Buck's Blog

I finally finished the cavalry for my Burgdorfreuthenheim legion.  The last unit is the Duke of Burdorfreuthenheim’s Own Hussars.

I decided to go with an art deco teal uniform with pink facings and trousers.  I made the horses a variety of colors.  The cavalry are wearing cuirasses.  The standard bearer is a “converted” officer figure.  I put “converted” in quotes, because all I did was cut off the pistol and drill a hole in the hand for the flag shaft.  The flag is hand-painted.  The flag is based on Bavaria, but is purple instead of blue.

This is a slightly closer view of the cavalry, taken from the left side, rather than the right.

In this close-up view you get a better look at the pink collar, turnbacks, and trousers.

Initially, I planned to paint all the horses grey.  Since I primed the figures in grey, this seemed like cheating, so I ended up painting the horses five different colors.

The legion of Burgdorfreuthenheim is now fully formed and ready for action!   As the Duke would say when initiating a charge, “Narf!”  (Let’s see how many readers will get that obscure reference!)

I finished the Burgdorfreuthenheim artillery battery a week or so ago.  All I have left is the cavalry.  I’ve decided on teal uniforms with pink facings.  If it doesn’t look too bad, I’ll post some pictures soon.

I decided the artillery would be in grey uniforms.  Note that the officer is in a slightly lighter grey.  The officers are not provided uniforms; they procure them from local tailors.  Thus, officers’ uniforms are often off by a shade or two.

I decided not to paint the barrel of the cannon bronze.  I think the black looks good next to the garrish blue.  I can always go back and put metal on it later, but I like the black.

NQSYW is a Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKs) club project involving 40mm home-cast figures.  Each of the HAWKs has been building their own contingent.  HAWK Rob Dean even ran an Email campaign once in which the battles were fought on the table.

My contingent is the small duchy of Burgdorfreuthenheim (berg dorf roith en heim).  I completed two units of infantry many years ago.  I don’t see them much as they are usually in the possession of Rob and others.  A complete infantry regiment consists of three infantry units, so I’ve recently completed my third.  In addition, my “legion” will include a cavalry unit and an artillery battery.  I’ll start on the cavalry tomorrow morning before the family wakes up.

These are fun figures to paint.  The hardest part was trying to match the colors of these new figures to ones I painted several years ago.

I’m trying to decide on the color scheme of my hussars.  I’ve been thinking that I’ll either go with gray uniforms with forest green stripes and facings or instead use art deco turquois and pink.  Hmmm.  Decisions, decisions.  You can see from the pictures that the forces of Burgdorfreuthenheim are typically dressed in subdued colors.  The line infantry is in olive and khaki.  The jaegers are dressed in black.  I’m not sure if the cavalry will be equally subdued or “go gaudy.”  I’ll post some pictures soon.

Almost all of my figures are in 25mm or 28mm.  My only dalliance with other scales was a brief excursion in the mid-80’s with Mike’s Models 15mm British Colonial (little cartoony fishing sinkers with feet) and with 10mm/12mm figures for Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII.  While painting these 40mm figures has been fun, and while I enjoy the HAWKs NQSYW games, I don’t see myself doing a lot in this scale.  They take a long time to paint and require a large amount of space to store.

Hinterland Miniatures makes a line of interesting female Hussars.  I like the fact that they are obviously female without being R rated.  I like the hair in a bun like in the original GASLIGHT Girl figure.  The sculpting and casting are both very clean.  The figures painted easily.  There is a lot of detail, more than my skills do justice.  The poses are good.  Except for the “army builder” pack, all the poses are different.  I like the officer figures quite a bit.

My painting and these photos don’t really do justice to these really nice figures.

This unit is fictional.  I was therefore free to paint them any colors I wanted.  I got inspiration from the Hinterland Web page as well as an Osprey book on Napoleonic cavalry.  If you go to Hinterland’s Web page, my favorite painting scheme was olive and khaki.  I used this blue scheme, because my 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War Burgdorfreuthenheim infantry uses khaki and olive, and I didn’t want to seem unimaginative.

The Maxim crew is quite nice.  I really had trouble getting a good closeup of these figures.  I took a dozen shots, and only one didn’t come out blurry.  I think I would have had better luck outside or in a better lit room.  The Maxim crew is a new set.  I found them by accident when I went to their page to look for some painting ideas.

By the way, the service from Hinterland is excellent!

Last Friday during the HAWKs gaming night, I put on a Northwest Frontier by GASLIGHT game.  This was a play test of a scenario to include in the upcoming GASLIGHT Compendium. The scenario, like many of my GASLIGHT scenarios, is set in the Northwest Frontier.  As part of “The Great Game” between Russia and Britain, the Russians have provide technology and troops to assist the various chieftains in their fights against the British.

In this scenario, a Kahn has revolted against the British.  Typically, the British cobble together a punitive expedition and set forth to punish the Kahn.  Prior to the start of the scenario the Kahn has been defeated and is now in retreat.  The Pathan force in this scenario must hold open the escape route (road) long enough for the main body to escape, which for this scenario is ten turns.  The Pathan force contained some Russian infantry as well as several Russian vehicles.  The British force is composed of British, Highland, and Indian infantry with supporting vehicles.  In addition a “flying column” of bicycle lancers, Indian cavalry, and heavy support tricycles attempts to cut the road.  The scenario requires both sides to move.  Unlike a typical pursuit scenario, the Pathans cannot merely try to outrun the pursuit, since they have to keep the road open for ten turns.

The Russian helicopter was knocked out of the sky early in the game by a Gattling gun.  An exciting moment came when Indian cavalry charged over a hill and caught some Pathans by surprise.  In a desperate melee, the Indians defeated the Pathan unit, but at heavy cost.

In this view you can see the Indian cavalry about to break through the first line of Pathans and charge into the second line to cut the road.  Note the Russian infantry.  There are two units.  In this test, one unit was wiped out, but this one saw little action.  Also note the ball-shaped tank.  Controlled by HAWK Geoff Graff, this tank fired several times at a British light tank, but only scored one hit all game.  Also note on the right of the picture the Pathan unit dressed in white with most of the figures dead.  These casualties were largely the result of a few well-placed rockets from Don Hogge’s rocket support tricycle.

My so enjoys the gaming when I bring him to conventions, but my daughter really seems to have taken to it.  She really focuses on the objective and manages to keep entertained through the slow points.  She’s pretty short, so we often find her climbing across the table to reach her troops.

The scenario went well.  I’ll run it a couple more times before going “final” for The GASLIGHT Compendium, but I’m pretty happy with how it went.  Once the book is published, I’ll post all the data cards on the Yahoo Group so people can download them and use them to run the game themselves.

(Photos of Northwest Frontier by GASLIGHT were taken by Chris Palmer.)

Yesterday morning I woke early and finished the last bits of my Polish force for the Cold Wars LSNC-aganza.  I had ordered some Pithead C2P artillery tractors.  I also needed to paint and mount Ursus trucks.

Pithead doesn’t make the horse-drawn machine gun wagons, but I wanted them for my cavalry units.  I found Russian ones from Pendraken at The War Store.  Though the machine guns are wrong, in 10mm they are close enough.  At this scale, any uniform differences are completely indiscernible.  I don’t believe the Polish had machine guns with wheels on them as shown on these wagons, but again, they are close enough.

Mounting the wagons onto bases presented a bit of a challenge.  With the horses, the wagons were too long for the standard 1.5″ deep LSNC bases.  I’ve had this trouble with larger German tanks as well.  I mounted the wagons on 2″ deep bases.  Also, there was the question of what is the “front.”  I decided that when the the muzzles represented the “front” of the unit.  This means that when moving, it will look like the wagons are backing around the battlefield, but they’ll look correct when they are firing at the Germans.

Note that the axles were not quite long enough on many of the wagons, which is why they look a little “bowlegged” in these pictures.  Again at 10mm they are okay.

To finish off the bases, I like to add some tiny gravel and also the “tufts.”  These come in sheets of static grass glued in clumps to waxed paper.  I get them from International Models (www.internationalmodels.net).  Though they are in England, they arrive about a week after I order them.  You pick the tuft off the waxed paper with tweezers.  Then I use a dab of white glue and stick them down to the flocked base.  After I spray dull cote over the entire base, they stick well.  I think I may have lost one in the past three years.

The Poles are now fully equipped and ready for action!

For several years, my friend JJ Dziadziola has hosted a gaming weekend at his house in North Carolina.  This even was originally designed to get our old high school gaming buddies together, but it has grown to include several other folks, including Dave Wood, whom I met at West Point, and the Schlegel brothers of the HAWKs.  This year, the gaming began Friday morning with an ironclads game, using Beer and Pretzels Ironclads.

JJ, the GM for this game, pulled a fast one on us.  I was part of the Union force that was sent to rescue a fellow Union ironclad stuck on a sandbar within range of shore batteries.  As our boats got close enough to haul the boat off the sand bar, we discovered that it had been boarded the night before.  We discovered this when it began firing at us.  Big surprise!  It really spiced up the game.

Our next game of the weekend was Poland 1939, using Look, Sarge, No Charts: World War II.  This was a play test of a portion of the Lvov extravaganza described in a previous post.  In this game, Ook ran the Polish cavalry, trying to slow the German armor and infantry.  Nick commanded the Polish armor which conducted a spoiling attack around the German right.

Ook’s cavalry screen managed to strip off the German infantry, leaving Mark with just armor to assault the town.  As that is a very difficult prospect in LSNC, we called the game a Polish victory at that point.

The third game of the night was a Blood and Swash cowboy game.  Eric used the factions and victory conditions from an Italian card game, Bang.  I was the marshall, and I didn’t manage to survive the fight.

Saturday morning we played Wellington Rules.  The scenario was based on the action around Laon in 1814.  We were part of the French rear guard retreating through a defile.  The Prussians were trying to stop us and block the road to prevent the French main body from escaping.  Everyone seemed to enjoy this game, because both sides needed to maneuver, rather than one side being on the defensive.

I was the rear guard of the rear guard.  My division was tasked to hold the end of the road closest to the enemy.  As the enemy neared, I turned to face them.  Mark and Nick hit my two battalions in line with six battalions in column.  One of my battalions evaporated.  Fortunately, I had a third battalion ready to plug the gap.  By the end of the game, my division had been completely destroyed and my guns overrun and captured.  It was a lot of fun, but the end was ugly.  

The final game on Saturday was another play test of Kurt’s Stones River LSNC extravaganza.  We had planned for this game to only last four hours.  We started at about 1300.  At 2100 I realized that we hadn’t stopped for dinner.  It was gratifying to note that all the players were busy and engaged in the game until the end.  We rarely play any games, let alone LSNC, for that many hours.  In fact, I can’t remember when I played the same game so long in many, many years.

JJ Con was the weekend before Halloween.  JJ’s wife, who puts up with the annual gamer invasion of her house, went to a Halloween party, dressed as a pirate, to escape the madness in JJ’s gaming room.

In addition to the miniatures games, we also played a few games of a card game, called Mag Blast.  These are short, light games that we could play at the end of a hard day of gaming to unwind.  If you haven’t played Mag Blast, you are missing a fun game.  One of the gimmicks is that when you play an attack on an enemy ship, you have to make sound effects or the shot is a miss.  Nick never seemed to quite get the hang of the sound effects, even with Dave whispering in his ear.

I think a good time was had by all, and I am looking forward to JJ Con 2011.