Chris and I continue to paint figures for our 20-layer GASLIGHT Mars game for Historicon. Early this morning I finished my second unit of Red Martians. In this picture they are fighting off a white ape. All figures are Bronze Age.
Another view of new unit of red Martians facing a white ape
This picture shows a slightly different view of the figures. I painted the skin a light orange and then applied Windsor Newton nut brown ink.
A duel with the white ape
The white ape will act as a “wandering monster” in the Mars game.
Ironclad miniatures Jawa-looking cannon crew
Ironclad miniatures makes these Jawa-looking figures for science fiction games. I like them as Martian desert raiders.
Another view of Ironclad miniatures Jawa-looking cannon crew
Ironclad makes a couple of different types of cannons to go with these figures.
The ground cloth for our game is a color, called copper canyon. We used a variety of spray paints to give it a mottled look.
Last night Sam and I started working on these eagles. The Battle of Five Armies box comes with three sprues. I bought my two sets second hand and somehow ended up with 9 sprues, minus one figure. I combined these with a bag of Eureka 10mm Elves riding eagles. For LSNC: Fantasy, Ancients, and Mediaeval, this gives me five bases of eagles, one base of eagles and riders, and one eagle “brigade commander.”
A better view of the GW Eagles
These painted extremely quickly.
Now I’ve begun working on more 10mm Dwarves and about 20 figures to complete my needs for the Historicon Mars GASLIGHT extravaganza.
Three units of Prussian landwehr cavalry and a brigade commander
For the two people who follow this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been pushing hard to finish my Prussian corps. I’m committed to running two Napoleonic games at Origins and a few more at Historicon. The last bunch of figures I needed to finish to complete the I Corps from 1813-1815 was five units of Landwehr cavalry and the generals. As it turns out, since we’ve decided that the Prussians need regimental commanders in the game, I am short a few Prussian generals. I can substitute Russians or Austrians for my upcoming games, but I need to paint one more bag of Prussian generals before I am all done.
I’m going to concentrate on writing the rules now and beginning development of LSNC: Fantasy, Ancients, and Mediaeval before considering British and Spanish units or adding to my French, Austrian, or Russian armies.
A couple of weeks ago, while I was recovering from surgery for two hernias, we took a short trip to the Smithsonian American History Museum. We hadn’t been there since it was closed a few years ago for a whole year for renovation. I have to say that I was underwhelmed, and think the American History museum has become ho-hum.
Why do I say this?
First it seemed that fully a quarter of the exhibits were closed. I found this interesting in a museum that just opened two years ago after having been closed for a full year. Secondly, the exhibits seemed really “dumbed down” to me.
On the top floor, where there are exhibits on American wars from the American Revolution to the present, I found many of the displays lacking in substance. There was an exhibit the size of a broom closet on WWI. The Vietnam display was 50% unrest, civil rights, and protests, and very little on the conduct of the war, phases of the war, campaigns, how a very professional Army went into the war, but how the long war eroded that professionalism, or how the majors and lieutenant colonels who came out of that war built back up the Army that amazed the world in Desert Storm. There was no display about the Cold War.
The display about our current wars in the Middle East consisted on one small room. For history class, my son is writing a paper about Iraq. I was struck by how little our young people know about our longest wars. If the job of museums is both to inspire and educate, I’d think that the Smithsonian should have significant, extensive, apolitical displays about these three wars. I don’t think I would have understood anything about Desert Shield/Storm, OEF, or OIF from these displays.
The new display of the flag that flew over Fort McHenry is very nice.
Finally, I was a bit put out that they pushed American citizens out of the way to entertain a bunch of visiting foreign dignitaries.
So, if you want to see Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Kermit the Frog, Fonzie’s jacket, of First Ladies’ dresses, this is the place for you. If you actually want to learn anything about our history or anything that really matters, seek other opportunities.
After finish a bunch of Prussian 10mm cavalry, I was looking for a short project as a change of pace. As we are beginning development of LSNC: Fantasy, Ancients, and Mediaeval, I’m slowly building my army for play testing. Taking figures from one of the Battle of Five Armies boxed sets, above is a picture of three units of dwarves, and below is a picture of three units of human spearmen.
10mm human bowmen
Chris asked the other day why I painted my human in different colors. I want the option of either giving a player a “brigade” of human bowmen, or creating mixed “legions” with spearmen, bowmen, swordsmen, etc. In this way, I can have a maroon legion, green legion, and blue legion of humans.
These 10mm fantasy figures on strips paint very, very quickly. Up close, they certainly don’t look as nice as 28mm figures, but deployed on the table at arms length, they really look like units in battle formation.
Sam helped me finish a second ERLT farm house. I had a previous post about the first one we completed, but Sam wanted me to take a picture of this second one to post. She picked out the figures in front of the house from my “unarmed civilian” box.
A handful of HAWKs got together yesterday to game. We ran a scenario with 1813 Prussians. Actually I ran it twice, because the first run was a blowout after less than two hours, so we reset and started over.
French chasseurs and infantry advancing toward Prussian columns (photo by Chris Palmer)
In this play test, I wanted to try out three things:
A new artillery rule
Command and control for the Prussians
A lot of cavalry in a battle.
Masses of Prussians advancing (photo by Chris Palmer)
Artillery rule: Napoleonic rules design requires a careful balance between infantry, artillery, and cavalry as well as column, line, and square to get the proper “paper-scissors-rock” feel. I was feeling that artillery was under powered and didn’t seem to have a large impact on the game. I couldn’t figure out why the artillery seemed fine in the ACW version of Look, Sarge, No Charts, but that it felt wrong in the Napoleonic version. In conversations with Sam Fuson and Dave Wood, I finally realized that it was about “formations.” Neither the WWII version nor the ACW version have explicit representation of formations. In the ACW version, a hit at long range merely accrues a morale check, not a hit. I added a rule that says that long-range artillery (only!!) fire against columns or squares results in a hit as well as a morale check. The math was okay, but I wanted to see how this worked on the tabletop. I tried to test this two weeks ago at HAWKs night, but the way the scenario developed there was little long-range fire. Yesterday we had a chance to really try it out. The consensus was positive, so that’s how the rules will be written.
Prelude to a swirling cavalry engagement with Prussian and French lights (photo by Chris Palmer)
Those of you familiar with the Napoleonic Wars will know that the structure of the late-war Prussian army was three battalions to a regiment and three regiments to a brigade. This gives a Prussian brigade nine battalions, closer to a French division. This means that pitting a French division against a Prussian brigade involves about the same number of battalions, but the French have three order dice and the Prussians only one. If the number on the Prussian order cube doesn’t come up on a card before the end of the turn, nothing in the whole brigade (division) acts. That seemed okay, but on the other hand if the card is drawn, the whole brigade (division) acts at the same time. This had two outcomes in the game: 1) in the attack, it was easier for the Prussians to manage their forces and 2) it took a Prussian player a long time to complete his activation.
French brigade retreating up and over a small ridge (photo by Chris Palmer)
In our second game yesterday, we added a regimental commander for the Prussians. I was afraid this would give them too much tactical flexibility, but it didn’t seem to do so. In fact, by having four dice for the brigade (division), one for each regiment and one for the brigade commander, it actually seemed to reduce the synchronization of the Prussian attack. I’m pretty sure that’s how I’ll write the rules; however, while a Prussian brigade commander has a morale rating of 4 (typically), I think that I’ll make commanders of Prussian line and reserve regiments 4’s but landwehr regiments 5’s.
French guard cavalry never really got into the fight (photo by Chris Palmer)
Finally, since I had finished a lot of Prussian cavalry recently, I wanted to put a lot of cavalry on the table and see how that worked. I think the effect was about right. When the French launched their brigade of six hussar and dragoon regiments at the French cavalry division of three chasseur regiments, there were a couple of turns of swirling melee before the Prussians broke through. It seemed about right. in the second running, the French cavalry was stymied by a line of Prussian squares. A couple of French artillery batteries caused some damage, but there was no infantry to send forward to break the squares. The effect was good, I think.
Aerial view of the retreating French brigade (photo by Chris Palmer)
In summation, I’m pretty happy with the rules the way they are shaping up. The play test games have been fun. It is most gratifying to hear people who have sworn off Napoleonics games say they really like these rules.
10mm GW Battle of Five Armies Human Spearmen Face a 25mm Ral Partha Dragon
I took a quick break from 10mm Prussians to try my hand at 10mm fantasy figures. These are from the Games Workshop Battle of Five Armies starter set. They are mounted for the under-development Look, Sarge, No Charts rules set for fantasy, ancients, and mediaeval warfare. I always thought the old Ral Partha dragons were underscale compared to their 25mm figures. I think the dragon looks about right compared to the infantry.
Two of the units I painted this weekend
Because these figures are mounted on strips, they paint rather quickly. GW recommends that you leave the strips on the sprues while painting them. I have two BOFA sets that I bought second hand. One set was till on the sprues, while the other was already removed. I actually think they were easier to paint after being removed.
Close-up of one of the units
The standard base size for LSNC rules sets is 3″ wide and 1.5″ deep. It takes four of the GW strips to fill a base at this size. A BOFA set includes six strips of these figures (men with spears). Two sets, then, have enough figures for three bases of spearmen.
I have been piddling with Prussian curassiers and Prussian artillery in 10mm for over a week. The curassiers were the easiest, because they wore white tunics with gray pants. They painted very easyily. The artillerists were a little harder. It’s much easier to paint the infantry figures on strips than the individual figures like artillerists and skirmishers. To finish my Prussian 1st Corps for 1813, I just need to complete several regiments of landwehr cavalry. I’ll being work on them this weekend.
Harford Community College (Harford County, MD) ran their annual gaming day today. Attendance was a bit light and spread across cards, computer games, and role-playing. The HAWKs decided to support the even by running five miniatures games. Tank and Eric Schlegel ran naval games: Uncharted Seas, Fire as She Bears, and WWII Naval (not sure of the rules).
Chris Palmer's Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII Russian 1941 Game
I helped Chris run a Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII game. One of the HAWKs, Greg Priebe, teaches distance learning history courses at HCC. He offered extra credit to his students who played in one of the historical games and wrote a short paper about it. Two of them joined the game. One of them seemed to have a really good time and may show up at a future HAWKs night. Two other long-time gamers played in the WWII game as well.
British home guard close assaulting a Martian tripod
I ran a reprise of my “Tripod Down” game from Cold Wars. At Cold Wars it was a convincing Earthling victory. Today, it was a convincing Martian victory.
Tripods closing in on the crash site
The scenario focuses on a Martian rescue mission to retrieve the crew of a destroyed Martian tripod.
I had planned to stay a little longer, but I wasn’t feeling well. I had double hernia surgery last Monday and still wasn’t feeling 100%. I couldn’t wait to get home and stretch out on the couch for the rest of the evening.
In the end we may have acquired four new HAWKs as a result of supporting the event. Even if that is not true, I think those of us who supported the even had a good time.
