New Games for the New Year - Naval Warfare?

Hi, 

I just wanted to share what is hitting my gaming table lately. A weird collection of games and scales, plus some new Euro style games. I've never been into Naval games (no terrain), but because I bought a game called Fighters of the Pacific, I wanted to add additional ships to the game at 1/2400 scale to match the small number of ships that come with the game. Of course, I can't just add a few ships!

Naval Thunder - Savo Island Game

Now, my local gaming friend, Daryl, decides to run a Savo Island scenario using the Naval Thunder rules at Cape Fear Collectables game store! He wasn't using miniatures, but rather 2D top-down miniatures that match the counters from the Fighters of the Pacific game. Alarm bells go off and I now know where I can get additional ships for Fighters of the Pacific! 

Daryl is using Top Side Miniatures. 

A photo of two of the ones I purchased. I bought the hard copy version that comes on beautiful vinyl paper with a peel off backing. I just stuck mine to thick black Presentation board that you can get at Michael's or Hobby Lobby.

You may notice that the first picture has Italian ships! I ended up buying the two Battle Sets: Pacific and Mediterranean. There is a Kickstarter for Fighters of Europe and I hope to add ships into that product when it arrives.

The Battle of Savo Island

Naval Thunder Rules

Daryl's summary of the battle:

"Savo Island proceeded today at CFC. The Japanese were played by Daryl as Flag Commander with Michael and Eric. The US were played by Harrison as Flag  Commander with Bill and Rob. The Japanese enjoyed early success sinking the Chicago on turn 2 while suffering little damage. The fates turned however when the Vincennes, Quincy ,and Astoria inflicted a heavy toll on the lead Japanese cruisers. The fight of the day goes to Rob's Bagley class DDs  that, although losing 5 of the 6, sunk 2CL and 1 CA with precision torpedo strikes. The night action belonged to the Allied forces. A well earned victory!"

Post Analysis

"OK, a little research into the battle and the rules and the flaw in the way the scenario was written becomes obvious. The exhaustion rules should be replaced with hidden rules.  This would require the Allied ships to spot the Japanese ships before they could engage them.  The Japanese historically were able to close on all of the Allied ships, in two separate engagements, and fire torpedoes before the Allies were even aware of them. The fire from the first fight did not alert the second group of Allied ships. In fact, the setup for the allied ships was incorrect. They were in patrol line formation, not attack fronts, and of the DDs only 2 ever engaged and they fired one torpedo spread and disengaged.  A 3rd DD, the Jarvis, was so badly damaged it was on its' way to get repairs and was torpedoed the following day and sunk with all hands.  The 2 picket DDs never were involved.

Suffice to say I've learned my lesson on trusting scenario setups.  I will do my own research from here on."

I only took a few photos and only one is worth showing:

Spanish Armada

So, what the heck am I doing? I saw a nice Armada miniatures game at Historicon with simple rules and the players seemed to be having fun. I then remembered that Peter Dennis, Paper Boys fame, had drawn out the entire Spanish and English fleets for this period of time. So, with a $10 purchase at Siege of Augusta I picked up the Spanish Armada book. Just need to cut and glue and I will have two entire fleets to recreate some of the action of that period of time. Why not?!?! Hahahaha.

Links to WoFun, Hellion, and Peter Dennis Site

Bloodstones

Ok, this game is gorgeous. The components are just amazing. I've played solo and it was good fun, but can't wait to play with my group. It is a very lightweight wargame, which I may be able to get the wife to even play. Innovative and unusual game. Here is a review from a more experienced player which coves all aspects of the game.

Review

BGG Link

Below are three of the six factions included in the game. Horse Lords, Corsairs, and Dragon Lords.

Maps are hand-drawn and are made of psuedo-silk.

Other Euros

Every Sunday night my wife and I get together with Bill and Linda to play Euro games. Here some of the new ones we have purchased and\or started playing already

I've heard tons of great reviews on Obsession and fits into my wife's obsession with Downton Abbey! I can't wait to break this one out. BGG Link.

Next, I picked up this massive Castles of Burgundy Special Edition game at Siege of Augusta convention. This has been on my purchase list for a long time and just fell into my lap at the convention. BGG Link. 

Lastly, is Ark Nova which is HIGHLY rated and we started playing this about two weeks ago. I give it an A so far. We have really enjoyed it and has emmence replayability.  BGG Link.

Cheers! That is all for now!

Eric

PS - Look for a Sikh War battle in 15mm in February! Kudos if you read this far!!!

Vauban's Wars - WSS Dutch to Man the Siege Lines

Good afternoon,

I have just finished my PaperBoys WSS Dutch army for my Vauban's Wars games. I wanted to create a Dutch, British and French War of the Spanish Succession armies to fight siege games with. I have been enamored with PaperBoys by Peter Dennis for years now, and decided to jump in the assembly process last month. As usual, click on the photos for larger images. 

Order PaperBoys PDFs Here and Peter has different collections on his site.

One great advantage of doing Siege games is that you don't need a lot of units, especially for the garrison, and you really only need a single line of figures per base (I like two ranks of figures for my field armies) since they are in trenches or behind fortifications. So I thought what the heck, lets see what I can do with these PaperBoys!

First off the assembly line are the Dutch infantry. Fourteen units! Two Guard, 2 Grenadier, and 8 line units. I'm going to do the French next as that would allow me to fight a siege with them. After that it will be the British on the cutting table.

PaperBoy figures come drawn in 28mm scale, but with a PDF you can scale them as desired. I settled on 62% as that was roughly 16/17mm in size and fits in with my existing 15mm armies. Since I'm doing one rank per stand, each printed sheet will give me two units. Another bonus is I don't need flag stands as they wouldn't have been used in a siege, nor do I need cavalry. I may make some mounted Dragoons at some point, because they come on the dismounted dragoons page in the pdf. 

Quick photo of the entire Dutch Army:

Assembly Method

Print at 62% scale, cut out the figures in blocks, score the paper on the fold lines, glue them together, then cut out the with x-acto knife (hardest part), glue them to the bases, then touch up the edges of the paper soldiers with inks and paint. I haven't decided on the base "flock" or just brown paint for trenches.

Above you can see the four stands of Dutch with yellow cuffs (painted the cuffs as there were red). One of the stands has no folded base so I use either a single office attached to give them strength or glue them directly with a cannon holding them in place while the glue dries.

Below are two Dutch\Prussian units that have not had their edges touched up. You can see their white outline. I'm also messing around with command stands (stand on the right) just for the heck of it. I will add flags to that stand later.

Dutch Army

I'm a bit ashamed that I don't even have names for the Dutch units. I found some uniform guides and just picked a bunch of different uniforms for variety. I'm just calling them Line Unit #1, #2, etc. Any help with names would be grateful. :-) So all figures were edged with Faber-Castell Pens and the bayonets were done in silver acrylic paint. I liked how they turned out.

Dutch Guard - no modifications. (two units)

Dutch Grenadiers - some white coats were turned to grey and blue cuff colors for that stand. There are 9 stands in multiple colors. Vauban's Wars has four stand units so I will make two units out of these stands.

Dutch Line Infantry - here I did the most modifications. Two white units (#1 and #2) were unaltered. The other four, had all their white coats turned to grey. Of those four, one had their cuffs painted yellow with acrylic paint. One had their cuffs painted blue and given blue stockings too. The last one was given red stockings to match the cuff color. One of the red coated units had their white cuffs changed to yellow. The two blue coated regulars have no changes.

Line #1 and Line #2:

Line #3 and Line #4 (here you can see some officers in the line):

Line #5 and Line #6:

Line #7 and Line #8:

Line #9 and Line #10:

How do they look in the fortress? Damn good I think!

For artillery and sappers I will use my existing miniatures. PaperBoys has sappers, but I don't know exactly where to find them. Anyway, I'll post more as I complete them.

Over the Vauban's Wars FaceBook page you can see a siege in action from Geoff Crick. It is a private group so you will have to join to see the the rest of the photos and discussions. You can pick up the rules in hard copy or PDF at the Piquet site, or On Military Matters, or in the UK at Lancashire games.

Cheers!

Eric

PaperBoys - an Adventure in Paper Soldiers

Hi folks,

I have been toying with the idea of either Paper Soldiers or the WoFun plexi-glass soldiers to fill out certain periods I'd like to play, but don't want to invest loads of time and money into the project.

Since I finished writing Vauban's Wars I thought it would be fun to create 15mm armies for the WSS and specifically make them for siege warfare. This means single rank of figures on a small thin base. So, paper soldiers should fit the bill and I never had WSS armies before! I don't even need flags for this project (however, I love flags). I can also skip the cavalry for the siege games, which means far fewer figures to cut out and base.

I decided to use the War of the Spanish Succession "PaperBoys" created  by the talented artist, Peter Dennis, and sold by Helion.

Materials

I used the following to assemble the armies, and I'm only showing the first units that I have made.

100 sheets x Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matte (link) ($14 USD)

200 x Litko's 1" x .5" bases (3mm thick) (link) ($29 USD) This will allow me to make 50 units with four stands per unit. This should be more than enough for Dutch, British, French, and Bavarian regiments for WSS.

PaperBoys WSS PDF (link) ($17 USD)

Tacky Glue (Michael's) ($2.50 USD) already had this. Link

Cutting blade ($6.99 USD) already had this. Link

Scissors (not used that much as the scale is too small)

Cold Grey color pen from Faber-Castell. (link)

62% scale from the PDF to get the right size. (Tried 64% but the overlap between the bases was too great). This puts the figure at about 17mm in size, which works great with my existing miniatures and terrain\buildings.

The Project

So, originally I was collecting the books from Peter, but then realized it would be better to have the PDFs as I could scale them at will and it is just a better format than a book. With the book you would have to disassemble the book, put it in the scanner (mine is not very good), the save the image and resize from there. The PDF has the miniatures on A10 paper and 28mm figures. I just did the math and tried different figures scales. 18mm = 64%, but this was too large for the 1" bases and the figures overlapped, which looks pretty cool, but then you can't align the bases that well. 

Here is an example of 18mm (64%) Bavarian Grenadiers and you can see the overlap:

Next, I tried 62% (17.4mm) and that came out just a bit too large with very little overlap. These are the Dutch Guard and I will keep the figures as they just look taller than their counterpart. Very "Guard-like"! I have decided to go with 62% scaling for this project as in the trenches and fortress walls the figures don't need to align perfectly. I like this look and will allow me to make a WSS project for Vauban's Wars on a budget. Storage should be easy too. I may use Mod Podge to seal and protect them. I'm also working on different edging techniques. Below I have used blue, yellow, and black to edge the coats. (Note: still need to flock or paint the bases)

I will complete the Dutch before moving on to the French. British will be more challenging as there is only one British Line infantry page and the cuffs are white, so I will have to print several of these and color in the cuffs to suit my needs. Could be tedious, but I'm not sure. It is sure faster than painting figures.

Future Projects with PaperBoys

Jacobite Rebellion in 15mm (62% scale). Two ranks deep on 1" x 1" stands. Here is a sample at 64% and you can see the figures hanging over the 1" bases. Looks great though. Note that PaperBoy figures come in three ranks by default, but since they are paper I just cut them the way I want to make two ranks per stand.

Irish Piquets and Jacobite skirmishers:

Casualty figures, "walking wounded", on round bases.

Punic Wars (62% scale). Two ranks deep, but larger bases for easier movement. I may go with WoFun's plex-glass figures here as this is a lot of work to cut out the figures. That is an expensive choice, but both my thumbs have arthritis so cutting out these PaperBoys is a painful challenge.

WSS full on armies. Double ranks. This will be far down the road.

On the Reading Table

Over the last month I have finished the following books:

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montazum ... by Buddy Levy (This was OUTSTANDING!!!)

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last...: aa: AmazonSmile: Books

Now I purchased some PaperBoy Aztecs and Spaniards! :-)

Huitzilopochtli: The History of the Aztec God of War and Human Sacrifice

Good book, more like a research paper in quality. 

The Great Martian War: The Gathering Storm by Scott Washburn of PaperTerrain fame. Thoroughly enjoyed this novel and the battle between the Martians and Prey Creatures (humanity).