Roundwood's World

Roundwood's Wordle 2012

2012-03-01T09:01:00.001Z

Here's a harmless (and some may say utterly pointless) bit of fun, and an echo from last year. I put the URL of my blog from the last few weeks into Wordle and came up with this ...

I did the same last year after Big Lee started the ball rolling and the change over 12 months, and particularly since Christmas, is pretty obvious. Great War to Dark Ages in one easy step.

No real surprise I guess, but lots of fun all the same. Have a go yourself, maybe - you'll enjoy it.

Seeing some of the Wordles in the gallery on the Wordle website is always fun - be warned though, it's a time sink!

More Wordle-ing in 12 months time, folks. Normal (non-frivalous) service will be resumed this weekend.

Dark Age Rules Mechanics

2012-02-29T09:18:00.001Z

The latest instalment of our Dark Age campaign set around fifth century St Albans turned out to be a crushing victory for the Saxon warlord, Cyddic. I thought I’d use this Blog Post to mention a bit more about the rule mechanics which we have been play-testing rather than inflict yet more dodgy poetry on you.

The game was a fairly straightforward scenario. Cyddic, a Saxon warlord recently migrated to Britain, has seen an opportunity for plunder and pillage in a small village to the north of St Albans. A recently constructed church has attracted his eye and he has determined that terrorising the faithful and impugning their God is a good way of attracting more mercenaries and warriors to his particular brand of colonisation. So yes, Cyddic is an evil man, but you should read what the monastic chroniclers are saying about him ...

Anyway - on to the game ...

The Saxons were tasked with raiding the newly constructed church, finding any buried treasure, and then escaping with their loot to their feasting hall. They entered on the south of the table, and had to exit from the south of the table. The entry of the Romano-British warband, keen on defending the church, was determined randomly. As the game was a raid, we rationalised that many of the formalities, or rituals, or battle – such as inspiring speeches, consultation of pagan omens, blessings from wandering saints – would be absent. We had a hasty assemblage of forces on the table pressing forward into a fight, as opposed to formal lines of spears an shields goading each other before combat starts.

Although there are missile troops on both sides, these do not tend to play a decisive role in battle – their goal is to irritate, to channel enemy forces and to inflict wounds on the enemy. They engage in a ranged combat when their card is drawn, but melt like frost on a spring morning when contacted by their foes.

That leaves the bulk of the action to be fought in close quarters by warriors. These are led by Big Men, being local lords, nobles, or officers (for the Romano British). The movement of a Big Man is determined by card-draw from a card deck, with each Big Man moving when his personal card is drawn. There is no card signalling the ending of a turn – the “Tea Break” or “Time for a Snifter” card in other TooFatLardies rules. This reflects the general absence of a distinction between close and ranged combat, as well as being more appropriate for a smaller game.

The clever thing I like about Richard’s approach to the rules is that he has married the card-draw mechanic with a second card deck, the gloomily but colourfully named “Fate Deck”. The idea behind the Fate Deck is a way of influencing combat and movement outside of the main card-deck. Cards in the Fate Deck can convey a number of advantages – they can interrupt play (a Big Man stepping forward to take his turn immediately), can help a unit move further, can give a bonus in combat, allow a rally, or permit an evade move. Such features could have been built into the main card-deck, but giving players Fate Deck cards in their hands so that they can choose to interrupt or influence play makes things very flexible.

Accordingly, as a player, you need to have eyes on the table at all times – this is because some of the Fate Deck cards are best deployed as a “trump” to other cards. Woe betides anyone nipping to the kitchen for a glass of mead when combat starts.

So far so good. We then tried to add on some additional features in the Fate Deck without adding more cards. Inspired by the card mechanics in boardgames like “Paths of Glory”, “Labyrinth” and “Wilderness War”, we tried to add in optional features which augment the deployment of a card from the Fate Deck. So, some cards can be played in suits (of ravens or dragons). Some cards have a dual use at the end of the game to assist pursuit or facilitate escape; holding such cards forces a player to make a choice as to whether to play the card or hold it for later. The only requirement in designing the additional features was to try and focus attention of the players at all times on the tabletop – we consciously tried to avoid the Fate Deck being focused towards the campaign game or towards events off-table (so no “strategic deployment” features, Paths of Glory fans).

I’ve always loved games-within-games, where players can play the main wargame but also have something interacting with the game and drawing their attention at a different level. Hopefully the Fate Deck mechanisms reflect that.

That’s really about it. The combat flows pretty smoothly once the interaction between the card deck and the Fate Deck is familiar. The battles are not large – 70 figures a side is more than enough. Games play in under two-hours. Combat is bloody and decisive, but not (to my mind) overly so.

Above all, the games are entertaining and fun. I know Richard’s done a lot of reading on the subject, so I’m making an educated guess that they’re as near to being historical as it is possible to get to. Perhaps more importantly, at least to me, they seem to have the “feel”, sound, rasp and smell of the Dark Ages. And, at the end of an evening’s gaming, that’s really what I was looking for after all.

Next up, I’ve a sub-Roman villa almost finished which is based on the large villa complex found at Yewden in Buckinghamshire. It’s about two-thirds done, but more about that next time. Until then, here’s a sneak peek, although as yet without the central roof and without the pantile roofs I've ordered !

The Song of Oswic: 454 A.D.

2012-02-16T09:44:00.004Z

Listen!
Cold now the fate of Angle kings
in days past, the countless battle storms
weathered by those heroes of these cold shores.

Many autumns of our lives
lie silent behind us while we sing
in the mead-hall ...

Of sword-strokes and battle blades swung under a mail-grey sky
as we stood on the iron hard ground before the fight ...

Of the cowardice of Britons and the conceit of their kings,
worthless their false-gold givers, and empty their halls ...

Of our sword-triumphs across the Grey Sea
Angle warriors sluggish with treasure from the Britons’ hearths barren ...

Of the Enemy, wailing from their wood-prison
fearful to meet us in the battle-hall of men ...

Of the Raven God, cruel and sharp
fickle his wings of fate watching the slaughter ...

Of the savage fight, well-wrought weapons glinting
in the flint-dawn, the fume of our breath frozen in the wind ...

Of the linden shields of their braced shield-lines worthless
in the smoke of their homes burning and gutted black-raw ...

Of the war cries and laughter, our hearth-heroes
goading them to their fate ...

Of the warriors fallen, spread-eagled by sharp spears
as the battle-walls screeched and moaned ...

Of the thicket of sword-blade and spear point
relished by carrion, and sharp jawed ravens garbed in black ...

Listen!
For our war-songs are yet young ...

***

And that’s the fourth battle report from our Dark Age campaign, told from the (completely biased) view of the hearth-skald of Oswic the Angle. For a game in which the Saxons and their Angle mercenaries looked to raid and loot a small British settlement, things quickly turned into an unexpected battle of shieldwalls as the British warband of Maxim Boicicus arrived.

The Angles, true to form perhaps, simply looted the helpless village for the entirety of the game. The Saxons and British carved chunks out of each other, alternatively goading and charging in a vicious spiral as the “shock” and wounds mounted on both sides relentlessly.

The game didn’t take long. We were done in perhaps a couple of hours, but most of the action took place in a frenetic 30 minutes as each side threw units into the fray accompanied by battle cards such as “Hero of the Age”, “Smite Hard”, “Braced Shield-wall”, “Goad” and “Aggressive Charge”. The play of the battle cards, particularly according to their suits (ravens and dragons) is proving to be a really fantastic enhancement of the tabletop struggle. A game-within-a-game which has its own rhythm and tension.

For a slightly more sober and insightful look at the rules and mechanics of the game we played on Tuesday night, Richard Clarke has posted this (far less biased!) report.

More next week from fifth century A.D. Britain, with some Saxon standards and shield designs to finish this weekend.

Until then, battle-brothers ...

Angles ... or Anglii ... or Angels

2012-02-15T14:42:00.000Z

“Then they sent to Angeln, bidding them send more help, and had them informed of the cowardice of the Britons and the excellence of the land. They then immediately sent hither a great force to the help of the others. These men came from three tribes of Germany: from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, from the Jutes”. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 449 A.D.

After reading the entry for 449 A.D. in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, I wanted to try and create a unit in our Dark Age games of Angles which could serve as allies or mercenaries of the early Saxon sea raiders. These would be men who had been informed of “the excellence of the land”, who had left the remote region of Angeln on the Jutland Peninsula overlooking what is today the Bay of Kiel for the softer gentler landscape of the English downlands.

The Venerable Bede in the eighth century A.D. briefly described the Angles’ homeland of Angeln “which lies between the province of the Jutes and Saxons, and remains unpopulated to this day”, perhaps a reference to the aftermath of the Angle migration. Tantalisingly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also refers, in the context of Angeln to land “which ever after remained waste, between the Jutes and the Saxons”.

I wanted to create a slightly different, identifiable unit of the Angles, or Anglii in latin (or angels, if you like the Pope Gregory the Great story). I started by creating a standard to which the small Angle force could rally, making the flag out of some thick artists paper which was glued with Araldite epoxy resin and folded to resemble it blowing in the wind. I’ve always found epoxy resin makes a great modelling glue for fabric and paper when you want the shape of the standard to stay curled or to resemble a flag blowing in the wind. Foil and thin metal works well also, but does not always have the resilience and endurance of good quality paper when painted.

I also made up some casualty bases for the Angles. The TooFatLardies rules almost all use “shock” (or “wound”) markers to denote casualties or deterioration in fighting capacity of a unit. We mark “shock” with small micro-dice, but in Dark Age fighting of lines of numerous units and shieldwalls, these can sometimes get knocked over or muddled between units. So I hit upon an idea (not my own, I should add!) of making a small dice holder on a casualty base. The casualty base comes on when some “shock” is inflicted, with the dice being turned as the shock rises or falls. They look a bit more cinematic than just having a dice on the table, and were pretty easy to make. A small offcut of Styrofoam, carved with a modelling knife, served very well as the holder for the dice on each base.

I primed the whole unit with Halfords grey car primer, which gives a lovely, even, matt grey prime ...

... and then painted the figures ready for the Army Painter dip. As with the second batch of Saxons, I “pre-shaded” the figures. By this, I mean that I shaded the deepest recesses of the figures chainmail, cloaks, eyes and neck, giving a very basic depth to the figure. This, in turn, helped to create more of a smoother depth to the colours once the Army Painter dip was added. In all this did add more time than for the first batch of Saxons, and a little more time again than the second Saxon batch as my pre-shading was more extensive.

I know from your comments that you’re interested in whether I actually save any time on this unit by using a dipping method – being honest, I have to say that I probably didn’t save very much at all. Dipping is certainly good fun, and I think I’m getting used to its idiosyncrasies. But I found that once I tried to reach for a good standard using the dipping method, I felt that the time saving was minimal. So, for me dipping will be a viable, alternative painting method – but I don’t see it displacing my previous painting style.

I painted the Angles bucklers light grey to create a uniformity of background. Lard-Thane Richard Clarke had suggested a white and back shield background for the Angles, and I thought this would work really well with the small buckler shields. I’ve always loved the Dark Age imagery of ravens stalking the fields of the slain after a battle, and the rapacious, land-invading migration of the Angles also struck me as being carrion-like. I therefore thought that painting a raven design on the Angles’ bucklers and standard would be quite suitable and also fun to try.

Now, at this point I shall confess freely that I have no evidence whatsoever of any obsession of the Angles with a dark, brooding, fate-laden raven God which inhabited the North German woods in the Dark Ages. And also no evidence of tribal groups painting their shields a uniform colour with a similar design image in fifth century A.D. England. None whatsoever. That being said, I had great fun painting the raven designs on the Angles’ shields working from images in various sources from a couple of Ospreys, a book on Anglo-Saxon Art from the British Museum, a couple of archaeological sites online and some field-work of looking at the crow rookeries in the nearby woods! So, in football score terms: History 0 Fun 4!

Some basing trays finished off the unit for the moment, although I’m going to add some Silfor tufts later this week.

Turning to using the Angles in our Dark Age games. I’m hoping we can focus on the role of the Angles as potentially unreliable allies, and perhaps even mercenaries, rather than merely subject troops of the Saxons. As close neighbours to the Saxons and Jutes, it is easily to imagine that the tribal groupings may not have seen eye to eye on all matters.

Mercenaries are always great fun to introduce into a tabletop wargame and a campaign, and I’m hoping that the Anglii, Angles (or Angels) are no exception.

Mapping the Past

2012-02-11T10:33:00.003Z

Like most wargamers I’ve ever met, I love maps. There’s something about looking over a map, particularly one which is authentic and historical, and wondering what would you do if your battalions were marching on that small town, passing those woods – would they be trapped at the ford, would your enemy be waiting on the wooded hillsides in ambush? I’ll wager you’ve spent a lot of time looking at maps (or star-charts, or dungeon plans, or whatever) with the same thoughts in mind.

Another of the great pleasures of playing wargames is fighting tabletop battles over actual terrain. There’s something about fighting a game, or a campaign, over ground which you know, which you’ve visited and which you can take a photograph of before or after the game.

But what happens if the period you’re fighting in has no maps available? The simplest thing is to make your own. Perhaps even more than looking at maps, I’ve love making them for years, usually in the notebooks where I’ve recorded the battles, campaigns and ideas about gaming. It’s old fashioned, takes a while, but when you’ve made the map and also fought over it, it becomes a real part of the memory of your games, just as much as any photograph can do.

But making decent maps always seems to me to take a fair amount of time, and of course sometimes the map you make just doesn’t work in a game. They can either be too detailed, or not show the right sort of detail or perhaps the geography is just wrong (why is that cliff there, and where does that river flow to?).

As readers of this Blog and Lard Island News will know, the current interest at Lard Island is the Dark Ages. I really thought that mapping out the Saxon Shore was going to force me to get my edding profi-pens and water colours again until a fantastic post appeared from Allen Curtis on the TooFatLardies Yahoo Group. Allen posted a link to the Ordnance Survey map of Roman Britain which is available online in segments here.

I can do no better than to repeat Allen’s description of the map: “As this edition was first printed in 1928, it shows place names that have been changed in subsequent editions to reflect academics' current views. But the map's sheer size, as well as the style of presentation, makes it a marvellous thing to behold.”

Here’s part of the map from Eastern England, which covers St Albans and much of modern day east Hertfordshire and Essex perfectly.

And here’s part of the most northern segment of the map, covering the Antonine Wall. To my mind, few maps, if any, convey such a sense of frontier and wildness as this one.

I’m hoping the Ordnance Survey maps of Roman Britain will be much in use in our games over the weeks to come. And, I hope also in your games. And even if I feel like making a smaller map, having the larger one available online and in very subtle muted tones will be a great reference point and inspiration.

Thanks again to Allen for this find. Now, off to finish my mercenary Anglii (or Angles, or Angels), which I’m hoping will be the subject of my next post. Have a great weekend until then!

The Fickle Hand of Fate: The Battle of Jupiter’s Shrine, 454 A.D.

2012-02-10T22:03:00.000Z

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how carefully you plan a battle, when you’re out of luck – well, you know the rest ...

Here’s the hand which the Fate Deck dealt the Saxon warband in Tuesday’s playtest game of Dux Britanniarum. Impressive eh?

Apparently, I’m told that Oh Bollux is the ancient German God of utter rubbish. Given that out of the five Oh Bollux cards in the 52 card fate deck, we (the Saxon players) had ended up with holding three (out of a hand of just five cards) it was impressive indeed.

The game, the Battle of Jupiter’s Shrine was set around sub-Roman Verulamium in the fifth century A.D., with a Saxon raiding party attacking the British forces defending a small farmstead.

A Roman road, no doubt close to the current A414, bisected the table. Unlike other playtest games, we were trying out a slightly different set of cards from other TooFatLardies games. The Fate Deck emphasizes hand management with cards being divided into suits and bringing various benefits to the holder. Well, except for the Oh Bollux cards, that is.

The idea isn’t really all that new. TooFatLardies have used cards in their games consistently, but what is different is trying to build in some of the features of card-driven boardgames where cards can be used to influence action on the board in a variety of different ways. Some may add a simple bonus, some may add more effective bonuses when played with other cards of the same suit, and some may be held back for use in the post-game period to pursue a defeated enemy or make good and escape. It’s a really interesting idea, and one which certainly led to a fast and furious game last Tuesday night.

The action in the game started fairly conventionally, with the two forces stalking each other through the woods and the farmstead.

Soon enough battle was joined, with a Saxon warband charging into a detachment of British hearth-guard. The ability of careful card management to focus, propel and drive the action forward was really apparent. Perhaps flushed with excitement of placing cards which allowed shieldwalls to be braced, charges to be furious and extra charges, both sides threw their cards down into the first combat without hesitation.

Other action followed, with the main Saxon warband comprised of veterans crunching against the British shieldwall. More effective, battle-hardening cards were deployed by the British ...

... with the Saxons able only to place their three Oh Bollux cards in reply. Not quite heroic, but very amusing all the same. Unsurprisingly, the Saxon war leader, Cyddic, suffered a heavy defeat as the British, bolstered by British cards and some fine dice rolls threw the Saxons raiders back.

Cyddic, seeing that the best option was discretion rather than valour, beat a hasty exit accompanied by his champion and what was left with his hearth-guard, leaving possession of the field to the British.

So, there we have it. The third playtest and the rules are proving to be fast, furious, fun and feature an interesting interaction between the tabletop and the cards drawn from the fate deck. Still a long way to go, but even without a blogpost full of dodgy poetry, I think we’re possibly getting there.

The Battle of the Via Claudia, 453 A.D.

2012-02-06T23:03:00.000Z

Grey the ships which brought us here
Serpent prowed and eager for sailing,
Through the sea foam’s fury
And dark nights of rain.

To the land of rich grazing,
Golden halls of stone,
Fat cattle herds and bloated Lords
Laughing like children.

Bone-white cold was the morning
When we stalked from the shadows,
Battle ready, with the keenness of ravens
Scenting the morning’s prey.

Handsome in their war armour
And shields of bright colours
The enemy stood before us
Twisting in their cold fear.

Ecgfrith, lord of the ring mail
His knife sharp and keening
Stood before them. Their women wept
As his knife drank blood.

Fast and sharp, like wolves
In the thin light, the champions fought.
The bone-bags scarred and wrecked,
Ecgfrith fell, in honour immortal

Out of the cold moor
Came our Saxon host, stalking.
Cunning and hungry
For revenge on their foe.

Battle ragged their standards quaked
In the fell wind of our bitter fury.
Our sharp spears
Shattered their shields’ clash.

Gold gleam and jewel hoard
Drew our Anglii kinsmen,
To burning and slaughter.
The enemy’s wails were terrible.

Sword cursed and hateful,
The enemy fought us,
The stench of their burning farms
Wreathing the battle-fold.

Battle-brave thanes,
Sons of Hengist,
We carved into slivers
Their wooden-walls, splintered

Recall now, Earlmen,
Our victory in the dawn gloom
As we shattered their forces.
Ravens glutted on their slain.

***

So, there you have it – the second battle report from our ongoing Dark Age campaign set around 5th Century St Albans, and the rival Saxon perspective on Lard-Thane Richard Clarke’s fine pro-British blog from last week. We’re still working on the detailed rules for the battles and campaigns, so it’s a bit early to talk about tactics and mechanisms. But I will say that the second battle really saw some aspects of the game coming together, particularly with respect to the battle between the rival army champions, and the ferocious fighting which focused on the British shieldwall.

The members of my local wargames club are really getting into the spirit of the period, which is proving as colourful and dramatic as I hoped it would.

On the modeling and painting front, I hope to blog the final 25 Saxon figures (actually Anglii mercenaries) shortly, together with one or two extras I hope you’ll enjoy. The next game is tomorrow night, so watch out for the third battle blog report later this week ...

Saxon (Psycho) Killers

2012-01-31T13:36:00.000Z

Following last weekend’s OK (but no better than OK) experiment with the Army Painter strong tone dip, I tried again this weekend with another 20 early fifth century A.D. Saxons. This group included five “Big Men” and also a Saxon champion. The figures were all Gripping Beast, which are slowing growing on me.

Perhaps most fun of all were the “Saxon Killers and Characters” which I used for a couple of the Big Men. These are not particularly for the faint-hearted, although I imagine they’re a fairly accurate depiction of what happened on a Dark Age battlefield (and no doubt on many battlefields since). In the words of the (still-phenomenal) Talking Heads song, "Psycho Killer,... run, run, run away".

As for the painting, I took a lot more time and care painting with this bunch than the group last weekend. Quite a few people posting comments on this blog and at my local club mentioned that colour selection was key. I tried to make sure all the colours were toned together before dipping, selecting browns, reds and greys as the key colour themes.

I tried to shade the bolder colours before dipping to create a little more depth than was created on the previous batch of dipped figures. As before, I didn’t highlight any colours, reasoning that this could come later, post-dipping. I also spent a little time on painting in eye sockets and (on a couple of figures) some face detail.

I also tried a different approach with metallics, painting first with very dark Vallejo gunmetal (mixed with Vallejo black) and then highlighting with plain Vallejo gunmetal before the dip.

I dipped as before, brush-painting from the Army Painter strong tone dip tin as opposed to actually dipping the figures in. As before, the immediate post-dip stage looked hideous. But at least I was expecting that on this occasion.

I applied the matt varnish and was reasonably pleased with the results. They looked better as a group than last weekend’s figures and seemed to “gel” together more. I think the pre-shading of the bolder colours helped a bit with this.

So, on the plus side, 20 figures in a weekend to a tabletop standard, and 50 in a fortnight, was a reasonable result. I put nowhere near as much effort into these as into other figures which have appeared on this Blog.

On the minus side, they are still very much the ugly cousins of other Bloggers stunning and beautiful Dark Age work on the Blogosphere and internet generally. To try and elevate them from “ugly cousins” to anything memorable, I’ll need to do some highlighting, add some shield transfers and some banners. A project for the coming weekend, perhaps. As Benito so very wisely said in his comment on my post last week, it all comes down to effort in the end!

As to how the “ugly cousins” and the Saxon psycho-killers fight on the tabletop, I shall be seeing in about 7 hours time when we play our next Dark Ages game.

If you have a soft spot for psychotic Saxons, wish me luck!

In the Year of Our Lord 452 A.D.

2012-01-25T09:22:00.003Z

In the Year of Our Lord 452 A.D. there came a terrible host of Saxons from their lands to the south, sailing up the River Colne from the Great River. They were led by a leader, Sidic, the wolf of the southern strands and notorious seafarer of the Grey Waters.

In Sidic’s host was a champion, Wulfstan, who the men of Verulamium greatly feared for he was cruel and mighty. Sooner would his flesh become food for ravens than he would approach an altar and bow before our True Lord.

Before the gates of Verulamium the host of Sidic stopped. The walls remained after the Romans had left. This masonry was still wondrous; fates had not yet broken it. The works of giants had not yet decayed. Under the columns stood the leader of Verulamium, Maxim Boice. Armed he was in the noisy combat. Amber wreaths encircled his brow and a purple cloak comforted his shoulders. Large was his retinue, the men of Verulamium, laughing as they moved, although fearful of a gloomy disaster before the Saxon foes.

Great was the quantity of spears who watched Wulfstan ford the dark waters of the Colne, preparing food for the ravens, slaughtering as he stalked. Splintering the shield of his enemies, women wept as he passed. None in the Verulamium host could stop him until a soldier of Britain, Mullard ap Artur shattered his shield.

There was food for ravens, and for the raven there was profit as Wulfstan fell in the Colne, his head severed by Mullard ap Artur’s sword. Furious were the Saxons. To drinking of mead they fell in gloomy despair. Black fury became anger as the words of their fell priest came to their ears

Silent the men of Verulamium watched. Of their leader, Maxim Boice came little but words of high pitch, reedy and soft. His words of battle were lost as the sound of Saxon arrows filled the air on eagles feathers, keening for prey.

Battle-mad with the death of Wulfstan burning their eyes, Sidic’s host marched with speed, regaled with mead; great was their design. Retreat was their poison, battle their desire. No mother’s son nurses them.

A conflict on all sides befell the bitter field. Saxon and Briton fell together in violent slaughter. Punishment the Saxons sought on their enemies, but the wall of shields of Maxim Boice stood fast. Sword and spear shattered upon wood and iron.

A violent thane, Brytnoth the Saxon, led his men first, eager in battle with eyes of a serpent. Under the helmet of his terror, his men died impaled on bright spears.

Sidic came to his aid, blood draped his cloak from many winters of fighting. With a bold shout he pierced the wall of Maxim Boice, the lion of Verulamium.

Blessed conqueror, Maxim Boice, of temper mild, the bone of the people, with his battle streamer displayed was victorious. There was grief and sorrow upon the Saxons as they went back to their boats. Those boat pirates who meddled with the mane of a lion did not return until the next summer.

****

So, there you have it. One of the forgotten battles of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recreated in all its glory at the Fleetville Community Centre, St Albans, England last night. It was the first game my local wargames club has done set in the Dark Ages and it was really entertaining. Especially fun was the way in which each side's forces had to be inspired to take the field through a mixture of excessive alcohol, the revealing of good (or bad) omens and through encouraging (or, as proved to be the case from Maxim Boice, downright awful) speeches.

It’s much too early to say much about the rules we were ~~using~~ ... writing as we went along ... , but the Venerable Bede would have no doubt been rather bemused.

Lard-Thane, Richard Clarke, has also posted a far more erudite look at the challenges and rewards of wargaming Dark Age England at Lard Island News. For those interested in the period, I highly recommend you have a read at Richard's blogpost here.

We’ve scheduled a follow up game for next week in 453 A.D., so stay tuned!

A Dip on the Saxon Shore

2012-01-24T11:51:00.000Z

As I mentioned before, the latest project at my local club is the Dark Ages of fifth century A.D. Britain. This seems to be a very popular period at present. There are some fine miniatures available at very reasonable prices and the attraction of the period has been reinvigorated by a host of different media, principally Gripping Beast’s very interesting set of rules, SAGA, and several films and books over the last few years (Beowulf, Game of Thrones, Outlander, etc.).

So, I should be excited, eager and enthusiastic about painting my first war band of 50 Saxons from 450A.D. Well, I should be ... but things for me worked out slightly differently.

It’s not the first time I’ve tried this period. In the dim and distant past, better known as the 1980s, I tried building a WRG 6th edition Dark Age Irish army. It was a truly dark experience for me. The 25mm figures I used were pretty dreadful. When painted they looked like a diseased, filthy, under-nourished rabble – in other words, quite accurate, but not attractive. I have bitter memories of painstakingly replacing their spindly swords with flattened wire swords, which periodically fell off during their tabletop battles. Grim, dark memories ...

Worse still was the history. Glimpsed dimly through the shadows of fifteen centuries, all I got was a few dramatic images from the fragmentary chroniclers. Welsh cavalry pounding a rainy North British hillside at the battle of Catraeth ... ravens gnawing on the severed head of a Scots-Irish chieftain at the battle of Strathcarron ... lines of incomplete poetry about a rain of spear points visciously coursing into the flesh of an enemy. All vivid and colourful. But nothing at all about where they were fighting, how many were fighting, and how they got there. As far as a wargame went, you could sort of make it up. And we did.

It was fun for as long as it lasted (and as long as the flattened wire swords remained glued into the drilled holes in the figures' hands). But in the end, finding out about the period was just very hard work.

So I was more than slightly pessimistic when the idea of Dark Age warfare was suggested again. Would it be better the second time around?

“Quicker to a field of blood, Than to a wedding”

I’d bought the 28mm figures for the Saxons from Gripping Beat about two years ago. (And yes, that is the normal painting schedule at Roundwood Towers). They are fine, strong figures, made with good quality metal. They’re also a very reasonable price when you purchase in bulk. I’d like to say that preparing them was a simple easy process, but I’d be lying slightly. The problem I found was that the figures are cast open-handed, which gives you a lot of options but is a real fiddle when you’re gluing the weapons to the figures.

I replaced the cast white metal spears which come with the figures with wire ones for strength, and made the best effort I could in fixing the weapons into the open hands of the figures. I started supergluing the weapons to the hands, but I was unhappy with the result. I resorted to epoxy resin after first gently “closing” the open hands of the figures with a pair of pliers so that the weapons would fit snugly.

The whole process was a bit of a palaver and took a few hours. I resisted temptation to throw the whole lot in the rubbish bin several times.

Once the weapons were glued into the hands of the figures, things got better. I based the figures on 3mm depth MDF round discs (or hexagons for “Big Men”) with a quick coating of PVA, sand and gravel on their bases.

I scraped the excess glue and sand on while the glue was setting.

I primed the figures with Halfords car primer, which holds paint really well and is as cheap as chips. I then had a war band, ready for painting. Although it was about then that some of my problems really started ...

The (slightly dubious) Joys of Dipping

As I was reticent about the whole project from the start, I’d already decided to try and get the figures painted as quickly as possible and on the table. Seduced by the lure of “painting and army in a weekend”, some spectacular videos on YouTube and some fine painting on other blogs, I decided to use Army Painter Strong Tone dip for the figures.

It felt liberating, at least at first. I perked up as I raced through painting the first 30 figures. Without shading or highlighting, the whole process of painting the figures was speeded considerably. I felt like I was going back in time. The years fell away. This was how we painted in the early and mid 1980s – flat, solid colours on (pretty hideous) club wargames armies which numbered in the several hundreds.

Non-metallic metals? Counter-shading? Four or five different paints and shading for a figure’s face. Don’t make me laugh! For several hours, I was in heaven. This was Old School painting, and I loved it.

Of course, I was telling myself that the Army Painter dip would make everything perfectly shaded. By now, those of you still reading will have a face frozen in a rictus of horror or will be laughing uncontrollably. I think you know what comes next.

The dip is pretty easy to apply. I painted it on, as very ably shown by Pat Lowringer of SoCal Warhammer in this great video. It certainly does the job of staining the figures, covering them all in a deep gloss shade. The hands and faces are easily visible, and it does a great job on the metallic in toning them down.

But, as you can see, what I was left with was a dark, grungy force, coated in a thick gloss varnish. While the Army Painter Strong Tone dip did its job, it isn’t a miracle worker. I probably chose the wrong colours for the base coats on the figures, and will need to do a little highlighting to lighten up the figures.

Matt varnishing, which I did last night, did help slightly.

The overall look is of a standard, ordinary, distinctly-average set of figures – OK when seen from a distance, but not great close-up. But then, what did I expect after spending next to no time on them?

Verdict

On the whole, I’m pretty happy – I had a lot of fun painted the figures in fast, simple block colours, although my hopes were unrealistically high for how the dip would look on the figures. On the plus side, I’ve now got a load of (slightly uninspiring) figures painted, we can start playing a few games at my local club. And there’s still chance to add a few highlights, some fancy banners and shield transfers on the figures I've done, and to try something a little different with the the next 30 figures for the war band.

I’ll see if I can smarten up the next lot of Saxons for next time. Wish me luck!

Being Inspired: Hops In Herefordshire and Thiepval Wood

2012-01-19T20:21:00.000Z

I was stuck for a blog post this week, so this post is slightly improvised.

I’ve been working hard over the past couple of weeks on some early Saxons from the fifth century A.D. which I’m hoping to finish off over the coming weekend. I’ll be blogging these as soon as they’re done, but I’m not there yet.

Instead, I’ll go with a couple of new departures for me.

First is to re-Blog a wonderful post by JP over at Herefordshire 1938. It’s entitled “Hop Picking in Herefordshire” and it sums up to me why I love reading people’s Blogs. Jon’s deftly combined his own personal family history with a really interesting insight into a hidden part of British life, in addition to giving a great idea for a very different wargame. Rather than give the game away, I simply recommend you have a read.

Second is to simply post this fine poem by Edmund Blunden, “Thiepval Wood”, from September 1916. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did when I found it.

Thiepval Wood

The tired air groans as the heavies swing over, the river-hollows boom;
The shell-fountains leap from the swamps, and with wildfire and fume
The shoulder of the chalkdown convulses.
Then the jabbering echoes stampede in the slatting wood,
Ember-black the gibbet trees like bones or thorns protrude
From the poisonous smoke past all impulses.
To them these silvery dews can never again be dear,
Nor the blue javelin-flame of the thunderous noons strike fear.

Edmund Blunden, September 1916

2012 Plans and Projects

2012-01-04T11:16:00.001Z

A very happy new year to you all ! I thought I’d cover in this blogpost what’s on the painting table and in the wargames diary for 2012. I’ve had a great time over the past few days looking at other bloggers’ plans, so I thought it was time for mine.

At least this year I’ve found somewhere at Roundwood Towers where I can put a painting table which is not going to be converted into an ensuite bathroom (as the last cubby hole was). Here it is – fairly small and discreet, but it should be large enough to get me through the year and then some.

On one of my favourite blogs, Tears of Envy quoted Victorian philanthropist Henry Wellcome who proclaimed, "Never tell anyone what you propose to do until you have done it." Wise words indeed. I should have followed his advice.

Sharp eyed readers may remember my predictions from last year, including this gem – “The focus in the Spring of 2011 is going to be on a troop of Lord Strathcona’s Horse from Moreuil Wood in March, 1918”. Well, that went well didn’t it?

One year on and not a single cavalryman, mounted or dismounted, has been painted with anything more than a black undercoat. So, this is certainly a long-overdue project which is firmly on the workbench for the Great War in 2012.

I also want to add about three more trench terrain boards to the Great War terrain collection. I don’t want to jump the gun and describe these (not least in case I change my mind), but I’m hoping one of them will include a free standing strongpoint such as a fortified farm or two-storey blockhouse. I have long envied Phil Robinson’s fantastic “die ratte keller” with green, jealous eyes and I can see myself unable to resist copying it shamelessly for much longer.

I’d also like to get my force of German trench raiders finished to go along with the new terrain. I had in mind an improvised Zug of veteran, aggressive trench raiders and was looking for inspiration to make the unit a little bit different. I’m still thinking through the possibilities, but this is certainly something I want to press ahead with in the New Year for the Great War.

From a written word perspective, I still need to post the campaign diaries from the games played in December (I’ve not forgotten!). And, fingers crossed, I’ll get the Western Front "Platon Forward" campaign supplement to “Through the Mud and the Blood” finished in the next month or so.

What’s left for the Great War? Well, I’m nervous about making predictions but here’s some clues ...

Finally, I’m also working on something very different in 28mm. Again, it’s a large-skirmish project, but it should challenge my ship building skills. Here’s some clues ...

As for wargames shows, we’re heading for Salute again with a demo game (no idea what yet) and I’d like to make the trip north at some point to one of the northern shows – probably Partizan – with another “Beer and Lard Day” in Burton towards the end of the year.

So, there you have it. Let’s see how I do in the next 12 months!

2011 – Review of the Year

2011-12-31T10:39:00.000Z

For the last blog post of this year, I thought I’d have a quick look back through 2011 and (in the next post tomorrow morning) look ahead to 2012.

This has been the second year of the blog, but I think it’s a year in which things have slowly started to come together a bit on the blogging front for me. First, and most importantly, I’d like to thank everyone who commented, followed, read or just flicked through the pages on the blog. Blogging is a social activity – it’d be no fun if no one read the blog posts – so it’s been really great to see that other people seem to have enjoyed some of the stuff which has been appearing here. I only hope you like what’s coming in 2012!

I also saw that the number of followers has reached 200. So, to all new followers, as well as old friends, WELCOME and thank you all.

As for blog posts, I managed 56 (not including this one), which was double the amount in 2010. It was just about what I thought was realistic in terms of achievable numbers, although looking back there seems to have been a few months where I posted a lot, and some when posting tailed off. I’m hoping for a bit more of an even coverage next year.

The most popular post was “Winter Sports: The Abode of Madness” with 2234 page views. I was a bit puzzled about this, as it wasn’t that different to a lot of the other posts. I have wondered whether it was because it was visited by a large number of blog readers looking for dangerous, insane off-piste skiing and snowboarding. If so, please accept my apologies for the misleading title.

As for exactly what type of blog posts you enjoyed reading, I don’t really know. I think you liked the terrain building articles, the AAR/ battle-reports, the wargames show reports and newer posts like the painting guides. Have no fear, ladies and gentlemen, because there should be lots more to come on all these in 2012. For example, I counted that I’d played 28 wargames in 2011, almost all of them at the St Albans Wargames Club (a.k.a. “Lard Island”), but that I’d not reported most of these. I’ll try and do better in the future ... mea culpa !

It hasn’t been a big year for me purchasing wargames figures. I’ve bought a few, mainly in 10mm for the Great War divisional wargame project we’d intended to start in 2011 but which hasn’t got off the ground so far. In the 28mm, I bought less than 150 figures – although this may well be because I’ve got piles of lead hanging around the garage waiting to be used.

Painting wise, I managed 132 Great War 28mm figures, far fewer than I’d hoped for but the dip was due to three months of making terrain and being busy at work for big chunks of the year. I managed four new terrain boards, each of which took a lot longer than I’d expected.

So, what were my highlights of the year? By a very short head, the leaders would be the Salute and Crisis wargames shows. The best thing about wargames shows is meeting old friends and new, and both of these shows were perfect for that. The games on display were stunning at both shows, and at each show there was a great turn out from my club. The after-show dinner in Antwerp was particularly fun.

The other main highlight, and running in a very close second, would be the TooFatLardies games day back in July when we put on a series of games around Tobruk 1941. That was a terrific day’s gaming (even with my ham-fisted umpiring at times!)

I also got a lot of satisfaction in finishing my Passchendaele wargaming project by the end of the year. It’s good to try and finish something, once in a while ...

Any dark clouds in the year? Yes, one or two, but thankfully pretty small. I never got my camouflage netting right for the artillery position in Glasgow Copse (which is why that never got blogged!). I didn’t even half start a couple of projects I wanted to. I put far less written material on the blog than I’d hoped for. And I’m still trying to finish the Platoon Forward variant for the Great War. Oh well, there’s always next year!

Anyway, with some great memories, old friends and new and some (old and new) projects to turn to again next year, I think I’ll say goodbye to 2011.

Have a great New Year everyone.

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-24T23:01:00.000Z

Just a quick post to say, Happy Christmas everyone.

I hope you all have a great Christmas, and have a wonderful day tomorrow! Thanks to everyone for following and commenting so far this year - I've really enjoyed everyone's company. Only a couple of posts left for this year after this one, but I hope you'll join me for those if you can.

Cheers!

"Passchendaele: the Bitter Victory" in the TooFatLardies Christmas Special 2011

2011-12-23T09:07:00.001Z

A little bit of a blatant plug in this post, but I hope you’ll forgive me. For anyone wanting to know a little more about how my local wargames club went about wargaming Third Ypres and Passchendaele, I’ve written a couple of long-ish articles on the subject for the TooFatLardies Christmas Special 2011 which is published today by my good mates Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner.

The first article, “Passchendaele: the Bitter Victory” starts with looking at some of the challenges in attempting to recreate Third Ypres and Passchendaele through wargaming. I then try and cover the key themes of the campaign, including the evolution of small-unit tactics, the dominance of artillery, military technological developments which influenced the fighting and the critical factors of terrain and weather. The first article ends with the suggested “house rules” we have been working on for our games of “Through the Mud and the Blood” set in Third Ypres.

The second article, “In The Salient”, provides three scenarios. The first, "Gegenangriff", covers a German “spoiling attack” on hastily assembled British positions in late September 1917. The second, “Virtutis Gloria Merces”, follows the attack on Reutel village on 4 October 1917 in which Captain Clement Robertson of the Tank Corps was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The third scenario, “A spot where only Devils can reign” recreates the Canadian attack on Vine Cottage to the north-west of Passchendaele village on 6 November 1917.

The other contents of the TooFatLardies Christmas Special 2011 are as follows:

The sinking of the Konigsberg. A classic scenario for Bag the Hun

On Patrol. A complete pre-game patrol system for I Ain't Been Shot Mum

A Brief Affair by Charles Eckart of Colorado. Australian troops attack a German held Pacific Island in 1914 with Mud & Blood

An A to Z of Umpiring. Nick Skinner runs through the dos and don'ts of running games.

One off Battles for Let Feu Sacre. Kev Lowth of Hampshire rolls up some scenarios for a quick game

Green Hill Moonshine. Chris Stoesen of Georgia presents this fun scenario for Terrible Sharp Sword.

Deadly Pairs. A Bag the Hun scenario for Normandy 1944.

Passchendaele: the Bitter Victory … errr … as mentioned above

In the Salient. Three Scenarios for gaming Passchendaele with "Through the Mud and the Blood".

6mm LOVES IABSM. Mark Luther of Atlanta tells us why he believes 6mm to be the perfect scale for IABSM

Across the Nemen. Mark puts his money where his mouth is with this great Barbarossa scenario.

Messing Around with Boats. Brian Wethersby of Texas presents his thoughts on rating ships for Kiss Me Hardy.

Operation Charnwood. Capturing Caen. Richard Clarke’s background to this remarkably little gamed operation.

A Fresh & Highly Trained Instrument A complete Operation Charnwood mini-campaign for I Ain't Been Shot Mum.

The Capture of Akhalkalak Fortress: Chris Stoesen presents this scenario for Sharp Practice set on the borders of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

Tom Ballou of Massachusetts gives us some alternative sniper rules for IABSM.

Bridge over the River Urk. Robert Avery of No Fixed Abode heads to the Eastern Front with a Partisan scenario for IABSM.

“The Roundwood Report”. Some more interrogation of Richard Clarke about some of the TooFatLardies’ products by some bloke who has a Blog

Get Fondler. With news of his brother’s death at the hands of a criminal gang, Richard Fondler heads for Gateshead in this gritty Sharp Practice scenario. Avoid tall buildings!

May Madness. Nick Skinner is Tail End Charlie with this scenario for Bag the Hun above the Dunkirk perimeter in 1940. Tally Ho!

I hope you’ll agree that’s a fairly chunky amount of information for the cover price of £6. Although I’m clearly not an impartial judge of TooFatLardies’ publications, I do think it’s good value and since not a penny, cent or euro of the proceeds are heading to Roundwood Towers, I feel I can honestly and with a good conscience tell you to go and buy a copy!

Observant followers of the Blog may realise there's an overlap with the mini-campaign we played at the start of December. There is, but fear not. I hope to have the Campaign Diaries on this Blog at some point over the Christmas and New Year period, together with some other loose ends I've been meaning to finish off.

"Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau": A "Through the Mud and the Blood AAR" for Third Ypres, 4th October 1917

2011-12-14T17:34:00.001Z

Last night, we played the second of our brace of games set in the Ypres Salient in the autumn of 1917.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, this game followed from a pre-game series of emails between the players in the game. The intention was for the decisions made by the players in the pre-game to influence the forces available and the tactics used by the German and British sides during the Tuesday night club wargame and also the precise terrain over which the game was to be fought.

The game played was the most promising of a number of encounters between the British 62 Brigade, part of 21 Division in the British Fourth Army, and the German 14th Reserve Infantry Regiment. The pre-game emails were focused on the British advance against German defences in depth in an area bounded by Jetty Wood to the North, and Juniper Wood and Juniper Cott to the South.

The Objectives

Being part of a pre-game sequence of emails, it was difficult to set the same fixed objectives as I would normally do in a scenario. Each player had stated in their emails what they wanted to achieve by the end of the mini-campaign, but translating that into hard objectives on the tabletop as slightly more challenging. I settled the objectives after discussion with the players – with the British objective being to navigate along the road from Polygon Wood to Reutel village (which ran across the North edge of the table, and for the Germans to prevent this happening).

The Terrain

The terrain over which Third Ypres was fought, and the changes to that terrain brought about by changing weather, was critical to the relative successes and failures of British operations in the Ypres Salient. In this context, the images of the flooded, shell-pocked terrain around Broodseinde, Zonnebeke and Passchendaele have become the signatures of the battle (even though at times during the Third Ypres battles large portions of the Salient were dry and dusty). It was therefore straightforward to mention to the players that their use of terrain, and navigation over the battlefield, would be key elements in the wargame.

The south of the table featured the edge of Juniper Wood, which petered out into a couple of isolated copses to the north. Alongside the eat edge of the wood was an artillery bunker, revealed in the first instance to the British players as simply being a reinforced shellhole. The reasoning here was that letters and post-war accounts by Tank Corps crewmen regarding concealed German artillery positions generally seem to have noted that a number of German field gun positions were practically invisible until the tank was very close indeed. I made the artillery Stellung accordingly difficult to spot for the British.

To the east of the table were two German MEBUs, or prefabricated concrete pillboxes. These were a typical feature of the German defences in the Ypres Salient. They proved historically to be a thorn in the side of attacking British and Imperial troops, necessitating a number of different tactics in order to neutralise them. The German player (Elton) has placed these carefully to provide mutual support on the campaign map, and they proved as venomous in the game as their historical counterparts had done. With a certain grim nod to the past, the northern pillbox was named “Scharnhorst”, the southern “Gneisenau”.

The terrain on the table was uniformly stated to be poor, requiring any movement to be at a -1 per pip of each movement dice. There was also the possibility of some of the terrain being abysmally bad, this being determined according to a random roll and reflecting the poor, rainy weather on the previous three days in the pre-game campaign.

The German player was also informed that prior to the start of the game, a creeping barrage had passed over his positions, dislocating his communications with his SOS artillery and causing some casualties in the pillboxes following several Stollenknicker, or large calibre dug-out smashing shells.

The British route of advance was equally testing. The road to Reutel was deemed to have been badly shelled by both sides in the previous days, and was negotiable only with great care. The road ran along the North of the table, but was difficult to follow for any British forces – especially if under fire. Crossing the short distance across the table, a mere 48”, would not be easy.

The Game

The British infantry from “A”Company, 1/Lincoln arrived slowly owing to being stretched out slightly along the road to Reutel (another requirement of a pre-game email from the British players). The first section to arrive occupied a small copse by Juniper Wood, closely followed by the first of a section of Mark IV tanks from “B” Battalion of the Tank Corps.

Black Prince II, a male Mark IV tank commanded by Captain The Honourable Roger Gustard-Woode, crawled cautiously onto the table, moving slowly along the road with its supporting infantry.

The pre-game emails had revealed Captain Gustard-Woode to be a most entertaining character. Here’s the description from Panda, the British Tank Corps commander:

“Captain The Honourable Roger Gustard-Woode is part of the landed gentry. His great grandfather had been influential in the development of corn thrashing machines, on the basis of which the family fortune was made. The Captain, like his father, took a keen interest in the workings of the farms and estate, and the introduction of machinery into the working day. It is for this reason he chose the tank instead of the lance, following his keen interest in farming machinery. A keen sportsman, Roger is often seen carrying a hockey stick, a hangover from his university days as First team captain. A rather social chap, his keenness to encourage a corps d’esprit amongst his men can sometimes take precedence over his other duties. However, Roger is rather hands on in terms of the technology at his disposal, and can happily spend hours talking and working alongside his engineers and crews, and often when other duties are to be attended to. Captain Gustard-Woode has chosen to spend time with his crew and their machines, tinkering with their new technology - sometimes to the annoyance of the engineers. In respect of extra equipment, the Captain recognises the importance of clear communications, and therefore has given orders for extra signalling equipment. Pigeons for signalling? No Sir, only for dinner!”

Eminently sensible, and characteristics which were reflected in the Captain’s performance with a couple of “house-rules”. These came in handy because no sooner had Black Prince II clanked its way onto the table than the German Blinds card was drawn, enabling the sharp eyes of Gefreiter Dieter Jaeger of 3rd Battery, 18th Bavarian Foot Artillery Battalion to drag the camouflage and scrim netting from his gun and strike the lumbering tank at long range. Firing his 77mm M1916 field gun after spending an action aiming, Gefreiter Jaeger’s first shot hit Black Prince II, shocking the driver and bringing the tank to a shuddering halt.

Stationary, Black Prince II started to slip into the Flanders mud. History repeated itself. “We travelled literally one foot to each revolution of the tracks”, recalled Second Lieutenant Wilfred Bion at Third Ypres. Panda and the other British players shared his experience and the tank bogged.

Immobile, with tracks revolving slowly into the mud, Black Prince II was a perfect target. Gefreiter Jaeger did not miss. The second shot smashed through the sponson, with Black Prince II catching fire, its crew scrambling out of the door hatch

Six of the eight crew, and Captain Gustard-Woode made the exit, gathering as an informal section by the now-blazing tank, thick black smoke enulfing the scene. One gunner had the presence of mind to drag out a spare Lewis gun from one of the sponsons before the fire engulfed the “bus”, and quickly deployed the weapon (somewhat ineffectually) against the Scharnhorst pillbox.

By now, British forces were streaming into the field. Brigand II, another male Mark IV tank commanded by First Lieutenant Charles Kimpton, rolled off the pavé road just avoiding Black Prince II and commenced firing with its 6pdr quick firing sponson mounted guns against Scharnhorst.

Its attack at long range was complimented by a swift attack off Blinds by another section of 1/Lincolns, this time with bombs at close range.

Keeping out of the arc of fire of a German maxim MG08 heavy machine gun in Gneisenau, the British bombers infiltrated to the rear of Scharnhorst and routed a defending section of German infantry guarding the entrances to the pill box.

With the Stellungbattalionkämpfer guards routed, the remaining bombers threw grenades into the rear of Scharnhorst. No quarter was asked, and none was given. As historically, the fighting had taken a bitter, cruel turn.

Gefreiter Hans Fassbinder, seeing the British bombers capturing Scharnhorst and frustrated by the narrow firing angle of Gneisenau’s embrasure, urged his crew to drag the Maxim heavy machine gun to the roof of the pillbox. The arc of fire was greater, and soon Gefreiter Fassbinder was directing withering fire against British forces on the north of the table.

The fire cut through both a British section and also the remaining crew of Black Prince II, but not before captain Gustard-Woode had gallantly rapped on the side of Brigand II with his hockey stick and demanded entrance to carry on the assault. He now led the remaining three tanks of his section, Brigand II which was now accompanied by two females – Belladonna and Banshee. More infantry was arriving, still in somewhat of a piecemeal fashion, as 1/Lincoln’s “A” Company headquarters deployed on the board together with First Lieutenant Percy Grantham.

By now the combined firepower of the “B” Battalion tanks was causing problems for the occupants of Gneisenau and also the artillery Stellung in the south of the board. Gefreiter Jaeger’s artillery crew has suffered two fatalities under Brigand II’s 6 pdr guns, with a strafing run by an RFC close support SE5 adding to the German discomfort.

While the German players attempted to rally their forces ….

… another British section waded through flooded shell-holes to pepper Gneisenau and it’s defenders with rifle grenades

As Captain Gustard-Woode rolled his tanks forward, even at one point navigating on foot before Brigand II, the German reinforcements arriving through Juniper Wood came too late.

Not even the presence of two high-quality German snipers, relocated by the German players from their reserves to the south of Juniper Wood, and the arrival of two additional sections of high quality trench cleaners under Major Ulrich von Bek, the local kampftruppenkommandeur, could stop the British forces getting close enough to an exit to call the morning’s attack for the British.

The Aftermath

So, there we have it. A larger, and more complicated, game than last weeks which I found much more challenging to umpire at a good pace. The duel between the tanks and artillery see-sawed dramatically in the two hours of the game. What seemed at first to be a withering fire by the German field artillery against stationary bogged-down British tanks son became a far more erratic sniping as crew casualties impaired the loading time and accuracy of Gefreiter Jaeger’s gun Bavarian crew.

The players seemed to feel that the pre-game emails had been worthwhile, and that they had set the scene for each of the games. This helped save time on the two nights we played, as well as helping to orientate players who were not very familiar with Third Ypres or the Great War in general.

Next, I hope to post up the pre-game/ mini-campaign emails and some notes for both the games. I always enjoy reading those sorts of things and I think from some of the previous comments that some of you may like that as well. Hopefully I can post them this coming weekend.

Polygon Wood, 2nd October 1917: A "Through the Mud and the Blood" After Action Report

2011-12-08T13:28:00.004Z

On Tuesday night, we played through the first of a brace of games set in and around Polygon Wood in the Ypres Salient in early October 1917.

For a while I‘ve been thinking of ways in which to add a bit more background and context to the evening games I play at my local wargames club in St Albans. I was hoping to immerse the players a little more into the history behind the games and develop further the themes which seem to me to be characteristic of the Third Battle of Ypres: immense battles, difficult and even abysmal terrain, dominant artillery, rapidly evolving tactics and weather.

In Blog posts later this month I’ll describe in more detail the way I went about trying to create this background through a series of pre-game emails sent to the players, each of which was focused on different levels of command. On replying to these emails, the decisions made by the players then influenced the forces available and the artillery tactics used by the German and British sides during the Tuesday night club wargame and also the precise terrain over which the game was to be fought.

If people are interested, I’d also be happy to post the full umpire’s notes for the mini-campaign, and also the email exchanges and game briefings once we’ve played the final game on Tuesday 13th December.

Enough of future plans, and on with the action from the first of the two games…

The German Objectives

The game featured a German spoiling attack on British positions on the east side of Polygon Wood. The German commander (Elton) had been told by email that his forces had been pushed out of Polygon Wood in late September 1917, retreating to the east in the face of a colossal “bite and hold” operation by the Australian Divisions within the British Second Army. Casualties amongst the German defenders had been heavy. It was imperative that the remaining German forces prevented further British advances which could threaten the Gheluvelt Plateau, Broodseinde Ridge and further eastwards towards railheads at Roulers and the captured Channel ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge.

The German commander had, by email, chosen to forestall the next British attack by launching a series of spoiling attacks on the British and Imperial forces reforming in Polygon Wood. His tactics, while aggressive, we completely in line with the summary prepared by the German Fourth Army in late September 1917 of how the rest of the Flandernschlact should be fought:

“In order to wear down and destroy the enemy [British] infantry in the same way as the enemy attempts to do to our infantry, there is to be an increased concentration on the engagement of the enemy infantry. Most of the field artillery is to be used I this way…..Large amounts of gas [shells] are to be used against enemy [battery] positions and the enemy forward battle zone. Army headquarters will issue orders separately for these “Major Gas Engagements”. Each of the Groups will also direct smaller scale gas shoots against the infantry whenever the wind is favourable. Extensive use is to be made of gas-filled mortar bombs…we have to force the enemy, therefore, constantly to maintain larger forces in their forward battle zone and to place their reserves further forward, so that our artillery has worthwhile infantry targets to engage. This can only be done if we launch attacks ourselves, preferably during the intervals between their attacks, so that we can disrupt their plans. This will force the enemy, if they are to be able to hold on to the ground which they have won, to launch costly counter-attacks against which we can deploy maximum firepower” (“The German Army at Passchendaele”, Jack Sheldon, pp 186-188)

The Terrain, the Weather and the Opposing Forces

I warned the players that they should consider the whole of the board to be covered with the stumps of shell shattered trees.

Lieutenant Cyril Lawrence described the appearance of the wood after the battles of August 1917:

“on our left, the shattered remains of Polygon Wood – gone – absolutely wiped out – simply a mass of huge splintered trunks and matchwood lying everywhere. In front, two or three pill boxes stand up like warts … and everywhere, everywhere the sea of great shell holes, lip to lip – not a trace of grass, of the forms of the hedges or the fields remains – just one heaved up mass of turned up earth”.

I randomly allocated movement penalties to each terrain board as everything I’d read about Polygon Wood in early October 1917 seemed to suggest it was an exhausting, challenging place to move or deploy through. I randomly determined the weather (light rain and mist) and the scene was set for a dawn attack by Germans Stosstruppen on the British lines.

The German Commander had access to a depleted company of Stosstruppen from 3rd Battalion, 229th Reserve Infantry Regiment, led by Fahnrich Joachim Vogel. This unit had historically been in action in an earlier spoiling attack in Polygon Wood on 23 September 1917. While it had suffered casualties, I reasoned it would still (just) be a first-rate fighting unit, albeit with its fighting value significantly depleted. To reflect the quality of troops and leadership of this formation, the German players on the night (Richard and Elton) were given a “German Dynamic Commander” card and two “Sturmabteilung Vor!” cards. In the end, these cards were to be crucial. I also gave Fahnrich Joachim Vogel a devil’s luck card, thematically entitled (in my dodgy German) “das Glück des Teufels”.

Opposing them were Major Jasper Whitechapel of “A” Company of 1/Middlesex with a small force of exhausted troops ready for relief from the front line. The last couple of days had been extremely difficult for this formation, with constant German shelling both along the line and across the rear areas of the battalion (the latter resulting from the German Commander’s email instructions focusing on artillery interdiction on British rear areas and supporting formations). Accordingly, the formation was barely more than half strength. Despite this, Major Whitechapel’s orders were to hold his Company headquarters position at all costs.

The British players were told that “A” Company of 1/Middlesex were due to be relieved by First Lieutenant Jackie Shearer of 2nd Platoon, “B” Company, 12/13 Northumberland Fusiliers, part of 62nd Brigade, 21st Division which would be taking its position for the forthcoming offensive. Once the German Stosstruppen commenced their spoiling attack, would the Northumberland Fusiliers arrive in time?

The Game

The game opened with a vicious fight between the lead assault sections of the Stosstruppen force, led by the dynamic Fahnrich Joachim Vogel and Feldwebel Max Schrek and the most advanced section of the 1/Middlesex.

Despite the ground in the first terrain board being determined as abysmal, and substantially retarding German movement, the shock and surprise of the Stosstruppen engaging the lead British rifle section in close combat was devastating. The remnants of the first British section withdrew in disorder as German artillery started to flay the British base terrain boards and rear areas.

While German movement was slowed by the abysmal terrain and some very poor movement dice rolls, the presence of a “German Dynamic Commander” card and two “Sturmabteilung Vor!” cards managed to drive the Stosstruppen forward.

Two German Granatenwerfer 16s added to the onslaught, peppering the British defenders with grenades whenever they appeared, directed by German front line troops shouting back locations to which their “pigeons” could be aimed.

A British Lewis gun section threatened to stem the assault, but Fahnrich Joachim Vogel continued to drive his men forward in repeated close assaults. The “trench brooms” of the lead Stosstruppen section (automatic C96 Mausers and Luger machine pistols with snail magazines), supplemented by a number Stosstruppen with bayonets and trench knives, clawed through the British defending sections, although at a cost.

By now the German forces had broken into the second terrain board, and found the going slightly better. More of the German Blinds were moved forward, allowing fresh German sections to fight off a flank attack by a section of British bombers as the struggle became more desperate on both sides.

By now the German artillery bombardment had lifted. The German artillery strikes had succeeded in killing all of the 1/ Middlesex’s Company headquarters section except for Major Whitechapel who seemed to be living a charmed life. Importantly, the British forward artillery liaison subaltern had been killed and his telephone cables to British SOS artillery batteries were now severed. (I let the British players know at the end of the game that the German Commander had, by email, informed me that his artillery forces would concentrate on counter-battery fire during the assault as well as bombarding British rear areas.) Major Whitechapel’s frantic signalling with the artillery liaison flags (collected, bloodstained, from a dying signaller's hands) was to no avail. On this part of the battlefield, the British SOS artillery barrage never arrived.

However, the German barrage had been too short in duration to catch the leading platoon of the 12/13 Northumberland Fusiliers as they made their exhausting progress through the ruins of Polygon Wood. Halfway through the game, the first sections of the Northumberland Fusiliers' lead platoon could be seen advancing onto the British baseline.

Spurred by the sight of fresh British blinds appearing on the table as the early morning mist dissipated, the Germans pressed their attack with renewed force. Support and inspiration came in the form of a Hannover CL.III from SchlactStaffeln 21, flying at less than 100 feet, strafing the already shocked British troops and with the observer shouting encouragement to the advancing Stosstruppen.

Despite the aerial support, Fahnrich Vogel was leading a much diminished force forward. The troops of his leading assault sections had been either killed or shocked in the remorseless attack through Polygon Wood on the British positions. He had one last card to play. He ordered up a two-man flammenwerfer to lead the final assault into a half-flooded broken entrenched position where he suspected the British Company headquarters was located. As the German players swiftly advanced the flammenwerfer on a Blind with judicious use of the two “Sturmabteilung Vor!” cards, the first of the sections of Lieutenant Shearer’s platoon from “B” Company, 12/13 Northumberland Fusiliers had made its way forward to face the Stosstruppen.

The club fell silent as Richard rolled the dice for the effect of the German flammenwerfer’s attack. With two searing darts of flame, the flammenwerfer turned the British position into an inferno of burning destruction, the shock effect of the nightmarish attack only too apparent as the Geordies recoiled back in horror.

Dredging the last of his force forward Fahnrich Vogel prepared to assault the final British position. He was sure he could see Major Whitechapel still frantically flapping his signalling flags to attract attention of anyone with a field telephone to call down SOS fire.

Everything rested on the turn of the cards.

In the end, it was the British Blinds card which trumped the various cards in the Stosstruppen deck which would have propelled the remnants of Fahnrich Vogel’s brave force into the British positions. With ample additional sections of the Northumberland Fusiliers arriving on the table, the German players decided that the spoiling attack had done enough … just.

The Aftermath

So, a tense, unpredictable and intermittently horrifying game found over the shattered ruins of Polygon Wood drew to an end. Played in a great spirit, I’m hopeful that the pre-game emails helped to deepen the context of the game for the players and provide an insight (however small) into the desperate conditions of the fighting in and around Polygon Wood in August and September 1917.

I’ll post the game briefings which I provided to the players over the next day or so. These contain some notes about a number of elements in the game, including British battlefield fatigue (affecting the 12/13 Northumberland Fusiliers as they battled forward from the British rear lines, the working (or not) of the British SOS fire.

I’ll Blog the second of the two games next week, after we’ve played it.

29 Ways to (try to) Stay Creative: A Wargamer’s List

2011-12-05T12:46:00.002Z

In September, over at the excellent Massive Voodoo blog, Roman posted a fantastic YouTube video clip yesterday called “29 Ways to be Creative”. Here it is …

All of that got me thinking of a wargaming specific list. I think wargaming is a very creative hobby, and with the internet and the growth of the blogosphere, I think it’s getting even more so.

So, below, I’ve given my own version of 29 Ways to Stay Creative as a wargamer. It’s definitely not comprehensive. I think we all get inspired by different things – things we see, word of mouth, ideas from a huge range of media, games we play, things we come across at wargames shows, and so on.

And in that fashion, my list is very personal (and no doubt prejudiced). It's what gets me thinking. I'm betting yours might be very different - and long live that diversity! It’s meant as a bit of fun at the start of a new week and – given that a lot of my current inspiration is obtained from the internet – is a huge thank you to everyone out there who’s hobby stuff and wargames have inspired me to try and do something different.

29 Ways to (try to be) be Creative (A Wargamer’s List)

1. Carry a notebook everywhere – ripped (shamelessly) from the embedded video above, this one really does work.

2. Join a club – in my humble opinion, nothing beats the social interaction side of the hobby whether running games or just joining in as a player. Not rocket science, just great times.

3. Embrace cross-overs – love the look of that ancients unit but play moderns? I keep being tempted by new periods and new sets of rules. OK, so who doesn’t? I’ve done a fair amount of “wargames butterflying” in the past, but these days I’m as likely to try and force myself to think how those colours, that basing, those rules mechanisms would look and work transported or across into the period I’m working on. 2,000 years of history, crossed in a heartbeat.

4. Read History – it’s a lot easier than just making it all up!

5. Give yourself time to be creative – the best ideas are not a eureka moment, but evolve and gestate over time. Looking back I tend to remember a single spark because that lingers in the memory, but often I’m forgetting the long period of planning, talking with hobby friends and experimenting.

6. Listen to Podcasts when painting, modelling, and whatever – this has certainly given me loads of ideas. The guys recording these shows week after week need to be pretty dedicated to keep doing that - and that’s inspiring in itself. Current favourites: Role Playing Public Radio, Jaded Gamercast, El P and the Man, Meeples and Miniatures, The Podgecast and Fear The Boot

7. Try Writing – blogosphere, wargames magazines, self-published rules, scenarios. Spread your word …

8. Never, never, never think that you have nothing worth blogging about – thank you, Mel!

9. See a different world – try wargaming your favourite period at a different or try fitting an RPG approach into a wargame. I’m trying out a mini-campaign right now doing this – full details to follow, so stay tuned folks…!

10. Break your own rules – go further than you thought you could

11. Try a new technique, even if you’re not sure it works. Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to try something new which you’ve read about in a book or online. I felt the same looking at the paint-flicking techniques for rust in the Forgeworld “Imperial Armour Model Masterclass” book. Surely it could never work. I tried it. It worked brilliantly. Leaps of faith – go on, try it.

12. Learn from your mistakes, but never stop experimenting. Even when it means ripping up the terrain you've just spent hours gluing down....arrrrggghhh!

13. Try not to listen to accepted wisdom – when we thought about building some modular First World War trench terrain to run a participation game at Salute 2009, some of the things I read on online forums suggested it might be inflexible, lead to dull games with no tactical subtlety and be generally a dead end wargaming-wise. Three years on, we’re building yet more terrain and people at my club still seem very happy to carry on playing the period. Dead-end? Dull? Well, it certainly hasn't turned out that way so far ...

14. Visualise and dream – try an imagine in your mind’s eye what it will look like when it’s finished, and then be realistic in what you can do in the time available

15. Respect the past and the Fallen – a very personal way to be creative for me, but some of the modelling I have got the most out of has been focused in this area.

16. Realise other people have been here before or are here now – the internet has been wonderful for following in giants' footsteps. Porky’s Expanse, A Gentleman’s Ones – please take a bow.

17. Break the rules and take risks – fixing some of the problems I’ve had with air-bubbles and “Solid Water” made me realise I could do a lot more and get a better result by being adventurous

18. Adopt a complete approach – embrace everything in the hobby, or at least try. Modelling, rules, terrain, club gaming, history … delve deeper into your favourite period

19 Remember original materials – see the word from your lead soldiers’ eyes

20 Think Cinematically – scenarios work best when they’re like a night at the movies. Keep it tense and tight if you possibly can.

21. Try and start a scenario as close to the action as you possibly can – always throw in an early explosion!

22. Quit beating yourself up – relax, this is a hobby, not work.

23. Have heroes who show you the way as gamers, modellers and people – the hobby has many of them. Be inspired. One mountain, but many paths to the summit.

24. Choose a style of painting which suits you - don’t be someone else’s perfect, but find something you enjoy and work at it. I like to catch the eye from a distance. Impressionism, colour contrasts, mood, shapes and not super micro-detail. Works for me. What’s your style?

25. Dream a favourite game – what game settings would you love to have in your perfect game? For me – close assaults, urban ruins, darkness falling, chaos and battlefield friction. They’re my signatures for an intense, cinematic game. Now slot them into a game – Porky had some great ideas in his brilliant post “Getting out of the Boat”

26. Watch great films – it really helped me get new ideas for running all sorts of games

27. Visit museums and battlefields – be inspired by the real thing. Touching the past, physically.

28. Put on a game at a show – people are interested in what you’re trying to do. Honest!

29. Have fun – it’s the only Golden Rule of wargaming.

That’s my list. Have I left anything out? What would you add to your list?

Painting British Infantry – Part 4 : Detailing and Finishing-up

2011-12-04T10:57:00.001Z

We’re in the finishing straight now. I spent an hour yesterday and about another 90 minutes this morning finishing the figures off. They’re now done apart from varnishing and basing the company command group. Which is a relief as I want to use them in a game on this coming Tuesday, 6th December.

There was not much left to do to be honest. I painted the mid-colour of the uniforms Vallejo English Uniform, and the highlight of the uniforms Vallejo Khaki. The metal parts of the rifles, the shovel heads and mess tins were painted Vallejo Gunmetal.

I added some miscellaneous Vallejo browns for the hair where this was visible under the helmet. And I painted a pair of eyes on the Artillery Liaison officer, as well as finishing off his compass, field telephone and boxes of spares.

I like to paint a black edge around the wooden base of the figures. I think that finishes them off, and forms a break between the figure and the terrain. I know some people prefer to simply paint the bases brown, and I’ve tried that in the past although my preference is for the black. Either way, I like to use a different paint which is a hard wearing acrylic paint for the base edge. I like the excellent Louvre series of artists acrylics for this. They’re very reasonably priced, work well for terrain as well as base edges, and they’re very hard working even if not varnished afterwards. They also have a great “double-cream” consistency, and never seem to separate as some of the Vallejo and Plaka colours can sometimes do. I bought mine at Cornellison’s in London, but you can find them at quite a few artists’ suppliers on line. Well worth checking out for large projects or base edges.

Well, that’s just about it. I’ll post a quick photo of the finished command group over the next few days. Next up will hopefully be the introduction to a club project we’re running through December. I hope you’ll like this, not least as it should give me the chance to talk through pre-game campaigning and the cross-over with running RPG games.

Hope you can join me for that.

Painting British Infantry – Part 3 (Mid-colours and Highlighting)

2011-12-01T20:13:00.000Z

So, a couple of days further on and the figures are well on their way to being finished. I estimate I’m about 80 per cent. of the way to finishing these figures now.

After the shade colours, I gradually worked on mid-colouring and highlighting on the group of figures. Although I like to do the mid-colouring altogether, the way in which I do the highlighting means its often easier just to do the mid-colours and highlights at the same time.

OK, hang on, hang on. What on earth am I talking about ….. “mid-colours”? “Highlighting”? Pardon??

By “mid-colours” I mean the colour which is about halfway between the shade colour I applied last time and the colour which I want to use as a highlight. Some enterprising paint companies have brought out paint in three colours (shade, mid and highlight) and while I don’t use those particular paints, I like the thought behind them. In a similar fashion, I like to work from a shade colour (applied in Part 2 of this mini-series), through a mid-colour to a highlight colour. Take the section of riflemen in the photos below for example …

The shade colour on the packs and webbing was Vallejo Leather Brown. The mid-colour I then painted was a mix of Vallejo Leather Brown and Vallejo Khaki. The highlight was straight Vallejo Khaki mixed with a very small amount of Vallejo White. Shade, then mid-colour and then finally highlight.

As the mid-colour and highlight both involve the same colour (Vallejo Khaki), I found it fairly easy to do the mid-colour and then highlight on the figures as a group in consecutive order, instead of (say) painting the mid-colour and then doing something else (like the mid-colour on the rifles or the figures’ boots).

So, in turn, I painted mid-colour and highlight on the figures’ boots, puttees, leather jerkins (for the three figures which have them), rifles and then the webbing and packs. I had meant to do the actual uniforms (tunics and trousers) but I didn’t have time last night. However, this is the last major area on the figures to paint with mid-colour and highlight, with only the fine-detailing needed after that.

The command group I saved until the end of last night’s painting session, and these chap are therefore lagging behind a little. I did manage the map on Tuesday evening, being another chance to try and replicate the colours used on actual trench maps in the Great War.

A couple of final points in response to some of the comments left on previous Blog posts.

The glass lenses on the gas masks on the figures are very simple. A shade colour of Vallejo German Grey, and mid colour of Vallejo Neutral Grey (which covers almost all of the lens) and then two flat dabs of Vallejo White mixed with Vallejo Neutral Grey. Simple, but fairly effective from a distance. I have tried some crazy things with the lenses (such as trying to paint the eyes of the figure through the lens and trying to paint a reflection of the ground beneath the figure in the lens). These are nice things to try for a display-case model, but on a wargames table that kind of super-detailing gets lost (in my humble opinion). So kudos to the chaps who do that on their figures, but I wanted something simpler but hopefully still dramatic … hence the solution I’ve mentioned above.

Finally, the cardboard bases under the figures. This is just an old habit of mine. I simply cut a strip of artist’s mounting board, place a lump of Blu-Tac on the end and stick the figure onto it. I’ve seen all costs of holders used for figures (from spatulas, to wooden strips, to wine corks) but the artist’s mounting board and Blu-Tac works for me.

That’s all for now. Hopefully, tomorrow night or on Saturday I can post the finished figures.

Painting Great War British Infantry - Part 2 (Shade Colouring)

2011-11-27T23:23:00.000Z

A few painting hours further on and I reckon that I have got about between 50 and 60 per cent. of the way to finishing the models shown in the photo below:

I continued today with the shade colours. The way I work is to block in the shade first, basically covering just about all of the black undercoat save for the very deep shade in recesses such as elbow folds and under the tunic at the thighs.

This does lead to a very dull and dark looking model. Any satisfaction I get at this stage by seeing the models covered with paint tends to be diminished by the fact that the models at this stage look very flat and unexciting indeed!

For this reason, on some of the figures I do try and keep my interest going by painting a something a bit more interesting. So, you can see the flags of the signaller , the riding breeches of the Major and the gas masks of a couple of the figures having been worked on more, probably at a point when I found my interest flagging …

Generally though, it’s a process of painting shade colour quickly, trying to be as neat as possible and trying to cover the figures in such a way that makes painting the mid colour and highlight colour as easy as possible.

Most the paints used in this part were Vallejo. So, for the uniform it was Brown Violet; for the helmets German Grey; the webbing and packs were painted Leather Brown; the boots in a mix of German Grey and Black; any helmet cloth covers were shaded with Burnt Umber; and the gas masks Green-Brown.

The only other paint used was Plaka Braun for the rifles, bayonet scabbards and shovel handles.

On a number of figures (but not yet all), I ran a very fine brush of Vallejo Black mixed with the shade colour to bring out more deep shade. You can see this best on the figures for the Company command stand.

I tend to use Windsor & Newton Artists Acrylic Flow Improver a fair amount just to keep the paint consistency smooth. The Vallejo paints work very well with this, although the Plaka hardly needs it.

About two or three hours to go for these chaps before they’re finished. With luck, I’ll be able to posted the finished results on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Until then…..

Painting Great War British Infantry

2011-11-26T20:01:00.000Z

I’ve posted some WIP shots of a section of 28mm British Infantry from Great War Miniatures plus a Company command stand which I’m painting for a game at my local wargames club on the 6th December. I don’t normally paint work-in-progress shots, mainly because I’m never quite sure if people are interested how the figures are painted as opposed to how they look at the end of the painting process. However, a couple of recent comments on the Blog suggested people would like to know more … and that’s the reason for the next few Blog posts.

So, a few words of introduction. There’s nothing original here. In fact, I think all my techniques have been featured by far better painters elsewhere. I get deeply inspired by Golden Demon entries and painting competition winners, and against the company of those artists, the figures I paint are on a far more humble plane of existence.

However, I have tried to paint the figures for our Great War games in a particular style, which I hope gives the results we were looking for at my wargames club in St Albans. The three things in my mind were:

(1) for starters, I was looking for figures which were attractively painted, but not too immaculate that I’d ever be too nervous to play with them in club or participation games at wargames shows;

(2) I wanted figures which would catch the eye from a distance of about three to five feet, especially to a person new to the period, and look dramatic on a tabletop. I wasn’t looking for painting every tiny detail in three colours (although some figures did end up a bit like that). But I also wanted to avoid the very-authentic-covered-in-mud look, at least for the figures (I found more issues with the terrain in this regard); and

(3) finally, I wanted to paint figures which looked a bit different, exaggerated even. This was because I wanted them to stand out on a fairly “busy” set of terrain boards and not just disappear into the background.

With this is mind, here’s how I’ve painted just about all the figures for the Great War project.

Stage One – Faces and Hands

I like to try for a base coat and three colours. The base used to be Plaka GelbBraun, but for some inexplicable reason this awesome colour has been discontinued. Vallejo Green Brown is a decent substitute, if a bit darker. The face base-coat of the figure on the far right, below, is painted with just Vallejo Green Brown, while the other three figures show the stages described below.

I then run a thin brush with a mix of Plaka Braun and Vallejo Black into the recesses of the face – eyes, mouth, sides of nose, under the cheek-bones. I don’t bother painting the eyes on the Great War figures. You can barely see them under the steel helmets of most of the infantry. I’ve only ended up painting the eyes when they have been clearly sculpted onto a figure’s face.

After the shading of Plaka Braun/ Vallejo Black, I build up the face contours using Vallejo Sunny Skintone and Basic Skintone, and finish off with picking out the tip of the nose and cheekbones in a mix of Vallejo White and Vallejo Basic Skintone.

The figure on the left below has the Sunny Skintone painted on, whereas the officer on the white has both Sunny Skintone and Basic Skintone, and dabs of the Basic Skintone/ White highlighting.

I used exactly the same formula for the hands as the faces, trying to paint in small blobs to accentuate the fingers. I work in groups of 10 to 20 figures. I’d estimate it took about an hour to do the faces and hands for the group of figures below.

I subscribe to the “inside-out” approach. Again, this is nothing new but the aim is to paint the fiddly hands and faces first, give the figure a bit of character, then build up the colours from the dark to light.

With this in mind, I like to try and cover a fairly large area next, so I usually paint the bulk of the uniform shade colour.

Stage Two - Shade Colours

For the British infantry, a uniform shade colour of Vallejo Brown Violet seems to me to work really well.

OK, next time I’ll post the rest of the WIPs for the bulk and shade painting. I guess I can finish the short series with a third post covering the highlighting and finishing, which is where the whole figure starts to look a lot better. Honest!

German Support Weapons and Stosstruppen

2011-11-13T17:55:00.000Z

You might be wondering what happened to the German support weapons and Stosstruppen I’d started in August after getting back from holiday. These chaps languished in black undercoat for a long time from the first flush of priming and basing in the summer while I finished off a couple of terrain boards.

However, I finally got around to finishing them in mid-October and was waiting for a good time to blog the final results.

So, the above photographs show (left to right) a Maxim MG08 heavy machine gun, a Mauser 13.1mm anti-tank rifle of late Great War vintage, a 7.58cm Leichter Minenwerfer n/A, a heavy flammenwerfer and a granatenwerfer m16. I was hoping that these support weapons would provide German forces with some different support options and concentrations of firepower in our wargames and mini-campaigns, particularly when faced with a significant number of allied tanks in late 1917 and 1918.

The figures are all from Great War Miniatures, and painted up very nicely. I’d painted each of the models before, so this was a little bit like déjà-vu coming back to the same castings and trying to add something different.

I decided that the easiest way to do this was to try and add some small touches. So, on the minenwerfer I super-glued a thin piece of wire from the gunner’s hand to the minenwerfer. Simple, I thought it added a bit of realism.

On the granatenwerfer I added a splintered chunk of reinforced concrete fortificiation, suggesting that the two-man granatenwerfer team had located to a disused concrete bunker on the Siegfried Stellung. I'd already done one granatenwerfer team with a similar chunk of concrete on the base, so this continued the theme. I also took this approach because I'd read that the granatenwerfer m16s tended to be deployed in a cluster, from four weapons to as many as sixteen, the distinctive sound of the grenades in flight being called "pigeons" by the French.

For the flammenwerfer team, I tried to create the effect of trench duckboards with some “grey-stuff” epoxy putty.

For both the maxim MG08 and the Mauser 13.1mm anti-tank rifle, I just added some ground detail to build up the bases.

Each of the support weapons was based entirely before painting. The big advantage of this approach is that when you have finished painting the figures themselves, you have really finished the whole model. There’s no figures hanging around awaiting basing (something I always dread and hate). The downside with gluing everything in place is that some part of the model can be very hard to paint because … well, because everything’s glued in place! I admit I did get frustrated painting the MG08 heavy machine gun because of this, but in the end it was adequately compensated (at least to my mind) up by finishing the model and not needing to base anything at the end.

One additional point in favour of the “glue everything in place first” approach is that while you do end up with a very small part of the being painted in shade colouring (such as, for example, where you can’t physically get your brush into a small nook, fold or crack), this is more than made up by you not noticing this when the models are on a wargames table 3 feet away.

Finally, I finished off a dozen Stosstruppen I’d been meaning to do for a while. Nothing remarkable about these. The figures are Great War Miniatures. The helmet designs are from the late war period (basically 1918). While the colours are a little bit speculative, they do look good and there is evidence for something similar on the Landships website.

Remembering ....

2011-11-11T07:47:00.001Z

I found this photograph a long time ago, on a website relating to the Great War. I don't know the soldier who is buried beneath this headstone. I don't know his wife. I don't know his daughter.

I don't know the battle or the place where he died. Or the time. Or the circumstances of his death.

But although I know none of those details, the pain, the loss, the suffering is overwhelming. A photograph left by a family, at the place where a father and a husband lies, left by the people who loved him most. Looking at the photograph, as a father, and as a husband, it's impossible to understand what that single death, that sacrifice, must have meant to that family.

One death, among so many deaths, across so many wars.

We will never forget the sacrifice, the suffering and the unbearable sadness. We will always remember.

Pick a card ... any card

2011-11-10T13:07:00.001Z

All of the games produced by TooFatLardies have a turn sequence which is influenced by the turn of cards (to a greater or lesser degree depending on the particular game).

The Great War rule set I enjoy using, "Through the Mud and the Blood" is no exception, and one of the things you need to prepare is a set of cards for the various leaders ("Big Men" in the parlance of the TooFatLardies), support weapons, vehicles, HQs and events.

When I started playing "Through the Mud and the Blood", I simply used old 5" x 3" record cards. However, in October I noticed that these started looking very dog-eared. The result was that I decided to make up my own cards using Microsoft PowerPoint and laminating them using an inexpensive laminator.

Before I go onto the cards themselves, you may like to know why I bothered. After all, the excellent Blog "Gaming with TooFatLardies" by Anibal Invictus (Benito) contains all the cards you'd ever need in a very generously made-available PDF. Another complete set of cards for "Through the Mud and the Blood" are available on the Yahoo Group for TooFatLardies. Both these great resources are free. So ….. why bother making my own?

Partly it was the wish to put my stamp on the games I run. I did the figures, and the terrain, so why not the cards and quick-play sheets also?

But also I was really taken with the idea of "Big Men" being represented named characters in my games, instead of just "German Big Man 1" or "British Big Man 3". I've become really interested in the personal accounts of soldiers in the Great War, particularly those from the area where I live, which is the South East of England.

Although it's a personal thing, I wanted the players to try and think of their Big Men as characters in our wargames, rather than just metal wargames figures. I know that some of the readers of this Blog feel the same way. My friend Ashley, from the excellent Blog Paint It Pink, said to me at Salute in April she thought that the TooFatLardies games were pretty close to roleplaying at times, and I have to say I thought that was a perceptive comment and a good thing in my book. I think that very many wargamers do empathise with the forces their leading on the tabletop, at least in part, but I was hoping that advancing Corporal Charlie Bow or Feldwebel Willi Fischer along a trench traverse would add something extra to our games.

Anyway, whatever the reasoning, here's the results:

I'm no graphic designer. In fact, this was pretty much one of my first attempts at doing any design on a PC. I was really surprised how easy it was to select a free texture from the internet, and add some text or a design.

The fronts of the cards were an image of Lord Kitchener, which I did a very minor change to using the GIMP photo manipulation programme.

A selection of the event cards, some of which are new and which we have been play-testing over the course of the summer for the forthcoming "Passchendaele: Bitter Victory" campaign in the TooFatLardies Christmas Special out next month.

Finally, here's some British and German Blinds, also made using PowerPoint.

I did about 100 cards, printing them in colour, cutting out front and back, gluing together and laminating. It took me about a couple of evenings while watching the (splendid) DVD of The Killing.

It goes without saying that I'd not be able to make the blinds without the very generous textures made available on-line by a very skilful artist, Borealnz. Check out his flickr and wonderful images here. And to Borealnz, again, thank you!

Crisis 2011 - The Other Games

2011-11-09T19:03:00.001Z

I've posted some pictures below of some of the other games at Crisis 2011 in Antwerp at the weekend in addition to the TooFatLardies game which featured in my earlier Blog post.

All of these games looked wonderful, with great terrain and stunning figures. What really stood out though, was the friendly and helpful attitude of all the clubs putting on the games. Wargamers are a pretty friendly bunch, I find. But the gamers in Antwerp this weekend were certainly right up there with the most enthusiastic and welcoming wargamers I've ever met.

First up, a stunning Napoleonic game with French forces trying to retreat from Prussian attackers

James Morris' and Newark Irregulars' wonderful Abyssinia 1936 game, a game which looks better each time I see it. I had a chance to chat with James abuot the game, the terrain and the history behind both in our hotel bar after the show and had the chance to congratulate him on winning "Best Terrain" at the show. A very well deserved award, indeed.

"Crush the Kaiser" from the chaps at the Herne Bay and Whitstable Wargames Club in Kent, England is another game which I first saw at Salute in April 2011. Since then, the game seems to have grown in detail and the wonderful range of "extras" on the battlefield. The display accompanying the game was really first class, and I spent many minutes chatting with the club-members about the game and their memorabilia.

A very smart pair of games featuring actions from the Great War - a French attack on a German trench, and a (very original) street fighting scenario from 1918 featuring British infantry against German Stosstruppen.

A lovely game recreating Marston Moor in 1644 with flat figures. Tony Bath revividus.

A great looking game from the Dortmund Amateur Wargames club featuring a hard fought ACW scrap over a peach orchard.

Action from Afghanistan, circa 2011, with some great, atmospheric terrain including a predator drone and F-16.

Finally, last but certainly not least, a very well presented game of Charlie Don't Surf, with a great looking jungle.

I'm already looking forward to next year, where the Crisis show moves to a new venue (hopefully one without the super-heated spot-lighting!)

Crisis 2011 - Antwerp 5th November 2011

2011-11-06T22:13:00.000Z

I’m typing this after getting back from the Crisis 2011 show in Antwerp. It was a truly fantastic weekend, and I have to give huge thanks to the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp who made us very welcome indeed and to the many friends, old and new, who dropped by to say hello.

The show was a great success, and we greatly enjoyed putting on the participation game based on the Cherkassy Pocket in February 1944. The snowy terrain produced by my chum Richard Clarke looked impressive under the very bright lighting in the Crisis venue, as we’d hoped it would.

The TooFatLardies team were awarded the Best Participation Game award, which was a great result but also a bit of a surprise given the very high standard of games being staged on the day.

Above all, certainly to me, it was a huge pleasure and a great moment to meet some fellow bloggers. Please take a bow, MiniMike, Rob and Suchet, who travelled down from Noordwijk in The Netherlands to the show and dropped by to say hello in the afternoon.

It was great to meet up with people whose blogs I get a lot of inspiration from – it certainly made the world seem a much smaller place.

Turning to the game were took to the show, there were two games played during the day. Both turned out to be close-fought actions.

In both the German defenders in the prepared positions stubbornly held on in the face of the Soviet armour onslaught, taking a heavy toll of both T-60s and T-34s.

Turn after turn saw the German defenders, machine gunners and PAK crew being whittled down but still able to reply with telling fire. In both games, once the position had finally been taken by the Soviet infantry, the German counter-attacks threatened to dislodge the Soviet toehold. Indeed, in the final game, the platoon of panzer grenadiers were poised to dismount from their Hanomags and storm into the Soviet infantry when the Show Organiser’s PA system went for the end of the show!

Any participation game only works with a great crowd, and for sheer enthusiasm, knowledge and eagerness to play I don’t think we could have found a better crowd of wargamers in the world than in Antwerp this Saturday. Thank you to everyone who joined in.

The Old Town in Antwerp, especially around the Cathedral and Grote Markt is stunningly beautiful. We had some great experiences on both the Friday and Saturday night, sampling the local beers, the fine bars and splendid restaurants in the town.

As before, we chose De Peerdestal on Wijngaardstraat for the traditional Saturday night post-Crisis meal. I can’t think of many restaurants I like more, and on the third year of going it’s starting to feel almost like a home from home.

Finally, after a good night’s sleep, we stopped off at a couple of locations around a very rainy and windswept Calais trace some of the actions fought in 1940. Here’s the TooFatLardies tour in Les Attaques and Orphanage Farm. Observant viewers may be able to grade the hangovers from our expressions ...

I’ll do a blog post of some of the other very fine games at Crisis a little later in the week (I’m travelling for the next couple of days, hence the slight delay). Until then, dear friends ...

German 7.7cm Feldkanone 96 n.A.

2011-11-03T00:21:00.000Z

One of the projects I started in the summer was a pair of German 7.7cm Feldkanone 96 n.A., together with some German support weapons and a detachment of Stosstruppen. Over the next few days, I thought I’d post up some pictures of how these look now they’re finished, by way of bringing that project to a close.

You might remember that I found building the two German field guns more than a little tricky. The Renegade model was, in particular, difficult to glue together and I ended up pinning it in a couple of places.

However, painting the guns was a lot easier than building them. I opted for a couple of colour schemes inspired by information on World War I German camouflage on the excellent “Landships” website. So, on the left hand side of the photograph below, there’s a slightly futuristic camouflage pattern which is similar to the pattern which seems to have been painted on some German troops’ helmets and artillery in 1918.

On the right hand side, I opted for a more “dappled” camouflage scheme, trying to echo the colours I used in the wooded terrain boards I built in the early summer.

I tried to stay close to the information on the Landships site, but I fully accept that there’s a degree of interpretation about the overall camouflage scheme I used on both field guns. I thought that the final results looked “about right” and, perhaps just as much to the point, both were a lot of fun to paint.

Finally, here’s a picture of one of the field guns occupying the prepared position terrain insert I blogged about a few days back. As you can see, it’s a tight squeeze getting the gun into place, but it does fit. It helps that the gun crew figures nearest the field gun, from Great War Miniatures, are in kneeling positions and so fit inside the low ceiling of the position (which is glued in place).

I also added one of the trench boxes into the position for effect in the photos, although I’m currently working on a German field telephonist to squeeze into the corner!

Crisis 2011 – Crisis in the Kessel

2011-11-02T09:07:00.000Z

Myself and another seven of my club mates from the St Albans club (a.k.a. TooFatLardies) are making the trip over to Antwerp for the Crisis 2011 show this weekend. It’s always a great show, and I’ve been twice before in 2008 and 2009.

Antwerp has a stunning Old Town, a relaxed but pretty vibrant nightlife, some great restaurants and many awesome bars. So, in a nut-shell, yes I’m looking forward to going!

We’re taking over a participation game which is based on the late February 1944 fighting around the Cherkassy Pocket. The rules we’ll be using are Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner’s new edition of “I Ain’t Been Shot Mum!”, which have just been published. They give a fast moving, fun and authentic game, as well as being very nicely produced. Both Rich and Nick will be at the show – so you can get any questions about the rules answered from the horses mouths (so to speak!).

Anyway, on to the game, which we play-tested for the second time last night. Because of my house being in upheaval at present owing to on-going building works, I didn’t get the chance to make much of the terrain for the game. I produced the forest bases, which were quite fun to do. I simply took the slightly scraggy 15mm scale fir trees which had been kicking around the club terrain cupboard for about two decades, glued them to a foamboard base, and then spread a mixture of PVA white glue, dark brown paint and Polyfilla all over each base before sprinkling liberally with builder’s sharp sand. Being from Yorkshire (and these being times of austerity), I was delighted that there was plenty of builder’s sharp sand around the house to choose from without spending a penny. I then dry-brushed the base a light ochre and dry-brushed the trees white. Last of all, I made some more of the PVA/Polyfilla mix, added some light grey paint and spread that over the forest base, before dry-brushing white when dry. The eleven forest bases took in total about 4 hours from start to finish. It was pretty economical too as the club had the trees already (most of which had been scratch built anyway) and the foamboard was only a couple of pounds.

And that’s all I got chance to do. Everything else on the table was Rich’s handiwork. I’m sure you’ll agree that the rest of the terrain, figures and tanks look absolutely top notch. You could feel the chill driving off the steppe just looking at the table. Either that or Panda had left the fire-door open when he went for a cigarette….

Without revealing the whole of the table, the game features a river where the winter’s ice has just melted, the river now running dark and heavy with slush and ice floes …

…. a small ferry station which the Germans need to defend …

… and a German defensive position into which the German players can deploy a variety of weapons. The one we took last night was a captured Russian 76.2mm anti-tank gun, manned by a German “Ace” gunner, Feldwebel Rudi Schweinsteiger.

As the game progressed, it became pretty clear that Feldwebel Schweinsteiger was indeed a veteran of the Russian campaign, knocking out Soviet tank after tank, irrespective of their positions. I don’t think I’d ever seen dice like it. Surely that can’t be repeated at Crisis?

Unfortunately for the Germans, there was still a lot of Soviet armour to come in the shape of a formidable detachment of T34s …

Feldwebel Schweinsteiger’s crew and supporting infantry platoon were steadily worn down through a hail of high explosive from various Soviet attacks …

We didn’t play through more than the first couple of hours of the game, but suffice to say there’s a lot more to come. And as a sneek preview, here’s some of the other forces which arrive at some point in the game

So, if you’re in Antwerp this weekend, drop by and have a go at the game, or just say hello. I’m really looking forward to it, and I hope to see many of you there. Oh, and this is me, second from the right, taken from our trip to Antwerp in 2009, with Noddy, Nick and Rich (left to right).

What, you thought the profile picture on this blog of the Williamite Gentleman was really me? Dear friends, you may need glasses…

77mm Field Gun Position and Trench paraphernalia

2011-10-28T10:52:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I posted, but I've been doing a fair amount of hobbying in one form or another during the last few weeks despite losing my painting area at home.

I built up an insert for one of the terrain boards in September, and finished painting it earlier this week. I was interested in trying to swap out one of the inserts which is currently a reinforced shell crater for an insert which features a dug-in position for a German 77mm field gun. I came by a few photos of this sort of arrangement on the internet.

Unfortunately, I can't locate the work-in-progress photos of how I went about building the position. However, it was pretty simple to make, involving Styrofoam being cut out and glued to a plywood base as a first step. I measured the Styrofoam before gluing to the plywood base to make sure the new insert would fit into the board. The internal details were then finished and painted before the roof was prepared, the latter being based on a piece of plywood and an assortment of sticks from the garden. Finally, I made some Milliput sandbags and stuck these around the base before the roof was glued on. One the rook was fixed in place, I added some more of the Milliput sandbags and painted anything remaining on the insert which wasn't finished off yet. Here's the finished insert, awaiting the 77mm guns (more of which in the next post!)

I also finished off some trench items. You may remember seeing these earlier in the summer. Generally, I think trenches (and most terrain) looks better with some bits-and-bobs strewn about. They give terrain that lived in look, which helps when you're trying to imagine the battle raging over the table top. There's no magic in these items - the boxes are resin casts from Hovels, the grenades and helmets are from Bolt Action Miniatures and the map's made from a piece of foil from a wine bottle.

I'll post the figures I've finished off over the weekend. Thanks for reading and catch you next time.

The Roundwood Report: TooFatLardies and "I Ain't Been Shot Mum"

2011-10-01T20:15:00.000+01:00

There can be few sets of rules that survive nearly ten years at the top, but I Ain’t Been Shot Mum seems to be a hardy perrenial. A recent poll on TMP rated the old black and white edition as the ruleset that gamer like the most (see this TMP Poll for more details). So, if you’ve got it right, why change it?

As readers of this Blog will know, I’m a huge fan of TooFatLardies rules. Both Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner (THE two fat lardies) are great mates of mine and are both members of my local wargames club in St Albans, England. However, before I shell out the cash for any set of rules, I want to think about them critically, and see if they match up with what I’m looking for.

With that in mind, today the Roundwood Report looks at the movers behind the changes and asks the questions that gamers want the answers to. As always, the Roundwood Report asks the tough questions and pulls no punches. Join me, Sidney Roundwood, as I talk to Nick Skinner and Richard Clarke, the two TooFatLardies.

*****

Sidney: So, the new edition of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum is at the printers and there is a palpable air of anticipation around their arrival. I’d like to ask you what’s new but first how about you tell us a few basics for anyone who isn’t familiar with the rules. What size game is this aimed at?

Nick: The rules are designed for company level games. What we mean by that is where the player is commanding a force roughly company size, but in fairness that can easily creep up to a couple of companies when you add in support weapons as well.

Rich: Yes, what Nick said basically. Traditionally IABSM was infantry-centric, with the player taking control of a company of infantry with some attached support. So you might have a couple of troops of tanks, platoons of tanks if you’re in the US, or maybe a mortar platoon or machine gun platoon. That type of size. These additional units tended to be bolted onto the infantry company. With the new edition you can actually flip that round and have the tank squadron (or Company) as your basic command and bolt on a few platoon of infantry.

Sidney: Right, so going head to head with, what shall we call them, “the market leader”. Are you trying to steal a slice of their pie?
Rich: Highly amusing Sid. I don’t think we’re attempting to steal anything, it’s not an area of the hobby we’re just moving into, IABSM has been around for nearly ten years and has always been aimed at that size of game.

Nick: I think it’s true to say that we are probably aimed at a different target audience. No sane person is ever going to set up an IABSM tournament, we are very much focussed on scenario driven gaming rather than points based armies. There is nothing wrong with points based game, it’s just that we see more enjoyment to be had by taking a more historical view of things.

Sidney: Okay, so what would be a typical game. Give us an idea of forces involved and how you’d put that together to make it “historical”.

Rich: Well, typical is a big ask as the permutations are almost infinite, but let’s take the game we played last week. A Company of British infantry with two troops of Shermans attacking a Company of German defenders with one AT gun and a pile of panzerfausts in close Normandy terrain that favoured the defenders. That’s a classic example of why points systems don’t do it for me, how many points is a hedge?! How many points is a network of small fields or a stone farmhouse well build and designed to be a haven against mediaeval brigands, but that is now an ideal strongpoint? I can’t see it being possible to really balance that out with any prescriptive point system, so we don’t even bother to try.

Nick: True. I am firmly convinced that we all know what kind of balance is needed to make a game fun for both sides and, if we want to use the word, “fair”. History doesn’t use points. Throughout history one of the prime aims of the military commander has been to concentrate his forces in such a way so as to achieve local superiority. This normally means that one side does have an advantage – and not by chance. War isn’t fair.

Rich: Indeed. In this case the terrain clearly favours the defenders, so we need to beef up the British. Put two supposedly equal forces in real Normandy terrain and you’ll only get one winner, that’s the defender. That isn’t “fair”. What I will say is that whilst we have no point system the rules do include a scenario generation system for those evenings when you haven’t had time to prepare a scenario. Five minutes is all it takes to roll a few dice and get a unique tabletop that varies every time and a scenario that allows you to choose your force, add some support units of your choice and then get fighting. Personally I reckon that’s a better option than points, but that’s just my spin on it. If people like points and tournaments then that’s great; different strokes for different folks.

Nick: We have also added a section that I have never seen done before in a set of rules, and that’s a guide to how we put together historical scenarios. It’s a few pages giving a basic guide on how we make this work, and for people who want to refight historical battles. That is what I really enjoy about gaming, the chance to explore and better understand historical actions by gaming them. That’s where we feel IABSM really stands out.

Rich: One hundred percent agree. I know a lot of people can be daunted by this, but the return on time invested in this type of game is tremendous. It’s where IABSM really excels. Time and again we have seen games where what occurs on the tabletop mirrors so closely the real events, and that’s normally with players who have never read anything about the action.

Sidney: Right, so we have a company plus sized game with an emphasis on scenarios. What scale and range of figures are the rules written for?

Nick: Any scale, any range. This is about aesthetics; you can choose whatever range and whatever size figures you’re happy with. On Lard Island we have traditionally played with 15mm scale toys ...

Rich: Much of the early play-testing was done with 10mm.

Nick: …but some chaps play it with 6mm very effectively. The rules are based on a ground scale of 12” on the table is about 80 yards, so 6mm is pretty close to true scale. I seem to recall that our original plan was to make them ideal for 15mm and 20mm figures, and wargamers being wargamers they have deviated from that slightly. To my mind I am not convinced that 28mm is the right size for a company sized game, but if you’ve got the room and for a huge table and you are happy with the visual effect then why not?

Sidney: So we’ve seen IABSM being played for the past ten years by a dedicated and wide spread audience. Why change it?

Nick: Because we wanted to introduce some of the new ideas and mechanisms that we felt took the rules on to the next level. I think our writing style has changed in the intervening years. We were rather more free and loose in our style of both writing and gaming then. The big quote about IABSM in its original format was that it was only 80% complete. Now we would disagree with that, in reality that “missing” 20% was about leaving room for the gamer to make his own judgements. We were very much inspired by the free-thinking behind the 19th century approach to kriegsspiel, and wanted to replicate that in the rules. For some people it worked brilliantly, for others it left a gap that they didn’t feel comfortable filling. Well, now we have filled that gap.

Rich: That’s very true. We have undoubtedly recognised the fact that gamers can create their own “wriggle room” within any set of rules to add their own interpretation of history to a game. We have been rather more careful to explain our interpretation of mechanisms and systems. One of the advantages of producing the rules in full colour is that we’ve been able to add plenty of illustrations and diagrams to explain mechanisms. On top of that we have vastly more examples where we walk through the rules at each step. This is much more a pick-up-and-play set of rules than anything we have ever produced before.

If you look at how well our Vietnam rules Charlie Don’t Surf were received, and then consider we have taken a huge leap forward from that in terms of readability then you’ll get an idea of how clear these rules are.

Nick: I should add that on the design side we’ve been lucky enough over the past ten years to research the experience of combat decision making with men who have first hand experience of combat. Their experiences influenced our thinking and we are really pleased that TooFatLardies rules are very popular with combat veterans – there’s something about our rules that accurately represent the lived experience of combat and battlefield friction.

Sidney: I suppose the big questions must be whether you feel you have avoided those classic pit-falls of new editions of rules. How many times have we seen gamers moan about new editions just being re-runs of the old rules with pretty pictures or, on the other hand, complete re-writes that fix things that weren’t broken. Which one have you stumbled into?

Rich: I am bound to say “neither”, aren’t I! This is certainly not a tart-up job, with a bit of metaphorical mascara applied to an ageing visage. There are aspects of the rules where we have completely rebuilt them. Command, control and communications is much better now than the original. The Big Men are still there, but their roles are more clearly differentiated. A Captain or Major commanding a company is now doing just that, he isn’t just a better version of a Corporal. The Lieutenant needs to consider his platoon as a whole. The rating system has changed so that he can spend a number of Command Initiatives in each turn. This makes good Big Men much more effective and able to reduce friction more than in the original rules.

Nick: Yes, and they have to consider where they are located much more than before, they can’t just rely on the Rally card to get their men motivated, they need to display a bit of leadership as we have shifted that mechanism to really put more emphasis on the commanders. This is a really good addition. Commanders tend to now have more initiative, but they also have more decisions to make in “spending” that. It makes for much more dynamic game play. The new tank and AFV command rules, combined with tank Shock really enhance that aspect of the game as well. I feel it has made it into a truly combined-arms game and more historically representative as a result.

Sidney: Any other changes?

Nick: Yes, summed up neatly in “effect not cause”.

Rich: Wise words mate. There are a few bits in the original rules that focussed too much on the cause rather than just considering the effect. The artillery rules were based on the correct procedure for calling in artillery fire, but there was no doubt about it, they were a bit clunky. The new ones are much more streamlined and as a result are easier to play through and get the correct result without micro-managing the process.

Nick: That’s also true with the AFV damage effects. You can really break that down into three distinct possibilities. It should either affect the gunnery or the movement capability of the AFV or the morale of the crew inside it. You really don’t need to know exactly what the specific damage, is, it’s a bit like when you’re driving a car and the engine goes wrong. You might hazard a guess that it’s the fan belt or the fuel pump, but ultimately what you really have to deal with is the effect this is having on your ability to drive the vehicle. That’s very much the approach we’ve taken here. It simplifies the process, it removes all those sub-tests like “does your engine catch fire, roll a D6” and replaces them with restricting movement and a possibility of breaking down. The same with gunnery. Your gun is either firing properly, or with reduced effectiveness or not firing at all. As the player you have to make decisions based on the limited information you have. Let the bloke in the workshop worry about just what damage has been done.

Rich: Absolutely. The set of tokens we are producing to go with the rules will allow you to track that easily on a traffic-light code system. If you have a red spanner next to your tank then it’s immobile. If you have a green spanner then it can still go but its movement is reduced by 1” per dice rolled. That can be cumulative, so you could end up with multiple green spanners and then you are likely to break down completely. The “red for stop, green for go” system is entirely intuitive and works brilliantly. The tokens are suitably discrete because you don’t need any text on them so they can be quite small, but they tell you all you need to know without checking charts and tables. The same with the gunsight marker for gunnery. Looks the part but is really simple. Just like you Sid.

Sidney: Hmm. Thanks. So, what about the change for changes sake trap?

Rich: Certainly not that. There is much in the rules that simply wasn’t broken, so it hasn’t been changed. The Fire Table is in there not altered at all ...

Nick: Didn’t you say you changed one number on the whole table?

Rich: I really can’t recall. I may have done, but if I did it’s still 99% there. Movement is the same, and the card system is entirely intact, albeit with one or two very minor tweaks, such as the Rally card being linked to any Big Men with a unit, or indeed not with a unit. We have, of course, added a printed card deck to the range. In fact we’ve already got them in from the printers.

Nick: We’ve gone for a double deck of 104 cards so that you can field a couple of companies a side plus a load of support as well without running out of cards. We thought it best to go large on this and hopefully that means you’ll have enough for any game you’re likely to play. We’re not interested in producing endless bits and pieces to try to squeeze another few quid, or bucks in many cases, out of gamers. We’d prefer to give them everything they need up front then they are sorted.

Sidney: Does this extend to supplements as well. Will we now see a constant stream of supplements, each with a new codex and some apparent game winning wonder-platoon each time?

Nick: Your wit truly knows no bounds Sid.

Rich: Apparently he’s here all week folks! No Sidney, we shan’t be going down that route. At the end of the day we’re rule writers, we’re not peddling a range of models so we have no need to hype the new “product of the month”. There are four existing supplements to go with IABSM, Blitzkrieg, Gotterdammerung, Rising Sun and Legions, they will work fine with the new rules with a few minor tweaks. We’ll be producing the “conversion kit” here on Lard Island News.

Sidney: How much will that cost?

Rich: Nothing. It will only be a page or so, just a free download. We will be re-doing all four supplements pretty much straight away so they dovetail neatly with the new rules, but clearly there is a pile of work involved in that so it won’t happen next week. My plan is to have them all done by sometime around Christmas, maybe one a month which would take us to January or February. There is, however, a mini-handbook in the rules which covers British, US and Germans in Normandy, so that should give people a feel for how the new Handbooks will look.

Sidney: Handbooks now rather than supplements then?

Nick: Yes, we produce a lot of scenario supplements, so we thought it would be clearer to call the “big four” something different to avoid confusion. Handbooks seemed like a sensible name. These will have force options for a whole range of unit types, all the stats for AFVs and AT weapons and a few other bits as well. Gotterdammerung will have the rules for sewer and tunnel fighting for use in Stalingrad or Berlin, stuff like that.

Sidney: Okay, so it’s all we liked about the original but better. When can we get our hands on this?

Rich: Well, I should be approving the printer’s proofs early next week. As soon as I do that we’ll be taking advanced orders. We’ll be doing some great bundle deals in month one so you can pick up what you want at a discount price. There’s also a limited edition 28mm figure of long-time Lard hero Hugh Jarce which will go with the first 500 hard copy sets of the rules sold, so lots of reasons to buy early and get the best deal plus a couple of freebies. We’ll be providing a free PDF copy with all advanced orders for hard copies, so watch out for that. Also we’ll be producing an i-Pad friendly version of the rules as well. That will allow you to navigate your way around the rules using the touch screen and should be a boon for the growing number of gamers who have been clamouring for this. We’re pleased to be at the front-end of that shift in technology.

Sidney: So what about price? In the last edition of the Roundwood Report (in the TooFatLardies Christmas 2010 Special) you said that you’d never produce a £30 colour set of rules. Have you sold us down the river?

Rich: Well, going full colour has certainly added to the price, as has the fact that this is now 104 pages long with lots of additional material such as the scenario generator, the historical scenario design section and four complete scenarios, two tutorials and two historical refights, makes this a much larger book than the original. But I stand by what I said. Publishing rules is not about grabbing what cash you can. I have gone full colour as it is pretty much unavoidable in the present time - people do seem to want it - but I have certainly avoided the heft price tag, The rules will be retailing for £20 with the PDF or i-Pad versions £12.00. The card deck is 104 cards and that will retail for £12.00 as will the 66 piece token set.

That said, for advanced orders you will be able to get the hard copy rules with a pdf copy, the cards and the token set for just £40. That’s nearly 30% off, and if you’re one of the first 500 you’ll get the limited edition figure as well. Once the rules are released the hard copy, the cards and the tokens will be £40 for the bundle, or you can get a PDF/i-Pad bundle for £34 which is the PDF rules, plus tokens, plus cards.

Sidney: Okay, so ordering early is the best bet?

Rich: It certainly is.

Sidney: And when can we do that?

Rich: Within the week we’ll be ready to take advanced order. Fear not Sidney, I shall be letting Lard Island News know first.

Sidney: Thanks to Rich and Nick for joining me on the old leather sofa at Lard Island News, I am sure you’ll agree that it was an informative look at what seem to be a new set of old rules.

******

As a postscript I can tell you that I had a look at the card decks that are already at Lard Island waiting and they are really very nice indeed, some great original artwork make them look the business. The PDF version of the rules I saw is quite unlike any previous Lardy product, Rich is right that the adding of colour has really allowed some good diagrams to be included in the rules which help clarify many points very simply. I know that lots of people are really looking forward to these. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved in the play-testing and I am sure you won’t be disappointed.

Here's a photo of Hugh Jarce his green state here:

And some samples of the pages from the new rules:

Well there is it, chaps. I tried to be as impartial as I could be. I'm sure you'll be hearing a fair bit about the new rules on the internet over the next few weeks, so remember - you heard it here first!

Quick Update: Apologies, Airbubbles (Dead Marshes: Part 4) and Sturmpionere

2011-09-26T11:22:00.002+01:00

Just a quick Blogpost to apologise for my absence over the past few weeks. I've been really busy at work, and I'm doing some work on my house which has meant losing my painting room for a few months. I'd never have thought that losing the spot you go back to in the evenings and pick up the brushes could make such a difference. Ah well, it's in a good cause I suppose. Or at least that's what my wife keeps telling me.

I thought I'd take the time to draw together a couple of loose ends: the last of the tips from The Dead Marshes posts (with many apologies to those waiting - yes, Mr Saturday, that means you - mea cupla!) and an update on one of the smaller units I started in early August.

The Dead Marshes: Dealing with Air Bubbles

I rather optimistically wrote in the Blogpost from 4th September that: "You’ll get quite a few air bubbles in the mixing process, but these never seem to have been a problem for me when the resin dries – they just seem to float to the surface and disappear (The note which comes with the Solid Water” packs says you should try and avoid getting a lot of air bubbles in the mixed water resin, but as I mentioned this hasn’t been a problem for me by the time the mixed water resin is dry)." I generally stand by this, but with a couple of major ampliciations which I wanted to mention based on my experience from finishing The Dead Marshes boards.

First off, when mixing the Solid Water resin by syringe I seemed to get a lot less air bubbles. When you are making a lot of Solid Water, and pouring resin and hardener together from the jars, I seemed to get a lot more air bubbles. There must have been something about these bubbles (maybe the way I mixed the resin) that they didn't go away in the first few hours on a couple of the pools.

Second, if that happens, don't panic. The solution is a bit painstaking and involved getting the air bubbles out with a pin before the Solid Water has totally set. It's painstaking, but it works.

I even found that you could make quite severe impressions in the still-unset water to get a patch of air bubbles out, and the resin would reset back to a flat surface. The picture below is an example of something which I really poked at for a while, which has re-set flat (to my relief).

Third, if you're still left with some bubbles, you can always stain or paint over these with some paint mixed with the next layer of mixed resin. That works very well. The picture below if the clearest shot I could manage of this sort of "staining" approach (which I admit isn't very clear at all!), but I promise the "staining" technique works quite well.

That's it chaps. Not much of a tip, but it might help you if you get stuck. If anyone has more specific questions (particularly if what I have written is not very clear - which is highly likely!!), please feel free to post them in the comments.

Late War Sturmpionere

I enjoyed converting and painting this large section of German Sturmpionere. There are a few accounts of line troops using bags of grenades and concentration charges against British tanks at Fontaine on 23rd November 1917 as part of the Cambrai offensive. The grenade bags were dropped in front of tank tracks, or even dropped from the upstairs of houses in the villages as the "B" Battalion tanks attempted to clear the village without infantry support.

Another situation where similar tactics were tried was by the 3rd Company of the 97th Infantry Regiment in the engagement south-west of Cerisy on 8 August 1918 against advancing tanks. In the thick fog and concealed by the undulations in the ridge line to the south-west of the village, several tanks were destroyed or disabled by a combination of armour piercing SmK. rounds fired by German machine gunners or by concentration and satchel charges deployed by assault grenadiers swarming round the tanks once immobilised or separated from their supporting infantry.

There are no doubt other examples, but I thought that the unit offered something which was historically accurate and also a little different to the late war German players faced with ever increasing numbers of allied tanks.

The figures are slightly converted Great War Miniatures figures, and were painted with Vallejo and Plaka before being varnished. To my eye, once I'd finished them, they did have more than a look of 1940 about them (which I was trying to avoid), but perhaps that's just me. They may have looked more firmly 1917-1918 had I done the helmets in camouflage colours. Perhaps next time!

That's all for now. Again, many apologies for the slow posting and the slow commenting on other people's blogs. I very much like to do that, but as I mention work has got in the way. I may be blogging a bit less in late September/ October until things get back to normal on the ~~worksite~~ ... sorry, at my house, but I'll see if I have some older stuff to post which hasn't appeared yet. Until then, mes braves....

Engreiftruppen and Stosstruppen Brigade, March 1918 in 10mm

2011-09-08T12:08:00.000+01:00

One of the projects I worked on a while back was three 10mm Western Front late war brigades for larger scale games based on the "If the Lord Spares Us" set of rules from TooFatLardies.

These rules are meant for battalion and brigade sized games, and involve a greater range of artillery assets than in "Through the Mud and the Blood" (where the effect of artillery fire does not differentiate between different calibres of gun).

Although we have played "If the Lord Spares Us" quite a lot at Lard Island, focusing on the Great War in the Middle East, we've yet to start properly wargaming the Western Front at this level. One of the reasons was the lack of suitable figures - it just didn't feel right proxy-ing Turks and British battalions in tropical kit into The Somme.

As I was pretty keen to look at the next tactical level up from the platoon-sized actions of "through the Mud and the Blood", I started work on a German late war division of Eingreiftruppen with some attached Stosstruppen from around the period of Operation Michael in March 1918. Here's where I got to….

The figures were all from Pendraken. I was pleased with how they painted up. So much so that I ended up buying both a late war French and a late war British brigade this year at the Salute show. I'll post the now-completed opposing British and French brigades on the Blog in the next week or so, just as a bit of a change to the on-going terrain posts which I've been showing of late.

First up, Battalion command with infantry, MG08 heavy machine gunes, flammenwerfers and MG08/15 light machine guns …

… a close-up shot of 37mm anti-tank guns and supporting 150mm and 77mm field artillery…

… an A7V in 10mm scale, and a close up of a howitzer position….

… and finally, a brigade in a box (well, almost - it occupies two boxes)

Hopefully we will be getting a few games in with them before Christmas. When we do, I'll post the battle AARs here in due course.

While I was photographing the 10mm figures, I also had time to have a brief photo session with some of the larger scale German officers and NCOs which we use in our games of "Through the Mud and the Blood". These all use the hexagonal basing which helps the umpire or gamesmaster tell at a glance when running a game where the "Big Men" are located on the tabletop.

Next time (probably this weekend), the final part of the Dead Marshes series of terrain board posts. Hope you can join me again for that.

The Dead Marshes: Part 3 – “Solid Water”

2011-09-04T21:41:00.002+01:00

After painting the marshy terrain boards, I had to add the final component – water. I’ve used a variety of modelling water over the years. My preference is for water resin, which comes as a two-part mixture of resin and hardener and dries very hard as a permanent feature. You can find modelling water which is just poured into terrain and forms a slightly springy jelly on the surface and which can be peeled off, but for terrain boards the mixed water resin/ permanent variety is my strong preference.

I’ve purchased a product called “Solid Water” from Deluxe Materials in the UK for about eight years now. I can strongly recommend it (although I’m sure there are others which are very similar). It’s easy to mix and stains quite nicely with normal acrylic paints. You can pick “Solid Water” up from many craft suppliers in the smaller scaled packs (50, 90 and 180 ml), but as I wanted a fairly extensive amount of water on the terrain boards, I settled on a couple of the 350ml packs.

I find it a bit difficult to estimate exactly how much water resin you need in a model until you’re actually at the pouring stage. However, I think the trick is to over estimate slightly, especially if you are pouring into deep recesses in the terrain.

Mixing the resin is straightforward (2 parts resin to 1 part hardener). You’ll get quite a few air bubbles in the mixing process, but these never seem to have been a problem for me when the resin dries – they just seem to float to the surface and disappear (The note which comes with the Solid Water” packs says you should try and avoid getting a lot of air bubbles in the mixed water resin, but as I mentioned this hasn’t been a problem for me by the time the mixed water resin is dry).

I add in any stain at this point so that the mix is consistent – for this project, I stained with Vallejo Russian Green and Vallejo Black, although I’ve used a variety of acrylic paints in the past. You can also get some interesting “swirly” stain effects if you pour the mixed water resin onto a model and trace your stain (using a paintbrush) through the resin …

But that wasn’t the effect I was aiming for here. I was going for something less pleasant, less artistic, entirely more corrupted…. In fact, a ”dismal outlook, the waste of treeless, houseless, greenless landscape, destruction incarnate, the all-pervading smell of stagnant shellholes, with their frequently dreadful contents, and the ever-present expectation of a sudden “area shoot”, a storm of high explosive and shrapnel breaking out at a moment’s notice; and one marvels that any human being could live through such conditions and keep sane” (Major R L Bond, DSO, MC, 23rd Field Company, Royal Engineers).

I stained each of the cups of mixed resin with a faint green tinge. Enough to look suitably thick and viscous as it pooled in the deep hollows of the shell craters, but not too opaque to conceal all detail at the base of each of the craters.

Pouring the mixed resin can be done in a number of ways. I have found the easiest to be a syringe (for small, detailed applications) and a small plastic cup with a pouring lip (for larger applications).

It’s best to pour from, or inject into, the centre of the location where you want the resin. In addition to the obvious reason (that’s where the water pools) it also helps ensure that any drips of resin from the syringe or cup can be covered over with more mixed water resin later. I then steered the mixed water resin into the edges of the shell crater using an old paintbrush …

I try and keep the layers of resin thin – this helps drying. This is the reason why I carved out the shall craters fairly shallowly in the design stage of the terrain boards – I knew in advance that if the craters were authentically deep, this would result in needing a very high number of mixed water resin layers at the Solid Water” stage. I don’t think you really need the full authentic depth anyway as the resin is very good at creating an illusion that the craters (or any water feature) is deeper than it actually is.

It wasn’t always possible to keep the layers super-thin, however, partly because of the odd shapes in the terrain boards I ended up pouring and injecting the mixed resin into. But I aimed for a covering about a couple of millimetres in depth for each layer. This has worked fairly well in the past. You’ll see from the photos in this Blogpost that a number of small stones show through the water. This is because the first few pourings of the mixed water resin may not cover all the surface detail and surface undulations completely. By the end, though, they should all be submerged, but I’m anticipating that it will take quite a few return visits with fresh resin layers to finish the job. (I’ve probably got a couple more pourings before these terrain bases are fully finished, but to keep the Blogpost momentum, I thought you’d like seeing these pictures now).

After pouring the mixed water resin, I always double check that the terrain bases are completely level.

I try and leave them in a corner of the garage where no one’s going to touch them, and just keep a check on them from time to time just in case something like a stray fly or moth lands in them before they’re “set”. Oh yes, bitter experience there, folks!!

Any spare resin can be used to trace some puddles in appropriate places, such as down the sides of trenches.

Hardening takes about 24 hours, but I try not to wargame on water resin bases until at least 72 hours have passed. I also took extra time with the special features, such as the arm of the Fallen soldier entombed in the mud and slime….

Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight,
(Under Lord Derby's scheme). I died in hell -
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
(“Memorial Tablet” : Siegfried Sassoon)

That’s it for this post. I’ve a very small amount of micro-details from the bases which I’ll post next time. After that, I’m not quite sure what I’ll cover next. Possibly some suggestions for rule adaptations for Third Ypres (along the lines of the “Rolling into Action” article I put in the TFL Christmas Magazine last year), or maybe some photos as I finish the German heavy weapons and artillery teams I started last month. Whatever it is, I hope you’ll join me then.

Meeples & Miniatures Podcast - Episode 78

2011-09-01T10:09:00.000+01:00

I'm guessing that by now quite a few of you may well have heard the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast (number 78) in which Neil Shuck interviews my good friend, Richard Clarke from TooFatLardies.

Meeples & Miniatures Podcast - Episde 78

Most of the discussion is about wargames rules writing and rules mechanisms, and Richard's attempt to build in "friction" and uncertainty into his wargames rules, including his World War One set "Through the Mud and the Blood". As you may also have noticed, these are also my preferred set for wargaming the Great War, although I do like using others from time to time.

If you've not listened to Neil's podcast before, it's a fantastic resource and episode 78 is a great place to start.

If you've not come across the TooFatLardies rules before, this is also a perfect place to start as Richard has a knack of explaining his design process and philosophy very clearly.

It's a really excellent episode, and highly recommended. Five out of five star shells.

The Dead Marshes: Part 2 - Painting

2011-08-29T14:05:00.002+01:00

Before adding the “Solid Water” to the terrain boards, I needed to paint them. I tried to aim for a muddy and slightly corrupted look to the terrain. I added in more green to the painting palette for the shell craters and shell holes surrounding the pillboxes with the aim in mind of representing the slime and horror of the dead pools bisected only by the shell craters and thin duckboard walkways.

The pillboxes were finished in a dull grey, representing the reinforced and prefabricated concrete. Sandbags, covering battle damage on the front face of the pillbox walls were finished in a dull cloth colour, punctured with bullet holes finished in black paint.

I picked out the circulated iron effects on the trench and pillbox walls in dark green or grey paint, with progressive highlighting.

The damaged and exposed steel lattice work in the reinforced concrete was painted at this stage, in a progressively lighter scheme of dark brown, rust, light rust and finally MIG pigment to give some texture. I also painted the trench access work to the rear of each pillbox...

Then came the big decision with the two pillboxes. Simply painting or some additional camouflage (camo-netting, mud, battlefield detritus) or both. I wanted the pillboxes to look realistic, but I also wanted them to catch the eye. There’s been a tension all through making terrain for the Great War between trying to represent something of the actual terrain, and also having a workable and attractive terrain on which players want to wargame on. A flat dark brown board of mud filled with dead figures and destruction would be sadly all to realistic – but I wonder whether anyone (including myself) would be wanting to play on such a terrain after a couple of games.

I mentioned near the start of this Blog about how I’d agonised over the decision to choose green, and not mud brown, as the base colour for the terrain boards. And I came back to that problem with the pill boxes.

Quite a few of the books I had looked through mentioned how difficult the pillboxes in the Ypres Salient had been to spot by the attackers. Although artillery shelling which hit the pillboxes had the effect of exposing fresh white concrete, German defenders were adept at covering the damage by night with mud, earth and tree branches. Although I didn’t come across many examples of pillboxes being painted routinely, I did come across some.

Perhaps equally to the point, as a wargamer I was keen to try some effect which would hopefully attempt to camouflage the pillboxes on the table but also be visually attractive and in keeping with the period. So, here’s what I came up with….

I felt that the colours chosen were in keeping with the German figures I had painted already, while the angular camouflage mimicked the effect on the Law War German stormtroopers’ helmets and even, just perhaps, some of the angular cubist art of the period. Best of all, perhaps, was that I felt I could always add camo-netting later after a few games if my clubmates or me disliked the camouflage effect after living with it for a while.

After the green camouflaging paint was applied, I added a few rust streaks to the pillboxes. This was another of those times when it really helped to be able to turn the pillbox inserts on their end to get a better painting angle….

I added some thinned black oil paint to the gutters of the access trenches by the side of the pill boxes…

… added some rust to the corrugated iron sheeting which had been used in the duckboard walkways between the flooded shell holes…added some of the same rust formula to the exposed barbed wire posts placed in some of the shell holes and also added some shading in very muddy brown paint to the duckboard planks….

Then, I did some light dry-brushing on the pillbox roofs (which broke up the camouflage paint again a little)…

… which left me with this as the finished painted effect across both boards. I was happy that the angular camouflage scheme seemed to blend in with the ground terrain when viewed from above.

This just left me with a little of the detailing on the boards themselves, namely the hand of one of the Fallen.

“There was no chance of getting wounded and getting a blighty one at Passchendaele. You could either get through or die, because if you got wounded and you slipped off the duckboards you just sank into the mud. Each side was a sea of mud. You stumbled and slid along. If you slipped you went up to the waist, not only that but in every pool you fell in there were decomposed bodies of humans and mules. If you were wounded and slipped off, well that was the end of you.” Warrant Officer Richard Tobin, Hood Battalion

I painted the sleeve uniform in the colours of neither side.

Next time, I’ll finish with micro-detailing, and the application of the “Solid Water” to the shell holes and craters.

When Dogs beat Frogs

2011-08-26T18:00:00.001+01:00

This Blog post is a slight interlude from The Great War and my usual blogged material. Readers with an aversion to hilarious and fun wargames would be well advised to click away quickly.

Lard Island was thrilled this week to welcome back our great chum, Rob Avery, for an evening’s gaming. Rob’s been a huge friend to our wargaming club, has contributed rules and scenarios by the bucketload to TooFatLardies, and is just an all-round great guy. He’s one of the most enthusiastic and fun wargamers you could hope to meet and is a real expert on Ancients and World War 2. Which is why… errrr…. he brought along his new set of rules for 15mm science fiction games this Tuesday night.

Or, as we came to know it during the evening, The Attack of the Killer Lawnmowers.

OK, so I arrived at the club late on Tuesday evening. And when I arrived I didn’t have a clue what was going on. This will serve me right for not being on time (again)! And although I’m a fan of reading science-fiction and the 40K universe, some sci-fi games can still come as a bit of a surprise. The table looked very nice, sure. Rob’s a great painter, and when he builds, he builds BIG as you can see from the photos. OK, so some things looked familiar - there were row upon row of Rob's wonderfully painted figures and “tanks” (the killer lawnmowers aforementioned)...

... but then there were also some far more exotic groups. This was because the Germans had become frogs and the Americans, dogs. I know, I know … now you’re confused. So was I. But the more confusing it got, the better the game flowed and the more wonderful and hilarious it became.

Wonderful because the Aufklärungsschwadron had become squads of frogs on “grav bikes” (which I could swear were space lambrettas), the panzer grenadiers seemed to have become potato-shaped terminators and the ~~Americans~~ … sorry, the Dogs … were supported by purple-people eaters of all descriptions.

The basic idea was to have a game which is based on Richard Clarke’s Second World War rules , “I Ain’t Been Shot Mum”, but set in outer-space. Well, why not…

So, with a straight face I can report that the space lambrettas were destroyed by the purple-people eaters, the potato-grenadiers-terminators swept all before them and the killer lawnmowers hovered majestically above it all.

Grim dark it certainly wasn’t. (Maybe a little Ciaphas Cain, but certainly not Grim Dark....)

However crazy a game that sounds, it probably was but I don’t think I’ve laughed and enjoyed a game so much in a long time. In other words, a change is as good as a rest.

Maybe you won’t want to play Dogs eat Frogs every week (or, maybe you do!), but if Rob’s is ever in town and offers you a place at the table commanding the killer lawnmowers, you should definitely accept. You’ll never regret it.

I'm hoping my normal service will be resumed this bank holiday weekend when I post Part 2 of the Dead Marshes (sorry for the delay with this).

Have a great weekend, and to all my American friends on the East Coast, stay safe and avoid the hurricane!

Oh, and I should mention that no frogs (or dogs) were hurt in the playing of this wargame.

The Dead Marshes: Part 1 – Building

2011-08-15T11:11:00.000+01:00

“Rain, mud, gas shelling and constant bombardment. I had never seen such a scene nor thought it possible. The whole country was water-logged, small spits of muddy land joined shell holes great and small, full of water, many with dead men and animals, the stench of which made us retch". Captain Philip Christison, 6th Batt, Cameron Highlanders

I mentioned a while back about the project I started to model a couple of board sections of marshy, abysmal terrain for our Great War set-up. I’d been interested for a long time in the Third Battle of Ypres around Passchendaele, and also inspired by JRR Tolkien’s fictional setting of the Dead Marshes in the “Lord of the Rings” (itself bearing echoes of Tolkien’s own experiences in the Great War). This is how I went about it.

Inspiration

The more I looked through the internet and books on the battle, two things happened, both of which had an impact on my terrain building.

First, I got progressively more depressed. It very difficult to read about Passchendaele without a sense of the misery and hopelessness suffered by troops on all sides in the battle. The photographs of the mud and the horror, even after almost a hundred years, remain shocking. Making Great War terrain for my club over the past couple of years has led to some thoughtful moments, but none more than this. I kept trying to remember that when my wargames club started our Great War terrain making project back in late 2008 we were trying to get away from the “folk memory” of Passchendaele – but looking through the books on the subject, seeing the photographs and reading the accounts of the soldiers who were there, getting away from that memory seemed somehow almost disrespectful.

Second, I was struck by the intricacy of the battle. As I read more I became interested in the incredible detail with which the main British offensives in the summer of 1917 were planned, the structure of sophisticated artillery bombardments and aerial spotting, the evolution of a flexible German defensive system, the little-known successes of the Tank Corps over abysmal terrain and the see-saw history of engagements and offensives fought over tactically important, but shattered, terrain points. Although Third Ypres was a titanic struggle involving hundreds of thousands of troops, at a small-unit scale the battle saw some critical tactical developments in both attack and defence. It was this micro-tactical, infantryman’s viewpoint which I was most interested in for wargaming.

Planning

I think that every terrain project benefits from a plan. Mine was sketched out in my notebook and translated to the finished project in about 6 weekends.

I used a couple of books extensively in the build, both of which are well written and I can recommend. They were the Osprey Fortress “Fortifications of the Western Front” by Paddy Griffiths, and “Pill Boxes of the Western Front: A guide to the design, construction and use of concrete pill-boxes 1914-1918” by Peter Oldham. The latter is particularly useful as it contains plans of bunkers, pillboxes and German MEBUs from the Siegfried Stellung, as well as equivalent British fortifications. More of the MEBUs in a future post! For Third Ypres, I found Peter Barton’s book on Passchendale and Peter Hart’s book “Passchendaele: The Sacrificial Ground” the most useful. Both have some fine first-hand accounts, although mainly from the British and Imperial perspective. For the German side, I read through “The German Army at Passchendaele” by Jack Sheldon

After reading up on the actions and offensives of Third Ypres, I set about a plan for the terrain boards. I wanted to try and create a damp, treacherous piece of terrain with extensive flooding and crossed by a number of duckboard paths.

"Passchendaele was just a terrible, terrible place. We used to walk along these wooden duckboards - something like ladders laid on the ground. The Germans would concentrate on these things. If a man was hit and wounded and fell off he could easily drown in the mud and never be seen again. You just did not want to go off the duckboards." Pte Richard Mercer

I also wanted to create a couple of inserts into the boards into which a pair of pillboxes could be situated without causing a problem with physical stacking of the boards. I wanted these inserts to be large enough to use for other centrepieces and gaming objectives to be built later, such as wrecked tanks, crashed aircraft and other features.

I also got together a selection of modelling materials, some of which came in useful and some which were nearly disastrous! In the photo below, there’s a large pack of “Solid Water” for the flooding effects, coarse Milliput (for sandbags), casualty figures, plastic “Corrugated iron” and a selection of resin fascine causeways. The intention of the causeways was to use these for the duckboards, tracing a path through the flooded land. I can’t have been thinking straight when I purchased these lovely pieces from Tim at Frontline Wargaming. The fascine causeways are very reasonably priced and fine resin casts. I’ve used them a lot with my 17th Century armies. BUT….they look very out of place in 1917. Why on earth I didn’t realise this until almost too late…. Ah well, I didn’t and as you’ll see, I had to change these at the last minute to avert Roundwood’s Terrain Making Disaster™ #38 !

In the photo below, there’s some more items I used such as wooden splintered coffee stirrers, more plastic “Corrugated iron” and some cheaper corrugated cardboard, small twists of barbed wire coiled round brass picket-posts and the cardboard duckboards I finally settled on using after I removed the fascine causeways. And I also added in an arm or two from a set of Warlord Games’ WWII infantry, as you’ll see.

Building

Following the craters being sketched onto the Syrofoam, I used a flat chisel to scrape away the craters to a depth of about 10 to 15mm. I was trying not to gouge deep pits into the Styrofam, mindful of having to fill the craters with Solid Water epoxy resin at the end of the project. There are a couple of deeper craters, but in the main the craters are pretty flat. I also wanted to make sure there were plenty of causeways for troop movement, and channelling of deployment, around the terrain boards.

After chiselling, I was left with a very rough surface which I then wanted to smooth out to ease painting. Some rough sandpaper did the trick, following which the first board looked like this…

I’d cut out the insert in advance and made sure it was based on non-warp plywood (which would form the base of the trench to be dug into the insert, next to the doors of the pillbox). As usual I used a couple of spare figures to make sure that the scale of the pillboxes looked right, and to check there was plenty of room in the outside trench.

The pillbox itself was made from two Styrofoam rectangles, each with a depth of 10mm. I would it easiest to use these so I could get a clean cut out of the pillbox embrasures. I quick sand down of the top and bottom made sure these were a good fit, and I marked them clearly to make sure I didn’t end up gluing the wrong one to the bottom by accident (yes, it’s happened before).

Next, I dug out some shell damage from the roof of each pillbox, using wire mesh on the pillbox and brass wire on the other (for variation) to represent the actual wire frame of the pillboxes being damaged in an artillery barrage. (Flames of War players will immediately spot where this trick comes from – and like so much on this Blog, yes, I’m shamelessly ripping off other peoples great ideas for my own stuff!) I then went outside and used some superglue to “melt” the Styrofoam in a couple of places to represent more damage such as bullet holes and shell splinters, although in the end I found this worked slightly less well on these models than on the pillbox I’d built in the Vlissinghe terrain board in 2009. Perhaps I need to practice more!

For history buffs, the reference to “Vampir” on the first pillbox is a reference to the pillbox of that name just by the Menin Road (and yes, the spelling of “Vampir” without the “e” is right, I think!).

The trench outside the pillbox was cut out from the insert, and the insert glued over a couple of nights to the plywood base. I then added my usual revetment sides to the trench, with some battle-damage and shellholes around the edges.

As with the other trench terrain boards, I mixed up some PVA and polyfilla, coloured it with dark grey emulsion paint, spread it along the trench and scattered a mix of small stones, gravel and sand into the trench. I painted the embrasures black before gluing the pillbox bottom and top together and onto the insert.

Next up was cutting suitably coloured or dyed old towelling around the shell craters.

Then, the base of the inserts were painted with the grey emulsion coloured PVA and Polyfilla mix, set in an old plastic tub and filled with gravel and sand scatter. I covered the rest of the terrain board with the same mixture, followed by the same scatter.

Modelling the Pillboxes

Once dried, I settled down to watch a DVD, fully intending a peaceful evening carving modelling putty along the sides and roof of the two pillboxes. I’d bought some modelling putty a while back, and it had been kicking around the spares box for a while. It looked perfect. And, in many ways it was….it was flexible, easy to spread, fast drying and easy to carve with a modelling tool. However, with a couple of second of opening the tube, I quickly found out why this stuff MUST be used outdoors….the fumes from this tiny tube are incredibly strong. No harm done, but for once the (frankly scary) notices on the back of the tube needed to be taken seriously. I finished the rest of the pillbox by the outside light under a Heertfordshire sky, at arm’s length!

I didn’t think the results were that bad, giving a half-decent simulation of the ridges of the pre-fabricated concrete used by the Germans as they constructed the Flanderenstellung. I glued a scattering of gravel and small pieces of Styrofoam to the roof of each pillbox to simulate shell damage, and scatter a thin coating of sand on that.

I also added a twist of picture frame wire in a couple of places, simulating perhaps a shattered telephone cable or electricity cable or just some wreckage on the roof of the pillbox.

The whole of the terrain boards, and the pillbox inserts were then painted with their base-coat colours….dark green and dark mud brown for the terrain, dark grey for the pillboxes.

The Flooded Land

About this time, I realised by mistake with the resin-made fascine causeways. They just did not look right. I ripped them off with some difficulty in places and re-laid cardboard, wood and plastic “corrugated iron” duckboard paths. I mention this because I sometimes feel that terrain building is a process of trial and error. Not everything works first time, and we all make mistakes occasionally. Getting over the disasters is part of the hobby. And when disaster strikes, “keep calm and carry on” are the watch-words for getting the flipping thing finished!!

I then added a couple of wire pickets to the shell craters. These were placed low enough to be partly submerged in the Sold Water, and low enough so as to not interfere with stacking the boards for storage.

I also added a couple of the arms from the Warlord Games infantry multi-part kits. I added them, part-submerged, to a couple of the craters. The more I had read about the later stages of the battle, the more it was clear that the apocryphal stories of Flanders mud were very real for the soldiers wading through the duckboard maze.

“We splashed and slithered, and dragged our feet from the pull of an invisible enemy determined to suck us into its depths. Every few steps someone would slide and stumble and, weighed down by rifle and equipment, rapidly sunk into the squelching mess. The nearest grabbed his arms, struggled against being themselves engulfed and, if humanly possible, dragged him out…..To be ordered to go ahead and leave a comrade to such a fate was the hardest experience one could be asked to endure…This was as near to Hell as I ever want to be”. Private Norman Cliff, 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards

At this point, the building of the terrain boards were finished. Looking fairly dark and malevolent, they awaited painting and the injection of muddy water…

“Floods of rain and a blanket of mist have doused and cloaked the whole of the Flanders plain. The newest shell-holes, already half-filled with soakage, are now flooded to the brim. The rain has so fouled this low, stoneless ground, spoiled of all natural drainage by shell-fire, that we experienced the double value of the early work, for today moving heavy material was extremely difficult and the men could scarcely walk in full equipment, much less dig. Every man was soaked through and was standing or sleeping in a marsh. It was a work of energy to keep a rifle in a state fit to use.” – William B Thomas, The Daily Mail, 2nd August 1917

"Over the Top!" - Warhammer Great War Supplement

2011-08-08T13:31:00.001+01:00

I was pretty excited on Friday to come home and find a copy of “Over the Top” had arrived in the post from Forgeworld. “Over the Top” is the long awaited supplement to the 2008 rule-set from Warhammer Historical Wargames, “The Great War”. Like most people, for a long time I had had given “Over the Top” up for lost following the decision of Games Workshop to close the Warhammer Historical Wargames publishing business in 2009.

Nevertheless, I was excited to see that the chaps at Forgeworld had decided to publish the “Over the Top” supplement. While I have some favourite rule-sets for wargaming the First World War, I’m always open to new ideas and on the look out for inspiration.

So what follows is not an analysis of the detailed rules in the book or a guide of how to win with certain armies. I’ll leave that for people who are more familiar with the intricacies of “The Great War” rules. What I thought might be of interest is a quick run through of what’s in the book, the new armies presented and some of the very nice features which are included.

The Book

“Over the Top” weighs in at a very respectable 176 pages, costing £20 (plus £3 shipping if you get it from Forgeworld in the UK). It’s a handsomely produced volume, standing the same size and in the same paperback format at “The Great War”. The two books look very well side-by-side on a bookshelf.

“Over the Top” is profusely illustrated, featuring a fine Peter Dennis front and back cover, numerous photos of wargames figures and tanks (eye-candy of the highest order) and quite a few photos of authentic or high quality replica Great War soldier’s equipment, weapons and kit.

In all, “Over the Top” is a splendid looking book, which will give a lot of pleasure (as with other Warhammer Historical books) from just flicking through the pages.

The Contents

There are a wealth of contents in the book, enough to keep any gamer happy for a considerable time. The book starts with a contents page and fine foreword by the author, Alex Buchel. One thing which comes through the book at all times is the depth of knowledge, interest and sheer passion for the period which Alex has.

After the contents, there’s an “Overview of the Trench Wars” and excellent section of additional rules entitled “A Symphony of Hell”, covering heavy artillery barrages. Following (creeping?) close behind there is a section entitled “Grand Manoeuvres”, which covers the anatomy of No–Mans Land, trench fortifications, trench fighting stratagems, and tactics.

This is a really excellent section, building on the excellent work done in some of the Games Workshop 40K special releases like “Cities of Death” (for the stratagems). Indeed, for a 40K player looking for more than the rather dull trench fighting scenario in last year’s 40K “Battle Missions” book, there’s a huge amount of useful information in “Over the Top” which could be imported into the 41st Millennium. There are also six new missions included in “Over the Top” (Village Assault, Stalemate, Fighting Retreat, Conquest, Meat Grinder and The Assault), plus a larger scaled game entitled “The Big Show”.

Reading through these various fortifications, stratagems and game tweaks made me think that “Over the Top” is very likely to really open up wargaming using “The Great War” rules. While it preserves the adversarial, non-umpired, point-system approach, the “Over the Top” rules for fortifications and stratagems seem likely to create a really finely balanced game in which both sides have a range of game options.

The book carries on with a section called “Battlefield Operations”, listing 12 notable offensives and battles of the War and suggestions on playing these. I liked this section as it places the context of games using “Over the Top” squarely into a historical context.

Following on are new army lists for American, British and Imperial, French and German forces, each of which adding something new beyond what was in the army lists in “the Great War”. Although I’ve only given these a quick read through, the lists look interesting, with the German Sturmpioniere, Landsturm and Musketen-Battalion options for some of the 1915 and 1916 units looking particularly fun.

There’s also a fearsome photograph of a French tank company featuring no less than nineteen FT-17s which no doubt kept someone very busy painting for a while. I am sure that there is some room for discussion on some of the historical formations and weaponry used (a very minor example being that German infantry suffer Tank Terror in 1917 including at Cambrai, despite German forces having seen tanks being used extensively earlier in 1917 at Arras, in Flanders and on the Champagne front), but the same is certainly true of most historical rules and supplements, including anything written by myself!

Finally, there is an “Army Intelligence” section in which there’s a set of rules for Trench Raiding with small forces, some painting information and a Resources section.

The Photos

“Over the Top” is another of the very respectable stable of wargaming books featuring sumptuous photography and very high production quality. There have been some very interesting discussions on TMP about whether people look for this in a book, or whether they prefer something which is plainer.

Personally, I like photos in the rulesets which I purchase. I generally think that for every time I play one of the “glossy” rulesets, I probably end up looking through the pages at the photos half a dozen times. My copy of the Warlord Games “Black Powder” rules is a case in point – played once, but looked through dozens of times in awe and admiration.

In the same way, “Over the Top” features some great photos of Western Front wargames, with the wonderful Partizan 2008 display table by Dave Andrews and Ally Morrison (which inspired my own terrain back in early 2009) featuring prominently. I would be very surprised if anyone enjoying the photos in “The Great War” would be in any way disappointed with the photos in “Over the Top”.

One very minor disappointment is that the terrific table built by the Gripping Beast/ Woodbine Design team for “Over the Top” doesn’t feature more prominently. I had the pleasure of seeing this at the Scarab/ Gripping Beast games day in December 2009, and it really was fantastic. So, I thought I would post my own pictures of that table as a bit of “Over the Top” eye-candy on this Blog post, with all the credit to the table builder Wynn Rogers and the Gripping Beast team who helped.

Verdict

I enjoyed reading through “Over the Top” this weekend. It is a handsomely produced, visually stunning supplement in the fine tradition of Warhammer Historical supplements. On first impressions, it sits very well alongside other Warhammer Historical classics such as "Age of Arthur" and "Shieldwall". I am sure anyone enjoying “The Great War” will get a lot of use out of it, but there is more than enough of interest for gamers using other rules to enjoy.

At the heart of the book is a really interesting approach to creating historically accurate, interesting, respectful and fun wargames set on the Western Front. If that was the author’s intention, then I’d say he has succeeded in full.

For a wargamer enjoying “the Great War”, five out of five star-shells. For a wargamer interested in gaming the First World War but not yet committed to a set of rules, four out of five star shells.

Painting Bases

2011-08-06T09:49:00.000+01:00

Painting bases is one of those painting jobs which I think it works best to do in bulk. You’re really looking to create a theme which unifies the unit you’re working on, and draws a number of different figures and base sizes together.

In an ideal world, you’d probably base your whole army together in one go. I know some people who have done this, but they tend to be the exceptions and not the rule. For mere mortals like me, it’s enough of a job to paint the bases on one unit and make sure they tie in to the others which have been done before and which come after. in other words, when it comes to painting bases, I'm a "painting in batches" kind of guy.

With that in mind, I found it helpful to keep a note of the paints and techniques used to try and achieve some sort of consistency. I tend to think “macro” when it comes to basing, relying on cheaper general-use acrylic paints than specific hobby paints like Vallejo or Foundry (at least for the groundwork). I’ve been using a mixture of Louvre and Plaka acrylic paints for a while now, and I really like the effect they give. The main Louvre colours I’ve worked with are black, white, light ochre and burnt umber, accompanied with a range of Plaka paints but in particular grau (grey), ziegelrot (a dusty brick-red/pink), gelb-braun (a wonderful muddy brown which is now, very sadly, discontinued) and dunkelbraun (a nutty dark brown about the colour of mahogany).

I tend to paint bases after priming and undercoating but before anything else, mainly because it’s easier to repaint over the areas (particularly on the boots and legs) which the bigger basing brushes accidentally cover. That being said, for some reason I can’t remember, I’d painted some of the figures in the pictures below with a base of flesh. Sometimes I have random days like that!

So, here's the Roundwood method of painting figure bases. What I try and look for is two contrasting, strong colours for basing. I try and make sure they correspond with the terrain I'm using with the figures (whether terrain boards, or terrain pieces). For the Great War, and for other modern periods, I've gone for grey and brown - these seemed to be good contrasting, realistic colours which you can find in lots of settings, whether in a trench system, open country or in an urban or village setting.

It doesn't matter what you start with, but for some reason I start with brown. So, first paint dark brown irregular shape (or shapes) on the base. Then lighten the dark brown shape with some yellow-brown and light ochre. I cover about half the base with these colours, trying to make the area covered irregular and patchy. I then cover the other half of the base in dark and lighter grey. I’m not too worried if I paint over feet, boots, equipment, as these will be painted properly later.

I tend to paint the glued-down floor matting in dark brown and progressively lighter brown. There are lots of other vegetation you can stuck on bases, like Siflor tufts, but I quite like the very cheap and very durable tough matting. Once you have hacked it up a bit with scissors, flattened it, and generally duffed it up a bit, it makes (to my eyes) a pretty decent impression of coarse, untamed grasses. I love the Siflor tufts, but my addiction to coarse matting seems to have died hard. Leopards and spots, I guess.

At this point, the bricks and corrugated iron are getting completely ignored. In a pretty short time, you’ll have a rough paint coverage on all the base, like these figures below.

I normally add some highlighting at this point, generally adding white to grey or yellow-brown and trying to bring out the gravel, sand and any contours on the base.

The bricks are then picked out with a combination of dark brown and brick red. I like to paint around the bricks, trying to create an impression of dust, broken bricks and general rubble surrounding the brick work.

At this point you may wonder why on earth I bothered with bricks in the first place – after all, aren’t these troops supposed to be in the trenches? It’s a very good question. I wanted to try and add features to the base which were distinctive - such as brick work, corrugated iron, old barbed wire posts – but which were historically accurate. There was more fighting near buildings on the Western Front than I had first thought when I started wargaming the First World War a couple of years ago, including the Somme villages, actions in Bourlon and Fontaine near Cambrai in 1917, the mining villages around Loos, the infamous “brickstacks” near Loos at the La Bassee brickworks, and so on. Enough, in other words, for me to justify the bases as looking right on those particular parts of the front line. It’s difficult to produce bases which are historically accurate in absolutely every setting you might think of to game in (unless you're in the Western Desert!), and I find it’s more a case of justifying why something looks right for most of the time, rather than all the time.
The brick base colours then get progressively lightened with a little Plaka or Vallejo orange and finally white, highlighting the base colours. I generally do this with a smaller, more controlled brush.

The corrugated iron is painted in a similar way, starting from a dark grey or dark green, and lightened along the corrugations. I usually add some Vallejo rust-coloured paint and (once the figure is painted and before varnishing) weathering powders to make the corrugated iron look more distressed. Hopefully the picture below of the Renegade 77 mm gun crew gives you and idea of the basing and painting, and shows the areas of “brickdust” around the bricks themselves.

I finish the basing when all of the rest of the painting is done on the figure with a brush of Louvre black around the edge of the base. I like the sharp contrast that makes between the base and the terrain, but I know some prefer to have base edging in a more natural tone.

None of this advice on painting bases is in anyway rocket-science, and it’s fairly simple to do. There are far, far better examples of basing on the internet and on people’s Blogs, but (as they say) this is what works for me!

Up next time....terrain making challenges and disasters on the Flanders Front as I try and finish the "Dead Marshes". See you for that soon!

The Guns of August

2011-08-05T16:16:00.001+01:00

Coming back from holiday always seems to remind me of the things which I should have finished off before I grabbed my passport and ran out the door with my suitcase. While on holiday I reminded myself that I'd left a few loose ends on the Blog before I left. In the spirit of tidying them up, I thought I'd spend the next couple of posts on artillery building, figure basing, figure painting and some terrain making tips (and disasters) from the Flanders front.

All the Kaiser's Men

I've wanted to build up my German forces for "Through the Mud and the Blood" for a while. Over the past couple of years, I've bought quite a few heavy weapons and support weapons for the German forces, without really having much of a plan for building them up into a coherent force. I'd managed to paint a few machine guns, but anything with the ability to stop the waves of British (and shortly French) tanks surging over the tabletop had been absent from my 28mm collection. I'd managed to survive with borrowed units in the games we've been playing, but I felt it was time to make some improvements!

So first off, I dug out a selection of half-started figures which had been based (but not much else) and some figures which hadn't even been primed yet. This included three 7.7cm Feldkanone 96 n.A. artillery guns, a couple of 3.7cm TAK Rheinmetall in starrer Räderlafette anti-tank guns, a couple of 13mm T-Gewehre anti-tank rifles, a two-man flammenwerfer, a 7.58cm Leichter Minenwerfer n/A, a Granatenwerfer 16 and a sled mounted Maxim heavy machine gun. I also included a large squad of figures which I could convert to use as engineers or sturmpioneers for anti-tank duties, and a few Big Men to add some backbone into my German forces generally.

Renegade Miniatures' and Great War Miniatures' 7.7cm Feldkanone 96 n.A. artillery guns

The 77mm artillery pieces come as a jumble of parts, and more than a cursory glance at the excellent Landships site is recommended if you ever fancy putting one of these chaps together. I had two types - one from Great War Miniatures and one from Renegade.

I found that the Renegade version was quite difficult to put together, and resorted to pinning the gun shield to the gun trail using brass wire for increased stability. I like to feel that when I pick up an artillery piece to paint or game with that it's not going to collapse in my hands (…been there, got that T-shirt…), and I think the pinning really helps make the model more stable. Even so, assembly of the Renegade 77mm is a chore and not a pleasure.

By contrast, the wheels fix reasonably easily to the gun shield, and after a few dry-runs I found that easiest to glue the wheels to the shield before adding the gun trail.

I tend to use fast drying araldite (an epoxy resin glue) for modelling as I find it's less brittle than super-glue over a long time. But using the epoxy to get the Renegeade 77mm piece to fit together was challenging, so I used very small amount of superglue just to hold everything in place until the araldite epoxy set.

The trail spike on the Renegade 77mm gun is very nice but needed some work to file down to the right width to fit with the gun trail.

By contrast, the Great War Miniatures model was easier to assemble and needed less ~~cursing~~ … errr...a little less energy to make sure everything set in place. Here's the two side by side, with the Renegade on the left.

For ease of assembly, I'd give the Renegade gun 2 out of 5 star shells, and the Great War Miniatures' gun 4 out of 5 star shells.

Great War Miniatures' 3.7cm TAK Rheinmetall in starrer Räderlafette

By contrast, the tiny 37mm anti-tank gun produced by Great War Miniatures went together perfectly, with no problems. 600 of these guns had been produced by the end of 1918, with the aim of attempting to halt allied armour breaking through German defensive lines. The wheels, gun trail and very small barrel all fit perfectly, making a really attractive model. 5 out of 5 star shells for this kit.

I find painting artillery pieces can be a bit of a pain. You don’t want to handle them, but at the same time you don’t want to glue them onto a base and struggle to paint all the difficult corners. My solution is to use old paint-brushes or spare chopsticks (I like sushi!) to hold the artillery pieces in place while painting is on-going. An old jar of sand into which the chopstick is stuck prevents them toppling over….

Great War Miniatures – Sturmpioneers/ Engineers

None of the 28mm manufacturers seem to make German sturmpioneers or engineers, so I set about trying to convert some Great War Miniatures figures to be suitable for the role. What I was trying to do was get a squad of figures which would be recognisable on the tabletop as “something different”.

I decided to double up the figures on the bases (2 per 40mm circular base) to make them stand out. Additional “concentration charges” of 6 or 7 grenade heads were added to some figures where single grenades had previously been. I also added some extra shovels and grenade sacks from the bits box, as well as some coils of barbed wire from Antenociti’s workshop, tied with fine wire from 4D Models.

Rifles were pinned in place ….

… and the barbed wire coils glued, and then given some “grey-stuff” wrapping to represent the leather carriers and strapping which might have been used by the engineers bringing the wire forward.

I was left with the following engineers and artillery, with basing to follow.

Hard Working Bases

Over the past few years, there’s been a real trend towards elaborate, intricate basing for fantasy and sci-fi wargaming figures. You can see lots of wonderful examples on people’s Blogs and the internet generally of that trend now rolling with some speed into historical wargaming. Hurrah – it’s a very good thing in my book, because I like trying to set figures in the context of the terrain on which they’re fighting. I don’t think that “intricate” or “elaborate” necessarily has to mean difficult or overly time-consuming however.

So here’s my ideas for some hard working bases for Great War figures. I use a mix of old rubber based floor matting, some plastic “corrugated iron”, some “bricks” cut from 2mm strip wood, and some offcuts from Styrofoam blocks (although anything chunky such as foamboard, cardboard or even putty would do).

To start off, just cut the “bricks” and “corrugated iron” to the shape and size required, and glue them into white PVA spread liberally on the figure’s base. Also glue in any of the matting at this point. Where you want to put two figures on a base, I sometimes mark down where the second figure goes and spread the PVA glue around it.

Next, sprinkle the “bricks” and some coarse gravel on the base, followed up by finer gravel and eventually fine sand. The different consistencies or gravel and sane sprinkled on the bases makes the basing seem to me less regular and more natural.

You’ll see that I sometimes glue down the full artillery crew onto their base at this stage. This may sound like lunacy (….and there is a chance of that!..), but I have a real horror of finishing painting and varnishing artillery crews and then having to assemble the final model and figures onto the base. For me personally, it’s a lot better to have the challenge of painting around figures glued to a base and then glue on the finished gun, than to have to assemble the glue and basing once everything is finished and varnished. Ok, OK, so I’m odd and weird in this regard … but as a wargamer, I probably knew that!

As regards the “hard working” aspect of the bases, on some larger units I have based the sections differently – so one section of a platoon has bases which feature only tufts of floor matting, one has bricks, one corrugated iron and one is left plain. It helps when the figures are on the table to tell the sections apart, and which Big Man belongs to which section.

Finally, on some of the bases, you can really go to town. Adding some plastic “girders” or Styrofoam concrete walls is pretty easy and works well for a support weapon like the Granatenwerfer 16.

After this, you’re done apart from some black primer.

Ok, next time I shall briefly cover the painting of the bases and then have a look at some terrain for the Dead Marshes before coming back to look at figure painting (for anyone still awake!). Catch you soon!