Monday, January 6, 2025

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.

Friday, January 3, 2025

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.

Thursday, January 2, 2025

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.

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

More Roman Cavalry

Over the weekend, I was going to spend time printing out the remaining ships of the North Carolina Mosquito Fleet. I successfully printed several of the vessels. However, I found that the pad that my magnetic build plate was starting to pull off and did while printing the USS Wabash. So another item that needs to be fixed.

While waiting for a print to finish, I looked through my lead pile. Apparently, I have found another stash of Roman Cavalry miniatures. This was an exciting discovery. These are all spear armed and have been mounted on painting sticks and basecoated in black. I will respray the horses in white. I also received my order from Old Glory 15s. This was less than exciting. It turns out that only four of the miniatures were spear armed. The other five are armed with a gladius. Making them not as useful to me. They also came with a round plume of somekind on top of their helmets. That part at least is easily fixed. They will still be painted up. I will probably only use two of the sword armed versions. Between the found miniatures and the purchased ones, I should have three full groups (Infamy, Infamy wise) of cavalry.

In addition, I found a nifty senator figure. This would be a good objective for the Celts to try to grab during a raid.

I have yet to make any progress on the Mansio or Villa. I cut a template for the main roof of the mansio to cut tiles for. I hope to get the roof done today.

Monday, December 9, 2024

Mile Fort and a New Ship

So I managed to get the printer working again and managed to print the CSS Appomattox. This was part of the North Carolina Mosquito Fleet. I purchased the https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/union-or-confederate-army-transport-1-600/ and got permission to modify it. I managed to add two guns and made it into a screw driven boat as the Appomattox was.

I hope to get a basecoat on the ship this week if possible. It should have a simple paint scheme. I kicked off another job to print out another vessel. This will be my second attempt at my Curlew model. Reviewing the book on the Curlew I believe the stern half of the ship is incorrect now. But it will still serve as a proxy until I can do something better. If I am able to get this one printed, I am pretty sure that I will be able to finish out the rest of the ships for the remaining elements of the North Carolina Moquito Fleet. The Union ships will be next.

The Mile Fort

I decided on a paint scheme and ran with it. I am not satisfied with the print job but think it is good enough at this point. Some pieces are better than others. I have added the pictures to the PayHip site.

I plan on ordering another group and a half of cavalry this week. I am deciding between the Old Glory and Rebel miniatures. Both come with a pack of 9 figures and have a look similar to what I have. I also did some work on basing some remaining figures that I had finished. I figure I need another hour to finish that off. I am close enought that I have pulled out my Celts to look and see what I can do for movement trays for them.

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Painting More Romans and Other Projects

I managed a few moments to paint yesterday and finished a few figures. I painted the Decurion to complete out my cavalry command. I also painted a Praefectus on foot. I now have him based with two servants behind him. I think it looks pretty good. I painted an additional Optio and one more Auxilia as well. These all need basing. I am basing the Decurion on a round base to make him stand out on the table. I don't really have a standard for the leader figures for my Romans.

I took pictures of the above but they are all terrible. Once the basing of the above is done, I will be working on painting my Mile Fort. I think I will go with the sandstone look. After that, I think work on the Mansio and Villa would be next. I will save the watchtower for later.

I am looking forward to getting these miniatures out on the tabletop. I have an idea for a campaign that I want to run. The Briton/Celts that I have should be mostly ready. I have a base force that matches with the rules and some additional items on order. Both Romans and Celts need some more casualty figures painted.

ACW Naval

My North Carolina Coast campaign has warmed up again with some fixes to the printer. I printed a really nice version of the CSS Curlew. The front half matches the book description of the curlew. The back half should be more like a passenger vessel than what I have but it will stand in. As I was removing the support for the vessel, half of the front deck broke off. So the model ended up in the trash. I kicked off a print job for the CSS Appomattox as well. Will check on that when I get home from work. I think I will start printing these without supports. That should help. Once the miniatures are ready, I have several scenarios to try out. I need to ask the designer of the Dawn of Iron rules about how well his land rules are coming along.

Negev 1948 Campaign

I had a request to dust off my old SOTCW scenarios for my Israel War of Independence scenarios. I decided to rerelease the original scenario set which was written for the Arc of Fire game system and used the Skirmish Campaigns format. I converted one scenario of it to IABSM years ago and did nothing else with it. In reviewing the scenarios, the maps are terrible. So i will redo the maps in Campaign Cartographer before releasing. I did one of the maps so far and it looks much better. I do want to finish the conversion of these scenarios to either Chain of Command or IABSM at some point. But probably not any time soon.

France 1944

I have been working on a pint sized campaign on an action that took place in Singling France in 1944. It presents an interesting set of challenges for how to present it on the table. It was a combined arms attack that would allow the players to each have a platoon sized element to work with. I am working out how to make them work as stand alone pieces or make them for a games day type of action where two tables would be going simultaneously and a reseve force would be allocated as needed for each side. There is some really good documentation on this small battle that I am working through. It has proved to be a fun research project.

Monday, December 2, 2024

Early Imperial Romans for Infamy Infamy

I think I am now at a point that i am only missing 4 figures for my Roman Auxilia. Three cavalry figures to round out the last group and a Cavalry command figure. All in all, some good work over the holiday week last week.

I managed to finish my Medicus figure by giving him a patient. The dead Roman is a Xyston model. The Medicus and box is from 3dBreed miniatures that I printed.

I finished a basic engineer cart. I may go back and give the cart an ink wash as it looks a bit too new. Or possibly place some form of materials in the back of it. But it is close enough for now.

The first of what will be two engineer groups is also done. One thought would be to make the base part of a Roman road. But I couldn't figure out how I wanted to show that. Still, they are complete.

Here is the core of my Auxilia infantry. I have six groups of 8 Auxilia. with a Cornicen, Signifer, Optio and Centurion.

I also have a group of 8 Auxilia with bows. While they normally would be separated out into separate Sagitarii units, the game calls for them to be a group. I have two additional bow figures as well. For some reason, I have two different manufacturers. I am not sure of the manufacturers. The ones in a loading pose are probably Corvus Beli figures. Not sure who the giants are.

I also have a spare command group with a Cornicen, Optio, Signifer and Centurion. I figure these may come into play with Midgard.

I have a senior command element as well. Two figures I can use as a mounted or dismounted Praefectus.

I also finished my cavalry figures. I have a group of 8 Auxilia cavalry, a half group of Auxilia Cavalry and a standard bearer. (can't remember the name of the cavalry standard bearer.) As noted above, i still need 3 more figures to flesh out the group and a command figure. Also in the picture are some support elements that were finished, a pair of pack mules and a scorpion with crew. All of these have their basing finished but I didn't take a picture of them yet.

I also have been working on a command base for the Praefectus. The plan is to have a shield bearer and a slave with a wax tablet standing behind them on a small Flames of War base. i have a replacement figure for the foot Praefectus that I need to paint. The two background characters are already painted. I also have most of a 3rd command group painted. I need to finish painting the Optio and get a good Centurion figure for it. I will likely giev the centurion a fancier comb on his helmet to signify him as a Primus Pilus or the like. I also have a seventh group of Auxilia Infantry ready to go. They just require a movement tray. The problem is, I have no idea if I cut the movement trays myself or bought them. I have the start of an 8th group of Auxilia Infantry. There are three painted figures on an old base that they need to be pulled from. I also have a lone Auxilia on a painting stick leaving just 4 miniatures to be purchased. But as it stands, I should have enough for a game.

I do have a number of Roman Auxilia in more skirmishing poses that are either thrusting with a spear or throwing one. The problem is most of the spears are either bent or broken. A longer term item would be to purchase some wire spears and replace them then base these to be an additional set of groups. If I were to do this, I would be coming close to having a 1 to 1 Roman Century worth of Auxilia. This is really not needed for either Infamy Infamy or Midgard. Still, it is something.

Terrain:

I painted some test pieces of Hadrian's Wall. One in a gray stone pattern and one that is supposed to be sandstone. I can't really decide which one I like better.

I like how the sandstone came out. My wife likes the gray walls better. Still debating.

I have not done any more work on the existing Mansio, Villa or Watchtower yet. Hopefully soon.

Friday, November 29, 2024

Roman Cavalry

I managed to paint ten Auxilia Cavalry figures in the past two days. I am using Army Painter Speed Paints on the horses and they came out rather well. I still have to base them. I have settled on how I will base them. I cut up a magnet sheet and glued down each individual figure. This way I can make a magnetic base to put them on. I should be able to finish off the basing of these over the weekend.

I also managed to get the Engineers onto a large Flames of War base. They look like a work crew. I have also painted and based an engineer cart. It has felt good to get things done this week. I still have another set of engineers to paint up. I am still not sure why I have so many. I also have some figures that I will use for a rally point. These are slave figures that are holding a shield and have wax tablets to record the action. I will likely put these on a small Flames of War base. I also painted a scorpion and crew. These will go on a medium Flames of War base. Not sure it will ever see a game but I wanted one. The crew are legionaires rather than Auxilia but that is fine.

I also got some paint on a few pieces of the Hadran's Wall Mile fort. I am not happy with it and will likely try something else.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Roman Mile Fort

The Mile Fort that I put on my PayHip site as pay what you want turned out pretty good. I just received the pieces from a friend who printed them for me. I laid out the pieces on my desk and was pretty happy with them. I will likely get some more straight wall sections and two more L corners. I have also made a tower without the gate for the wall as well. But I want to paint out what I have first.

In looking at pictures of mile forts, I was looking at the images of the internal buildings. I decided to add an internal building to it.I have added it to the files. It is a rather basic one that would need additional work. I have no idea on how to make a pantile roof.... yet.

Anyway, this is where I am at the moment.

Monday, November 18, 2024

Roman Project Update

After having a change to sort through my found miniatures, I have a nice selection that have made their way to painting sticks for priming. This includes 10 dead Roman Auxiliaties, 13 dead Celts, 8 Roman Engineers, a Scorpion with 4 crew, three servants (holding shields and wax tablets), a mounted Decurio, a mounted Vexilarius, and nine Auxilia cavalry. This will round out my Roman force nicely. In addition, I have a Roman Engineer mule cart and two baggage mules. That should give me enough to field most of the support options for a game of Infamy Infamy.

There were a number of Celt miniatures in my find as well. There were some figures that would be useful as wailing women. just fully clothed. I also found some Celt civilians. These I believe are Blue Moon minatures that came with the village that I bought a while back. The village was nice but ended up on a shelf and never painted as I changed focus.

I have glued the pantile roof to the side sections of the Mansio. I am trying to figure out how to get the main roof done. I'm trying to decide how to paint these. I will duplicate that effort on the villa and watchtower as well. I am searching for videos that may help. I aam definitely going to rewatch an old video from Red Beard Baron on his Roman Houses. I may use this as the basis for all of it.

I received my PDF copy of Midgard over the weekend. I have barely started to read it. But I am interested if this could be used with Infamy to make for a larger campaign. Could be interesting.

I ordered some Celt miniatures a while back to add two units of Noble Warriors for my Celts. Those are still in the mail, possibly with my physical copy of Midgard. But the Celts are for later.