Saturday, March 16, 2024

Prehistoric Terrain

        When I think about it my idea of "prehistoric terrain" is more informed by Saturday morning "B" movies than any sort of erudite study.  These epics often took place in the desert valleys near Hollywood, a terrain MOST unlike anything encountered by humans trying to survive at the end of the last Ice Age! Some quick study made it clear that the climate was far more temperate. Land so recently scoured by glaciers would have far less topsoil and much more exposed rock so plant life would be scattered and struggling. With those thoughts in mind I sat down to paint the terrain for Zhodani Commando's caveman game.

a now-dead volcano's basalt core bared by the relentless weight of the ice

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Wargaming Update, Battlefields is coming soon 16MAR2024

        That perennial favorite, Battlefields, will soon be upon us. Make sure to set the day aside to attend this great local convention, it is always a fun time. New this year is a Bolt Action tournament and a Paint and Take table, two great additions. Of course there will be the usual raffles and free Flea Market tables. Just $10.00 gets you in all day and games are free. There is hot food and a bar in-house and any number of good restaurants nearby. Easy access off of I-96 or I-275.

         You can find the list of games and the location on Tabletop Events.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Marius visits Persia

       Just an explanatory note; our group long ago adopted certain "alternate methodologies" when playing WRG Ancients. Frankly we abhor book-keeping so we began substituting a "saving throw" rather than carrying over fractional casualties. As, under the rules, each figure represents twenty real soldiers we decided that we would roll a D20 against any fractional remainders after the whole figures had been removed. An example would be a unit suffering 35 casualties would have one figure removed (twenty soldiers) and then roll a D20 against the remainder of fifteen. A score of sixteen or higher and the figure stays with no fractional accounting, if the result of the die roll is fifteen or less the model is removed. This can lead to some unpredictable results but we had always considered that casualty generation under WRG was far too predictable (and everyone finds my ability to roll one less than the needed number to save quite amusing). The other thing we did was to discard written orders and just announce general orders to the opposing player at the beginning of the game; "This lot will skirmish forward" or "The main line will advance and engage the enemy" and trust that our opponent will cleave unto their orders honestly (and who would care to game with someone that isn't honest?). This has worked admirably in speeding play and getting rid of tortuously-written standing orders loaded with conditional circumstances. 

This time around Anton had 19 scouting points and I had 14 so no one was outscouted and we both followed the rules and deployed our armies from our own right to left.  Below is initial deployments.  

 

Friday, March 8, 2024

Roman vs Roman

       Ed Note: I must say that in all my years of wargaming (nearly a half-century now) this is the silliest terrain that I have ever played across. The Housemartin and I followed the terrain generation rules exactly and ended up with this odd terrain. Also, despite my endless carping about poor dice rolling, this game saw the longest run of positive rolls in many a decade. Therefore I will quiet my complaining and work on my generalship!  

         Anton's cessation of complaints not withstanding, I would be remiss to not complain about the fact that We rolled to play out of the Second Army list book, but Anton "senior momented" (Ed. note I am officially a Senior Citizen and I plan on milking it for all it is worth!) and decided to run an army from the first book.  So his Marian Romans will be taking on my Late Imperial Romans.  One thing for sure, the terrain turned out quite silly.  I was trying to get a gentle hill for my artillery and Anton placed a wood line in front of all the hills ( I placed four of them).  Two of my hill stuck, but unfortunately Anton's wood line obscured the field of view for both.  I had 16 Scouting points, Anton had 14, so no one was outscouted and we both deployed from our right to left.  Here are our deployments and the messed up terrain.   



Monday, March 4, 2024

1/72nd Hobbyboss F4F-3 Wildcat

 

overall it is a nice model, I liked the flashy paint-job

       In an effort to distract myself from building a vast (unauthorized) underground cave complex for Zhodani Commando's cavemen I decided to build this kit. The "easy assembly" is a bit of a misnomer, it is easy to build if you don't mind that the wings and the fuselage don't quite fit together, or that there is no option for retracted landing gear and no trace of a pilot. Assembly required a fair bit of filing and a dash of brute force to get the wings and fuselage to accept each others company (I had the same problem with the Dewoitine D-520 from the same manufacturer). Once that was done and a bit of putty and filing had been administered the retracted landing gear needed to be scratchbuilt. After all that it made up into a decent looking model, fine panel lines and an excellent look.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

AN IMPROBABLE CLASH The Anglo-Danish VS the Tabascans

        Despite some far-fetched claims that the Vikings made it as far as Central America during the Dark Ages it seems unlikely that Anton's Anglo-Danish armies ever faced off against my Mexican force. But Anton and I made it happen anyway!  Since Anton's army knew what a horse was, and mine did not (an old Steve Breismeister joke to those of you who knew him), Anton Out scouted me and I had to deploy first.  Here is our initial deployment.  


Sunday, February 25, 2024

Assembling the forces for Battlefields

  

 the Japanese bombers

        Last Saturday I ran my scenario for Battlefields with my usual gaming group. The conversion from hex-based movement to octagonal movement went without a hitch. Some valid points were made regarding the rules and adjustments have been  made.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Mudslide!

 

wallboard compound, to be truthful, not real mud

       I was puttering in the workshop and struggling to resist the urge to build a vast underground cavern system to go with Zhodani Commando's cave men. To keep myself busy I decided to add some wallboard compound to the existing hills to blend in the features and add to the texture. I use the sort with a latex base as it survives handling better than regular "mud". Now I have to wait for that to dry so I'm back to the "idle hands" problem......

       Maybe I will build a model airplane as a distraction.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Some prehistoric terrain bits and a little side-project

       My good friend, Zhodani Commando, is setting up to run a caveman game using the Tribal! rules. You can check out his beautifully painted minis over at his blog. I offered to put together some terrain for the game using the still massive pile of insulation board that I have. He happily accepted. I haven't been painting much lately so I thought that a terrain project would  re-light those fires. 

        I dug out my old friend, Proxxie, and got to work cutting insulation board. Pretty soon I had several bits sorted out and enlisted my buddy, Mr 60-Grit, to round off some edges and get the models ready for spackle and paint. That is where things stand for the moment.

I bought this off a flea-market table at a convention a couple of decades ago,
a coat of primer was as far as I got with it, I'm sure the talented brush of Z.C. will bring out the best

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Enter The Octagon!

a little package of happiness

        I have to confess to being incredibly lax about posting of late. In my defense the first couple of months of this year have been rough; on top of my usual "January Blues" a couple of sudden funerals and a long-running revision of my air combat rules have eaten up both my time and energy. That is all behind me now and I have renewed energy with the arrival of a package from 24 Hour Crafts (a specialist woodworking shop) who made me a custom set of octagonal bases for my revised rules. Everybody and their brother makes hexagons but these guys were the best price/service that I could find that would cut octagons. Product quality is top-rate and they got me my fifty octagons in less than a week, I would happily recommend them to anyone.

the items were carefully packaged

the octagons were very precisely cut, fractions of a millimeter tolerances
notice how it is possible to get much more subtle movement patterns once hexagons are forsaken
 
it took me a while to work out the "tweaks" in the new movement system
 but this seems to work very well

       I am currently working on converting the individual aircraft maneuver books and will post them as I get them completed. I will leave the hex-based books up as well in case you prefer those.

Monday, February 12, 2024

Warfare By Proxy, or At Least It Was Quick

       This time around we were working out of the first book once again  Anton selected the Early Hebrews (list 13) and I selected the Illyrians (list 26).  Anton's army had absolutely no cavalry, and there was not enough terrain on the table for his light infantry to count for scouting so he had officially "Zero" scouting points.  With my army I had presumed that I would be outscouted and elected to have my CinC on foot.  I also chose to include an allied contingent, whose general could only be selected as on a horse, so I had exactly 1 scouting point.  Due to the odd system of scouting in WRG because "1" if more than "50%" more than "0", I out scouted Anton and his troops had to be deployed first.  I also had the option of flanking him on either, or both flanks if I wished.  I did not!  So here are our deployments.