Author: Buck

After some yard work and running a few errands, I completed my first battalion of 10mm infantry for Look, Sarge, No Charts: Near Future and Science Fiction.  This battalion was made of Dropzone Commander infantry of different types.  For this battalion I was considering either three companies of four platoons or four companies of three platoons.  I decided on the latter and added a heavy weapons company.

The battalion also has a light reconnaissance platoon at the battalion level not shown in the previous picture.  These, I think , were from a clicky base game, and I found them in the Flea Market at Cold Wars last March.

This battalion is painted in khaki with olive helmets.  As with the tank battalions, each infantry battalion will have a slightly different paint scheme to make it easier for players to distinguish them on the tabletop.

In addition to the full infantry battalion, I also painted some independent companies that will be assigned to battalions from division or brigade.  Note that these are in a different paint scheme from the infantry battalion.  The independent companies are in a basic olive green scheme with slightly different colored helmets.

This is a very heavy assault company.  I see brigade attaching this company to a battalion that must force a breach in enemy lines or assault an urban area.  These guys will be somewhat slow, but have a lot of firepower and be difficult to kill.

This is some sort of heavy weapons company.  I haven’t decided what these weapons will be just yet.  The rocket battery in the back will likely act as artillery, and I am thinking of the heavy cannon in the front being some sort of heavy anti-tank weapon, but it might end up as some sort of artillery as well.  Who knows?

I made two companies of these heavy infantry.  They would be attached to a battalion that is the main effort to bolster their combat power.

These will either be a set of recon platoons that can be assigned in penny packets to battalions that need them or deployed as a screening force on the flanks of the main effort.  The rocket launchers give them some ability to hold off enemy armor, while the chain guns are terrific against enemy infantry.

Today I am shifting gears away from 10mm.  The weather is nice, so I am going to break out the airbrush in the back yard.  I have five German 1:48 vehicles for Combat Patrol (a Hetzer, three halftracks, and a truck) that have been base coated in desert yellow but now need the 1944 brown and green camouflage air brushed on them.  It has been quite a while since I have used an airbrush, and in the past I have done it with Humbrol oils, so I am somewhat apprehensive about getting the consistency of acrylics correct for this project.  I hope that they will look good enough to post some pictures this evening.   I will be using this as my pattern.

I recently ended up with a stack of unwanted hexagonal bases from the Reaper CAV Kickstarter.  Why all the tanks I ordered came with all these bases, I don’t know, but they did.  I was trying to figure out what to do with them.  As I was holding a couple together contemplating their potential, I hit upon this idea

Six of these bases come in a blister pack from Reaper.  They are textured on the top and have some support structures on the underside.

So, I glued six of them together with E-6000, sprayed them black, and then dry brushed them with a couple shades of gray and white.  I also printed some labels in alien symbols to mark the boxes.  I think the effect is pretty good, and they will be great in the cargo hold of the space ship I plan to build for 28mm science fiction Combat Patrol games.

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Even with the Combat Patrol(TM) play test day yesterday, I managed to complete my 4th Reaper CAV tank battalion, this time heavy tanks.  From previous posts, you know that I am painting each battalion in different camouflage schemes to make them easier to distinguish on the gaming table.  The first three were in a modern, realistic camouflage pattern.  I decided to be a little more outlandish with this battalion.

Of course, this could be a very realistic camouflage scheme on a different planet.

After completing this battalion, I felt like I should make the battalion HQ more distinguishable.  If you look at the top image, you see that the company and battalion HQ bases each consist of a single vehicle on the same sized base.  I decided the easier way to distinguish the battalion HQ bases was to put a small guidon on the battalion HQ vehicle.

The flags are removable to make the bases easier to store.

Now, I need to get started on all the infantry while I await the few missing vehicles from the CAV Kickstarter to arrive…

A number of people have agreed to develop supplements for Combat Patrol(TM).  Supplements in active development are Napoleonic Wars, The Falklands, several British colonial periods, and modern Afghanistan and Iraq.  Several of the supplements have elements common to each other.  For instance, several of these periods require rules for close formations and cavalry.  To help ensure that these supplements are consistent with each other and the intent of the base rules, I hosted a play test day in my gaming room.  We had initially hoped to get in three games, but ended up only running two.

Everyone converged on the “war room” at 0900, but we spent the better part of two hours just talking about Duncan’s Napoleonic supplement, how to deal with closed order troops, cavalry, charging, etc.  It was a good session and set the stage for a successful play test.

I have found that a play test event like this needs to be a small group of the right folks who are okay with changing the rules on the fly, can offer suggestions that remain in keeping with the tone and intent of the base rules, understand the desire for simplicity and consistency, etc.  In this case I only invited those folks who were interested in writing a Combat Patrol(TM) supplement.  To me it was important that I got everyone on the same sheet of music.

Our intent with this supplement — and all of them really — is to change as little as possible from the base WWII rules.  There needs to be a compelling reason to make a change or addition for period feel.  Otherwise, we want to make sure that supplements are as consistent with the base rules and with each other as possible.

Our intent was to test as many aspects of Duncan’s supplement as possible.  One of the reasons to select a play test group carefully, is that you also need folks who won’t get too wrapped around the axel about trying to win the game or scenario anachronisms.  In the case of the photo (above), we used Mexican lancers as part of the British force, because those are the only lancers Duncan had in 28mm, and we wanted to test the lancer modifiers to the basic melee rules.

In order to test a wide swath of the rules, we had lancers, regular infantry, Rifles, hussars, etc.  The scenario involved a small British detachment defending the house at the top of the picture with the rest of the British riding to their rescue as the French try to seize it.

In advance of Chris’ farmhouse defenders, Chris had deployed a section of infantry in open order in the woods to slow down Zeb’s French.  Zeb advanced slowly through the woods in formed lines, while Chris spread out in open order.  Eventually Chris was driven from the woods.  One of his soldiers was left behind accidentally as most of the section fled the woods and ran toward the farm yard.  Once the “rear guard” was out of command radius, be became “pinned,” and Chris couldn’t extract him, but the figure, who we dubbed “Crazy Jenkins” held of several of Zeb’s attacks for several turns, slowing the French advance.

As a major focus of this play test session was to test the cavalry rules, Zeb and I conspired to create a cavalry battle in the center of the table.  Unfortunately as my lancers advanced and deployed, Zeb activated first and charged my lancers with his hussars.  As luck would have it, he was able to gain impetus and I was caught stationary.  The results were ugly for me.

Duncan’s intent was for these melees to become confused fur balls that would take a turn to two to resolve.  Our thinking is that much of the confusion of a melee is generally abstracted away at higher levels of abstraction, but we want this to be explicit in Combat Patrol(TM): Napoleonic Wars.  You can see elements to three cavalry units in this picture:  Zeb’s French hussars are in the center and left, my lancers are in the center, and my hussars are toward the bottom.

Slowly my numerical advantage over Zeb begin to tell, and he collected a lot of morale markers (the pile of green chips).  His cavalry scattered, and I moved to reorganize my cavalry and work around the exposed flank of the French infantry.

I attacked this French infantry unit on the flank and rear, but the French passed their Reaction check and were allowed to face their second rank to the rear.  The results were ugly for my cavalry.  While we still need to tinker with the modifiers to melee a bit, in general, the new rules for close order vs. open order, cavalry in melee, and cavalry vs. infantry seem to work well.  We are still thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of being in close order.

Duncan has come up with a mechanic that I like for cavalry.  There is no charge bonus, per se.  Cavalry must spend the last four inches of its move going straight ahead in order to receive an impetus bonus in the melee.  Remember:  this is a skirmish game, not a tactical game.  In my “charge” around flank of Duncan’s infantry, I did not have impetus, which hurt me in the subsequent melee.  I think it worked pretty well.

I had smashed my cavalry against Zeb’s cavalry and Duncan’s infantry, and Duncan and Zeb still had two untouched sections of infantry.  Chris was is sad shape in the farm yard with Zeb’s battered by still good infantry closing on him.  At this point, we had accomplished our play test goals and had a clear winner, so we called the game and set up our second play test.

The second game was a play test of Greg’s Falklands supplement.  After we cleaned up I realized that I didn’t take any pictures.  Greg has ordered a platoon each of British and Argentinians for the Falklands, but for this play test we used his UNIT troopers from his Dr. Who games for British and my WWII US for Argentinians.  The terrain was mostly barren and rocky.  We used Top Malo as the play test scenario.  As the Falklands war is much more like WWII than the Napoleonic Wars are, there were fewer optional rules to test.  We tested the new weapons for the Falklands, and we tested rules for night fighting.  According to Greg’s research the Argentinians had better night vision than the British, but the British employed them better.  Greg’s rules seemed to reflect this well.  By this time, Zeb had had to leave, so we had the four member of our club with the most notoriously cold dice facing each other in the dark.  In the real battle the British set the Top Malo house afire with M72 LAWs, but Chris and I got “out of ammunition” results with most of our sections when we tried to use our LAWs, meaning that we ran out of them.  With the Argentinians having better night vision, and our LAWs depleted, we had no choice but to advance to close range across largely open ground.  The results were predictable.  Greg and Duncan soundly defeated us; although, Chris made excellent use of his M203 grenade launchers to soften them up.  Sorry I don’t have any pictures to show, but with all the surrogates for figures and terrain, it wouldn’t have looked very Falklands-like to purists.

It was a successful day.  I think we’ll have the Napoleonic supplement ready to share with a slightly wider group of play testers in a few weeks.  Greg and I need to think a little more about night fighting, but the basic concept we employed seemed to be okay.  I hope to schedule another play test day to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan and perhaps another Falklands or Napoleonic test.  We had hoped to have The Falklands done before Salute, but the real world has gotten in the way.

This weekend, I knocked out a few odds and ends.  This is the Reaper Bones I Kickstarter clockwork dragon.  Honesty, this one piece was the reason I bought into Bones I in the first place.  I finally got around to priming and painting this piece over the weekend.  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, even though the feet didn’t really stand flat, so I had to build up the base somewhat.

I also painted a third battalion of armored vehicles from the Reaper CAV Kickstarter, this time with a slightly lighter — almost jungle colored camouflage pattern.  This is a light anti-tank battalion.  I like the turretless design.  The Army was working on a replacement for the M-551 Sheridan, called the Armored Gun System, that had a similar turretless design.

I painted this Reaper Bones II Kraken some months ago, but one of our gamers was asking about it this weekend, so I decided to post a couple of pictures.

I completed the second battalion of CAV vehicles, this time a battalion of light tanks.  I tried a lighter camouflage scheme on this battalion.  As I mentioned in my previous post, my intent is that each battalion will have a different camouflage pattern to make it easier for players to keep their battalions separated on the table.

A few weeks ago I received my box of Reaper CAV figures in the Bones material from the Kickstarter.  I really like the look of the vehicles, as they have a near future vibe that I find plausible.  I didn’t purchase any of the stompy robots, because I think they would be silly, impractical, and expensive on a real battlefield.  Last night while watching a movie with my wife, I finished the first battalion.  These look to me like M-1 tanks with some kind of rocket launcher on the top.

This signals the imminent start of development on the near future and science fiction version of Look, Sarge, No Charts.  Each base represents a platoon, so in the picture above, the heavy tank battalion has three companies of three platoons.  The single bases represent company and battalion HQ.  You can see that I have left space on the back of the bases for the characteristic Look, Sarge, No Chart data labels.

I sprayed the vehicles with Krylon camouflage paint that is supposed to bond to plastic.  I didn’t find a specific camo and Fusion product, but these camo paints are supposed to work on plastic.  These paints did not result in the common tackiness that many experience with the Bones material.  Though they dried with a nice, flat finish, they felt a little damp, not tacky per se, but damp.   They almost felt like suede.  After painting on the camo pattern and a few other details, I overrated them with Army Painter matte finish.  If find the large cans of Army Painter matte finish convenience, but as you can see in these pictures, it is not as matte as the Dull Cote matte finish.  Anyway, after spraying them with the Army Painter matte finish the damp feel is completely gone.  I think I may hit them with a light coat of Dull Cote to dull them down.

I don’t know if we’ll try to build our own back story and fluff, so there really is no guidance yet on organization, sides, or painting schemes.  At this point, I have two partially completed battalions of vehicles that I kit bashed from various sources.  I am painting them in straight olive drab.  The Reaper units I plan to paint in different camouflage schemes.  This battalion got a 1980’s US woodland paint scheme and the Desert Storm “V.”  I’ll be doing more fanciful painting themes on the next battalions.  While not 100% realistic, it is sometimes true that different units in the same Army have different painting schemes because they are habitually associated with a specific geographic area or terrain.  In Desert Storm, many of the deployed units had olive paint schemes, because they had been earmarked for deployment to Europe.  Anyway, the different camo schemes will help players keep their units separated on the tabletop.

For the near future, my focus will remain on Combat Patrol(TM), but I will begin development of Look, Sarge, No Charts for the near future and science fiction genre.  Between turns, there will be a cyber phase in which players use their cyber forces to get into the enemy’s command and control networks.  This will result in the winning side of a cyber phase drawing some number cyber action cards that can be used during a turn to impact enemy spotting attempts, activations, and other actions.

Last weekend was Cold Wars in Lancaster, PA.  Due to family commitments, I was only able to attend on Saturday, when I ran three back-to-back Combat Patrol (TM) games.  In addition to my games, Zeb Cooke ran a Winter War game with 28mm figures, Dave Wood ran two Boer War games, and Duncan Adams ran his Napoleonic game (see previous posts).  Running three back-to-back games on Saturday had the benefit of limiting the amount of time I had to spend money in the dealers’ hall, but it also limited my ability to take pictures.  The picture above is the only one I remembered to take of the Poland 1939 game.

In my first game a Russian column was pushing up this road through the snow, but the Finns had other ideas. The Finns began the game hidden in the various wooded areas.  In addition to some satchel charges and Molotov cocktails, the Finns had a single anti-tank gun.

The Russian tanks were mostly road-bound, as they had to suffer bog checks if they left the road.  The Finns had also mined one of the frozen lakes.  The Russians immediately spread out their infantry to try to clear the wooded areas.

The hidden anti-tank gun brewed up one of the Russian light tanks.  By the end of the game, most of the Finnish infantry had been badly mauled, but the Russians had also taken heavy casualties.  I called it a narrow Finnish victory.

My second game was based on a scenario from the Skirmish Campaigns book on Poland 1939.  The Poles launched a local counter attack to knock the Germans on their heels.  It was a bloody affair with nearly every tank on both sides wiped out.  While I was running this game, Zeb was running his Winter War scenario.  I understand it went quite well, but I was busy running my own game and didn’t get a chance to see it.

My third game was based on another Skirmish Campaigns scenario and was set in France in 1940.  The French launched a local counter attack.  According to the scenario, the Germans had a 75mm gun, which in 1940 was a monster.  The gun took out two Somuas and two Char Bs.  The French continued to advance up the road into the teeth of the AT gun while pumping HE shells into the anti-tank gun’s position.  Luck was not with the French as after pumping six or seven HE rounds into the position and driving off the crew once, they were not able to knock out the crew.  The Germans had lost all of their tanks (35(t)s and 38(t)s) by the end of the game. The French objective was to push two vehicles across the table, but they only got one off the table, and their remaining Somua was still in the kill zone of the AT gun, so I called it a German victory, but it was a close run affair.

In all three scenarios, the rules worked well.  For a small number of players, there was a bit of not seeing the forest for the trees.  I have been working on an optional rules supplement to handle a few “corner cases” that are not fully addressed in the rule book, but in general, they held up well in a variety of situations.  In the France 1940 scenario, the French players were upset that they were unable to knock out the AT gun, which was a result of really poor luck.  Still, I think they came close to winning and could have won if they had done something other than continuing to charge up the road straight at the AT gun and had instead sought some cover.  Players tend to ascribe tactical mistakes or bad luck to the rules being broken.  An odd situation occurred that I plan to address as an optional rule, but again players tend to latch onto one tree and forget about the forest.  Also, in the Finland game, players kept wanting to gunk up the game with additional modifiers that favored them.  (They would likely have been just as vocal about opposing those same modifiers if they had been on the other side.)  While most of the players were very happy with the rules, a few folks didn’t appreciate the streamlined nature of the rules or the fact that a lot happened in a short period of playing time.  At the same time my France 1940 games was going on, I kept an eye on a nearby France 1944 game, and while the players had a great deal of fun, there wasn’t a lot of movement.  The card mechanic is really unique, and I have found that sometimes players really fight it and don’t try to get their heads around it.  Once they do embrace this new paradigm, they really see its benefits.

On Military Matters brought 16 copies of the starter set (printed rule book, one activation deck, and two action decks) and sold more than half.  Of course, I would have liked for them to sell out, but I think that was a solid showing.

I also recruited someone to start working on the modern Afghanistan and Iraq supplements for the game.  There are a lot of issues to work through, so don’t expect this in the next month, but it is definitely moving forward now.  So, while I am working on the South Pacific WWII, there are folks working on Napolenoics, British Colonial (Boers, Zulus, and the Sudan), the Falklands and other post-WWII British campaigns, and Modern Afghanistan and Iraq.  I am looking for someone who wants to go after Grenada and Panama, so I can concentrate on my favorite campaigns of WWII: Finland (done), France 1940, and Poland 1939.  I am also beginning to mull around a card-based scenario generation systems for Combat Patrol(TM) that will be equally applicable to other systems.

 

I had a busy Saturday, but this Sunday I had a chance to get some painting done.  Saturday I played in a Tekumel game run by Bill at Games and Stuff using GASLIGHT.  The game was quite fun.  While at the hobby store I finally found the Frostgrave sigilist figure I have been wanting to pick up for my party in Chris’ Frostgrave campaign. I chose a sigilist as my wizard because I like these figures.  I don’t know if they are any good in the game.  My first outing was less than stellar.  I really like the green paint scheme on the packaging for these figures, but I decided not to merely copy that paint scheme.  I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

A couple weekends ago, I stopped by Dave’s house, and we was cleaning out some of his unpainted lead mountain.  He had this pack that he said he would never use.  It is called 09-004 Kroger the Gorilla with Damsel in Cage in the old Ral Partha line, The Titans of Terror.  I have named these figures Dave (the gorilla) and Brenda.

Several months back, I bought into an Indigogo project from Dragon Bait Miniatures for a set of fish men.  I received mine a few weeks ago and painted them up this weekend.  Above is the publicity picture from the crowdfunding page.  Below are my version.

Chris and I are talking about another underwater GASLIGHT game in the foreseeable future.

Throughout the week I picked away at these a color here and color there, but I finished a bunch of Pulp Figures Villistas.  I purchased these at Historicon last Summer.  The picture is a little blurry, but I am happy with how they turned out.

Though not completed, I also assembled and primed a bunch of science fiction vehicles and figures I recently purchased from Pig Iron.  I will begin painting the figures this week, but I won’t be painting the vehicles until it gets warm enough for me to set up a table in the back yard and pull out my airbrush.  I have eight science fiction vehicles a 1:48 Sherman, a 1:48 Hetzer, three 1:48 SdKfz 251s, and a 1:48 German truck that are all awaiting warm weather.

In a previous post I showed pictures of Pig Iron infantry that I recently painted.  Soon after I learned about Pig Iron, they announced that they were going out of business.  So my planned slow purchase of Pig Iron infantry and vehicles turned into a leap.  Yesterday a box arrived with infantry I had ordered as well as four vehicles.  The quality of the casting is excellent.  There are no pits, chips, or bubbles.  The vehicles look feasible, unlike other science fiction vehicles.  You customize the basic hull by applying hatches, stowage, and turrets.

I purchased on tank turret as well as a bunch of bags of smaller machine-gun turrets, hatches, and stowage.  You can’t seem them in this picture.  I will post pictures soon of assembled vehicles.  I also bought a few extra bits beyond what I need for these four vehicles so that I can scratch build some other vehicles in the near future.