Moving on apace - 2mm ACW and a little rock music

 Or should that be moving on at the double quick time?

Rebasing from card to MDF is now completed (phew) with the exception of the artillery which is a minor task by comparison.  So I have moved onto adding new infantry brigade bases with the ultimate aim of having the right number of bases to field both sides for Gettysburg (Yes, I know that my megalomania is showing again!).  I have settled into a simple production line system working in batches.  This means I cut a lot of matchsticks to length, move onto assembling that batch, then basing them and last is adding the flags.

Tiny flags you don't have to be nuts but...

The trickiest part of the process is the last, the flags, one for each Confederate unit but two for each Federal one, so either four or eight on each base as I'm doing four regiments per brigade base. I have made them way over sized as I need to be able to handle them and after all the work printing cutting, shaping and gluing it's nice for them to be noticeable. It does make a real difference to the bases though as it makes them come 'alive'. So far so cheap (other than the cost of bases) but before long I will have to bite the bullet and spend money on extra bases and those items where I use Irregular Miniature castings! It's still not a huge outlay though compared to even 6mm projects.

The flags add some movement to the static lines of troops

To help with the tedium of multiple repeats of a single process I have fired up Spotify on the PC and have been working through the back catalogues of some bands I haven't listened to for a while (in some cases for a VERY long while) and catching up on stuff I missed first time around.  I was an early convert to 'art rock' in the1970's and that brought me to the band 'Deaf School'.  I was lucky enough to see them live in  back in 1976 touring their first album which incidentally is a real gem.  It's a quirky mix of rock, cabaret and glam rock stylings with some clever lyrics.  I am currently listening to some of their later albums that I missed out on when they reformed after a long break.  Coincidentally their original drummer was born in my home town a couple of years before I was.

This is the first album and its a cracking listen

I also have found my Father's wartime photo albums from his time on HMS Chaser (a US built escort carrier).  He served from 1942 to the end of the war in the Far East. So a new project is born scanning the prints to obtain digital versions that I can make available to anyone who is interested.  More on that in due course.

 

Hitting 65,000 page views

 Just a very quick post to say thank you to my reading public for clocking up 65,000 page views.  If there is anything you would like me to cover (within decency and reason 😄) let me know and I will see what I can do.  

The painting table - May 2022

My painting table is unusually crowded at the moment.  Mainly this is due to the 2mm ACW production line.  On the table are bases that just need the bases a dry brushing in green so they will be out of the way PDQ.  Towards the top right are a couple of 2mm artillery bases but I can't rebase these until more MDF bases arrive in the relevant size

There are also some Brigade Models small scale scenery buildings from their Medieval and ACW ranges and some 6mm Hun Light cavalry, from both Irregular and Baccus. The later have been waiting on my attention for quite a while now!  There are also a few bits n bobs awaiting repurposing for my 6mm ancient armies and a small number of O8 3mm armoured vehicles for the 1980's cold war gone hot games.

The current state of play

I'm going to try to make inroads into these before I post a June painting table update, well it would be embarrassing to keep posting the same picture wouldn't it!  Lot's to do and so little time to do it so if I don't make progress feel free to nag at me!

Ammunition supply - further thoughts

 My post covering a possible rule to cover the risk of a unit running low and subsequently then running out of ammunition sparked a healthy debate on the TMP boards.  Much more than I expected.  The responses split into two groups.  Those who felt that unit commanders should know what the ammo supply state was and control the engagement accordingly and those who felt that at some point going up the chain of command that ability to read the minutiae of a battle was lost.  It was partly split on time periods too with those who game in mechanised periods less keen on the suggested rule as they considered that commanders should never be surprised by running out of ammo.

The debate focussed on the view that where an army has a firm understanding of it's supply position pre battle then the risk of going ammunition depleted should or could be managed and reflected in the way the battle is fought.  There was also a feeling that resupply was so well organised that using up ammunition should be an extreme case.  One responder seemed to think that a very detailed rule would be required and that the overhead wasn't worth while.  He even wondered about the available statistical evidence and how well my rule reflected those details.  My problem is that while I can give statistics on the rate of use of ammunition for the British Civil Wars based on re-enacting experience and that I do know that resupply of filled bandoliers was carried out in some cases, the rest of the data isn't (or at least isn't easily) available.  So I can't point to a battle where ammunition ran out or had to be resupplied but can find evidence where the move to close combat happened because powder and shot was in short supply.  

The one thing I can be sure about is that a musketeer's initial load of powder and shot was commonly between 14 - 18 premeasured shots and that  an initial rate of fire of two shots a minute was easily attainable although as muskets fouled this would slow down due to the difficulty of ramming home the musket ball.  Even with slower firing  either from firing by single ranks or files or due to fouled muskets one shot a minute should be achievable.  At those rates it is entirely possible for a block of musketeers to use all of the powder and shot they carried on their persons in around 30 minutes (or three turns in my rules).  For an army to keep a steady rate of fire up either units had to be rotated to the front or powder and shot resupplied.  Even with the typically short time in action during BCW fights I think it is it is a constraint worth modelling.  

Under the proposed rule the chance of a unit becoming low on ammo is 15/216 or just over 2% .  Subsequently the chance of running out is also 15/216 so pretty long odds of going out of ammunition before resupply is arranged.  For steady fire (introduction, extraduction and the like) I upped the requirement to rolling 3 sixes on the 3D6 firing roll to drop to low and then out of ammo status, which is 1/216 or under 0.5%.  So if a unit is low on ammo they can change firing tactics to conserve powder.  That works for me.

While I do like to stay close to statistical norms for my rules where the data isn't available the best I can do is create a rule to require decisions to be made about things where the real commanders had to make those decisions.  In this case about resource allocation and rate of use.  The key point being that we are dealing with human issues such as how fast is a unit burning through it's powder as well as some abstract ones such as quality of gun powder.  For example, what if going out of ammo replicates successful resupply from local resources but the resupply powder is damp or adulterated or unavailable so a unit which expected to be able to continue a fire fight cannot do so? (Isandlwana anyone?)

I reread the original post and came to the conclusion that my suggested rule works best for pre mechanised armies where the player is sitting at army commander level rather than at battalia or brigade level.   Once we get to periods where logistics are being well managed and rates of depletion of ammunition are known, then I'm happy to accept that those armies can be assumed to be dealing with the problem without player input.  For lower level combats at platoon level or lower then maybe some rule is needed as I recall that one of the main tasks of an infantryman was to manage their ammunition and it was rare to use rapid fire for a sustained period.  I'd want to cover that in a different way.

Your thoughts may, of course, vary!

Still re-basing!

 Did I mention that I hate rebasing?

Almost done though and I have come up with a system which makes things faster.  By cutting the figures off their old base and trimming any excess card from the old base then covering the entire  new MDF base with PVA allows me to position the matchstick infantry and then cover the rest of the MDF in sand all in one stage.  Obvious when I think about it.  For new figures coming off the production line that has been a two stage job in the past because the matchsticks need to be glued to a base to get the printer wrapper (with the soldiers on) to sit neatly.  I'm thinking that I might be able to do something similar with those too, by lightly basing the match sticks to card while I do the paper wrap and then moving them to the MDF base.  Sounds time consuming but it makes the stage where the sand is added much simpler.

In other news the Memsahib was away for the weekend looking after two of the grandchildren while their parents were at a wedding.   Which actually cuts down on my hobby time as I need to keep our two dogs' creativity within reasonable bounds (Nose art added to windows, bits of chew toy fragments everywhere you get the drift) and let them in and out (and in and out) feed and water them, and generally tidy up after them.  Compared to our dogs three year olds are a doddle!

 

Barney pretending to be cute, don't fall for it!

and George surrounded by the fruits of his creativity

Still I managed to tidy my desk which I have been meaning to do for a while.  Not quite sure what to term it now as it is no longer a work desk/work station and mostly I play computer games, write blog posts and research stuff sat at it.  A post retirement hobbies desk really doesn't sound right!

I also caught up on some reading, in this case Simon Macdowell's excellent trilogy on the 'barbarians' who brought Rome to it's knees in the 4th and 5th centuries; The Goths, The Vandals and the Franks.  Well worth a read.  I have finished the Goths, and am half way through the Vandals with the Franks still to start. I'm also rereading a classic Science Fiction novel  Joe Haldeman's 'The Forever War' which I found hard going in places the first time I read it.  It is a lot less confusing on a second reading, the books the same so my perception of the stories themes must have changed over the intervening years.   I'm told that it's really about the US troop's experience of the Viet Nam war but other than the overarching disconnect between combat troops and civilians it's not really obvious.  Still I wasn't there (man!) so I'm not equipped to spot the subtle connections.  It does have some interesting things to say about the time dilation effect and how that might impact strategy in an interstellar war.  Again well worth a read.

So that was my weekend taken care of.  How was yours'?

New Housing from JBM homes

A lovely gift dropped through the letter box this morning.  A nice selection of homes fit for heroes courtesy of the Jolly Broom Man.  All from Brigade Model's 3mm scenic range as far as I can see, painted and very nicely based by JBM himself.  Lots of nice detail and added features.  The clocks on the churches both say four o'clock.  Which seems right as it is always teatime in a traditional English village when we look back on them.

The full collection.  I rather like the multi building bases.

The first village base

I'm thinking this must be the Central Banking District

Probably the main retail area

For some reason this reminds me of Chigley

A Post mill

The big church, that will be the High Anglicans then. 

Lastly the 'big house' where Squire Broom 'isself lives

I have to say that these put my own efforts to shame and I'm going to have to up my game now or the tenants in the houses I created will be raising complaints about the poor standards of maintenance in their village!  JBM thought I might need to rebase them but I'm not so sure I want to do that.

Thank you so much JBM these are exceptional and will be getting lots of use on my game table.

In praise of plastic soldiers?

 Let your mind go back, back into the past, if you will.  To a simpler time when teenage boys could buy a box of Airfix soldiers for mere pennies.  Most toy shops sold them so they were easily available and there was a good selection of mostly well sculpted troops.  The down side was that they were moulded in a soft plastic and paint had a habit of flaking off thin parts.  At the same time though in their model kits Airfix used a harder but more brittle plastic.  Some of these included crew figures for things like artillery or the Bloodhound missile set.  These held paint without any issues as they didn't flex.

Mid 1970's box art I go back much further to the ones with the cellophane!

Now the mists of time gather again and a few years roll by.  It's now the early1970's Airfix figures are still available but metal wargaming figures are more readily available courtesy of Hinchcliffe and Minifigs.  The choice of periods is far greater than those old favourites from Airfix but the cost is far greater as a penniless teenager can just by the figures they want in small numbers.  This allows entire units to be fielded (eventually when funds allow) all in a single pose.  They paint well and apart from wonky spears (unless using Hinchcliffe with wire spears) look great.  It was at about this time that a young Elenderil looked at the hard plastic Airfix kit figures and wondered why no one made a range of wargaming figures in a similar material.

Fast forward past the intervening years of my life and here we are in 2022, fifty some years later and plastic wargaming figures are all the rage.  Multipart figures in hard plastic and now the Plastic Soldier Company are releasing the Corvus Belli 15mm ranges in something called ultracast plastic.  This seems to be more akin to the old Airfix style soft plastic but apparently takes paint OK.  

Oh how the younger me would have loved that.  Good quality plastic soldiers covering a wide range of historical periods.  And yet there is a doubt in my mind.  Aren't we meant to be reducing our reliance on plastics?  It is turning up in the strangest places micro plastics in the oceans and apparently in human blood samples!  Maybe teenage Elenderil would have welcomed these but pensioner Elenderil isn't quite so sure. 

 

Rebasing...I hate rebasing!

The Altar of Freedom rebasing is progressing on some sort of schedule.  I'm taking it as a positive as it means that I like the rules enough to upgrade from the cardboard test bases.  The laser cut MDF is so much better than my ham fisted attempts to cut marine ply into 100% accurate bases on a consistent basis (Bases ....basis there must be a tongue twister in there somewhere).  It has quickly become my new go to solution since i started basing my 6mm DBA/ADLG forces that way.  I don't have that many units to do for AoF as I only made up the OOBs for 1st Manassas/Bull Run to start with.  In the next few days I will be expanding that to create the bases needed to be able to play Gettysburg as that is the scenario which needs the most troops in the Eastern Theatre.  If I can cover that battle I'm good for anything in the two scenario books.  Time to start cutting more match sticks.

Dragging the WW2 models out has also shown up the lack lustre basing (cardboard again) I used the first time of asking.  These will need bring up to my new standard in due course although I can live with them as they are for the time being.

In other news when I finished typing this post I went to the post setting screen to add the labels only to find Blogger has forgotten what they were in previous posts.  Which is an embuggerance!

Edit - after much cursing I have managed to get Blogger to relist past labels.  I have no idea what is going on (so no change there then).

More 6mm World war two - this time the Home Guard.

 Did you know that when first set up the Home Guard was called the LDV - Local Defence Volunteers, although my Grandfather called the organisation "Look, Duck and Vanish"!  He served with the LDV and Home Guard as he was too old for the main forces in 1939 at 43 years old.  He'd done his stint in the latter years of the Great War.  I'm not sure if any of the vehicles below would have been familiar to him or whether they were more likely to be seen on and near the South coast.

Home Guard platoon.  I can see Pike's scarf in there!

First up is the PBI of the Home Guard.  The rifle sections are Irregular Miniatures from their Spanish Civil War range The MG section are also from Irregular but are a Lewis Gun team from their First World War range.  I want to have a look at the 2D6 range for World War two as they have a rather nice deployed Lewis Gun team.

Next are some improvised armoured vehicles from Irregular.  The desperate need for armoured cars and trucks was filled by Spanish Civil War style improvised stuff.  These are actual British designs which were built and placed into service!

A Beaverette.  Slap some steel plate onto a saloon car and call it done!

I'm not sure how effective the Beaverette would have been (or any of the others to be honest) but it's quirky and gives a scout car option.  The next three vehicles were more mobile pill boxes than anything resembling an armoured fighting vehicle.  Firstly the Armadillo with an open topped concrete fighting compartment.

An Armadillo.  Watch out for grenades lads!

Next up two other variants on the pill box on wheels, the Bison.  Apparently the Bison 1 (on the left) was so underpowered it could hardly move for the weight of the concrete box on the back.  The Bison 3 was a bit nippier as it carried a lighter steel fighting compartment.  The roof was a weak point though as it was a (IIRC) steel mesh covered with canvas.  Oh and the white squares on the bonnets are gas detection patches.

A pair of Bisons

Now for something a little more main stream and which could give the invaders a moments pause.  An Infantry Tank mark 2 (A12) 'Matilda 2'.  The 2pdr gun was effective against anything the Germans had although it lacked an HE round.  The only way to be certain of stopping these was with 105mm artillery or Flak 88mm in a direct fire AT role.

Matilda 2 from GHQ Models

Lastly (and sorry for the fuzzy photo) a Cruiser Mk 1 (A9) this is another GHQ model.  

Cruiser Mk1 also GHQ

These are not fully painted and have been sat in the lead pile for a few years so they will need a bit of tarting up.  Although the GHQ models are incredible castings they are only available in packs of five and are expensive compared to Heroics and Ros.  2D6 models are not doing early war stuff yet so any further purchases will be from H & R.  Still I have enough for a small game or two.

6mm World War 2

My first foray into proper wargaming was World War Two using Airfix soldiers and models as recommended by Charles Grant in his rules 'Battle'. I still have one or two of the figures I used in the spares box somewhere. At university a couple of people were gaming WW2 using 1/300th micro armour and the WRG rules. These games always seemed to end up with a German 'super tank' chasing a lone Sherman around a terrain feature trying to get a kill shot. Clearly we ignored any difficult concepts like morale! The Grant rules especially left an indelible impression as they didn't so much say what you should do under the rules but rather why the rules worked the way they did so the player knew why they should do things the way the rules wanted (or how to change them to allow other outcomes). Over the intervening 40 plus years I have dabbled with WW2 from time to time, but never as a primary project.

A few years ago I had one of those bursts of enthusiasm and obtained an early war German tank battalion made up of 1/300th Heroics and Ros models.  This was supported by a couple of infantry companies and various support vehicles and units.  I also made a start on some British stuff (I have a soft spot for those early war cruiser tanks with all those A numbers) .  So with the WW3 project shelved it's time to bring the 1940 kit out of hibernation.  As a taster here is a sample of the Nasty side!

Sample of the kit the Wehrmacht will bring to table!

In the above photo are single examples of SIG33 self propelled artillery, Panzerjaeger I, STuG IIIB and Panzer III and IV.  The infantry are based as platoons (I forget the German term) of two rifle sections and two LMG sections.  At the rear is a 50mm mortar team and the Platoon HQ.  As with my Altar of Freedom figures I'm probably going to rebase these at some point.  I know that many people dislike basing 6mm vehicles but it prevents the wheel hub to wheel hub deployment seen with some rules and protects the models by giving something to pick the thing up by.

I will post some more images of the German forces in the next few days.  The British are coming (as the man said) but at present I only have Home Guard stuff painted and based.  There are some oddball vehicles in that collection so you have something to look forward to.

A bit of navel gazing

 I spent a chunk of today looking over past blog posts to see how the blog has changed over the years.  I actually found a post celebrating reaching 20,000 hits from a little over two years ago.  Since then the numbers have gone up to over 63,000 and I still have no idea which are real live human page views and which are automatic web crawlers.  I still don't have a huge number of followers and some of the names on comments from the early years have disappeared.  I suppose the same person may still be visiting under a different nom de plum but again there is no real way to tell.

Some posts are more popular than I expected currently a cold war gone hot tops the all time page view charts (This one in fact Small but Perfectly Formed: Cold War 1982 - Disaster at Ingelund (elenderilsblog.blogspot.com)) with almost 1,000 hits.  That is followed by two more after action reports one from the DBA Dark Ages campaign and the other is the Altar of Freedom taster game.  It seems that people do like a battle report.

Looking back on early blog posts I can immediately tell that my painting table is over crowded (aka a right mess) and looking a bit 'wonky'.  I suspect a post about tidying up will not be a major attraction though!

What was rather interesting is the number of blind alleys a rereading throws up.  Things that seemed to be promising that I simply lost interest in.  The ECW in Lancashire campaign for example or writing a set of WW2 rules are good examples.  There are also some successful projects like the WW1 air combat rules that just didn't generate the games I thought they would.  I suppose that Covid restrictions had something to do with this.

So going forward what is on the cards?  Well I need to do some Altar of Freedom stuff so I either need to find a remote opponent over the net or find a local player willing to try some face to face gaming.  As I have shelved the BAOR 1980s campaign them maybe a couple of World War 2 games of A Fistful of Tows might make a decent replacement.  lastly I really do need to get the DBA campaign back up and running!  the other side of this particular coin is that Mrs E and I have sponsored a Ukranian couple to stay with us and space will be at a premium so I may not be able to get the big tables set up.  I'm also more than a little worried about playing wargames while hosting people who are fleeing from an actual war.  One to move cautiously forward with I feel.