Buck's Blog

Once again my North American frogs took on Chris’ South American frogs — this time for control of the Suarian idol in the center of the table.  For this game, we used the new character sheets from The GASLIGHT Compendium.  I had also gotten an advance issue of a new figure in this line: frogs riding on crocodiles.  This picture shows the North American heavy cavalry in melee with South American pikemen.  It was a bloody struggle, with only the local, small, flying insects coming out ahead.

The catapult in this picture was home cast with an extra turtle shell used to hold the rocks.  Chris modified some of the Eureka cannon crewmen to be catapult crewmen.

The objective for this game an idol in the center of this rocky outcropping.  The North American frogs got there first and occupied the outcropping with three or more units.  At one point, I was sure this was a runaway victory for the North.

Then the South threw everything they had at recapturing the idol.  This included units, cannon and catapult crewmen, and even the king.  The king in his sedan chair charged a unit of North American frogs and nearly recaptured the idol, but he died in the attempt.  Later, one of the South American frogs did recapture the idol.  Though the North had an additional unit or two to send into the fur ball on the outcropping, the South had four fresh units of lizard auxillaries and frog spearmen to reinforce their position, so I called it a South victory.

The melees were so fast and furious on the rocky outcropping as the battle swayed back and forth that I used the new, optional streamlined melee system from The GASLIGHT Compendium.  This kept the game moving so that other players didn’t get bored.

I think this was a very successful game.  There were some young players in the game, assisted by adults, who stayed with the game and remained focused.

Previously I’ve posted about the plastic army man project for Historicon 2011.  Briefly, the HAWKs received a large batch of plastic AWI figures from the estate of Wally Simon.  Through a series of painting days, we block painted eight Continental armies and eight British Armies.  We are running two events at Historicon 11 for four kids each.  Each kid who plays in the event walks away with what you see in the picture above.

Of course, they get both a Continental and British army.  In addition they get a copy of Big Battles for Little Hands, in which Milk and Cookies rules are included.  They also get a green ground cloth, some green moss for wooded aries, a set of suede roads, and two hills.  They get a pack of cards a set of six-sided dice.  They get two paper buildings to assemble.  Finally, they will receive a bag of some extra figures that they can take home and paint themselves to supplement their armies.

This is pretty neat gift for a ten-year old kid!

Sammy ran her first wargame on 2 July 11.  She used my Eureka toy soldiers and teddy bears.  She made all the terrain herself.  The windmill came unpainted from the craft store.  The roads and rivers were made from white foam painted with acrylics.  Note the defensive walls made from miniature blocks.  See the ones arranged to spell “I love GASLIGHT.”

She used GASLIGHT to run the game.  Since the toy soldiers were originally mounted and organized for Milk and Cookies Rules (units of four) to groups made an eight-figure GASLIGHT unit.  We used 8-sided dice, instead of 10-sided dice, for morale checks.

Note the trees made to look like lollypops.  The log cabin was made from miniature Lincoln Logs that Sammy glued together.

I have more toy soldier units than bear units, so the bears had slightly better stats.  The game was extremely balanced.  When we had to quit, the toys had three full-sized units, a cannon crew, and a handful of beaten-up units.  The bears had two full-sized units, a cannon crew, the fort, and a couple of chewed-up units.  It was a very good game.

Sammy did a nice job running the game.  A couple of times she had to make decisions about ambiguous events, and she made good calls.  Now she wants to run the game at a HAWKs night.

Friday night, Dave Wood, Chris Palmer, Kurt Schlegel, and Eric Schlegel came over for the first official play test of LSNC: Napoleonic Wars.  I was most interested in trying out the skirmish rules and getting some ideas on the numbers for melee, etc.  The scenario wasn’t ideal.  I put a river down the middle of the table with three crossings.  The objective was to be the side that captured two out of three bridges.  An open field battle might have been better for this initial play test.  There was some good give and take.  The basics seemed to work okay, but the numbers I had assigned for morale, etc. needed to be reworked.  The next play test is scheduled for 1 July.

Despite advice to the contrary, we went with the name Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII for the original rules.  There were two issues with this.  First, because is said “sarge,” may people thought it was a set of rules for skirmish gaming.  Second, since the title sounded goofy, may people dismissed the rules.  For the ACW version, we made LSNC: American Civil War the subtitle.  The title is A Union So Tested, which is from a quote by Joshua Chamberlain.  We will do something similar for Napoleonics, but we haven’t hit upon the right quote yet.

Kurt will be running a LSNC: Napoleonic Wars game at Historicon, so come by and take a look.

Eureka Miniatures USA sent me some turtles riding alligators (or are they crocodiles?) that will be released soon.  I agreed to paint them up and use them in my frog game (Viva la Rana!) at Historicon.

These are fun figures.  There was very little flash except where the alligators’ legs meet their bodies.  This was easily taken off with an Xacto knife.  There was just one turtle body, but there were several right arms, so that you can customize the figures.  I saw these as mounted rifles, so I used mostly the rifle/musket arms.  I will pick up four more at Historicon to make a full unit of 10.

Killer B makes a bunch of figures of pulp science fiction games.  Their heroes are very large 28mm figures, so I don’t think they mix with a lot of other stuff I have.  Who knows (or cares) how tall aliens are, so their non-humans are quite usable.  These are their Gadfoz aliens.  I have 11 of them.  The two five-packs had enough variety that I was able to identify two as the leaders.  This allowed me to treat the single leader figure as an unattached main character.

I have been posting a lot of pulp and VSF stuff lately.  This has been driven by getting ready for the release of The GASLIGHT Compendium and getting ready for Historicon.  I still prefer historical games and think of VSF and Pulp as light diversions.  Most of my WWII skirmish collection is 20mm.  I started getting 28mm WWII when Foundry released their Home Guard figures.  Since then I bought some 28mm Americans to use in my GASLIGHT game against giant ants, as in the movie Them.

This tank game as a multi-part, mixed medium kit.  The turret, body, and tracks/wheels are separate pieces.  The machine guns and tank barrel were metal.  All the bits fit nicely.  There was almost no work to be done on the resin parts other than to wash them to get off the mold release.  I had to drill a hole in the top to insert a piece of wire for the AA machine gun.  The kit did not come with a mount for that gun.

Bronze Age Miniatures makes figures that are perfect as Green Martians from Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter books.  They are called swamp mutants or something like that.  In this picture, this mounted figure is facing off against two conversions that Chris Palmer made from plastic British colonial figures.

Here are five of 10 poses.  Note the figures have four arms and lots of weapons.  The rifles are particularly Pulp sci fi looking to me.

These are the remaining five poses.  The figures seemed to have a lot of mold release and didn’t take to super glue well at first.

For scale, the John Carter and Deja Thoris figures are full 28mm figures.

Wargames Illustrated magazine has produced a series of historical vignettes.  You get one (of your choice) when you renew your subscription.  This one matches the print of Lew Armistead at Gettysburg that I have over my entertainment center.  I think I’ll use this in my Historicon ACW GASLIGHT game.

We had a very busy weekend, but I had a chance to wrap up a number of things that have been sitting on the painting table for several weeks.  Among them were 80 or so Old Glory Second Edition ACW figures for my upcoming Historicon game.  I also knocked out 20 Union infantry in frock coats.  These were really fun to paint, and I think they look pretty good.  The Old Glory Second Edition figures are skinnier and more anatomically correct than many wargaming figures.

This “space car” is a resin kit.  My daughter picked the colors.

This is a neat one-man zeppelin.  I need to mount a weapon into it and decide what gunner I want to use.

I also finished this figure of Dr. Who as depicted by John Pertwee.  Growing up, Tom Baker was my favorite Dr. Who, but Simon Russell, a buddy from the UK, turned me on to John Pertwee.  He has become my favorite.  I really like the story arc with the Silurians.

Eureka Miniatures posted an advertisement on the The Miniatures Page for some new Martial war machines.  The article mentions GASLIGHT, and the free .pdf offers GASLIGHT stats for the war machines.

http://eurekamin.com.au/news.php?newsid=EFpyFZAuyEDhiblfOw