New Family Member: Impawator Augustus

 

Things have been a little quite on the blog lately, but not that quite in real life.  We’ve added a new member to our household - a puppy who has been named Augustus.  Now this is pretty big news as I’ve been asking for a dog since my lovely wife and I got married.  I was very surprised to find that on our 34th anniversary she finally agreed to add a dog to the family mix - Best anniversary present EVER!

Augustus is 11 weeks old and is a Lagatto Romagnolo - an Italian water dog which are used to hunt for truffles.  He is a wonderful addition to the family!

Here you can see Augustus advising me on strategy as I get ready to play a game of Blucher online against Alex from the Storm of Steel You Tube channel.  Augustus proved to be a canny strategist and is a very good boy, indeed.

Garden Fun

 

The garden is doing really well this year - heres a picture of what we pulled out of it on Saturday - and this picture doesn't have the peppers

Lots of tomatoes - there have been rumors that I may have planted too many tomatoes - as if that is even possible.  We do have 8 different types of Tomatoes this year.  My favorites are the Roma's (the oval shaped ones) which are used primarily to make sauce.

Speaking of sauce, the less than perfect tomatoes - ones that have split due to the heat or have some insect damage get cleaned up and then put through a food mill to make sauce.  The pitcher holds 3 quarts and we managed to get a total of 6 quarts of tomato sauce.  My wife then takes the sauce and turns it into marinara sauce which we freeze and use the rest of the year.  We got 2/3 of a gallon today of that red gold.

The garden looks like a bit of a jungle but is doing really well.  It makes my wife really happy and after her year of dealing with COVID she gets what shes wants.

I promise to have some miniatures content in a future post

Shameless Self-Promotion: Austerlitz Game Video Trailer

 

Please take a look at the Austerlitz game video trailer.  The full game video drops on July 20th.

This game was one of my favorite Little Wars TV projects to work on and we used a slightly revised version of Dave Brown’s General D’Armee rules.  The terrain was built by fellow club member Ed and is superb.

Now this game was played with a twist - two different outcomes and viewers can choose which one they prefer.  It was a super fun game that I am really looking forward to replaying at the club one day.  There was also some surprises for both sides that are best not to be revealed here.

We used my French and Greg’s Austrians and Russians for the game.  

3D Resin Printing: USS Minnesota

 

Some more experimentation with 3D printing - in this case a 1/600 scale model of the USS Minnesota from the ACW.

I purchased the stl files from a designer on the Wargaming 3D marketplace called East Coast Ironclads.  He has a large range of ACW ships to choose from and of the two I've purchased I have been very impressed.

The spars on the masts can be a bit delicate so I plan on reinforcing them with some green stuff sculpted to look like furled sails.  Off course if they break due to gameplay one can always just print off a new one!

I've got some pretty large gaps in my ACW ironclad collection and these models are a great way to fill them without spending a ton of money.

3D Resin Printing Week 2: Printed Terrain Details

Week 2 of my foray into 3D resin printing continues to show real promise.  Despite the the build volume being small (3.1 inches wide, 5 inches long and 6 inches high), one can cram a good bit on the plate.  One of the terrain features I was missing for the Stalingrad table was the Barmaley Fountain and I was struggling to scratch build one.  Let's just say there have been 2 scratch build failures.

A quick internet search found that 3dPrintterrain makes a collection of WW2 themed files which includes the fountain as well as some other iconic terrain pieces.  

It took a little maneuvering to get the fountain to fit on the build plate but it printed out great.  It's also far superior to anything I would have scratch built do I am really pleased.

I doubt I'll be printing out full building using the resin printer (expect for 6mm) but key detail parts like window frames, doors and signage will be easy to do and add a lot of visual appeal to my scratch builds.

One other useful "discovery" are these cheap plastic cafeteria trays.  The raise lips are great for keeping your printer in and protecting against the inevitable resin spills.  They also make great spots for storing works in progress.

The lips have edges that are 1/8 inch thick and about 3/8 of an inch wide.  I think I can build some really simple cabinet boxes with 1/8 inch grooves and make some super quick storage shelves.

I purchased 2 sets of 12 each, which cost me 20.00 each set (used).  Thats kind of expensive for plastic but compared to the alternative cost of wood and build time a real bargain.

Obviously, "cafeteria tray" storage shelves will not look as nice as my standard box shelves but after building 36 of these wooden shelves, I'm running out of space!  Plus with wood prices being what they are, it's hard to justify the cost.  Yes, all 36 drawers are filled just like the one pictured.

Great 3D resin Printing Post on No Dice, No Glory

 There is a great article on 3D Resin printing for Historical gamers over on the No Dice No Glory blog.  You can find it HERE

I’m referencing the blog post as it’s likely a better write-up than I can do and the use the same printer I got for Fathers Day.  It also has some great links for historically themed 3D print files and I’m using the blog as a form of a notebook.

First 3D Resin Prints

The Elegoo Mars Pro 2 printer has been set up in a temporary location (the card table in the game room) so I could start to learn how to use it.  Long term, I'll make some room in the shop.

The first miniature prints are a German Bison Assault gun and 2 Soviet winter infantry figures, all 15mm scale.  This picture shows the lot on the curing turn table right after finishing the ultra violet curing.  

I downloaded some all of these files from a sire called Wargaming 3D, which is a market place for vendors to sell .stl files for historical wargaming - if you're thinking about a 3D resin printer go check it out as the selection is very, very broad.

The second test print was a SU-76 and seven Soviet Naval Infantry figures (again, all 15mm).  The SU-76 is a 2 -part model - the hulls is one piece and the gun compartment a second.

I did have a minor issue with the back right corner of the gun compartment lifting off, as you can see in this picture.  It will be easy to fix with a little green stuff and maybe some stowage.

The corner lift continues around on this side.  In all honesty Ive had much worse issues with resin cast tanks from Battlefront.  I still need to remove some of the print supports from the model.

A close up of the "warping".  I'll be printing a bunch of SU-76's so will eventually figure out the right settings.  I really shouldn't complain - the .STL files for the SU-76 were available for FREE from the wargaming 3D site.  Free is a very good price.

A close up for the Soviet Naval infantry.  I am very pleased with the detail and think these figures are as good as the plastic or metal figures I'm used to purchasing for this scale.  In fact, I'd say they are better than Plastic Soldier Company.  These figures are from a file set called RKKA_naval_squad_02 which has 12 different poses and you get files for both 28mm and 15 figures.  There are also squads 01 & 03 from the same designer (mr3DPrint).  My current set of Soviet Naval Infantry are metal casts from Peter Pig - they are great figures but only have SMG's and 2 or 3 poses.  I'm very excited about the modeling possibilities here.

The Su-76 and 7 infantry figures took about 1.5 hours to print and another 15-20 minutes post production to wash and cure.  The build plate on the Mars 2 Pro isn't that large and I could probably fit another 3 infantry figures on it.

I am very struck by the reliability of resin printing.  One does have to be very thoughtful in working with the resin - its rather toxic stuff.  The key is developing a set workflow to ensure you don't contaminate surfaces with resin that gets on your gloves.  I'll do a future post on my workflow once I feel its really nailed down.

3d Resin printing is a really exciting technology for the hobby and I think it will have a profound impact on the distribution of miniatures.  Will it replace cast metal of plastic figures - probably not.  I think it will eventually reduce the sizes of those "mass produced" ranges to the basics and push the specialty troops to digital distribution.  I'll probably always get my bog standard Soviet infantry from Battlefront or PSC, but specialty troops like Naval Infantry or NKVD will likely now just be purchased as files.

3D Resin Printing - Father's Day Gift

 

It looks like I'll be delving into the world of 3D resin printing as my Father's Day gift is a Elegoo Mars 2 Pro 3D Resin printer (on the right) and it's associated cleaning and curing station (on the left).  Because I am smarter than the average bear, I have cracked the sophisticated code behind the color choices and will now reveal said revelation to you - Mars = Red! and Curing requires the sun = Yellow.  Please use this information for good and not evil.

I am fascinated by the prospect of "sculpting" in CAD and making food quality miniatures via a home printer.  Since my 3D cad skills are, ummm, nonexistent, that may be awhile but there are a growing number of file vendors to choose from to get started.

There will be lots of mistakes made along this journey which I'll post here for all of you to ridicule mercilessly.

One of my inspirations for getting on this new journey is Aaron over at the Project Wargaming You-Tube channel.  All of the buildings on his fabulous Berlin board we used in the LWTV Berlin episode  were 3D printed.  I really excited about the prospects for adding details to the Stalingrad board and  my next secret project once that's done.

I'm compiling a list of 3D miniature file vendors so any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

The Hunters - U-Boat Solitaire Game

It was a rainy and unseasonably cold Saturday morning so I decide to break out an old gem of a solitaire game "The Hunters" for a little diversion.  The Hunters is a fun little game where the player is in command of a U-boat and you see how far you can get before, well, the allies catch up to you.

I stated with a basic Type VIIB boat.  Thew mechanics of the game are relatively simply - you roll to see which theater your next mission is - my first few where the British Isles.  The sub marker is then placed on the right track and you roll for encounters which are varied and based on where you're patrolling.  Earlier in the war (I started at Sep'39) you have a greater chance to catch single, unescorted ships.  As the war progresses the allied escorts and air attacks become both more numerous and more effective.

My first victim is an unescorted small freighter of the coast of Britain.  Knowing this poor ship has no escort and it is a Daytime attack, I elect to approach on the surface so I can use the deck gun.  I elect to shoot a single torpedo and fire two rounds of my deck gun.  The torpedo hits and the deck gun proves to be overkill.

Progress is tracked by mission, with the tonnage of each ship engaged written down - circled ships have been sunk.  After my first three missions my U-boat had racked up an impressive 8 kills and 42,900 tons.  We also successfully deployed mines on the third mission.  I also almost lost the U-boat on the way back from the mission as we were attacked by allied aircraft and heavily damaged.

After repairs, we shall see what more havoc we can inflict on allied shipping.  Hopefully we roll up a Norway mission as it is rich in potential capital ship targets!

The Hunters is available from GMT games.   

Play Testing My Stalingrad Rules

 

My personal vanity project of writing a set of wargaming rules continues on.  One of the goals of using hex-based terrain is speed of play (no measuring) for large participation games.  Another side benefit, is I can test the rules using board games - as with the lovely Stalingrad board and counters from Flying Pig's Old School Tactical game series.  If you're looking for a fun and "not brain melting" complex tactical WW2 game, I highly recommend Old School Tactical.

I've been running some company level actions to test the rules and find some logic flaws.  The first game proved that KV-1's shred tiny Panzer III's if they can not be outflanked.  It also proved Germans trying to cross open ground without smoke or artillery support do not have a very good time of it.

A second test game, where that nasty old KV-1 was replaced by a T-34, proved a bit more even.  The T-34 did drive off 1 Panzer III but was worn down by successive damage results and eventually caught fire and had to be abandoned.

The infantry combat worked really well but I'm still tweaking the mechanics to make it a bit more deadly.

Close Assault in the first game proved to be a bit bloodless and that combat results process needs to be tweaked also.

One of the evolving goals for this ruleset is to allow players to stage games with miniatures on a tabletop  - lets call that "3D gaming" or using an existing hex and counter game like Old School Tactical / Squad Leader / Combat Commander to play out a "2D game". 

Why would one want to do that - to make the game more approachable to new players - there are a lot of copies of Squad Leader gathering dust on shelves around the world and to facilitate extended multiplayer campaigns.  More on that in a later post.

The working title for these rules is "Company Commander: WW2".  I suspect that will change as there is all ready a ruleset named Company Commander but it's for small scale Napoleonics.   Still I think using the same name isn't the right thing to do.  At some point I'll need to put on my "brand management" thinking cap and come up with a suitably overwrought name.   Maybe "The Brave Little Toy Soldiers".

Last Night at the Club

 

Last Monday night at the club Tom ran a 100 Years War game using 10mm miniatures from Tony and Greg's collections.

We refought the Battle of Poitiers - with Greg and I taking the French and Tony and Ed the British.  The French forces outnumbered the english by almost 2:1 but our commander was rated as "buffoon" which ummm limited out choices!

It was a great game and pretty close run affair but history repeated itself and the English won the day.  These 10mm medieval armies are superb and very tempting....

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!

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!

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!

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....

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!

 

Basement Flooring Done

 

The basement re-flooring project is now complete.  Well the flooring is now all down.  I still have to attach the shoe moulding around all the trim but that's on order as it appears are most building supplies these days.

I am forced to admit that my lovely yet fierce wife was right (again) this type of vinyl flooring is superb - it feels like wood, looks great and is nigh on indestructible. 

The gaming area is looks great and is now due for a major refit since everything had to be moved.  Moreover , the prospect of moving all of that "Sh**" oops - I meant to say "treasure" back really brought home that I can get rid of half of that stuff and clear out a lot of space.  I often tease my wife about her hoarding tendencies with her research papers but I now realize that I "might" have a similar issue with tiny little figures.  Somewhere in the world Marie Kondo is smiling.

The sharpe eyed amongst you might be wondering - hey where did that massive table go?

It's on wheels!  Very sporty.

I borrowed one of those large floor jacks from a friend who runs a car repair garage and used it to jack up one end just enough so I could attach some heavy duty castors and then repeated the process for the other end.  The castors have wheel locks and the table remains very sturdy when they are all locked up.

Now that the basement repairs are almost done,  I think I'm going to do a full refit of the gaming area.  At some point in the future, I will be able to host people for a game (with or without bubble suits) and I'd like to make it a memorable experience.

Adding the wheels was a great addition to the table but doing so has raise the table height from 42 inches to 47, which is a tad too high (in my opinion).  I'm going to replace the top of the table with 2 sheets of 2/4 inch plywood so its nice and flat and maybe trim the edges in walnut.  Technically the current table top was meant for storage under the playing surface but I've never used it so I can reduce the height back down to 43 inches and make the table look a bit better.  I'll give the potential changes a "think" over the next week and then get to work.

I need to move fast, as the Boss is coming up with other home improvement projects for me to do.  There are rumors of putting in a heated floor in the master bath and upgrading it's counter tops and cabinets.  We do live in perilous times.