More Picking Away...

More stuff accomplished this weekend. First, I built a second DBA base, this one for English medievals:

I ordered a handful of Fife and Drum figures. The Spirit of '76 vignette, and five minutemen. My plan is to paint them up for a work display - the theme for the whole year (not just summer) is America's 250th. So another excuse to promote miniatures in the library. I plan to paint two of the minutemen to represent a pair of free black colonists who - completely coincidentally - shared my rare last name. So I hope to do a good job painting them.

What I got was a bunch of figures, free overstock! Thanks! About half minutemen, half Continentals in uniform. That could make up two small regiments or one large one, with mixed appearance like Jim Purky's own 2nd New Hampshire. 

I haven't built or painted metal models in ages, so some filing practice is in order. I'll also have to use a pin drill on the standard bearer. As for basing... probably singly, for skirmish games. I have lots of round Wargames Atlantic bases.

I also bought some Games Workshop 25mm and 25x50mm square bases, for the Pike and Shotte starter set. Here's the first infantry sprue mostly made up:

Needs a few more hats, and there are also a lot of scabbarded swords on the sprue I haven't figured out where they go on the figures yet. I'm glad I just made these chaps to start with, as I found out specific arms go to specific figures. Also, gluing two arms onto a figure at once is a bit messy. A little filing and paint, though, and I'm sure they'll look good enough for the tabletop.

Finally, a painted Skaven done with Speedpaint pens. Fun and not too frustrating. I find it hard to tell the colors apart when they're bunched together, so (for example) some of the leather has a gold tinge...

I'll stop here, as I have two cats on my desk trying to interfere with typing and projects.

For comparison, here's the one I have to coax into letting me touch.
On the right: still unopened boxes of Warlord samurai.

'Til next time.

Picking away

• Reading Fools and Mortals, a Shakespearean mystery by Bernard Cornwell.
• Listening to Ashes of the Imperium, the first novel in Games Workshop's new Scouring subseries set immediately after the Horus Heresy.
• Waiting for Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915, and Samurai Warfare by Stephen Turnbull. The first suggested by listening to the Great War documentary series on Youtube (an absolute classic) and the other by the commenters here (thanks).
• Arranging to demo Charge! at the club next week.
• Undercoated a Skaven figure.
• Finished building three bases of paper knights.
• And built five more ECW musketeers.

They need hats.

How do I rotate a picture again?

Also bought a used office chair, more comfy to sit in at my desk. So all in all, a productive day!

BEF nearly done

It took me significantly longer than I hoped, but I finally finished nineteen of the remaining twenty LDV figures.

Scottish Republican militia squad.

LDV rifle squad.

Close assault section.

Command section.

The last three elements can make up a small platoon (of any side). The armless guy behind the mortar team I will try to convert into a standard bearer.

I had to do more conversion than I thought here. There are only enough P14/17 Springfield rifles in the kit to arm one LDV squad, which is why I ended up making an assault section with the Thompson SMGs, and added a mortar to the command team. A couple of the rifles also required some messing about with alternate arms, as the same left arms are used for both types of rifles and I had used all of the necessary ones on the first Enfield-armed unit. The left arms end at the wrist and there are hands already attached to the rifle barrels - I prefer kits where the arms and hands are entirely separate from the guns, as with most 40K kits. Too used to the conversion potential of 3rd edition 40K, I guess!

I also haven't based the prone figures - I should have bought oblong bases for them. I may put them on the round ones just to match the others, or I may let my brother figure it out. The next step is to box them up (safely, somehow), and ship them off to him. I haven't added much equipment, in part because I'm not sure where most of it goes, but "home guard" types may be assumed to be close to home to begin with, and in the universe of VBCW can probably call it off and go home for tiffin anyway...!

I've been slowly working my way through Playing At the World - currently in the very comprehensive section on the history of Kriegspiel. I have to send it back by next Friday, so will need to ask the Interlibrary Loan department to ask the other system if I can keep it longer. I'll be travelling next week and even if I wanted to bring it with me, it's too big! A packed tome with few illustrations, it invites careful perusal.

Have also been reading some Rosemary Sutcliff - a coworker checked in about a dozen of her books and offered them to me to check out before they return to their original branch. Finished The High Deeds of Finn MacCool and partway thru a volume on the Holy Grail.

I'm still waiting on a VBCW book and a pack of event cards for Went the Day Well?.

Til next time,

Paperboys for Featherstone and Other Such Things.

I've always been enamored of Donald Featherstone's 1963 rules, as shown on Man of Tin's blog:

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/featherstone-simple-ww2-rules/

Three simple sets, for Ancients (a la Tony Bath), 18th/19th century, and Modern (which at the time meant WWII).

While 18th Century is my first love, I have a heaping handful of basic WWII stuff now that will work alright for the "modern" rules.

My first effort at an M4 - appears to be overarmed!

The tank didn't last long - partly because I made it out of regular "20lb" paper, it is easy to accidentally indent the "box" of the hull, and once it's closed, you can't pop it back out. I also had to use glue to stick the turret to the hull, which didn't last. The intent is to use an exacto-knife to cut a hole in the top of the hull and bottom of the turret, then connect them with a "straw" of paper. Finally, there are many accessories to add on - machine guns, markings, armor and so on, which I left out in this test model.

Two twelve-man US infantry squads.

On the gaming side of things, you'll notice I've based the infantry in three-man teams. This is because those 1963 WWII rules are among the first to have multibases, three figures apiece. These may be riflemen, machine-gunners, mortar sections, etc, but each is effectively a singular element that can be killed by a single die roll (usually a five or six to hit). I look forward to trying this, but tanks and artillery are important to the game too - infantry alone plinking at each other would not be so interesting.

For this reason, I'm considering also using plastics. I've had a canister of toy WWII types for ages, and - in part to provide some armor to use bazookas and panzerschrecks against - I also added a few 54mm scale toy tanks. I'm having the same dilemma between Little Wars Paperboys and Armies in Plastic toys for playing two 54mm-scale games - HG Wells' Little Wars and Howard Whitehouse's A Gentleman's War. I'll discuss that in a future post.

Instead, here's a few more Paperboys types I'm working on:

A third squad of US WWII infantry

A few Sioux and buffalo for Native American Heritage Month.
Not shown - an Aztec house and a couple Tipis.

The newest Paperboys are tricky to assemble because they do not have tabs - they must be stuck edge-on to the base. White glue is best for this, but I've found it helps to add the drop of glue, then leave it several minutes to set before sticking the figure into it. It also helps if you can vertically bend or "kink" the figure, and while you can achieve the same effect by cutting out the legs and giving them a "step out" pose, it works better on rows of figures than on individuals, as you can see. So in future I may leave the space under their legs uncut.

Something else gamewise I need to plan: a Dungeons and Dragons encounter for tomorrow. The Youmedia manager wants me to run it properly, in place of the generic games and puzzles, so, ah well, I'll try it. So I'm reading the basic rules, listening to a couple how-to-gamemaster books, and prepping dice sets.

I also have a few things to try to paint: 8th edition 40K starter Space Marines, and 10th edition starter set Tyranids.

And a couple things to game - that test Dragon Rampant game, and a round of Minceheim.

Oh, and a job interview.

I think I'm under a certain Chinese curse...

More Miscellaneous Stuff

Been a long and exhausting week. I have a lot of personal appointments and home improvement to catch up on. Haven't got much done gaming-wise done at all; my plan for a Battery Wagner game at work was shot down, so won't have a chance to use it at work anytime soon. This week is Fourth of July, though, so I'm hoping to get away with a "patriotic" game of some sort. I'm torn between a reenactment of North Point using Junior General and Paperboys I built during the pandemic, and a round of the Perry's TravelBattle (its Napoleonic style works just as well for War of 1812). I'm leaning towards the latter, as it's more "game-like."

So this weekend was spent working on personal stuff a bit, and a few books and hobby bitz.

I read the first volume online, and hunted
the second down on Ebay. A very interesting
biography of a perhaps over-maligned commander.

Not specifically gaming-related, but by a well-known
game designer I've gotten to know on Facebook. The
first volume's quite good so far - a fun series with
the style of a classic.

Completed the 3rd Edition 40K ruin I bought at Recon.
Very easy to build, and solid even without much glue.
May try painting it one of these days.

Another Recon purchase - Mark 6 Heresy Marines.
Each slot contains the parts for one model, in the
unlikely event I do a build-n-take at work. I'd need
inexpensive plastic glue, though.

Spent some tiring time in the heat today collecting a 
6x4 piece of light plywood. Laid atop my 2x4 plastic
table, I'm hoping this will enable me to play more
conventionally-sized games.

This week? Mostly work and a little job-searching, as usual. I hope to use the larger table to play some mid-18th century games on a more conventional scale; I'd like to work my way through all the Charles S. Grant solo scenarios.

Hope your weekend has been as productive!

Bits and Pieces

 I've been so exhausted (lazy?) lately, that I haven't gotten much gaming or even modeling done. 

• I've done one layer of gold on a handful of Warhammer minis - weeks ago. 
• I've read eight books from Tanya Huff's Confederation series. Not useful unless a futuristic-marine vs. lizard version of Rorke's Drift might make a useful scenario for Xenos Rampant. Which I need to order, having read of it being used for more historical conflicts.
• I bought about ten mats of aquarium plants for counting as jungle in The Sword in Africa. 
• And I've signed up for a TSIA game at Recon 2023 in Orlando next weekend. Hopefully that'll give me some inspiration and ideas for modeling; I've been meaning to run it for ages, and even have a player or two at the club willing to play as soon as I get around to it.
• Tonight, I finished the first two chapters of Ian J. Knight's Warrior Chiefs of Southern Africa, which made me want to base some of my Zulu...
• Instead, I based twenty-eight colonial redcoats. Where basing means simply gluing to pennies with PVA. I'll probably do some more tonight - just working my way through the collection. I've considered using pennies with my 20mm Napoleonics, but then they don't seem to stand close enough.

AOS construction

Obtained some glue, brushes, and more paint, so ready to build and undercoat the Storm of Sigmar set.

Building the AOS minis was messier than I remembered. Construction has always been my favorite part of the "hobby," but Games Workshop has sharply reduced the customizability of their models. These are monopose, so it took a little work to make sure they were assembled correctly. They are also designed in such a way that you almost have to puzzle them together - for example one of these figures has the back and one leg matching up with the other leg and one arm!

Next step is basecoating (with Army Painter Skeleton spray), but I've just remembered my bottle of regular Skeleton-colored paint is at work, so won't be able to touch up right away. It's dark out anyway...

Another delivery

Ordered a handful of gaming tools and bits from Games Workshop, and received them remarkably quickly for the free shipping (I was quoted nine business days, got it in three).

• Some 25mm bases for the Ork Boyz I've been sorting.

• A drill to help assemble the metal Ork Nobs. I've never needed to pin a mini before, but superglue isn't working this time. The tool doesn't come with instructions, so I'll need to find some and learn to use it properly. Probably also need a vise.

• A painting handle. Might seem superfluous, but I've watched it in action on Youtube for a while now, and I understand the appeal. Looking forward to trying it.

• A painting-water cup. I threw it in mostly to get to the point of free shipping, but it's got a couple of handy features. Scores in the inner face to keep your brush pointy, and a curious "lip" that can hold a brush or two out of the cup (all those reminders of not leaving them in the water or smushed against the bottom!).

• And a free book - a sampler of five short stories from the latest series. A fine taster for the Warhammer worlds - when I finish it I might try passing it around the teens at work.