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.

Encounter on the High Seas

HMS London and SMS Brandenburg closing range.

 The newspapers are unclear as to why this incident occurred, but word from the admiralty has it that German ambitions in East Africa were in need of a stout pounding!

An early critical hit slows the Brandenburg but she still packs a dangerous punch

 I managed to get my first two pre dreadnoughts at this larger scale  painted up in late Victorian livery, and decided to give them a go with a single ship to ship action set up the hex board I made a week ago out of the back of a Christmas tree mat. The hexes are M44 sized and I plan to get/make a larger hex mat with 5" hexes soon but until then, I just assumed the ships were located in the bow hex and it all worked out pretty well.

The London changes course to close range and sustains a hit in her forward turret.

The "iron dice" are rolling hot for Brandenburg's gun crews and the London begins to take significant damage as the range closes.

at 4.000 yards both ships run parallel courses and trade pounding broadsides.

Both ships are approaching their "break off" point with the London taking another hit on her guns.

Final turn of the game finds the London battling a fire and attempting to escape, but the Brandenburg gets in a final broadside that completely disables the London and she starts to list and the captain reluctantly orders "abandon ship!"

"Londoners were shocked at the news in the morning papers..."-

I'm really enjoying Bob Cordery's "Memoir of Battle at Sea"...and the great potential for adding "chrome" to the basic rules. The ships painted up pretty well and look the part so I started a couple of British cruisers to beef up a retaliatory strike on those overly ambitious Germans!

And finally to the stout fellows who graciously honored me with a Liebster Award for my blog please know that it was really appreciated and I'm working on posting my favorite 10 blogs that I think are tops...(I know, not the exact rules of the game...but I follow and enjoy 160 blogs on a regular basis and I thought that it would be good to honor the top ten...maybe I'll do a "Lead Gardens Top Way Beyond Cool Gaming Bogs Award" ...suffice to say I'm compiling that list right this minute and hopefully will be my holiday "shout-out" to all my favorites who give me so much pleasure and inspiration...Thanks Everyone!

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.

Exciting Holiday Find

 I don't normally love the holiday season because here in the states it can get a bit crazy. But one thing I always look forward to is the holiday decorations that can be turned to good use for wargaming. Today I found a Christmas tree rug 30" in diameter with a nice green grass surface on one side and a smooth black rubber surface on the back. it was under 10 dollars and I bought one and headed home with my gaming wheels turning!

I got home and gave the rubber backside a coat of blue acrylic loosely applied letting some of the black show through...making a nice ocean texture. Then I got out a hex "template" that I had saved after punching out a Battle Cry boardgame a few years ago...(my wife calls me a hoarder but it's for just such a moment that I save things.

I got a hole punch and punched the vertices of the leftover hex sheet giving a good sized template to use for laying out some ocean "terrain" for my predreadnoughts. I just used a white gel pen to mark dots at the vertices and then freehanded the sides of the hexes...(a little drawing ability helps here...) The result is loose but effective. And the board is 12+ hexes across ...and at the game scale I think works with my ships, (1 hex to 1000 yards)which would be extreme engagement distance for ships of that era. Ships are allowed to use movement points to turn more than one hexface since the scale of the hex allows even the largest ship to turn within the hex. This is a variation of Bob Cordery's Naval version of his Memoir 44 based rules.

 I enjoy the way the circular board gives a sense of there being a horizon. It also reminds me of the "battle board" in the old Avalon Hill Bismark game...which I think I still have somewhere in my garage.

Now what to do with the grassy side....

PS, I found this mat at Lowes.

The Full Monty, (or Cunningham)

Late in the game, the 15th Panzer in control of the field with swarms of Commonwealth infantry scrambling to hold the line after the heavy British tank losses. German infantry still cling to the airfield at Sidi Rezeg on the left of the pic. Italians still hold Bir El Gubi at the bottom right, and the South African Brigade is left facing German armor in the center.

I got a copy of the Memoir 44 "Breakthrough" boards in last Friday's post and I had some time today to set up the "Crusader" scenario. I had also recently purchased the new "equipment pack" with lots of special figures to add some spice to the M44 stew. In this big game I am going all-out with all optional rules and added a few extra units to the original scenario as well as some adjustments to the map to make it look "more like the actual battle" to my eyes.

Playing a desert scenario of a battle this large demand the inclusion of such goodies and rules like scout cars, supply trucks, 88s, big guns, mobile artillery, command cars (to represent Rommel) and the air pack. I also used the Churchill tanks included in the equipment pack to represent Matildas and treated them using the "Tiger Tank" rules (since they were really hard to kill given the light guns of the time) and reduced their move to 2 hexes since they were slow infantry tanks. And finally the grey French figures in the new equipment pack served nicely as Italian infantry and the Japanese tank minis from the Pacific served here as Italian armor.

The Lufwaffe really took a toll in this first game since with his free order Rommel was able to keep the air assets up and flying for several turns in the center sector where all the British armor was concentrated. The supply truck rules allowed units to withdraw to resupply and recover a hit. This made the game ebb and flow just like the real battle. With 12 medals required for victory the the game was long enough to support a withdrawal and return to the fray. For such an abstract game this was really not a bad representation of the battle.