Saturday update - Forager figures and house building

Last year I picked up the Forager skirmish rules via a Kickstarter...of course as usual I haven't actually played the rules although they look pretty good and I had an interesting chat with the authors at Salute.  I was interested in how adaptable they might be for later periods such as Colonial: the authors weren't convinced that the mechanics and ranges etc would hold up for that period although I'm still fairly optimistic that they would work with minimal changes.

Actually my plans for Colonial skirmish is to use the Horse and Musket version of A Fistful of Lead.  I've played a couple of excellent games of this at Eric the Shed's (Link) and they should work very well, especially for multiplayer games.  We're planning to try this out next month so I'll need to get thinking about scenarios.

Back to Forager...the Kickstarter also included French, British and Guerilla figures (and Cacadores but I didn't sign up for them).  The figures are interesting...quite chunky and caricatured and at first I wasn't overly impressed but actually they have grown on me and I've now painted them all up.  They'll make a useful addition to my Napoleonic figures, either for Forager or for Sharpe Practice.

As it has been a wet Saturday I've also been working through some of the buildings that I'd picked up at Salute from TT Combat.  Building things really isn't my strong point.  I'm notoriously ham-fisted when it comes to any form of DIY.

The first of these to be completed is this 28mm Japanese Minka...I wasn't actually sure what a Minka was and when I googled it the first entry was an article on an American/Korean porn actress by the same name!  After a bit more googling (and hoping my wife doesn't look too closely at my browsing history) I discovered that a Minka is a traditional Japanese house for farmers, artisans and merchants.  It only took 30 minutes of so to stick it all together and I managed to avoid putting anything on back to front or upside down!  TT Combat have instructions for some of their buildings (including this one) online but worryingly they don't have any instructions for their Cowboy range which are next in my building queue!  This did seem fairly self-explanatory though so hopefully it will all make sense.  The model comes unpainted but with some coloured card for the timber frame and the roof and I reckon needs little more done to it.

Next was a 4Ground  28mmWild West store.  This looks a bit more impressive as it is pre-coloured but was, again, pretty straightforward to build.  I did find that some of the lugs that fit the roof onto the main building didn't align very well so just chopped these off!

Finally we have a 15mm ruined house, again from 4Ground.  I found this in my box of WW2 stuff when setting up for the game with Keith last week (see my previous post) and must have bought it a couple of years ago but had forgotten all about it.  Again it all went together surprisingly smoothly.  I have a good mind to send photos of these to my old woodwork teacher...I was asked to stop trying to make things in Woodwork classes as I was 'just wasting wood'.  On second thoughts that might be a bit weird...

I have built a house...

Well, not exactly a house...it's actually a Japanese Rice store but it has walls and a roof so that's close enough for me.

I bought this 4Ground rice store in October at SELWG to use with my Ronin figures and it has languished with my other purchases since then until yesterday when my wife spotted it and wanted to know why I'd bought things if I wasn't going to do anything with them.  Clearly she doesn't understand about the principles of buying stuff for wargames...these things need a certain time to mature.  Nonetheless I was inspired to make a start on the rice store and built it fairly quickly.

I'm pretty cack-handed when it comes to any form of building things...generally the rule in our house is that it's better to get someone in than to let me loose on any form of DIY and this proved no exception.  Like a lot of the 4Ground kits it has an inner wall which is built first and then lined with an outer and inner lining.  I completely failed to take account of the fact that there is a door and a window on 2 of the walls and managed to put the wrong parts on each side!  As I'd used Superglue rather than PVA this was a bit of a bugger but I managed to prise the pieces off without inflicting too much damage (but covering my fingers in glue in the process)...at least I didn't stick myself to anything...

The store has a Teddy Bear fur roof and my main question is why does mine look like Donald Trump!!!!

This is the house after the fur has been given a liberal coat of PVA/Water and a bit of a trim...now safely de-Trumped!

In Her Majesty's Name - first game

In Her Majesty's Name seems to have created a real buzz over the last few months with the Nickstarter launch generating [presumably] a lot of people with a sudden accumulation of figures to paint and scenarios to devise.  I've always liked the whole Steampunk/VSF thing in fiction... anything by Mark Hodder, KW Jeter, Kim Newman etc.  Incidentally is there a difference between Steampunk and VSF??

Having beem surprisingly devoted to getting the figures painted and terrain built, I finally got round to playing a game last week at Guildford.   The table consisted of 3' x 3' boards using floor tiles from Wilkinsons range [it takes a lot to tempt me into Wilkos but these did it!].  The cobblestone effect is a bit oversized but looks surprisingly effective.  Added to these were 2 warehouses and 3 town houses from the Stoezels Structures range of card models.  My modelling skills aren't great and there has been a lot of cutting, gluing and swearing going on the dining room over the last few weeks as I experimented with different ways of putting the models together.  In the end I decided not to make the roofs detachable and planned to replace the model with a floor plan if anyone decided to enter a building. 

The tabletop with the Servants of Ra carting off
their mystical artifact at the bottom of the picture

The scenario pitched the Scotland Yard squad [Anthony] against the Servants of Ra [Keith] who were moving a rare artifact stolen from the British Museum, to an East End warehouse before doubtless using it for some unspeakable purpose. I umpired with the option to interfere with a 3rd home brewed faction if I got bored!  As it was there was plenty going on that meant there really wasn't a need for anymore confusion on the tabletop.

There was a smattering of innocent bystanders to get
 in the way of the police and cultists alike

 

 

 

 

Anthony's coppers used the tried and test tactic of shooting anyone that looked a little bit foreign or beating them with their electric truncheons.  Keith's rank and file cultists weren't much opposition but the rampaging Mummy and scantily clad Hashashin carved their way through the police ranks. The Egyptian leader (a reincarnated pharaoh of course....there's no cliche left unturned in this game!!) sliced up Holmes and Watson, leading to a showdown at the end between the seemingly indestructible Egyptian and the strangely Ripper Street-like Chief Inspector and Sergeant. It looked as though the forces of law and order had won the day until we realised we'd mis-read a rule and victory swung the other way!

The Inspector is surrounded but managed to fend them off

The rules had the great advantage of being easily pick-up-able... always a good thing when you have limited time in a club evening, but have enough depth to force a lot of thinking and planning between turns.  There were definitely tactics that would be changed now that we've played the game through.

The rules use alternate activation so Player A moves a figure, then Player B until all figures have moved.  This is then repeated with shooting etc.  This does force a degree of tactical thinking [who should I move when, which figure should shoot or fight next etc] but I did worry that it could have slowed down too much if we had a 3rd faction on the table.  We'll have to try this out next time to see how much it impacts on the speed of the turns.  I have a cobbled together faction comprising of Professor Moriarty and his henchmen, assisted by his latest invention... steam powered automatons! [well... why not!]

Overall though the rules were excellent and have huge scope and potential.  They'd be easily usable 'straight' too, for 19th or early 20th Century skirmishes.  I could certainly see these being suitable for my Russian Civil War/Back of Beyond figures as well as the VSF adventures they're designed for.  I'm finding I really enjoy this level of game, both in terms of the physical scale of the number of figure etc, but also in the size of the project.... getting 2 forces painted and some terrain built at this level makes for a fun but achievable project.  I think this says more about my attention span than anything else but it does mean that I'm more likely to stick with it and see a project through. 

I've just spotted Osprey's next rule set... Ronin, a Samurai skirmish game with similar sized forces also available from Northstar... damn... here we go again!!!

Verdict on IHMN.....Highly recommended!!

Scotland Yard and the mystery of the finished project

Breaking all my normal habits I've actually finished painting something I bought at Salute!!!

Normally I assemble some of the figures, paint a few and then leave them to languish in a box as one of my many half finished projects [or in some cases leave them in the Salute bag and put them in the loft, never to be seen again!]

But, having painted up the Servants of Ra for In Her Majesty's Name, I wanted to keep going and I've now completed the Scotland Yard set as well!  It's a really nice set with a plain clothes section led by an Inspector and Sergeant who seem very inspired by Ripper Street (a good thing!  I've just picked up the boxed set as I missed the last couple of episodes and my son was pretty addicted).  There are also 4 uniformed coppers armed with truncheons, but being VSF these are "electro-truncheons":  I decided not to add the cables connecting them to the power packs...partly because it was a bit fiddly and very fragile, but also because I didn't like the aesthetic look of them.  Finally the squad includes a nice Detective and Doctor: I also painted the Moriarty figure that I got as part of the pre-order... A nicely elegant villain hiding a pistol behind his back.

The Detective

Definitely shades of Ripper Street...

Professor Moriarty



The buildings in the background are from the really very nice range from Stoelzel's Structures.  I've built a few card buildings in the past but this is the first time I've attempted something more than just building a box and the first time I've built around a foamcore interior.  The building shown is a free downloadable Warehouse which has various options for the interior.  I decided to try building it as a series of 3 layers and to be honest it's a bit scrappy in places.  I've certainly discovered that I lack the ability to cut in a straight line!!  As you can see the floors don't line up very well and the white foamcore shows through in places... nothing to do with the model and entirely down to my crap modelling skills!!!

I've decided to have another go [which is the advantage of downloads] and will probably ignore the separate floors and just build it as a solid building,or perhaps just have the roof detachable, and use black foam as a base so the edges should be less obvious.  I'll post the results when they're done [unless they're too embarrassing!!]

The range of buildings available is really impressive and I've also downloaded a couple more including the Old Town buildings which may have been a bit over ambitious having seen the huge number of pages of walls that were in the PDF... the kit comes with each building in a range of shades to reflect daylight, dusk and night time!!  The kits can be found here... Stoelzel's Structures and are well worth a look.

Log Cabins and Postman B****y Pat!

A tale of great products and not so good customer service...

My Musket and Tomahawk games have been suffering from a lack of buildings for the settlers to hide in when the rampaging Indians/French/British come calling so I was very tempted by some log cabins I came across produced by 4Ground.    4Ground's website

 

Technically these are listed under their Europe at War range and I guess are designed for use in Russia and Eastern Europe.  I’m sure there are some architectural experts out there who will point out discrepancies in the roof design but I figured a shack is a shack and no one would really notice. 

 

 

 

 

At £20 for 3 pre-painted cabins these represent really good value: they come in a flat pack assembly style and the main problem I had putting them together was that several pieces fell out of the frame before I could work out which was part A and which was part B!  Luckily I had my son on hand who was  after a favour and within an hour he’d built all three and assembled the pack of fences I’d also bought.  The models look great and are shown here with some Blue Moon 18mm figures for comparison.  They also smell really nice!!!  There’s more than a hint of woodsmoke presumably thanks to the laser-cutting which certainly adds to the atmosphere when your Indians are trying to roast the settlers hiding inside!

 

 

Actually getting my hands on the cabins was a lot more complicated than building them though!  I’d ordered them in mid-October and duly received confirmation from 4Ground that they’d received my order and then that it had been despatched.  I was away for a week in Scotland and assumed they’d be waiting from me [or at the post office] when  I got back.  On my return there were some parcels to collect but sadly nothing from 4Ground. 

 

Here’s where the customer service part went wrong.  I’d discovered the T&Cs which let me know that if I’d spent £2 more I would have had it sent via courier but as I’d spent £28 I only qualified for normal Royal Mail post and a proof of posting certificate: not 4Grounds fault as it was clearly on their site although I was a bit gutted as it looked as though my parcel had gone astray and there would be little I could do.  As we were now approaching a month from placing the order I emailed 4Ground... nothing.  I called... they’d have a look and get back to me... then nothing.  I called again asking for some kind of response... nothing [and nothing for the last week].  At this point my wife, out in the back garden with the dog discovered a parcel lying in a puddle by the back gate... the b***y postman had obviously lobbed it over the fence rather than leave it with a  neighbour or taking it back.  The packaging pretty much disintegrated when I brought it in but luckily the contents were sealed well inside and were intact.

All in all I’ve been left with pretty mixed feelings... the cabins are really great... some of the nicest I’ve seen and are really affordable .  For the sake of a call or an email though 4Ground could have made me a much happier punter.  As for the Post Office, I’ve logged a complaint but don’t really expect to hear back.  Would I buy more... definitely... but I’ll try and make sure I’m around when they’re delivered!