A mix of Paperboys

Some Peter Dennis-inspired modeling this week.

I experimented with a faded brown sharpie on the edges of some Wofun ECW Highlanders. The difference stands out in the mix of uncolored and colored strips, though I will also need to try a sharpie with more ink:

 

I built a couple knights and a tilting ground from Peter's free Jousting set, which I take credit for inspiring after I asked him for some side-on knights for jousting games!

My thought was to run a Warhammer Fantasy jousting tournament (rules from White Dwarf 215) with custom-colored paper knights, but the teens have just gotten a new 3D printer and are already printing plastic miniatures. So we are likelier to use plastic knights, though on the other hand the staff are eager for me to run a simple painting class. Will have to make the time.

Finally, I finished my Glory:1861 battalion:

Eight companies, command base, and two field officers.

HQ element: Lt. Colonel, Major, Color-bearers and Musician.

Closeup on the troops - 18mm Paperboys, nine to a base.

My first "battle" may simply be a "training" action of four companies a side to test the rules. Given my table size, I'm thinking of building a small Western Confederate unit for trans-Mississippi battles. The three-company Arizona Rangers, a handful of which fought at Picacho Pass, might be a fun unit to raise.

Design for Glory: 4th Battalion, 19th US Infantry

 At the rate I'm snipping and gluing, it'll be a while before I have a paper regiment ready to play Glory:1861. But that needn't stop me from designing it. Glory:1861 is deliberately similar to roleplaying games in that the "character" of the regiment is paramount. Its background, skills and experience all must be determined both beforehand and in the course of play. And character creation is a key part of any RPG; it is in fact a lead-in to play, because the mere act of rolling dice and writing down the results feels like play to newbies.

I chose to build a (fictional) US regular battalion because I recently read two volumes about the Regulars in the Civil War. These were That Body of Brave Men, on the Regular Brigade in the West, and Sykes' Regular Infantry Division 1861-1864, on the Regular Division in the East. 

These were both formed from newly raised infantry regiments, the 11th through 19th, authorized in 1861 to, in theory, triple the size of the US Army. This was because, instead of the ten-company, single-battalion organization of the first ten US Infantry regiments and the militia which became the US Volunteers, they were composed of three eight-company battalions. In practice, not only were 27 battalions never raised, but the ones that were rarely got up to eight companies or even full strength. Both books spend considerable pages on the extreme difficulty of recruiting for the regular army:

• Volunteer regiments had lighter discipline, better promotion prospects, and a commonality of culture as troops were from the same state.
• Volunteer regiments paid more, particularly from mid-war as bounties appeared and the draft encouraged more to enlist.
• Officers had to leave the battalion for extended periods to raise troops, train them and transport them back to the battalion, leading to a paucity of leadership in the active elements of the unit.

On the other hand, they had greater esprit de corps and experience based on their prewar officer and NCO corps, and (unlike most volunteer regiments) actively recruited and reinforced so that rookie troops were backed by stolid veterans. This made them somewhat more reliable than volunteers.

While normally regiments start off as green, there is an option to make regulars "competent" rather than poor or inexperienced. This appears to require nine months experience and five training bonuses. Initial upgrades may apply to the entire regiment, but future ones are purchased by company.

A battalion has eight companies, at four points per company. The field officers cost two points, and the standard bearer and drummer will cost two more, for a total of 36 points spent and 14 left over, which I'll spend on training bonuses and other characteristics, including rerolls. This will also come out to thirty-three eight-man bases (one of them a command base), and two individual officer bases. There is a free band available at helion.com, so I might build one and count it as the musician and the command base as the standard bearer.

Basically I'm losing two companies and one field officer (the battalion would not have a colonel), in exchange for better quality. The field officers (let's call them Lt. Col. Smith and Major Jones) begin with the following characteristics:

Command range of 18", Initiative of 4, and Combat Experience of 2. Since I only have the two officers, I'm going to roll to improve their command range. Smith's increases to 27". (Given my small figure scale and table, I'll probably reduce distances - perhaps to cm rather than inches.)

Each also receives one random characteristic on a D66 chart. I roll 45 for Smith and 15 for Jones. Smith is Humanitarian, meaning that no company may be Unrestrained, and Jones is Wheezy, meaning he must rest for one turn in every five. He must be pretty old, or maybe he got shot in the chest with an arrow during the Seminole Wars.

The battalion has eight companies, A through H, and of course eight Captains to command them. Each rolls on a quality table.

• A - Captain Able (Useless Slow)
• B - Captain Baker (Slow Overeager)
• C - Captain Carle (Overeager)
• D - Captain Doggett (Useless Heroic)
• E - Captain Easy (Useless Slow)
• F - Captain Fox (Tolerated)
• G - Captain Goff (Tolerated)
• H - Captain Howell (Tolerated)

Useless means a 1/3 chance of orders being ignored. Slow means an extra turn for orders to be followed. Tolerated means no bonus or detriment, and Overeager means that a unit taking a morale test may advance 2d6". Out of eight dice, I rolled a four or better once. I'll pay two points for four rerolls: 2, 6, 4 and 2. That upgrades Able and Easy to Slow, Baker to Overeager and Doggett becomes the only competent CO in the battalion, with a +1 to morale throws.

Next, I need to characterize the companies. Cowardly companies have -2 to morale throws, Reluctant ones require a field officer nearby to advance, Resolute has no effect, and Unrestrained, like Overeager, provides a chance of advancing further. As my CO is Humanitarian, I reroll Unrestrained. I also rerolled D Company's result, leaving me with ten points; out of twenty dice so far, I've rolled a single 5.

• A - Reluctant
• B - Unrestrained Resolute
• C - Resolute
• D - Cowardly Resolute
• E - Reluctant
• F - Reluctant
• G - Resolute
• H - Unrestrained Cowardly Fired Up

Now to training upgrades. Initial ones may apply to the entire regiment; after the first game they apply only to individual companies. So best use them now. Based on the sample regiments provided, I'll choose:

• Move - units always move at least 3" per die.
• Rally - unit can attempt to rally in one phase.
• Load - reloading takes one phase.
• Fire - bonus on firing modifier.
• Fix/remove bayonet - Unit can ... fix or remove bayonets.
• Skirmish Order - Unit can skirmish.
• Close Order - Unit can ... move in close order.

Out of points now.

The regiment, being US Regulars, is one of the only types that can choose rifled muskets, so gets the 1855 Springfield:

This provides greater range.

Beyond the Session Zero "character creation" phase, I've cut out twenty-one bases today to attach the paper figures to. Still inching forward... Even at 30mm wide, 32 bases will stretch the limits of my five-foot table. Need to think about increasing my table space.

Glory:1861, and slow progress

 I spotted a cartoon on Facebook today. It was of an inchworm. The caption was something along the lines of, "Even the smallest step forward ... is still a step forward."

I bring this up because that's how I tend to do wargaming projects. I force myself to do something. Anything, just to progress. Even if it's only one step towards the end.

I've been doing that lately.

These are "ACW18s" - 18mm Paperboys by Peter Dennis. They're smaller and more numerous than in his original 28mm Civil War book published by Helion, which I also have. Given the size of my gaming table, however, the 18s work well and don't need resizing (though there is some automatically, given that they are designed for A4 paper and I am in the US where the slightly-smaller 8.5x11 inch is standard).

I have several projects in mind for these chaps. One I am eager for is a version of Fort Wagner and the 54th Massachusetts as depicted in the film Glory. The ACW18 collection includes fortress elements that can be worked to resemble the fort, and it would be appropriate for Black History Month in February. Rules and even presentation are up in the air; at the rate we're going I might have to try running the game over Zoom, which is one reason I hope to join in on some of Jon Freitag's games at the Palouse Wargaming Journal blog. I've also been following online games at Wargaming For Grownups, which Jon has participated in.

Another project, and the point of this blog post, is Glory:1861.

I see an Uncanny Valley effect to this cover.
I think it's Stonewall Jackson, but vaguely disturbing.
Granted, TJ himself was vaguely disturbing...

Glory:1861 has strong overtones of a roleplaying game, because the pre-game phase of "building" your army (a ten-company-strong infantry regiment) is intricate and absorbing. The author recommends using singly-based figures: four per company, plus three field officers, two color-bearers and a musician, for 46 models. But the rules are model-agnostic, and it's entirely possible to use four multi-bases to represent a company - also more representative, as you could use 6mm figures in bases of twenty to represent every man in the unit. I've chosen a happy medium - four bases of eight men each, on 30x20mm bases. Peter Dennis' 18s are intended for groups of around 14 to a 40mm base; but I've become used to eight 18s on a 30mm base due to collecting many Wofun figures, which reduce Peter's 28mms nicely and are small enough to play an almost-normal battle on my small table. (I'll talk space and size when I get to trying Peter's English Civil War rules!)

This means that I need forty (count 'em) bases of troops. One strip of nine is enough to make one base.

Well, actually, I need thirty-two, as I am planning this first regiment to be US Regulars. Hence the choice of Iron Brigade figures. The "new" regiments formed by the US Army at the start of the Civil War were, unusually, of three battalions rather than one, and of eight companies each rather than ten. The 11th through 19th US Regulars thus were battalions. This means my "regiment" will be smaller than normal, but that also means I have more room to trick it out.

As a roleplayer, I can affirm that one of the best parts of RPGs is creating characters - even ones you never get to play. "Statting up" fictional characters - James T. Kirk, Indiana Jones, Gandalf - is practically a cottage industry, and arguments abound online about what feats and abilities this or that character should accurately have. Luckily, there weren't many famous regiment commanders during the American Civil War, at least early on as Glory:1861 is limited to. And the commanders don't have all that many bonuses - at the beginning.

So at least I'll be able to design the regiment before it ever takes to the field. Not to mention its opponent. 

I'll have to, because as I implied way back at the beginning of this post, my building rate is slow.

I have seventeen strips cut out. And most of the bases folded and glued.

I'm cutting out roughly one or two strips a day, mostly while watching Youtube.

And after that, I'll need to cut each in half (carefully trimming around the edges). Then attach each half to a base. Then paste each base to a 20x30mm bit of card. Then make a command base and two officers (major and lieutenant colonel).

And then go through the same process for a Confederate regiment.

See where I'm coming from?

And with Paperboys, this is lightning-fast compared to the traditional method of buying and assembling metal or plastic, undercoating, painting, basing... Even with Peter's lovely art to look at, and the relaxing process of assembly, there's a reason I purchase figures ready-to-play.

A decade ago, I'd probably have given up on a project like this. At the rate I'm going, it'll be the turn of the year before I have enough completed to try a game. But that's no longer the point.

I may never play. That's certainly my end goal, but if you've read this far you know I'm so easily distracted I can barely stick to one century, much less one game system. But that's alright, because the journey is the destination.

There are games where I do have a specific endgame (heh) planned, complete with deadline. My Picacho Pass scenario, for example; I would like to run it for my group in April of next year, exactly 160 years after the actual battle. A battle for Black History Month next February is another goal; at some point I'll need to pick either Olustee or Fort Wagner, buckle down and go at it.

Glory:1861 is different. While I might demo it for my adult group at some point, it's more of a solo project. And one of the nice things about solo projects is that you can take them at your own pace. The roleplaying aspect only accentuates this; design and planning is half the fun!

So, actually, is writing this blog post. I could have spent the last hour cutting out several more strips of paper soldiers, but instead I'm doing this. The gaming hobby is so much more than just throwing down on the tabletop. I relearned that today when I directed a boy to Dewey 793 on the library shelves, where I found him three books on Minecraft and two on Dungeons and Dragons. He may not be playing tonight, but I bet he's reading.

And dreaming of his next project.