Radar Installation

At the Goodwill the other day, spotted and bought a GI Joe personal track vehicle for a whopping whole dollar. The 2 pieces that caught my eye will save me hours of free building the radar dish for my above ground installation. The over all above ground installation has a layout for about half a dozen buildings, including a radar assembly to track aircraft that might get to close to said installation.

Not to large so I can mount it on top of the Admin building, though probably will add a stanchion with a couple of Missiles to deal with aircraft that get to close.

Underground Update

Finished sheathing all the foam blocks for the varied office levels of the underground complex with Foam Core art board. Hot glue and Caulking for the win! Next was the priming of the foam board surfaces with water based paint to avoid the warping if you use spray can paint with solvents.

28mm soldiers added for scale comparison. Wall fixtures, pipes, valves and the like are next, though finding a source of Pipe Elbows is proving to be a bit of a bother... The building blocks are separate from the under board so they can be re arranged for multiple uses rather than a fixed board. 

Sea Foam green for the office walls, some of the lower parts of the blocks will get the rock texture applied from the blasting to create the "underground" complex. Floors to be concrete or maybe some lino like for the office areas.

Underground Complex Advances

Countless Minions were hired from Minions R Us to push the progress on the Underground Complex project;

Foam core board is being affixed to the sides of all the foam blocks that will represent differing levels for the underground complex. A soldier, 28mm, is shown for size comparison. 2 of the simpler blocks were covered today with a 3rd under way. Areas that represent enclosed "rooms" have a inch high "lip" on top of the blocks which is representative of the blocking of Line of Sight out of that "room". Stairways are drawn on for the moment with eventual stairways and platforms to be added later.

WWW II Battle

So in the pursuit of generating the best set of rules for our WWW II campaign, yet another battle pitted Axis Germans and Itallians versus Russians and Belgians.

The Axis is at the top of the picture, Germans left, Italians right, with the Russians lower left and Belgians lower right.  For a meeting encounter the Allies did the advancing while the Axis went to shovel and pick work. The activation is now with designated cards and a End Turn card mixed in to randomize when the turn ends, either plays out or suddenly ends. The Belgians were using "captured" Pz 1s, that were small and fast, dodging a lot of incoming fire from the Italians and later the Germans Stg III's fire.

The Russian plan with a company of Penal Troops was "right up the middle" to see how some of the recent rules changes would effect their play. Of course this left a trail of bodies up to the German position but a couple of torn up squads reached their objective building and proceeded to evict the Walker behind it with a close assault, which raised so questions about how such assaults would work, good question to get settled in play test!

I have to say that with the card activation, I got to advance 2 squads, then a Belgian unit, then the random turn ending card flipped! Followed by a shuffle and the first card up allowed by screen to move up again, catching the German defenders by surprise ... or so it would have seemed. Then the Germans opened fire.

Of my 8 10 man squads, only 1 and a half of them survived the battle which ground to a draw with the Allies in small point advantage. Cold drinks were broke out and the post game discussion engaged.

During the course of the game I detected a few oversights to our current hot off the presses rules, Blast Templates needed to be expanded to our 28mm size from the 15mm size, a few of the anti tank weapons didn't have range and penetration numbers and minefields needed points costing. Otherwise were hoping to get the Scenario generator set up this coming week if I followed the give and take session at the end.

Boring Development Work

Working with RRsize to come up with the lighting LED plan for the convention level game board has turned out to be dry dusty work to assemble the number type and placement of the LED groups.

So, using paper cut outs, a few figures and dice, placements for the "encounter Labs" were figured and totaled.
Placements for Labs will have a slightly raised Dias area with wiring under the Dias placard. Large Copplestone order should be going out shortly for a lot of consoles and lab sets, which in turn have to be drilled out to get the LEDs inside the "scopes" and crt displays.

Stairs.... still need to come up with about... add it all together, 4 feet of stairs. Single run and switchback style arrangements are in the plans, just how to put them together is still being debated, that's a lot of stairs to build or... simple stairs could be cast.  Fiddly bits.. are the time consumers.... and of course the "mission creep" of adding another encounter spot.... must avoid any more or they will be sitting on top of each other, heh.

Napoleonic Warmaster Battle

Traveled a distance to some gaming friends club meet and got pulled into a Napoleonic Warmaster Battle as a co commander.

The battlefield, river with 2 bridges and a ford that "might" be crossable and proved to be about 12 inches deep..... I played adjutant to the left flank British commander offering sage advice and otherwise suggesting forms of mayhem to the French who wanted to cross the river in the worst way...

French Deployment faced our left flank with their Reserve Cavalry, who lacked any Infantry or Artillery against our all arms force which did include infantry, artillery and cavalry.

Picture of the left flank forces arrayed at the outset of the battle. The French won the initiative with a general advance on the ford. Our move put us a tragic 25cn from blocking the ford due to a flubbed command roll...

The French then managed to squeeze a Cav group through the small gap but then returned the favor of failing their next command roll, leaving the single Cav unit on our side of the river, who in all fairness wiped out a artillery battery, bounced a unit of our cavalry, turned and injured a unit of infantry before going down in a welter of musket fire.

Our position mid way through the battle. An attempt to breach our ford  defense with a cav charge led to the chargers being thrown back and then decimated with artillery and musket fire. Once the French Cavalry that had crossed was dispatched our flank settled into pounding the French Cavalry till their commander decided to shift to their center area. This led to tea time and a few crumpets before we had to mount up and journey home.

Conflict Resolution Devices

Some munitions used in a miniatures battle over the weekend:

First action of the new years

As I cleaned up the living room after new years a friend dropped over with a flat of Dwarven Troops and said lets dust of the figures and play Something... so out came the Chipco Fantasy rules for a very small action game.

My Orcs were initially successful in slamming back some of the Dwarves but alas, the God Di ' ce  abandoned my Orcs to their fates in the end.  My, what a lot of rule book page turning to get back into the game! So the Miniature games of the new year have started!