Slow Updates - What a Cowboy and Dawn of Iron

For What A Cowboy, my Mexican faction has been glued to a base and primed. I am still amazed at how well the detail held up on the 3dBreed.es models when shrunk to 15mm. I have no idea when I will get around to painting them. I have made multiple attempts to print horses and mounted versions of these figures. All have been failures. The legs on the horses end up being too fine and either don't print or end up at the bottom of the resin tank as they snap off during printing. These too come without a base. My thought is to add a base in tinker cad to the horses. That and possibly figure out how to thicken the legs. I have not bothered to print the riding figures yet. If I get this done, I need to look into making casualty figures for each of these. Not sure how I will do that.

I have saved off all of my supports from my printing efforts so far. I intend to make some forest sections with them. I just haven't had time to attempt that yet.

Dawn of Iron I am now only missing a mast set for the CSS Jamestown and a good print for the USS St Lawrence. When I went to prime what I had, I didn't like the way the hull had turned out. I do have one good print of a vessel in that class. I managed to glue the masts to the second USS Minnesota class ship and the USS Congress. I now have most of the vessels at least primed. Shouldn't be too much more work to have everything primed. I have enough vessels and the first version of their cards printed out to have a game. I also printed and primed some splash markers. I have no idea what I will do with those yet. I will likely use them for Coastal Patrol as well.

Anyway, these two projects are coming together. I have terrain ready for What a Cowboy. Most of the terrain that I have is paper terrain from Eric Hotz. I really like those models. If I spent more time on them and added raised details, they would be really nice. But since I haven't been able to convince my son to get into any of the games we have had so far, I am unlikely to invest money in MDF terrain for a project I probably won't play.

Not much of an update.

3D Printing

I managed to get some nice prints done with my new printer so far. The first print I did was of the USS Cambridge, the CSS Raliegh (stand in model) and the CSS Harmony (stand in model). Everythign turned out really well. However, I was using regular resin. The smell was too strong and I switched after that to a water washable from Sunlu. It took a number of prints to get things tuned in. The water washable gave me a good print of the USS Minnesota and the CSS Jamestown. I only lack prints of USS Congress and the USS St Lawrence. Fortunately, these are the same class ship and I have the STL files for it.

I am also anxiously awaiting the release of What a Cowboy. To prep for it, I am looking at a Mexican gang to add to my existing unit of Peter Pig minitures. I checked out 3d Breed's models and purchased their set. I printed the foot minis and am happy with them so far. They look good. I should have added a base in Tinkercad first. I still need to see how well I scaled them to match with my existing Peter Pig.

Well, it is a start. I also have mounted versions of each of these. In addition, they come with two different horse variants each. Seems like their miniatures are really nice so far. I am happy with it. They need casualty figures though.

Wargame Vault Review

You may not know, but Wargame Vault using a rating system for products based on their sales numbers. Each level is assigned a "metal" as it rating. Starting at Copper, it progresses to Silver, Electrum, Gold, Platinum, Mithral, and lastly Adamantine.

The sales levels are as follows:

Rating	Number of Sales
Copper	51+
Silver	101
Electrum	251
Gold	501
Platinum	1001
Mithral	2501
Adamantine	5001

As of this morning, I did some research and was pleasantly surprised. My books had done better than I had expected. Thank you very much.

BOOK	Type	Sales	Sales Rank
Action at Ustilug	WWII Skirmish Scenarios	81	Copper
In The Name of Roma	WWII Skirmish Scenarios	45	-
Battle of Kharkov 1941	WWII Skirmish Scenarios	149	Silver
Second Battle of Kharkov 1942	WWII Skirmish Scenarios	86	Copper
East Front Bundle	WWII Skirmish Scenarios	226	Silver
Falcon and The Gladiator	WWII Air Campaigns and Scenarios	42	-
The Coming Thunder	ACW Skirmish Scenarios	156	Silver
To Covet Glory	Age of Sail Small ship Battles	114	Silver
The War of Jenkin's Ear	Black Powder and Age of Sail Skirmish Scenarios	25	-

These are only sales from Wargame Vault and do not include the hard copy sales from Amazon, direct sales (before I did a PayHip store), or sales from my PayHip site. Now, I had messed up when i did the East Front Bundle. Within the bundle are both Kharkov Supplements, Action at Ustilug and In the Name of Roma. If you do bundles correctly, bundle sales increaase sales of the products under them. All in all, I am very happy with how they have done. Of the 9 books, only four are on Amazon in print form. Two are available as kindle. Kindle is a terrible format to release the books on.

In the Name of Roma is the oldest of the series and sold 63 kindle copies and anther 14 print copies. The First Kharkov supplement sold 14 kindle copies and 41 print copies. The Second Kharkov book was only available in print and sold 55 copies! Thank you! Lastly, To Covet Glory was only released as a print copy and sold 48 copies!

I forgot to look at PayHip.

Book	Sales
Action at Ustilug	36
In the Name of Roma	11
Battle of Kharkov 1941	26
Second Battle of Kharkov	26
East Front Bundle	31
Falcon and the Gladiator	14
To Covet Glory	16
The War of Jenkin's Ear	8

Now there are other items that are only on PayHip that are not on the other sites. I may have to change that as it seems peopel trust Wargame Vault more than they do PayHip.

The copies I sold directly and from PayPal are lost to history. No idea of how I would ever figure that out. Anyway, it was a fun exersize to look through how sales have gone. Compared to many, this is a drop in the bucket. But for me, I am pretty proud as to how they have done. I would love to see the War of Jenkin's Ear book get to copper status. That it is half way there made me really happy. I didn't think I would sell 5 copies of that, honestly. It is a very niche subject.

Anyway, that is some motivation to push ahead.

Travel and Battlefield tour

I am going on a trip to Nashville soon. My wife agreed to a battlefield tour of the battle of Franklin (1864). While the battle is really larger than what I can do in Sharp Practice I am particularly interested in the fighting around Carter's Farm. The fighting around the farm house and the cotton gin were particularly fierce. I am wondering if it would be possible to play a game concentrated on that feature.

The battle was a disaster for Hood's forces as they took terrible losses that they could not replace. A large number of senior officers died in the action including general officers. This is a battlefield that has undergone considerable conservation in recent years (since 2000). Given its location, it is amazing that the whole sight is not under the pavement of a mini-mall and subdivision.

Happy New Year 2023

Once Again, we have reached the time when we need to buy new calendars. Happy New Year, dear reader. I am attempting to focus my time for the upcoming year that is already seeing scope creep.

Seven Years War - Skirmish

At the scale of Sharp Practice, having a multitude of poses for skirmisher figures is a thing I am looking for. Since I am looking at the April 1759 actions in Bohemia, I am struggling to find appropriate figures.

I have some painted Prussian Jagers that I purchased off of Ebay. They are all in firing poses. They have the advantage of being painted and based. They are based in blocks of 4 figures, two accross and two deep. I prefer single based figures. The figures are kneeling and stanging firing figures. The figures are likely from Old Glory 15s. While my other purchased (but not yet painted) miniatures are either Eureka (Prussians) or Blue Moon (Austrians).

The Grenzers from Blue Moon look good in variety and in poses. I had purchased the skirmishing pack and the command pack. These just arrived recently and have not been base coated yet. My Prussian musketeers are from Eureka and are all marching poses. Which is probably fine for regulars. These are base coated but no other paint has reached the miniatures.

I have been looking at the miniatures from Henry Turner. These are STL files and could be promising. In the off chance that I get a 3d printer for Christmas, I was told that he has just released some Austrian skirmishers on his patreaon that will go to other sites in January. If that is the case, that may sort out some Croat/Pandour troops out for the Austrians. Wunsch's Prussians encountered a large number of "Croats" upon crossing the border in their advance.

The other troop type that I need are Hungarian troops. Among them were the troops from the Arch Bishop of Mainz's regiment Kurmainz Infantry. I will probably go with Blue Moon for these.

One terrain item that I need is a powder magazine. At this point, I have not been able to identify where the powder magazine in Peterswalde would have been. I am attempting to make one similar to one I found that was in a fort from the period. It is across the country from Peterswalde but it should do in a pinch.

ACW Naval

The plan is to print and paint some more ships for the Dawn of Iron rules. I am waiting to received the wash solution before attempting to start printing. I did pick up some books that should prove insightful on actions along the eastern sea board but I have not read them yet.

Terrain Beautification

I watched Rich's great video on his Burma build. It got me motivated to look over some of my older terrain pieces. One that sticks out is a Game Craft Miniatures factory building that I assembled a while back. I won't claim to have painted it. It is too basic for that. I plan on going through my existing buildings and seeing what I can improve. I also have a set of Impudent Mortal 15mm buildings that they did years ago that is still unopened. I plan on modifying these to look more Middle Europe that could be in Bohemia for my SYW project. As always, I will also try to make some more trees. Just dropped some money on eBay towards this.