Rulesets for Ancients

Historicon is coming up and with it, my annual buying binge in the Vendor's hall, also known as the "Pit of  Financial Despair" by my lovely wife.  Rather than fall victim to the wily marketing pitches and glamorous vendor "super-model" spokespersons, I thought a little preparation would be in order.  I've got my eye on the 28mm Warlord Imperial Romans, but need some advice on an ancients ruleset - hence the poll to the upper right of the blog.  My son has gotten into, shudder, GW's Warhammer and is building a chaos army so I also plan to use my future stout Romans to battle him as a stand in fantasy force.

I really like the Warlord Romans, but am not that interested in Celts as foes - any recommendation for 28mm foes such as Parthians or others would be appreciated.

One note of Historicon, I think I may be one of the few, but I still wish it was being held in Baltimore - I could have traveled to and stayed on my boat rather than a 2hr car ride and hotel.   Perhaps "The Wire" wasn't the tourism boom Baltimore hoped it would be?

Architects of War: Garden Test Build

I was recently asked by Ernie, over at Architects of War, to do a test build of some of one of his new scenery products, "the Garden".  It's a nicely done kit that consists of a resin base, 8 castings for crops, a bucket, seed bag, hoe, and a scarecrow.  To the left is a picture of the finished product with some 28mm Perry French next to it for scale.  The kit also comes with a very nicely done instruction manual (7 pages) and a plastic pipette for applying diluted glue.

The quality of the resin casting was superb, I couldn't see any bubbles and just needed to trim some very minor flashing off one side - it required only two cuts of the Xacto knife to clean up.

The metal castings were nearly flash free - the only thing that needed to be cleaned up were the casting stringers at various points - I'm sure there is a better technical term for those!  I really like the scarecrow casting - it adds a nice but understated bit of whimsy to the piece.  The crop castings were also well done.  The crops in the garden are (from left to right in the middle and bottom pictures), a row of cabbages (cast in the resin), a row of tobacco, some carrots, a pumpkin vine and some zuchini.

The instruction manual was very well done and serves as a great tutorial for how to build scenery.  I picked up several dry-brushing techniques reading them.  It's rare to see a manual as informative as this one in any kit these days.

I think this type of scenery piece has some uses in skirmish gaming as an objective for marauders or forage parties to seize.  It can also serve as an "atmosphere setting" for larger, set-piece battles.  All-in-all, I really enjoyed assembling and painting up the garden and look forward to getting it on the table in the coming days.  I would recommend taking a look at the Architects of War website.

Using Carpet Pad for Figure Storage

An alternative title for this post might have been "Lemonade from Lemons".  Yesterday, my son and I finished cutting and installing a carpet pad and rug that my wife recently acquired.  My retirement sailboat continues to get shorter and shorter, but I digress.

Anyway there was some carpet padding left over - 2, 12'x1' strips and I thought it might be useful for the hobby.  The carpet pad is foam based but seems to grip objects fairly well, which hopefully can reduce transit damage.

The design is very simple - a plastic box that is lined with the padding.  The sectional dividers are strips of foam core that are also lined with the padding.  I used wood or yellow glue to attach the padding.

The joinery for the dividers are simple notches as they are simple to cut and allow for dividers to be removed to accommodate larger models.  Total construction time was 30 minutes but about half of that was me thinking about what to do.  Since everything was made from scraps the total cost of the project was negligible.  The plastic box is made by "Really Useful Boxes" which I find to really useful in figure storage (forgive the pun).

Out of curiosity, I called the oriental rug store and the owner indicate that he also has padding that is not perforated and I was welcome to rummage through his scrap bin.  I was thinking that foam padding might also make good flexible roads.  I'm not sure how the padding will hold paint / flock, but who can pass up the opportunity to root around a rubbish bin!  I'll let you know what I find.

School Project: Da Vinci Tank

My son had a school project to make a model out of one of Da Vinci's inventions.  He chose the tank and you can see the results to the left.  The project was for his French class so I'm not sure why Da Vinci, other than he did live in France for a bit.  Oh well, I don't get the new math either.

Sean is planning to use the tank with his warhammer armies so he'll be concocting some rules over the weekend.

The tank is made from a disposable pie tin and came out very nicely.  It's also nice that my frequent justification for wargaming expenditures - "it's educational" actually has some merit to it now!

6mm ACW: Black Powder Test Game II

I've made a good bit of progress on building out my collection of 6mm ACW figures and terrain.  The picture to the left shows a test game I've set up to get a better understanding of the Black Powder ruleset.  The painted Union forces consist of 28 infantry regiments, 4 calvary regiments and 20 artillery batteries.  Each base equals one regiment or battery.  The Confederate force is a bit smaller, with 24 infantry regiments, 4 calvary regiments and 14 artillery batteries.  It's a total of 1,852 painted figures!  This force size allows for games pitting 2 Divisions for each side against one another.

This is a picture of the Confederate left flank, which is anchored on a wooded hill and is defended by a brigade of infantry and 2 batteries.  A calvary reserve can be seen in towards the rear.

I'm using regiments as the base unit.  Normally with Black Powder, each unit would consist of 4-6 stands that can be arranged to form columns / lines / squares etc.  I wanted to keep the base unit fairly small (60x30mm) so there are no individual stands. To compensate, I made up some formation counters for march and attack columns.  While not that attractive, they are clear and serve to space the units out accordingly.  The picture above shows a Union Brigade in March Column moving up to support the developing attack in the center.

I also made counters for other Black Powder specific status levels such as "Dis-Ordered" and "Shaken".  The red squares with numbers will be used for casualty markers.

The scenery has been enhanced with my first tries at building 6mm "scale" forest and wall sections.  The forrest are made using 1"-2" high Woodland Scenics tree armatures and clump foliage.  I also tried my hand at making stone fence sections using thin plastic cut in 4mm high strips and glued to a base.  The wall section is N-Scale railroad ballast that's attached to the plastic strip with white glue.  I spent about 45 minutes planning and making the 3 120mm sections and I think they came out pretty well.  I add some more later this week.  I doubt I'll try to make split rail fencing as that may be too small for me.

Lastly, there was a small bit of progress on the naval side as I based the ships.  I used a pointed base layout to help players readily understand where the bow is - some of the ironclads are a bit hard to tell. The shortest base has some gloss medium stippled on as a test to simulate waves and such.

The play test today went well, but it wasn't a full battle - just a bit of pushing bases around to get a better understanding of the rules.  I'll be hosting a few games later this summer so it helps to know the rules.  More importantly, I really need to get a firm grip of the BP rules by July as I'll also be helping my friend, Ernie, stage his Black Powder game at Historicon "Black Powder in the Peninsular".  Heres a link to his website that describes the game:

http://greenstuffandbrass.blogspot.com/2010/05/historicon-2010-game.html

Mulberry's and Terrapins

It's been an eventful weekend, nature wise, here at the Lair.  We began to harvest mulberries from our mulberry trees and the place has been over-run with nesting Terrapin Turtles.  Terrapin amphibious turtles that are native to Maryland and are a smallish version of a snapping turtle.  The ones we're seeing are about a 12 - 14 inches long.

First the Mulberries.  As you can see in the pictures below, mulberries grow on trees and are very tasty- especially in pies or jams.  Harvesting them is relatively easy - lay out a tarp under the tree shake the branches and there-you-go.  We got about 2 gallons of the berries today and hopefully a bit more next weekend.  I'd like to take credit for the planting the trees but they were on the property when we bought it.

As I said before, Terrapins are native to Maryland and are the mascot of the University of Maryland, whose motto is "Fear the Turtle".  Perhaps not as intimidating as a Maryland defensive lineman, they are both very interesting and rather reclusive creatures.  We usually see only one or two a year, but have never seen four in one day.  It's prime egg laying season and we do the best we can not to disturb the guys and gals as they go about producing more.  Every now and then we have to get one out of the pool (as was the case in the first picture with my son).  They like the pool - lots of bugs and frogs to eat and warm water.  I don't think the pool chemicals are the best for them so we try not to let them take up residence too long.

Workbench Improvements

I've made a few changes to my work-bench area.  The first is organizational in nature.  This may surprise you, but I can be very sloppy when modeling (it's a shocking revelation and one that, I'm sure, is quite foreign to your own modeling efforts).  In addition to annoying the spousal unit, I do waste a good deal of time looking for tools, paint etc.  A few months earlier I had re-organized my garage and woodworking tools and ended up with an unused tool cabinet, which is perfect for a modeler's storage needs.  The cart is on wheels, is incredible sturdy and comes in a very dapper Craftsman red.  (It's actually about 12 years old, but Craftsman is top-of-the-line stuff).  One of my storage closets has a space to roll the cart in so cleaning up for company or a game night is easy.

Here's a picture with some of the drawers open - The top drawer is for basing materials, glues and plastic / brass stock.  The second drawer is for tools / brushes, The 3rd and 4th store paint.  The 5th drawer has unbuilt models.  The 6th and last drawer (unopened) is used to store scenic materials.  I use a similar approach for modeling at our weekend place, but with a smaller tool cabinet and have found it really helps keep me organized.  I'm also hoping that the relatively small space for unbuilt models will keep the lead pile down to a reasonable level.  We'll see about that...  There was one, unexpected, side benefit of organizing the cabinet - I "discovered" some tools and models that I forgot I had!

I also picked up a small natural light lamp from micro mark.  It makes a huge difference when painting and takes up very little space.  The unit folds closed when not in use.  I should have added better lighting ages ago.  The lighting also helps with taking better pictures.

The last addition may seem a bit mundane, but it matters.  I've discovered a new super glue "Super T" from Satellite City.  It's a great glue and I have enjoyed using it on metals.  I got it from my friend Ernie over at Architects of War.

Black Powder 6mm ACW Test Game

I've made a good bit of progress on my 6mm ACW armies.  The Union force of seven infantry brigades (each with four regiments), two calvary brigades and a bunch of artillery are mostly completed - I just need to attach some flags.  The Confederate force is still being painted and is about 2/3's complete.

I decided to set up what I had painted to do a few run through with the black powder rule set.  I apologize that the terrain is so sparse, I need to add a lot of woods sections, but it's good enough for a trial game.  The road sections also need to be dressed up a bit.

Here's a close-up of two of the union brigades.  While I'll always prefer 28mm, there is something to the mass-effect one gets with large 6mm armies. I don't really paint a lot of detail on the figures, but it seems to work.

The last photo is of two Confederate brigades defending a hill, with 3 artillery batteries in support.  I have some limbers built and awaiting painting which will be completed in the next week or so.  The Confederate bases need to be sceniced also, but that's a pretty quick project.  I should have all the mini's completed in the next two weeks.

Any suggestions for acceptable (and cheap) 1/300 or 6mm scale trees to make forrest scetions out of would be greatly appreciated.

Architects of War: Fortification Set #1

I just purchased the new Fortification Set (#1) from Architects of War - I think I'm the first US customer!  My initial reaction upon opening the box is extremely positive - the set comes with six sections of fortifications, a blister of metal siege tools, a pipette and a nicely detailed manual on painting / game use.  The scale is 28mm.  My game table is 4' wide so the you get about 44" of defensive works.  Sorry for the 15mm WWII stuff in the background, I was a bit too lazy to clear of the table for a few photo's.  The six sections consist of 2 straights (each unique), an artillery emplacement, an end redoubt, a 45 degree turn and a "under-construction" piece.   The blister of metal siege tools is intended to enhance the "under-construction" piece.

Here is a close up of the artillery section and the siege tool blister.  There are a lot of hidden details molded into the resin pieces that include powder barrels, a single shot pistol and a whole bunch of others.  I was reminded of playing "Where's Waldo?" with my son the first time I looked at each piece.  The casting is great - no bubbles and very limited flashing.

My favorite piece is the end section or redoubt.  There's enough room for a the 60x40mm 6 figure troop stands I use for my Napoleonics to line the entire interior.  I expect to have many desperate defenses of this piece in the future.

This picture is a close up of the under-construction section.  It's a nice touch to the overall set and the instructions come with some creative rules for using this piece in a siege type game.  The metal siege tool blister has a bunch of pieces designed to enhance the look including stakes to show a gabion in the process of being built.

The final picture is a side view of the set - the under construction piece is out of the frame on the lower left.  Like the redoubt, all the pieces are designed to both look good but facilitate the placement of gaming figures as there is plenty of room behind the defenses to place troops.  All-in-all its a really great terrain set and I look forward to both painting and playing with once I finish my current 6mm ACW project.  I should point out that I am friends with the owners of Architects of War (which is how I was able to purchase this product before their website was completed).  I have tried to keep my comments unbiased and truthful more for Ernies benefit than anything else.  Starting a business is a tough endeavor, but doing show in today's environment makes that task even harder and false praise would be both untruthful and unfair to a friend.  I really like the products and hope you check out Architects of War if your into 28mm gaming.

E-Milestones

In a rather pathetic attempt at self-congratulation, I just noticed that my little spot on the net has passed two milestones - I've had over 10,000 hits and now have 50 followers.  To be honest, it's completely beyond me how the mainstream media has missed this story.  Perhaps all the hub-bub with the oil spill, the Icelandic Volcano whose name can not be pronounced, and financial services reform has grabbed all the attention.  It does seem unfair, doesn't it.

Anyway, I've learned a few things by keeping this blog.  It's a great way to meet and interact with other historical gamers, which has both increased my enjoyment of the hobby and taught me better skills.  Keeping the blog has also been a great motivator to make progress on projects - everyone remembers the joy and pride from elementary school "Show-and-Tell" sessions.  It's either make progress on projects or write about my deep inner feelings on relationships or regale against the cruel injustices that our medical establishment piles onto Pork-Fat based food stuffs (mmmmmm, bacon....).  I think we can all agree the less said about the latter two topics the better.

I look forward to the next 50 posts!

Maybe more bacon related stories might be an improvement - I think I need to get the new Pig-Sty scenery kit from Architects of War!