Starting the Siege Lines

 Created a few test siege line pieces for Dendermonde which will fit in with the hex terrain which covers 4' x 6' of the table.

Gabions are 3d printed -  a lot more to do to create 3 parallels and the approaches.

I had originally thought about building up an earth bank against the gabions but decided that I had enough to do already and the gabions look fine.

Forming a Square

 

After a couple of weeks of doing quite a lot of printing, I managed to assemble the basic table top rail today.

This is the basic version that surrounds two of the collapsible table and is just under 4' square inside.  It needs an insert on each side of 96mm to expand the area to contain a 4' board, the grey below of the black attachment covers is 9mm and where the boards will fit.

It needs the top MDF rail spraying black and then glossing and attaching and a load more black attachment covers printing.  I also want to design a few odd side covers that will either be glued in place or slip on to cover the odd size areas.

After that I might put a matching MDF strip around the bottom of the outside below the covers to hide the joins between the 3d printed parts.

After expanding to 4' square, I'll print two 2' long pieces which just need 8 pieces printing each and then that will expand it to 6'x 4' and it will be done.

I also need to print some token trays, dice trays, drinks holders, card holders and possibly a dice tower that attaches over the corner...

But I really need to return to painting some figures and printing and basing up gabions for Dendermonde!

Creating a Ledge around a games table

 

Ever since I created my Hex scenery I have wanted to make a rail that goes round the edge of the table to finish off the look and hold the hexes in place - I have also always fancied a table with attachments like dice trays, etc as well.  It all seemed too expensive to do and difficult.

Then I saw the kickstarter for the War-ganizer Battle Board which is essentially a fold up table with a 3d printed attachment rail system based on 2" thick foam.

This isn't what what I wanted but I did wonder if the files would be modified to work as a rail system without an entire 6' x 4' piece of foam.

The rail is going to be in sections (maximum 2’ long) so I can have a 4' x 4', 6’ x 4’, 6’ x 5’  and 8’ x 5’  setup using the folding tables I use as my games table.

 I used polystyrene initially as I had it but  ordered some 50mm deep dense foam sheets to use for the final thing.

I have changed the panels to have a top and bottom ledge so that they form a box around a pieces of 50mm x 40mm foam.  I have also extended the outer panel so that it overlaps the table by 2 inches to stop the whole thing sliding.

To connect the length of the rail together I have made a 4 inch panel to connect to the attachment points and 2 more 4 inch panels for the left and right side of the connectors.

I have thought about making the inside panel blank, so that it was easier to print, but I need to be able to use the connector panel inside, and might want to attach somethings like dice trays to the inside of the rail.

I will probably cut some attachments down to 4” so I can use those at these spots as well.

Photos of initial pieces below:

I just posted this on the FB group for the designer and one person wondered why I didn't just design a box rather than filling it with foam.  To be honest I hadn't thought of it :-) 

Doing a quick sanity check, a solid box of the same size (with 25% infill for strength) would cost nearly twice as much in filament, take 1.5 times longer to print and I'd have to attach the 6 inch sections together with dowel or something.  It would probably be easier to make and put together but the foam I have ordered is less than half the price difference - not to mention I'd only get 2 feet of rail per roll of filament!

Nice to know I am not missing an obvious way of doing this - I could also have done it with 3" square lengths of wood with a 5" piece on to overlap the table.  Then I'd still have to print panels and glue them on for the attachments to connect to....

After a fair amount of experimentation and trying various things out - double and triple checking measurements I have managed to put together two pieces of the rail system.

A corner piece and a middle rail.

4 corners and 4 rails will combine to edge my normal 4' x 4' table and be useful for boardgaming or small wargames.

The next step once that is complete is to add another rail section which will clip in and extend it to a rail that surrounds a set of 4' x 4' boards (2 x 4' x 2' 9mm MDF) - the last picture above shows what the rail will look around a board.

After that, I'll add 2 x 2' sections to extend it to a 6' x 4' table then maybe two more to extend to 8'x 4'

probably 80 hours of more printing to finish the the 6'x 4' lot!  I complete the printing for another straight section today.

The attachment shown is a turn counter for 1-15 turns for One Hour Wargames, looking at card holders, dice trays and token trays.  Not so sure about drinks holders - nice idea but there is plenty of space to put drinks elsewhere,

Been enjoying the experimenting and problem solving.

The black covers cover the attachment points when they are not being used.

54mm ECW Collection for sale

I am selling this collection on behalf of a friend 

It is a large, well-painted collection of 1/32 ECW figures and includes Leaders, Infantry, Cavalry, Dragoons and Artillery.

The figures are mainly Call to Arms plastic ECW.  The mounted and dismounted dragoons are Irregular Miniatures metal figures.

The commanders for each side are Alexander Toy Soldiers Metal figures.

There are 212 Foot figures, 63 mounted and 5 guns and crew that are painted.

There is also several boxes of unpainted figures - again mostly Call to Arms but also more Irregular Miniatures Dragoons.

Price is £1200.  You can contact me with a comment or at littlewars1913@gmail.com

These were painted by a commission painter so it would be possible for you to add to the collection using the same painter.

This is too heavy to post easily so collection only please from Woking.

Additional photos are here:

https://littlewars1913.blogspot.com/p/54mm-ecw-collection-for-sale.html

Defenders of the City

 

Next off the workbench (at last) are 50 Minifigs French Marlburian infantry for Dendermonde - they have been hanging around getting closer and closer to being finished for quite a while. 

This brings the french forces to somewhere just over 150 defenders.  The allies are somewhere around 100 so far I think.

Lots more to go - but probably onto guns and crew next to help with working on the siege lines.

Painting Update

 Two very different sets finished this week:

 

 First attempt at French vehicles and some french camouflage .  The two trucks are Frontline Wargaming Resin, the Laffley 20 and the bus are 3d prints.

There is a lot more to follow this with a whole bunch of french tanks and more transport.

I also finished 10 flying Kraag Warriors for Space 1889 for a friend's collection.  They are painted to his spec (so gloss) and awaiting their final bases so I can finish them completely.

Next up I need to finish some Marlburians and then maybe some more TYW Epic and even some 20mm Sudan seem to be beckoning...

Rethinking Epic Thirty Years War

 

I have been having a long think about my TYW Epic project and came to the conclusion that the units (at 180mm wide) are just too big for my playing area and are going to result in lack of manouevre in any games.

I looked into possibly splitting the sprues in half and came across Dartfrog's blog  ( https://dartfrog06mm.blogspot.com/search/label/TYW ) where he has gone through the the same exercise and I am impressed enough with the results to decide to copy it and to base everything on one base for a unit. These should still work with Through the Square Window (which I think are my rules of choice) as they don't use stand removal.

This way the units will be 3.5" wide which is only about 90mm.

I have put together a test Scottish in Swedish service unit first to check how it look but the sprues split surprisingly easily, and I think the results once painted don't look any different from normal wargames distances.

The first test piece for TYW rebasing:

 

Painted in 3 hours (2 hours while not watching Traitors last night and this morning at 6am when I couldn't sleep).

 

Happy with the look and there is something wonderfully tactile about hold a whole unit like this in your hand....

Also I have ordered a whole load of Scottish and English musketeers from Peter Pig to add to the stands to make them look a little bit busier and more dynamic with some skirmishers out the front.

It also means that the 3 Swedish units I have finished will suddenly be 6 units (once I have painted another couple of strips of pike)

There are few reasons for going with this change, one of which is the realisation that I don't have the time to produce everything I want to get painted and on the table and smaller units take less time to produce.

I like the idea of a single base unit for Pike and shot - it eliminates some of the problems which arise with sets like Black Powder and Pike units targeting musket units  and lets you abstract the unit’s abilities into a single unit.

I think I am over my desire to produce really big units for the look of it - I use 12 figure units for my Napoleonics and my 25mm Franco-Prussian and they look fine to me, let me put on the size of game I want on the normal 6 x 5 table we have at the Guildford Club and fit more easily into my games room.

My main opponent away from the club prefers games that last 2 hours rather than 3 or 4 and playing on a smaller table lets me play the same game and get a result without reducing everything to 6 units a side.  I would prefer longer games but manage to get 3-hour games at the Guildford Club and occasionally at home.

I also have half an eye on using these for a hex based rule set or on grids which is something I have moved to for some periods  - the games are quicker, remove problems to do with wheeling, etc.  A single base unit less than 4" wide will fit on my command and colours mat or on Hexon if I went down that root.

Lastly, I actually like the look of the single base units over the very wide standard Warlord Black Powder unit.  I never had any intention to model exactly the ratio of Pike to Shot in each unit (been there, done that with Forlorn Hope) - I am happy just changing the unit's stats to match the firepower, melee, etc.

Through the Square Window rules use 30mm stands to make up units (with 6 pike and 4 musket stands in a Tercio) so I could have gone that way with this, but I find small stands too fiddly.  I like the look of the Tercios games I have seem in style which uses bases like this - but dislike the use of order cards for every unit, which I think would slow games down massively.

I do realise that quite a few people don't like the look or the abstraction, but everyone can choose their own solution.