Mansio Troubles

The basing for the mansio proved to be a disaster. The card warped badly and looked horrible. I pulled the building off and didn't ruin too much of the paint on the building. I still want to base it but may wait until I can order some of the base materials from Sarissa Precision.

Before I order those, I need to place an order with Litko for more metal bases for my miniatures. I am still trying to figure out the group basing for the celts. I don't really like what I currently have. Either the washers used have too much zinc or the magnet in the movement tray is too weak. Or a combination of the two.

I started to look at terrain for the Singling scenario. I have laid out the likely buildings from what I already have. I do have some that will do which is nice. I will need to do some modeling for some of the houses for the town square. I think I already have a pretty good start on that. I wish the old blog posts from TooFatLardies were still around. Rich did some excellent tutorials on making buildings that I really liked. The one he did for his Post-Roman British church is one that I wish I could see again.

I started assembling an Empires at War French farmhouse last night. While waiting for the glue to dry, I assembled a Sarissa Cantina that I found that I had forgotten that I ordered a long time ago. I am looking forward to painting it up. I have several other French buildings, including barns and stables. The center of Singling had some agricultural buildings and it is noted that there was a massive manure pile in the middle of the town between some houses. While that was probably OK in the winter, I can't imagine that being a healthy thing in the summer months.

I have started to plan out the church that I want to scratch build. I have the size worked out but I need to determine the material that I will build it from. After the basing disaster for the Mansio, I am hesitant to build it out of card.

New Book - Nothing but Blood and Slaughter Volume 4

With some Amazon cards received at Christmas, I was able to get the 4th book in the series by Patrick O'Kelley. This covers the battles in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia for the year 1782. It is a slimmer volume but is still very interesting. The partisan nature of the battle in the south is emphasized with the continuation after the fall of Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. i am not sure that I will end up making any more books in the series on the war in the South for the AWI. But this one has me thinking.

Between work and helping my son complete his paperwork for his Eagle Scout application, I have been swamped and have not done anything hobbywise. I did buy the PDF copy of The One Ring RPG rules and have been enjoying the "Waking of Angmar" podcast. It is very interesting. I have been pleased with the Free League Publishing rules. Betwen the new Twilight 2000 mechanisms and TOR 2e, it has been a fun read and something to think about. I am wondering how to use these elements to time them into other wargames. Who knows. Probably nothing will come of it.

Roman Mansio and Pint Sized Campaign Musing.

Infamy Infamy Project

Over the weekend, I had a few moments to work on some miniatures and terrain. I wanted to finish the mansio that I started. The base that I decided on using was some thick cardboard that I had lying around. This was likely a mistake. After putting basing matter on the cardboard, it began to wrap upwards. I flipped it upside down and coated the bottom in PVA glue in hopes to reverse that. This made me rethink how I plan on basing the Villa. I will use plastic for that. We will see if the base can be saved of the mansio.

The tower is complete. I do not plan on basing it.

The new Celts I received, I managed to get mounted to painting sticks. This should complete out my Briton/Celt/Gual force. This will give me 3 full units of armored/noble infantry. The problem that I have for them is basing. I had based the rest of the celts on steel washers, and then used a magnet sheet for the movement tray. What I noticed was that this does not work as well as the reverse that I use for my Romans. The Romans are based on magnet sheet and I use a steel rectangle for the movement tray. To assist the Romans to be able to line up better in formation, I have glued a thin wood strip to the front of it that the bases can push up against. Their basing has worked out well. The Celts are another story.

I did get some paint onto the horses and riders for my Roman Cavalry. Not much but the spears are painted as well as the horses tack for a single group.

WWII

I have been looking for winter troops to buy for an upcoming project. I may go with Gajo Miniatures as I can get them painted already. It seems like all of the metal Battlefront figures have been replaced with plastics or are unavailable. That was disapointing. eBay was not that much help either. Now that I have a snowy ground cloth, I really should have winter equipped soldiers. My previous supplements had summer uniform troops running around in the cold. I should do better. I am eyeing a German platoon at the moment. I found a box of winter Soviets in a drawer that are unpainted. Not what i needed but a welcome find.

For the village Church, I am happy with the STLs that I have made for the details. I found some plastic bits that I plan on adding as well. Next step will be to make the walls of the building and see what I can make. I have some unstarted buildings that I was looking over. I am seeing what can be modified to make it look more like the buildings from the town.

Reading the account, I have decided to custom model the buildings around the town square. Thus far I have targeted the church and school house. I will also work on the other building between the two. I am still trying to piece together what that will look like. The tough part is figuring out the maps and where to snip them to match the action of the historical battle. For most of the day, according to the US Army publications on the battle, the Germany infantry has little to no impact on the battle on the 5th of December right up to late afternoon. The German panzer Grenadier battalion was reduced to just 150 to 200 men. Those troops that the Americans did encounter tended to either get shot or surrender without much of a fight. The German Armor and artillery played the largest roll in the battle.

My thought at this point is to have three simultaneous tables for the battle. An oversized section that is slightly out of scale running up to the north west, another centered on the village square and a third on the east side of town running up to the valley in the north. The Germans would have some set forces that will be present on each table already deployed with some static jump off points. The Americans would enter the table at specific points with the goal of taking the town. The Germans would have a number of forces that they can use as a reserve and pick which table they want to deploy to. So once that resource has been deployed, it is committed and cannot be used elsewhere without leaving the table and attempting to move to the new location. They will have to have a clear path to get from one point to the other or the resource does not arrive at the other location. This is just a preliminary idea. I also want to utilize some off table resources. There was a 75mm anti-tank gun that was deployed north of the town that fired into the town and knocked out at least one American tank. I am not sure how to use that yet. My thought is that the infantry can spot it and relay the message to the tank crew or if the tanks are unbuttoned they can have a chance to spot the gun in the distance.

I am looking forward to v2 of Chain of Command and what it holds.

Attempt at 3d Modeling a historical Church

In working on the current Pint Sized campaign, I looked at the scenery for the town in question. In particular for the buildings that stand out the most in the battle. One in particular that caught my eye was the town church. It is not a particularly impressive structure. It looks more like a shoebox than a cathedral. But it did have a few unique features. The doorway was rather distinctive. So i took my hand at making just the doorway. I have a period picture of the church and the church still stands today so it can be seen in Google Maps Street View. This is a huge help. The buildings in the town in several instances extend out into the street itself. How this is not a terrible traffic hazard, I am not sure. The battle has a number of pictures of the town just after the battle. This is helpful but the Google Street view allows you to get a better understanding of the spacing that you loose with some of the historical images.

Historial Church as of December 1944:

Church Front Today:

After doing the entrance as 3d files. I think I will also model the windows. There are four windows per long side of the building. The building will be made outside of my printer as the printer is too small to handle the building, even though it is a small church. I am thinking of going with foam core for the building. The image taken of the church after the battle showed that it survived mostly intact but the stucco was pock marked on the walls and in many cases, the stone underneath can be seen. Since the town was shelled prior to the attack, I will probably try to model the damage on the church. The modern church has whitewashed walls with a white and black steeple. The roof appears to be tile. The town had mostly tile roofs so this makes sense. The historical image supports a white and black steeple. The steeple roof is black while the square building part appears to be brick.I can only guess at the building color. Possibly a brownish color.

Details modeled so far:

The back of the church is extended out (my geometry eludes me to describe the shape) to make the building a little more interesting. During the fighting, the steeple took fire from US forces thinking a sniper would be present in the building. It was also struck with something heavier than a rifle round to leave a large hole under the window on the front face of the church. The blinds covering the window in the steeple appear to have been replaced with smaller thinner ones compared to the period picture. I am unsure if the roof of the steeple has changed over the years as the picture of the church cuts that part off. I will base the steeple roof off of the modern building.

Back of Church:

I will mess with mocking up the building later today. I don't plan on modeling all of the buildings from the town. Just a few that stand out and seem important to me. So far my list has:

1) An MG bunker: Probably purchase the Sarissa one at some point.
2) The AT Gun Bunker: I may just look and see what is available.
3) The School House: Another building with pictures from the time and still stands in the city across from the Church.
These are just my first thoughts. The others I have some that seem similar enough to stand in.

Celt Village and Happy 2025

Over the Christmas break, I was able to get some work completed on some terrain. I finished painting the Celt Village from Blue Moon/Old Glory Miniatures. I am mostly happy with how they came out but feel that the thatch roofs could have been better. The picture is on top of some small shelves that my son bought me for Christmas. It was a pretty useful gift.

I also managed to finish plastering the watchtower. I also have gotten some paint on it as well. I have purchased some speed paints with my Christmas money and tried a dark wood on the platform and woodwork. I am still undecided on how it looks. I started painting the tile roof but that still needs more work.

I also plastered the Mansio and most of the Villa. The Mansio has been mounted on a base as well. This should help keep it together. I also glued the elements of the mansio together. I will have to do the same with the villa as well. It is just proving to be more fiddily than the Mansio was. The hope is to make progress on these soon.

I also placed an order with Sarissa Precision for the barracks from their 15mm line of Roman Buildings. I saw that they have a Roman farm as well. I am very excited about picking that up as well, but that is for the future. I found a nice small house on Etsy that seemed to be at a reasonable price. But the shipping was close to $60 for it, so I passed on that one. I will probably get the Vicus buildings from Warbases 15mm line at some point.

Celts.... I got in my order from Stonewall Miniatures. I now have enough for two more groups of noble warriors for the Celts. These will be a mix of sword and spear armed.

I also now have more Auxilia to paint. I was really surprised that I have three more groups worth of Auxilia infantry to paint. This is besides the cavalry and the painted Romans that I have. I am wondering if I should get some Legionaries but at the moment, I will pass.

Other items, I purchased a BattleMat Bazaar ground cloth. I got the double sided one with a winter snow on one side and something green on the other. I am looking forward to getting it. I have plans for a December 1944 pint sized campaign for Chain of Command. I am concerned about how much in the way of rewrites will be needed when Chain of Command 2 is released.