Russians and Pirates

So,

Life has been interesting, now that we are starting to open back up, one more thing now has us back in our homes...sigh.

But enough of that, I have still been busy, did my last commission for my buddy Robert last week, a Regiment of Russian Napoleonic troops for him. Robert gave me some completed troops to match paint to, and I did a great job match painting them, see for yourself below. 

Roberts Russians

The other thing that ended up on the paint bench were some pirates! My buddy Merle in Kansas reached out to me a couple weeks ago and said that his local group was going to be playing Legends of the High Seas and wanted to let me know about it, basically that people were still playing my game.

So because of this, I dug through the old lead pile and found some figures to paint up. I have been painting a pirate a day and do most of it on my lunch hour as I am still working from home. Here is last weeks and this weekends accomplishment.

Pirates for the Wicked Wench

So there you go, still painting and planning, I have about 7 more pirates to complete and now I am looking at doing some terrain work for some Necromunda, so stay tuned!

TK

Battle of Salem Church prep

So,

In about two weeks, we will be doing another Huge ACW battle with Black Powder. Our group has been working on forces for about ten years now and we are just about done with everything. We will be at Imperial Outpost on March 3rd playing the Battle of Salem Church. It will be an all day affair as the table alone will be about 12'x8' with close to 1000+ models on the table! This will be the biggest battle we have done to date.

So since I usually play Rebels, I committed to building and painting at least three Large units of 40 figures each! So about two weeks ago I dove into painting the boys Union Federal Blue. The first unit ended up being 44 models, not sure why 44, I think my cats knocked a few models off my table one day and i had to assemble four more models. Regardless, I now have a large unit 44 men strong!

Getting ready for war!

My second unit is a 40 man regiment and funny thing that happened here is I glued down what I thought were 5 men to my paint sticks, I had four sticks so that would be 40 right? But for some reason I came up six models short! Once again I blame my two kittens that like to knock stuff of my paint table and play with them in the kitchen. I suspect that I will find various items under my refrigerator, including my missing troops!

40 men, but six went awol!

My last unit is a zouave unit which I based off the 10th New York. The have brown jackets and the light blue pants. Rob has two zouave units and I wanted a unique looking unit and these guys are it. This unit is only a 36 man regiment, no kitten issues here, I only had 36 of these to start with!

10th New York

 Seeing how I just painted 120 figures, I felt like painting a few guns for the game, now these are being finished later today, but the now I have a 4 gun regiment for my growing Union force.

Four Guns almost ready.

And after the guns, I figured I needed a few command models, so these guys got painted up and their basing will be completed later tonight as well.

Six out of Eight Commanders

So after all was said and done, I have painted up 156 models (Counting guns and horses) in about two weeks. I am pleased with my newest contributions to the game and look forward to seeing them on the table top.
.
TK

Smoke and Death

Well,

Robert and I finally after about 5 years of painting and planning, got a small game of ACW Black Powder on the table. Now we have played larger games, but we had this idea that BP could be played on a smaller table (8'x4') with about two brigades each. Now some of our game friends had said that BP couldn't play on a smaller table due to the orders and how far movement can take place. But we were not convinced that would be the case, so we put it to the test. Now to be honest, Robert was waiting for me to get my two brigades completed, hence why it took so long.

The Battlefield

We each took two brigades worth of stuff, which each brigade having a Brigade commander and four regiments along with a gun. Model count for my Rebs, put me in the 220 figures or so. Roberts Union had a few more, with these model counts, it reminded us of the WAB armies we used to play with at 2000 points.

The Brigade General in the center.

With the armies chosen, we rolled off to alternate deployment, which the Union arrived first and began to deploy. I choose to deploy with a strong middle and a heavy right flank. keeping only one Regiment to hold the left flank. My plan was to push the center faster than the Union could out flank me. But this is BP and I am notorious for not passing command checks. But it was a plan and I tried to stick to it.

Right Flank

Well as the game began, the Union pushed across the table pretty quickly in the center, while the left flank stalled and his right flank pushed to the edge of the fields. My left pushed up to the edge of the fields and a stand off ensued

Left Flank holding off the Union

. 

My Left Flank was getting hammered but they held their ground and the poor Union troops could not pass through their own lines, apparently the volley fire was too much for them. This allowed me to get one of my guns up to start laying down fire to support the left flank.

Mean while the fighting in the center intensified and the Rebs started to make headways on the Union troops in the woods. The Rebs must have had to Grace of God on their side because they hardly suffered any casualties during the fight. One Regiment was able to take the bridge and pour Volley after volley into the Union troops.

About this time, the Union center started to fall apart and the Rebs started pushing them back. One Regiment was able to get across the river and enfilade fire into the Union troops. After two vollies, the Union troops retreated back across the river to leave the battle.

The Union feeling the pressure of the Rebs Advance

Needless to say the Union troops started to suffer more casualties and soon the battle was over with the Union having a broken Brigade. The Rebs had pushed the Yankees back across the River!

The Union Center collapses!

So, how did the game play, it played great! The movement orders that a few thought would be too much, never happened and the game felt very much like a WAB game of old. It was great to see that BP can be played in a smaller setting (if you say 200 models a side is small!). And I am sure that Robert and I will be doing this again in the very near future.

Union Surgeon doing his best.

Now really this game was more for us to re-learn the rules besides try out smaller armies. We will be doing the Battle of Salem Church in about a month or so which we will have well over 1600 models on the table and Oh, this is all in 28mm people!

Stay tuned for that coverage in about a month or so...

This is the end...

TK

More Troops join the Conflict

So,

While this week has been a rather tough one, I did manage to get a few more models done for our ACW game in February. So here are the two new units. Most of the figures are all Perry Miniature plastics, although there are a few Old Glory Second Edition models in there, mostly command models. These two units are considered Large units for Black Powder, being 7 stands large, which is 28 models in each unit. I usually do 5 stand units, but wanted something a little larger, this way I can take units away to make them smaller.

Perry Miniatures black pants

 The above unit I decided to paint them with Black English Uniform pants, I wanted something a tad different and while looking at the Perry drawings, they had this as an option. Plus it is something different than all grey.

Perry Miniature with Federal Blue Pants.

The second unit is painted from another piece of art that is supplied in the Perry box set. This one has the unit wearing Federal blue pants. I envisioned a unit having looted or stole a military bag train and equipped themselves with the new pants. May not be historical, but hey, I like it.

Perry Miniature Metal commanders

A few weeks ago, DrunkenSamurai gave me two old Perry Metal command figures since I was lacking some commanders on horseback. Both were the same so I did a simple head swap using one of the Perry Plastic command heads. A quick snip and pin job and I had a different looking commander. Oh and one thing that does bother me is that they are based on plastic beveled bases instead of my laser cut MDF bases which I ran out of while getting these two painted!

I still have three cannons to paint as well as two more units and I will be ready for the game in February.

TK

Field Works Complete and other stuff

So,

Here are the completed field works that we will be using for the ACW Black Powder game in February. Drunkensamurai got all of them painted up and flocked, do have to say these look awesome on the tabletop.

Side view of filed works

Defenders side of Field Works

 

Close Up shots of the defenders side.

Attacking sides view, along with last group that charged!

Also to go along with this game, I am working on adding 6 regiments to my current Confederate force. Here below is the first new completed regiment.

1st new regiment raised!

This is an all Perry Miniature unit and is basically the left overs of two other boxes I had lying around. I really love the rag tag look of these figures, feels very Confederate to me.

Besides the unit, I finished up half of my dying or wounded models for the game. We use causality figures to represent wounds caused to the unit as opposed to using beads or similar markers. When not being used for the game, we usually have a make shift aid station with them all sitting around. DrunkenSamurai has these and will hopefully get them all finished up by game time.

Old Glory wounded ACW figures.

 SO there you have it, another quick update for our ACW game for February.

Oh one last thing...

BB in the House!

I caved and picked up the new Blood Bowl set, I had been trying to not pick it up, but I am weak! So you will be seeing more of this and the new Ork Team I am planning called Azog's Ardinals, based off of the AZ Cardinals!

TK

ACW Black Powder Game - Preperations

So,

February 18, 2017, I will be hosting a Black Powder American Civil War game at our local shop, this game will be an invite only game (but feel free to stop by and watch) and we are planning on a huge table (8'x12'). The battle will be based on the Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863 at the Chancellorsville Inn. The Union troops pulled back from the day before and constructed hasty field works to try to slow down the Confederates that had won the day before.

So with that, we needed some field works for the game, so last weekend I cut up a dozen 1"3/4" x 12" long strips for bases of the field works. Robert then added pink foam and added the planks to the back of them to give then a hasty built look.

Roberts Photo of the cut foam on the bases.

The planks added to the back side

With troops behind (Roberts Photo)

Another shot of the planks with troops (Roberts Photo)

I came over this past weekend to help finish up the field works and we also added some angled sections to make the field works look a little irregular and not just in a straight line. Funny thing is when we cut the bases, we just eyeballed it and cut them up. Once they are together they look pretty slick.

A shot of the Cannon and angle sections.

We also wanted the field works to accommodate guns, so with a few scraps, I cut out half circles (Roberts Guns are on rounds) and add a few plastic gabions to them. Once these were cut out, we moved onto texturing the foam.

Texturing is getting added

  We used an Elmer's Glue sand able wood putty to give us the dirt look. Nice thing was that it was raining here in Phoenix and the temperature was cool, so the Elmer's wood putty stayed wet and was workable. If it had been hotter out, it would have dried before we got it on the material, such is the problems of working on terrain in the Valley of the Sunstroke!

So there you go, a few field fortifications for our Black Powder game. The good thing is that we could use this for other games as well, heck, I even mentioned these would be good for Bolt Action for World War One! (Are you seeing this Warlord???)

TK 





Black Powder American Civil War

So,

My local game buddies and I usually get together once a year or so and do really big games of Black Powder American Civil War. This year thought we did not find the time to put together anything, our last game was Flank Attack at Chancellorsville, you can read about the game here on Drunken Samurais blog.

With no games coming up, I decided to organize a large game in February 18, 2017 up at Imperial Outpost Games. There are a couple of main reasons for this, first up, a good friend and fellow Adepticon attendee, Merle D will be coming out to play. Secondly, I usually run Gathering in the Desert in February and I am burned out on organizing this event, so I decided that it would be a great time to do this big game.

The other night Robert and I were talking and he mentioned that we are mid way through October and that we need to get going on this ACW game in February. It dawned on me that I still had figure to paint and some terrain I needed to build for the game. So I thought I might as well get started on this project now.

So I drug out all my painted ACW stuff (which is only three small 5 stand regiments) as well as my in assembled Perry Miniatures. here is the first regiment assembled last night.

This is a larger unit making up seven stands all out of the Perry Confederate box. They assembled rather quickly and so I figured I would add another regiment as well.

This regiment is from the first ACW Perry box which allows you to paint them up as either Union or Confederates. I did add a Sash and Saber banner bearer as well as a Old Glory Second Edition commander to the group.

Tonight I hope to get at least two more regiments assembled as well as prepping the Old Glory ACW set of Wounded and Dying figures. I will use these for casualty markers besides my units when they suffer hits.

So stay tuned for more ACW Black Powder updates.

TK

General Butternutts Epic Stand

So,

Today a bunch of us today got another epic Black Powder ACW game, This time around Tom was the organizer of said event. The players were as follows, Myself, Robert, Tim P and Al R being the Union side, while Tom O, Joe D and his Son Joey took up the confederates side.

The table was a small 12' x 8' and the terrain was supplied by myself, Rob and Tom. here are a few before shots.

Tom came up with an interesting way of deciding the forces, we drew randomly and each brigade had a random set of units with random skills. Once sides were decided, we rolled for our leadership of our Brigade commanders. Rob, Tim P and Al all rolled a leadership of 9, while I was to be the unlucky one with a leadership of 6!

Well, once we got under way, the North proceeded to march on in all the pageantry  that they were know for. Tim P advanced up the road, Rob and Al both advanced as well, I got lucky ad was able to moe on as well.

The Rebels advanced onto the table and took up good postions, but it was clear that the rapid union advance had caught them by surprises.

 

By turn 3 things started to get interesting, the Union had advanced across the table and started to pour fire on the Rebs. Also it came down to my brigade had to advance to support Tim P on our flank, the Union General attached to my Brigade (so I could use his Leadership) and I was successful with ordering my large unit into a firing line to start my shooting against the Rebs that were still in march column.

By the beginning of the 4th turn, things went bad for the Rebs, the Union had a good round of shooting and I even was able to get my large unit into Hand to Hand combat. they were successful and routed the Rebs on my side of the table. After the smoked cleared, it was obvious that the Union had won the day. Here are a few more shots from the game.

All in all it was a great day and it was awesome to see the game on the table. This has fired me up to get my Rebs to the table. I look forward to the next game.


TK