In the Kingdom of the Blind

Having a BBQ this afternoon so being an English summer I've hunted out my scarf and overcoat. Prep finished early so had a quick skirmish on my new mine terrain board. As suggested by Roy at RoyW's Hobby Blog it was a VBCW fight between the miners of Dinnington who occupied the mine and the BUF who had been sent to clear them out.

Dinning Miners - 1st Corps WW1 trench raiders

BUF 

The miners locations were generated randomly using cards and the BUF would activate them when they came into view, at which point the miners would get 1st go. BUF had 3 smoke bombs and miners 3 grenades - let's not even think about gunfire and grenades in a coal mine.

The BUF fired a burst from a Lewis gun down the tunnel to pin any potential miners and chucked a smoke bomb down the tunnel as cover. They advanced to the first set of doors. 

The rules which I made up on 10 minutes before the game enabled figures to look round corners and if pistol armed to fire round corners. Visibility was 6".and the lead BUF took a sneaky peak into both rooms. The south room was deserted and the northern room only contained the hapless Bert.

Opening Advance

 Bert is cornered

3 BUF advance on Bert and demand he surrenders, which he does. Leaving Bert under the guard of a trooper the rest of the BUF advance down the tunnel past the now dissipated smoke and reveal Bruce and Bill who opened fire and missed. The corporal of the BUF, Sid, opened fire with his SMG and killed Bill.

Under the cover of Sid the BUF continues to advance. Sid kills Bruce in the next turn and the BUF tentatively enters the main hall revealing Boris and Basil.

Boris throws a grenade to no effect apart from stunning the 2 lead BUF troopers. Basil opens fire and misses.

Boris throws another grenade and both BUF troopers save and Basil hits but another save. Third attempt bu Boris and he takes out one BUF but Basil misses again, something about cows arses and banjos seems appropriate.

Sid reaches the end of the tunnel and dispatches Basil. All dead miners are down to Sid and based on previous fights his days must be numbered.

The BUF burst into the hall and reveal Brian, Bart and Bob all of whom take aim and get 1 hit on Sid who saves. Sid takes out Basil. The following BUF troopers take out Bob and Brian. Boris is hit but saves and surrenders.

This was a fun 30 minutes and the BUF won because they had sensational roles and the miners were bleeding awful.

All Fun and Games until Someone loses an Eye

Being in that limbo stage where I don't know really what to do I've been building some terrain boards, seems to be the vogue at the moment, maybe spring has that effect and we are gardening by proxy.
So my next terrain board is a coal mine, although it has potential for any underground terrain, especially as rail tracks have been around for hundreds of years before trains (wooden rails in mines from about 15thC and possibly earlier). The board is 60 by 45 cm so that 4 can fit on my small table, even though not being square makes orientation repetitive.
Walls and pillars are polystyrene fixed into place with small nail locating pins and PVA. The walls are then coated in plaster cloth to give stability and stop them looking like polystyrene.

The mine consists of 2 rooms and a pillar and stall mining area. Previously I'd mixed PVA into the water used to soak the plaster cloth on my other builds but this took a couple of days to dry so this time I mixed the PVA with black poster paint to undercoat the mine. Seems to work fine.

Little too shiny yet

View from the entrance

Next step was dry brushing with a mineral stone tester pot from Wilko and adding some coal in the corners.

Finally some shuttering, pit props and rails.

Really enjoyed making this and am going to make 3 more to give a fairly large mine level. On the others there will be no entrance or exit and I shall make some doors and trap doors that can be positioned randomly on each board giving me a wide range of layouts and different levels. 

Not going to clutter up this with  fixed bits of mine furniture so that I can keep the use flexible, I also like my terrain to be uncluttered if possible. I am not a great craftsman (every time I do DIY I reduce the value of my house a little bit) and whilst I admire truly beautiful terrain I often think "how do you play on that". So I developed an impressionistic style that matches my skill with some practical piece of terrain to play on that isn't a hill made of books - never, ever make the hill using the rule book you are using to fight.

This seems an appropriate song to end on Between the Wars though this was really a close second Heart of Gold . Holiday next week but staying at home so if weather's nice off to beach and castles (I do love Northumberland). If rainy then expect more mine workings.

Free giveaway

Not me, yet. It has become obvious to me that the generosity of the wargaming blogosphere is without limit. To celebrate his 10,000th hit Pendragon Without is giving away a wonderful church. Go over to his site and check out the general wonderfulness to be found there.
I also finished the hill that I started last week. The outcrops are the remains of a concrete flagstone weathering away to nothingness in my garden. The heather bushes are from Tajima 1. Overall its ok but you can still see the seams in the plaster cloth.

I also finished the compound from a previous post but forgot to photograph it.

I've now been blogging for about 6 weeks and generally it's been fun and the bloggers are great but I'm kinda drifting through the posts. I shouldn't have started immediately after the Analogue Hobbies challenge, I'm still a bit shell shocked. I can't get my painting going properly. I need to have a think and a proper plan to move forward. I have enjoyed the AAR posts and the central challenge of not turning them into Rimmer's Risk Diary. I've been tinkering with a VBCW campaign and have a starting battle plan, but I also have a colonial river based campaign in mind. Both appeal and I may focus on one or both for my posts in the future. 

A big boy did it and ran away

In the last episode our plucky hero started to build a big hill from polystyrene and plaster cloth. Tips from the manufacturer state that for best durability use a mix of PVA glue and water to soak the bandage before using. However the 10 minute setting period took 3 days. So I built 2 more terrain boards and tried to paint some zombies in grey scale. This worked OK but was more grey than grey scale.
First up the zombies

These were very quick - only on hour to paint all 12 and as a horde I think will look fine. I followed the idea of having a splash of colour to set off the grey, in this case red for blood or green and blue for the ties of the office worker zombies.
Next up the terrain boards. These are 60cm by 45cm  6mm MDF which means I can use 4 on my 120 by 90 playing area or 8 on my larger board, although not being square may lead to some issues.
The first board is a wadi or canyon or, well you know. Although using same technique as the hill this dried quickly.

The dried board was painted with brown and yellow water soluble paint and poster paint. Then dry brushed. Sand was then added and the whole board was washed with thinned down PVA tinted with burnt sienna ink to give it a reddish hue.

The next board is a simple large scale walled compound with 4cm high walls made from polystyrene sheet pinned and glued in place and covered in plaster cloth. Once finished with whitish walls and a more interesting base this can be used as a compound from any age if filled with appropriate buildings, either as part of a battle field of the whole play area.

Overall it's been a fairly productive week as I have been prepping figures to free up space in the to do cupboard. I've even had to hang terrain in carrier bags in the spare wardrobe such is my lack of space at the moment.

And finally Too Much Too Young

Be My Enemy

So this week I painted some of my Northstar Samurai and started to build a really big hill. The Northstar lucky bags contained 17 samurai and I've painted the unarmoured ones.

I recently acquired some large chunks of polystyrene and so I bought a polystyrene cutter from e-bay. Like most things from e-bay it was a cheap piece of tat but it works, although finding 4.5V batteries was trickier than it used to be.
I had bought some MDF to make terrain boards and so cut and trimmed the blocks to form a really big hill. I then covered it in Mod Roc, my first go with this and I must say it was great fun and very theraputic. Areas that were too steep were bulked out with filler.
Next it will be painted with poster paints mixed with PVA to give it a good base colour, brown areas too steep to climb in normal battles but feasible in skirmishes, Finally some flocking, outcrops and foliage, more next time.

This seems an appropriate song about a hill in Wales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlRrdbkyV8w&list=RDLlRrdbkyV8w#t=0

Election Day

Today is general election day in UK. For those of you eligible to vote I have one request. Vote. I don't care who for, not strictly true but none of my business. Much has been spoken of politicians broken promises. Well you know that the reason politicians break promises is our fault. We demand things from them and them complain when they can't deliver. because they can't predict the future.
We complain that they are all the same, rich, Oxbridge educated professional politicians.  Well the reason for this is that we don't vote for the other sorts.
Vote for the person who most closely sees the world as you do. Would react to issues in the way you would. If none of them do then next time stand for election yourself.
I'm not politically active, not a member of any party, but I am annoyed with peoples attitudes towards politics.
You always get the government you deserve.

Sorry for the rant and more interesting posts to follow

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

Bank holiday in UK today and my travel plans were cancelled. Typically the weather is shocking and so I fought a battle between pirates and Brits to test out my newly painted boats and a Warbases palisade fort I purchased at the Border Reiver event last year. The battle is nominally set on the American mainland around 1690 with the pirates landing on a beach and capturing a fort held by the British.
I was trying out my colonial rules adapted for pirate battles and for the first time special weapons cards that can only be used once. The Pirates, under Captain Pope, were 2 boat loads of musket armed troops and 1 of assault troops with pistols and swords, ladders and 2 special weapons,a volley gun (6 shots from 1 man but no reload) and a hand held deck gun to take out the gate (again no reload). I use pistols in melee combat as an extra attack (no reload) or fired mid charge to mess up the defenders.
The Brits also have special weapons in the form of 4 grenade cards that can only be used by the grenadiers, if they are killed the grenades are lost. The British have a volley fire rule where they roll for reload against the officers stats. A volley causes an automatic pin on the target unit but give the targets a +1 save.
The battle begins with the 3 pirate launches, Maisy, Jenny and Bessie from top to bottom, appearing on the beach observed by the British beach patrol under Ensign Watkins.

 Opening positions

Fort

Pirates

 Pirates come ashore

The pirates came ashore somewhat clumsily and faced a couple of ineffective volleys from Watkins patrol.

Ensign Watkins patrol

The patrol then legged it back to the safety of the fort, losing a man at the gates, leaving the pirates to advance.

Race for the fort

Under covering fire from the crews of the Bessie and the Maisy the crew of the Jenny assaulted the walls. Boaz Shufflebottom advanced with his deck gun, fired at the gate and hit the wall causing no damage. The grenadiers on the wall lobbed grenades and killed 4 pirates including their leader, Bosun Israel Hands. This was a shattering blow and they needed a 10 on a D10 not to rout. 

Frontal Assault

Which they achieved and supported by a devastating volley from the crew of the Maisy who killed 3 defenders including both grenadiers pressed home up the ladders. Mad Jack Calico made it to the to but drew his duel. The pirate on the other ladder was killed and the crew of the Jenny routed. I decided that Mad Jack was lost in the battle and if he passed a separate leadership test he would carry on..

Mad Jack Calico

Which he did, with another 10. but again only fought to a draw. Seeing his reckless bravery the crew of the Maisy advanced the climb the ladders.The pirates were having some terrific dice throws and in the next turn the crew of the Bessie swept their side of the parapets clear with another shattering volley. This cleared the way for the crew of the Maisy to climb onto the walls.

On the walls

The Brits weren't finished and a series deadly volleys kept the ramparts clear. Ensigns Watkins and Williams charged the remaining pirates on the ramparts, killing them and routing the crew of the Maisy.

Captain Pope, having lost half his men decided the the fort could not be taken withdrew to the boats.

Thoughts were that it worked well but needed some tweaks to grenade rules. All the pirates are Foundry and were my first major purchase on return to the hobby. The Brits are from Dixons. Both forces are great sculptures and a joy to paint. The boats also looked great.

For those of you who are following the building of the Battle of Chunuk Bair diorama in New Zealand have look at this photo essay.  http://anzacdiorama.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/first-pics-of-massive-gallipoli-diorama.html I would like to congratulate all involved it looks truley amazing. This seems an appropriate song to end on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZqN1glz4JY