How is it going with the woods?

Hi again

Well this weekend I have started on some prototypes to use as woods on my table. I wanted woods with a canopy that troops could move through and hide under. Usually woods are represented by a couple of trees standing in an designated area. I still have to mark the edge of the woods but I hope that these larger areas will look more lika a forest than some scattered trees. The problem I faced was the cost. I used some cheap mdf for the base of the canopy. Then in the guides I had read they used woodland scenic material for the leafs. But that is expensive stuff! I got hold on some pillow stuffing really cheap (found it on my work...) my idea here is to thin wood glue with water and then dreanch the pillow stuffing in small balls in it. Put it on the mdf and let dry. My first thought was that I had thinn it to much but it stuck on. The next step is to get some dark green sprey and make a base coat on the canopy. And to round it of some pictures.

Hope I don't get lost in the woods. Until the next time keep rolling sixes.

/Conny

Can't see the wood for all the trees

The work to make some wood for my battlefields has begun. The idea is to make a canopy that is raised from the table to simulate a wood and not single trees. I am trying to follow the guide on the Alter of Freedom homepage. I have made some slight changes but on the whole it is the same. Now I must find a store were I can buy material for the canopy and a hot glue gun. At last some pictures of the work in progress.

I will cut the tree trunks shorter when the glue has dried.

Until next time, keep those sixes coming!

/Conny

I have made a list

Well I have had a bit of a painting depression lately. Not much have been done and I have to many projects bouncing around in my head and can't seem to start anything up. I also have a lot of projects just lying around and taking focus from me. It had been a lot of boardgames and card games instead. But in an effort to break the standstill I have made a list of things that needs to be done. Soon there is a large convention in Gothenburg and I have some things that needs to be finished for the convention. Hopefully my list will get me going. I will try to post here what has been painted and it is a lot of different things to say the least.

I will give you some pictures of the things I have painted. The miniatures are from Mantic Games and for the game Deadzone. Not the best miniatures but they are ok and easy to paint. 

My weakness as a wargamer is and have always been making terrain and a lot of my projects right now are at that crucial moment when you need something to play on. The miniatures are done but it is a sad sight to play around books and cereal boxes.

But now me and my list will go down to the bunker, that has a new table, and start working.

Until next time keep rolling those sixes!

/Conny

Work as usual

Well my vacation is over and it is back to the mine. This does that a bit less are done in the basement but it is not standing still anyway. I have now almost cleared the whole room out and are going to buy paint for the celling at the end of the month. Doing this hobby and living in boxes is not a good combination…

But I still get some paint on the miniatures, but at the moment theres is almost only terrain for my 28mm on the agenda. I have done some more worm fencing, but damaged to give some variation to it. I have also started to make some rail fences. Only three at the moment but at least three more are to be done. They were a bit more complicated than the worm fence but not much.

I have also started to plan how to build the first house to this project. I was on a start up conference with work and found that they had small wooden sticks that you have in you're coffee to stir. The looked to be perfect to use for walls on model houses. I started to take a few every time I passed and I also got my colleagues to take some for me. Now I have a lot of those to build from :) I need to find were I can buy thees things since I think they will work very well to build from. In the past I have build houses from cardboard and it is a pain in the **** to cut out strips of cardboard to get to the walls. But I am still to test this so I will return on the matter.

My goal is to get a house in the style of the Henry House from Bull Run. It won´t be exactly as this house but I use it as reference for my own building.

Here you can see some drawings from the early planing stage. I have also made a test wall from the sticks just to see how it could be.

O well, time to sleep… keep…

…Rolling sixes!

/Conny

Keep the cows in the corral

Well now I have seven soldiers a side for my little skirmish project. Plus one rider for the south and a special character. On the painting table I have started one more rider for the South and a cannon with crew for the union. The cannon mostly fot the fun off it. But I will be able to use it in a game to if I want. So now that the troops are getting ready I need something to fight over and so the project goes in to another stage, the terrain. I started out with some simple wooden worm fence. My thought here is to make all the terrain myself and only buy the trees if I don´t find a good, simple way to do them to. I will make fences, stone walls and hedges. Then I will also make two to three buildings of varying size. Roads and small streams always piff upp the table a bit. Some hills or more elevations also needs to be done so the table wont be all flat. So you can imagine I have a lot to do but I won´t stress this and work on it to much since there are more things to do in life…

A standard worm fence.

I have now made six of them and it took about one hour to do them. Now I only need to base and paint them... I plan on make four more. I think ten will be enough to work with for now. I will make some picked fences and some rail fences to.

Here you have a enclosured field and some fences lining a road. They take up a fair bit of space on a table. But it is better to have to much terrain then to little.

Two more soldiers are done, one for each side. The confederate soldier are supposed to have a uniform in butternut. I think it works rather well but will try to not get that hard change in color from the base to the highlight.

The union soldier are a sharpshooter so I gave him the green uniform to make him stand out a bit from the ordinary union soldiers. He has a sharps rifle that are classified as a good rifle in the rules and don´t misfire as easy as a springfield or an older rifle.

I have also made some more cards for my the skirmish games. More soldiers are added and some reference cards for the players.

Soon the HQ:s for the confederates will be done for Alter of Freedom so soon I will be able to test the rules out. But HEY you scream only write HQ on a pice of paper and have a go at it! True, true I could do that but I don´t want to ;). I want to do it right whit all the components there so I get a nice experience when I test them. But I will make some rule amendment to the rules. The first one is to change the scale from inches to cm. This because my bases to Volley & Bayonet RtG are on bases that are 3x3cm. The base for a brigade in Alter of Freedom are 6x3cm so since my bases are nearly half the size I think I can do this without damage the rule system to much.

I hope that the rules will appeal to me. I like Volley & Bayonet a lot but the rules are poorly backed up by the author or anyone else for that matter so if you want to play ACW with the rules you need to do a lot of research by you're selfs since the rulebook don´t have any scenarios for ACW just for Napoleonic. There is a scenario book for ACW for the first edition of Volley & Bayonet. Old Glory in the US have the book for 18$ wich seems like a fair price to me. So I went there and put the book in the cart and pressed checkout. Then There were 3$ extra for handling. Ok 21$ I´m fine with that, no problem. Continued true the system and wrote the destination for the book, Sweden. And then I saw it… shipping 59.95$. So for a book that cost 18$ I would be made to pay 80.95$ for, nope I did not finish the buy… And I can´t find the book anywhere else either so I leave it at that.

A rather expensive book…

I leave it at this for now and I hope you all will...

Roll sixes!

/Conny

I am ready

Well I made it. One week later than my goal, but still, I am ready. Now all is prepared for GothCon and tomorow I will look throu the rules and the scenario special rules and then it is time play. Lets get ready to rumble...

The finished board.

The city of Corinth.

Roll sixes/

Conny

7 days to go

Hi

Now it is only seven days left to GothCon. All my miniatures are painted. The labels are done. I have done markers, fortifications and a turn table to keep track of the time. The battlefield are soon done to. The railroad are still left to do but I feel confident that I will make it in time. Next week I will start to re-read the rules and look up scenario specific rules. I am also preparing to do a play test of the "Alter of Freedom" rules to. They have a nice small scenario of Kernstown on their webbsite that I intend to do. But I need to paint some more troops before I can do it, as always you can never have enough troops. The only thing that is of concern here are that all my brigades are 3x3cm and the brigades for AoF are 6x3cm. Well you say just put to brigades together and it is done. Yes I could do that but then I would only have half of everything and then I must paint a lot more than I do now. So I will try the rules with smaller bases and hope it works ok anyway.

Here are some pictures of some finished stuff.

The last miniatures that I needed for the scenario. I gave the cannons brass barrels to get some color to the artillery bases. I think it works fine.

All new markers that I have done. I will do more of these since I can use them to more rules than just Volley & Bayonet RtG. They were also rather simple to do and I hope they will enhance the gaming experience.

Here are some fortifications that I made. The town of Corinth was fortified by the confederates and when the town was captures by the union they used the defenses to. I made all these in the same length and think that I can use them in other scenarios when that time comes.

This is half of the board all done. The only thing that needs to be done are to varnish it all with a matt varnish. I also need to paint one more house for the town and that house is half finished at the moment. I also need to do some bridges but that wort take that long in this scale.

That was it for now so keep on gaming and maybe I see you at GothCon!

Roll sixes/

Conny

New markers

The work to be ready for GothCon continues. Soon the battlefield will be done and I have started to do the defenses that surrounded the town of Corinth. On the battlefield I still have to do the rest of the railroads and then paint the sides of the board black.
Here is a picture of the board and you can also see were the defenses will be. I have come a bit further than the picture suggest. The roads and streams are all done and even the gloss varnish on the streams are applied :)

In Volley & Bayonet a brigade can be disordered and then permanent disordered. Earlier I have shown the status of a brigade with beads. A yellow bead för disorder and then a red bead for the permanent disorder. The beads have worked fine but they leave some wishes about the visual appearance of the game. So I have started to do some new markers for the game. Inspired by the rules "Alter of Freedom". The disorder marker will be a fallen soldier on a round base. None of these are done yet but I have prepared the miniatures. Then we have the permanent disorder which is a banner fallen to the ground on a round base. We all know that it is worse to lose the banner than a few soldiers... I hope these new markers will improve the visual appearance of the game and don´t hinder the game to much. To much clutter on the game board can slow down the game. But the only difference here is that the new markers are bigger than the beads.
And at last some picture of the new markers.

Here is a union brigade that has both a disorder and a permanent disorder marker on it in the bead form... The disorder marker can the brigade recover from but the permanent marker can as it name suggests never be removed and the brigade lose its effectiveness because of it. 

Here are two pictures of the new permanent disorder markers that I have done. I have at the moment only twelve done, six for each side. I need to do some more but don´t have bases too do it so I need to order some more.

The marker can be laid behind the brigade or on the label on the base. I can also fit two markers on top of a base. 

Well that was all for now so until then...

...Roll sixes!

/Conny

Train are running down the track

Hi all

Just a quick note on the progress of the board. I have now started on the railroad for real. It is done on one off the pieces and now I only have to clip some more little sticks to use as  sleepers that the track from wire can rest on.

Here are two pictures of the progress. At the moment two pieces of the board are done and I have now started to paint the edges black on them. On the other two I am still on the roads, but one of the tracks on one piece are almost done.

Tuuu! Tuuu! I can hear the train coming down the tracks... (sorry about that...)

I have also started on some new markers for Volley & Bayonet and Alter of Freedom. I will show you some pictures when I have them.

Roll sixes/

Conny

Slowly taking shape

The work on the Corinth board continues. I have now made a descision on the railroad and are going to build it directly on the board. The painting off the open fields and the woods are done and I have started on the roads. I am also planing on how to make the defence systems that was built around Corinth. They will be removable so I can use them in other scenarios.

My work table all cluttered with work material.

Close up on one of the four parts that will be the battlefield of Corinth.

Two of them togheter so you can see how they fit.

The start of my railroad. I will try to use some wire for the tracks.

I am along with this process also thinking about making terrain in a more traditional way. That is terrain pieces that I can put on the table in different ways to create new battlefields.

Here is a last shot on the confederates waiting to get some paint on them.

Two batteries, one cavalry and one dismounted cavalry. Not that much...

Roll Sixes/

Conny

Work on all fronts

At the moment there are work on all fronts. My basement are at the moment a workplace and in my garden I have an excavator digging all along my house to improve the drainage. This makes it difficult for me to get to my bunker and work on the board and miniatures to GothCon.

But all is not lost and some work has been done and GothCon draws near...

Here you have the board with hills and edges to the streams done.

Here I have used wall filler to smooth the edges.

The difficulty now will be how to make a railroad that fits the board. I have some ideas and have got some good advices at some forums. Oh well that comes later. Anyone have a good idea about this please write a comment about it.

I have done little on the bases for my union troops but have none the less made some small progress.

All bases has got some gravel on them and I have started to paint them. I also started to do some new labels for the scenario. I am trying to make them more clear as of what formation the different brigades belongs to. I will put up pictures of them when I have some.

Roll Sixes/

Conny

Work progress on Corinth

Hi

The work on the Corinth board has started for real now. With 75 days until GothCon I need to speed up some if I am going to make it all ready. I use white glue and gravel to get an edge to the streams. Then I will use some filler to get a smooth transition to the board. The hills I make with cardboard in layers. Then I will use filler to smooth the hills. O well need to make some defences to and I still have to do the missing troops. The basing continues with the union force and the confederates are being prepared to be painted. Here are some pictures of the work in progress. I am also preparing a how to of how I do my bases for Volley & Bayonet. 

Well white glue and gravel as promised.

This is how it looks after I remove the gravel.

Here you see the rivers are almost done. The glue on the hills need to dry before I can start applying the filler. This time I am also trying to do the board in pieces for easy of transport and storage. My Bull Run board is rather large and therefore difficult to store ;)

Roll Sixes/

Conny