Author: Buck

As Reaper posted their second Bones Kickstarter project this week, I was reminded that I hadn’t painted any of the first batch.  I really only wanted about half of what was in the Kickstarter deal, but half was enough to make the deal worthwhile.  I traded some figures with others in the HAWKs and sold another batch at Historicon, retaining the ones I really wanted.  I took advantage of being furloughed to take care of some needed “honey do’s” around the house and also work on some of the Reaper figures.

Some weeks back I posted that I was working on a Victorian version of the Marvel Avengers.  The only Avenger I was missing was Thor.  Someone online suggested a blacksmith.  I converted one of the Reaper blacksmith figures to be Thor.  He’s the one on the left in the picture below.

I considered making the apron red, like Thor’s cape, but that looked goofy, so I made his pants red instead.

Here is a view of the complete Avengers group in action against a giant crab.  The front row, from left to right:  Black Widow, Thor, Captain America, and Hawkeye.  The back row, from left to right:  the Hulk and Iron Man.

I’m not sure how this figure became part of the handful I pulled from the box, but since she was on the table, she got painted.

I tried to be a bit artistic with these.  I wanted them to look as if they were being lit by the lanterns.  The effect was not nearly as good as I had hoped.

I really like the two figures on the right.  They depict the typical dungeon delver, heavily laden with weapons and treasure.

Why so many duplicates?  You can never have too many townspeople, so one of my Kickstarter add-ons was a second set of civilians.

At this point, I have no planned use for these figures, but when I saw them at Historicon they called to me.  I really like the look of these and can see them showing up in some games in the not-too-distant future.

At Historicon, these figures called to me.  They are Eskimo cavalry riding polar bears and some sort of yak-like animal produced by Sergeant Major’s Miniatures.  I just had to have them to add to my Northland Adventures collection.

The mounts were cast in two pieces.  The rider’s right hands were separate and had to be glued onto the arms.  I am looking forward to seeing them in a game.

I recently finished eight more battalions of Russian infantry.  To finish the VII and VIII corps, I just need to complete several regiments of cavalry and many leaders.  It takes 30 figures to make an infantry battalion but only 10 for a cavalry regiment, so I suspect it won’t take long to complete the order of battle.  I’ve figured out what I need to order from Old Glory and will probably place the order soon.

I have been storing my 10mm figures in cardboard, computer keyboard boxes.  With 10mm WWII there are only 10 infantry figures on a base.  The density of figures for Napoleonic bases is much higher, and the cardboard boxes are beginning to crush.  I mentioned that I was looking for something better, and my buddy Mark turned me on to Really Useful Boxes.  After perusing their Web page, I determined that the 4-liter box would be the right size.  With the lipped tray, you get two roughly equal height storage levels that are perfect size for 10mm infantry, artillery, cavalry, or leaders.

Here is what the box looks like when it’s closed.  One of these boxes is shorter, but slightly taller than the thin keyboard boxes I’ve been using.  They also store a few more figures than the keyboard boxes.  For 10mm WWII, I put two battalions in a cardboard box.   It will be excellent to put two battalions in one of these, one on each level.  Then I can just hand a player either a box without the tray or a tray without the box, and he will have his total command.  Two players won’t have to fight for access to their keyboard box with another player, particularly when they enter the game on different table sides.

One of these 4-liter boxes will be just about right for most of my 28mm figures with the trays inside, but any figures that have their arms or anything else above their heads will only fit if you don’t use the second-story tray.  They also make two more boxes that are slightly taller but have the same footprint at the 4-liter boxes.  I was thinking that one of these with the tray would enable me to store the taller figures on the bottom level and the shorter figures on the top level.

On their Web page, these boxes are $15 each, but at Staples I can get the boxes for $8 each.  The trays are an additional $4, but you must order them on line, as neither Staples, Office Depot, nor Office Max carry any of the inserts for the boxes.  The boxes are much more sturdy than the cardboard ones, and after I fully convert — in several years — my shelves will have a pleasing, uniform appearance.

If you have been following this series of posts, you’ll recall that I am developing some concepts for a new skirmish-level World War II game.  In previous posts, I’ve provided examples of some of the action cards as they’ve evolved.  Above is a sample unit record sheet for a player.  Note that each player is supposed to lead a squad, consisting of two half squads for most countries.  (Marines, on the contrary, divided their squads into three teams.  One might also argue that a US Army squad was divided into three teams as well.)

Below is an example of a vehicle record.  This is very early in development of a vehicle record, as I haven’t thought through all the vehicle rules yet.  I am also desperately in need of another play test of the basic infantry rules.

Note that the layout of the “back” of the vehicle card.  This is designed to give the players guidance on how to resolve the various results of hit location from the action deck.  I would guess that after a game or two most of the back of this card will be no longer needed.  I am hoping to develop some fun items for the non-penetrating hit table.  Also, I think that any penetrating hit will also include a roll on the non-penetratin hit chart.  I’m not artist, but I’m trying to lay out the back of the card in a way that is intuitive.  What do you think?

To this point in development, the only need for a die has been to roll for movement distance each turn.  To resolve these kinds of combat effects, I think I will put a 1 through 10 in the top right corner of each card.  You could then flip a card to “roll” a d10.  If players prefer, they could also use a d10 already sitting on the table for movement instead of flipping a card.

For the first time since May I had a chance to do some painting.  Sam Fuson has made sheets of labels for Fate of Battle that reflect real orders of battle.  For my Russian force, I am building out Bagration’s VII and VIII corps.  My current Russian force was an ad hoc mixture of things I was able to find on ebay.  That was enough to get me started and do all the needed play testing for the rules.  Now I am building out the missing bits to create those two corps.

At Historicon, I had pre-ordered several bags of Russians.  Two bags of infantry and a command bag make eight battalions with two color parties extra.  I’ll eventually mount the color parties on the bases for the corps commanders and Bagration.  I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I wrapped up these eight battalions of Russian jaegers.  The uniforms are just about the same as Russian infantry, except they have white plumes and green pants.

I also knocked out several batteries of artillery.  Of course the Russians in the Napoleonic Wars are known for their masses of guns.  Looking at the order of battle for these two corps, I’m not sure I want to face them on the table.  This picture just shows the light artillery in the VII and VIII corps as well as some attached directly to Bagration.

This is the heavy artillery.  As a comparison, the two French corps that I have painted have a total of 8 artillery batteries, mostly 8-lb ones.  Later in the wars, the French began to compensate for lack of well-trained infantry by adding artillery batteries to their corps — in many cases supplied by the enemy.

In the top third of the card, I thought all the modifiers and things looked too cramped and busy.  It occurred to me that the players could start in the right “column” and then apply fewer column shifts.  So in the example above, all the cards have the “EVT” labels under the first three “columns,” standing for expert, veteran, and trained, the three ratings for accuracy and melee.

I had envisioned a multi-step process using the existing mechanisms for resolving HE and other forms of indirect fire:  flip a card to see if you hit the right area [if no, then scatter], then flip a card to see if where you wanted to hit is blocked (e.g., by a window) [if so, then scatter], then figure out which figures are in the short, medium, and long radii from the point of the blast, then flip a card to determine if each figure was hit, then for each figure hit, flip a card to determine wound location.  Argh!  One can imagine the game coming to a screeching halt and folks heading out for a meal every time someone throws a grenade!

It occurred to me that I could make three octagons that are just “rings.”  These would be different sizes, representing different blast radii for indirect fire.  While a bit of an oversimplification, the smallest one would be for grenades, the second would be for small mortars (say 81mm and below), and the larger one would be for large mortars and artillery.

The process for throwing a grenade, for instance, becomes flip a card and look at the small numbers above the row of checks and x’s.  As with direct fire, the starting “column” used would based on the accuracy rating of the thrower.  The top row of numbers indicates the number of radii of scatter and the little knife indicates the direction.

In these examples, a veteran unit with no other modifiers would scatter two radii, zero radii, and one radius, respectively.  One can imagine that the scatter distance might be doubled for off-board artillery.  Or, you might imagine that HE fired in direct fire would use the radii as indicated on the cards, on-board indirect fire would double the scatter distance, and off-board artillery might triple the distance.  The beauty of this approach is that a weapon with a small burst radius thrown from a short distance, like a grenade, would scatter a smaller amount than a light mortar fired from some distance.  This was a problem I’ve tackled in different ways in other rules, such as BAPS.

Now, here is another nuance.  See the three blast symbols on the top figure?  They represent small, medium, and large burst radius weapons.  When all three are shown as indicated above, if the soldier is within the octagonal ring of either a small, medium, or large weapon, he has been hit, and you flip the next card for damage, just as with normal fire.  You would flip a card for for each figure in the burst radius.  Some convention might be used, like go from inside out or left to right.  The manner doesn’t really matter as long as one card is flipped for each figure.

There are 50 cards in the deck (plus two extras).  Twenty will be misses, meaning that the figure for which you are flipping takes no damage.  Ten will have all three symbols, ten will have just large and medium, and ten will have just large.  (I need to think about this math a little more, to make sure I’m including the right number of each type of effect.)  One can imagine ways to reduce this to one symbol showing the smallest radius weapon that scores a hit, so instead of having to use all three symbols, the “small” symbol would be read as “small or larger.”

What does this mean mathematically?

If there are four figures in the large burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.6 x 4 = 2.4.

If there are four figures in the medium burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.4 x 4 = 1.6.

If there are four figures in the small burst radius (a difficult task), the expected number of casualties is 0.2 x 4 = 0.8.

It might seem odd that everyone within the radius has the same probability of damage, but on average, I think it will work out fine.

See how this gets away from complicated templates, having to break out the calipers to determine who is in the short radius and who is within the medium radius, etc.

The HE procedure now is significantly streamlined from what was discussed above.  Now you flip one card to determine whether the round landed where you want it and determine the scatter direction and distance all on one card.  Then for each figure in the burst radius you flip one card for damage effect, ignoring the counting (which figure is hit) diagram.  Indirect fire, instead of being onerous, has just one more card flip (on average) than direct fire.  Pretty cool.

I’m going to bed now.