Battle Report: BIG 9th August 2015

We hit BIG this weekend, Rob and myself and made a new friend, Glen.  Rob had put together a scenario that challenge him to fight a delaying action with 2 Brigades of British Line Infantry with some support from 2 Light Infantry Regiments against 2 French Infantry Divisions supported by a Division of Cavalry.  This was going to get messy.

The Orders were sent out.  Here

The battle was great fun and we took a few shots of our new project now completed and some of the action.  Sorry for the image quality as we were beside a window on a pretty bright day.

In the Beginning....

1st Brigade moves to protect the Right flank and capture the bridge crossing.  Engineers to be used to blow the bridge if needed.

Comments form the Super Coach, Rob shows Glen some nuances of the game

The the Eastern approach screened the French Columns seem unstoppable in their progress to the North.

The Crisis:  the British bring awesome fire to bare on the french crossing the Bridges.  French Artillery move to dispatch the threat.

French Infantry supported by Artillery hold the Bridge while the voltigeurs harass the British Cavalry from the woods.

Its just not adding up...

For sometime now I have been working on developing Neil Thomas's rules covered in his book "Napoleonic Wargaming" into a larger scale system to play out some of our more grander conflicts.

To his credit I have failed every time, the rules seem simple, fast and balanced.  Sure a few things madden me but I can live with them (until I can and venture off into another fruitless attempt to improve them).  You see he explains his thinking and rule formation in detail through out his book, his book is 160 pages and his rules are covered off in 8 pages (plus some Orders of Battle and Campaign flavour).

Well Neil I think I have you now!

Its the British you see.

Neil has covered off regarding the shooting with British troops that they hit on 3+ rather than the 4+ all other infantry hit on.  This we have played and enjoyed for some time now.  But what has bothered me (despite having a British army) is that they only have two strips of figures to everyone else having 3, naturally this is due to the 2 rank not 3 rank.  But when I place 4 stands of infantry in a line fronting their French counterparts should I not have a 1/3 additional frontage.

Also running the number (sleepy yet?) you end up with this;

4 stands, hitting on 3, will hit 67% or 2.67 each shot (British)
4 stands, hitting on 4, will hit 50% or 2 each shot (3 rank Infantry)

This gives me a 1.33 ratio or one hit in every 3 stand over the 3 ranks not the 1 hit in every 2 that it should be.

It is actually more accurate to add two stand to the British, this gives them more frontage and makes the fire figures more accurate.  The stands now all hit on 4+ as the British didn't shoot better, just had more guns, which is covered by the additional stands.

6 stands, hitting on 4, will hit 50% or 3 each shot
4 stands, hitting on 4, will hit 50% or 2 each shot

This brings my fire ratio to 1.5 and provides a more accurate frontage.

BUT

It does mean that I have 2 extra stands for each unit giving it 8 extra hits.  My thinking is that this is simply fixed.  With the addition of stands to my unit I must water down the hits a stand can take, this will mean that a unit takes a total of 16 hits normally and so the British must spread that out of the 6 stand, this doesnt work out.  so

All 3 rank stands have 3 hits.  All 2 rank stands have 2 hits.  This gives a 6 stand unit 12 hits and a 4 stand unit (3 ranks) 12 hits.  Evening out the hits again.

Adding to this a desire to change morale a little.  Rather than have morale rolled for each stand lost to fire, I have decided to try it with all units having a morale of 4+ keeping it simple so all rolls are made with 4+ (besides Artillery and I have yet to work out what I want to change there if anything).  But morale grade of a unit just determines teh number of stands you can lose before you need start rolling for morale, so Elite can lose 2 stands, Regular lose 1, Conscripts must roll morale at the first stand lost.

Anyway will chew these over in some play testing and see what I come back with.

My Basing Idea....

For some time now I have been chewing over the idea of how best to base my troops for transporting.  After my 20th trip in the car to our games club and the unloading ritual of reorganising my tray of troops I decided that enough is enough.

Previously I would base my 6mm and 28mm with Picture frame backing card and use an adhesive flex magnet fixed to the bottom.  This works well to keep the majority in place but one sudden break in the car or a sharp turn and the fringe troops would start to move about the tray.

The magnet was just not cutting it.

So I contacted a local Aussie MDF shape laser cutter, ordered myself 100 bases cut 20mm squares with a 3mm diameter hole in the centre.

Once I had these I would place a 2mm high x 2.5mm diameter Rare Earth Magnet in the hole and scrap some liquid nails in over the top of the base to hold it in place.

This had a few advantages, firstly magnetism was dramatically improved.  My bases have now become more precise in measure with each base being identical in size and finally the MDF is more durable than the card which would warp during the flocking process if too much moisture was present.

Some finished units on the left and centre (unflocked), the right is the old card base.

Making Trees that I can live with

Experimenting with foliage design I have come up with three approaches to cover either broad areas of forest or small crops of trees that would likely be found beside roads and around towns.

Forests

Using Upholstery Foam or Polyurethane Cushioning Foam cut the shape of the area you wish to cover.  Now cut to a height of about 10mm to 15mm (for 6mm scale) don't worry about keeping it neat in fact the rougher the better.  Once this is done using tweezers "pluck" pieces of the foam to remove any straight edges and give some shape to the forest.

Now you have the foam formed its time to colour it so that it no longer looks bright yellow/white.  I use craft paint in water, 1 part paint to 4 parts water(roughly).  I used brown as I was going for a forest edge look, but I am not sure if it works well, comments I have had say it looks better than total green.


Pour the mixed paint into a jar and stuff the foam in, close the lid and shake.  Ring out the foam into the jar and repeat for your other forests or put a lid on to use it again later, layout your now coloured foam on a flat surface to dry.

Once its dry grab some contact adhesive spray, keeping the foam forest side up on newspaper spray the entire surface with glue.  Place the now glued forest foam on a clean sheet of paper and shake flock over the forest canopy and let dry (15-20mins to be sure).  Once it dry, shake off the excess flock and place it back on your spray paper, respray to seal the flock on the forest and let dry again.  Dry brush with yellow or light green will bring out the highlights, I have not in my examples but plan to.

Now your forest is ready to mount on the board.  Using pins which you have used the same craft paint as you used to colour the foam, pin the forest in place, careful not to push the pin in too deep to misshape the foam.

For larger scales or a stand alone forest layout Architects of War have a great guide;
http://architectsofwar.com/Howto/forests.pdf




Trees

Option A:
This process is quick and easy but will take ages to make a forest worth of trees and even longer to mount them on your board.  These trees are not really designed to be permanent and are placed on the board when your ready to play.

Using some of Woodland Scenics Clumped Foliage and some normal dress pins, make sure you get the ones with normal metal pin heads not the plastic bulb ones.

Grab yourself some green craft paint that is similar in colour as the clump foliage you have.  Paint the pin heads and let dry.

Open your clump foliage and find some firm pieces, some will be firm to hard where the rubber has bonded more than others, these pieces make perfect trees.

Pierce the foliage with one of your painted pins in manor that you feel look tree like.  Make sure the pin head is as covered as possible.


Now grab some 50/50 PVA wood glue/water mix and pour some into a small container.  Dip the foliage pin into the glue insuring the glue covers all of the foliage then let the excess drain off.  Stand the pin in a piece of foam to dry.

The foliage is rubber so if your glue is not sticking then you have to much water in your mix.
 

Finish touches would have a bit of dry brush highlights of yellow or lighter green to round off the look.

Option B:
Using Upholstery Foam that has been coloured as above, cut a rough tree shape out.  Cut a slit into the foam approx half way up the tree shape (as if you were chopping the top of the tree off), stick a pin down through the centre of the tree out of the base of the foam (keep it straight as you can as it will make using it easier).

Using PVA glue cover the pin and let the top of half of the foam flip back using the glue to seal it up again.  This will also act as a hard surface to push the pin into your board with.

Let this glue dry, pluck the tress shape gently with tweezers and glue and flock.  Spray with glue again and your down.

Foam Tree

I find this method a long winded way to make trees and the foam never seems to look as real as I can get the Clump Foliage to look, Clump also dries harder and is much less likely to wear out.

Option C:
Pine Trees are easy to make with pipe cleaners, get ones with a decent amount of material on the wire, dont get it too short else you will lose your ability to sculpt it.

Austrian Command Stand with Pine Tree

Cut the cleaner into lengths of about 1 inch.  Now using a lighter or candle, melt back the material on one end, this will form the pin to stick in your board.  Melt it back so that about 1/2 to 2/3 of the material is removed.  Now carefully tapper in the top so to seal in the other end and stop you losing the material over time.

Sample Trees

Using a hair spray or spray glue, coat the material that remains, then dip the tree in flock.  Allow to dry then using metal snips, tapper off the bottom so that its pointed to be able to stick in a base or board.  Due to the broadness that the twisted wire will have I would not used this to stick in a cloth covered board as it will permanently damage the foam.  What I have used this for is character bases for command and other stands.

I prefer this look for miniature stands as the wire pipe cleaner gives it a bit more strength and can take a bit of a knock.


Addition
I have just finished experimenting with wire trees and have come back with mixed results.  I feel the trees are too delicate to be mobile enough for gaming, but they do look as close as you can get to real trees.

Photo below shows on the left, the wire frame of the tree wrapped about a pin to make sticking in foam easier.  This is then shaped to look like a tree, painted with PVA.  Once dry you would paint it tree coloured and then glue on the clump foliage at the end of the branches.  Cover the foliage in PVA and sprinkle flock on.

The third tree was an attempt to use fibrous material purchased at spotlight that I had planned for smoke from gun fire markers.  Hairspray to catch the flock and to hold it.  By and large a massive fail....

Conclusion

I have decided that I will be settling on the following for trees.

These are 3/4" to 2" Armatures (Deciduous), which you can purchase from most model train stores.  I would strongly advise using the woodland scenic Hob-e-tac adhesive as it does the job perfectly.

To add to a little something to them I purchased some rare earth magnets 2.5mm by 2mm and drilled open the base stand with a 2.5mm drill bit.  This makes them easy to transport as well as assisting with my next two projects once completed......

Some candid snaps

Time to put out some troops and see how the board looks and feels.

British Lights defend the Chapel

British Divisions formed up behind the ridge line

Facing the French Lines

The steepest part of the board can still handle a stand of troops

Spanish Settlement

Just to see what it looks like with 28mm figures (Dutch Belgium Infantry - Painted by Peter Cross)