Forest terrain for smaller scales

Most of my gaming is on hexes these days and I needed some indicators for forested areas that were suitable for 3mm to 15mm figures. I looked at some commercial options but didn't want to pay the high price so I decided to just make some using stuff I mostly had laying around.

I cut some floor tiles into hexagons and then bisected them. I wanted a mixed of conifers and deciduous. The conifers are made from wavy pipe cleaners (in eye-searing Christmas green) that I glued to the base.

I then spray primed it black and hit it with some matt sage green. This dulled the pipe cleaners (mostly!) and matched the base to the rest of my terrain.

I then filled in the spaces with train foliage.

The result, seen from above and three feet away, looks fine and is hazy enough it can work in multiple scales. I didn't want to haul out a hex mat so I just pulled a single hex to photo-illustrate the finished effect. The hex can be fully filled with trees.

If there are units, they mostly fit with half of the hex open. A green felt hex laid underneath would allow removal of all the trees but still have the space marked as forest. So now I'm off to look through the bins for some dark green felt.

I have a small number of hex bases left that I didn't turn into forest. I'l; have to have a look through the rule book to see if there are other kinds of terrain I need to model.

The Battle of Hoth

For my birthday, my wife got me the new Battle of Hoth game. This is basically a reskin of Memoir 44 and comes with miniatures.

The bulk of the miniatures are Imperial Snowtroopers, which I promptly painted up.

The snow troopers are okay figures. This was a quick prime, detail and wash. I see the bases may need some more work.

The best part about them is that they more or less match the 25mm West End Games figures I have from the 1980s. The WEG figure is slightly beefier and is on a washer but otherwise, these are a good match. It is wild how long it has taken for a Star Wars game token to match the old WEG figures!

There are also some probe droids that match the WEG ones pretty closely.

There are also a bunch of Rebel Hoth Troopers.

These are pretty nice figures that paint up well.

The rest of the minis have variable scales. The snow speeders are maybe 5-6mm sized.

The AT-ATs are very small (2mm?), the turrets are more like 10mm, and I've no sense of the ion cannon or the shield generators.

Once put on the game board, the effect is awesome and I cannot wait to play a game as well as the two campaigns the box comes with.

Undaunted 2200: Callisto

Bruce and I have played the first two scenarios in Undaunted 2200: Callisto. This game is the sci-fi adaptation of the Undaunted WW2 series and centers on a fight between miners and mine bosses in outer space.

Callisto is a boardgame that you can play right out of the box but, of course, Bruce was keen to miniaturize it. He even did a set of troops and then replaced them with even better sculpts! The only thing we haven't done (yet) is to physically represent the different elevations (we're just using the visual cues on the game boards).

Overall, this is an easy game to learn and involves tough choices about building your card deck versus taking action on the table. 

There are some changes versus Normandy and Stalingrad, including the use of elevation (which affects the size of the dice you roll: d8, d10, d12). The scenarios also can be won through control of objectives or through attriting the other side (attrition does not carry forward into future games like it does in Stalingrad).

Of the three games we've played, they have all been closely run. The ability of the units to perform different tasks takes some time to learn but rewards careful play.

Below, you can see the elevated walkways joining the rise portions as well as the mine pits (which vehicles cannot get down into).

Overall, a fun game and maybe the first game I've played where a labour dispute is the heart of the game narrative.

Undaunted 2200: Callisto

For Christmas, Bruce kindly bought me the new game Undaunted 2200: Callisto. This is a sci-fi variant of the Undaunted series (I think we've played Stalingrad, Normandy, and North Africa) based around a labor conflict (exploited miners go all deny, defend, and depose on the bosses).

While it comes as a complete board game (eight scenarios), cardboard isn't really our style, so Bruce included some mechs (bosses quick resort to mil-tech to keep control) that I painted.

He then added a bunch of bases for the bosses, as well as the equipment the workers repurpose.

And some infantry bases for those. So I hope together this on the table sometime soon! If you can zoom in, the bases Bruce did are pretty good.

Up next: Maybe back to fantasy figures for a bit.

La Salle and PBI at the club

We had eight guys out at the club this week. Bruce hosted Richard, Terry and Scott in a game of La Salle. I think the defenders managed to hold off the attackers' efforts to expand a bridgehead.

Mike hosted Dan, Chen and me in a game of Poor Bloody Infantry (v1). This was set in Italy with the Loyal Eddies attempting to clear some Germans out of some houses (the Germans set up hidden).

On the German right, the Canadians came forward pretty relentlessly.

Over on the left, the Canadians ran into stiffer resistance on the woods.

A firefight saw the Canadian left attack stall out. Mike's cursed green dice were entirely responsible for this. Death to the green dice!

Mike's 10mm figures are very nicely painted, however. And his terrain was super slick so I guess can forgive his choice in dice.

The Germans took the offensive on the left and push an assault forward into the woods.

The result was that everyone but the German platoon commander died ("Ach, Scheisse!"). This basically ended the Canadian attack on this side.

On the right, the Canadians came on strongly but ended up strung out with command and control woes. The Germans then redeployed to contain the Canadians and counter-attacked.

With the game-clock running out of time, the Canadians were thwarted and the Germans won based on casualties.

Crossfire at the club

We had six guys out at the club this week. Bruce out on a game of Lunar Wars for Richard, Terry and Chen. I'm not sure what point Bruce is making in this photo, but I suspect Chen is learning his lander will be late arriving because it stopped for an iced cappuccino.

Mike brought out a 10mm game of Crossfire. Crossfire was one of the first games we played at the club 15 years ago. But some of Mike's terrain was so new that the glue hadn't dried!

The British had to occupy the crossroads at centre table while the Germans had to maintain LOS on it at the end of the game. Neither side could afford to lose more than 50% of their units and there was a count down clock to game end.

The hidden deployment was fun and forced a cautious advance. Eventually the two sides came to grips. Mortar fire stalled the British armour but the infantry were able to reorient to pin down a German unit.

After deploying some PBI mine detectors, the Brits rolled up the right side of the board and outflanked the Germans for the win.

I had a really good time and would play again now that I have a better sense of the rules and could play a more aggressive defensive strategy.

Vikings!

I popped over to Bruce's for a game of Vikings 878 on Tuesday. We'd tried this at the club a few months back but I was keen for a second go. Bruce took the role of the blood-thirty invaders.

His first move was to land at London (which makes sense, given the map). He scored it and part of Kent early on.

I then pushed him back to the shores. My goal was to limit his space to expand (which complicates the defence a lot). His dice were notably bad and mine were hot. I'm not sure containment would be viable without the favour of the dice gods.

Bruce pushed against inland and also landed in the north. My dice were good enough that, by this time, I had all of my green troops on the board and most of my blue available. That makes it hard to the viking to capture my reinforcement points and also less useful strategically.

The tide swung back against the vikings and, shortly after the pic below was snapped, they were eliminated from the island.

Fortunately for Bruce, he had last go in this round and managed to land a sizeable force in the north to stay in the game. But we were in the second half and one of my truce cards had already been played (no sign of the other truce card, though).

Bruce pushed south but just had terrible luck in combat. There was literally nothing to be done. He had good strategies but even my Fyrd proved worthy opponents for his beardos.

We called the game at this point as there was no reasonable prospect of viking victory. An odd result. Some nice mechanics still--the Fyrd are a lovely way to simulate a local defence factor but include a random element. Same with the viking reinforcement card draws.