Fortifications - earthberm wood reinforced

A set of fortifications (unknown manufacturer) that have sat in a box for years. I think this may have come from a bartertown swap.....maybe. I know for sure I didn't select them directly to order. Maybe a lot of terrain?
Anyway, having done some vietnam fortifications in the past I had an easy paint recipe, so on the table they went to be worked on when I am burnt out on batch painting.

I'm pretty happy with the effect and amount of time it took to bang these out. It's a bit unfortunate there are sandbags as that makes them less useable for a wide range of time periods.

Undocumented work: Jungles

I was swapping emails with a local gamer and tried to send him pictures of some of the terrain I'd made. Turns out I'd never put pictures on my blog. Even more surprisingly, I didn't have pictures. Ver strange because I could swear I took a photo when I finished the project. Strange stuff.

These are jungle terrain bases on CDs. I got the idea from Too Fat Lardies walkthrough for "charlie don't surf". It took me a coon's age to track down the dark green 'grassy' door mat stuff. Months and an international border before I spotted one in point roberts. Pain in the posterior to stuff in my backpack and motorbike with it. Even more annoying that now I see them regularly in many hardware stores. I must have been ahead of my time.

The original pictures appear to be casualties of the photobucket shakedown that has screwed a lot of blogs recently. Basically you use cake topper palm trees, various aquarium plants, doormat grass, hot glue gun, and (for me) pumice gel media.

I find the palm trees too cartoony and too short. I'd like to make some extra bases with taller palms to make a 'triple canopy' type thing. The cd shinyness also seems to peek through too much. I suspect hitting this stuff with primer before hand might help.....although it might just flake off and leave a worse bond. Though I've noted a bunch of damaged trees that need some fixing (off picture there's probably another 8ish bases) so I probably shouldn't store them at the bottom of a rubber maid container with all the extress build materials on top (dur).

6MMRPC: Week 11 Vietnam Firebase Fortifications

Having earlier completed my trial artillery fire pit (here) I finished painting up the rest of the hydrocal terrain I cast up using Thomas' molds. The hydrocal (tougher plaster essentially) was allowed to dry fully for about a week, and then painted with future floor polish to aid with robustness/anti chipping. I think this will also help avoid the hydocal/plaster from drinking up paint.






The scale is about 20mm (1/72). I will happily use if for 15mm figs, and I suspect it wouldn't look too far out for 28mm as well (although maybe the artillery pits would fit a heavy weapon rather than a true towed weapon).




 More pics after the jump....

Playtesting Vietnam - HOT LZ!

Once again I met up with Thomas (Peabody Here!) to have a game on his exquisite Vietnam setup. He has been working on a reinforced platoon size rule set. Apparently there is a bit of a dearth of 'modern' (i.e. more recent and streamlined ones that recognize people don't have tons of time) rule sets for Vietnam.....particularly at this scale. I'm sure this is a controversial statement for some, but I'll leave it at that.

I've been encouraging Thomas to develop this set and wander further from the original inspirations in order to achieve fun, fast, and smooth game experiences. One of the complaints previously was the resolution of artillery....totally clunky with too many die rolls. This also bled into helicopter (aerial artillery) attacks as well. To be honest, you almost didn't want to use the stuff b/c then you'd have to resolve it (I joke....sorta). It was particularly grating as the basic move, fire, suppression, morale, order rules were pretty tight and played well.

In our last brainstorming session over copious amounts of tea, we made some heavy revisions for the artillery, spotter helicopters and aerial artillery, and 'Hot Lz' VC card/ability. The artillery rules included prep fire.....so we decided to make a 'HOT LZ!' mission to try and test our revisions most efficiently. The FFW plots some prep fire, the VC sets up his blinds, artillery is fired, and the FFW arrive in their choppers. GAME ON!

AAR after the jump....

Playtesting Vietnam 2nd game: Cordon & Search redux

This weekend I had the fortune of once again playing a Vietnam game on Thomas' (peabody) lovely gaming setup. He continues to work on his Vietnam game. I met a new gamer, John, who took the free world forces, while I took on the VC. It was interesting watching John grapple with the exact same issues I had when I played, there is a steep planning curve for the FFW to decide how to break up their units, how to approach the village to Cordon it, where to land, and how radio checks work for the integral air transport and the divisional assets.

Strangely (or perhaps not) we chose very similar attack plans, with a squad and the company hq walking on, and two helicopter lifts available. John walked his M60 on as well. The pace of play was much slower (I suspect I'm a fast-ish player) as the US has much more assets to work with in this particular scenario.

It was certainly noticeable that this is in alpha. While the movement, actions, shooting, pinning and killing works quite well, the helicopter artillery felt like the flow hit a brick wall. We had some talk at the end of it all. Similarly, the spotting rolls to reveal VC blinds is interesting, but unlimited spotting for everything in sight was a bit too much (especially when the scout copter showed up and initiated about 8 or 10 rolls). It was suggested to bump it down to 1 per unit, or 2 for the scout copter (per turn).

We only finished about 3 turns in our allotted time, so there wasn't much in the way of morale chit pulls. Therefore not much chance for booby traps, airplane strikes, and other items to come up. Due to the scout chopper removing so many blinds early, the VC were really stuck out, with little flexibility on the board. They crashed into the FFW and hugged them, but they were getting greased pretty quickly. It would seem that dividing them up to cells (rather than the full squad and double cell strength I tended to) would have been move valuable.

My dice luck was almost completely in the negative, so I was thinking it'd probably be a good time to pull out the troops and give up the objective.

 More pictures after the break.

Week 7 6MMRPC: Vietnam Artillery Position

1/72 artillery piece

This week has be 'basing hell'. Fairly boring work that doesn't keep my attention, so I wander away from it a lot. I'm holding off on posting pics of some other minis until they are totally done. In the meantime, I've recently finished off a firing position.

Thomas (Peabody) scratch built an area of fortifications and then (most cleverly!) made molds in poly-urethane. When I went over to cast some rock formations (from woodland scenic molds), we made up a bunch of fortification bits. The painted examples should be landing in the next month or so. He does have intentions of selling some sets, so if you are interested I could pass on his contact info.








 The join between peices looks super rough, but in the next ones I'm working on I've rubbed sand into the milliput filler, so it looks much smoother.

This is what it looks like when you start assembly.

Playtesting Vietnam Cordon & Search

I was very fortunate recently to join in a game that Thomas hosted at his buildings activity room. Thomas is a fan of the Vietnam era, and has some lovely kit to game with, but has found that there isn't a rule-set that really resonates with him. Cribbing from a number of other games and synthesizing, he has been working on a set for the reinforced platoon/company level.






The rules largely use squads as the maneuver unit, but they can be broken down into fire teams. Activations are rolled at the beginning of the turn and allotted to units (pips essentially).  Units that become pinned/suppressed are *very* difficult to re-motivate. Army morale degrades by (semi) random value chit pulls after losing units. There are also some non-onerous spotting rules for effective (non suppressing) fire that make sense in the jungles.

More eye candy after the jump.....