Wild West weekend

I was scheduled to run this Month's game for one of my wargaming groups session and figured it was time for me to breakout a Wild West game. It's been at least 7 years since I ran one, I just couldn't find a set of rules I liked and also thought would be fun for the players and eventually I kind of forgot I had Wild West stuff.

Late last year I picked up Shoot n Skedaddle (from Turnstyle games), and thought they looked like they would fit my stringent requirements (fun to play and easy to run). I haven't ordered the cards yet as they are (with shipping) somewhat expensive, so I bought the PDF cards, printed them out and stuck'em in card sleeves and made my own versions of the character cards to match my figure collection.

In preparation on Saturday (December 9th) I took the rules and stuff to the Hamilton Road Gaming Group for a trial run and ran two games. Just one picture of the games. First game had 2 players and I learned 6 characters is too many for one player to run. Second game, both players ran 4 characters and things went more quickly. Might have made some sales for Turnstyle Games.

Shinbone shoot out at the Crouch aka the HRGG

Experience gained, I then ran two games Sunday (10th December), again in my Wild West town, Shinbone.

The first game was scenario one, with each of 4 player drawing 3 characters, one player drew a cowboy and both Soiled Doves (I suggested he swap one out for a redraw but he declined). No pictures of that game. It was mainly to get everyone acquainted with the rules.

We broke for lunch and afterwards played scenario one again with new characters.

Outlaws hanging around near the Saloon,

Some of the forces of Law and Order, The Judge (inside) and Mountain Man in the street,

Bodies piling up at the corner of the Dry Goods Store

Mountain man's body atop Herman's Feed and seed.

Mid way through the game, the Lawmen turned one of the outlaws (via special card), but then the outlaws almost immediately had a townsman join them (via another special card) he popped up near the corner of the dry goods store, very near the end of a turn, and so got both actions quickly. Oh and he had a Mare's Leg

3 men remain, a pair of outlaws vs. the Bounty Hunter (atop the Sheriff's office). One outlaw has taken a hostage, but all doors are locked and he can't climb over a fence with the hostage (and refused to turn her loose).

The game was called at that point, Bounty Hunter had a carbine but the only target he had was the hostage taker who was rooted in cover with his hostage and the other outlaw was wounded (and not coming out).

Players had a great time, but now expect more games of this, I guess I'll have to level up my terrain, Thanks! Turnstyle games. Might have made some more sales for Turnstyle Games.

One thing players didn't like was the amount of one shot weapons, (by one shot I mean you get 1 shot then have to reload before you could shoot again), but that could just have been the luck of the draw.

Super Easy 28mm trees

I like making my own trees, not sure why. (probably something to do with my "Frugality", yes lets call it frugality)

I am happy with my scouring pad trees, but the other day I was in a dollar store and saw a cheap Toilet brush and had a wild idea.

It took less than 20 minutes for the wild idea to reach a point that I thought, with a bit more effort I could make something that would look acceptable.

My first attempt was with just laying some woodlands scenics flocked poly-fibre over the bristles and it looked pretty good, Then I thought these look like they will make passable K&M like trees, with some flock added. So I ripped off the poly-fibre applied some spray glue, then sprinkled flock on it and it looked much better, than the poly-fibre.

Poly fiber on the left, just a coarse flock on the right. The 28mm Soviet Soldier is for scale.

Things needed.
Toilet brush
Spray adhesive
Coarse flock (I used homemade, coloured sawdust)
Hot glue (and glue sticks)
Black or dark brown spray paint
Brown and green acrylic paint
Heat gun
2.5"-3" circular MDF base
1 Roofing nail per tree
Razor saw
Basing materials

 First go to your local dollar store, and purchase 1 or more toilet brushes (it's just as easy to make one or more than one). My dollar store also had spray adhesive on the shelves, so I bought a can of that for $4.

 Remove the brush from its packaging and throw the stand and wrapping away.

 Unscrew the handle from the head.

Give your brush a bad haircut, so the final tree will look a little more realistic.

Whittle the bottom of the brush head to remove the straight edge.

I found while whittling the bottom made the finished product look a wee bit better, I needed an even better way to hide the bottom of the brush. My first thought was drill some sloping holes then stuff bristles into them, then affix with hot glue, which would hide the bottom, but that's a lot of work. I then decided to heat the bottom bristles enough so they would droop. What I eventually was a combination of heat gun drooping and scouring pad off cuts glued to the bottom and painted brown.

Re-attach the handle and with your heat gun and gently melt the bottom bristles so they droop, set your heat gun to it lowest setting and start by hold it 2 feet below your tree and slowly reduce the distance, don't get too close or you will shrivel the bristles. You could try using a candle but I have a heat gun so i just used that (a hairdryer didn't get the bristles hot enough to sag).


Spray the head of the brush black (or brown), you could paint the handle as well, but since it will be covered with glue, there is no point.

Spray the painted brush with spray adhesive. Sprinkle the flock on the bristles and let it dry. The messy part is sealing the flock, so most of it will stay on the tree. I used spray lacquer but that made the flocking brittle, so I am leaning to either watered down Mod Podge or Future acrylic floor polish.

After the tree canopy is flocked it is time to start on the trunk and the base. Cut the handle to 2" length and hot glue it to your 3" MDF base.
Initially I just glued the handle to the base with a blob of hot glue then I decided it needed extra strength so I drilled a hole through the base, countersink the hole on the bottom of the base and push a Roofing nail through, then glue the handle onto the nail, The handles of the brushes are hollow (but if not drill a hole in the handle).

Underside of the base with its counter sunk hole

Roofing nail awaiting base.

Roofing nail through the base

Being held in place.

Then make roots with lines of hot glue, and smear the trunk with more hot glue that is spread around with the side of your glue gun's nozzle. When dry paint it.

Finish your tree's base as you want.

28mm Soviets moving though the forest

Summer Reinforcement Challenge 2nd wave

Completed another batch of Reinforcements for the Tabletop Commanders' Challenge.

This time I went up to 1/72 scale, Ruga-Ruga from HAT Industries.

Video

Summer Reinforcement challenge

Tabletop Commander's Summer Reinforcement Challenge

I haven't done much wargaming related stuff lately, lack of motivation mainly.

The Tabletop Commanders (A facebook group) have a painting challenge and offered an excuse to do some painting. The challenge is to add more units to an existing force.

My first offering for the challenge was more 6mm Austrian units.

Here are a trio of videos showing my progress.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

 

That's a lot of horse flesh

I didn't like the basing on my cavalry figures (4 on a 40mm x 20mm base), as they were. I was able to use about only half of what I have painted in my Blucher games (my preferred Napoleonic rule set) also 8 figures to a unit was somewhat anaemic looking. My first thought was re-base just some figures on 20mmx20mm bases and add make new cavalry sabot to hold the 60mmx 40mm cavalry units, then thought to my self why not just re-base them all on bases the same size as my infantry and I can then use my infantry sabot for both my cavalry and infantry units.

Here is the end result of 5 days.

All my painted cavalry.

British and Portuguese cavalry

Austrian cavalry

Finally the French cavalry

I still cant use it all though. When I originally started (with Napoleon's Battle) my main cavalry unit size was 16 figures and I am using just 12 for Blucher, but still looks better than 8.

Old based cavalry in cavalry sabot

New based cavalry in infantry sabot

Gratuitous close up

 While I was taking the pictures I decided to see if there is any difference in the quality of my painting. One of the units below I painted 25+ years ago and the other one a mere 2 years ago.

Better looking than an opaque cup

Inspired by a post on the Toy Soldiers for Old Gits blog here is my homage to his Dice Shako ... err shaker.

Where as TSOG made his out of PVC pipe, I went for more accessible and easier to work with components.

Needed:
Cardboard Mailing tube 2 1/2" diameter 2 feet long
Black Construction paper
Red Construction paper
White Glue
1 piece of Yellow Card stock
Thick card board (for the plug)
Cereal box card

Cut a 3" section of your mailing tube. I used a table saw.


Plug one end with cardboard or a circular base if you have one that fits and hot glue it in place.

Then glue, using PVA, a piece of cardboard from a cereal box or whatever over the top of your plug.

Hold it in place while the glue dries either a heavy book or clamps.

When dries trim it flush with the sides. Then glue black construction paper on the top trimming it flush with sides, then glue more black construction paper to the side of the Shako

Cut 10mm wide strips of red construction paper.

 Glue one red strip to the top and another to the bottom of the Shako.

 Now to make the Shako plate. I found a line drawing of one in a book, scanned it and printed it onto yellow card stock.

I then made a gold wash (didn't have a brass or copper paint) and painted over the printout of the Shako plate.

Which I then cut out and filled in the some of the spots with a Sharpie (i didn't want to try and cut out them).

Glue the Shako plate on (with white glue).

Then glued 4 more red construction paper strips, over where a wearers ears would be, in a slight V-shape.

A near run thing at HRGG

Last Saturday saw another Blucher game take place at the Hamilton Road Gaming Group, located in the Crouch Branch of the London Public Library.

The players were Cecil (Craufurd), Mike (Hill) Jordan (Ney) and I (Drouot)

A battle using two 305 point armies using the 100 days lists.

Both sides split their armies into 2 all infantry corps and an all cavalry corps. The British attached all eleven of their foot batteries to brigades, opting for the additional die when shooting, but massed their 3 horse batteries and attached it to the Cavalry corps. 

The French attached a cavalry brigade to each of their infantry corps and massed all their artillery into 2 Horse, 2 Heavy and 3 Foot units.

Both sides had an army morale of 6.

The British set up with their cavalry on their right, Craufurd's corps on the hill and Hill's corps behind the woods on the British Left.

The French set up their cavalry corps on their Left, I Corps with Drouot attached in the middle and Ney's II corps on the right.

Stars represent the objectives

Ney sent II corps forward over the hill at Hill. French I corps occupies the village and sends 3 more brigades forward to fix in place (and reveal) the British on the hill.

The entire British cavalry corps races into the center to threaten Ney's open flank, its horse battery opens fire and scores 3 hits.

II corps advances on the far side of the stream and the British cavalry rushes to threaten their flank. in the foreground French Heavy artillery opens fire on Craufurd's troops.

The French heavy batteries open fire on the British on the hill, causing some casualties, the French Cavalry corps waits in reserve.

Ney's lead brigade takes 2 more hits from the British Horse battery (they are down to 1 elan), Ney Swoops in to rally them, does and dies! (it's turn 5).

The death of Ney

Hill and Ney exchange fire for a few turns, with II corps coming off worse. Its actions only manage to fatigue only 1 British brigade, which cravenly retires. At one point Ney's successor got his cavalry behind the Hill's front line and charged a unit in the rear, with an infantry brigade flanking it as well, but was unable to break it, and the cavalry ended up retreating off the opponents table edge (counting as broken).

French I corps engages in a firefight with the Craufurd's troops on the hill, while Ney's successor fights both Hill's II corps and the British cavalry corps.

Ney's corps eventually gets ground up having 4 units Broken (counting the cavalry that left the table) and many units sitting at 2 or 3 elan, but drawing all the enemy cavalry to the far side of the battlefield, at which point the French cavalry corps goes into action, moving onto the flank of Craufurd's corps, which forms squares, and the French Artillery gets to work softening them up and cavalry charge them, quickly breaking 5 units in three turns.

On the far side of the British cavalry make another attempt to break some of Ney's troops but a series of bad rolls for the British see no French units lose a single combat.

Both side are sitting at 5 units broken.

Craufurd's surviving brigade falls back towards the Northern ford, looking to join with Hill, but a French cavalry brigade forces them to square. Five French batteries open fire on him, the first 4 (15 or so dice) and do a total of 1 hit, then a horse battery, barely in range, open fires with 4 dice and gets 3 hits (three 6's and a 2) breaking him.

The open spot just in front of the French Cavalry is where Craufurd's last brigade was destroyed by the fire of 5 massed batteries.

The British army has 6 units broken (in Blucher at the end of each turn victory is checked by asking is your army Broken?), so they regardless of what they do they have lost but as the French are one unit away from breaking themselves, we decided if the British can break a French unit they will get a draw. They launch 3 Brigades of cavalry at 2 French infantry brigades (a slim chance, but a chance) the French are in squares. The don't break either one and the game ends with a French Victory.

British cavalry preparing for their last ditch attempt to deny a victory to the much detested French.

Result: Crafurd's Corps was completely destroyed, Hill's corps had 2 units retire and a bunch of casualties (General Hill died trying to unsuccessfully inspire his troops), Ney died and 5 of his Brigades followed him. Drouot did little, except attach himself to THE Horse Battery and claims it was him laying the guns that resulted in its exceptional last shot.

22 turns.

4 1/2 hours

4 Players (2 of which had never played Blucher before).