Buck's Blog

Sunday morning tends to be pretty light at Historicon, Cold Wars, and Fall In.  A few years ago there was a push to add Sunday morning games.  The HAWKs responded.  We typically put on at least two Sunday morning games — which constitutes about half the scheduled games.  This year Eric ran his car race game using Jamie Davis’ Future Race rules and Duncan ran a WWII naval game, using his “Charted Seas” rules.

Charted Seas uses the combat mechanic from Uncharted Seas, a modification of the activation mechanism from X-Wing, and ship data from the Axis and Allies collectable miniatures game.  I’m not all that interested in “modern” naval games, but this mashup really works well.

Eric ran a car race game through the desert that, based on the whooping and hollering, was a huge success.

If you haven’t played Future Race, you are missing out on a terrific game — and the only worthwhile thing to come from Star Wars Crapisode I.  Originally conceived to have pod races using Micro Machines pod racers, we have used the rules for air boats on the swamps, dog sled races, and flying carpet races — in addition to the pod races for which it was intended.

While these games were going on, JJ, Don, and I played in a game of the 1978 Source of the Nile game (before it was licensed to Avalon Hill) run by one of the original authors.  We had a very good time.  My expedition got lost in the desert.  My guide and half my askari and bearers wandered off looking for food and water.  Then a freak storm struck the desert, and most the rest of my expedition ran off.  A rhino killed my last bearer, and hostile natives killed my last askari.  I wandered out of the jungle, dehydrated and babbling, with only my musket and notebook, but I still managed to eek our third place.  I haven’t played Source of the Nile in 25 years.  It definitely has an old feel to it, and I think it could benefit with an update to more modern mechanics, but it was a fun and nostalgic game.

I just received this first sample card from my artist.  I think the new, special deck for Japanese is going to look quite good.

I have been working for a couple of months on Pacific War supplement for Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.  The supplement involves new morale results for Japanese units as well as special rules for banzai charges and suicide attacks on vehicles.  The new morale results have more unit results and fewer individual results to reflect the unique military cult culture of the Japanese Army in WWII.  These new morale results will be incorporated into special Japanese Action Decks.  The cards in this action deck are exactly the same as the other Action Decks except for the morale results.

I went back to my artist and asked him to create new artwork for the Action Deck.  Again, the results will be the same as the other Action Decks, but I wanted the artwork to look Japanese.

I really like the new artwork.  It is consistent in style to the original Action Deck, but it is definitely Japanese in feel.

This picture is really hard to see.  I drew it 30+ years ago in pencil on a piece of loose leaf paper.  This cartoon depicted a party of adventurers bursting into a room during a Tunnels and Trolls game.  I don’t remember why the one character had his face explode as the party entered, but I remember we laughed about it for days.  My buddy Ma’k Morin found this recently and sent it to me.

The all new Web portal for Barrage 2016 has gone live for people to register as attended and GMs.  This year the folks who bring you the popular HAWKs rooms at the various HMGS conventions have expanded Barrage from one day to two days.  Take a look at the Web portal (www.hawks-barrage.org).  Come back frequently as new games and other content is added.

A few weeks ago, I ordered a bunch of figures from Wargames Supply Dump in the Dirk Garrison range.  I had been working on them a half hour at a time most of the week, but today I had a chance to finish them up.

The figures have a very retro comic book styling to them that I really like, so I painted them in primary colors.  I finished them late and needed to use the flash to photograph them, so you see a lot of shine, and much of the detail is washed out.  The figures look better than these photos.

I really like the crew-served weapon.

This weekend, Sam Fuson hosted a gaming day at War Horse farm in Gettysburg, PA.  I had a chance to play in a modern skirmish game with Ed Duffy’s modern rules he’s been developing.  In the afternoon I ran a slightly modified reprise of my American raid on a Japanese radio site on “some island” in the Pacific.

The game went quite well.  A couple of players had played Combat Patrol(TM), but must had not.  They picked up the rules quickly and then concentrated on the fight rather than the rules.  The scenario was both ahistorical and anachronistic; the American raiding force was composed of both US paratroopers and US Marines.  The Marines had one squad and a bazooka team.  The paratroopers had two squads, a platoon leader, and a bazooka team.  The Japanese had three squads, a couple of extra light machine-guns, and a Chi-Ha tank.

The Americans ran into the compound.  The Marine bazooka team pumped three rounds into a Japanese bunker.  Though the rounds penetrated, the Marine player was incredibly unlucky in determining the effects, so the Japanese machine-gun inside was wounded and stunned, but not knocked out.

Though they inflicted a lot of casualties on the Japanese stationed around the perimeter, the paratroopers made it into the compound and were running across to the radio shack when a couple of Japanese mortar shells landed.  The paratroopers had gotten bunched up, and the mortar round landed right in the middle of the clump, killing two, wounding five, and stunning a couple of others.

The Marines never really made much progress into the compound, but they tied down a squad and a machine-gun.  The paratrooper bazooka team inexplicably charged a couple of Japanese in a foxhole.  Despite outnumbering a wounded Japanese soldier in the foxhole, the paratroopers lost the melee, the bazooka man being incapacitated and his assistant falling back.  The Japanese soldier then charged at the assistant bazooka man as the result of a morale check.  After some back and forth, the paratroopers finally ended up in control of the bazooka again.  He fired at the Chi-Ha, hit the wheels, but didn’t mobilize it.  The bazooka man never got off a second shot, as he was cut down by a Japanese machine-gun.

After the incredible Japanese mortar fire and the lost of both bazookas, the Americans called a retreat and melted back into the jungle.  They never really got very close to the radio shack.  If things had broken their way once or twice, they might have gotten it; they were very close at one point.

The people who weren’t regular gamers, but just come to War Horse a couple of times a year, had not trouble catching on, since they have no preconceived notions of how a war-game is supposed to work.  The folks who are regular gamers caught on quickly as well.  That was good to see.  After about two turns, my role became merely answering questions and calling out cards from the Activation Deck.  All of the players really enjoyed the scenario.

There will be several Combat Patrol(TM) games at Historicon next weekend.  Sign up for one of the games, come by to see if there is space, or just come by to watch how this elegant system works.

Thursday, 1400:  The Battle Before the Battle (GM: Duncan Adams):  Battalions formed; lines dressed; banners flying. The drums start and one line begins moving, steadily closing toward the inevitable, violent collision. But before the lines close there is another battle which must be fought first – between the closing lines. Today we fight that battle of light infantry struggling to weaken the enemy’s line while protecting its own.

This scenario uses the under-development Napoleonic supplement for Combat Patrol.  This is really cool scenario that concentrates on the skirmish fight between two formed units.  Lots of fun.

Friday, 1400:  The Streets of Stalingrad (GM: Eric Schlegel):  22 Oct 1942.  Elements of the Infanterie Division 389, supported by armor and engineers with flame throwers and demo charges, are ordered to assault the Barrikady and Krasny Oktyabr factories held by remnants of the 138th & 308th Rifle Divisions.

Friday, 1900:  Star Wars Combat Patrol (GM: Buck Surdu filling in for Greg Priebe):  On an ancient, war-torn world, a rebel strike team searches desperately for relics that can aid their cause. Little do they know that the forces of the Galactic Empire are already on their trail.  The card-based rule system of Combat Patrol comes to a galaxy far, far, away. Will you fight for freedom in the galaxy, or will you embrace the power of the Dark Side?

This scenario uses mods that Greg created to represent Star Wars weapons in the Combat Patrol rules.  This is a battle between Rebel troopers and Stormtroopers, not one or two main characters where the troopers die in droves.

Saturday, 0900:  Kerfuffle at the Crossroads (GM: Buck Surdu):  An American patrol advances toward an important crossroads and bumps into a German patrol in 1944.  Both forces jockey for position and call for reinforcements.  Learn to play Combat Patrol.  Fight the battle, not the rules.

I am going to change this a little from what is in the PEL.  This game will involve a Germans force sent into the town to dismantle the roadblock, while the Americans try to stop them.  In the play test a couple of weeks ago it was a close run event.

Saturday, 1900:  Warsaw Uprising (GM:  Buck Surdu):  The Polish Resistance Home Army has risen up to eject the Nazis.  The uprising is timed to coincide with the Soviet advance, but the Soviets stop short and enable the Nazis to crush the resistance after 63 days of bitter fighting.  Learn to play Combat Patrol as a member of the resistance or the German army.

During my very enjoyable experience at Partizan in June, I had a chance to look at the buildings from Sally 4th with the photo-realistic covers applied to them.  I picked up the corner shops, part of the Normandy range, and brought it home.  I had begun construction a couple of weeks ago, but life got in the way.  I had a chance over the three-day weekend to finish it.  Bottom line:  I am extremely pleased with this kit and will be getting more of them.

The basic building as an MDF kit, not unlike others.  There are a couple of unique features that I really like.  First the buildings have interior walls.  Second, all the windows and doors come with clear plastic pieces, so they look like real windows.  Finally, I really like the way the roof is constructed.  The outside, visible portion is part of the exterior of the walls.  The support for the roof fits inside the peaked portions of the walls.  This gives a very nice look with full roof support.  The MDF is thick and sturdy and does not warp.

I also found the step-by-step instructions easy to follow.  Each step included a color illustration.  This was the first of the Sally 4th buildings I have constructed, and am no good with paper models, but this kit went together like a dream, and the final product is terrific.

You can purchase the professionally printed photo-realistic covers on thick card or you can download the cover sheets and print them yourself.  In this case, I opted to purchase the cover sheets while I was at Partizan.  I figured that the pre-printed sheets on card were cheaper than me printing them at home and would look better.

The scary part for me was beginning to apply the photo-realistic covers.  Up to this point, any mistakes could be easily corrected.  Once I started cutting paper, mistakes would be harder to correct.  Since I didn’t print the covers myself, I thought that reprinting any mistakes on my home printer might not match those I purchased.  The photo-covers come in several sheets and are easily cut out with an X-acto or scissors.  The registration was perfect.  When I cut out the sheets, including cutting out the windows, and laid them against the MDF, they lined up perfectly.

The windows and doors were a three-step process.  The glazing is glued to the clear plastic and then glued into the openings.  Then the brick frames of the windows and doors are glued into place.  The effect is really nice.

You can see that the interiors are detailed with interior walls.  Sally 4th offers optional wallpaper for the building interiors and optional interior stairwells.  In the picture above, you can see where the stairways would fit.  They also sell optional bombed out roof sections to replace the nice ones that come with the kit.  I saw these at Partizan, and thought they looked great!

In the picture above you can see the awnings and the color instruction booklet.  I have elected not to attach the awnings to make the buildings easier to store, but it is nice that you have that options.

At this point, I had not picked up a paint brush.  All of this work was done with an X-acto, scissors, and Elmer’s blue.  I later applied a little dark gray paint to the tops of the chimneys and painted the shutters for the windows, but that was all.

The cylinders coming out of the chimneys were meant to be rolls of paper.  Demonstrating my poor skill with paper models, I muffed the first one and decided to cut bits of black straws instead.  My straws don’t look as good as the paper ones shown on the Sally 4th Web page.

As I said earlier, despite a couple of rookie mistakes, this building went together with little muss or fuss.  I like the way the kit includes corner brickwork that hides the seams between the cover sheets on the walls and roof.  I have already ordered the Norman church — which comes with three different steeple tops for different eras.  I will likely order a couple more of the Normandy buildings in the near future.

If you are at Historicon, I will be using this building in one of my Saturday Combat Patrol(TM) games.  Come by and take a look.

Before I discovered Sally 4th, I had been ordering one or two of the Crescent Root buildings each month.  The Sally 4th and Crescent Root buildings will mix nicely.

Again, I highly recommend this kit and the others in the series.  It took me no longer to complete this building than any similarly-sized MDF building, but the final product looks nicer than I would have achieved by painting it instead of using the photo-realistic covers.

 

Despite a business trip and a bunch of gaming this week, I did manage to get a little painting accomplished.

At Nashcon I found three packs of figures.  They were supposed to be promotional giveaways from some sort of tournament.  One of the vendors had them available for sale.  I thought they would be a nice addition to my growing legion of female hussars from Hinterland.

I finished these floating robots from Biller B.  I am not too happy with how they turned out.  I haven’t mastered how to get those nice clean lines on white uniforms and robots that I see in others’ examples.  I like the robot below, but I can’t remember where I purchased it.