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.