Tissues and glue....

 I have started the long process of texturing and painting the Dendermonde walls.  The techinique is to coat the structure with a thinned coat of PVA glue and then to apply a single ply of tissue paper to it.

 

 

Then you paint another layer of PVA over the top.  This produces a textured surface that can be sprayed grey and then dry brushed to highlight and bring out the texture.

I use cheap "Saxon" 2-ply tissues from Aldi which are large and easily separate.

The end result when dry is this:

City walls are done and most of the Ravelins.  Next up are 2 Demilunes and then the 3 Bastions.  I need to cut some window and door frames for the city gate before I can texture that and also need to tile the roof.

The effect once painted is shown on the sample ravelin here:

Seven Years War Armies ready

I have finished basing the Prussians and the Austrians and now have enough forces for a game.

 The Prussian Army

 

Their Austrian opposition.

They meet in their first battle on Monday.

More rebasing..

 More rebasing of the 25mm Seven Years War collection.

14 units of Austrian Infantry...

 
Up next will be the Prussian and Austrian artillery and some more Prussian cavalry.  I am looking at picking up some more Austrian Cavalry and I also need some Austrian commanders.

I will then have enough to play some games, so will leave the French forces until I have some games of Honours of War played.

Back Home

 I have been away for the whole of May touring Scotland in our (fairly new) small caravan.  We caught up with a few friends (a couple of whom we hadn'tseen for 17 years!) and drove most of the North Coast 500 coming back via Loch Lomond, Edinburgh and Newcastle.

Had a great time and didn't see any rain until May 27th.

Now the lawn has been cut and most stuff put away I am looking at my workbench now and trying to remember what I was working on and why!  I am planning on finishing the couple of items sitting on it and then trying to concentrate on the Marlburian project for a while.

We'll see how long that lasts!
 

It is interesting to see that a lot of people have been trying out the Dominion of... rules over the last month and my regular opponent Anthony has tried them out as well for Jacobite games.

I understand the theory and the fast play ability to run a campaign in and evening, but for me they simply look too abstract without terrain and a battlefield to fight over.  I have similar problems with the 3 x 3 version of Portable Wargame which has never appealed.

If I was going to play this sort of abstract game I would rather use a boardgame than figures on a blank grid.

 

ACW in 20mm

 Played an ACW Game this morning with Anthony, my regular opponent, using the Osprey With Hot Lead and Cold Steel rules and my 20mm collection. Enjoyable game - we had to call time but the Union were slightly ahead at that point.

We haven't played the rules in quite a while so it was slightly slow as we remembered exactly how they worked, even with the 5 page synopsis I had typed up after our last game.

We both like the rules - they had a fairly easy order system, use initiative so it isn't quite Igo-Ugo and have the ability for units to fire back if shot at and they haven't fired that turn.

The units shift down in size and abilities as they lose bases and the morale tests are fairly tough so once stuff starts to run it can be difficult to rally and it can sweep the rest of the brigade along with it.

Playing with hills

 

Spent some time today playing with hills and how I want the hex terrain to work with flowing hills rather than occasional lumps on the battlefield.   I have been cutting extra tiles to provide unpainted supports beneath the flocked surface.

I recently added some stream tiles to go on the surface.

I am quite pleased with the way it is looking.

I have enough basic hex terrain cut to cover an 8'x 5'table which was my eventual aim. I need to cut a load more "support" tiles to build the hills up and more edge supports so that the hills can start right on the table edges.  But it is coming together...

Field of Battle 3rd Edition

Played an FPW game on Tuesday morning using the Field of Battle 3 rules - I have had these quite a long time but have never got around to playing with this edition.

Field of Battle comes from the Piquet stable of rules and uses a similar style of rolling for initiative and turning and acting on cards.  But, it has ironed out a lot of things that people disliked about the original Piquet rules and provides a very interesting game.

You both roll for initiative and the difference in the rolls is the number of cards you can turn. The winner of the rolls decides whether to go first or second.  Turning a card costs an Command Point, but all units can act on a card without using any further Command points.

All the cards have the detail of how you use the card, what the opposed roll is (if any), the result of rolling even, etc

You use polyhedral dice for rolls and having an advantage moves you up a dice size (so a D8 becomes a D10) or a disadvantage moves you down a dice size (D12+1 becomes D10 if you are down 2).  This becomes pretty easy to calculate after a few turns.  D12+3 is the maximum dice and D4 is the minimum.

It makes the game move quickly and is relatively easy to follow.

We both enjoyed the game despite me getting a number of things wrong and completely forgetting the disorder rules.

The game resulted in a crushing victory for the French, mostly due to my inability roll anything but a 1 on a D12 - every time I picked it up!  Managed 4 1s in a row...

Will definitely be playing a game with these rules again soon.