Getting ready for Enfilade.

By 9am next Friday (5/24) I will be heading out with three buddies to our semi-local convention Enfilade.
I'm really looking forward to this year as this will be the first time where most of our gaming group is capable of going to the convention.  It should prove to be fun, with lots of laughs along the way.  This will also be the first time I'm running a game at a convention.  To say the least I'm a little nervous.
I've run the game twice with my group and we made some adjustments that should help with the flow of the game.
Also while I'm at the convention I will be helping a long time Piquet player, who has moved from the east coast to Seattle, with a Barrage battle.  Luckily, I will only have to coach the new players on the system.

I have worked out my Army roster for my next project, which will be for the American Revolution.  I have based my troops on the rosters from the battle of Monmouth.  I am going to start with 20 units per side.  The figures will be Pendraken with some Old Glory mixed into the lot.  Bases will be 1" square for Infantry with 16 figures per 4 base unit.  Should look good on the table.

Here are some photos from the last test battle of my Enfilade scenario.

Surrounding the Russians 1914

This past weekend I ran a Two Fat Lardies game of "Through the Mud and Blood".  I am preparing a scenario for Enfilade at the end of May.  This will be my first time GM'ing a game at a convention.  I'm a little nervous and I want the game to go as smoothly as possible.  Knowing that I can't account for everything I at least want to handle what I can.

A couple pictures of the table and a close up of the center.

The Russians hold the town and the main road.  The Germans start on three sides of the board.  The Russians start off with one Platoon that has seen better days.  The Germans have two platoons and they are a little shot up a bit too.

The Germans started off really well.  They pushed forward and shot up one Russian squad.

The Russian poured heavy fire onto the advancing Germans causing massive causalities and lots of shock points.  The German artillery was ineffective but the Russian SOS barrage hit their targets.

The Germans found their footing again and pushed forward taking heavy losses along the way.  By the end of the game the Germans were able to take 3 houses.  

This resulted in a draw for the battle.

I learned a couple of things for this battle. One I have to rewrite the victory conditions.  They were a little too vague and could be interpreted in various ways.

I also have to add one more Big man to both sides.  I also need to remove one building from the town.

I am going to rerun this scenario again this Saturday with the changes.  Maybe the Germans will have better luck. 

Country House bases

You may remember a few weeks ago I finished painting up some Italian style buildings.  It has been my plan to make some of the houses into a modular city/town.  Well that part is on the back burner since I don't have enough row houses to do what I want.

I do however have enough to do some country houses or farm houses.  I use Piquet for our games mostly and they call for a 6" base that counts as building and its area.  While at the local Craft Warehouse they had some 6x6 canvas panels.  They are sturdy, don't warp and very cheap.  They were a $1 a piece, so I picked up 12.

So I picked one of the houses and placed it.

I also placed a few trees and once I was happy with the placement, I sketched in a little path from the farmer and family to walk on.
Then glued the trees and house to the board.

I then painted the path black and painted the base green.  At this point I had decided I would just flock the base as is but decided against it.  I had read on someone's blog about using spackel to contour the base and then paint the spackel.  A quick trip to Home Depot provided me a small vessel of spackel.

Now the path was also filled in with Woodland Scenics ballast.  I watered down some elmers glue and painted it onto the path and put down the ballast.  Once that dried I took some more elmers/water mix and used an eye dropper and squirted it onto the path.  Once that dried it was hard as stone.  No pun intended.

The spackel was then put down with a small putty knife.  I used a thin layer and once that dried, within a few hours, I then thinned down some dark brown paint into a wash and painted it on.

The thin layer of paint dried quickly and allowed the contours to show through.  The picture isn't great but its there trust me.  I then mixed up some more elmers and water and spread it in batches where the grass would go.  I didn't cover the whole base in flocking, just a few areas.  Once that was dry I then put more elmers/water mixture onto the patches of grass.  Again that was allowed to dry.

Once the grass had dried I took some cream colored painted and dry brushed it onto the exposed brown areas.  All in all I think it turned out pretty well.  Now I'm going to do this 4 more times.