Imperial Romans and Gallic forces

   One of the occasional attendees of my local gaming group [The Historical Gaming Association of London (Ontario)] was divesting himself of some figures, his new dedicated wargames room in his new country house would 't have room for figures he had not used in over 5 years. He offered them to any member that wanted them, I eventually offered to take them as I had heard of S.P.Q.R. and thought this would be a good way to get a head start on two warbands for that rules set


   Here is what I got from him they are all painted, they are better than any of mine, (he's even painted their fricken eyes).

  I then saw some demo videos of S.P.Q.R. and knew that is was not a set of rules I wanted to play.

   A few months later I saw an announcement for Clash of Spears and was relieved that I would be able to use these figures for those rules.  The rules do not cover Imperial Rome... Yet. But they claim play-test armies for Clash of Spears that cover Imperial Romans and Gauls are on they way, then I will be able to use them.

We will start with the Gauls a mix of metals and plastic.

 The plastics

The metals

    So a fair few figures (about 100), they were based for Hail Caesar, so I had to first de-base then re-base for my use. I am thinking I can use the Gauls as to fight for and against my Carthaginians.

   Here are the Romans, they are all metal, a mix of Wargames Foundry, Front rank and others (he couldn't remember).

There are well over 400 Romans.

A rough estimate is that they are almost a $1,000 worth of figures.

WIP: Painting 6mm Austrian Infantry part 2

The first batch of Austrian infantry is done, except for the sealer/clear coat.

They look pretty good when viewed at arms length (which is how they usually are looked at), but not so much during an extreme close up.

WIP: Painting 6mm Austrian Infantry

For something different (for the last several years I have been running a lot of WW2 games). I plan on running a Napoleonic game in August for the HGA.

Instead of  French vs. Anglo-Portuguese in the Peninsula, I am going to run an Austrian vs. French Battle, I am thinking of the 1809 Battle of Sacile, or something hypothetical.

To get my interest piqued I decide to paint up some more Austrian infantry and probably some  cavalry.

All I have done in the following pictures; is prime the figures in white, painted the bases green and blue-tacked the figure strips to water bottle lids

WIP- Build up to Hotlead 2

WIP- Build up to Hotlead 2

My build up to Hotlead 2012 continues now on game design.

So I thought about what would make a good game and quick, continuous action seems to me, to be the goal. Rules are a Squad Leader miniatures conversion, scale is 1/72nd, and must accomodate 4-6 players. One big change we have made is that vehicles can not enter woods (mainly to speed up play)

Its going to be late '44 Eastern front with the Soviets on the attack.  I want the Soviets to have a lot of troops so they can take loses and keep going, their orders are "take the crossings or this" an enclosed cynide pill (last year I had a player who didn't want to lose any troops, so moved his infantry deep into a forest and did nothing else the entire game)

My initial thinking is a small German force is defending 3 river crossings (bridge and 2 fords), Soviets arrive, and fighting begins. There is little cover on the German side of the river so they have to cross over the bridge. The Soviets win if they control 2 crossings, otherwise Germans win.

Soviets enter F edge, germans row C and halfway onto D, reinforcements enter on road A3 for the Germans and roads F1 and F4

Soviet OB is 7xT34/76, 2xSU-122, 2xM3 halftracks, 2xM3a1 halftracks, up to 10 rifle squads, 2 Machine gun teams at start. German started with 4 squads 1 of which had a Panzerfaust, a Panzerschrek team 2x Sturngeschutze IIIG (Stug for Short) and a SdKfz 234/2 Puma Armoured car

I laid out some terrain (I wanted short Lines of Sight and plenty of cover), pulled some figs and vehicles and played 3 turns.

Terrain layout doesn't exactly match my map, but close enough

The Germans had lost 2 vehicles (Stug IIIG and Puma), vs. 2x T34 and a SU122 (to a panzerfaust) and the infantry were just starting to squabble.

Both side get reinforcements;
Turn 1: 3x German squads in 3 halftracks arrive, plus a SdKfz 250/1.
Turn 2: 3x Mark IVs
Turn 3: 3x T34/85s, 2xSU-85s
Turn 4: 2x Tigers
Turn 5: 2x JS II

My short playtest is encouraging, I may remove the Puma, as it can't really hurt anything's front armour and its unlikely to get a side shot, due to the terrain layout.

WIP - Dollar Store House 4

WIP - Dollar Store House 4

I tried to watch the NHL all-star game on TV but it was so boring. I decided to do some more work on my Dollar Store house.

I just black washed the entire thing, I'll leave off any more work on it for a while.
As an experiment it was successful, in that I made it look much better, with very little effort, than it does straight out of the bag.

Caesars' minis for scale

The doors and windows are just something I printed out, framed in thicker cardstock and glued on. It probably took me 2 hours (in about 3 or 4 sessions) to reach this stage. A lot of that was thinking about what I wanted to do and how to do it.

It was pretty easy and now that I have finished one I could probably churn them out much quicker, especially as I would do several at a time.

I might do some more, leave them unbased and take them to a Bring and Buy, I wonder if $10 a piece is too much?

WIP - Dollar Store House 2

WIP - Dollar Store House 2

Last night I managed to finish putting shingles the roof. I still need to add a ridge cap though.

The red lines are so I can keep the shingles relatively straight.

I did decide on shingle strips, and finished the thing in half an hour, It doesn't look quite as good as the individually placed shingles but it much faster.

This is the other side.

To make the shingle strips I grabbed a Ritz Cracker box from the blue box and marked it into 5mm grid, cut that into 1cm wide strips about 15cm long, then take each strip and with a pair of scissors cut into the strip about 7mm (at least halfway) every 5mm. the shingle strip is complete, almost. to make them appear less uniforn I go along and randomly shorten some shingles on each strip.

Here you can see how I have shortened some of the shingles.

I then glued the strips to the roof, using white glue, do 2 or 3 strips on one side than switch to the other, then switch back to the other side, until the entire roof is covered, and let dry make sure that each strip is offset from the one below it. The shingle strips are not straight they have a bit of an arc to them, the thinner the card you use the less they will arc, one way to adjust for the arcing is to cut the strips into shorter strips (3-5 shingles long), like real roofing shingles.

WIP - Dollar Store House

WIP - Dollar Store house

I was in Dollarama, a Canadian dollar store chain, and saw these hanging on a wall.

I thought for the price ($1.25 + tax) it would be worthwhile picking a few up and seeing what I could do with them. It might be easier than scratch building.

I built one, it took less than 5 minutes, it looks compatible with my 1/72nd scale as is, and should work with 28mm as a small building. My main concern though is with 1/72nd scale so that how I intend to accessorize them.

They look pretty good for 28mm too.

My first decision was to build it as a ordinary rectangular house, as opposed to the cruciform version, not many early 20th century houses look like that especially European houses.

The first thing I did was glue the walls together and add a floor, I used an old 3 ring binder cover but foamboard would work as well, then after the glue set, cut the corners flush.

it's built correctly, the wall is upside down as the door shows

Floor added to give much need Strength.

The next thing was to make the roof removable; so I cut off the roof mounting tabs and 4 pieces of foamboard and hot glued them to the underside of the roof, I then glued cardboard (actually cereal box) over the entire roof, I lose the inscribed shingles, but was the easiest way to patch the gap.

 Having covered the shingle-like pattern etched into the wood roof I have to make it look pretty again, I cut a bunch of cereal boxes into tiny 1 cm x 1.5cm rectangles and proceeded to glue them on as shingles,it takes forever, I think i'll go back to my shingle strips for this smaller scale.

This took almost an hour to do

 Here is a complete house built for post-apocalypse games.

All I did to this one was to cover the construction tabs with white glue and paper towels, added shingles and a chimney.

WIP- Build up to Hotlead

Build up to Hotlead 2012

My friend Greg has again offered to run a game at Hotlead! 2012, this year and like last year it will be Late war WW2 eastern front. We pool our stuff, Greg supplies most of the infantry, some of the vehicles and a bit of terrain, I supply some infantry, many vehicles and much of the terrain.

This year I am hoping to improve the look of my terrain, it is currently more functionality over visual appeal.

The thing I like best is my hills, they could look more realistic but they are sturdy and transportable.

My trees look OK, but I still need a more appealing way to delineate the wooded areas. Currently debating between these three methods.

Green craft foam cut outs with dark green and brown splodges painted on.

green felt cutouts

Green towels cut outs, may add some paint to break up uniformity of colour.

 

 

 

 

I am currently leaning to the towel option, If I can find more in a similar shade.

I was preparing to make some stream sections, but I saw on TMP that HOTZ ARTWORKS has a felt airbrushed stream option, and since I was planning on making mine out of felt or craft foam, I bought $20 worth of their 3" wide option (11' should be enough) to see how it looks.

The Soviets weren't big on paved roads, so I need dirt roads, I made them out of felt, acrylic caulking, and dry brushing.

Here's a drybrushed section in use

A lot of my German vehicles need decals, the Armourfast, Plastic Soldier Company, Pegasus Hobbies and Italeri fast build model kits don't come with any, fortunately Warhammer Historical has a decal sheet specifically for 1/72 it has 1200+ (it claims) decals, which means I can finally decalize my Nazi stuff.

All I need now is a bridge that is suitable for the eastern front.
Do Russian bridges look markedly different that their western counter parts?