Jungle Terrain 2.0 Done

 There are 15 new sections of jungle terrain and I've refurbished my earlier versions (which are off to a friend in Canada)

I think they came out very nicely and  this was a very fun project

 Some of the refurbished pieces

 The bamboo still a little "shiny" so needs some more weathering.

 The ground works was really simple to do and I think the look is fantastic.  I'll do a more detailed how to post as I've got enough materials left over for another 4-6 terrain plates.

Marshall Theodore does approve but prefers me in my office in my executive repose.  Apparently, I'm very comfortable furniture.

Welcome to the Jungle 2.0 - In Production Now

 The test Jungle section pieces came out really well.  I'm very pleased with them.  There's still a little more to do in terms of tiny details and silly easter eggs but the overall look is what I was going for.

 I did 3 test pieces.  This is the first time I've worked with raw cork bark as rock faces and I'm impressed.  Obviously not as customizable as carving EPS foam but really fast looks very natural and is cheap.

With the technique nailed "downish", It's time to start mass production.  I'll also be tarting up some of the old pieces to make the journey up to Curt in the great white north

Some of the old pieces have been completely stripped other are having major surgery done as you can see in this picture.

Back to the terrain bench

Gallipoli Game at the Club

 Last night at the club, Josh put on a superb 6mm game depicting the initial landings at Gallipoli.  There were 2 stunning board - one for the Helles point (on which I was the Turkish commander) and another for ANZAC cove (picturedat the end of this post).  The first picture shows my initial deployment using blinds.

Each side had a CIC who played but wasn't allowed to see the boards - we could only communicate via messages - command control was umm difficult!    There were 10 total landing sites and the British had to secure 6 to win the game.  Greg was our overall commander and decided to roll the dice and overload my table (which has 6 beaches) so I had an extra regiment (the 27th) to deploy in reserve behind the 26th which was deployed along tip.

The British, under command of Ed as CIC, elected to land at night.  They gave up any ship-to-shore bombardment but gained 4 "unopposed" turns to land and move troops inland before the Turks could react - as long as they stayed 2 inches away from any Turkish unit.  Tom did just that and chose to land at 2 beaches and here was his progress at dawn (turn 5).  The troops stands in the water are waiting to land and there is a similar stack behind the beach in the lower right.

The fighting was very intense but I was lucky in some early command rolls and rushed 2 battalions of the 27th regiment to try and stem the flow of British troops

British losses started to mount as the dice gods favored the Turks this day.  I also took an extreme gable and pulled the battalion guarding the point to launch a counter attack on beach Y.  The British Brigade there broke twice and was pushed into the sea

On the upper beach, the British brigade also broke but was able to retreat back to defend a small pocket.  They could not be dislodged by the end of the game.

 The view of the Helles after the battle.

Things went much better for the Empire on the ANZAC board, as the Aussies made great progress inland - in part because one of the regiment defending in this area was transferred to my board.  Still Dave and his son put up stiff resistance against overwhelming British forces.

The battle ended with the British controlling 5 of the 6 beaches they needed so was a marginal Turkish victory.

We used the Great War Spearhead2 rules, which I have a mixed set of feelings about.  Some things are good and other are maddening.  I need to play them a few more times to give them a good shot.  They are simple so will work well in a convention game.

Ed, as the British CIC, seemed a bit doubtful about his prospects as he came to the club with some pre-made newspaper headlines that was sent out on facebook just after the battle.

It was a grand, very closely fought game.  Josh will be running the game at cold wars and if you're attending I suggest you sign up - it's well worth your time.

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.....