Box Inserts

 There has been a fair amount of discussion about storage solutions on blogs recently and I am no different in trying the find the perfect solution for storing figures.

In between painting houses for Dendermonde I have been printing a load of different inserts for storage. One of the problems I've got is that I want the figures for Dendermonde to be individually based so they work for the siege.  I have originally thought I would magbase them but they looked odd mounted on a base and were too high.

So, I have designed an insert for a Really Useful 4 litre box which lets you put the figures in rows and holds them in place.  You can fit 4 of these trays into a 4-litre RUB.

I am also printing a 45mm high tray which will take the marching figures and officers and you'll be able to fit 3 of those into a one half of a 9-litre box.  So able to mix and match with 4 of the other trays.

The Standard bearers I might just lie down, though I might make a 70mm high tray to take them and mounted figures with wider slots.

Also looking at trays with 25-30mm wide slots for artillery pieces.

 

House Painting...

 

The house painting has started.

I bought a load of 2 for £4 acrylics from Hobby craft to paint the houses with after giving them a grey primer coat.  They will still need two coats each to get a solid finish.

Most will be painted in fairly muted colours with a few richer houses painted in brighter colours to add some contrasts.

After these have their walls painted, I will go back over them and paint the windows different colours.  Then, I will paint a number of card sheets different colours and cut the shutters out of them.

Finally, I need to cut the beams and spray them black and then they will be attached as well as the door surrounds.

After that it will be onto cutting and assembling the roofs and adding coloured tiles from prepainted card cut into strips of tiles.

Return to Cork City (it's been a while....)

 

Dug out my Gangster collection and Cork City for a game with Anthony today. It has been a number of years since these buildings saw the light of day (possibly 10 years!)

This was the first playtest of mixing One Hour Skirmish rules with Mad Dogs with Guns to see how they worked. Verdict was encouraging...  

The rules use cards for activation and action points like OHS but I have added wounding similar to Mad Dogs to make a small 5 figure a side game last longer.

The two gangs were searching for information and money left in one of two possible locations by the dead mob boss Danny Devito.  Anthony's Lieutenant managed to find it first and despite a lot of gunfire and ramming his car with mine, he managed to get away to win the game 5 VPS to my 3VPs.

I need to do some more work on the rules for cars to cover firing from cars, ramming cars, running people over and the risks of driving too fast which have always been one of the entertaining things in the Mad Dogs rules.

Made me realise that the City needs some TLC and repairs and I might change the base from the cobblestone mat to something more modular for smaller games plus tart up some of the buildings a little - this was made a long time before I had a 3D printer so I can now easily add water towers, hydrants, rof skylights, etc.

 

 

54mm Travel Battle Napoleonics

 

Last week tried out the Travel Battle rules from the Perries using my 54mm collection.  This was on a 6' x 4' table with 4" squares, so 12" deep and 18" wide - very slightly narrower than the travel battle board.

Just set up some terrain and played an encounter game with the victory conditions being to destroy two of the enemy brigades as per the original rules.

The game was fun, moves quickly and the rules are simple enough to remember - though I did get some of the cavalry rules wrong initially which affected my left flank cavalry brigade.

Eventually, the Prussians/British broke the French for a win.

We are thinking of trying out an historical scenario next time with the same rules.

Back boards

Had a rethink over night and decided the trench pieces would look better with back boards, so I designed and cut some pieces this morning.

 

 This also means I could use the pieces as two sides of a tranch for other games if I ever ventures into WW1 in the future...

Lines of Investment

Been bouncing around from one project to another at the moment.  I did manage a Travel Battle game with my 54mm figures today, a report will follow.

I also managed to spend some more time today designing and printing some simple shapes to represent the initial investment lines for the Allies at Dendermonde - an earth bank thrown up to protect preparations.  These will be textured and painted to represent earth.  A couple of straights, a slant and a gun point.

Also played with how these will look and how I am doing in printing and painting for the overall siege lines.

 

More TYW

 

First already painted unit converted to the new basing  - two units of the Blue Brigade.

I had to paint two extra strips of Musketeers and an extra Pike strip.

The skirmishers out front are Peter Pig ECW figures.  The first Peter Pig I have ever bought and painted.  They are slightly crude (the Epic figures are much easier to paint) but match okay in size.  I have painted another 8 which will go at the front of two strips of Musketeers to make a commanded shot unit.

Two more units (Yellow Brigade and a grey unit) to also convert and then I'll paint some Imperials to see what Tercios will look like.

I also have 3 more sprues of almost complete Swedes (Black, Red and Green) which will give me 13 infantry units for the Swedes when they are complete (and I have painted extra pikemen, etc).