Distractions

I just picked up a copy of the rules Dawn of Iron. Thus far, they seem straight forward. This is the second or third time I have looked into taking the plunge into ACW Naval gaming. The original idea was to support a naval landing campaign for Sharp Practice. My main problem is a lack of understanding of what the key factors are in early steamship naval battles as opposed to Age of Sail battles. My thought has been to try and convert KMH and TCG to the ACW. But steam vessels move very differently than sail vessels. The rifled guns of the ACW are significantly different than the smoothbore guns of the previous era. The wooden hulls of the Age of Sail are completely outclassed by the iron hulls of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. But then there are other items like Cotton Clads to consider.

So I am looking to see how others have addressed this. Dawn of Iron is interesting. I will play a few games with it before I say more. the bundle include a print and play kit for the Battle of Hampton Roads. It has some paper ship flats to use if you lack any miniatures. So it is ideal to give it a try. I have the link at the top to the Wargamevault site for it. I am also looking into some STL models for this. There are some free ones on Thingiverse as well as some in 1/600 on wargame3d and more on WargameVault.

Anyway, this is a slight disctraction from finishing my War of Jenkin's Ear book. Hopefully that will get more attention in the near future.

Reading and other distractions

Things have slowed on the hobby front. Scouting events have taken most of my free time. With my son now in the Order of the Arrow, there are more events than ever. I wouldn't trade it for anything. My back may disagree after that last campout.

I started work on another paper building. This time it is the Brooklyn Hotel from the White Wash City line again. I made a mistake and didn't print out the roof. I corrected that but lacked the time to cut it out and glue it to the building. The main drawback of doing these buildings in paper at 15mm (1/100th scale) is the stove pipes. Rolling the paper ends up a mess and I am never able to get the angle cut correctly to glue it to the roof. As such, I am gathering plastic coffee stirrers. The ones that look like small straws. This should give me roughly the correct size. This still leaves the cone on top of the pipe. I haven't solved that yet and may just ignore it.

Trees are still a priority to wrap up the War of Jenkin's Ear book. I have some bases ready and tree trunks preped for foliage. I just need to make the time to work on them. Hopefully, that will happen this week. Once the current batch is completed, I will reevaluate how many more I will need. I am running into storage issues for the current ones that I have made. If I have enough coverage, I will push forward with the scenarios to wrap up the book.

Quick Update

War of Jenkin's Ear Terrain

I completed another stand of Pine trees. This one had three tall pines on it. I have the basing done on another smaller pine group that will have 4 shorter pines. I still need to cut down and flock the trees. I also did the basing on a larger section of deciduous trees that will hold six or seven trees. I have the trees based and the trunks dealt with. I still need to do the upper portions of the trees and flock the bases. If all goes well, that can be wrapped up in a couple of hours.

What a Cowboy

I did have some additional hobby time and worked on getting some more paper buildings completed for What a Cowboy. I did a two story doctor's office and two houses from Eric Hotz's Whitewash City sets. I had considerable trouble with the chimney's in 15mm. They are very tiny. Also the pipes for the stoves were difficult. I ended up finding a paper Q-Tip length that I cut to size. I need to paint them to finish these off. There are a sidewalk set that comes with one of the collections from DriveThruRPG that I had purchased and made as well. They really add to the look. I am looking to build a few more houses, a ranch and some fences to complete the town that I have started. For a quick and cheap western town, these can't be beat. If I really wanted to put in the time, they could easily be as nice as some of the MDF terrain that is out there.

Fantastically Quick Service and my What A Cowboy Project

I placed an order to Sarrissa Precision a few days ago and already received the product. It was delivered extremely fast. The buildings came with a nice painting guide as well. Very pleased with the service.

I ordered some row houes, row house gardens and a cantina. The first two are for some Normandy games I have been thinking of and the latter to prepare for What a Cowboy whenever it releases. At the same time I ordered from Sarrissa, I also ordered a Mexican force for What a Cowboy from Peter Pig. I have the makings of a nice little Mexican village. I have a church and a few low buildings. But the cantina looked really nice and I thought it would make a great addition. They have a few other western buildings that I would like but I held off for the time being.

What a Cowboy is really interesting to me due to the low figure count. That and Peter Pig's western offerings are interesting. They have big man packs that include mounted, dismounted and dead figure. Their minion packs have mounted, foot, dead and now a wounded pack. The dead and wounded are generic figures for the type. The foot and mounted come with either pistol or rifle armed. Some packs have shotguns. I have a few of these figures already. The plan is to have small forces that I can swap out figures for depending on their current state. Since the figure count is rather low (3 or so figures per side) this would work out well.

I have enough to play but I have wanted to field a Mexican force. I picked up the pistol armed figures and the Big Pedro figure. My existing force has a few lawmen and some bandits. My western terrain, besides the Mexican themed terrain, is all paper buildings from the wonderful White Wash City line. The price was right at the time and it didn't take too much effort to make terrain to fill a table to play a few games with my son. Now, though, I am looking at some of the options for MDF terrain and rethinking that strategy. I may have to revisit it. But for now, I have terrain to use.

For paper terrain, I have almost the entire set from Eric Hotz's Whitewash City. I know of 2 buildings that I am missing in his existing set but I only have about a dozen of them built. I think my other terrain are old JR Miniatures buildings.

In going through what I had completed, I pulled out the miniatures that I have. As it turns out, I have more painted figures than I thought. I have the makings of four groups and a group of civilians. The civilians were a gift from a wargaming friend in Canada (Thanks Mike!). I have not really based them yet. They are glued to a piece of computer motherboad material. I want to finish them off at some point. The signs and railings behind them are also from Mike as well.

The gangs will eventually be used for What A Cowboy. I have them painted in schemes where they will more or less match one another. I have one gang painted up with a leader in mounted, dead and foot poses. He then has 3 minions with two of them with dead figures. In the picture you will see that there are multiple basings used. This is because the tiny based ones were purchases off of ebay years ago. The ones based on US Pennies are the ones I painted up.

My second gang has five figures in it and one has a dead pose. The mounted leader figure is still on its painting stick. I also have five more dead figures to paint up. The third gang has two painted figures. I have two more unpainted figures for this gang. The last gang will be treated as lawmen. I have five of them painted with no dead figures... yet. The mounted leader figure is on the painting stick but not even undercoated.

I found someone's campaign game that they had set up using Whitewash city buildings. The doc they made had maps of various cities in fictional Fromme County, Nevada. https://www.iandrea.co.uk/wargames/resources/W3G/FromeCountyMaps.pdf is the location of the maps. The site is well worth checking out for some canned backgrounds to start a campaign. They did a great job with it.

Trees and More Trees

I am not sure if I posted about a recent Etsy order. I found a person selling tree bases. These seemed useful and I placed an order. Here is what I received from them.

I had some of my existing pine tree bases laying about and had some time over the past couple of weeks to get started on them. I have completed 3 groups of trees so far with many more to go. One pine tree base is complete as well as two of the new bases. I am playing around with how to make the trees. I have several articles and youtube videos I am trying to emulate to varying degrees of success. I have these finished beyond this but only took a picture before flocking the pines and the other set.

I am starting to run into storage probelms with the trees. But the trees are getting better than my original efforts glued to a washer. I hope to get some more work done on them next week.