War of 1812 miniatures in 15mm from Old Glories Blue Moon line.  A bunch of US commanders and two large calvary groups - US light Dragoons in the front and Mounted KT rifles in the back.  You'll be seeing a lot more of these chaps in a few weeks.  In the lover right are 10 stands of Native Americans.

I would like to leave this post with a plug for Old Glory and their "Army Card" subscription option.  Old Glory make very nice and affordable figures but they also have an option to pay an annual fee of $50.00 and get a 40% discount on the entire line - thats 40% off already reasonable prices.  It's the best deal I know off and one you should take advantage off if you're building out just about any army in 15 - 18mm scale.  Thanks Old Glory!

First Game of the Year: NUTS!

I played in my first game of 2020 last night at the club.  Greg ran some "teaching" games of the WW2 skirmish ruleset NUTS!  It was nasty Russian vs even nastier Germans.  Keith and I were Russian players and we faced of against Dave and Tony

The game is a very tactical depiction of WW2 with some RPG elements thrown in.  Your commander is meant to represent you and each figure can have unique attributes.  We kept it all pretty generic for the first game.

To be honest, I was a little leery of the game as I tried to read the rule book and found it to be very hard to understand.  My concerns were misplaced, I really enjoyed the gameplay and look forward to playing again.

There are all sorts of rules that make getting your commander killed outright pretty hard.  Tony and I managed to blow past all of those protections as the first casualty for each side was our respective commanders.

Can't wait to try the game again.

What's on the Painting Bench?

Lots of US war of 1812 mounted figures - Generals, Dragoons and Mounted Kentucky Rifles.  Oh - and some Native Americans

All of the figures are 15mm from Old Glory's Blue Moon line.

There's a bunch more to do.

AHPC X: Week 3 Update

We are now almost 3 weeks into the X'th version of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge so I thought I'd put out a short update on my progress.

As the incomprehensible graph shows, I'm very slightly ahead of plan (the bars) but a bit behind past years production (the lines).  As with all past Challenges the composition of what I'm actually painting bears little resemblance to what I thought I would be doing. 

One big thing that has changed is my original goal for this Challenge was to paint up all the figures I need to put on a game at Cold Wars this March.  It was a difficult but tough personal challenge.  Unfortunately some looming work issues may require more of my attention than usual and I was uncomfortable committing to a project where people might sign up to play only to turn around and bail on them because of work.  I still like the game concept and will delay it for Fall In later this year.

I still have a lot of painting to prep for Historicon so there's plenty to do!