Adventures on the Wargames Table

Our miniature landscapes need, in my opinion, to look a little ‘lived in’ to get the most from our games.  Given that many of our battles are set in rural, or at least semi rural, areas then some suitable livestock are an obvious choice.  So, I’ve painted some. These are from Redoubt (cows and pigs) and Warbases (rabbits).  Bases from Charlie Foxtrot Models. Here are a few closer shots. I felt that painting the cows the usual black and white would limit them to a European setting, tho I may be wrong.  A bit of Googling resulted in me opting for a more generic looking scheme of pale brown and creamy off white.  This is Foundry Buff Leather and Foundry Boneyard, respectively.  Want to add another couple of bases.  These could just as easily be objective tokens in scenarios such as foraging raids too. Again Google helped choose this reddish brown scheme for the piggies.  This is Foundry Spearshaft. Just for fun, I wanted some rabbits!  Foundry B...

Conflicts in the North American theatre, particularly for ACW and AWI, need the distinctive “zig zag” or “worm” style fencing to set the right tone for the battlefield.  So I’ve taken a short break from painting miniatures to build some. These were based on the test piece ( here ) I made a while back.  Simply kebab sticks glued to MDF bases (Charlie Foxtrot Models).  Painting was easy: spray with Halfords grey primer, heavy dry brush of a lighter grey tester pot from the DIY store, then another heavy dry brush with an off-white tester pot.  Basing as per my troops. The fences in the pic above are made from matchsticks.  Painting was as follows.  Prime with matt black spray, heavy dry brush of of VMC Leather Brown (any dark, flat brown would be good), very light dry brush with AP Uniform Grey. I’ll probably add some cross and rail (with stones) style fencing too, but this lot will do for now.

In Sharp Practice it's vital to track the morale of your force and that of your opponent's. Thankfully Charlie Foxtrot Models make an excellent little item that's perfect for the job. It starts out as plain laser-cut MDF but I decided to give it a bit of a makeover. I sprayed it white and picked out the letters and numbers with black. I used the same recipe as the basing for my AWI models. The flag tokens are just 25mm bases on to which I've glued some printed and trimmed flags. Get yours here ! That's a £1 well spent I reckon :o) You can also see my interim deployment points. These are just slightly larger versions of the morale tokens. I'll eventually make some nice little dioramas with spare models or scenic items but they'll do for now whilst I concentrate on getting the troops painted. BTW, these were (shamelessly) copied from an ACW example I saw on the FB group by David Robotham. Thanks mate! In other news... Chum Colin got these splendid ...

I like my gaming tokens to match the units. Shiny pieces of plastic are all well and good but I do find that they rather spoil the look of a good table. So I made these Present!, Uncontrolled and Reload! tokens for Sharp Practice. They are simply Charlie Foxtrot mdf bases (40mm x 20mm) on to which I've glued the printed words. I've roughly torn the edges of the paper as I thought an irregular edge would look better. Next, just apply your usual basing methods. Here, it's sand and grit painted with Americana Honey Brown followed by highlights of VMC Dark Sand (847) then Foundry Boneyard light. Then out comes the box of grass and foliage, etc.

The Redcoats are marching to war! Yes, I've pulled my finger out and painted some figures for Sharp Practice. Award winners they ain't, because I've made the conscious decision to paint them up "fairly quickly". As long as they look good at three feet then that's good enough for me. One of the big stumbling blocks for me back in my "Napoleonic days" was getting to caught up with the details on each individual figure which slowed painting to a crawl. Plus it just made things hard work. Here's the painting recipe if you're interested. I started with a light-to-mid grey primer. The flesh is Foundry Flesh mid, the red is Foundry Bright Red shade, the musket is GW Scorched Brown. Next, give these areas a wash of slightly thinned Agrax Earthshade wash. When that's dry highlight the flesh with the mid and light colours from the triad. The red gets the base colour again, leaving some shaded areas. The musket is highlighted with Foundry Conk...

With these rules I want to be able to play games that tell a story, or series of linked stories. Players can then be swept along by the narrative with each game helping develop the story and set the scene for the next chapter. That, to me, is 'proper' wargaming! So, I'll need to collect some initial forces to help make this happen One of the joys of getting in to a new era is the plotting and planning associated with choosing your new toys and it's no exception here at the 'table. So... I decided to start by looking at the earliest era of the war; Lexington, Concord, the Boston Campaign etc. Now, if you're an AWI aficionado then please bear with me as I'm really only just starting to chip away at this rich seam of history. My view of the forces I'd like are (for the British) a core of tough, disciplined regulars backed up by enthusiastic loyalists. The latter might be of dubious military value but "By George!" they do love their King! Her...

Battlefields for conflicts such as the AWI or ACW often have a very distinctive style of fencing that, in my opinion, immediately evokes the right sort of feeling for the terrain and the era. My post & rail test piece In reality such boundaries were easy to produce from the abundant natural resources and very sturdy. So I thought I'd have a go at a test piece before making many feet of fencing in miniature! Building I began with an spare piece of 3mm MDF approx 4cm by 28cm, trimming the edges to give a slight 'chamfer' to the sides. The rails are made from kebab sticks - easily sourced from your favourite supermarket - Tesco in my case. Mark out the holes and drill them ensuring the diameter of the hole is slightly less than the diameter of the sticks to help get a snug fit. Ensure that the MDF is on a solid surface when drilling (I didn't and the board partially de-laminated so I had to shorten it!). The holes should be slightly further apart than th...

Basing figures is always worthy of some consideration I feel. So I've been mulling over various ideas for my nascent Sharp Practice II collection. I rather like the idea of basing all the figures for each group on a single base so as to make some nice vignettes. However, in these rules figures are removed to track casualties, so I would need to devise suitable tokens to represent this, that's in addition to tokens for shock and possibly other rules too; perhaps this might result in "token overload"? Chum Colin of Charlie Foxtrot Models makes some lovely sabot bases for a variety of round base sizes. These, I think, are the way forward! But that in turn leads to the conundrum of what base size to use. Options are basically 1p or 2p coins. This has the added bonus of being able to utilise rare earth magnets (embedded in the base of the tray) to hold the figures in place. So, here are the two options. British 1p bases on the left, 2p on the right. From abov...