Painting at the Library

 So, that went well.

It wasn't nearly as chaotic as the first two attempts at this were. I spent about three hours and only had about a dozen takers - two to four at a time - which was much more relaxing. There were few enough that I could change most of the water myself without leaving the kids unsupervised. 

To be fair, most of the folks who came by were there for DnD, and many of them took a mini without having time to paint it. I painted three myself, mostly for demonstration purposes. There are fifteen left of the forty or so I started with. I did decide to stick with the four Warhammer Alliance types, though I added some of my own paints.

Undercoating went badly, partly because the canister ran out of paint. The figures came out ... dusty. Worked alright, but I think skipping the undercoat step might work for a project on this scale - the sample figures in the magazine are not undercoated, for example.

A few examples:

I even got in a simple game demonstration with a few of the kids, facing off single Space Marines and Necrons. A couple of the parents read through the magazines.

May add more photos when they are distributed by the staff member who took better ones.

The small, laminated paint palettes are harder to clean than they look; we tossed most of them and a couple brushes, but overall the kids paid a lot more attention and I managed to teach a few basic techniques. I had hoped to run a Youtube painting video for inspiration, but the screen was in use for 3D scanning.

Oh, and I asked a coworker to print a couple of Victoria Miniatures' "Space Aussies" for me:

Not great. Might try printing them at larger size instead.

It would seem the printers at work aren't the best for the job. We have one at the club now, though, so I may try it one of these weekends.

In related news, I have started reading Playing at the World, a history of early DnD which appears to have plenty about early wargaming - both board and miniature - to go with it. A thick and wordy tome, but good so far.

Bardia Holds Out - Easily

Our regular game of Tactical Combat today was a vignette of Operation Compass from January 3, 1941, the first action of the 2nd Australian Imperial Force.

The table from the Commonwealth side; ominously open
and overseen from a height.

The Italian western flank.

Eytie defenders setting up.

The hammer - eight Matilda infantry tanks of 7th RTR.

The smaller but plucky Italian armoured corps.

A platoon of 2/7th Australian Battalion, riding in two trucks
and five Bren carriers, supported by a 3" mortar and two portees.

 

The eastern end of the defence, across a wadi. 

We concentrated our forces on the right, where the rows
of barbed wire weren't, but right away had a tank knocked out.

We drove forward, sheltering our infantry behind clouds of dust.

Both sides also had supporting artillery, while the Commonwealth had a preliminary bombardment (which mostly missed) and a Gloster Gladiator (which failed to turn up). We rolled really poorly for much of the game.

A few turns in, we're halfway to the enemy positions, but
are taking casualties, and what are those tokens between us
and the treeline? (Minefields, that's what.) 

Italian cavalry arrives - the defenders don't really need the help.

At this point we had a little luck, by knocking out three of the Italian vehicles and strafing the enemy artillery positions.

This didn't really help much, though.

This is about as far as we got before giving up for the day.

Part of the problem was concentrating our attack, which meant that even missed shots scattered into more of our troops. Part of it was the minefield, which turned out to be empty right in front of the Matildas. Part of it was our opponents' positioning of obstacles, which was professional and intimidating enough to make us try to flank him and run into those mines. And part was our rotten dice luck.                                      

The ruleset is not the culprit; it's an old friend to most of us by now and surprisingly effective at what it tries to do. I still hope to use it to run a VBCW game sometime.

I'm sorry to admit I kinda disengaged from play, letting my partner take over most of the tactics and only occasionally tossing dice or moving an errant unit for him. The relaxed club atmosphere encourages this - another member (having been distracted by car trouble) was fast asleep!

In other news, I put up a diorama of the Battle of Olustee, February 20, 1864, for Black History Month at the library:

Given the current political climate, this may be subversive.

Depicting the rearguard of the 54th Massachusetts at the end of the battle, I intend to add more Confederates and make better smoke. I forgot to borrow some of the pillow stuffing we used for dust in the Bardia game, but maybe I can pick it up this week. See you next time.

Ups and Downs

So, yeah, I didn't make any progress. It started last Sunday night when a pipe burst on the seventh floor of my apartment block. About a quarter of my floor flooded. I rescued a handful of minis boxes sitting on the floor, but spent the next day futilely waiting for an inspection that never came, rather than going to work. Eventually the floor dried and today I got a cleaner in to go over the floor and hopefully stave off any mold.

Spent most of my time reading. Finished a recent biography of Flora MacDonald of 'Forty-Five fame, started on a brief memoir of a US Marine in Vietnam and my first Iain Banks Culture novel, slowly worked my way through Charles Darwin's classic Voyage of the Beagle, and picked up an entire set of Tintin volumes.

That reminds me, I want to 
buy a few of Roly Hermans' paintings.

I did get permission to build a diorama for Black History Month, and have started on a Paperboys depiction of Olustee. Past displays have increased kids' interest in building their own paper models, so with luck I can "spread the love."

Finally, I obtained a copy of the Bolt Action starter set. Took a while, but on the upside it turns out the shop offers a 15% discount on Warlord and Games Workshop kits. That tempted me to pick up an LOTR set, but it'll have to wait. The Bolt Action box is very nice for the cost and even includes a dice bag for its initiative mechanic. The building sprue looks good too. I look forward to assembling this one. With luck, I might be able to get away with doing it at work as well, as I am on the WWII-80th-anniversary committee. The German vehicle in the box is even flat; perfect to go with Paperboys!

So... looking up, I guess. See you next time.

Painting and Other Miscellany

Not much gaming or posting this month. I worked at a local convention and brought a few Paperboys sheets:

And finished off the LDV bases with some Stirland Mud:

Re: Paperboys, I've had little interest in the Portable Wargame during Chess Club, but a couple players suggested that the figures would make good chessmen. I've been thinking for a while, but so far I haven't worked out what all the pieces would be. Pawns, Kings and Knights are easy enough. Elephants or war engines would work as Rooks, as these were the original name for the piece. The Bishop can be taken from one of the medieval sets with monks. The Queen is the real problem, as (Paperboys focusing on wargaming pieces) there are few women. I could use Boudicca, for example, from the Romans-and-Britons volume, but then there are no Roman women, and while the Britons have druids for the Bishop, there's no corresponding figure for the Romans. While for the Rook, the Romans have both elephants and war engines, but the Britons have neither.

Best for the purpose might be the clearly differentiated Little Wars figures, in blue and red. Still need a queen, though it might be possible to modify the civilian women a bit - someone has already done it to make suffragettes. There is one with a huge flowery hat, just the sort of Ascot wear you might expect of an 1890s upper-class woman. I've looked up French first ladies of the period, and they wore the same hats, so I could use the same figure (or head, anyway).

After a little experimentation, I also suspect I'll need to modify the size of different pieces. The size of chessmen is an important element of any set, with the pawns half the size of the pieces. A knight at the same scale as "infantry" bishop, rook, king and queen would also tower over them. I'm thinking 28mm Pawns and Knights, with the others in 54mm.

Finally, heavier bases would be useful. I've been using old business cards, which works very well for smaller figures. I would prefer thick "grey card," the sort at the back of notepads, but am not sure where to find it.

Finally, I've started painting my Warhammer 40K 8th Edition starter set:

Tricky to undercoat in blue when they're already blue...

Though in the circumstances under which I'm likeliest to play with them, leaving them bare might actually be preferable, as they seem more like "playing pieces" than complex models this way. So I'm undecided.

And that's what I'm on about this month. Other than reading, of course. Have got thru four Leaphorn/Chee novels and one and a half Poul Anderson fantasies so far. See you next time,

Jutland in Miniature...

 ... in more ways than one.

I finished The Sleepwalkers and am now waiting on a copy of The Gardeners of Salonika, the latter chosen because Serbia is a huge part of the former. Looking forward to reading it.

Today's achievement, minor though it is, is basing my half-strength Jutland battleship squadrons. This was necessary since time left in a car in Florida has warped several of the bases and models. The warping is unfortunately retained on the new bases, but mostly not too obvious:

I'm not positive about using plastic glue on paper-and-card bases. The glue doesn't stay stuck, or maybe that's because of the flexible bases "popping" away too easily. Maybe sticky-tack would work? I do like the ease of labeling. Clear labels go on nicely. I had to replace a couple misspelled German names, but I learned a little history by looking up a few of the more curious ones, like Prinzregent Luitpold, who turns out to be the guy who imprisoned Mad King Ludwig.

A mini Grand Review.

I've slightly modified the Junior General rules to account for
differing battlecruisers. The German ones have the same hitpoints
as a battleship, but less firepower; the British ones have the same
firepower as a battleship, but fewer hit points.

In other news, I had twenty 54mm Apollo astronauts 3d printed. Depending on when I use them, I have between four and sixteen days to prep them for painting (three different space-program-related events coming up). This will require undercoating, basing, possibly basecoating, and finding enough paint and brushes. The figures are black, and all I have at present for basecoating is Wraithbone spray, a sort of creamy-white. I'll experiment on Monday. In the past, I've used grey undercoat and a heavy drybrush of white to start.

Other crafts/activities that can be used sometime in the next month include the usual coloring sheets, cut-and-stick activities, make-your-own astronaut helmets, "stomp rockets" and Kerbal Space Program, which I've managed to make work on a presentation laptop at work. Project it onto a screen and I can either recreate an actual mission (surprisingly difficult even with an autopilot add-on), or have the kids instruct me how to build a rocket. ("Oh, it crashed. What do we need to add? Yes, a parachute sounds like a good idea.")

I also have something more specifically military - a 99-year-old (!) WWII veteran who rode a glider across the Rhine and also fought at the Bulge. I'm working up an interview and presentation that we plan to have both live and streaming to several other branches next month. So I'm idly messing with paper paratroopers and trying to talk downtown into getting a temporary movie license so I can drop in the Pegasus Bridge scene from The Longest Day.

So that's what I've been up to when I'm not posting...

Alternate Histories

Achieved a couple things today. First, I finally got in a round of Junior General's Hampton Roads scenario at work.

There were fourteen fourth graders expecting an activity, and the children's librarian was busy. I checked with the teacher and she was amenable - though I presented it as "sea captains and pirates" to begin with.

I divided the kids by color of shirt - five black, nine blue - into teams. (Since Monitor has fewer guns, this is fairer than it sounds.) Then I just went person to person. Each turn, one kid would move a ship, and the rest would take turns "firing". Next turn, whoever was next in line would be "Captain" for the turn and the cycle continued. The firing mechanism is Fred T. Jane's original "pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey" routine, using the bamboo skewers seen in the above photo.

The photo is old, by the way, and I didn't have the storytime rug. Would've come in handy, actually, since the kids were naturally crowding each other; but in general they took turns and learned the procedures quickly. I was limited to the floor-carpet, but it is a blue-grey mix of angled shapes so still quite sea-like.

For presentation, I asked if they'd been studying black history, and they had. I explained that this was based on a real battle from 160 years ago, and that it might take a while or even be a tie because these ships were special. Among the first to be made of iron, cannonballs would usually bounce off! (There were "ooooh"s at this.) I taught them the ship names as well, though I used Merrimac just because it sounds funnier.

I misplaced the rules for casualties (D6 per penetrating hit), but there are other ways to win, by either hitting the waterline, the gunports or Monitor's pilot house. The Virginia took an early lead with a hit on Monitor's turret that knocked out one gun. That slowed return fire. There are two sheets of silhouettes - one short range, one long - and the Union players learned quickly to stay far away where their "crackerbox on a shingle" was too tiny to hit, and Virginia's lower speed and maneuverability made it harder to catch up. Monitor got lots of hits on its bigger target.

However, they eventually learned to present their four-gun broadside, and the few hits they got were eventually crippling. The pilot house was hit once (twice and the captain is blinded and the ship must retreat) and after half an hour they knocked out the second gun. Monitor had to retreat.

Every hit resulted in cheers, and kids were even encouraging their opponents. I had to quiet them down and tell them to sit back and not interfere with each other, but their enthusiasm was infections. The target sheets, punctured in many places, will have to be replaced.

Crafting Unsuccess, and Thoughts on Fixing It

It should be obvious by the late dearth of posting that my life is going downhill at present. Work has been impressively busy, and my usual reaction to the end of a bad day is to be as unproductive as possible when I get home. This is not good for my personal life; unfortunately, it's not much good for hobbying, either.

I find gluing and cutting Paperboys very relaxing, so have been building several pages worth of fantasy types to try out Dragon Rampant. Of course, I haven't gotten around to actually gaming with them, and pictures and play will have to wait for another post.

One of the issues at work is that I get sidetracked very easily - regular readers of this blog will have noticed. This means that I lose track of projects, even the ones I was looking forward to. Yesterday, it was my turn to entertain twenty-plus sixth graders from a nearby school that regularly sends its students to visit us. Good for our statistics at least. I was reminded that morning, and went into panic mode.

In hindsight, it would have been smarter to break out my mini Battle of Hampton Roads kit that I 3-d printed years ago and rarely run since. The rules are simple, the two model ships attractive, and the scenario can work between large teams (everyone gets a turn to "shoot"). Instead, having been aimlessly cutting up Paperboys for weeks, my mind shot to the Undead pages of the series.

Halloween is coming up, after all. Every year we do a well-received haunted house, and since I don't like dressing up or anything approaching horror, I get drafted to help with games and crafts for the littler kids and families who don't want to be jump-scared. Given the "success" of my painting program a few months ago, that's what I've been leaning towards, but now it's a tossup between that and papercrafting.

I shouldn't have experimented with it on this short notice, though. An enterprising and encouraging coworker pointed out that we'd have an hour or more, so it would be okay to prepare less. It takes fifteen minutes tops to build a Paperboys base, right?

HA! 

Here's the result. It should be noted that none of these errors are the kids' fault, but mine. And they did mostly enjoy themselves, so despite the chaos I deemed the program a successful failure.

Count the errors:
Left and Left Rear: Not bad actually, but didn't bother to cut
around the figure edges. I grant you this can be tricky for many.
Center: Built the base correctly, then stuck the mini onto the
underside of it.
Center Right: Stuck the minis on a plain bit of card.
Right: Again not bad, but didn't fold the base-paper edges under
(as seen at Center).

I posted this photo on the American Library Association's "League of Librarian Gamers" Facebook group with a rueful comment about learning what not to do next time, and a moderator asked me about the lessons learned.

Here they are, combined with the ones learned from the painting program.

1. Above all, don't leave attendees to their own devices. They'll make mistakes, or become bored or frustrated if not directed. Most of the rest of the lessons are in the name of getting this first one right. Games Day has "paint-and-take" tables, but I'd love to know how they deal with newbies.
2. Attendees should be in a compact space, where everyone can see and be instructed by the presenter at once. This way, there are fewer delays and less leaving attendees to their own devices.
3. All supplies should be close by and, so far as possible, already distributed to each space. If possible, in separate "kits" for each seat. Again, less time wasted, and less confusion for attendees.
4. Prep as much as possible so the attendees (or presenters) don't have to. Fewer steps are usually better, especially for younger kids. Assemble and undercoat minis, for example; let them get to the good part right away.
5. If possible, have all attendees do the same step at the same time. This works better for a "timed" event, though; a "pickup" program is trickier, in which case see 4, 7, and 8.
6. If time permits, demonstrate the full activity to all before embarking on it, not just an example of the finished product. A video can be an attractive example.
7. Instructions (and useful tips) must be simple, clear and visible. Several participation games I've seen included poster-sized combat results tables for all to see, rather than fumbling with rules sheets that also take up room on the table Full-color images, or, again, videos, are useful.
8. If at all possible, there should be two or more presenters, thoroughly practiced. A single person will exhaust herself. Part splitting the work and part the need for multitasking; a presenter off replacing paint water can't welcome someone who just sat down at the table, demonstrate a technique, or remind kids to Thin Their Paints.

I will probably have to update this post as I make more mistakes, but it'll do for now!

First update: I just watched an episode of the Painting Phase podcast on Youtube with ex-Games Workshop painter Louise Sugden. For a few minutes, she discusses teaching a roomful of kids to paint goblins.

And doing it basically the same way my hapless painting program went. Deliberately.

She was working with 5-7 year-olds, provided coloring sheets, and told them to "tell a story with color." What does a green goblin make you think of? Grass! Why is your goblin red? He lives in lava! It sounds fantastic, and really made me rethink the success of my program. No techniques, no instructions that will disappoint them when they get it wrong, be willing to waste paint and brushes. It'll still work.

It's two-plus hours, all interesting, but for the bit I'm talking about, skip to One hour and forty-four minutes in.

This makes me feel way more confident about the prospect of doing a painting project for Halloween.

For older kids, I might use our tech lab to film videos of my own, in part because the "official" how-to-build-Paperboys and how-to-paint-your-Space-Marines-in-just-five-colors videos are still around fifteen minutes long. Shorter vids where they don't show you every color and technique may be useful for veterans, but they might be just as good for quickly teaching kids. 

Lookit, We Painted Something

... On the one hand, the paint-and-take program I ran today was chaotic.

On the other hand, the kids (and parents!) were enthusiastic and clearly enjoyed themselves. I had several ask to do a second figure. Several parents asked for more information about Warhammer and I gave away a few of the magazines, which contain coloring sheets, background information and simple game rules. I also suggested they look for painting videos on Youtube, but cautioned them about the Grimdark theme of the games - as long as they stick to the painting videos and avoid showing their kids the lore, I probably won't get any complaints!

Pro-tips for doing a public painting program with small children:

• Have extra experienced painters at the table.

That's it, really, but the fact that there was only one of me and, at times, a dozen or more people crowded around the painting table meant that:

• I spent most of my time replacing dirty paint water.
• I couldn't spend enough time going over the basics, which in turn meant...
• ...That people were sitting down while I was away from the table sidetracked by something else, and making a mess.

I wasn't expecting quite that many people at once, nor was I expecting to keep getting sidetracked. Next time I'll train a coworker or two on the basics.

When I do this with the teens, I usually only have a handful, they're all starting at the same time, and they're all paying attention. Doing it as a "drop-in" event is, as I said, chaotic when all the painters are newbies. My normal procedure is to make sure everyone has a brush, an undercoated mini, and starts out with one (1) paint bottle. Open the bottle, draw a little paint from the cap (or, with Army Painter bottles which I am learning to prefer, squeeze just a little), mix it with a bit of water, and start painting. Even better is if I have a mini of my own to demonstrate each step. With just a few kids (and there were a few older ones and parents too) I could clearly explain the "two thin coats" thing.

This worked alright early on, before we were crowded and when most attendees were in our auditorium looking at live critters brought by a parks authority. Everyone could see and everyone paid attention.

Later, it was a real scramble. The younger kids were impatient. Painting directly from the pot isn't that big a deal, but opening the pot wide and pouring it directly onto the table is. Mixing it in the bottle... was, in hindsight at least, hilarious. At least I hadn't paid for the bottles! We had some "one thick coat" minis, and I scrambled for paper to wrap them in for the ride home because obviously they weren't going to dry.

At least no paint got on the floor, and coworkers convinced me to put two layers of paper on the table.

Ah, kids.

Pictures!

Setup: Magazines and an action figure for inspiration,
minis, paint, water and wet-wipes.

Some of the results:

So, yeah, reasonably successful. One coworker was optimistic about the possibility of painting skeletons or building zombies for Halloween. I'll burn that bridge when or if I get to it...!

Nuns With Guns

 I brought a lot of minis to work this week, using the tech lab's light box to photograph them. Wednesday was the turn of my new, but nicely-painted Sisters of Battle army.

I got a couple teens to help me set up the field of battle:

Assorted rocky outcrops surrounded a ruined shrine, which would be the objective for the game. Each side got three squads and one vehicle. The players varied over the course of the hour-plus we played, some dropping out and others turning up.

The rules were Third Edition, using the army lists in the main rulebook. I made two mistakes - I gave the Sisters better ballistic skill, and forgot that the Immolator tank's weapon had a special quality.

A new player ponders his first move.

Another learns to measure moves.

In the first turn, the two sides simply moved; nothing was in range to shoot. The side with the blue Sisters made its first mistake - it advanced the squad over the hill, and rolled poorly on its difficult terrain checks for the rest of the game.                                       

STEM requirements of the program were met when one of the teens started taking some fairly good pictures.

A transported squad.

In the second turn the mounted squads - a command unit and heavy weapons squad - dismounted from their transports and fire was exchanged, to little effect.

I explain how to disembark figures - placed near the hatches.

Explaining how Tank Shock and Death or Glory work.

Jump-pack Seraphim tackle heavily-armed Retributors...

... as the Immolator tank flames an oncoming infantry squad.

Sadly, I counted the Immolator's weapon as a regular heavy flamer; in practice it should have been an Inferno cannon which automatically breaks its target. Given that the blue squad also on the Immolator's side never got into action, this would have made a difference to the result, as that side was thus badly outnumbered in the center of the field.

Sisters advance upon Sisters. This is where a different army
would have come in handy. I'll have to paint the base edges.

The game ended at 5:30pm, four or five turns in, after an internecine combat between assault and heavy-weapons squads over the shrine. The heavy-weapons sisters eventually broke and fled. The assault side, at this point, had only one unit on the shrine - its Rhino transport. Victory to them. The players of the other side learned a lesson about not isolating half their infantry (still standing on the corner hill and plinking storm-bolter shots across the board). I learned a lesson about learning rules better before demoing a game - or at least making clear unit cards so I didn't have to keep checking the army list. Such instructions were extremely useful for new players in many of the games during the convention, and I'll take them into account in future.

Ultimately a good game, and I had about a dozen players or observers in the course of it. Next week we'll go back to DnD. But STEAMFest is coming up in less than a month, so I have to build and prime the Games Workshop freebies before then...