Unexpected treat

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of enjoying an unexpected treat – a huge (by our local standards) game of General de Brigade. And no tiny 6mm midgets on that occasion, my dearies!We would be running that game the way wargaming magazines and Warlord Games have learned us over the years is the propper manner – 28mm plastics as long as the eye could reach, and a lot of them too!

Having the pleasure of seeing somewhere near 1500 28mm Napoleonic miniatures may be a common thing for those of you who are lucky enough to live in the land of the Queen and huge wargaming clubs, but let me tell you – here in southern Sweden it’s a rare sight indeed. My hat is definitely off for D., whos collection provided lion share of the figures on the table – very well done indeed, mate!

The game

Allright, so what about the game then? Well… I’m actually still trying to wrap my head around it. If I understand things correctly we run one of scenarios from Caliver Books’ latest scenario book for General de Brigade, dealing with 1813. The one we picked had rather traditional format – two long lines of infantry and artillery opposing each other, the village in the middle provided the major objective. Prussians apparently had some beer in local beer house and Frenchies, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to appreciate the idea of Germans having good time and and decided to crash the party. And yes, it would be one of those ‘hammer to the teeth’ affairs where attackers would rush into defenders along entire line and hope of the best.

Over next four or so hours, we managed to play grand total of five, maybe six rounds. I must admit that being busy trying to shove in as many Frenchmen into the village in the middle, I didn’t pay much attention to what happened on my flanks. Things seemed to go rather well on my left. On my right, I did manage to observe that my fellow comrade in arms had rather dismal luck with his dice rolls and failed to make any impression on Prussian defensive line.

Yours truly tried his best to keep some sort of order among French columns marching toward the village. These columns, consisting of mainly second line troops constantly blasted by artillery batteries supporting two German Jaeger battalions parked in the village and having no intention sharing that beer, had a devil of a time. By round three I managed to reach the edge of the village, but once there, my assault pretty much stalled. By round five one of my battalion routed of the table, while the two battalions that managed to reach the objective intact were repulsed, with some losses. Prussians simply refused to be dislodged from their position. With just under an hour remaining of the playing time, I did the thing I hate being done to myself – I declared that since we wouldn’t be making any headway in remaining time, we may just as well quit for the day.

Musings after the battle

First of all, thanks again to the guys based in Lund for letting me participate in their game! Visual aspect of well-painted 28mm Napoleonic miniatures deployed en massé on a large table is something every wargamer should experience at least once.

Having said that… Damn, General de Brigade is reaaaaaly slow and ponderous game system. In our game, we had three players a side and things should have moved along at a decent speed, but the average time to complete one turn was still somewhere around 30 minutes. I honestly fail to see how, using this ruleset, one can complete a scenario of decent size in a single gaming session. This in itself doesn’t mean that BdeB is a bad ruleset, but I’m starting to wonder if I can use it for purely practical reasons. Say whatever you want about ‘Black Powder’, but that thing at least moves along at decent pace.

FOr no reason whatsoever

I think that given enough time, every wargamer jumps into a period or game system because this or that miniature range is just “so good”! I’ve been there a couple of times myself. But… how many of you have started a new project because of terrain, or to be more specific, paper buildings?!

Allright, perhaps ‘starting a new project’ is a bit of an overstatement, so far we’re talking about a single finished item and as we all know, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. But let’s start from the beginning. I am a regular visitor at Wargames Vault. I’m sure most wargamers are familiar with it and if you’re not, have a look. Just don’t blame me for the money you’ll spend there afterward! A lot of useful stuff can be found there – rulesets, magazines, counter and paper terrain. In that last department, a man with name Dave Graffam has published a whole shedload of very, very impressive buildings. The only problem is that they are intended for fantasy or middle ages. OK, if you squint, they’ll probably can be used for renaissance too. In any case, not really my cup of tea. But nonetheless, something about them caught my eye and when they were on sale couple of months ago , I could not resist the temptation. I grabbed a bunch of them ‘just because’ with no real expectation of doing anything with them in forseeable future.

Couple of weeks ago I found myself feelig quite pleased over the fact that I have finished my Saxon warband for Dux Britaniarum. At the same time, I was for the moment quite fed up with painting minis. I needed to change gears. I then remembered that bunch of PDF-s on my harddrive and decided to take a closer look at them. Well, let me tell you – Dave Graffam has gained an instant fan-boy about a minute after I opened first file. A lot of work has been put into these buildings and the components look beatiful already on the screen. But what really impressed me was the fact that many of PDF-s have so called layers – this allows you to change textures, add and remove details and decide where the door and windows are placed.

I decided to give one of the more complex buildings a try and printed out components for Willow Brook Inn – sixteen sheets of paper, two of them are for the base, four for very basic “cubes” intended to act as supporting components hidden inside the structure and adding sturdiness to the whole thing. Once all the sheets were printed, I mounted the base on 5mm foamcore sheet. Remaining sheets were mounted with help of spray glue in rattle can on 300 grams black cardboard. It’s not necessary, but for me normal 80 gram is just too flimsy for this type of projects.

Once everything was dry and set, the next step consisted of a looot of cutting and glueing. After all, it’s a paper building. The whole thing took me about nine hours to finish with no problems encountered along the way. I strongly advise anyone meaning to give these buildings a shot to follow the instructions and advice of the creator, which can be found in a manual included with this building. I am not complete newbie when it comes to paper buildnings, but some of Mr. Graffam’s advice was both new and quite useful for me while working with this project.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the end result. The first thing that strikes one once the the buildning is completed is its size – it is a substantial construction with large footprint on gaming table! And there is a lot of potential for improvements if one wishes to spend some TLC on it – beams could be replaced with balsa strips, the roof could be textured or covered with your favourite material for thatched roof, window shutters could be added, doors replaced… But even ‘straight out of the box’, this is a very beautiful terrain piece.

Paradoxically enough, the fact that I really enjoyed putting this thing together has created a bit of a problem for me. The simple fact is that I don’t have any use for it or for the remainder of this product range! That I had to use minis of gladiators for size comparison is perhaps the best proof of that fact. But I would love to build some more of them, maybe even create a complete town setting with them. And so, just like any ‘proper’ wargamer would, I’ve now started to look for rulesets and miniatures that could allow me to use it (and its ‘siblings’) in a game. If you have any helpful suggestions, let me know in the comments!

Lol… New miniature ranges have triggered this reaction with me often enough, but paper buildings? Now, that’s a first!