Winter terrain commission

I took on a terrain commission a few months back to make some 15mm pieces for a Flames of War board. These included some summer wheat fields and well as hills and forests for a winter game.

The hills turned out okay. My approach to simulating snow worked well on small bases but not so great on larger terrain pieces. So the simplest piece (hills) took a long time and entailed a number of false starts. In then end, they will do. I wonder if foam hills painted white wouldn't have worked better than the more elaborate textured approach I took?

The five forest pieces, by contrast, went quite quickly. I bought some N-scale railway trees and frosted them with a bit of white spray paint. I then drilled out some magnets (sprayed white) and glued the trees into them. Each tree them sits on a washer I glued onto the base plate. This allows the owner to re-arrange the trees and also take them off for easier storage and to position troops in.

I decided to put a small number of trees on each base. Really, the bases simply denote the boundaries of the forest so all it needs to do is hint at rough ground and trees. Some rocks, trunks, grass and snow do the heavy lifting.

All of the pieces fit within an 8x10" box and I tried to make the pieces a natural shape.

I also did one that was thinner to represent more of a treed ridge line. Hopefully the owner likes them and they will stand up to play.

Up next: Some 1/72 ancient Germans have been patiently waiting for some attention. I also need to clean my hobby room as terrain making is bloody messy!

EWG club night May 7

We had 11 guys out at the club last night with four games running. This was an excellent turnout given that everyone played all day on Saturday at MayDay.

There were games of FUBAR and Warmachine that I did not get pictures of. Dave hosted a game of Big Battle DBA using a late-Roman army facing down some horde or other.

Scott and I played two games of 1812: The Invasion of Canada. The games split, with the first one seeing an American win in about 1813. Below you can see the hordes of Detroit have crossed over and entered the western flank.

Game two saw a British win, again in 1813. And interesting bit of play in the east, with a British army sitting in Albany blocking American reinforcements while an American army besieges and sacks Montreal to block British reinforcements. Montreal was eventually relieved and then operations along the thinly held frontier commenced.

Below you can see the Americans surging up towards the Niagara peninsula. Eventually there were landings, with Scott drawing every damned boat card there was in his deck. I eventually cottoned onto this gimmick myself but Scott clearly played the lakes better than I did.

Up next: I have four winter hills about ready to finish. Then onto some 15mm forest pieces. And then back to some 1/72 ancients.

MayDay 2013

The Edmonton Wargame Group hosted its 9th annual MayDay gaming convention yesterday. We have about 80 people through the doors participating. The main hall included two tourneys (40k and warmachine) plus open gaming. We also ran a large silent auction in the hallway to defray club costs over the year.

During the morning session, I put together the auction and then jumped between observing two games. Sean from Calgary ran a game of Gaslight. Below is the camel corp, which went on quite a tear.

Dave hosted a game of El Cid-themed War and Conquest. I thought the Christians were in for a rough time during the first few turns but then they managed to punch some knights through the Muslim line and execute a flanking attack on the blackguard. Marginal win for El Cid in the end. One more turn and it would have been a major win.

In the afternoon, Mike and Ward brought out a large game of X-wing. I have heard good things and was keen to try. Mike coached Wiley (below) and I through a Vader v Skywalker dogfight. Wow, what a slick system--a bit like Wings of War but with the clunkiness worked out.

After Wiley's efforts to Force-choke me failed, the dogfight commenced. Since neither of us had played we had a couple of minor traffic jams that (fortunately) tipped things my way. Some interesting tactical things to be aware of--using the Y-Wing's Ion cannon to tie up a ship for the X-wing can some in and waste it next turn, for example. All told, a great game.

The X-wing continued with a large battle featuring all manner of ships but I steppe dout to chat with some gaming buddies I hadn't seen in a awhile.

I bailed mid-way through the evening session but snapped a picture of Justin's Vietnam terrain, which was very nice.

Terry put on a game of Pirates which looked great.

Thanks to the organizers and tournament and game hosts--perhaps the most successful MayDay yet!

Up next: Working on 15mm winter terrain this evening after spending the afternoon working on some 2000mm summer terrain. And I have some more 1/72 stuff to get to eventually. And our regular club night runs on Tuesday.

1/72 Roman Auxilia

Apologies for the lack of updates. Gardening, cycling and general spring distractions have cut into my painting time. I did managed to finish off 48 Roman Auxilia from Strelets for a CCA army.

A fair chunk of them are spear armed, which are useful. Overall, nice figures although I much prefer the ones with cast-on weapons.

There are also some armed with swords. These are generally pretty good poses, excepting the ones in the backrow of the first photo below.

What I was most struck by while painting these guys is that there could work for early Romano-Brits. Helmets maybe aren't perfect, but the guys in the cloaks would do just fine. I don't think there is a plastic 1/72-scale set for this period so nice to know there is an option.

Up next: Gaming with Bruce tonight, then MayDay on the weekend. I am also working on a terrain commission for Flames of War.

1/72 Roman cavalry

The build up of imperial Roman armies in 1/72-scale continues. This is a box of Strelets Roman cavalry in battle. It is a nice enough set with 12 rider poses and six different horses. I see that I forgot to detail the banner held by the leader!

The riders fit beautifully on these horses, which is almost the never the case with 1/72 plastics. On the downside, some of the long straight pieces have some unfortunately bends and a few of the horses have donkey ears. Overall, a pretty nice set. These fellows will be heavy cavalry in CCA. I have some Gauls on the way to fill in the medium and light cavalry units.

Up next: Some terrain building will happen this weekend. And I'm working on a box of auxilia to round out the basics of the army. Pretty nice that you can get a full Roman army from four boxes of Strelets.

EWG April 16: WW2 planes

We had 12 guys out to the club this week, including newcomer Wesley and there were five games running! I played in Bruce's Warbirds game (basically WW2 Canvas Eagles) with Andy and Terry. I think we got four (or maybe five?) games in in about two and a half hours.

The first couple of games saw a crippled B-17 getting jumped. The first game the B-17 had an escort and the second game it did not. Warbirds is surprisingly easy to pick up but has some subtleties that take a game or two or cotton onto ("I'm going waaaaaay to fasssst..."). I think the bomber had split outcomes, with game one including a pilot killed, a mid-air collision (sorry Terry, my bad) and a plane exploded. We got better though.

We then did some dogfights. Man, the P-51 is a helluva plane. The first game was a decisive allied win with Andy landing with a dead engine and Terry piling into the ground in a spin. Game two didn't go so well for the allies with leaking fuel lines and fire... .

There was some Warmachine, some Vietnam and some insurgency being played. And Dennis and Dave played some more LaSalle. I caption this photo "God wills it, Dennis!" as Dave basks in the Sun and Dennis fishes around for less cursed dice.

Up next: Some 1/72 Romans horse are drying and some auxiliaria are underway. I also have some terrain to do this weekend.

1/72 Roman light foot troops

Today the last batch of the Strelet's Imperial Roman Velites is dry enough to photograph. These guys will be used as light troops in Commands and Colors Ancients Imperial Roman expansion.

There are 16 guys in four poses. Most are throwing (or have just thrown) javelins. Not sure why all of these imperial Romans are wearing pelts (Punic Wars re-enactors?) but what can you do? A couple of really flat poses but all told this box is a real boon for gamers--lots of light troops in multiples of four and no completely useless poses.

Up next: I have some Roman cavalry underway and am cutting and assembling a bunch of Roman auxilia off the sprue. Since more snow is forecast this weekend, I hope to make some progress. There is also club night coming up on Tuesday.