Rescue the Princess: part 1

I started this about this time last year. It a game in progress, and I will periodically update it as I go long.

Introduction
Desclaimer: All characters appearing in this game are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Proctoring final exams is pretty dull. What better time to have another solo RPG adventure, or at least set one up! The problem was that I didn’t have my dice with me. Online dice rollers are OK, but a little slow. Then I decided, why not use my students as templates for characters?   In a small school like mine, you get to know the students well enough to judge their stats and what sorts of character classes they might be. The characters are mash-ups of several students plus the names were changed to protect the innocent. I decided to make them second level characters because it was an upper level class, so they were all juniors and seniors. Besides, I wanted the game to last longer than the first one I had.

There are a lot more members of the cast that I planned, but it fits the story and the relationships they have to one another. I set this one in my old fantasy world that I used for both role-playing and fantasy war gaming. Again, I am using Basic Fantasy RPG (2nd Edition), the No Budget No Frills Pencil and Paper Dungeon Generator (version 4.1) with a few add-ons I made from Tabletop Diversions blog, Mythic Master Game Emulator, and whatever else I happen to find of use. Since its a solo game, I mix and match whatever gaming mechanisms I want. As I go along, I am continuously tinkering with the dungeon generator.

The Background
On her way to pay respects to her future mother-in-law, the Countess of Erelle, the young Lady Hayleea was kidnapped. Her fiancée, the dashing Sir Elgrum immediately rode off with a large, armed party to rescue her. Along the way, his party was ambushed. They defeated their attackers but only Sir Elgrum, Sister Yabringa (Lady Hayleea’s dour spiritual advisor, who managed to escaped being kidnapped), and Kassira Kwin (the rescue party’s tracker) survived. They took up the trail, which led them to a small village on the border with Turonia. Several villagers told of a party hurrying north into the wilds. They continued to follow the trail until ended near some old burial mounds. They returned to town, as Sir Elgrum sorely needed help. While at the local tavern, they were told that those mounds were those of the Gails, ancient ancestors of the barbarians that were now to the north that worshipped an evil snake-goddess. They managed to recruit two fighters, two magic-users, and a thief.

The Characters
Sir Elgrum (Fighter. Str: 16 Int: 8 Wis: 8 Dex: 14 Con: 12 Crs: 14HP: 11). Noble and dashing, but somewhat headstrong. Not a paladin, but very religious. Armor: platemail. Weapons: Two-handed axe, longsword.

Sister Yabringa (Cleric. Str: 11 Int: 16 Wis: 17 Dex: 14 Con: 12 Crs: 8 HP: 8). A plain woman with a shadow falling over her, she is always wearing a perpetual scowl. Maybe it’s her strict orthodoxy to the Faith, or perhaps another hidden struggle. She has been a loyal confidant and spiritual advisor to Lady Hayleea for many years. Armor: Padded leather vest. Weapon: club.

Kassira Kwin (Half-Elf Ranger/Druid. Str 14 Int 17 Wis 14 Dex 16 Con: 13, Crs: 12  HP: 9) A petite but physically strong woman. She is also extremely dexterous and gains a +2 when climbing things.  Armor: leather vest. Weapons: Quarter staff, Short sword (D6+1), and dagger (D4+1). Elves made her short sword and dagger especially for her. They are not magical but gain the bonus in her hands.

Sir Gladwell Ravenlocks (Fighter. Str: 16 Int: 12 Wis: 8 Dex: 14 Con: 12 Crs: 17 HP:12) A wandering knight, he was renown for doing good deeds. He is a great charmer of women. Currently, he travels and adventures with his companions Youngrin and Cuthwaith. Armor: chainmail (sleeveless, of course!) & shield. Weapons: Longsword, dagger.

Cuthwaith Tunnelruner (Thief. Str 14 Int: 9 Wis:6 Dex:16 Con: 12 Crs:12 HP: 5) A good thief, but he’s not the brightest fellow. Tends to get in trouble and has to have his comrades bail him out. Armor: None. Weapons: Short sword, 4 throwing daggers.

Sir Youngrin Bodin (Fighter. Str: 17 Int: 16 Wis: 15 Dex 12 Con: 13 Crs: 14 HP: 10) Gladwell’s friend and adventuring companion. They are often rivals in everything, including women. He tends to be the realist of the two and often has to bail both Gladwell hand Cuthwaith out of trouble. It is said that he is the son of a very powerful lord. Armor: chainmail & shield. Weapons: Longsword and dagger.

Charnel of the Mystic Glade (Magic User. Str: 12 Int: 17 Wis: 9 Dex 13 Con: 10 Crs: 13 HP: 6) While a very good magic user, she tends to be rather absent minded. She will often neglect her studies with her apprentice. Armor: None. Weapons: Staff and 1 dagger.

Miria Meeksoul (Magic User Str:9 Int: 16 Wis:12 Dex: 10 Con: 7 Crs: 6 HP: 5) A small, quiet woman, she is the apprentice of Charnel. It is not clear why Charnel took Miria on as an apprentice, nor why Miria stays with Charnel. Armor: None. Weapons: Staff and 1 dagger.

Chapter 1:  Encounter along the way
The adventures left early from the tavern, as reached the end of the town, an old man hobbled up to them. He tugged on Sister Yabringa, reins. “Please blessed sister, my daughter, Enya, was kidnapped the other day and I’m sure she was taken to the burial mounds! Please find her and bring her home to me. She is all I have!"

Sister Yabringa scowls, but Sir Elgrum cuts in, “good sir, fear not! We will find your daughter and bring her back to you."

The old man thanks Sir Elgrum and shuffles off. The party rides at a quick pace, hoping to arrive before nightfall. But shortly before they arrive to the burial mounds, they heard a scream coming from the forest. Kassira volunteers to investigate.

She quietly moves through the forest floor toward the noise. She enters a clearing an sees a large ogre smacking around a young man. Unfortuately, she gives her location away with the snap of a branch. The ogre quickly turns, picks up a large club, and charges after Kassira. Seeing that there is strength in numbers, she turns and quickly runs back to the party shouting, "OGRE!!”

She easily out runs the ogre back to the trail. The rest of the party reacts quickly and prepares for battle.

The party gets the initiative and Kassiera and Gladwell get the first attack. Gladwell misses, but Kassiera gets in a deadly blow (natural 20) but not enough to kill it. The ogre's club smashes into Gladwell's shield but Gladwell is only shaken by the blow. Magic missiles by the magic users seem to only enrage the ogre. After several rounds of combat, wounds are taken on both sides but the outcome is still up in the air. Ffinally, Sir Elgrum manages to plant his two-handed axe into the ogre and it goes down.They search the ogre but find nothing of value.

The party goes back to the clearing and finds the young man. He is conscious but injured. Yabringa cures him. He tells them that his name is Bral (Str: 12 Int: 9 Wis 11 Dex 16 Con 9 Crs 7 HP: 6). He is a young farmer whose wife was abducted two days ago. He managed to follow the abductors here, but ran into the ogre. They ask him if he is from the village that they came from, but he tells them no. He is from another village. He begs to come with. The party is split, but they tell him if he can carry their items and stay out of their way, they will let him accompany them. He has no armor and his weapon was a staff and a dagger. but they promise to give him any weapons and armor if they find it. They decide to camp for the night and enter the burial mounds the next morning. Nothing happens that night and they prepare to enter in the morning.

Chapter 2: Entering the tomb

Entrance into the burial mound

The morning they gather around an entrance way. It blocks by stones and rubble.The Cuthwaith  confidently declares there is no traps, and they have Bral remove the stones. They are in a small room (1) made of earthen walls held precariously up by rotten timbers. At the end of the room are stairs plunging into the earth. Lighting torches and lanterns, they descend the stairs. Reach the bottom stairs and walk along a passage until they get to a 4-way intersection. Suddenly a giant crab spider leaps out at them (2)!

It attacks Bodin and severely wounds him. The poison takes immediate effect and he passes out possibly dead!

The party is stunned by what they see and the spider gets a second attack! It then attacks Bral. Bral tries to jump away but he is hit bad, however the poison doesn’t seem to effect him (successful save vs poison). Instinctively Bral swings with his staff and it hits the spider doing minor damage. The spider then attacks Charnel but misses her due, in part, to her dexterity.

Now, everyone gets a blow. Charnel, being just attacked, manages to fire off a magic missile doing mior damage. Everyone else misses.  In fact Cuthwaith nearly hits Charnel. Miria then casts a spell that does a lot of damage and the spider is dead.

They rush over to Youngrin. Both the cleric and Kassira (who also has the gift of healing) manages to cure him of the wounds, but is it enough to stop the poison? Sir Elgrum decides to leave the dungeon make camp. They carrying Youngrin’s body out. While still unresponsive, Kassira pulls out of a pouch some dried leaves, mixes it with some oil and applies it to his wound. She does the same to Bral.

A day and a night passes. Finally in the late morning, Youngrin stirs and seems to have survived. Sister Yabringa is sure it was witchcraft, and mentions it to Elgrum. Elgrum rebuffs her stating that they should be happy that Youngrin is alive. They camp for one more day to help Youngrin recover. Youngrins Con is down 1 point for the remainder of the adventure.

The following day they reenter to the burial mound. A little more cautious, they send the thief up ahead. Reaching the 4-way intersection, they find the spider’s body still there. They decide to turn left. They travel about 60’ down a straight hall and find it ends with stairs going down. Along the way, they noticed a door on the north side of the passage.In protest, Cuthwaith goes down the stairs a ways, stops and listens. Hearing nothing (failure), he quickly runs back up the stairs.  They decide to go back to the 4-way intersection but first check out that door. Cuthwaith listens but hears nothing (success). Checking for traps (fails), he finds nothing. The door not locked but stuck. Elgrum bashes the door in. The room comes alive with light and music (3). A sourceless, warm glow suffuses the chamber, and a harp you cannot see plays soothing sounds. Unfortunately, the rest of the chamber isn't so inviting. The floor is strewn with the smashed remains of rotting furniture. It looks like the room once held a bed, a desk, a chest, and a chair (from: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/drdg/index.htm). They search for source of the light and music but couldn’t find it. They leave and continue to the intersection.

And there it ends for now. Stay tuned for another chapter!

Gaming Hiatus

The beginning of the year seemed to hold promise in terms of hobby activities, but so far, its been butkus! Between work and family, I've gotten nothing done since I finished that 15mm sci-fi structure. On the flip side, I have not spent a whole lot of money.

I did get Secrets of Wargame Design volumes 1 and 3 by Wally Simon. These are complications of newsletters written by said author from the 70s to early 2000s. Volume 3 is on solo gaming. I figured that I'd get volumes 1 & 3 and if they really knock my socks off, I'd get volume 2.  To some up, they are OK, but not enough to really want to get volume 2. Some articles are seem useful, some not. Many of the useful ones were ideas that I've already known about. Like a lot of things, I probably need to re-read the articles again, I might get more out of them a second time around.

Old Warhorses

The "Soldier Room" as my daughter calls our bonus room has been in dire need of cleaning. After my mother-in-law went back to China, it became the dumping ground for various items. I am as much to blame as everyone else, A lot of gaming and hobby items have not been put away.  I thought since I was on spring break, I would make a stab at cleaning and organizing. Of course, I had to begin with the gaming stuff! I was organizing one of my book shelves that was bordering on chaos. I came upon some of the first rule books that I owned. This gave me a even longer trip down memory lane.

Originally, remainder of this post continued as some wargamer's version of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. After writing for about an hour, I was starting to bore myself. Who wants to read some mopy recollections of someone's gaming exploits from ages past? So, I thought I'd give a quick review of these various rules with only a little bit of moments of times past to put things in perspective. The advantage I have to reviewing these rules is that I used them A LOT! In fact, I used them almost exclusively until about the early-mid 90s. I don't pretend to be a wargame-rules historian. There are plenty of folks out there that can give a more complete and probably more accurate overview of the history of wargaming and the rules that were developed. My comments are as how I see them or saw them at the time.


Chainmail

Chainmail was the first rule book I bought. Not only that but it was one of the very first gaming items I bought along with some 25mm knights and very early Ral Partha goblins at a store in Chicago called Sutler's Wagon. This was the third edition. I used these rules quite a bit, even up until the 80s where I switched to WRG Ancient rules.

There are three parts to the rules, plus lots of appendices.  The first part is for mass battles. Troops separate out unit types into light (LI), heavy (HI), and armored infantry (AI). They do the same with cavalry. Missile fire is based on general differences in armor. Melee outcomes is based on who is fighting whom. It is easier to kill off troops lower than you but harder to kill off types higher than you. For example, it takes one LI trooper to try to take out another LI trooper, but it takes two LI troopers to take out one HI and has to roll a 6. On the other hand, the HI trooper gets to kill the LI on a 5 or 6. There is also a section on artillery both cannons and catapults. There are rules to cover sieges, and a section on national differences, but these are not all that detailed. An important part of the rules is morale. I found it complicated, or at least time consuming. Troop types are worth different points. First, you have to figure out the number of losses on each side and who inflicted more casualties, etc., etc. and then roll a D6 for a random effect, etc., and then multiply and add various numbers, etc. then you look at the differences between the two sides. The one with the higher points wins the morale test. The amount of difference determines what happens to the loser. Whew! As I recall this is what really slowed the game down, especially when you have an epic-sized game going.

The second part covers man-to-main combat. These are very similar to D&D with types of armor and different weapons causing differences in how well they do against the armor. The difference is that you use a D6. I used them several times for some skirmish battles and they seem to work well.

The third part is a section on jousting. A shield is divided up into several regions. Each jouster aims for a particular point. Depending on where you hit on the shield, you can knock your opponent of his horse. It was a lot of fun and you don't need miniatures to play.

Of the various appendices, there included a fantasy supplement. It contained a bunch of fantasy races and monsters and their stats for the mass combat rules. There were also some magic spells thrown in for good measure.


Tricolor

Shortly after getting started in medieval and fantasy figures, I thought I'd give Napoleonics at try. I found that I really enjoyed painting figures and was reasonably good at it. Napoleonics lured me with all those colorful uniforms. I started off with 25mm, but soon realized that this scale was economically unfeasible. I then turned to 15mm as a reasonable alternative. What I found was that I didn't have anyone to game with. My gaming buddy Mark, was totally into microarmor and had even less interest in playing Napoleonics than fantasy mass battles. Something about not having a whole lot of expendable funds back in high school didn't help either, which I will go into at the end of this discussion.

It is a D6 game. There is usual information on basing, scale, movement, and terrain. Ranges for musket and cannon fire are very important. Small arms fire is resolved using tables that compared number of troops firing with the range of their target. Better troop types got bonuses when firing. Artillery was a relationship between range and caliber of gun. For melee you compared melee factors for both sides. The melee factors  for each was the number of men involved time their Melee Power, which was how effective they were. Militia has low Power, Guards had high Power. The melee resolution chart not only determined the casualties but also the morale results. They had a very large section on differences among national armies. This included overall national characteristics, tables of organization and characteristics in terms of morale and combat effectiveness. About half the book was on these subjects.

The big problem that I with the game was so much the mechanics, but with the number of figures you needed. Once you learned them and played a few times, they were not that difficult to use. These rules were before the time of one-figure-equals-100-men sorts of rules. The rules state that a figure equals twenty men. So, for a French line battalion, one company requires 6 figures, and you need 6 companies to equal a battalion. They then state that you need three battalions to equal a regiment. Nations like Russia and Austria, had even larger regiments. For a high school student, this really added up financially! Also, since I really didn't have anyone to play against, that meant that I had to provide both sides. Yes, I could have used Airfix figures, however, I felt that I would be able to use an entire set due to all the less than desirable poses that you got. I did have a few solo games, dragooning Airfix figures to fill out the ranks of 15mm. I also had one rather epic battle where I used pin heads as infantry and individual staples for cavalry stuck in cardboard bases. That was the swan song of my Napoleonic efforts.

Angriff! and Unit Organizations of WWII

As I said, my friend Mark was really into WW2 microarmor...and in a big way. He sold his N-scale train and converted his layout into a gaming table. I found it harder and harder to get him to play anything but microarmor. He finally gave me the few medieval figurines that he bought but never painted. He astutely pointed out that unlike my fantasy and Napoleonic figures, he could pit five American tanks against five German tanks and have a decent little battle. We started off using an old xeroxed copy of Angriff! that someone at school gave him. It looked like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox. This game turned me into a tread-head.

The thing about these rules is that some things are really simplistic, whereas others are pretty detailed. You probably can guess which is which. For small arms fire, different stands equal different points. A stand of infantry = 1 point. If you have a HMG stand, it equals 3 points. Range is the only only modification. You then throw two dice and you get a number that is then multiplies by your total points. That is how many casualties you inflicted. Firing HE shells is even simpler. If you score a hit you automatically kill a certain number of guys based on the caliber of your gun. Melee is similar but even simpler than Tricolor. Barrages, which are not part of the basic rules, is based off of a template that you lay over the area you want to shell. You roll die to see where the shells land, and then consult a table regarding casualties. What is detailed, and to a nerdy teenager the most important aspect of the game, is armored combat. Guns have different percentages to hit based on ranges, and how much penetration they do in millimeters at that range. Tanks and other armored vehicles have all the armor values for every spot on the vehicle, in millimeters. Front, side, top: you name it, its covered. Some kids memorized baseball stats, we memorized armor values and gun penetrations. I'm sure Freud would have had something to say about all this, but we won't go there. You would think that this would really bog the game down, but it didn't. If your armies have the same tanks and weapons game after game, eventually most of the stats get committed to memory.

We had many an epic battle using these rules, but around the early 80s, Mark and I had drifted off onto different pathways of life and I had found new people to game with. I switched over to a set of rules called Jagdpanzer that took a more abstract approach to armored combat. I didn't know it, but the days of using actual armor and penetration values was about over.

Mark and I finally bought our own copies of Angriff! and we found that they had TO&Es a the back of the book (missing from our xerox copies). At the same time,  I started buying a magazine called Wargamer's Digest. The editor, Gene McCoy was a WW2 vet. It was a great magazine for its time. He covered everything and anything. He did a number of issues on WW2 units of organization as well as tactics. We realized that the TO&Es found in Angriff! did not square with those of Wargamer's Digest. In turn, the Avalon Hill games Panzer Blitz and Panzer Leader also had TO & E data. Who was right? I then found Unit Organizations of World War II. That pushed us over the edge. We then went from rivet counters to TO&E wonks. Our games were always at 1:1 scale, but now we were at the point of being obsessive about it. Each of our squares of infantry became squads. We even marked who had the submachine guns, pistols, etc. We constantly discussed, argued, debated unit organizations and equipment. All of armies were fully manned and properly equipped down to the last rifle team. It covered all of the major combatants and how they changed over time.

This book is a precursor to to the various books that Flames of War now put out. It is not nearly as detailed as what we see today. There is also very little discussion of the organizations. No discussion meant that we took the charts literally. If the book said a platoon had 5 tanks of a certain type, that is what we used. If each US armored infantry squad had only one bazooka, than that's all it had. This is despite the narrative of Mr. McCoy. At the time, this book really helped us to at least feel like we were gaming reality rather than throwing together a bunch of weapons and battling it out. Our platoons maneuvered and operated as units; we didn't intermingle different weapons. There were no panzer divisions made up of King Tigers. We really stuck by the organizations.

I tried to come up with some sort of thoughtful conclusion, but couldn't really think of one. As I re-read them, I found that they were still pretty good rules. Granted, I can't comment on the evolution of Napoleonic rules, but I've used or read enough modern rules for both Ancients and WW2 and I think these old guys still hold up. If nothing else, gone are the days of when you bought a set of rules, all you got were the rules and not a lot of pretty, colored pictures, 3D graphical diagrams, and fancy type all bundled in a hard bound book. You can't beat a $5 rule book even at 70s prices.

Sci-Fi Building from Paper Mache Packaging

I started this project back in November, and now finally I am finally finished. I was going to do a series of work-in-progress posts, but then decided to post it all at once. I thought I had took some pictures of my progress from the very beginning, but I can't to find their files, or maybe I thought I had took them, but didn't.

We seem to keep a lot of those paper mache packing containers. I am not sure why we do. I blame my wife, who can't seem to throw anything out. I don't really know what they are officially called, but those are the things that a lot of electronic devices are stuck into to keep them from banging around and getting damaged. The one I picked jumped out at me as a good candidate. It looked like a dwelling or research station made of some sort of earthen structure such as adobe. Maybe its a homestead on a backwater planet.

Prepping the Container
I sealed the container, both the exterior (the side that will be seen) and the interior, with Mod Podge. I suppose I could have used watered down PVC glue but I wanted to bring out my Inner Hippie. Plus, its fairly cheap and is consistent in viscosity. It never warped the paper mache, made it stronger, and sealed it up nicely for later painting.

Making a Base
I bought some cheap, thin, acrylic sheets at Lowes and cut a base. I cut it to size so it just fit the container. I then sanded it so that glue would take to it. The container was strong enough that I didn't need to fill it with water putty like I had done with the previous sci-fi dwelling I made. I glued the container to the base with some superglue gel.

Adding the Windows, Doors and Decorative Do-Dads
I used the mold for my previous sci-fi building to make more doors. The windows were made from piece of plastic embroidery mesh. This time, I used square styrene strips to frame the windows. They looked a lot nicer.

Front of building before painting

 I really wanted a skylight, but didn't want to just put another flat, framed window on the roof.  Embroidery mesh is a pretty soft plastic--a lot like 1/72 scale plastic miniatures. I cut out a piece and kept bending it to a point were it would not flex back all the way into its original flattened state. I built a frame out of styrene and fit the mesh into the frame. The natural tendency of wanting to go back to a more flat shape make it lock into the frame and was held there by adding superglue. The sides were kind of tricky. They don't look that nice, but they will do.

Close up of skylight

I then added a bunch of do-dads. I added some vents from The Source, some soda bottle caps for air conditioning units, and one or two other items to decrease the empty spaces around the structure.

Back of building

Due to the folds and crenulations on the surface of the container, some of the doors and windows had really obvious gaps between them and the walls. I filled them in using glue-soaked tissue paper.The last thing I did before painting it was to put some acrylic pumice texture gel on the small part of the base that was exposed. I thought about leaving it as is, but it was already frosted.


Painting
I primed it with gesso. I don't like using gesso on figures, but I figured it would work well on a building like this. Plus I have a huge bottle of the stuff and I don't want to waste it.

 Thinking about it, I could have left the structure unpainted in is natural color, which was a light brown, but I was not sure what color I wanted it to be. Well, I ended up painted it a light brown that pretty much matched its original color! I then washed the whole thing in my patented wash of Future floor wax (or whatever its now called) and black india ink. To reduce the shine, I then finished it with a clear flat.


 The last step was to add a little extra touch to the skylight: glass. I made the glass of the skylight using this stuff from Testors that is for gluing canopies to aircraft models.

Applying Testors glass making glue to the skylight with brush

Finished Building
Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. The front door and two of the windows look a little wonky, but its fine for gaming purposes. After I had put in a number of windows, it seemed to need two more. Being lazy, I made another mold using one of the windows that was already glued to the building. It turned out OK, but didn't have the depth that the actual embroidery mesh had. 

Front

Right side

Left side and rear

A Grey Alien pays a call

X-Wing Miniatures Game

I've started playing Fantasy Flight Games' X-Wing Miniatures Game with Will. I've had a few games so far and I really enjoy it. It looks daunting when you look at all the cards and stats, but is very easy to pick up. Poor Will, I've beaten him three times already!  The mechanics has a lot of potential to be turned into a modern jet combat game.

Boat Comparisons

I am in the process of cleaning my workbench. Its gotten to the point where I work off of about a 3 inch space in front of me. I want to get it clean before half of my family returns from China. Then, I will have no time to do it as the Little Boss Man will demand much of my time.

What does this have to do with boats? While cleaning, I found three in various stages of completion, so I thought I'd take a picture of them before I put them somewhere out of harms way. All three are 6mm-1/285 scale and will be used for my Gambusia campaign.

Top: In-shore patrol craft; Middle: Soviet BK1125 River monitor; Bottom: SOC-R assault craft

The patrol boat looks enormous next to the other two. However, the SOC-R is just larger than the rubber boat that is on the back of the patrol boat, so it seems to be in scale.  When I stick a 6mm infantry man onto the patrol boat, he seems to fit right. The Soviet river monitor is the one that seems out of scale. I am pretty sure I did the math correctly when I did the scaling. It could be that those Soviet river monitors were just not that big.

The inshore patrol boat was featured in an early series of postings, so I am not going to comment on that.  I decided that the monitor needed some updating. I cut off the machine gun turrets that were in front of the 76mm tank turret, on top of the pilot house, and aft. The detail on them wasn't all that much. I added a tripod mast with two radar mounts. Where the pilot house machine gun turret was, I added an electro-opitic system. In the rear, I scratch built a M2-3 turret with two 25mm AA guns. It didn't turn out very well as it is larger than it should be. Originally, I tried to make it out of paper, but that ended in complete failure. The guns are too thick as well. These turrets, common on smaller Soviet ships from the 50s to the 70s, were very small. Only a single gunner could fit in them. I am thinking about adding railings around the monitor, but it depends how motivated I am.

The SOC-R assault craft is made by P.T. Dockyard. I have been eying the various small ships that he has to offer for quite awhile. In addition to some 1/700 missile boats, I got two SOC-R river assault crafts that are 1/300 scale. They are cast in white resin. It was very difficult to remove the flash successfully from the guns. I had to replace the barrel of one of the forward mini-guns with a thin rod, and will have to do the same for one of the bow machine guns. I added two antennae made out of plastic filament in the back. Despite these issues, I am pretty happy with it. I will mount it onto a thin base. I modified a GHQ WWII US artilleryman to pilot the boat. The assault craft will be part of the small Southern Chalupastan river fleet unlike the large patrol boat and river monitor, which belongs to Northern Chalupistan.

A Month of Spending Foolishly

I could not resist spending this month. Most of my spending was on rules or game related books.

First off, I ordered the Kindle version of The Wargaming Compendium by Henry Hyde. It think it is about $40 hard cover. I didn't really feel like paying that much, so I got the Kindle version. It is well worth the money. It is an excellent book, particularly if you are starting out. I really enjoyed his style of writing. It was relaxed, almost conversational. If I were starting out, I would seriously invest in the paper version. Only two criticisms. His history of wargames is good, but based on other other history of wargames articles, I think there were some things he left out. Second, the book just ends abruptly. I might have missed it, but I would have liked a conclusion.

Second set of purchases were some modern air rules. The first one is Bandits! 2 by David Redpath.

Bandits! 2 by David Redpath

My interest in them came out of several interesting AARs that he wrote in SOTCW's journal, The Journal. I am always on the lookout for air combat rules that are not too complex and these sounded like they were. Ordering them was sort of a pain in the you-know-where. They are only sold on Ebay, which not my favorite place to shop. They are published by Vandering Publications, the same company that put out Shipwreck! I had to do several emailings in order to finally get them; the issues had more to do with the publisher than the author. This is definitely a don't judge a book by its cover sort of rule set. It comes bound in one of those plastic binder things that students use for book report covers. I have yet to use them (big shocker there!) but they have some interesting ideas, particularly what the author calls "situational awareness." Its what allows each side to perform various actions. The author has a blog, but has yet to post on it.

The other rule set is Flames Above the Falklands, which is part of the Wings At War series produced by Tumbling Dice miniatures.

Flames Above the Falklands.

 I thought I had ordered the Vietnam rules, but I got these. They come with a bunch of Tumbling Dice's Vapor Trails 1/600 scale aircraft, which is a nice touch. Again, I have not tried them. There are some aspects of the rules that are not clear to me, but I will refrain from any more judgement until I give them a try. There is a website for the rule series, but it lacks a FAQ section.

Are you still with me? I'm not done yet!

Next, I ordered two pdf rules. First, Modern Naval Conflicts by Naval Warfare Simulations.

I had never heard of this company/organization, but they were having a sale on these rules, so I couldn't pass it up. I got the main rules along with the 1980s expansion, which covers the Falklands War. I have not had a chance to read them in detail, but they seem on the order of Harpoon in complexity.

Next, is 5150: Star Navy by 2 Hour Games.

I have not time to even read them, but the reviews of them sound good. I wanted something to go with my 15mm sci-fi stuff.

The last book I got was The Solo Wargaming Guide by William Silvester.

Its a small book, but it has a lot of good ideas. I especially liked his ideas on how to transfer your campaign map onto the gaming table.

Last, but not least, some fire power for LEGO minifigures:

 

An assortment of weaponry as well as some stands from BrickArms. I'm thinking of having a free for all battle royale sometime in the future, provided my daughter lets me use her minifigures.