World War I Updates

I completed the second machine gun and crew for the Austro-Hungarians (I use the German mg and crew from Irregular Miniatures, with gasmask heads because gasmasks look cool) and with that, phase 1 of my WWI armies, for Austro-Hungary at least, is complete.

We'll call this a battalion of three 6-figure companies with a stormtrooper company in front,

I haven't decided if I'm keeping the Green Tea base color or not, hence the plain wood rounds.

Now obviously, when someone says something like "Phase 1"that implies a "Phase 2". Indeed, that is the case here. 

Of course, these phases, so-called, were derived after the fact, thus the labels are being retroactively applied.

Phase 1: 

• 18 infantry figures
•  6 assault troops
•  1 leader
•  2 machine guns with crews. 

The Italian gun and crew are in the queue and have jumped to the front:

Irregular Miniatures British HMG and crew, with Adrian helmeted heads from their Empire  Multi-parts range,

Phase 2:

For both sides: 

• 6 additional infantry figures (giving me 4 companies for my battalion, when using 6-figure units),
• 1 airplane

For the Italians: 

• 2 additional cavalry figures 
• 6 Alpini figures

Phase 3:

• 12 Germans
• 12 British 
• 1 German MG
• 1 British MG

"Now, hold on there, Jethro!", I hear you say.  "What's this about an airplane?" 

Well, I acquired a print copy of Contemptible Little Armies and I really like the way air support is included on the table. Before I could say "contact!", I had a 1/48 scale model whizzing through the mail to me:

The search for a suitable (i.e. cheap and not difficult to assemble) kit for Austro-Hungary continues. 

I haven't built a model plane in nearly 40 years. I'm a bit nervous about the painting. And I've always hated applying decals(I always tore them accidentally). The 1/48 scale should hopefully be easier for my all-thumbs-itude and my sketchy vision to deal with, at least.

Finally, also World War I, but on the weird side, I have assembled my 1/35 ICM French

They remind me of game pieces in this grey state.

Let me be clear, I love these figures. The poses are fantastic, the sculpting is crisp, and the figures very clean with no flash and minimal, easily removed, mold lines. HOWEVER, I doubt they will last more than a game or two, if they survive painting. 

Apparently, the difference between 1/35 and 1/32 is that in 1/35, bayonets are skinny little needles that break when you look at them wrong (both of those pictured are glued together somewhere in the middle of their length as a result). That the bolts on the rifles were a separate piece to be attached with glue defies all logic that I can muster.

At least I somehow managed to glue the bi-pod on the LMG the right way.

As I said, this is a Weird World War I project (and ICM is helping by suddenly releaseing a bunch of sets of figures in the attempts at armor made during the war). Weird means there needs to be something, well, weird. First up:

This is in-progress. I have yet to decide on how I'll finish i off

This is a hook horror from CP Models. It is intended as a larger than human-sized 28mm figure. But, I wrote to the proprietor and found out just how big.

I think it fits quite well with the 1/35 figures. It doesn't look bad next to my 1/32 HaT Spanish Infantry either (which are undersized). 

Painting for the entire Weird War I project is intended to be grittier than my usual glossy toy-soldiers to convey the weird aspect in visual form.

Oh and one last thing, I recently learned of Never Going Home, a WWWI RPG. Savage Worlds has its own Weird World War I books, which I will acquire eventually, but I managed to score the entire Never Going Home PDF collection via a Humble Bundle deal. Highly recommend if just for the evocative artwork!

More Age of Fantasy

After assembling three 705-ish points army lists for Age of Fantasy, I set up a table and then drew two of the armies to participate. The result was a rematch of lizard warriors against medieval humans, or Saurians vs Chivalrous Kingdoms, in the parlance of the rules.

The armies would fight over a pass with four objective markers scattered about. Deployment was determined by die roll.

Activation in Age of Fantasy is by unit, and alternates between the sides. To make this more challenging as a solo venture, I assigned each unit to a card and each side had it's own deck. On that side's turn, they drew a card to determine which unit would activate. Thus sometimes, the order of units was not ideal, or rather did not meet my plans, and thus forced some changes to my thinking, which was the point after all.

Games are limited to four turns, which doesn't sound like much, but given movement rates and devastating combat effects, it seems to be more than adequate to determine a winner.

By way of example, the human archers were quickly cut down by the triceratops (the onboard crew did not even attack - as you can either shoot or melee and they are shooters. So it was all dinosaur stompin' time).

In the middle, the scrum lasted a touch longer, with the marine iguanas holding out against the foot knights for two turns.

The mounted knights charged the geckos and it went about as well as could be expected for the tiny lizard warriors.

That fellow in the lower right has the right idea.

 However, they passed their morale check and the survivors hung on.

For their part, the knight's victory was short lived. The lizard shaman (using the Frog-Mage stats) has some seriously powerful spells - and wiped out the entire unit with ONE spell!

On turn three, the Chivalrous Kingdoms, who had been quite aggressive to this point, found themselves consolidated into a rather thin line.

The High Champion, who must have truly been high, decided to make a bold move.

The results were predictable. In my defense, I didn't realize he only had a Tough trait of 3. I thought it was comparable to the same trait for the Triceratops. It was not - the triceratops has a Tough of 12.

Barely inconvenienced by the stupidly brave man on a horse, the triceratops and crew turned their attention to the human archers.

This pair began to seriously reconsider their life choices.

A similar miscalculation on my part with respect to hero hit points occurred in favor of the humans, when I failed to realize the lizard shaman only had three. However I also screwed up the way close combat works when attacking a single figure. I could not find anything in the rules, so assumed it was like so many other rules sets and allowed only three attackers. 

Later this was clarified for me in a Facebook group (oddly enough, I'm one of the admin) - the rules apply exactly the same. So potentially many more of the attackers could have been involved.

You might argue that the shaman survived the attack as a result. However, they have an insanely good quality of 2, so it's very hard to cause them any damage at all. 

In any case, it wouldn't have changed anything. The Chivalrous Kingdoms were down to this one unit of knights.

Here is the overview at the end of turn 4.

The lizards controlled two objectives, the Chivalrous Kingdoms had one, and one was contested at the end of the game. The humans had lost all but one unit of foot knights, compared to the loss of but one entire unit by the lizards.

A lizard victory. Not a bad accounting for the shaman's first outing.

The Gathering Storm

Two French scouts stop at the edge of clearing. 

"Mon dieu! Regarde! là-bas!"  ("Look! Over there!")

Small blue-orange lizard warriors enter into the clearing.

Followed by their larger cousins of the marine tribes that inhabit the many coastal shoals of the Venusian continents.

A terrifying toothy jaw of a Spinosaurus led by a diminutive beast master from the inland deserts came next.

Soon, the very ground trembled accompanied by the beating of a drum echoing through the jungle.

Crashing of timber heralds the arrival of one of the formidable Tritceratops battle platforms.

The gathered warriors hiss and chant. There is an undeniable energy in the crowd as they gather at the base of an outcropping.

Two more lizard warriors, Saurion champions, emerge to the riotous cheers of the throng.

Beating spears, feet, and tails against the ground, they are on the verge of frenzy.

Suddenly there is a bone shaking roar. A great and terrifying visage bursts forth atop the outcrop. A second roar and the crowd is silenced.

From the shadow of the great beast steps the very reason for this gathering: the Shaman who has gathered the vast and varied tribes of lizard folk together to resist the men of Earth and the men of Venus.

His words, though incomprehensible to the Frenchmen hiding and fearing in the jungle, needs no translation: there will be no peace on Venus for mankind.

*****

As you have no doubt surmised, I finished painting the last originally planned figure for my lizard warriors: the lizard shaman. I say originally planned" because I came up with an army list for Fistful of Lead : Bigger Battles and this is that list. 

However, I already have ideas for expansion in part thanks to Age of Fantasy, in part because I have some extra figures (I have a lot of Wargames Atlantic lizards - the "beast master" above). I plan to put them on the howdah, and pick up 3 more Dark Heaven figures (the red/orange figures) to make a unit of 10 of those.

In any case, here are some glamour shots of the shaman.

OH, if you're getting Spider-Man vibes, good. His color scheme is based on the Mwanza flat-headed rock agama. Which, as you might guess, is nick-named "the Spider-Man lizard".

Unusually for me, I did some dry brushing, a bit of washing, and some highlighting. The figure had way too much detail to just go solid uniform color. He's also not glossy - instead I relied on Mod Podge to provide a mild sheen.

I suspect the gloss would look odd on a figure with this much detail.

The figure is from Iron Wind Metals from their Spellcasters game. It is a 54mm figure - all of the figures in the range are. I believe they are old Ral Partha sculpts, but don't quote me on that.

A Hobby Heavy Weekend

Every once in awhile, the stars align and a weekend arrives with sufficient hobby time to do multiple activities.

I started the weekend off by finishing up a couple of new additions for my Tanitians (aka "not Carthaginians"). Up first is a unit leader and an ordinary swordsperson:

The figure on the left, who will function as a leader figure in rules that have them, is by Classic Toy Soldiers (CTS), from their Carthaginians box. The fellow on the right is from HaT, Spanish Infantry I believe it's called.

The CTS figure appears to be Spanish infantry as well - albeit substantially taller. In fact, I believe the HaT figures from the Spanish infantry box are undersized (compared even to the HaT Carthaginians).

Another CTS figure will serve as the army commander:

His shield design was copied from an Eldritch horror font set. Size-wise he fits in perfectly with the HaT Carthaginians.

Finally, for the Tanitians, a figure I'm most happy about. She started out as an SCS Direct mermaid figure and will now serve as a Tanitian warrior-priestess (in Fistful of Lead:Bigger Battles, she'd be a hero figure):

I lopped off her tailfin, and then a bit of PVA coated tissue covered her mer-person lower extremeties. Some tin-foil folded on itself many times and glued over the mermaid's sad little wand (or was it a dagger?), formed her sword. I *may* paint some tentacles coming up over skirt, but then again, I may not.

At this point, I am five of the black-figure pottery figures from completing my originally planned Tanitian force.

Because I am a man of extremes, I tried my hand at some 2mm figures as well:

I think it's pretty clear they are Austrians, late war, circa 1917-1918. Close-up (below) you can see how the paint was sort of hit-or-miss on my part, but the figures, at least the prone ones, are clearly there. Some of the other poses confuse me as to what they represent.

The base is the 20th Century infantry base from Irregular Miniatures. They are, to borrow a phrase, "cheap as chips." They also paint very quickly. It took maybe 5 minutes from base coat to flock to do these two bases and I could have done a good dozen or so in barely any more time.

 I have in mind to do a divisional level game set in Italy, in WWI (obviously).  However, 2mm may not be the ideal choice, as much as I like them. Everything looks fine in bright light, but by and large, I like dim lights and that makes the figures nearly impossible to see against the base. I also really want to do a Granny Grate army (I did some tests a decade a go that I was quite pleased with but I had not project in mind at the time and so painted some generic British red-coats), so I'll try that next.

Early Sunday morning, I finished the last three of my Marine Iguana inspired Lizard Warriors:

This gives me a complete unit of ten. By my original plans, I need only complete the shaman and the force will be complete (I do have a few other figures to paint though to act as handlers for the Spinosaurus, but they are not necessary).

Finally, all work and no play blah blah blah.  On Sunday, I was invited by Cloud Captain to join him and a friend for a game of Age of Fantasy out at Hobby Town.  It was a battle of Greeks (28mm) vs Ogres (Cloud Captain's 54mm barbarians for our planned Venus games and a frost dragon). 

Cloud Captain shared command of his ogres with me, so that I could learn the rules.

Greek general attacks the frost dragon.

My favorite picture - this fellow held on to the end, bravely, but futilely, swinging his weapon above his head at the ogres on the hill.

Although we ogres lost, it was great fun and a rare non-solo game for me. The rules are straightforward and I would say by the end of turn 2 that I had a decent enough grasp on them. 

You can pretty much map army ideas to existing concepts (apparently, if you support the patreon, you get access to a points calculator for full customization). My Tanitians, for example, map well to the Dark Elves (and I plan to field them as such), while the lizards are clearly Saurians.

I hope to get a solo game in soon using the rules.The rules would certainly work for battles among the various native Venusian factions. Incorporating the Europeans with their rifles and Gatlings may require a small amount of effort to do so.

Many Wars Ago

Norm's relatively recent post entitled Too Much Stuff had had me thinking quite a bit about wargame rules and my various figure collections. I realized that one of my favorite sets of rules, G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., by Buck Surdu and Chris Palmer, hasn't been on the table in ages. This is not because I don't like them anymore, I do, but, as part of that whole "modern age" thing, I am spoiled for choice and find myself always chasing the next rule set. It was time to put this game on the table again.

Saturday night, I set up an Italian assault on an Austro-Hungarian held hill-top, inspired by a scene from the movie, Many Wars Ago, itself based on A Soldier on the Southern Front, 

G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. is written for 10-figure infantry units. Morale checks are directly impacted by unit size - however, if you have polyhedral dice, you can have units of a variety of sizes, although technically the math won't be exactly the same/ (A 10-figure unit that loses 1 figure has a 10% chance of failing the morale check, while an 8-figure unit that loses 1 figure has a 12.5% chance. Still, I'm OK with all of that because it makes the game flexible.)

The Italian's have three 6-figure units (5 soldiers and a leader - I tend to treat the soldiers as representing some number of men, while the leader is just one person. I don't know why but I"ve almost always done this with G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. even though, I am now fairly certain that the intent is 1:1 for everyone), while the Austrians have one 7-figure unit and an HMG unit. 

The discrepancy in the number of figures relates to the sizes for companies given in H.M.G. (a WWI ruleset). While I did not use the numbers given there exactly, I wanted to reflect the differences in the size of the units just the same. The Austrians to have more men per company than the Bersaglieri (a standard Italian infantry unit would have nearly 1.5x as many men per company as the Austrians).

Finally, I set the shooting value lower than usual (normally for trained regulars I use 8-10, so I went with 5 in the event), in order to give the smaller units a chance to survive a little longer.

In any case, enough rambling!

The Battle

The Italians ready in their trenches. There is some concern that there is not much cover on this hillside.

An overview of the battlefield. Both sides are in trenches at the start. I had each Italian unit dice to see if they'd leave the trench when their card was turned. Only the one on the far right in the above picture went over the top on the first turn.

Machinegun fire begins to take its toll almost immediately.

The Italian center and left go over the top - no doubt spurred forward by the gathering carabinieri

The Austrians take fire from the Italians left but they unleash devastation on the Italian right.

The unit on the Italian left is almost to the enemy trench!

The center struggles to advance under oppressive fire. Meanwhile on the Italian right, the unit is destroyed through casualties and desertion. The commander races back towards his trench in a panic but, seeing the gleaming rifles of the carabinieri, he thinks the better of it and eventually makes his way to cover up the hill, where he can fire ineffectively at the MG.

The Italians crash into the waiting Austrians and a viscous hand-to-hand struggle ensues.
Close combat in G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.  can result in neither, one, or both combatants being eliminated.

The carnage after two rounds of violent man-to-man fighting.

Unphased by the chaos to their right, the HMG keeps firing away, chewing up the Italian center and sending the survivors running back down the hill. 

One of the great things about G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. is the potential for larger-than-life leaders - the Austrian officer prepared to hold his ground against the Italian wave, but the Italians called off the attack. It had been too costly.

The Italians lost 2/3 of their force but distributed unequally between their three units. Not visible in the pictures, the Austrians had two more figures on the table (they had 3 casualties and 1 desertion) - the two had abandoned the trench on morale failures but were still within 12" of the leader figure. That means they could move to rejoin him on their next card. 

I'm not sure if it felt like a WWI game or not. I think it pretty much did. It felt like G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. for sure though ( a little silly, a lot of fun, bloody) and that was good enough for me. They will definitely see more use with my Venus collection, which had always been my intent anyway, but now I see them as a strong candidate for small games set in The Great War.