HMGS-PSW Miniwars 2016

This years Miniwars was held at the Couprie Martial Arts Center in Van Nuys on October 8th & 9th. I only attended on the 8th. It was a nice size facility with room for all we had going on. The War House was there with all kinds of goodies (good thing they were there I had forgotten my dice and needed to buy some). Here is a quick picture gallery of the happenings.

This is the setup for the Frostgrave game that Don Hawthorne and his friend Jim ran. I actually got to play in this one. It was set up to have two pairs of war bands fighting over a quadrant with one sorcerer from each quadrant reaching the top to battle it out with each other and the Guardian for the relic hidden in the monolith at the top. I almost killed Don's apprentice with my zombie but he got away....

1806 Battle of Halle using La Battaille Rules.

Brian Moseley of Safehaven Games brought his Legends of the Colosseum and Winds of Fortune games to run some demos.

Some X-Wing action.

A 1942 Russian front Flames of War scenario in 15mm.

A 1943 Flames of War scenario covering the Salerno landings in 20mm.

I also ran a 15mm Fire & Fury game of Seven Pines which I described in a previous post. This time next year we will have a larger facility, and with more time to plan an even grander schedule of games. We will be hosting it at the Titan Center on the Cal State Fullerton campus. I am definitely looking forward to it. Just need to plan my games. There are pictures of Sundays games on the HMGS-PSW Facebook page.

Seven Pines A Fire & Fury Brigade AAR

So I travelled to Van Nuys on October 8th to run an F&F Brigade game of the Battle of Seven Pines at the HMGS-PSW Miniwars 2016 Convention. I have been using this set of rules for around 20 years, and it is by far my favorite  for the American Civil War. They have been out of print for some time now, but, I was delighted to find out that the author is updating them and a second edition will be out in early 2017. In the pictures you can see my completed boards that I have been writing about. Here are the pictures of the initial deployments. Since this is an historical scenario they start where they did historically.

Initial Confederate deployment. DH Hills division waiting to launch their assault on the Union lines.

Casey's and Couch's divisions of Keyes Corp hold their respective defensive lines. I used some little trees for the abates which worked well but I could have used another pack.

An overview of the whole board.

Here the Confederates have pushed back Palmer and Naglee's brigades. They fell back to either side of the entrenchments. Palmers brigade is visible to the left.

The Confederates have driven Casey's Division from the first set of earthworks.

Couch's division patiently awaits the Confederate attack.

The Confederates advance on Couch.

Union reinforcements stream in from all corners of the map to stem the Confederate tide.

The Confederates were bringing overwhelming numbers and they are ready for their final push on the second line of reinforcements. The turn after this they moved up and brought a devastating fire on  the Union and were ready to make the final assault. Union reinforcements were too little to stem the Confederate tide.

Overall the game went well. I got to play with a couple old friends Bob Burris, and Bill Rhein. I also had a guy new to historical gaming. It was a good time and I certainly look forward to the next time. Probably Stones River at either Kingdom Con or next years Miniwars.

Building Seven Pines Part 2

It has been a busy few weeks and I am going to catch up with a few posts. First off I am going to finish my con game board for the ACW Battle of Seven Pines. First off I want to thanks TMP's own xintao and tomrommel1 for their help and for patiently and promptly answering my questions. So here are a few shots of the mostly finished board.

Here we are all flocked. I used a combination of fine and course Woodland Scenics flock in the wooded areas. I tried doing only the course but it was difficult to attain the desired coverage. I got a much better result with the combination

I used a fine brown ballast for the roads, that worked out very well. I don't have the middle stream done yet but the smaller ones have been completed. I used this product;

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018N7M9U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s04?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It was recommended by xintao and I found that it was an easy pour and forget product. As you can see by the pictures I had painted the streams a brown color. Then I dry brushed a black green in the bottoms and sprinkled dirt through them. The dirt in my backyard yielded a nice mix of dirt, small pebbles, and small pieces of wood, which gave a really nice effect. The only issue I has was that the resin would seep into the flock and create an area around the streams that would look odd. For this particular battle the streams were in flood historically, so the look was fine. In the future I'll do the resin pre flock. 

To finish I painted the edges, and finished the ballast at the track. That created all kinds of new drama. I watched a video on youtube about doing the ballast. So I gave the technique a try. First you place the ballast, then clean it up with a brush. After that you use a highly diluted mix of PVA and water and squirt it on the ballast. Needless to say it did not work as planned. My glue mix, instead of soaking in to the ballast, beaded off and ran all over the board. This caused me to redo a 3' section and make numerous repairs to the other flock. I went ahead and just brushed full strength PVA onto the tracks to get the desired look. It was a bit messy on the track portion but overall it looked good.

Overall I did try to do a fine spray of diluted PVA on the board but I could not get the right mix. Next time I'll probably just get the premade stuff to set the flock.You can see the finished product on my next post, along with the AAR of the battle.

Terrain Boards for Seven Pines

So we finally nailed down our HMGS-PSW convention for this fall and I decided that I wanted to do a Fire & Fury Brigade game of Seven Pines. Since I have all the troops already I thought it would be nice to put together some nice terrain. I had decided on the foam insulation boards. Unfortunately, here in Socal they do not sell the pink or blue foam panels, or let me say I could not find any in my local area. So I decided to settle for 1-1/2" thick white foam boards from Home Depot. They come in a 2' x 4' size so I needed to pick up 6 of them to make the three 2' x 6' boards I was planning on. That was easy enough, I busted out the circular saw and cut three 2' x 2' pieces from the extra boards and then glued them to the other three 4' boards. After which I caulked them to leave less of a seam on the top. Here is a shot of them assembled.

Then I took the dremel tool and ground out the streams that cut through the battle field.

 Here is a shot of the map from the book.

Then it was on to painting the features.

I decided on an N scale track. I thought the HO would end up too big after it was done up with the ballast. I am happy with the N scale track. At this point I am ready to start flocking. I'll post again later in the week to show that progress and sometime the week after showing the finished product and the game itself.

Black Powder Napoleonics

A few weeks ago we did a small action. Prussians v French.  While Black Powder is not my favorite set, I have issues with the movement, I think I am getting the hang of it anyway. The scenario was a hypothetical one with the Prussians defending a cross road, that being their mission. Here is a shot of the battlefield after the Prussian setup. I am the command closest to the camera.

The middle command is deployed forward in the town and the hill just past it. The cavalry command is centered in the rear and my command in columns closest to the camera. The French arrived on the table edge to the right. Not sure of where they would concentrate we retained a couple commands back till they started to move on.

The French start to trickle on to my front. He kind of got stuck there a couple turns due to bad command rolls, while I was able to deploy.

As a second unit entered to my front, I started to deploy in line with the front edge of the village. with a couple supporting batteries.

My unit fully deployed and ready for the French onslaught.

As the action stalled in my area devolving into a shooting match, the rest of the table heated up. The Prussian cavalry has left the center rear to meet a flanking attack to our left rear. This was dispatched handily, and allowed the cavalry to meet a new threat that materialized from the French side of the board on that flank. The French attacked heavily with infantry on the far village and the center hill between the two villages. They finally captured the far village but were repulsed at the hill in the center.

This is when the center Prussian player decided that the best defense is a "good" offense and attacked!

About that time I had a unit collapse from fire. leaving a small gap that was quickly plugged by a reserve battalion.

The Prussian attack goes in and is heavily repulsed leaving the door open for the French to take the crossing. Since our reinforcing brigade never arrived we were in a pickle and our fate was sealed. Though that fate was disputed by some. Overall, a great game and as always good times with friends.

Latest Things Off the Painting Table

It has been a productive weekend of hobby work. I had some time today to get some more of my backlog flocked, sealed and in some cases based. I am all caught up now with the basing but I still have a backlog of flocking to do.  First up are my Warlord Waffen SS. I have to admit that they were a bit daunting with the camo but after watching Christy Beall's Youtube tutorial on painting the Autumn Oak Leaf Camo I felt a bit better about the undertaking. I was happy with the result and it was quite easy to do. Here are a few shots of them Pardon the quality I had to use my phone today.

I had purchased these on ebay already based and primed. I think I would have put them on smaller bases. The base size made some of the multi-figure groups look funky. I was just being lazy and not fixing them up. They are really fun figures to paint. Unlike the figures on my last blog I used a sepia wash starting with these guys. I think it gave them a much more natural look.

The next three groups are 20mm SCW figures from Minairons. What a joy they are to paint. A nice amount of detail and action in the poses. The first group up is the Republican Command/Weapons set.

Sorry only one good picture of these guys. It comes with a couple mortars and an MG. The next group is the Nationalist Command/Weapons set.

As you can see this comes with some automatic weapons and a heavy MG. The color they give for the uniforms is a little weird to me. Minairons has some alternate colors listed in the free painting guides they offer. I will probably mix those in because this green is a little too loud, even with the wash. Net up were my favorite figures to paint. The militia women.  I loved the poses and the one woman wearing a blouse and skirt from home.

I definitely had fun with these while painting them. I am not sure how legit the red berets are, but I was watching The Wild Geese when I was painting them and it influenced my color choice. There are some cool poses here. The woman behind the flag bearer is prone behind a small sandbag emplacement. There is a light MG in this group. I don't have it pictured because I dropped her and lost the MG. I need to get a replacement for it. It has a woman firing an MG from a small sandbag parapet. There is one other posed not shown but I thought it odd. The woman has both hands clenched chest high. Not sure what she is ding but if someone knows please enlighten me. The flags are all Minairons, and very nice. The only gripe I have with them is the thickness of the paper. It leaves the edges white. I'll have to find a suitable paint color to blend the edges in. Overall the Minairons figures are great and I look forward to painting more of them. I just wish they had more of the oddball units. I guess those will come with time. Well, that is all for now. Have a great week!