More Terrain Progress

Having a few moments alone today, I managed to finish up a few more terrain pieces and a couple of miniatures.

First up is some campfires. These are tiny things that I mounted on US Pennies to keep them from getting lost on the table.

Next up are some scatter terrain pieces that will be useful. They are stacked supplies.

While I was working, I rebased a unit of Rebel Militia for the AWI and have them with a sabot base from Warbases in the UK. I really like them.

While working on minis, I found a few that I forgot to base. I finished those off. A physic for Sharp Practice and a Holy Man with a dog. The physic is a Blue Moon mini and the Holy man and Dog are from Peter Pig's ECW line (I think).

I had also finished a man plowing a field. But I have no idea what happened to the picture. While talking about Peter Pig, I had their War Memorial from their scenic line. It has been sitting around for a bit and I slapped some paint on it. I wanted the top part to have brass plaques on it and the ones below to be stone. Not sure if I am happy with it.

I also managed to finish another stand of trees. I tried making these a bit differently from the others that I have done. I like the look of them. Also had a chance to use some new tufts that I picked up this week.

I also started to work on a sample cane break and a sample swamp section. I am basing these on vinyl tile. I am then gluing some foam matting to it and covering it with a mix of caulk, sand and paint. This is sitting there drying at the moment. Nothing exciting yet but I hope to have more pictures as it gets closer to finished. Well that is it for today. Hope to get some more work done this weekend. I found an MDF building from Starfort miniatures that I have been dry fitting together. It is one of their Southern European houses. That may see the light of day at some point too.

Rocky Comfort Creek - March 22, 1779

Yesterday, I had a most enjoyable game of Sharp Practice. It was from the This Land Divided supplement that I am upgrading to version 2 of Sharp Practice. We made a few tweaks to it but they were minor. It was a three player game that was umpired by Mark Luther who provided the terrain and the figures. They were beautiful as always.

Following the disaster at Kettle Creek, the British attempted to raise the Creek nation to come to their aid. Taitt, the British Indian agent managed to raise a large force of six hundred Creek Warriors supported by a few Loyalist militia. As the force descended on Wilkes County, Georgia, the Rebel militia was again raised to counter this threat. In order to reach August, Georgia, the Indians separated into three separate bands. One of these bands, Headed by Alexander McGullivary, was checked near Rocky Comfort Creek. Historically, the Rebels stopped the Indians and sent them back to their homes. The Rebels had raised a large force of militia and destroyed each of the three bands in detail. Capturing several key leaders. Taitt would reach Augusta but with just 70 Creek warriors of the original six hundred he had raised.

Rocky Creek takes place after several other bands have been checked. The goals of the Indians are just to survive on the field for seven turns of the blank card then melt away into the woods.

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Lieutenant Daniel Egan took another pull from the whiskey bottle before the surgeon dug into his arm to extract the musket ball. It was one of two wounds he had taken on the day. The clerk was taking his statement on the recent action to send out to Taitt, the indian agent to the Creek.

"We proceeded toward Augusta. We had a large party of Muskogee, Creeks under the command of Alexander McGullivary. One of the bands was commanded by one of Emistiguo's sons, Big Fellow. There were two other minor leaders as well. I accompanied them with a party of loyalists. Yesterday we had learned of the defeat of the other bands being sent down to Augusta and that the militia had been raised in Wilkes County.

"We advanced down toward Rocky Comfort Creek. Our scouts reached a hill in the forest that overlooked the river. It was here that we saw a large party of militia that we observed crossing the river. We were significantly outnumbered. They had cut off our path to Augusta and wouldn't be able to move around them.

"McGullivary issued orders to hold up their advance until we could get away by dark. Cloud and Moon moved forward to hold the hill top."

"The Rebel Militia were moving faster than we thought they could be. They pushed forward a body of skirmishers that came close to our position in the woods. Big Fellow lead his men down the hill to push back the skirmishers. I went forward with my Loyalists near the small dirt track. I observed a party of horsemen coming up the road and took my men further into the woods for cover.

"Big Fellow rushed his men forward and engaged the skirmishers. His large band of followers outnumbered the skirmishers. With thrown tomahawks they hacked their way into the Rebels who broke and fled. This was alarming for our force as Big Fellow had taken a wound and was knocked out. I was uncertain if our allies would remain in the field. They have broken when one of their leaders had been wounded or killed before. The skirmishers left their four dead behind and fled past their lines. I would later learn that they killed the skirmisher officer, a Captain Hatcher."

"From the cover of the trees, the mounted militia proceeded into the scrub across from my position. I had my men fire a volley into the horsemen which stymied their movement. We were to learn that their leader, Major Ross of the Rebel Fair Forest Militia was wounded and had his horse shot out from underneath him. Several other horses were hit as well. The militia then dismounted and attempted to form into a line.

"We exchanged fire with the militia line for a time but other rebel militia advanced through the forest. Our position was nearly in line with Big Fellows and Cloud and Moon's Creeks. My men began to take casualties. Over the course of the engagement, I was wounded twice. Eight of my men were killed and left in the field. My men would have to drag my unconcious form from the line of fire.

From what I learned, Big Fellow recovered from his wounds and started to pull his forced back from the Rebels. Cloud and Moon also pulled back and were able to slip away. I was the last to quit the field. I learned that our Indian Allies suffered only the injury to Big Fellow. Besides the four skirmishers that Big Fellow's men killed, I believe that my troops killed no more than a handful of the enemy but we still held them at bay."

"More Rebel militia continued to cross the river and arrive. The militia line that we were fighting remounted to prepare for pursuit. On the whole, our Allies performed well and my men fought bravely to the end. But I regret to inform you that Big Fellow and his Muskogee will be unable to reach Augusta."

Your Obedient Servant,
Lieutenant Daniel Egan

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The game was fun. I enjoyed playing the Indian forced. The rebels moved up their deployment point and prevented my movable deployment point from going forward. I could only move it sideways. The Rebels had tons of militia and they had a very good force morale. With the destruction of the skirmishers, the loss of their leader and the wound of Major Ross, I was unable to move their force morale below 8. My force morale began at 11 and it dropped to 4 before I got away. The lone group of Loyalist Militia were badly beaten up. We had rated them as skirmishers for the game but should not have. They should have been just average militia but armed with rifles. The rifles made them much more deadly than they would have been otherwise.

The Heavy Going of the woods restricted the movement of the Militia. I had some unusually fortunate die rolls on movement with the Indians which allowed them to get into positions that I wished. I never deployed my last two groups Indians as I wasn't trying to fight it out. I just wanted to survive for seven turns of a blank card then fade away. This we did rather well.

More Terrain

I managed to paint up some more terrain. I have eyed Rich's small fields that he did for Sharp Practice years ago. I had bought some fake flowers a while back and promptly did nothing with them until yesterday. I knocked out a small field of cabbages or some vegetable. It was fun to make.

I also bought the premade Battlefront swamps. They look more like small muddy ponds. I flocked one of them and will be able to use it now. I also knocked out a small stand of birch trees too.

Then there was a stand of pines.

I also started on some deciduous trees. Everything was going well, until I tried to put the trees into their bases. One went in part of the way while a second had the post at its base snapp off. Now I just have to fix it. Trying to pin the pieces together.

Swamp Fox Errata

Well, I had a typo that slipped past me pointed out. On page 43 there is a set of incomplete instructions for deployment.

This should read,
"One Group of 8 Loyalist Militia Skirmishers (Mounted option), South Carolina Rangers. Muskets.The British roll a D6 when they wish to enter the table. On a 1 or 2, they deploy to location 1, on 3 or 4 to location 2, and on a 5 or 6 to location 3."

You can get the corrected page here.

If you have trouble with the link, please email me and I will forward it along.

Terrain Time

I have had a few moments to get some hobby time in and have started to work on terrain. I managed to make some trees. Most of these are chinese trees that I purchased from AliExpress. They were cheap and look pretty good. The pictures are rubbish. They make the trees look far shinier than they are in reality.

And one more shot that is of the ones above.

And two more sections.

I have several more bases of them that are in various stages of being. I hope that I can finish more this week. Once these are done, I have swamps to make. These will be fun.

Swamp Fox is Released!

Swamp Fox is now availible for purchase on the TooFatLardies Website. It is availible for just £7.00.

The supplement includes 12 historical scenarios that follow Francis Marion's campaigns from August of 1780 up to January of 1781. Also is a series of campaigns that are all linked. There are four for the British and four for the Rebels. They are played simultaneously.

I would love to hear from you on what you think when you have a chance to read it through.

Sharp Practice Musings

As I am going through the Swamp Fox supplement, I wanted to determine what would be needed in terms of movement trays to be able to game any of the scenarios in the supplement. I was really pleased with the movement trays that I bought from Litko for my Pirate project. They worked out very nicely. So I wanted to duplicate the effort for my AWI troops.

Militia will need two types of bases. The more experienced Veteran militia will be in units of 8 men while long service and poorly equipped militia will be in units of 10 men each. All of my AWI troops are based on US pennies. So a sabot base with 20mm holes is needed. Then there are skirmish troops of 6 men each. While these don't necessarily need a sabot base, I thought that they would look nice based that way.

A trip to Litko's website gave me sticker shock. 7 2x5, 7 2x4 and 5 s slot bases worked out to over $100. That is more than I paid for the miniatures (if I remember right). Once I recovered, I set about to try to find an alternative that didn't involve me making them by hand. Warbases showed up in my search. I thought that this would be hopeless as the shipping costs would be terrible. I was wrong. The bases were each less than a pound each. I even threw in two of their casualty markers and the total with shipping was less than $37. A few clicks later and now I just need to wait on the postman.

Since Rich is getting close to releasing Swamp Fox, I have started to take a look at my older AWI supplements. Starting with This Land Divided, I am retooling the scenarios to work with the Sharp Practice II rules. I am actually really excited about this project. The aim is to keep the original supplement in tact as the scenarios worked well for the first version of the rules. Then include a second presentment of the rules, redone for SP2. That means the scenario will be close to 130 pages in length but the player can print out the parts they want rather than the whole book. When done, I also plan on releasing them on Amazon as a paperback. No kindle version for this as I doubt the usefulness of a kindle version of a wargames supplement. It seems PDF and hardcopy are more useful.

I set up my table and started to get ready to take some pictures for This Land Divided. I realized I do not nearly have enough trees. I have individual trees and some groups of trees. But not nearly enough. What I do have is a bunch of Chinese trees that I bought from AliExpress. And some model railroad birch trees. So I started working on making tree bases. I have two bases pained and flocked. I started to drill holes and fix the trees to the bases. I have too much more work to do before I take pictures. Hopefully, I will have something by the weekend.