Happy New Year 2013!

Happy New Wargaming Year to Everybody!



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The half-timbered house (and the log cabin)

The half-timbered house and the log cabin are almost finished

The next thing will be some scenery items: walls, trees, etc... I'll search in my pile of wargaming-garbage to find some materials!

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Lone Warrior goes electronic!

Lone Warrior, the Journal of the Solo Wargamer Association has moved with the times in the right direction, and is now offering electronic pdf subscriptions, payable through Paypal.
As an old subscriber of this Journal, I can only congratulate myself to be able again of enjoying the thoughts of the solo-wargamers fellows.
I have found one under my Christmas tree!

More information about subscriptions (including old issues both paper and electonic) at Lone Warrior site.

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The half-timbered house project grows up!

The half-timbered house is taking shape slowly.
5) The roof, the timber frame and the walls are painted with dark red, black and ochre respectively. In this step I have used commercial, non-hobby, acrylic paints.

6) Afterwards, the lights are added with Vallejo acrylic paints, using lighter shades at random.

7) Arrived to this point and before to finish the house, I decided to add a smaller wood cabin. The carboard structure is built following the same method.

8) In this case the walls are made with round wood skewers placed with white glue.

To be continued!

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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Digital Art from Agustin Espina http://www.alkaidediciones.com/tienda.html

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A small divertimento: 1/72 half timbered house

While designing the game table to play the next SDS scenario "Surprise at Kosen", I realized that my miniature buildings were not well suited to play 1:1 skirmish games with my 1/72 figures.
My existing buildings were designed to play Napoleon's Battles (NB) and follow the Built-Up Area concept - see the main web site -. Because real buildings are big and can dominate the battlefield in a wargaming table, the mine are built with a smaller 1/100 scale. This is not a serious problem with NB (or Lasalle) games, where it is clear that the miniature figures are abstractions representing 120 men (in NB) or 20-30 men (in Lasalle). However, in a skirmish game with a 1 man: 1 figure scale, my buildings become significantly smaller and everything seems too strange, because a 1/72 figure (1.80 m tall) looks like a 2.50 m tall giant!
To resolve this mess, I have decided to make a couple of buildings from scratch at 1/72 scale for use in SDS encounters. With my miniature armies fighting mostly in central Europe, it was clear that the buildings should be German-looking, so half timbered houses, ubiquitous in Germany, Austria, France, etc. in Napoleonic times, are obvious candidates. There are in Internet many images showing these houses, and even some miniature websites, as the famous Croebern 1813 site have small tutorials with step-by-step instructions and many pictures.
The materials are 2mm cardboard, white glue, double-side adhesive tape for carpets, wooden matches, self-hardening wall paste, corrugated cardboard for the roof tiles (carefully stored for years!), scissors and a cutter. Below you can see a first graphical summary of the first steps, as the buildings are now halfway through construction).
1) By using Powerpont and its drawing shapes, a 1:1 template is drawn. The real total height of a typical napoleonic 1/72 figure is used as a guide.

2) The template is printed and its shape is cutted on 2mm carboard. The windows and doors are opened and the timber frame is made with wood matches. I used two different bonding methods, the first was to use white glue and the second - depicted in the following picture - requires the previous covering of the cardboard walls with double-side adhesive tape, on which the wood matches were then adhered
.

3) The wall plaste is the applied whitin the limits of the timber frame and then allowed to dry for 24 h.

4) The roof is made with corrugated cardboard strips than are fixed superimposed from bottom to up as seen in the following picture (taken from Yorvi Forum)

5) A picture of the final roof

To be continued!

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The rules for Kosen SDS Scenario

Taken from http://iron-mitten.blogspot.com/

Deployment (See the previous post)
Austrian Grenzer
On sentry duty (see map) 1D6 Grenzer
Inside the cabin/ houses: Officer, NCO and the rest of the squad.
French
Deployed within 1M of the table edge or inside 1M of a wooded edge.

Scenario Special Rules

These rules are similar to the used in the  SDS Wethau bridge scenario, with the only addition of a rule about bridge demolition:

 Destroying bridges special rule

·      At the cost of 1 action, a model armed with axe may try to destroy the wooden bridge. Treat this as a hand-to-hand “combat” between the model and the bridge. All possible modifiers (strong, better weapon, engineer, multiple combatants) apply, with the bridge having a C3 Combat value. The opponent rolls dice for the bridge and combat is resolved normally.
·      Only sappers can use the +1 Combat modifier, which is only applicable to this “combat”.
·      If the model loses the “combat” or the model wins without doubling the bridge’s score, nothing happens. The bridge is only slightly damaged.
·      If the model wins doubling the bridge’s score, the bridge has been damaged. Decrease its Combat value by 1.
·      In both these cases the model can try to attack the bridge again if it has actions remaining. If the feature was damaged, the lowered Combat score is used.
·      The bridge is destroyed when its Combat value reaches zero.
 

Victory conditions

The French goal is to break the bridge whereas the Grenzers must to avoid it.
·      Normal rules and morale tests apply to attackers (i.e. they lose if their Squad breaks). The French mission is to destroy the bridge, so if it occurs the game automatically ends with a French victory.
·      Grenzer with bad moral runs towards the village where they can continue the fight (if they wish).

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