Egyptians for Colonial Adventures, The Sword and The Flame, and The Men Who Would Be Kings

Colonial Barracks was an excellent TSATF convention.  I got to catch up with old friends and play in games.  One of the things that impressed me was Richard Smethurst's 15mm games, to the point that I went out and ordered a bunch of 15mm Egyptians (momentarily forgetting the Fuzzy-Wuzzies to oppose them).

Both Colonial Adventures and TSATF use a 20-man unit including an officer and NCO. Richard had based his figures 2 to a 20 x 30mm base. He used base removal to mark casualties at a higher level. Each 20-man unit equaled a company.  I'm using the same bases, but I'm playing at the unit equaling a platoon, two platoons equaling a company with another officer added.

Here is a unit of Egyptian infantry in Formed Line.  This formation, though slow to move, can volley fire, very important in Colonial Adventures, since each hit caused by the volley results in a reduced Reputation for the target, who then tests to see if they stay or go.  This is very important when the Rep 3 Egyptian infantry is firing at a Rep 5 Beja mob! The figures are Old Glory 15s, not Blue Moon, which are 18mm.

The officer is marked by a white rock and the NCO by a darker one. All figures here would be able to fire.

Ammo can run low, and casualties must be taken, so there are two figures on half-sized single bases.  I chose to leave the officer and NCO on double bases, and will mark them with rings if they become casualties.  This is to remind the player that the unit is leaderless. When ammo runs low, a figure is sent to the ammo dump to replace the ammo. Why send 2 figures when 1 will do?

Egyptian companies each have a different flag. The first company's is blue. I have marked all the bases in this unit in blue with a 1, to indicate the 1st platoon of the 1st company.  The second platoon will be marked with, tah-dah, a 2.  This photo also shows the 2 single bases.

Next is a unit of Egyptian gendarmes in Mob formation.  They are a police force, and not really as well trained as the regular infantry, so they will only be able to adopt the Mob and Open formations. This means they cannot volley fire.  Right now, there are only 16 figures in the unit. I'll have to see if that makes them too weak, on top of not being able to volley fire.  Their unit also includes 2 single bases. Essex figures with a Old Glory 15s officer.

These are all the figures I have finished, though there is another regular infantry platoon half finished on popsicle sticks, and 4 more finished gendarmes still mounted on sticks.

I have another company of regular infantry still in the bag, a company of Sudanese infantry, cavalry and artillery, but I'll stop at the second platoon, to paint Fuzzies coming from Stone Mountain.

This week's finished figures

Since I'm not getting any game in, I decided to show the figures that I have finished painting this week. Click on the pics for larger versions.

First up are some Colonial Police from Brigades Games in the USA.  These are older figures, and are a bit crude.  The faces are caricaturish.  First I painted them to resemble the Nassau police.  The sun helmets have no indication of the 6 seams that comprise the cover, so those were painted with a brown wash and a tiny brush.  I wanted these guys to be pristine, so no wash was added to their paint.  The white was dry-brushed up from ivory, but that's about it.  The belts and shoes were glossed, since policemen are very proud of their appearance.

Then I did the same figures in khaki, with my usual wash.

Next up are men and women survivors from Wargames Factory.  I'm not thrilled with these figures due to the need to fill the joints between the arms and torsos.  I don't quite get the girl with the compound bow, bustier, and mini-skirt.  The figure in orange is an escaped prisoner from a work detail of the Orleans Parish Prison, hence the OPP.  And we can't do without Shaun of the Dead!

These are Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd.  Of course, after assembling these about 6 months ago, I learned that these poor slobs would not have any helmets.  The other 24 are being assembled correctly.  I use Ambroid liquid cement to assemble these figures, and a little squishing around fills the small gaps between the arms and the torso.  I use a small ball-shaped grinder with my moto-tool to expand the necks so that the heads fit with little fiddling.  Once again, a little squishing with Ambroid seems to fill any gaps.

And I finish up with a few more figures from Wargames Factory male survivors.  The kid had the scope clipped off his rifle, because I don't think he would have sniper skills.

That's it 'til next time.  All comments are appreciated!

Boring Boers & another pointless nude!

I haven't been able to play a single game since Colonial Battles III, so here's a few things I painted.  Dale Kemper was there of Stellar Miniatures, and among other things, I picked up 2 20-man units of Boers.  Then I went through some figures Al Reis had given me and found a half-painted unit of Boers and artillerymen.  A look through a box donated by Paul Harruff found a few Boer corporals by Falcon US and 18 - 20 mounted Boers by Ral Partha.  Here's the first stuff I painted.

A unit of Ral Partha's with a Falcon US corporal.

A unit of Ral Partha's with a couple of artillerymen converted by Al Reis, including the corporal.

And the Ral Partha artillerymen with a Falcon US officer.  Al had painted them for German Southwest Africa, and I painted them "freely interpreted" for the second Boer War.

And finally, to maintain my salacious reputation, an old sorceress I recently obtained and painted on the misspelled Pegasus "Alter of Evil".

Not much of a post, but all I've got at the present.

Using the elephant-carried Gatling gun.

Here is my take on how the elephant-carried Gatling gun would be used in Colonial Adventures 2.0 and The Sword and the Flame.  It is nowhere as quick as a limbered gun, but about the same as a mule-packed screw gun.

My feeling is that the elephants would need to be removed much farther than a horse limber or pack mule, since they are more intelligent.

RAFM makes an elephant-carried Gatling gun set, but it uses two elephants per Gatling, which is correct.  I find the elephants to be rather weird. I just use 1 elephant because they're expensive, and 1 figure represents more than 1 man...

Elephants and Gatlings!

Since all gamers have short attention span, I decided to paint up two elephants with Gatling guns on their backs.  This is in tribute to Gunga din, of course!  I lost my two Ral Partha Gatling guns in Katrina, and haven't replaced them until last week, when I ordered a pack from Dave Kemper through Great Endeavours.  So without further delay, here they are.

Yes, Virginia, I did have two Redoubt Tiger Hunts.  In my defense, they were bought many years apart.  The platforms have craft plywood bases and coffee stirrer sides.  The nails were added with a disposable drafting pen.  The elephants were painted in a method described to me by Vince Clyant of The London War Room many years ago.  They are painted with metallic spray paint, and then dull-coated.

Although the Gatlings in the movie are disassembled, I didn't want to go to that much trouble, so you just pick them out of the boxes and set them on the ground.  They will be manned by two Highlanders each with their rifles cut away, and, of course, an officer.  They are in process!  Here's a picture of how they will be uniformed.

The assembled Gatlings can be removed and baggage substituted, or can provide an improvised howdah that can hold two figures (a little shakily).

Once again, thanks for looking, and comments are welcome!

Bayou Wars XXI, June 7 - 9, 2013

Bayou Wars XXI was held a the Doubletree Hotel on Veterans Blvd in Kenner, LA.  It was a chance to run and play enjoyable games with old and new friends.  This is a very gentlemanly convention, with lots of welcoming gamers.

FRIDAY

On Friday, I ran a 5150 Star Army game in which Planetary Defense Force fire teams were pitted against marauding Lhurgg.  The players learned not to engage the Lhurgg in hand-to-hand combat.  Shoot and scoot, if possible!

Chris Swearingen and I ponder the likelihood of the PDF surviving, and completing their mission of clearing the table.  Due to being an early game, we didn't get started for about 30 minutes, waiting for players to join the con.

The lumber yard, from which a small group of Lhurgg attacked, and the PDF Lt. ran away, though all his troops thought little enough of his actions to remain.

Jeremy (center) and Josh Gremillion capably handled their fire teams, as did the young man nest to them.  The ultimate result was that the PDF cleared the ruined factory, but forgot about the lumber yard.  More time might have seen them succeed.  The Lhurgg were run as PDF's, played by Brian Simmons, who arrived late.

These are shots of a beautiful game that I didn't see.  Theresa took all the pictures.

And here we have Duane Rock and Rudy Nelson of Time Portal Hobbies at his dealer's table.

Next to my dealer's table and game table, Ken of All The King's Men ran 54mm ACW games throughout the convention.

Steve Wirth ran a dinosaur game in the other gaming room, and apparently all had fun getting eaten!

Larry Reeves gets a clarification from Steve Wirth.

JonnyCon 4.5 ran a what if game in which the Battle of New Orleans was fought in 1864.  I believe that the Rebels won.

And I tried my hand at the new Star Wars fighter game, and being loyal to the 501st, took a flight of tie fighters to their deaths, though my tie fighter was the last on the table, avoiding damage from a flight of X-wings, with very bad shooting rolls.  Thomas and I gave up both our flight to take out Wedge; an expensive accomplishment.

While we were eating dinner earlier, Elizabeth and Walt Bourgoyne stopped by.  It's always nice to see other gamers wives at the conventions.  Theresa is always there for moral support.

And the Jackson Gamers were getting silly as Jim Campbell puts horns on the svelt Jay Stribling and Phil does his best to ignore them.

SATURDAY

Saturday, of course, is always the big day at a convention.  In order to play in Mark Stevens "colonial" game, I moved my game up to 9am, unfortunately to the disappoint of Mark and Joshua Brown, who didn't arrive in time.

My game was a rip-off of Gunga Din and Mark Stevens' game of Bayou Wars XX.  He's an excellent painter and uses more expensive figures.  I use Ral Partha, being cheap!   I of course used Colonial Adventures 2, by Two Hour Wargames.

Here's the initial layout.

Cutter, Ballentine, and McChesney attempt to fix the the downed telegraph wires.  The buildings were some of the first I built from foamcore about 25 years ago.

Rick Doskey chose the telegraph repair unit and died gloriously to a man, the first unit on the table to do so.

I was quite happy to have Marc Stevens in the game, a dyed-in-the-wool Sword and The Flame man. Of course, he handled his troops well.

Jim Campbell stopped by to take pictures while Duane Guilbeau helped with setting up the Pathans!  Duane is another disciple of Two Hour Games, and active on the Yahoo group.

And we finally got to meet Duane's lovely wife, Theresa!  In the background in the green shirt is Mike Bobbe of Bobbe's Hobbies, Pensacola, FL, who is running Pelicon III on the 29th of June, a great one-day con near the Pensacola Air Museum (Yeah, they're both in Pensacola)

And, of course, I'm carrying the dispatches.  The Brits won the day; the Highlanders were the deciding factor.  Without them, the Indian troops might have been wiped out.  As it was, it was a neat thing.

I'd like to thank brother-in-law Ron Gros for running Saga in that helmet, making sure that I didn't have the silliest hat!

These are the pics Theresa took of Saga units.  Ron ran this all day long, teaching the rules.

Allie of +1 Gaming playing on the Portmouths Games table.  Lovely looking game that never seems to start when I'm available.

Marc Stevens game of Napoleon in Egypt.

The British commanders, Jim Pitts, Al Himmel, Richard, me (GOC) Larry Reeves son, and Larry himself.

Mark Brown and Martha Stevens, French commanders.

Our right flank crumpled as our cavalry was outnumbered 3 to 1.  The worst troops on the board, the Ottomans, led by Larry Reeves crumpled the French right flank, and my Guards brigade threw the French center back.  The French had to occupy the two buildings on the board.  They never seriously threatened the one on our left, and bypassed the one on our right without bothering to occupy it.

Chris Swearingen ran a great early France WWII game using NUTS! 2nd edition.  I took HQ, a squad, and the HMG detachment.  Brian Simmons bravely took the lead ahead of me and suffered for it.  Even the Stuka attack that should have landed on me deviated to Brian.  The Germans were PDF's run by Chris.

Brian and I get last minute instructions from GM Chris.

All of the PDF's have not yet revealed themselves.  A Stug IIIa appeared on the left and held us up, while a German squad with a MG34 did damage to the left until finally a Rep 4 activation allowed my HMG team to do away with them.  We won, but there were a lot of Adrian helmets to put atop rude crosses.

   

                                      

Here a couple of pics of a Star Wars game atop CorSec Engineering's beautiful Red Nova mat.

These are pics of games that I did not get to see.

SUNDAY

Of course, on Sunday many of our friends are checking out of the hotel, but I managed to gather 17 players for my Six Gun Sound: Blaze Of Glory (Two Hour Wargames) hillbilly game.

Yes, I know many GM's despair over playsheets on the table, but it's my Sunday Morning Brain Dead Game, and neatness doesn't count!  The Clampetts were angry because the Skaggs had killed one of Ellie Mae's racoon and made soup.  The Skraggs were in a foul mood because Jethro Bodine had impregnated Laurie Lee and never crossed the river again.

At the end of the game, the last Clampett blew up the kerosene tank behind the store (the only place to replace ammo), and the remaining Skraggs rolled off for the 'valuable' prize of a hillbilly dice bag.

Ron Francis' possum-eatin' grin!

Marshall and Mark Mod

Ashley Nicholls and Jeremy Gremillion

Rick Doskey wisely played Laurie Lee and survived the whole game, for once!  Allie sits in disbelief.

Angela played Ellie Mae and was unfortunately shot down before any of her critters could come to her aid.  The shock around the table as our Baton Rouge star bit the big one!

 The bloody bridge!  I painted it Sunday morning!

 I laugh as silly things happen to Ashley Nicholls and Josh Brown.

 Apparently the far end of the table was invaded by some alien who had no effect on the game.

 Rick Doskey gloats as Laurie Lee survives the slaughter.

And Allie of +One Gaming wins thd coveted dice bag!

Angela and Brian Simmons take their prize home!

The final gasp of JonnyCon 4.5

Duane Rock does all of this terrain.  The fences have plastic tubes inserted into the stryofoam that they fit into quite sturdily.

Well, as always it was a great con.  Special thanks go the the Board of Directors for keeping it going, and to all the GM's and players for making it so enjoyable.