Cheap Plastic Trees

While planning my European Theater WWII games, it occurred to me that I was in need of some deciduous trees. I have a dozen evergreen trees, but that's it. I don't count the snow and glitter covered Christmas-village type trees of which I have a few dozen - I am loathe to use them except for Christmas-themed games because at the very least they leave a glittery mess on your fingers every time you touch them, at worst, they leave glitter all over the ground cloth, the figures, your hands, the carpet, etc. Also many of them are gold, silver, or a shade of red - hardly typical of European forests, although I've never been to Europe, so maybe I'm wrong about that.

I also have no desire to make trees. Or rather I do, but most homemade trees involve clump foliage, flock, and such, and seem delicate. I am rough on my toys, particularly terrain - cramming it unceremoniously into a large plastic storage bin when the games are over.

What I need are durable, but also inexpensive, trees. And I found some, so I thought I'd take a chance.

Made by Arcady, the bag header is labeled "Animal World" and "Wild Animals", with pictures of an elephant, giraffe, and a lion. Never mind that it's just a bag of trees. 

The way they are packed gives the distinct impression of aquarium plants - at least that was my impression. They certainly did not give me much hope at first, despite having seen pictures of them on Amazon (which is where i got them).

Here is what they look like out of the package. They are somewhat squished and the foliage is mostly on one or the other side of each tree.

However, this isn't my first rodeo. One pot of boiling water and between a few seconds to a few minutes of dunking, and they look quite a bit better:

As a group I think they make a fairly convincing woods (if a bit toy-like. which, no surprise, is a selling point in my book). 

You may have noticed that the trunks, besides being semi-flat or semi round depending on your perspective, are green - this bothered several reviewers who wanted brown. But brown is not realistic so why get upset about green? 

I had planned to dry brush some grey over the trunks and limbs - which based on my two seconds of observation this morning while walking the dog, is a more accurate color for bark, but that seems like a lot of work and I don't care that much. Green is fine by me - just pretend the tree is covered in moss. I will however paint the base with Burnt Umber, or maybe its Raw Umber, the dark brown one, to match, or try to match, the craft foam I use to indicate a woods or forest.

 

Some 1/32 W. Britain's WWII British infantry for scale.

Speaking of the bases (which are part of the tree trunk and have molded roots - they are integral bases if you want to be fancy). The trees are fairly stable - they do wobble a touch if you bump them, even after removing the mold line on the bottom of the base, but they are in no danger of tipping. That said, I may mount them on some 1.5" diameter discs to eliminate the wobble and to add a few millimeters of extra height, which is never a bad thing when playing with 54s.

The trees are $12usd for twelve (The link is a few paragraphs back. You get two bags of six and each bag comes with that delightfully misleading header card). They clearly aren't the best trees ever, but for the price I think it would be foolish to expect them to be. In any case, I think they'll work just fine on my tables.

First Figures of 2022 Finally Painted!

 Stop the presses! Nearly four full months into 2022, I finally finished some figures! While I have several started with base colors, I just lacked the wherewithal to cross the finish line. After reading through the fantasy board on Little Wars Revisited and Lead Adventure Forum, and the VSF forum on the latter as well, plus a perusal of my back issues of Lone Warrior, enthusiasm shattered whatever mental resistance there was from having survived the Christmas game painting marathon.

The figures had been primed weeks ago, but Friday night I started the proper painting and by this afternoon the figures were sealed with Mod Podge and acrylic varnish:

To be fair, one of these had been painted months ago, but the other three were just completed. Because they lack scales, unlike the Reaper figures, they seemed the perfect candidates for the toy soldier gloss - I am rather pleased. The full unit of either ten or twelve will be quite the sight, I hope.

For the record, their color scheme is based around the Marine Iguana. As such, they'll fill a similar niche on Venus or in other fantasy type worlds. The figures themselves are from SCS Direct - part of their Fantasy: Series II box set - there are six of these figures per box, along with a ton of other figures. These are the cheapest lizard warrior figures for 1/32 that I am aware of, short of making conversions of humans with dinosaur heads. You can find these boxes on Amazon and eBay for around $20 usd. If you see someone selling them for $30something, move along.

Also finished this weekend, though perhaps less noteworthy, was another ruin. That makes 1 complete building, 3 ruins, and 1 stone wall (with still enough to make at least one more stone wall 8"-12" long) from a single piece of foam core/foam board that cost $1.25usd. I still have three sheets! 

The figures are Toy Soldiers of San Diego US infantry painted a number of years ago (a number I don't actually know). They haven't seen use in quite some time. However, as I find myself less interested in gaming on the Eastern Front these days, their time may be coming again. In particular, I think I may revisit the Skirmish Campaigns Normandy: Heroes of Omaha and Panzer Lehr for a D-Day game this year.

Caporetto-ish

I have long wanted to try the "Machine Age" rules in Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames. It also seemed to me that the "Late Arrivals" scenario in the same book could act as a generic place holder for an opening bout in a Caporetto-like wargames campaign - the combined German / Austro-Hungarian breakthrough of the Italian front lines in late 1917. 

Note, I consider the units to be companies with the resulting force a battalion plus a little extra.

The rules themselves required some modification - there was no cavalry in use in the theater in 1917 that I'm aware of, except as dismounted infantry, so I made any cavalry rolled into assault troops. I gave them the increased movement range as the Zouaves have in his American Civil War rules. I also gave them a +2 in close combat and they could ignore defensive cover in close combat. 

Close combat? 

Oh, I added that, too. Since units have a front-arc (unlike in the WWII rules), using his basic close combat mechanism works. However, I modified it to allow units to abandon close combat. This is to reflect the fact that troops would routinely give up their trenches, rather than fight to the end or surrender, unless they were caught completely flat-footed.

Finally, I used the opening barrage option Neil Thomas suggests.

Because my figures are mounted with a 3" frontage, I scaled all measurements in the rules accordingly, so for example, a 6" move was now 3". In retrospect, that wasn't quite right given the table size was 24" square, and the intent wasn't that the 3" base width mapped to the 6" width, but more like a 4.5"-ish width.

Speaking of the table, I tried something I've been thinking about a lot - a 2D surface to give a boardgame like look to the proceedings, inspired in part by Shambattle.

Two infantry companies hold a trench near the foot of the mountains.

An Austrian battalion led by two companies of stormtroopers advances on the hapless Italians.

Flank attacks in close combat due double damage, so they turn to face their attacker...

And end up being assaulted on their flank anyway - and eliminated shortly after.

Things went a little better on the Italian left. However, with no reinforcements on the way until turn 5, the infantry abandoned the trench line. 

The Austro-Hungarians keep moving beyond the trench, but Italian reinforcements are making their way to the front. 

An Italian infantry company with an abundance of machine guns arrives in the village.

The Italian field gun battery gets off a few rounds. I rule that once field guns fire, they stay where they are - I think i'ts odd they can move as fast as infantry.

I also rule they get -2 in close combat, because the crews didn't sign up for this kind of fighting.

Surprisingly, the field gun battery holds its own and occupies the Austro-Hungarians on the Italian left, keeping some of the pressure of the Italians in the village.

More reinforcements arrive and immediately join the fray. The tides are turning.

The company in the village is routed. The Austro-Hungarians enter, but so do the Italians.

The Italians win the battle for the village on turn 15. 

At the end of the game, both sides had two units remaining. I suspect if the game continued, the odds were high that the field gun battery would fall, allowing the Austro-Hungarians to turn their attention to the village.

My rules modifications seemed to work and without making the stormtroopers overly powerful. 

By not allowing fire into close combat, it made close combat worthwhile even for regular infantry as they could prevent the enemy from engaging all targets in ranged combat. And if the enemy chose to retreat, they would still be in range - giving an aggressive attacker opportunity to do further damage.

Giving assault troops the small advantages to reflect their training and higher morale (it was pretty low all across the Italian front on both sides generally) kept me pushing them into close combat. I had toyed with a -2 for ranged combat to drive the point home, but I'm not sure that's necessary.

I'm not sure about the field guns not being allowed to move any further once they fire, but I kind of like it. I'll have to think on that a bit.

Obviously, one game is not enough to be sure the changes don't break things, but I feel confident enough that I plan to measure out and paint up a few more maps/boards based on scenarios in the book and then play out a campaign.

I'm Like Bob the Builder, but I Don't Have Wendy or Any Anthropomorphic Vehicles to Help

The latest construction project took shape after I decided I was unhappy with my original execution of my idea. 

Here's the finished product:

Going for a Mediterranean look as suits my planned campaign for the paratroops.

The 2nd floor is in two pieces so i can access either side of the bottom floor to move figures.

Really pleased with the stone work on this side.

A new low stone wall - made from two pieces of foamboard glued together.

The three buildings made from a single piece of $1.25 foamboard.

This building, as I noted, started out completely differently:

I wanted something like a water color look, like the smaller buildings I made a few years ago and that I use quite often. However, at this scale it looked all wrong and rather flat. So I hacked it into a ruin and peeled off some of the paper backing so I could create the exposed stone, as if the plaster had shattered and fallen off the house. The result is most pleasing to my eyes.

That I could get these three buildings from a single piece of foamboard somewhat amazes me.

Cost-wise these are hard to beat. $1.25 for the sheet of foamboard. $1 for the bag of maybe 50 popsicle sticks (I think I used maybe five or six), an empty pasta box (basically the same as what I believe the UK folks call cereal packet, but pasta), craft paints, Mod Podge, and hot glue (also acquired from the Dollar Tree, as was the hot glue gun). Oh and painted with brushes from the Dollar Tree. The most expensive bits were probably the Mod Podge and the hobby knife and utility knife blades .I went through five or so of the former and two of the latter.

I have two more complete sheets. I have some ideas - a mixture of ruins and intact buildings, residential and perhaps industrial or commerce related, Mediterranean and more northern Europe. The biggest issue is how much space they take up.

Part of the reason I'm doing my spring clearance is to empty a bin that I can use for the buildings and larger terrain/scenic items.

Although I haven't managed to finish a single figure yet this year, I do feel good about making some progress towards some game or another. Hopefully, this surge of enthusiasm for sitting with the craft supplies again will motivate me to finish up the figures sitting on the painting table (albeit mostly for WWI and the Venus project).

Making Room

Depending on where you view this, you may not notice that I have added a page for the Spring 2022 Clearout. 

Much thought and contemplation has led to these decisions. Mostly, it comes down to the the fact that I really do prefer gaming in 54mm for the most part (I'm interested in 2mm to 6mm gaming as well, though I have none of those at the moment). And in the case of the Great Northern War figures, I have decided if I do Horse & Musket in any way, it will be complete Imagi-nation style, as the moment I start learning history, I find myself unable to divorce myself from the actual history.

In any case, I would rather these figures and books and games get some use rather than cluttering up my very limited space (which grows smaller as I continue to make buildings for WWII skirmish gaming!)

Here's a sample of what you'll find on that page:

15mm VSF/Pulp

1/72 Great Northern War

Books!

Curious about ASLSK?

Please note, I only ship to North America. Not because I do not love my overseas readers, but because I have had issues shipping overseas in the past and do not wish to be on the hook for packages that I can't track.

 

Under Construction

I decided I wanted some ruins for my 1:1 games and although I considered buying some Form Tech ruins I found on eBay, expenses for attending (and being in) my friend's wedding in a few months caused me to reconsider. Certainly, making ruins must be easier than making complete houses? For one, you don't have the hassle of having to make sure all the walls and roof line up just right.

So, with a few bits of foamboard, I set about making the first ruin in about 15 years (when I first started gaming, I used cardboard, roughly hacked, and soaked with watered down black). It's still a work in progress - but I am pleased at how it is coming together. It is decidedly more "realistic" looking than my usual efforts, but nothing remotely complicated. 

Other than foamboard, there's a bunch of small rocks/gravel bits that I picked up in the flower arranging section of Michael's (a craft supply store here in the U.S.). The whole thing was glued together with a hot glue gun. I don't know why I suffered through regular glue for the last build I posted. Hot glue all the way!

All of the paint I used is Delta Ceramcoat - a craft paint that is not as widely available as I'd like in local stores!

I had meant to document all of the steps but that didn't happen. So, instead, here's the building after the first coat of paint was applied. 

The grey doesn't look bad on its own but I have plans.

The floor has been "etched" with a blunt sculpting tool and painted with a thinned Raw Sienna. The walls and rubble have been dry brushed (well almost dry brushed - it was a little wetter than that) Hippo Grey. 

Once the grey dried, I dry brushed with Raw Sienna over the grey. This time it was more of a true dry brush. The whole building began to look more like it was made of stone or had water stains or something. However, I didn't get any shots of the building in this state, because I went right on to dry brushing with Bridgeport Grey.

I like this picture. I think it looks better here than it does in-person!

This turned out to be a tedious process and I sometimes have a life outside of gaming related activities, so I didn't quite finish this step.

You can see the Raw Sienna without the Bridgeport Grey on the left.

My plan, which I mentioned ever so quickly above, is to go for something that will evoke ruins in Italy. Next up is to dry brush with offwhite and then a closer-to-white off-white, all the while leaving some of the more rock like stuff to show here and there.

At least that's the idea - we'll see how it comes out when I get there.