A Break From Terrain

I am getting pretty close to the amount of terrain I need for the first battle of my campaign. About the only thing left is some fields of crops, need to check that I have enough paved road segments, and a truck stop, which is the biggie.

As I am figuring out how to make the truck stop, I decided to work on some odds and ends. First up, solving the problem of the tipping Caribou transport plane. I should have gone with my gut and made a clear, removable peg that served to hold the back end up, but NO-O-O!!! I had to try to cut out the back part of the plane to make it lighter. The result: EPIC FAIL!

Well, that looks like crap.

I drilled a bunch of holes, one of which pushed the sides of the plane out. After three holes, I decided this wasn't going to work. I globbed some nasty model putty in hopes that it will harden well. I still have to put at least one more layer on in the morning. I am hoping that the putty will be hard enough to drill a small hole for a peg.

After that waste of about one and a half hours, I wanted to feel like I accomplished something this evening, so I went back to a project I started in 2009, but never finished. This was improving the hold of GHQ's turrets to the hulls on their Chinese Type 63 tanks. This was more of a pertinent project because the Type 63s will be used in the first battle. Back in 2009, I used rare-earth magnets, but I was burnt out from just making big holes with large pin vises. Instead I used some really tiny nails to do the job.

Tiny nail resting comfortably on a piece of carpet

I only had to drill small holes in the bottom of the turret and on the body of the tank. The flat head of the nail will hold the turret in place:

It was a little work to make sure that the nail was reasonably perpendicular to the bottom plane of the turret, but they all seemed to work out. The turrets rotate smoothly.

The left and center have the nails for pins, the right has a magnet

This was a lot less work than the magnets. My only concern is that someone might try yanking off the turret, which may pull nail out. Time will tell. More importantly, it soothed my soul after the Caribou disaster.

Aircraft Issues

I recently discovered Amphibmods. Its a small company that makes microscale landing craft, riverine combat ships, and aircraft. They have a small, but useful selection of military transport planes that are in metal and very inexpensive! I got some C-7 Caribou. The Caribou are solid metal. I decided to build them with the landing gear down. Unfortunately, It finished up looking like this:

Because it is solid, I couldn't put any weights in its nose. There were several suggestions from the 6mm Facebook group to dig out the metal at the tail end and fill the spaces with putty. I think I would have a major and messy job on my hands if I did that. It is not a top priority to finish it, so I will dwell on this problem while working on other things.

Bought the Farm(s)

I've had a little time at night to continue working on terrain pieces. This latest work has been on building farms. I scoured the web looking for what a typical non-Western farm looks like. In the US, Canada and Europe, there are typical farm buildings like a barn, but outside of these regions, all bets are off. I just decided to create what my own farms having gotten nowhere on the internet.

This is the one I finished last night:

I am particularly proud of the stairs. It took me almost as long to make those as the rest of the farm complex:

Here is one I made about a year ago:

I think my recent farm is a great improvement. It was a lot easier to use thin cardboard to make walls, and they look nicer, too. The polymer clay was very difficult to make them.

Why walled farms? Why not? I could probably also use them for walled parts of town.

Thinking About Activation

I've gotten some time to work on things and am currently working on some farm pieces. I should have a post on these maybe next week when I return from vacation.

For quite some time, I have been mulling over methods of activation. Lately, the idea of strict I go/you go games have repulsed me at a visceral level (or maybe it's just my body is still reacting to not having a gall bladder). I've been exploring the various means of activation and how they might fit into a solo game. Here are some in no particular order of preference. I'm sure you all familiar with most.

Alternate Activation
It's been called the new IGOUGO system. Each side takes turns activating a single unit.

Chit System
IGOUGO but each side gets a certain number of chits representing how many units can be activated.  Can be a fixed number or randomized like DBA.

Random Cards
There are a whole bunch of rules that use card activation, I Ain't Been Shot Mum is an example of card activation. For my purposes, each unit, probably consisting of a company gets a card. You mix up the cards and pull out a card. That is the unit that activates. Now, once you've activated a unit, there are probably a number of ways to decide who does what within the unit. The issue I see is that might be too random at a level above skirmish. There is no sense of coordination among units. Combat Cards is another set of card-activated rules. I reviewed this set of rules in a while back.

Warmaster/Cold War Commander
Its been awhile since I've read through the rules, but I like the ability to activate a unit more than one time with the fear of command fail ending the whole shebang.

Infinity the Game/Iron Cross
Once again, TheEvileMonkeigh at Delta Vector has an excellent game review, this time of Infinity. I downloaded them, but never really looked at them. They have a system that seems to allow for a great deal of decision making depending on how you want to spend your points. As far as I can tell from thereviews, the new WWII rules Iron Cross uses a very similar system, which additionally allows for the opponent to use their points to react to any actions.

One of the issues with all of these is how to translate them into solo gaming. I think some will work better than others. Would a hybrid syem be the way to go? For example,  I would use the Infinity mechanism whereas the AI would randomly drawn cards.

Active April to Slow May

Not much as been happening hobby-wise since the Nerd Fest convention. Between finishing school and home life, I've very little other than prime some figures. Most of what I've been doing is cleaning. I've probably mentioned this before, but my wife ordered a major cleaning frenzy. We have too much junk. Of course, when I tell her I am taking this or that to the Salvation Army, I get from her, "No-no-no! We need to keep that!" Ugh! Most of the stuff is either junk she bought at a garage sale, or clothes (her's, my daughter's, or my son's). One moment its get rid of it all, the next is must not part it. We have a big community next Saturday and I hope we can sell of a bunch of stuff.

I was pretty good about spending up to about the last two, or three weeks ago. Here's a few things I got. I apologize for the crappy pictures. Adobe Photoshop spoiled me. MS Paint is worthless.

First up, Battle Cry board game.

I've read so many things through other blogs about this system. My gaming buddy Will, was going to hold a nano-convention at this house this weekend, and I thought that would be a good excuse to buy it. A friend of his had some old SPI games that I was itching to play again, but it fell through for this weekend. At least this gives me time to learn how to play it.

Next, The Kaiser's Battlefleet: German Capital Ships 1871-1918 by Aidan Dodson.

I've always like ship drawings and lately, I've been building up a library of these various sorts of books. I had a lot of Amazon.com points on my credit card, so I thought, why not? The drawings are a little small, so they lack a lot of the detail such as ship's boats. For ship making purposes, that is a help, What it has is fewer of are the top views. Otherwise, it looks like a good book.

Third, is The Fred Jane Naval War Game (1906) including the Royal Navy's Wargaming Rules (1921).

This is one of John Curry's History of Wargaming Project books. This might be another "fun" sort of game to play at Nerd Fest, or Will's gaming convention (if or when he has it). After reading Curry's chapter in the book below, I might also get his reprinting of Fletcher Pratt's rules. I have a copy, but there is some expanded material based on Pratt's and others' unpublished notes concerning the game.

Last is Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming edited by Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum.

From what I've read so far, its pretty interesting. Being a history buff, the chapters on gaming history are very enlightening. The sections of the book are divided up into specific topics, but its not always clear why a particular chapter is in a particular section. Some of the chapters read a little more like promotions of an author's game. I also noticed that a number of the authors are seem a little condescending when it comes to miniature gaming. Its a little hypocritical to look down on miniature gaming but then essentially confess that Advanced Squad Leader and some others are basically miniature games!  Nonetheless, its a good book and worth the read. Its a scholarly publication, but its not as dense as Phillip Sabin's Simulating War, which is a good book but a tougher read.

Nerd Fest: the Convention

Despite the many forces working against me for the last three weeks, I managed to pull off my contribution to Nerd Fest 2016. I ran one game. I only had two participants, but there were a number of onlookers that stopped by. Part of the problem was that there were few in attendance this year. They booked it too late in the semester and got a weekend with other, more "official" events going on.

I arrived on time, but it took me a while to set up. I had a few more unit cards that I had to print off in addition to unpacking the armies. The game didn't get going until about 2:00.

I set up the game in one of our biology labs. We have nice big tables, in fact, they are probably a little too big. I wrote on the chalkboard the rules, which was often ignored by both me and the players.

To be read from right to left

Several students who stopped by took a look and said, "it looks too complicated." But a student named Chad, and a friend of his (I can't remember his name) decided to give it a go. Chad's friend had played Warhammer 40K, so his was both interested and familiar miniatures games. This helped him a lot during the game.

The Battle

Once again, it was Medieval Humans and Dwarves vs. Human Barbarians and Orcs. I did use my road of human flesh, which a colleague who popped in said that it was fitting as it lead to the armies of evil. As I said in a previous post, I used Dragon Rampant! with some modifications for big battle, formed units.

Opening moves: 
Both sides slowly slogged along. Units routinely failed their activation rolls. We deviated from the rules that when a unit fails activation, the other sides goes. A lot of deviations from the rules were made throughout the game. The medievals were particularly bad at passing activation rolls.

The barbarian giant sprints out to meet the slow-moving medievals.

Dwarves attempt to maneuver around the farm. Orc chariot off to attack.

View from the Orc's side.

Orcs progressing nicely.

The giant leads the barbarian attack.

Medievals slowly moving along.
Knights seem determined to move through the forest.

Armies clash:
On the one side, the barbarians with their mighty giant smack into the medieval spearmen that had advanced past the knights. I added a bonus for flank attacks which was a little too powerful.

BAM! 

The knights were still trying to negotiate the forest while their foot brethren took a beating.

Meanwhile, the Orc chariot, way out ahead of the rest of the Orc units, plows into one of the Dwarf units that had finally maneuvered around the farm.

Orc suicide chariot doing a lot of damage before
second Dwarf warrior unit could arrive.

The thick of battle:
The knights finally get their act together. One unit finally gets into the battle and attacks the giant. At the same time, the medieval archers moved up and ran off one of the units of barbarian skirmishers. Chad was overly concerned about these skirmishers even when his friend showed him their stats. His undue attention to them, kept his archers from supporting his spearmen.

Both sides bring in support to the ensuing melee.

Over by the road of flesh, a second clash between the medievals and barbarians occurred. With it was the first use of magic. Each side had two magic-users. Each magic-user was allowed two spells that they picked randomly.

Second melee between knights and barbarians.

Chad's wizard cast a Sudden Retreat spell that caused the barbarian warriors to turn around and run. Chad had hoped that his knights could pursue and hit them from behind, but on his next turn to move, his knights failed to activate. The barbarians managed to shake off the spell and turn around to face the knights. Then, it was the babarians' turn at magic. Just as the knights caught up the the barbarians, their shaman cast the dreaded Weapons to Noodles spell that turned the knights' weapons ineffective for two turns!

Slingers in action

Barbarian skirmishers ran down the road o' flesh and started pelting the knights in support of the warriors. A unit of Dwarf crossbows were down the road but were still out of range of the skirmishers.

The Dwarves managed to destroy the Orc chariot, and after some fancy maneuvering, the other Dwarf warrior unit hooked up. But two Orc warbands were now approaching. Another Orc warband and a unit of archers were close behind.

Dwarves starting to get their act together. The high command
seems very content to stay as far away from the action as possible

Things are about to get down and dirty between the Orcs and Dwarves.

The end:
At the one end of the table, the giant went down, but he took the spearmen more-or-less with him. The barbarian shaman threw a healing spell on the warrior unit and it was back up to almost full strength. The battle in the middle of the table was going in favor of the barbarians. Maybe Chad had good reason to fear the skirmishers. The second unit of knights were starting to get hurt despite having Prince Valiant in their midst. The Dwarves couldn't seem to get their crossbows up to aid the knights. Things could have gone either way at the other end of the table between the Dwarves and the Orcs, but one Dwarf unit was hurt due to the chariot battle, and there were two more units of Orcs that were moving toward the scene. Chad called it quits on the count that Nerd Fest had officially finished a half hour ago.

Post-Game Analysis
About half way through the game, I realized that we weren't testing for courage. I brought it up, but the two opponents seemed content to ignore it. I didn't feel like making a fuss over it. I think things would have gone differently for both sides if courage tests had been used. Also, I need to re-read the rules with regards to units of one, i.e., heroes. They seemed awfully tough. I am not sure if we were using them right. So often the case: you can read the rules a million times, but you don't know how they really work until you play them.

Unfortunately, Chad didn't really know what he was doing (he admitted that). His friend, on the other hand, figured out the stats on the cards and knew how to use them to his advantage. Both players said they had fun. That was the main thing. They even thought it would be cool to start a wargaming club. I won't hold my breath, but who knows? I am think of running two games next year. One will be another fantasy battle, and the other will be a bug hunt using my 15mm sci-fi troopers and xenos.

Now, I can get back to my moderns.

Nerd Fest: the Road to Hell

This didn't work very well...

Ew-w-w!

...unless the battle takes place at the 9th level of Hell and this is the road leading to it is made of Caucasian human flesh!

Should I still use it and pretend nothing is wrong with it?