Digging in

Right, it's been a busy week, but I've shaken off the cold and taken a break from work for a while to crack on with some wargames terrain pieces.

I intend to fight the final battle of the VBCW Bury St. Edmunds campaign, and looked over the army lists for this hypothetical period. One option defenders may chose are trenches for a team or section. They can be deployed as part of the scenario set-up or chosen as a support option from the lists. Either way, I realized I didn't have any trench pieces for this (or any other) scale - so I had jolly well better make some!

I began with a basic shallow box made from craft sticks and 'tongue depressors.' Gluing them to a card base, I made a series of triangular pieces from corrugated card and glued them close together to form the foundations for the sloping sides of the earthwork. Lengths of cartridge paper glued along this made the slope itself. I used craft glue for the most part, holding it in place with blobs of hot glue to save having to pin them whilst they dried. The slopes were then smeared with spackle, allowed to dry then smeared with PVA and scattered with sand. The photos show this stage just before and after.

Pretty simple, but effective and light weight. The next stage will be to fit some slim upright pieces of card at intervals to represent bracing along the wooden trench sides, then apply the paint.

Hors de combat

My wife and I had a great time at Cleveland Concoction SF/fantasy convention last weekend. We met old friends and made new, and the several panels we were on or attended were excellent. The trouble is, someone amongst the large crowd had a cold and 'shared the wealth.' I've had a stinker of a head cold for the past four days.

So, since my streaming eyes and nose prevents me from doing any close-up modeling work, I might just turn to a game tomorrow, perhaps the last in the VBCW mini-campaign. I'll see how I feel.

Have a great weekend.

Victory Without Quarter trial run

Having a bit of spare time this afternoon, I decided to try out the Victory Without Quarter ECW rules in a solo game to see how they run with my Pendraken 10mm figures.

Because it's a try-out there's not much finesse involved here. It's a case of lining up both sides and having at it. Lacking casualty markers and such I used poker chips, blue being hits, red being casualties, and yellow appropriately enough marking shaken units. So, on with the action, where fervent Royalist Sir George Mountebank challenges Puritan General Temperance-and-Prudence Knott.

Both sides square up to each other in mirror formations

The Royalist cavalry advance, to be met with fire from the trotting Ironsides

Both regiments of infantry advance, masking their artillery. The Royalist cavalry suffer a casualty from severe pistolling

Casualties mount, the Malignants become Shaken, and the Ironsides attempt a charge...

...which connects!

Musketry from both sides. Montagu's Regiment takes more hits than their opponents but shrugs them off

Break! In a reversal of the normal pattern, the Ironsides send the Royalists packing

With the Ironsides merrily dispatching their foe, the foot of both sides come to push of pike. The Royalist general feels lucky in spite of a casualty...

...but his luck turns sour and the foot break, carrying him off with them.

On the whole I like these rules. They offer a quick and easy game without much record keeping. In this run-through I covered everything from cavalry charges and firing and melee, to infantry and artillery action. Once I get some more units, I'll move on to run a mini-campaign. The world has not heard the last of Sir George Mountebank and Temperance-and-Prudence Knott...

Prospect of a Game

Since my injured thumb is healing (with the occasional curse as it hits/gets hit by something), I'm thinking of playing a solo game this weekend - the first game of the year. I'll give Victory Without Quarter a run-through, and possibly play out the last game of my AVBCW campaign where the Anglican League are assaulting the BUF main defenses on the outskirts of Bury St. Edmunds.

Ouch!

A badly-gashed thumb means I'm kind of restricted at the moment in what I can do gaming and modeling-wise. I did manage to make a range of turn cards for the ECW Victory Without Quarter rules without injury.

Hopefully I'll get a game in this weekend to try out the rules. Fingers - but not thumbs - crossed...

ECW armies

The assembled might of the Royalist and Parliamentary forces gather in a corner of England's green and pleasant land. My ECW armies so far. Royalists to the left, Parliamentarians to the right.

I've got a stack of work on at the moment, but I hope to at least try the Victory Without Quarter rules some time soon.

Village pond

This piece of scenery proved easier to make than I thought. It's a piece of clear packaging plastic cut into a rough square. I glass-papered half an inch in from the edge to make a rough surface then spread Aileen's tacky glue over it followed by a good sprinkling of sand. This was followed up with a 3:2 mix of ordinary green and brown craft paints and spackle to get a thick mixture.

Sand added to the glue.

Paint and spackle.

I smeared a bit of this mix on the surface of the pond-to-be to represent weeds and algae bloom. The next step was a coat of Pledge polish with two drops yellow, one drop blue acrylic inks mixed in. It picked up some of the green paint from the first step and made the surface rather matte in appearance. A second and final coat of Pledge alone fixed this and turned the surface glossy. One more coat of craft paint to cover places where the polish had seeped out from the center and the piece is done. It took a couple of days, drying period included. It's fairly flexible and shouldn't chip or anything.

The final result looks pretty good, and it works for most scales.

ImagiNations: A contingent of Hetzenberg Horse ride by after watering their mounts.

ECW: Royalist cavalry out in search of rebellious Parliamentarians to thrash.

AVBCW: Womens' Socialist Militia accompany a T26 in search of bullying BUF men to thrash.

Colonial: "Er, mebbe this wasn't such a good place to camp, Corp?"

17th century street

Sunday was a productive day. I finished the trio of 17th century buildings for ECW gaming, and they'll work just fine for VBCW. 

Parliamentarian pikes form up in the street.

The old stone church has probably seen plenty of military shenanigans in its time.

I made two timbered houses and an inn, which work nicely alongside the medieval church and alms houses.The inn walls look nice and bright, which would be appropriate for a new building of the age. I settled for a neutral slate roof for all three, using a mix of silver and tan craft paints to get that slight sheen of slate (try saying that three times quickly!). The silver paint is quite thick, almost like a gesso, and I stroked the brush horizontally to get the effect of rows of tiles. It doesn't quite show up in the photos, but looks okay in real life.

My next projects will be a churchyard and that staple of British villages, the pond.

ECW artillery and generals

The last ECW figures are safely based up, which is a relief after the warping shenanigans of yesterday. Here are two light guns with teams and limbers, with four generals to the left of the photo. I chose a generic orange-red shade for the gun carriages, as this seems to have been a popular color going by contemporary accounts. There's so little concrete information about this and other aspects of the ECW, it's as good a guess as any. One of the limbers lacks a driver, as he wasn't included in the order. Pendraken are good at rectifying such things so it'll be sorted in the fullness of time. I'll fix the limbers to the horse teams next, using the thin string shown bottom-right for the traces.

Behind them is a work in progress house, the first in a batch of 17th century buildings I plan to make. I used two layers of 1/2 inch foamcore, one wider at the top to get the jettied effect of the period, and clad them in thin card. The paintwork was done with basic craft acrylics, and the timberwork was done with a Sharpie marker pen. It's so much easier and less fiddly than using a brush. I've yet to add brickwork chimneys, doors, and crosshatch leading on the windows. First, I'll go make a cup of tea...

Basing Blues

The last ECW figures came off the painting block and I'm now in the process of basing them up. I reverted to plastic card after experimenting with some thin wood which promptly warped all over the place, requiring a hasty removal of the figures.

Ho hum.

I'm going to try out Clarence 'Quindia Studios' Harrison's Victory Without Quarter rules for ECW. These require generals based up with a few other riders to represent staff, couriers and such. At the moment I only have the generals on horseback, so I'll put them on temporary bases until I can find some suitable figures.

Photos to follow tomorrow...