An Odd Idea

 I was reading the classic "Little Wars" a few nights ago (something I do from time to time to get re-inspired), and an idea was rekindled in my head regarding how to make woods on the gaming surface. H.G. Wells had a set of large rectangles of wood planks that, when stacked, served as hills. Though it's not mentioned in the text (but outlined in some detail in his "Floor Games"), his approach to making woods involved having the hill boards drilled in a grid to take short branch cuttings from actual trees to make his wooded areas. You can just make out the grid of holes in the pictures in "Little Wars". I've always wanted to give that idea a try but never had the wherewithal to tackle it given that it seemed like a bit more than was necessary to produce woods. But the idea still hung around my thinking and finally ran into an opportunity to give it a try...now this is an odd idea for sure as it involves "damaging" a game I own...but I still thought it had good possibilities so I decided to give it a try.

A Reb unit assaults a wood defended by Union infantry and a battery of artillery. (The game board is a bit shiny and I was thinking a quick coat of matte spray might make the whole look of the game a bit more like a tabletop wargame rather than a boardgame.

Basically I took the idea of drilling the game surface to accept trees to one of my "Battle Cry" game boards to try a way of producing wooded hexes without having to use the flat tiles included in the game.

The result is kind of cool, but perhaps a bit "out there" if one wants ever to resell the game. And maybe just a bit too "fiddly"....I just drilled each hex vertices using a small bit (1/16") and sized to take the trunks of some nice little wire trees I got on sale at my local hobby shop. I forget the manufacturer of the trees but they are simple twisted wire trees with some clump foliage glued on. But when you stick them into the board surface it gives a fairly good alternative to the woods tiles. (I think this idea would work even better if you laid the gameboard on a piece of blue styrofoam insulation so the trees would hold better in the surface.

I'm still not completely sold on this idea. I just drilled a corner of one of the two Battle Cry boards I own just to experiment with it. I have to give it a few days to see if I really want to drill all of my boards this way. it just seemed to me that if I was painting the figures I should do a little more with the terrain. It kind of warps the boardgame idea...but the effect is pretty good.

I also want to do the full treatment of this idea for my 40mm homecast horse and musket stuff by doing up some layers of boards drilled to H.G. Wells specs. (...and not to mention the new Spencer Smith 42mm 'Little Britons" has got me on full alert... with calculator in hand trying to work out how to afford a classic set of "Little Wars" toys soldiers! (Many thanks to Ross for the link!)

Nothing like some experiments to get the gaming juices flowing!

The Admiralty's Response

Two new British cruisers (small) are added to my British fleet

After the "world turned upsidedown" debacle on the high seas, the British Admiralty has ordered two new cruisers to be constructed to accompany the sister ship of the now sunken "London" to hunt down the Brandenburg and disable or sink her.

 Some pics of the finished cruisers and my attempt to make believable smoke using pins and cotton balls.

 ...And here they are in action in confined waters....made using new hex blocks I just got in the post to enhance my M44 and Battle Cry games from RDOXX Inc. They worked pretty well to make headlands at the mouth of an estuary that the British are attempting to leave while the Brandenburg lurks in the distance.

 It was interesting to see if the large ships could be played on a very small table ("30ish" inches diameter...small and simple is always my goal..)

 Again, these hexes are too small for the scale of the ships, but that will be remedied soon...but still it was an interesting action and the simplicity of the "Memoir of Battle at Sea" Rules made playing it solo easy even with my little ones clamoring for attention.

The hex blocks are exactly scaled to M44-C&C game hexes and are very nicely made and well worth the reasonable price... my hexes are just a bit bigger, hence the gaps.

The Brandenburg barely skirts the headlands to make her escape

This time the battle was a draw with the Brandenburg escaping after heavily damaging a cruiser and the battleship and taking heavy damage herself, so the British commander decided to break off  try again another day.

Finally Got Up the Steam

 One of those long untended areas here at the Lead Gardens is my project to paint up the plastic figures of my Battle Cry game. But I recently got re-energized by an ebay purchase of a second copy of the original Hasbro/AH game and doubled my figure count and opened up the possibility of doing more ambitious battles like Gettysburg in a more "grand manner".

 I finished the first set of Rebs last night and was pretty happy with the result. Though they are still a bit too shiny in these pics...I think another coat of flat spray will do the trick.

 

 I also think I managed to find the ideal solution to the plastic figure painting problem. I did the usual soap wash and then followed with an undercoat of black acrylic gesso mixed with "Weldbond" PVA glue. Weldbond is very tough and flexible and dries very tight to the surface and I think enhances the already great adhesion of just straight acrylic.

 I followed with a classic triad of base block colors, plus ink wash (I use "Didi's Magic Ink" from "The Warstore"), followed by a light drybrush of white. I coated the figures with Krylon triple thick gloss which gives the figures a very durable top coat. I then made a pass with Krylon Matte spray to get the shine to "flatten", but with only some success in getting to a satin finish. I'm going to try again tomorrow but I think the figures are at least a bit better than unpainted.

 You can see in the pics that I have to go over the bases again because pulling them off the paint sticks peeled the paint around the edges of the bases but that should be easy to fix.

 I think in general these guys came out too dark so in the next set I'm going to try to lighten the colors so when the wash is applied it should not darken things too much.

 I also replaced the game flags with paper flags downloaded from the various free flag sites.

Ultimately I want to be able to throw these fellows back in the box and not loose any paint to chipping...so we will see...
...But, I may eventually base these guys up and go to marking hits on a stand instead of the individual figures.