Chaplin Heights or what to do when you hope for a bang and get a whimper instead

Last weekend it was finally upon us – a first, long overdue, game of 2018. As you can perhaps judge from the previous posts I was quite chuffed with the terrain, while the scenario looked (on paper at least) as the most interesting of the bunch in “Heartland” booklet… in other words I was really looking forward to it. For the game itself I decided to step back into GM role and let L. and H. duke it out while I took care of the rules and book-keeping.

While Chaplin Heights scenario gives the initial impression of being quite complex, if you study the setup it’s really pretty simple. Whoever controls majority of the seven heighs at the end of the game is the winner. Union side (that would be L.’s command) controls four of them at the start of the game, but the federal troops are pretty green. Their initial deployment is also somewhat disconcerning. Rebels on the other hand are poised for assault and get a reinforcement on Union right flank sometime after turn 3, so they have all the incentive in the world to be the agressive party at least at the outset of the game.

Both L. and H. quickly recognized those facts after inspection of the field and their lines. L. was warned in general terms about possible threat to his left flank and would be initially preoccupied with the challenge of sorting out the somewhat awkward lineup of his troops. Therefore it was hardly surprising that he assumed defensive posture to begin with. H. on the other hand decided to keep things simple – “There is the enemy, now go and kill ‘em!” seemed to be the inderlying spirit of the orders he issued at the start of the game.

Initial positions of the troops are shown in previous post, so I won’t be covering that again.

The game lasted all of three rounds. In that time, the rebels moved against enemy line, all Confederate units that were able to, did try to charge in second round… and all of them failed to get into contact. In third (and as it turned out final) round the Union line tried its damdest to shoot the rebels in front of them into pieces. L. had pretty decent return on his dice rolls, H. didn’t. All things added together, it was pretty clear that the game stalled and it would take time for H. to recover from this sharp rebuff. By that time we’ve been at it for more than three hours and I’ve made an executive decision to call it a day.

Situation at end of round three. The assault on southern right flank never got any momentum, with all regiments failing to get into contact. 6th Tennessee is in serious trouble – “Falter” status makes it unable to move, while 105th Ohio in front of it pours led into it. 6th Tennessee’s sister regiment, 9th Tennessee is in full retreat. The inexperienced 41st Georgia stands still and exchanges salvos with 123rd Illionis.  On the other side of stone wall, things don’t look much better for Donelson’s brigade. 16th Tennessee, is receiving a sharp lesson about the consequences of getting in effective range of rifled muskets even though you’re deployed in skirmish line.

Meanwhile, Steward’s brigade is trying to get out of the woods…

…and Jones’ troops are on their way toward a meeting with destiny (or at least Union brigade under colonel Harris’ command) that will never take place.

Musings after the battle

Perhaps not much of a battle, but a lot of musings nevertheless. First of all – why did I decide to call it quits when I did? After all, nothing was decided by that moment and who knows, maybe the rebels would recover? The answer is simple – time! Three rounds plus a quick and dirty rules walkthrough still required three and a half hours to complete. “Knowing my customers”, I knew that we had maximum of one more hour of playtime before the guys would leave for home and we would not achieve anything in that time. So, chances were that that final hour would be much more enjoyable if we spend it on a chat about the game and the rules… which we did!

In more general terms, let me put it bluntly – “Guns at Gettysburg” is not a quick ruleset to play, especially with players who are unfamiliar with it. And the fact that those 6mm minis can be quite fiddly to handle doesn’t help speeding things up. Those two statements bring me neatly to a conclusion I have arrived to while observing last Saturday’s game – with somewhat heavy heart I think I will have to accept the fact that large set piece battles are, at least under current conditions, not feasable as multi-player games for me. At least not with “Guns at Gettysburg”.

Please note however that I say ‘multi-player games’. So stay tuned, because we are not done with Chaplin Heights and “Guns at Gettysburg” just yet!

Chaplin Hills scenario–lull before the battle

Two days ago I was so proud of myself – ready with everything, all I needed to do was to deploy the troops on the table on the day of the battle. How hard could it be, right?

Well… Murphy was listening to my thoughts and decided to laugh in my face until morning of the battle. That would some two hours ago.

As soon as I deployed Confederate battery on their right flank, I realized that something was off with terrain setup. The battery was totally out of range, or more precisely, the hill it was deployed on was some 20cm too far back in relation with remaining terrain features. It was actually easy to explain and I had a feeling this would be an issue; my tiles are 30 x 30 cm, but the terrain map in this particular scenario is somewhat wierdly compressed in ‘depth’. Alright, time emergency adjustment – make necessary adjustments by moving some stuff forward. Problem – my tiles are still 30 x 30 cm, I needed to move stuff forward only 20 cm. Solution – demark Confederate map border with piece of red thread. Sometimes you really need to keep it simple.

Next issue appeared while deploying Union troops. As it turns out, I misread orders of battles and 4th Kentucky mixed battery turned into an infantry regiment! Problem – somewhat to my surprise, I didn’t have enough Union artillery bases for deployment of yet another 3 gun battery. Solution – scavenge couple of guns from other batteries, H. and L. will have to keep number of pieces in each battery in their heads!

Note to self – paint more Union artillery!

And so, here we are, now ready for battle for real! In case you wonder why only the Union army gets some close up attention in the pictures, the explanation is simple – see where the soffa is located.

Chaplin Hills – preview

Continuing the attempt to bump up post count for 2018!

This time around, preview of terrain for quickly approaching Chaplin Hills game. Still, troops done, terrain done… and 36 hours before actual start of the game! Must be doing something right.

Najewitz Little Farmhouse and barn–ready for action

Seems like every single post I make here starts with “It’s been a while since the last post…”, but this time around it’s really been a while since the last post! Funnily enough not because stuff isn’t moving forward on wargaming front, mind you! The fact is that April, which didn’t even earn a single post here, was quite busy and fruitfull, thank you very much. But “real life” made it impossible for me to make any pictures and let’s face it, what’s the point posting something without pictures, right?

And so, here are finally some pictures, this time around from the finished Najewitz buildings that figured prominently and ‘in natura’ in my previous post. By now, they’re finished, painted and ready for featuring in those Chain of Command games I keep planning for.

Since those buildings are no longer available on the market, I will limit myself to saying that they’re very nice, but also very labour-intensive – couple of hours at the minimum needs to be spent on cleaning them up, glueing, sanding and filling. “Ready for deployment out of the box’ they’re not. But… once finished, they do look quite presentable and I look forward to putting them on the gaming table!

As for their preparation, they’re certainly a learning experience. I’ve cut some corners this time around and, after priming them in grey, I dealt with the interior quickly and efficiently with help of light cream paint in a spray can from Montana’s Gold product line. I’ve recently remembered about the existence of Montana and their spray cans and now I absolutely adore them. For those unfamiliar with the company, they produce spray cans for grafitti paintings. Wide range of colors, matte finish and very durable. Two coats were more than enough to paint the inside of my buildings. If you can find them, give them a try!

Exterior of the houses was painted with more traditional paints and techniques. Humbrol enamels were used on the stone barn. I tried to vary the shades of brown and do some wet-blending, but as usual I’ve chickened out in regard of palette and the end result is pretty uniform and boring. Oh well, maybe next time… The farm house was painted with… acrylic wall paint bought at local DIY shop. Perfect coverage and a whole lot cheaper than stuff from GW, Vallejo and such! I finished everything off with some Vallejo washes, just to dirt things up a bit.

Here are the promised pics, hope you’ll like them!

Najewitz french buildings, second batch–under construction

It’s middle of March, Saturday noon and outside it’s just friggin’ cold! Makes you wonder when this global warming thing arrives to Sweden! Oh well, this yet another cold snap gave me the opportunity to give some attention to another set of Najewitz 20mm buildings.

I’ve put together a the small farm building and stone barn couple of weeks ago. Now, I’ve spent almost three hours on making them presentable with help of “buckets” of filler and sanding sticks. I have to be honest, I am not a very happy bunny right now. Sure, they look quite spiffy, but the fit of individual components leaves a lot to wish for.

Anyway, here they are, ready for primer.

Hills, smaller hills, smallest hills

I am slowly preparing for yet another ACW game based on scenario from Partizan Press’ “Heartland” scenario book and guess what… I need to do some more terrain. I really, really look forward to a game where all I need to do is put together stuff I have and play!

In this particular case, I was in need of seven rather small heights. This made me think – on those occasions I needed some hills, they were sizeable terrain features. Since they were so large, I also made them rather high… at least for 6mm battlefield. And sure those high hills look rather impressive on the “battlefield”, but they also cause some problems – their steep slopes always make my minis act as if they are out on a training session for sled tournament. Up I want them to go… and down they slide again.

So this time around I decided to do things a bit different and make a couple ‘very small’ hills with very gentle slopes. This poised slighly different demands on materials I could use – standard expanded polystyrene sheets wouldn’t work, because you can’t sand them. And my default cheapo choice for bases – 3mm board – would also be a bad choice, because it would not hold the ‘edge’ at the borders. So instead, I had to do it 'standard wargamer style’ – 3mm MDF for bases and extruded polysturene (aka blue or pink stuff) for the hills themselves.

Step 1- MDF bases were cut out of 3mm MDF sheet and beweled with a sharp Stanley knife (here in Sweden they’re called ‘mora kniv’). Keep the knife sharp, watch your fingers and always cut away from your body. Seriously, be very careful when beweling those sheets, you can loose half a finger in a blink of an eye if you’re not carefull.

Step 2 – glue sheet material to the bases and leave for some time under pressure. This time around didn’t use PVA glue, but builder’s mounting glue. Dries in an hour or two, doesn’t seem to warp and my hot wire-cutter didn’t have any problems slicing throuth it as I trimmed off the blue stuff.

Step 3 – after trimming off the polystyrene, it was time to sand. Another health warning here – put on a mask before you start with this step! MDF dust is definitely something you want to avoid breating in and I can’t imagine that ground down polystyrene will do your lungs any wonders!

This was actually the first time I’ve worked with MDF and extruded polystyrene and I have to grudgingly admit that I now understand why these materials are prefered choice for terrain making – you can really shape that stuff into exactly the shape you need. It doesn’t show on the picture above, but the angle on the bevel of the MDF bases are no more than 20 degrees and it will stay that way even if bumped into something. Untreated board sheets just crumble…

Step 4 – paint with brown of your choice. Here I cheated and painted with a mix of brown household acrylic paint, grit, sand and gipsum (something I saw on Youtube and wanted to try out).

Step 5 – flock, leave to dry and presto… gentle hills ready for the gaming table! The thing that worried me a bit was the slenderness of those hills – 3mm MDF and 5mm polystyrene doesn’t amount to much. But I must say that I like what I see. For 6mm games maybe less is more also in regard of elevations on the table!

They’re bringing carts now!???

Well, it would seem so, Saxons have finally figured out that carts and loot fit together as hand in a glove!

Seriously though… one of generic raid scenarios in ‘Dux Britaniarum’ requires three carts of some sort. With this in mind, I’ve had a quick look around for something suitable. Offering from 4Ground was very much to my liking – their cart is made from laser-cut MDF, thus cheap as dirt and shipping it over the pond wouldn’t cost me my shirt neither. Also, those guys at 4Ground seem to be clever chaps and realize that something must pull those carts around. And so, they are kind enough to offer suitable draft oxen minis, sold in pairs.

Don’t remember how long it took for the envelope (yes, envelope, apparently 4Ground took the page from IKEA’s operations manual), but it didn’t take many days before my carts arrived to me. Here’s what I’ve got, in three sets.

First a couple of words about oxen minis. They were all ‘business’, but required some serious cleaning up and putty to cover up some serious holes in the casts. Also, as can be seen in the pictures, heads are separate and the fit isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. Once the heads and bodies were glued together, it became apparent that something had to be done about the gaps around the neck. Lucklily that’s what green stuff is made for.

Carts, on the other hand, could be assembled without any problems. In fact, I glued them together while watching a movie and was done before it was finished. Really simple assembly was made even easier by a nice, easy to understand manual.

The paint job was also a pretty straightforward job. With carts, I started with couple of base coats of burnt umber. Then I proceeded with successively lighter coats of burnt umber and white. I finished with couple of black, brown and green washes.

With oxen, I first found couple of reference pictures of the real things – I was a bit surprised over variety of “cammos” that oxen come in. In the end, I went with dark brown/cream white “ambush scheme”. I’ve also decided to play around with paints and made a very first attempt at wet blending. Not sure how successful I was, but I think I managed “game table” quality. But what do I know, judge for yourselves.

Anyway… I must say that I am quite happy with my first experience of laser-cut MDF and 4Ground. If you need a couple of carts to move your loot quicker around the table, I can recommend this stuff as affordable option.

Timecast latex rubber rivers

Since this article is a ‘pure’ review of a commercial product, let’s start with the mandatory declaration of independence – I am in no way associated nor sponsored by Timecast Models. Thus, this review is an expression of my personal opinion as private consumer and wargamer.

Allright, with these rather official preliminaries completed, let’s get on with it.

Couple of years ago I’ve decided to ‘migrate’ my terrain from GHQ-s styrofoam hexagons to ‘conventional’ DIY terrain boards. Major reason for this move was my wish to simplify the setup and keep as much of it (hills, woods, rivers, ditches, hedhes and so on) as removable, flexible stand-alone pieces.

At the same time, Timecast Models released their roads and rivers system, made out of silicone rubber. That in itself wasn’t anything spectacular, many companies make similar terrain pieces. But two things caught my attention in regard of this particular product range. First, Timecast Models made rivers came in four different widths that could be connected together with dedicated ‘connector’ bits into integrated waterway system. Second, Timecast complemented their product with variety of resin bridges and fords. In other words, their product line struck me immediately as a complete and expandable solution for waterways. And that, ladies and gents, isn’t something one can often say when it comes to wargaming terrain.

My first (and so far only) order included enough straight and meandering river sections of smallest width to provide continous river of about 2 meters. I’ve also ordered all available sets of fords, connecting bits and river bends. Samples of what came in the box are shown below.

As can be seen in the pictures, the rivers and fords are made of brown, flexible rubber-like material. You can easily cut and trim individual pieces with a pair of scissors.

Before painting and flocking, I washed the whole lot in lukewarm water with some dishwasher detergent. Every bit was gently scrubbed with a toothbrush, rinsed in cold water and left to dry. It was probably a bit of an overkill, but better be overly cautious than running into problems later on with some chemical residues left-over from mouldning process messing with the paint.

On with the painting then… I kept things extremly simple here and started with painting the riverbanks with dark-brown acrylic wall paint from Flügger. Water surface was painted with dark-blue acrylic artist’s paint from Amsterdam. I know, I know, not very realistic, but I like my rivers and ponds blue. Next, I tried to add some shine to the water surface with help of blank acrylic varnish, but I can’t say this step had a lot of effect. Finally, I’ve stuck some flock on top of river banks with thinned PVA glue. And that was that.

Couple of comments about painting process. First and foremost – the paint seems to stick to the rubber material used for these terrain pieces… and stays there! This is more than I can say about my silicon roads from Total Battle Miniatures. Yes, you can peel it of if you scratch it forcefully with fingernail or something sharp, but the paint doesn’t peel of on its own if you bend the ‘bands’. That’s a good thing. Second, the flock I’ve glued on with the PVA will probably rub off with time. But that’s no biggie, I’ll just reflock if I feel it’s necessary. Finally, I feel it’s a good ocassion to repeat the advice I keep hammering on this blog – if you value your money, do not use modelling paints for your terrain pieces. Vallejo, Army Painter, Games Workshop, it doesn’t matter which brand you use, their pricing is insane and wasting their product on terrain pieces will cost you a pretty penny. For large terrain pieces, use artist’s paints that come in huge tubes, or better yet, take a trip to your DIY market and find their paint section. They usually sell half litre sample jars that will last you forever, for price of two GW paint pots and carry color ranges that will make all modelling paint ‘systems’ look puny.

Oh yes, one last thing. I’ve included couple of resin bridges that were suitable for those rivers. I still haven’t painted them, but I think it’s only fair to included couple of snapshots of how they fit together with the rest of  the ‘system’.

Overall, my initial impression of Timecast’s river system is very positive. They’re made of what seems to be durable, flexible material. Acrylic paint and varnish sticks well on them and they look the part once painted. Addition of dedicated bridges and possibility to integrate different river widths into single ‘system’ is in my opinion a stroke of genius and was the factor that convinced me to go with this product. So, for the moment at least, I can’t but enthusiastically recommend it to anyone in need of simple but effective representation of rivers on wargaming table.

Hedge test piece

Once again, going where everyone has been before. After watching a couple of tutorials on Youtube, I’ve ordered couple of packs of coconut fibre. Here in Sweden the easiest way (actually the only way, it would seem) to get hold of them is in small packs intended for nest bedding for birds and critters.

OK, you wonder, why should I care? Well, as it turns out, coconut fibre works pretty well as base for hedges of different sizes. And hedges, or to be more specific, boccage hedges is something I will need meters and meters of for my future Chain of Command campaigns.

For this first trial, I just wanted to see how hard it would be to work with the stuff. As it turns out, not hard at all. First, I took a wide lollipop (3cm wide) stick and sawed of the rounded edges. I didn’t bother with painting or flocking it, as it was quick and dirty proof of concept piece. Next, I pinched off a handful of coconut fibre and glued it onto the stick with hot glue. A bit of trimming was necessary to give the lump of fibre appropriately ‘hedgy’ look. Finally, I blasted the thing with spray adheseve and sprinkled the thing with Classic Flock from Noch. Couple of minutes later I repeated the last step, just to give the hedge a bit more ‘bushy’ appearance.

And that’s it, this is the result of this first trial, which by the way took all of 7-8 minutes.

When Wargamer’s Magpie Syndrome pays off

Let’s face it, we all suffer from it to some degree – new period catches our interest, a new range of minis is released, a book or a movie gives us ideas for a cool scenario or campaign. When this happens, small parcels start being delivered by postal service to our doors. I’m sure that vast majority of wargamers is far more disciplined than I am and manages to put contents of those parcels onto wargaming table within a couple of weeks… In my case though, these newly acquired ‘treasures’ are as often as not inspected, admired, put in some box and then doomed to linger, half-forgotten, in my basement storage room. Sometimes for years, sometimes for decades.

Every once in a while though, a small miracle happens and my interest in the period or theme awakens again. As for example, with the WWII skirmish due to ‘Chain of Command’ ruleset. As I started to seriously consider putting together last week’s test scenario, I realized that I really didn’t have much terrain suitable for such game. And then I remembered… sometime in late ninties I’ve bought a shedload of bits and pieces from Gamecraft Miniatures. It took some effort, but after a small archeological excavation I’ve managed to dig up a bag of resin walls and stones. I am pretty sure that a dozen or so resin buildings are hiding somewhere, so the search is not yet complete!

Anyway… getting these walls and stone formations ready for a game seemed like a plausible goal over a period of two weeks I had for preparation of the game. In ‘raw’ form, the terrain pieces are made of off-white resin. So the first step was to wash them in luke-warm water with some detergent. An old-fashioned toothbrush is quite useful for this task.

While the resin lumps were put aside to dry, I started to wonder how to approach this particular painting job. Normally, I start with a coat of Vallejo (or these days Plasticoat) grey primer and then get to work with acrylics. But in this case we’re were talking about stone. In nature, both stone walls and outcrops have a lot of subtle tonal variation, but in a limited color range. Browns or greys shift in saturation due to varied exposure to elements – to get a realistic effect, I would have to do a lot of blending and washes. And I have to admit, after all these years blending with acrylics is still a challenge for me. And so, I arrived to a somewhat surprising decision – this time around I would go ‘old school’ and dust off my old Humbrol enamel pots!

Enamels may be an unfamiliar medium for ‘younger’ wargamers, but they were pretty much all we had before acrylic ‘revolution’ of early ninties. They are not water-solvable and need either white spirits or terpentine to thin (and wash the brushes). They stink (especially some of the older Humbrols can make your nose hair curl in panic as soon as the lid is off) and they take forever to dry. So when acrylics arrived on the scene, enamels didn’t stand a chance. But… this last drawback – long drying time (and I speak about several hours) is under certain circumstances a blessing in disguise. It allows for blending and lifting off techniques (that’s what I call painting and then ‘taking off’ paint from painted surface) that one only can dream of with acrylics.

I started the painting process with an uniform coat of Humbrol 98 for the stone formations and Humbrol 118 for the stone walls. Once this was done, I let the pieces dry over night.

For stone formations I next proceeded with building up several thin layers of 72 and 187 mixed in different ratios. Darker shades were applied all over the stones. I did however try to let the dark base color to get through here and there. That’s where ability to pick off the paint with the brush was very useful. As I successively lightened my mix, I blended it with underlying layers in the areas that would be exposed to sunlight and elements. For final highlights I added some light grey Humbrol 64. Addition of light neutral grey desaturated the mix. It was added to the sharp edges and surfaces that were visibly raised. Normally this step would be done with drybrushing technique. However, since enamels don’t dry in a blink of an eye, I had plenty of time to do proper blending.

I did however switch over to drybrushing once I started working on the walls. Blending of individual stones would simply take too much time. So a heavy drybrush of Humbrol 26 was applied to the raised stone areas with a flat brush, followed by lighter passes of Humbrol 187 and 72 in irregular patterns.

Next, I returned back to the stone formations. I dilutted heavily the dark brown Humbrol 98 with white spirits and used it as a wash, applying it to lower parts and around crevices of stone formation. Once done, I left everything to dry over night.

Last painting step consisted of a wash with Vallejo’s acrylic washes, which I applied on the walls in an attempt to bring out the detail of the walls. I mixed together Black and Oily Earth and applied it all over the walls. Not entirely happy with how this step turned out, but it did add a bit of variation in color tonality.

Once everything was dry, I flocked the terrain bits with turf and foam clumps from Noch/Woodland Scenics.

Overall, I am not entirely happy with how the walls turned out – the reddish tone of Humbrol 118 that I used as base color looks a bit unnatural to me. But from a couple of meters away the walls look perfectly serviceable. On the other hand I am totally delighted over the visual effect of stone formations. The stones have subtle but clearly visible shifts in color, which is exactly what I was after and the dark brown wash that was added in spur of the moment did a lot for creation of ‘natural’ look.

It was a very happy return to an old medium of enamels, which I’ve neglected almost completely over last two decades. For the future, I will have to remember about their special characteristics and positive properties.