All Units Return to Base

Friday was my birthday. I am 51. Not sure how that happened.

Peppermint Update: He came home from the hospital on my birthday, which was the best gift I could get. There's no cure, but at least he's home and comfortable and we can take care of him ourselves.

We went for a walk to the nearest convenient store (a bi-weekly tradition) and I treated myself to a Monster energy (Orange Dreamsicle flavor is amazing!). I may or may not have had three more over the weekend *cough cough*

I had thought that afterwards I might strong-arm my son into playing Wings of Glory with me, as we recently had a great time with the basic rules, but alas, his friends were all online playing Roblox together and I didn't have the heart to keep him from that.

Instead, I sat with Peppermint and re-watched several episodes of HBO's The Pacific.

Fired up, I spent time Saturday rebasing my Pacific Theater collection. 

The result is that I can field a company plus per Crossfire organization tables for both the Japanese and the USMC in 1942. 

Cutting the little b********** free from their individual bases was far more trying than I expected. Fortunately, I only stabbed myself once. Unfortunately, it was right in the tip of my fretting hand index finger, which means playing guitar will be unpleasant for a bit.

The Americans

The Japanese. Each platoon gets a knee mortar. And a badly painted flag.

I toyed with using 1.5" squares and three figures per base, but went with 2-figure1.25" squares (the standard size from the rulebook) because I can field more units this way.

Of course, based as they are, I can use them Hammer of Democracy, too.

I have Britton Publishers Rising Sun: Operation Watchtower for Guadalcanal scenarios and Rising Sun: Operation Galvanic for Tarawa. It's been awhile since I read either, but if I recall, most of the scenarios are infantry only, with off-table artillery, which suits my forces. I suspect that as written they are better suited to Hammer of Democracy, as Crossfire requires substantial terrain laid out with great care to prevent table length line of sight and fire lanes.

Sunday,  which, by my reckoning, was still part of my birthday, I ran the third session of our Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign.

The party made it to the town, spent some time talking to the townsfolk (where we discovered I can do just two accents: Southern and the other Southern) and went on a shopping spree, before eventually making their way to the hideout of some ruffians who have been shaking down the businesses in town. 

They quickly found themselves toe-to-toe with a Nothic (a creature none of us had never heard of before - and they still haven't, I just showed them the picture, not the name) but came out victorious. This was followed by rolling over some skellies in a crypt. We were all shocked to find out that in 5e clerics don't get to turn undead at 1st level! I guess that makes up for them being able to cast spells at 1st.

To my delight, the players have rediscovered the ancient joy of mapping the dungeon as you go.  It's not really accounted for in-play like it is in B/X, at least not in the starter set, so it's not an in-game document they can lose in a fire or flood. 

Not that I'd do that to them. I swear.

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

After two years of 2" square bases with 2 figures each, I have decided it's time to change things up for my WWII Eastern Front collection.

The impetus for this was the realization that board games give me everything I want in a squad based game, with the ability to put more troops, guns, armor, and buildings on the table than I could ever manage (at least in 54mm/1/32, even with 1/43-1/50 vehicles). The other push came from basing my Venusian figures on 1.5" round bases with a single figure each. I just really like how this looks.

This still leaves questions about what kind of game am I hoping to get from this particular collection to justify it's taking up of space. 

I already have single-figure basing for Western Europe, with British paratroopers and American infantry vs German Waffen SS. Those figures are Britain and Conte, scored when I find great deals, so they are rather small forces of a squad each.  That means squad or less per side gaming. The Eastern Front has to be something larger than that as I can field slightly more than a 1:1 platoon, never mind the support weapons. If I'm only using 10 or so figures, why hold on to 3 or 4 times that?

A company advances across the river - each grouping of three figures is effectively a platoon. In one of my many test games, I activated by platoon and alternated each side - keeping all platoons within 12" of the "leader" figure. I rather liked this approach as I could get a little more narrative detail like "3rd platoon advanced to the west end of the ridge as 2nd platoon secured the middle." Of course, the 10 figure unit could be a platoon and the three figure groupings squads, just change movement and weapon ranges.

A recent revisiting of Grant's Battle was particularly inspiring. I was most taken by the devil-may-care attitude towards TO&Es when equipping one's armies (admittedly this was much due to availability of suitable models when it was written as due to the author's ethos), but also the abstraction of counting one figure as more than one man. I realize this is fairly common for many gamers, but for WWII, in my own gaming, I have either done 1:1 or used trays (Morschauser's term) where the figure count was irrelevant, the tray was the thing.

In any case, this also had me contemplating Lionel Tarr's rules and Featherstone's simple WWII rules, which both treat 10 figures as a company. Grant calls his units platoons, but he's using 20mm figures and his ground scale of 1 inch = 33 1/3 yards, so to my mind that makes them more like companies. There's that nerdy obsession with ranges and unit frontages and "getting it right" (something I'm really trying to let go of).

A firefight at the village as the Germans try to weaken the defender before advancing into close contact. Meanwhile, the second Soviet company w/mg support advances towards the hill to head off the Germans advancing across the river.

Regardless of the specific figure count, this level of abstraction appeals to me as does the general nature of the "old school" approach - especially rolling to attack for each figure with the weapon they are equipped with and individual figure removal of casualties, which  seems appropriately "toy soldiery". Admittedly Featherstone and Tarr cause multiple casualties from attacks by a single figure, but they were probably using more figures than I am with 54mm figures on my 38" square card table. My 48" table may however allow me field a battalion with support and armor and I could try their mechanics as written.

The Portable Wargame also works well for me and I have come to like the look of individually based figures in a grid space for this period - at least other people's games of such - so this will allow me to achieve those aesthetics. Finally, it turns out that 6 figures placed on a 6"x 3" movement tray make a nice unit for One Hour Wargames style WWII forces (again though I prefer to treat the base as a company).

All of that said, I am going to refrain from painting the round bases any time soon. Until I've played a few more games to confirm this is the way forward (for now), I'd rather not use up precious hobby time painting the bases. I've also saved the square bases, just in case. Because I do nothing but a simple paint job on them, reattaching the figures is a quick process.

Island Hopping or Rebasing the PTO

No gaming afoot but I did get inspired to rebase my 1/72 Pacific Theater figures.

Originally they were individually based on U.S. pennies but now I'm basing them on foamcore, for use in Crossfire, Blitzkrieg Commander 1st ed., The Portable Wargame, my Morschauser Modified Modern rules, my various grid games, etc.

I have between 40 and 50 figures for each side (painted around 10 years ago and gamed with very often for a time)- so more than enough for my current small multi-figure base games.

The proof of concept batch.

I liked the light I was getting, so another one of the same batch.

More figures on bases. Perhaps they are fighting in winter? Nope, just haven't painted the bases yet.

Finally, not exactly gaming related but certainly tangential. I acquired a copy of The Legacy of World War II in European Arthouse Cinema by Samm Deighan. I've known Samm for over a decade now and I have been eagerly awaiting this book since I first heard whispers she was working on it, many years ago. By the way, lest you feel like you might be hoodwinked into some affiliate link, the link is to the Google book preview rather than to Amazon for a whole host of reasons.

Cheers to you all  - I have been popping in to read your blogs whenever I can. I've been swamped with multiple efforts on multiple fronts (and enjoying all but the ones involving my day job) and your posts keep me connected to the hobby, inspired, and itching to play. 

I do hope to get a game in tonight or this weekend - a board game perhaps or maybe toy soldiers. We'll see what hand fortune deals us!

Re-basing Continues

More re-basing - here is the current re-based German force:

6 infantry units, 2 MGs, 2 mortars, 4 leader types.

Figures are a mix of Airfix, Matchbox, Classic Toy Soldier (MG), Dragon (MG), and 21st Century/Ultimate Soldier (mortar crews). The Ultimate Soldier mortars are delicate and in my ham fists, they have all broken. The mortars pictured are from BMC. They aren't great but what they lack in detail and accuracy, they make up for in durability.

Here's a closer picture of the mortars and their crews:

One of the the mortar crew has a non-uniform base color. They will be dealt with accordingly.

One thing I have yet to decide on is how to handle the LMG teams for both sides. I can base them two figures on a base, like the HMGs, or I can base them with three figures(either three prone, or two prone and one kneeling) like the rest of the infantry and use them as regular infantry bases.- which sort of makes sense given that the LMG is just assumed when the bases represent sections/squads and above.


I'll let that sit on the back burner.

Next up, figure-wise: finish painting the next three-base German infantry unit and assemble and paint the two Soviet HMG teams in my to-do pile.

Re-basing Update

I finally started re-basing my 54mm WWII infantry on Litko bases, with magnetic sheet attached, to allow for a completely non-committal basing scheme,

It is most definitely time-consuming and somewhat tedious.

(Mostly) Matchbox Germans and a mix of Airfix and Supreme (Italeri clone) Soviets.

Being able to fit so many figures into a single case is pretty exciting.

Figures stuck to galvanized steel sheet. Yay! Science!

Unfortunately, I got carried away basing the Soviets, who haven't even been out on the table in 3 or 4 years and weren't part of my original calculation for my order from Litko, and I also failed to account for mounting the prone two-person German and Soviet LMG teams on 4 bases each (2 per figure), so I'm going to need to order more bases. 

For some reason I ordered 25mm x 40mm bases for my original order. I probably should have ordered 1" x 1.5" so, for consistency and to avoid having to redo all of the figures I have done already, I'll stick with the 25mm x 40mm.

The other "problem" is that it's been so long since I painted a WWII infantry figure, I forgot what color green I used on the US bases - an attempt to match my Britain's Big Red One figure bases - which is the color I want to use now on all of them for a semblance of consistency.

I think it was Vallejo German Camo Dark Green, and it doesn't look too far off, so that's what I'm going with.

Rebasing Project

On Christmas Eve, I received an order of 3" x 3" Wargame Accessories bases from The Last Square. Although I've heard of The Last Square before, this was my first time ordering from then and I was most pleased. I did not expect to receive my order so quickly!

With steel bases and magnets on the figures, I realized I can be as non-committal to my basing scheme as always without the hassle of scraping glue and blue-tac off my toys.

Yep. That's a metal square.

Today on my lunch break, I spent some time fiddling around with magnets and such - and while simple sheet magnets will work fine for the plastic figures, the Britains and Conte metal figures need something stronger.

I grabbed some rare earth magnets off the fridge (5mm x 1mm) and they work well enough, but they add a bit of extra height to the figures. Making a hole in a wooden base for the magnet, and then attaching the figure to the base and magnet (using blue-tac) works like a charm. Unfortunately, the wooden bases I have are too big to fit 3 figures onto a 3" square, so another order placed - this time with Litko.

And just for giggles, below is one of the Tehnolog figures I got for my son for Christmas - rather nice figures that fit well with Armies in Plastic, Deetail, etc.

This one may have just robbed a Playmobil armored truck.

The Grass is Always Greener

As mentioned in the previous post, MDF coasters were given a coat of Ceramcoat Green and figures were to be attached with blue tac.

The last part is done and here are my current medieval forces, based for Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames.

The Europeans

The Saracens 

Figures are mostly Deetail. You will notice a general lack of archers on both sides, and levies (as NT classifies them) for the Saracens.

To rectify the Saracen situation,  I have placed an order with The Toy Soldier Co. for this package which includes 36 figures, many of whom are usable as levies, and a kneeling archer pose which will give them at least one base of archers, so the armies will be equal.I will also get a few bases of war camels out of the deal, which isn't necessary for OHW but could be useful with other scenarios.

Eventually, possibly later this month, I will make a play for some European archers to fill out the one base I have. Some day, I suppose, I will try to hit two bases of archers each, and thus  'complete' these armies.

Many of my unused medieval figures from this project will ultimately find their way into my imagined VSF game - at least if I go the G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. route, with its individually based figures - or ,perhaps, some skirmish gaming of a sort.

An Update for the Sake of Updating

In order to keep my posts going at least once a week - here's what I've been up to.

Nothing.

Ok, not entirely true. I finally got around to painting my 4" MDF coasters a lovely shade of Ceramcoat Green.

I take that back, it's not a shade, it's literally just Green.

This picture was gathered from Pinterest. Not a photo of the actual bottle of paint I am using.

None-the-less, it's very toy soldier appropriate, even if it contrasts strongly against the green used on the figure bases - which varies from a dark forest-y green to bright Deetail's green.

I have a few more I can paint before I semi-permanently mount my medieval figures to them with blue-tac.

Not sure what I want to do for my WW2 figures yet - I keep bouncing between the 4" bases, per Tim Gow's lovely Little Cold Wars, and the 3" bases that I used to use (settled upon by a mere doubling of what people typically do for 1/72 figures (not to mention it's what Morschauser did for his 54mm)).

Basing: The Perennial (Weekly?) Dilemma

Is there anything worse than the self-doubt inspired by making a basing decision?

54s in particular seem a bit more troublesome than most - so few rules suggest a size for them, and doubling or tripling can often result in ridiculous base sizes.

If you take a look at my other blog, you'll see that my 54s were mostly multi-based, 2 figures to a 3" square:

Typically, I treated each base as a squad for Blitzkrieg Commander, or a platoon for One Hour Wargames (sometimes I used two bases for a 6" front per Neil Thomas's rules).

But after seeing Tim Gow's play test of a Little Cold Wars inspired WW2 game on Megablitz and More where the figures are four to a 4" square  for platoon, I decided to unbase everything and give that a try with some 4" MDF coasters I picked up for the purpose (4" also corresponds to what Neil Thomas suggests for a basing width minimum in OHW):

This looks good to my eyes, but, despite almost never playing 1:1 skirmish anymore,  I really want the flexibility to use my figures as individuals and on bases and potentially, bases of different sizes (I have commitment issues, what can i say?), but not have them fall over when I move those bases.

I'm also demanding as you can see.

So, stealing borrowing from Mr. Gow, I have decided to mount each figure to a base, attach a magnet, and make the movement tray/sabot from steel.

But, as I just bought the 4" coasters (well, around 4". They aren't perfect), and more than I could use at that, I thought it better to see if I could make them work. After some research, I found "steel paper" available relatively inexpensively and easily cut with scissors - so that's that.

Deciding on which base for the figures themselves took several hours of wasted energy researching round vs square and which size for 54s. The Miniatures Page is almost as bad as getting lost in Wikipedia! I saw everything from 1" squares to 1.5" circles to 2" squares/circles, and why squares are better and circles are better. *bangs head on desk*

I opened up OpenOffice Draw and made scale renderings of different sabots with bases and how figures with different sized integrated basing might look. (Obsess much?)

Finally, I went back to the inspiration for this, and, after reading dozens of entries on Megablitz and More, I found the dimensions of the rectangles Mr. Gow uses (30mm x 40mm), and promptly placed my order with Litko for the same, with rounded corners.

No sure how long until they arrive (I rarely order anything not Amazon Prime with 2 day shipping, so I'm somewhat spoiled that way), but in the meantime, I've got five Conte US paratroopers primed and ready for paint this weekend. Ironically, they will probably be left as single figs for 1:1 skirmish games.