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).

40mm AWI on the new table

 

First game to christen my new table layout was a 40mm AWI using Rebels and Patriots on a 4' x 4' layout.  I took the Americans, my opponent Anthony the British.

The British are trying to force a path across the bridge.

The game didn't start well with my Militia unit deciding to open fire on their own captain's unit killing two men - but fortunately not their captain.

The British slowly advanced while the Americans took up positions and then refused to fire, turn after turn (my order dice for firing were terrible!).

Finally the British got the upper hand and the Americans admitted defeat.

It was a fun game and I think the system of keeping clutter off the table worked really well.

Painting...

 

Finally got back to some painting.

Added an extra rank to my test TYW Scots which I think looks better.

Then finally finished off some Bones fantasy figures for Frostgrave which have been almost complete for a while - just need to finish the basing.  There are a couple more to finish as well.

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!