Back from Enfilade 2014!

After weeks of preparation and last minute changes to one of my games my friend Shawn and I headed out to our local convention Enfilade which is held every year in Olympia, WA over Memorial Day weekend.  We left Friday morning around 930ish and arrived a little after 12.  Other members from our group Andy, Dave and Kevin where either there already or were on their way.  Check in this year was a breeze.  Last year, the hotel was doing major renovation work over the convention weekend and played havoc on guests trying to check in.  Some didn't get a chance to check until 7pm due to construction delays.  This year no issues.
So this year I had decided to branch out a little bit more and run two games at the event.  The first was in line with the convention theme Forgotten Battles or Theaters.  I scheduled it from the 2nd session on Friday night.  I ran the Battle of Campladino, 1289.  The second game was in honor of the 100 year anniversary of World War I starting.  For that, I ran a Russian vs. German 1914 scenario using "Through the Mud and the Blood."  As a gift for running both games, the guys in charge gave everyone who ran 2 or mores games this spiffy hat. The WWI game was run during the 1st session on Saturday morning.

I will write up a full AAR for both battles with more pictures from them this week.  

This is a quick shot of the Campladino Game.

A setup shot of the WWI battle.

I had full participation in both games which was nice.  I'm always a little anxious about running a game as I'm not sure anyone will want to play it or have some sort of interest in it.

Once those two games were over I was free to play other games the rest of the weekend.  The pickings were good.

My first game on Friday afternoon was WWII battle pitting the U.S. 29th infantry vs. Germans who counter attack a section of St. Lo.  The rules were "Breakout Normandy".  I played the overall US commander and in the end we were able to stop the German attack.  I also played the 4 sherman tanks we were given and was able to blow up 2 Stugs.  I was pretty happy.  :)  The terrain was beautiful!

The second session on Saturday had me playing in a Lancastrian vs. Burgundian 28mm Armati game.  I had never played these rules before and wanted to try them.  They were pretty fast but the gentlemen running the game did all of the calculations.  We just had to push lead and roll dice. The figures for this game were incredible.  The detail was amazing.  My iPhone didn't do them justice.

The last session on Saturday, I played in 10mm Samurai game with homebrew set of rules.  The rules were only 1 page front and back.  The battle was based on a historical battle, unfortunately I don't remember the name of it.  I held one small end of a long table.  Because of that our end of the battle took became a little bit of side show to the larger forces at the other end.  At one point we were about 5 turns ahead and had to wait for them to catch up. :-)  The figures were awesome looking and I loved the mass look of them too.

The first session on Sunday and also our last session, I joined a Check Your 6 Jet Age game.  The scenario had the Argentinas attacking British troop transports which were protected by the Royal Navy and 4 British fighters.   I had a 4 Argentine jets loaded with bombs.  Before my jets even got close to the transports two of my 4 were shot down.  The other two made it, dropped their bombs and missed.  I was able to fly away after that.  

After my planes were shot down and the other two escaped, I was free to hit up the bring and buy and the dealer area.  I also took photos of this awesome looking medieval 28mm siege game.

So what's a gaming convention without buying more stuff!  I did and I think I came away with some pretty good deals.

Everything at once.

This is a paper kit and it comes with everything you need from the figures and fittings for the ship.  I can't wait to get this one built.

I've own the CY6 Jet Age rules for awhile and I want to do this period.  Now I have too.  Just need to get some planes. 

There was a dealer there who had some 15mm WWI British for sale. $4 a bag, not bad.

This was in the Bring and Buy, a 15mm DBA Western Imperial Roman Army.

Another DBA army Teutonic Knights, which dropped in price from $60 to $20 by Sunday.  That's when I snapped it up.

The Game Matrix is always at Enfilade and I bought this Low Country DBA army from them.

This was another Bring and Buy special.  Another Roman army.

I think over all this was the best purchase.  These are 10mm War of Spanish Succession figures.  I'm not sure of the count but on Friday this box started at $60 by Sunday morning I got it all of $10.

I've looking to buy Conway's book 1906-1921 for many years.  The price was always an issue.  $90 and above for a book.  In fact one of the dealers had a copy for $90.  This one was in the Bring and Buy on Saturday and I bought for $25.  Not bad at all.

This whole weekend was awesome and my gaming group and I had a great time.  It was great seeing friends that we only see once a year too.  Lots to catch up on.  I'm already starting to plan what I want to do for next year. :)

Battle of Campaldino Play Test!

To get prepared for Enfilade I ran a test battle with my gaming group to see how the scenario for the Battle of Campaldino would work.  The first thing I found to be difficult was the size of the table.  The table was a little too narrow at the game shop.  This shouldn't be an issue at the convention.  I hope!  While looking at the battlefield as a whole, I left off the extraneous pieces to leave the playing area the main focus. 

The forces were setup as close to historically as possible.  This was based on my reading and a board game I have on the battle. 

The battle was fought using Piquet's Band of Brothers 2.  To recreate the initial charge of the Ghibelline Knights they moved first on any Move card that appeared and would continue to move until they connected with the Guelph first line.  Those units would also melee without the need of a melee resolution card.  This would be the only time they had these special rules.  Once contact was made and the first melee resolved, the main rules would then apply.

The initial charge was met and the Guelph front line routed.  Historically accurate so far. 

The second line of Ghibelline Knights wait for their chance to charge.

The Guelph archers sit in the tree line waiting to fire.

Novello's command that historically left the battlefield once the battle started, moved down the road to attempt to flank the Guelphs.

The Guelph Knights charge into the waiting Ghibelline Knights.  The fight was bloody.

The center of the battlefield locked in a deadly melee for most of the game.

The forces locked in melee, the Ghibellines routed soon after.  Their moral getting dangerously low.

The Guelph infantry wait for orders.

The Ghibelline infantry waiting to move forward.

The Guelph forces move forward.

The Guelph Knights hit the Ghibelline infantry line.  At this point the damage has been done with the routing Ghibelline Knights sucking up moral chips.

The Ghibelline Knights routing away.  The battle is over with the Guelphs winning the day.  A historical result overall.

The Guelph Infantry refused their flank to receive Novello's advancement.  The battle ended before they could be put into play.

Over all I was happy with the way the rules and the scenario worked.  I hope all goes as smoothly at Enfilade in two weeks.  I will post the results of that battle when I get back.

New hills to go with the new forests

So after building some new forests for my games. I decided that I needed some new hills as well.  So I went to Kallistra to pick some up.  I've purchased a couple of their smaller hills once before and really liked them.  They are well made, sturdy and come pre-flocked in a couple of different colors.  So this time I went big and bought two of their 15 hex, 1 each of the 8, 7, 4 and 3 hex sized hills. 

The really nice thing about these hills are that they fit together nicely.  You can create and endless amount of arrangements with the hex design.  These lovely hills will be making their gaming debut at Enfilade in two weeks.

Built some new Forests.

 So a few years ago I built some forest bases for my games.  If you scroll through some of my past posts you will see what I had made.  Those were all first time attempts and I wasn't happy with them but I stuck with them until I figured out what and how I would redo them.  Well after searching the internet and finding lots of different opinions on how to build them and I found some great ideas. I had two requirements for this project.  The first was that the trees had to come off of the base for storage.  The second the bases had to be large enough for firing distances and for the troops in them to have some sort of visual spotting range once inside of them.  After looking through the rule sets that my group uses the most, I decided that base of the forest had to be at least 6" in depth.

The first thing I had to acquire was new trees.  With this I decided to build my own using Woodland Scenics trees and foliage. The Woodland Scenic trees have removable trunks so I went with them.  So after much trial and error, I came across a system that worked for me at least.  I purchased some glue called 9001 clear.  This stuff dried in a couple of hours.  Once that dried I then took some aquanet and sprayed the foliage to harden it up.  Once that was dry I worked on the bases.

For the bases, I borrowed an idea from another blog (who's name escapes me at the moment) and went to Home Depot and bought some self-adhesive flexible tiles.  They were about $1.50 a tile.  I bought 6 of them.  I also bought a roll of draw liner to stick to the back of the tile and to prevent them from slipping.  I then took some good scissors and cut out patterns of what the forests would look like.  I then glued down the tree bases to the forest base.

These photos show the trees on the forest base before I glued down the tree bases.

Once the tree bases had dried I applied some Liquitex Matte Gel and mixed it with Burnt Umber Acrylic Paint.  Using a painting knife I smeared the gel onto the forest base.  Ensuring I covered the tree bases.  Using some Woodland Scenics Fine Turf and Static Grass Flock in Harvest Gold and Light Green, I sprinkled it all over the bases.  I let that sit for 24 hours to dry.  I then sprayed the top of the bases with Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement.  That sat for another 24 hours to dry.  The finished base looked like this:

I then put the trees back into their bases for the finished product.  I added some 15mm pikemen to give a sense of scale for the pictures.

I'm rather happy with how they turned out.  I will be using them this weekend for the first time.  Hopefully they will stand up to the rigors of gaming.

Some new books arrived this week.

Some new books arrived this past week for my reading pleasure.  I thought I would share my new finds with you all.  

The first is Mussolini's Navy.  An excellent book on the Italian Navy during WWII.  I've always had a fascination with this navy.  This book gives an excellent overview of the navy and the ships and men who were a part of it. 

There are wonderful pictures of each class of ship.

Along with color photos.

And a wonderful guide to camouflage used by the navy.

My next little gem is on the Roman Army as you can see from the picture below it's about the complete Roman Army. This books cover every facet of the army from it's very beginning to the end.  Lots of photos and great diagrams.

The last book I picked up is Don Troiani's Soldiers of the American Revolution.  A great book of Don Troiani's paintings.  It's also a great reference also for my AWI project that I'm working on at the moment. 

This is one of the great illustrations in the book along with wonderful photos of equipment used by the people of the period.