An Unexpected Journey

A trip to visit my family and in particular my father who has been experiencing some ill health lately (fortunately he is doing much better), led me to the far reaches of south Louisiana last week. Though the trip took me off the gaming map for a while, the seafood was superb and in addition to gaining a few pounds on my mothers authentic cajun food, I did manage to find a few more boxes to complete the desert fort I started in the last post. I'll be working on that in the coming weeks. I also found a couple of nice wooden boats that when converted will be just right to make a few more dhows to complement the Mahdi's navy. With teaching and fall semester looming next week, I'll have to be more careful with time but of course there's always room for gaming!

in the meantime here are the parts of the fort that I had completed in the last post in action.


You can see the box built parts work fairly well with my existing desert buildings (done the old fashioned hard way with balsa, and "Durhams" water putty coating).


Though my collection is 25/28mm Old Glory, these 20mm Ral Parthas work well for mahdist artillery because their smaller size fit the ramparts well...as long as I don't put them right up next to the OG figures they look ok. The 2 crew are painted as captured Egyptians...the guy with the whip keeping them to their work at their guns is an Old Glory leader figure. He's a bit bigger so he looks suitably tough.)

So then more to come soon ...gunboats, forts, and the Naval Brigade next.

Out of the Box

More advances on the cardboard box building front. I bought a few more cheap craft boxes of different sizes and spent the evening puzzling out how to make the components of a credible desert fort. The challenge was to cut the boxes in such a way as to preserve the structural strength of the thin cardboard box while cutting away enough to make the parts I wanted....a bit of a geometric puzzle, but nothing too complicated... just a bit of fitting and trimming to get the parts to butt together. Again, as in the method I described in the last post to make the simple desert houses, the essential "move" is to flip the box lid over and glue it to the box bottom make the parapet/roof.




I live in a small town and the local craft store only had a few sizes of boxes available so the corner towers had to be made with two smaller boxes stacked. But I may take a little drive today to the larger store (45 minutes away) where there is a bigger selection of shapes and sizes...again all just a dollar or two each! (Though the fuel used to make the drive will cut into the "frugality margin" of the project).

Still a work in progress but I painted the sections I had and so far, I think the result is promising.

Half a fort, and still only 10 dollars spent

I also found a sphere made of the same material as the boxes (or so I thought, ...it turned out to have a soft plastic inner lining, but still easy to cut.) so the dome was a nice addition.



I used a wire nipper to cut the crenellation along the top of the large walls. Since the cardboard is thin this job goes fast. The thin appearance of the parapets is something that I'll have to overlook for the sake of an inexpensive project. Though they could be backed with another layer to thicken them up, for this first go I wanted to keep it extremely simple. In other words, whenever the urge to complicate things crops up, step away from the project and have another Bass until the feeling passes!

Super Simple (and Super Cheap!) Desert Buildings

...I went in for gunboats...and came out with...
buildings!

I'm sure someone somewhere probably already thought of this idea but I'm planting my flag in it nonetheless!...because, it's new to me! ;)... I saw a nice idea for using inexpensive cardboard pre-made boxes commonly found in craft stores here in the US for making the half circular paddle wheel housings found on the side of Nile gunboats over at the Wasatch Front Gaming Society Page. In the process of searching out the right shape I was standing in the store playing with the other boxes available and it hit me that the rectangular boxes would possibly make decent desert buildings...and they were only about a dollar per box!!.

the basic box...1.00 USD...

lid flipped and glued...

So I stood there with the box bottom and the box lid and did a simple flip of the lid...and wow a pretty decent beginning of a desert building with a parapet just the right size for 25mm figures! So in addition to buying the circular shaped box to make another Nile steamer, I bought a couple of the rectangluar boxes in different sizes and headed home to do some modeling.

The boxes are basically grey fiberboard covered with a brown "craft" or mailing paper that is a nice shade of brown that makes a good base color without having to prime the surface. The boxes cut really easily and thus surgery to make things fit is a snap. On the prototype buildings you see in the pics I used two sizes one large and one small. I simply flipped the top of the box over and glued it to the bottom of the box, flipped the whole thing over and...well...it's finished... ready for painting!?

OK I know it sounds too easy but all I had to do was drybrush the surface with a light sand yellow. The surface of the boxes are just a bit bit rough and take drybrush perfectly. Then all that remained to was to draw in some details with a "Sharpie" marker pen (using a thin and a thick one as per my "old school method" described in an earlier post). To do the buildings up just a bit more I added an ink washed stripe along the bottom of the building (I've seen this done on some traditional buildings in Africa), it helps to give the building some color and detail. The parapet is also ripe for detailing with decorated corners and such, but for this first prototype I just left things simple.




On the roof I glued a square of basswood (scribed to look like a wooden roof "hatch") to detail the roof...and its done! The whole process took about 15 minutes and cost a dollar and some change. (Holy smokes! At this rate I'll have Khartoum in a few days!).







To get further versatility I cut the "parapet" on the smaller box to make a small wing that can be attached to the larger buildings to make variations...and...ok, this is really fun!

two story possibilities

and with the right surgery, perhaps a fortified city wall...

Next I'm going to try modifying the boxes to make fortified walls, gates and such...so more to come!

Arab Dhow: A Navy for the Mahdi

Not even sure if the Mahdi had a navy, but in the wonderful world of semi-historical colonials...he's getting one! ;)

I finished the arab dhow conversion and took it out for a gaming spin. My "period sketch" begun a couple of posts ago, continues to evolve and has now become a running game that is getting new reinforcements as I finish them. In this case I added a strip of the Nile to the end of my table and surprise here comes a dhow full of jehadia riflemen to give the Brits a few headaches.




The conversion was done as per the one found on the "Major General's" page. Here are some comparisons of the original toy ship and the finished conversion.






The only real departure from the method described by the Major General, is that I found that after the surgery to remove the tabs and such from the original deck, the surface was pretty carved up so I decided to just plank the deck with a new surface made of wooden coffee stir sticks "liberated" from my local Starbucks. (the petty larceny was minimal since it only takes a few sticks to cover the deck)



Though it looks time consuming, the deck only takes about an hour to complete because the coffee sticks are thin enough to cut quickly with a wire nipper. I started on the centerline of the ship and worked out to the beams cutting to fit as I went and after a section was all cut I just glued the planks down. The nice thing about the wood deck is that it just takes a light ink wash followed by a drybrush to get a good looking finish and the irregularities in the planking make any fitting mistakes almost invisible. The rest of the colors were determined by looking at a few dhow images online. The blue colored panels and white trim look pretty common in pictures of the real thing.

The dhow was just in time to add needed support to the mahdists defending their stronghold against a determined British/Egyptian column.


The tower is also a part of the Pressman Weapons and Warriors set and is simply painted. The tower holds about 4 or 5 riflemen depending on your base sizes

the Emir orders his camelmen forward!

The emir figure is a Connoisseur casting and is converted (with a good bit of surgery and green stuff) to sit on a camel instead of a horse.


What started as a rough table "sketch" is starting to develop into full blown colonial mayhem!

Egyptian infantry in some peril...



while their second company comrades make an attempt on the tower gate


Bengal lancers melee with the emir's camelmen.

Paints and Progress

Dropped by my local brick and mortar game shop today and picked up some new paint. I try to support both shops in town even though they are primarily GW/Fantasy outlets, so mostly that means buying paint. While I don't have any particular favorite paint, over the past few years I have tried to buy the better stuff (meaning for me: coverage, color, and consistency...not necessarily in that order). For years I used the cheap stuff from my local craft stores, like Ceramcoat and Palmer Prism that are workable but sometimes lack covering power. Lately though I've given myself the license to go for better quality paint since it really does make life much easier in the long run.

My staple brands have been GW and Vajello since I can readily get them nearby and they have given me great results. Today though, my local store had a new stock of P3 paints from Privateer Press (I think the line has been out for a few years) that I decided to try and on first blush are nice high quality paints... so my paint box is getting pretty "promiscuous" . But I still use the cheap Palmer Yellow since it is the best yellow for my purposes and surprisingly covers well. Yellow is for me a notoriously tough color coverage-wise so I sometimes judge a brand by yellow first.

And finally tonight I'm finishing up an Arab dhow and fortress tower converted from parts of an out of production "Weapons and Warriors" game made by Pressman that I got on ebay last month. The Major General's page has detailed instructions on how to make the dhow, so no construction pics here, but the game comes with 2 ships and 2 small dinghies! So after I get the sails on this evening, I'll post some before and after pics of the original plastic game components and the converted dhow in its finished glory!

Since this is the second Pressman set that I was able to acquire over the years, I still have two other boats that are in their original condition plus lots of the other parts. I sold one dhow and tower conversion on ebay from the first set, (they went for a surprisingly high price a couple of years ago.) thus leaving me with one plus the two new ones that came in the newest set so I'm knee deep in plastic boats! I'm figuring to make one as a square sailed 18th century 2 masted brig or sloop....and the third I may finish as a dhow and sell it to buy more stuff!

"Sketching In" a Period

While I was working in my "man space" today I had a visitor in the form of the young son of a customer of my wife's who was buying yarn up in the front (believe it or not, my gaming space is in the back storeroom of a yarn shop!?) I had given him some AWI 54mm plastics and a few buildings a while ago and I think the miniatures bug may have bitten. He was pretty quiet and taking it all in but I'm guessing the "wheels are turning"...his mom may let him visit this blog...if so, welcome!

Anyway I was working on my colonials table and experimenting with the cardboard flats described on the Major General's page in the terrain section. Since my game space is essentially in a shipping room, corrugated cardboard is in generous supply and I was spending the afternoon doing what I call "sketching"...which is essentially laying out figures and terrain and seeing what options I have given my available terrain and in this case trying out a quick method for dividing up a small table to make the apparent length greater. The guys at the Major General's page suggest a really clever method using cardboard flats arranged in such a way as to essentially double the table's length. Just the ticket for those colonial punitive column scenarios. I just grabbed some stuff off the floor of the shipping room and started cutting. The result is crude (like a sketch) but lays out the essentials in a way that can guide future improvements. In the meantime...well... I can start gaming!

Egyptian column works its way up a rocky valley with a troop of Bengal lancers scouting ahead

I also dug up a fortified tower from my old NW Frontier terrain to use as an intermediate objective for the column. The tower is a bit large for the small table but I have a remedy in the wings. I was lucky enough to win on ebay one of the Pressman Weapons and Warriors game sets that contain some really marvelous stuff that can be used readily for colonial gaming. So in addition to converting a couple of pirate dhows (as described on the Major General's page) I have a nice plastic arab stronghold (small tower) to paint up soon...all of these development to be posted as they are completed.

One of the most wonderful elements of the Major Generals page is the way their scenarios are played out on REALLY small tables, yet they are able to capture a sense of a much larger world that the game is occurring in. My favorites are those scenarios that are laid out on a small oval dining table. Also much appreciated is the flexible approach to historical opponents...with the most interesting scenarios being historically based but fictitious nonetheless. Really inventive and amazingly inspiring stuff!


In the meantime some images of my "table "sketches"...


I really like those background hills out of cheap cardboard...hmm...if I paint those up in a little green I might be able to solve my background problem for my 18th century stuff and ECW as well.


The pics if find also help to figure out what needs improving, like those old beat up styrofoam hill pieces got a little paint touch up today.

I'm using The Sword and the Flame rules as my base set but I also ordered the new edition of Piquet called "Field of Battle" so as to have another avenue for solo play.