Back in front of the keyboard - what have I been up to?

 What have I been up to of late?  Well Mrs E and I took a short holiday, nothing fancy and mostly taken in our garden and then we have had some building work under way which has slowed down my blog output.  Oh and I was binge watching 'The Big Bang Theory' on Netflix as well.  The other thing (and probably of more interest to you) is the progress on the 2mm Altar of Freedom units.

I sent off an order to Irregular Miniatures, just after my last post, for some 2mm castings to cover the HQ elements, Artillery and and command bases and have painted these up and based them since last I posted.  The army command post casting  is really rather nice having tents, picketed horses and a couple of figures gathered around a table.  It comes with a flag attached to one of the tents but I clipped that off.  The rows of small tents are also very useful and the large tents add a bit of variety.  Throw in some covered wagons and all the components for the command stands are sorted!

As you can see from the pictures I have added some overscale flags to the HQ and command bases so they are easier to identify on the table.  I'm ignoring the fact that these are wildly out of scale as they will help show where the centres of operation are.

HQ and Command stands for First Bull Run/ Manassas 

I also bit the bullet and purchased the STL files available from Forward March Studios these only cost $15.00 and provide a huge number of files for troops from late renaissance through to the late 19th century along with some terrain items.  Once I have decided what I need I will arrange to get some  printed. I also lost some time playing with Tinkercad a 3D modelling software package.  This is free on line and although it's not a professional level package I think it will let me edit the STL files from Forward March should I want to.

The thing which is slowing me down is the sourcing of 2mm ACW buildings.  The Altar of Freedom site provides some paper models for free covering some of the best known  buildings from the various Battle sites but although described as 3mm scale I found them a little over sized.  Nearer to 6mm then 3mm in fact.  Still reducing the size on the print settings easily solves that.  What it doesn't solve is the the fact that I find making a 1/900th scale paper building tricky with full scale fingers!  Brigade models do some ACW buildings which include some I can identify as being based upon those on the Bull Run Battlefield as well as from A few others.  They don't do the bigger buildings for say Gettysburg though and I can see why from a commercial perspective.  After all how many Lutheran Seminaries will I, or other ACW gamers, need to buy?  Demand would be limited so its never going to be a priority.  Which is where I was hoping 3D printing might help but 2mm and 3mm is not well catered for at present.

Nice production values for a free download

I have tried my hand at making some using some old house shaped pieces of hard wood from the bits box which are not too bad but don't look like any of the well known buildings.  They will work as generic buildings for towns and villages but I should really like to have a recognisable Henry House or Stone House available.

Most Altar of Freedom games are played on a 6' x 4' Table, with a very few using a 4' x 4' table.  I have been meaning to create a wargames board for a long time (If I'm honest that's a very, very long time) so I dug out the MDF boards that have been sat in garage since we moved in and stripped off the badly made Bussaco terrain they were covered with, to bring them back to a level surface.  They have warped slightly since I made the Bussaco boards back in 2007 so I need to batten them to take that out and then seal them.  I have four 2' x 4' boards so that's more than enough for what I need.  1" x 2" timber should be enough for the battens and I intend to drill through them and use kitchen unit connectors to fasten them together as required.  A coat of cheap emulsion paint and Bobs yer Mother's Brother and all that.