Sprucing up the factory

Taking a few minutes to breathe, I have decided that my rather vanilla looking factory needs something. I was recommended to add a patch to the roof. That was done easily enough but it still lacks something. My wife asked "Well, what about a sign saying what factory it is?" Well duh. I should have thought of that. So breaking out the virtual crayons, I have been busy attempting to figure out what to call stuff.

So off to Mr Google's wonderful translator. The first was something rather plain - Gorlovka Steel Works which worked out to: "Горловка Ϻеталлургический Завод". That seems simple enough. But making a sign that just says that would be.... boring. So back to Google to find something suitably officious. With that attempt, I came up with this.

A little more thinking and I decided that I can do better. Make the signs so that they can be removable and I can use this for different stuff. So I scratched my head and came up with this.

Завод Детского Питания - Baby Food Plant

and

Государственный Индустриальный Завод - State Industrial Plant

and because I just read the recent Stephen Hunter book Даллас Kнигохранилища - Dallas Book Repository.

Anyway, I would probably drop the text from the image and just print it and center it on the building. But how to mount. My thought is to glue some steel washers to the back of the signs. Then use magnets on the back to hold them in place. Anyway, its a thought.

Chain of Command Preorders being taken

Rich has finally opened up for pre-orders of Chain of Command. Yea! These have been such fun to participate in play testing. The changes to the rules are rather a dramatic departure from their card driven system - on the surface. Honestly it took me a bit to get used to the mechanisms. Once I did, I really, really enjoyed them. Do I miss the cards? Yes. Are there some things that you can't do because the cards are not present? No. It makes scenario design more challenging but it has not really prevented any actions I was looking to see in the game.

For example, in Troops, Weapons and Tactics, to trigger an action, you have a card in the deck for that. I use a blank card that when it turns up 'x' number of times, an event will occur (reinforcements, troops are allowed to withdraw from a defensive position without penalty or any number of things). With Chain of Command, this is still doable. One just has to be more creative. Using a count of the number of Full Chain of Command dice that get generated is one option.

The advantage of the Dice activation is that the game moves much faster. Even my bumbling first attempts worked themselves out quite quickly.

The rules work great with 15mm miniatures. Every game I have played with has used 15s. The rules come with some canned scenarios to try out and hopefully, I will have my scenario pack out with about 10 to 15 scenarios tailored to these rules. Anyway, Chain of Command are definitely worth a look. I am looking at ordering the "Big Bundle" at some point. The prices on just the PDF are not up yet but they are a great value and an easy way to check the rules out before committing to a bigger purchase.

Some fun summer Reading or Learing about the Afghan Frontier in 1917

One of the blogs I am following is a developing campaign set in Afghanistan from before WWI to just after it. The blog, Waziristan on a Fancy has just put up their first scenario for their campaign. Its a wonderful diversion with period descriptions of colonial actions that quite frankly I had never heard of before nor was likely to until I stumbled upon his blog.

He is focusing on the Late/Post WWI time period. The veterans of the Great War are few and far between and the British Army in India is not the same as the Men who fought across France and Belgium. The Afghan's are a colorful collection of troops with a wide assortment of weapons. He is sorely tempting me to look at a new period. Anyway, check out http://waziristanonafancy.blogspot.com if you have a spare minute. You will not regret it.

Mucking around with a camera in desparate need of help

Well, I am working on finishing out the book. Since pictures are important, I have stolen my wife's camera and tripod and set myself to work. Rather than setting up any particular scenario, I threw something together to take a few "test" pictures to play around with the camera and its settings. Well here is what I came up with.

I set up the table to have a small river with a ford and a village beyond it. The Italians were storming their way across the ford with a rifle section while two LMG teams were providing cover fire. There are a few casualties among the charging Italians. In the village are two squads of Soviets and a MMG team behind a fence. The MMG team has suffered a few casualties but I am not sure you can even see the casualty markers behind the fence. Now, on to the pictures.

I tried to crop the picture down to just the main action. The shot is over the shoulders of the attacking Italians as they head towards the MMG location.

Here is a shot of one of the Russian Squads as it rushes towards the sound of the guns.

Here is a different angle of the Soviet MMG Team. You can just make out one of the casualty figures there. Plus some brave Socialist cows standing before the enemy. Is including livestock a good idea in these pictures?

This is similar to one of the above images but cropped differently.

Just a generic picture of the town before miniatures were inserted. Is a generic terrain shot like this useful?

I need help with this as I don't have a good eye for what makes a great picture. I have a Cannon Rebel digital camera. I set the fStop to 9.0 and the ISO to 1600 for these pictures. I read about these things on Trouble at the Mill's blog but really don't understand them other than it lets in more light and light is good. Would pictures like this be interesting to anyone purchasing a scenario supplement (provided they were related to the scenarios of course)?

Maps are Finished!

Well, I just finished the last map update for the CSIR scenario set. The last to do is to get some pictures taken to have game shots in the supplement. Also, I am waiting to hear from some of my play testers as well.

On less happy news, the varnish is all dry on my house and I am not sure I am happy with it. It came across as very dark. It does have kind of a not maintained look about it.