Get to the Boat! Part II

First of all I apologize for being out of touch lately.  Again, job, family and travel sometimes gets the best of us!  And on top of all that I have been deeply focused on getting this project completed that is taking up my gaming/work/boatyard table as you will see in the pictures below.  

And, oh, regarding travel, I am going to put out a post of my trip that my Wife Julie and I took to Normandy! One of my bucket list places to visit.

So what am I up too?

After putting on this scenario with my friends at a con in Florida and borrowing all of those buildings I thought I probably should make some of my own.  This project is getting closer to the end, maybe two more weeks and I will post more pictures during the upcoming play tests.

For this scenario I am going to use The Men Who Would be King (TMWWBK) just to mix things up at our big Club event in November.  The main reason for the this project is that I try not to borrow everything I need because when I want to put on a game it becomes a burden on others.  So I always try to be self sufficient whenever possible.  As I mentioned in the last scenario blog it would not have been possible without buildings and walls from Sgt. Guinness and Dr. Pasha Jones in Florida, thanks again.

So to begin this project I invested in the right tools!  Man that saved some time.  I purchased cutting tools from Foamwerks which allowed me to cut up walls production line style.  And then with some proper knives slicing in doors and windows was easy but time consuming.  My buildings are not perfect and not Ebay worthy like some of the "works of art" I see you gamers doing but it works for me.

At this point I still have to mount wood doors and window shutters, build one more building and finish and paint the Mosque and Government House.  In the pictures everything is laid out on the back of styrofoam board because it got messy!  But at first dress rehearsal I will remove everything in a particular order and then lay out my cool Cigar Box desert mat, water tiles and dock and reassemble the town you see here with all the trimmings.  lol.

I intend on getting two pre-games in before our game day at the club and then be able to transport this to gaming conventions next year.

I will post more details later, I just wanted to let my "Gamers in Arms" know that I have been very busy.  And my humble apologies on the delays with my Boat Production and Gunboat Rules.  As soon as I can finish this I promise I will be back in the Docks!

Here are a few pictures of a big mess...without the ground mat, palm trees, gunboat, etc...

Last Stand Dan

Last note:  If you have not read my last blog about this battle it might help put things into perspective.    Bottom line is that VIPs have to make it from the Government House to the Gunboat Cairo waiting at the docks while Dervish units appear at active hot spots all over the table.  More on the revolt later...

Third Battle on the Nile (Sudan Gunboat battle)

So I have to say that the last two gunboat battles were a lot of fun.  Both Colonial Barracks V and at our Colorado Military Historian (CMH) club meeting a week ago I can say that everyone again had a great time.  As we local's know our CMH President Doug Wildfong had some very serious surgery a few weeks ago.  I am not sure if they let him out or he escaped the hospital but he can be seen moving around pretty good these last few days.

Doug was also hosting his very good friend and long time wargamer Larry Armin.  Larry was on his last days of visiting Doug here in Denver so I thought he would enjoy playing in a gunboat battle.  The same for Doug who missed Colonial Barracks and our last club meeting.  So without missing a beat I setup a slightly smaller but action packed scenario which resembles the CBV and CMH battles.

In this battle, the sister boats of the Kadesh and the Giza are both present in the British force.   The scenario has the British going after the Pointe again.  The same objectives to destroy the mud forts and occupy the Pointe were in effect.  So this time the Grenadier Guards have been disembarked onshore and the Camel Corps along with a Screw gun battery making a flank move inland who will join the battle a little later.

We used the old school TSAF (Brom) rules alongside Boilers and Breechloaders (Wilson).  This should be interesting.  This battle flowed very well with all players playing TSAF before.

And back in Wadi Halfa Capt. Lucas (ex-Giza I Capt.) of the Giza incident, is still awaiting his court martial and the proceedings should be starting very soon.  He has been seen hanging around the boatyard, head down in deep thought.

Colonial Times announcing the Giza incident

In other parts of the Southern Sudan, the word is that the dervish warlords are rattling their sabers and calling for another holy war.  So far the hostilities have been focused in this area but a breakout is inevitable.  Outside of this battle area down stream British and Egyptian Command are mobilizing Egyptian forces into the region to protect many of the towns and villages so hard fought for in the last campaign.  The British have taken a support role at this point.  Stay tuned.

Last Stand Dan's Project table
I am starting to build out my Egyptian forces along with some cavalry units.  In fact, cavalry units on both sides will come into play in the next Sudan campaign (2016).  The next campaign will be similar to the Khartoum River dash or Nile campaign but in southern Sudan.  So that means new gunboats and dhows to be built. And I also have some requests to build a couple of boats for some gamers out there.   I better get to work.  More on this later.

Well back to the battle, enjoy the pictures and embedded AAR.

Last Stand Dan

RECRUITS Bolt Action Board

Here I go again building out another gaming board.  A few ask why I keep building these.  Well besides the time it takes which is Therapy to me it actually is much cheaper in the long run for me.  I just hang these up on a closet wall and the next time I play it takes only minutes to setup for a battle.

Here is the usual framing.  I took two 2 x 4 foot sections, already cut from the local Home Depot.  This time I built up a 3 inch rail on three sides of each board and a two inch rail where I would join the boards together.  I will talk about that later.

After Power Grabbing the Foam sections and elevations to the board I cover with the usual Plaster Cloth.  Just shoot water and smooth it out.  I always have my vehicles, buildings, troops around for scale and to give me more ideas as to what I am trying to create.

Here is a look at the boards together.  I also added the Wooden and Pegs and holes at this point.  The concept is to be able to remove the trees, buildings, etc and place one board on the other using the pegs.   I will add the locks, handles and two wheels at the very end of the build.

I was going for more elevation(s) to make Line of Sight a little more challenging.  Bolt Action and any Skirmish Game system really takes that LOS seriously.  

Again, my new best friend is Tile Grout (Earth Color) to cover the plaster.

It goes on easy with a trowel and wear gloves!  It already provides a nice texture to it.  

Had this idea to buy some walls and then said, "wait a minute!, what about all this foam board you have laying around.  So I cut 3/4 quarter inch tall strips to create my walled fields.  You can also see the roads I put in.  That is simple Spackling putty and using some tape for the edges just smeared it on to get the paths I wanted. 

Roads got a Brown base and a lighter highlight at the end. 

Yes I wanted to get a more Spanish or Italian looking board and the Pine Trees may not be correct but I go a good deal on them at Caboose Train Store.  

The Buildings I believe are Miniature Building Authority.  Here again I am getting ideas and making sure the infantry have a good feel regarding the height of the walls.  

I got some Coco Matt from Tony Fryer, thanks Tony, using that stuff really makes a terrain board pop!

On the walls I smeared some Liquidtex Cereamic stucco available at the local craft store.  When that dried the walls got a black base and two shades of gray to give them a stone like texture.  

And then had this idea to hot glue some lichen to give it a semi bocage, hedge, vine growth kind of thing on the walls.  

Starting to shape up!  Note that the forest will be "unplugged" and bagged when in transport along with the buildings.  

This walled area will get full foliage on the walls while the other a little lighter.

The Building on the hill in the foreground was scratch built by Mr. Tony Fryer.  The interior even has wall paper and wood floors.  On this hill we are going to put the Ruined Farm that comes in the Bolt Action Normandie Starter Box.  

There is that house to the right that we will probably will not use.  Not about that dried up stream.  I saw some pictures when looking up Italy and Spain and one of those pictures gave me this idea of a dried up stream.  So I painted in some "puddles," dropped some rock and some wood pieces in there, then poured the liquid water and let it dry over night.  I also added some twigs from the backyard to make a makeshift foot bridge.  We will be creating a small forest path from this point to the road in the forest. 

A word to the wise, make sure you do your streams either before or after flocking.  Just make sure it is COMPLETELY dry.  I learned that lesson long ago.  It can make a mess when the stream is wet and you decide to start blowing off the excess flock.  Oh yeah, I did that in my early days...

Looking through the Forest from the road.  I was worried about having long open LOS.  Looking here if a tank got to that point in front of that wall it would be able to catch a vehicle coming around this bend.  Any further behind that wall the terrain drops a level or two which will make it difficult to setup that far away.  

And here is my Jedi painting, terrain, and everything hobby Master, Mr. Doug Wildfong.  He has been doing this for a long, long time and he knows his stuff.  He came over to my house with various flocking material and ideas to bring the terrain board to life!  

Doug will be running the Bolt Action games with me at Recruits.  We are also driving from Denver together, both our first time to this convention.  

As the work continues I mark the tree holes with screws so that we can flock away.  Probably a good idea to use the screws when in transport making it easier to insert the forest.

So here we are close to the final phases.  That stray field up left on that hill is where our ruins will be going.  And we are looking maybe to add some hedges or more trees on some open areas.  We should wrap this up in a couple of days.  Also note that I will be running some Napoleonic Skirmish in 28mm on the same board.  We plan to move a few things around and presto, some mano y mano skirmish combat.  

 I will update the blog showing the board hardware, wheels, handles, locks, etc.  Please stay tuned, join this blog to get the next updates over the next couple of days.