Elf Army Project Part One

After painting the 6mm figures last month, I spent the first week of this month taking care of other things and reading the new set of rules from Wiley Games.  These are the set called "Bigger Battles and are intended for larger scale skirmish games where units of 5 to `12 figures are used instead of individual figures.  This inspired me to dig out my 28mm figures that I had started a while back and finish painting them.

The first batch is the Elf heavy infantry.  The next batch will be the Elf light infantry, followed by the elf cavalry, and finally special figures like heroes and mages. I had originally started painting these a while back and then decided to change the color scheme.  This group of figures was about 1/4 to 1/3 completed prior to working on them this past week.  The Elf heavy infantry is organized as eight units of 16 figures.  The color scheme is green and yellow uniforms and equipment with red weapons and silvered and gold armor. I need to get a tube of plastic glue to fix a few missing spear points on several figures. Edit:  This is the first of three blog posts the other two follow directly by clicking on the newer post at the bottom of the page.

Shields were made from scans of shield patterns that I had and resized and reshaped as ovals in addition to the circular ones using PaintShop Pro.  I did not want to use the original shield shape and patterns supplied by Games Workshop.  The new shields are printed on heavy card stock and glued to the figures. Most of the shield patterns are sort of floral in design.  The guard infantry unit has a white Pegasus on a pale blue background and one unit has an altar with a central flame.

 The guard infantry

Keepers of the flame

 

 

 

 

 

When the rest of the army is finished they will be able to engage the dwarf and human forces I painted a while back.  Dwarf Army  Human army

Byzantine and Sassanid Persian Cavalry

I finished basing the Sassanid and Byzantine cavalry that I painted this month.  The figures are all from the Baccus 6mm Sassanid Persian line.  Currently no one makes all the figures needed for Early and Maurikian Byzantine armies.  However, by adding shields and paint, I was able to convert the Sassanid cavalry to close approximations of the Byzantine counterparts.

I was able to locate a set of 3mm and 1.5mm paper hole punches.   2mm would have been a better size for the Byzantine shields and with the 1.5mm punch being too small I used the 3mm punch.  I had hoped to use Paintshop Pro to reduce the late Roman shield patterns from the Notitia Dignitatum, but they were too detailed and did not print correctly.  I ended up just printing red on cardstock and punching out the shields that I glued to the figures.

The Sassanids are on the left and the Byzantines are on the right.  There are 180 armored horse archers in the back, 180 lance and bow cavalry and 18 command figures.   The Byzantines have 144 lance and bow cavalry on unarmored horses in the back, 144 armored horse archers in the middle, 72 lance and bow cavalry on partly armored horses in the front, and 8 command figures.   I have other command figures for the Byzantines also, but those are from a while back.   The 72 figures on the partly armored horses were in a previous post.  I will be adding flock to the unfinished bases later today.



I was painting these figures throughout the month while taking breaks to paint the Achaemenids and NKE's.
The Achaemenid cavalry that I finished earlier this month are here
and the New Kingdom Egyptian army is here

The total figures painted for this month are 923 mounted, 677 foot and chariot crewmen, 30 chariots, and 60 chariot horses.

Sassanid Persians and Byzantines

I am in the process of replacing my Sassanid Persian and Byzantine armies.   I did have armies composed of figures from Heroics and Ros, but sold them to another club member a while back.  I would have kept them, but the figures were based on outdated information.  Currently only Baccus makes updated figures for Sassanid Persians.   Unfortunately they do not make Early Byzantine or Maurikian Byzantine figures.   However, with a bit of painting and adding shields to the armored horse archers and the lancers on unarmored horses the figures will pass for Byzantines.

The following pictures are of the 180 Sassanid Persian armored horse archers and the 72 Byzantine cavalry on partially armored horses.   I still have 180 armored lancers to paint for the Sassanid Persians, 144 armored horse archers for the Byzantines, and 144 lancers on unarmored horses for the Byzantines.

To distinguish the Byzantines from the Sassanid the Byzantine cavalry will have iron armor for the partially armored horses while the Sassanids will have bronze armor for their horses.  I also gave the Byzantine cavalry red standards and shields while the Persian standards and shields will be in multiple colors.   I did try reducing and printing shields from the Notitia Dignitaum, but the images would not print clearly.

 The Byzantines

The Sassanid Persians

Achaemenid Persian Cavalry

I completed the second set of figures this morning.   They are from the four different sets of Achaemenid cavalry made by Baccus 6mm.  There should have been a total of 180 figures, but six of them were from some other nation.

New Kingdom Egyptians

One of the clubs that I belong to has a painting "competition" for the month of April.  The option of the contest is to paint as many of unpainted figures as possible.

Today I completed one of the painting projects that I am working on this month.   The army has three "divisions representing the Amun, Re, and Suktekh divisions.   Each division was given a specific color to differentiate them. These are red, yellow, and blue.  In addition to the three main formations there is the Pharaoh in front center, two additional commanders, two units of guard infantry and one unit of Nubian archers.

Each Division has four units of archers, two units of close order fighters, one unit of Nubian archers, one unit of light infantry and 9 units of chariots.  The middle chariot in the front row is the division commander.  There are 176 infantry figures in each division, 18 charioteers plus one standard bearer, 18 horses and the 9 chariots.

The guards have 64 figures plus the 16 Nubians  The Pharaoh and commanders have 12 figures and
one mounted scout plus the chariots and horses.   Total figures painted for this army is 678 figures, 61 horses, and 30 chariots.  Except for the Pharaoh, who I purchased from Baccus, all figures are from Rapier Miniatures.

28mm Science Fiction Buildings and Vehicles

I recently found out about a website with free science fiction buildings and vehicles that can be printed.   They have  a variety of items available.   So far I have assembled some trucks, cargo items and several buildings.



The trucks are one of the vehicles available.  They can be printed in four different colors and  each has a choice of four different loads - Water, Fuel, Open, and Covered.   The chassis are all the same consisting of the main frame, cab cover, four re-enforcements, six interior wheel parts, and two additional parts.   The different payloads can be the same color as the chassis or can be different.   The open truck is carrying most of the boxes.

There are a lot of other vehicles, including drop ships, and a freight hauling spaceship. The buildings I have assembled so far are the water tower, wind powered generator, solar panel, a pair of storage tanks, a landing pad, a greenhouse, a storage shed, and two of the habitats.   The habitats have three different types of sidings and each type is available in four or five colors with a total of seven different colors.   The farm set has an additional habitat in one of the siding types with a different color pattern.  This gives a total of fourteen different color and siding combinations.  I left the bottoms off of the habitats so that they can be stacked.   Each habitat is assembled with twelve panels has six solid side panels, six window side panels, and two chimney panels to choose from.   These can be arranged in any order.   Additional items that can be added are the door, up to three dormers, and if desired a part to connect multiple habitats together.

The prefab habitats.  The one on the left has a dormer added above the doorway.

Landing pad, greenhouse, shed and large pallet of boxes.

Water tower, wind powered generator, solar panel, and two storage tanks.

I still have five of the habitats to assemble, ten service droids with four small parts vehicles, and a few additional items from the farm set.   There are some other vehicles I am thinking of printing and assembling and am still undecided about making the cargo spaceship.  There are eleven different versions of the spaceship to choose from and the model has a total of 42 pages of parts to print.

All the items that I have printed and assembled so far are fairly easy to assemble and fit together very well.  While not any particular brand the cargo trucks and some of the vehicles could be used for present day 28mm skirmish games.  The link to the free items is Free items

South Bay Gaming Club meeting March 14

There were four games at the club meeting today.   Form on the Admiral's wake (age of sale0 rung by Bob,  American War of Independence in 54mm run by nick,  WW2 air run by Chuck, and a fictional modern armor game run by me.

This was the battle of Salon de Companerismo had the Union Federal de Buena Vista first division fighting the first division of the Republica  Democratica Popular de la Cucaracha.   The UFBC first division had three combat brigades and one divisional artillery brigade.   The combat brigades had one brigade with two tank battalions, two puma battalions, an engineer battalion and one artillery battalion, one brigade with one tank battalion, three puma battalions, one engineer battalion, and an artillery battalion, and one brigade with three boxer battalions and an engineer battalion.   The divisional artillery brigade had three MRL battalions and one AA battalion.

The RDOC had a brigade with three tank battalions, one BMP battalion, and an raillery battalion.  The second brigade had two tank battalions, two BMP battalions and one artillery battalion. The third and fourth brigades had one tank battalion, one BMP battalion, two BTR80a battalions and one artillery battalion. The divisional artillery brigade had three artillery battalions, one MRL battalion, and one AA battalion.

The rules used were Lightning War - Red Storm, which are available for free from  LWRS group.io   We did use some house rules for the game as we kept the ground scale to one kilometer per 10cm (four inches) instead of the recommended doubling for the modern period and  changed the quality ratings by increasing them by 5 and using a roll of two dice instead of a single die roll for activating formations.  The table was 24km square.

View of the battlefield from the northwest

At the start of each turn two six side dice were rolled for each brigade and any modifiers are added.   For this scenario there were none.   Both sides were rated as good with a rating of 8 for all units except the RDPC artillery brigade. which was fair with a rating of 7  The die roll is used to determine the order of activation for each combat formation (brigades for this game). The score for each of the formations on both sides determines the order of movement for the turn.   The highest score can move first or choose to move later in the turn.  This gives the higher scores an advantage over lower scores as they can choose to move when it is to their best advantage.  The next higher score now has a choice of moving or deferring their move to later also.   The same applies to each formation in turn and can force the formation with the lowest score to move first.  This process is repeated until all formations have moved.

Indirect fire is then resolved followed by  direct fire.   It is possible for artillery fire to disorganize a formation which would then cause it to only fire with half its combat factors.   Artillery fire is not guaranteed as the unit calling the fire has to roll equal to or less than the artillery formations quality rating and calling divisional artillery has an additional negative modifier applied to its rating.  Artillery fire is very good at disorganizing units, but causing casualties on armored units is difficult due to the save modifiers.   Infantry in built up areas can also be very difficult to cause casualties on.

The UFBV used march and road movement to move quickly forward and gain a positional advantage over the RDPC.   At first casualties were very light.   The RDPC was advancing from the east and managed to occupy the town on the south center edge of the battle field.   The UFCV advanced towards that town and prepared to storm it with a pair of infantry battalions.  Artillery and direct fire had disorganized the DRPC defenders. If the UFBC could roll high enough for initiative on the next turn the two battalions would be able to move first and assault the defenders before they were able to recover from disorganization.  They were able to do so and their assault drove the defenders from the town.

View of the town on the turn prior to the assault on it.

Center of the battlefield on the same turn viewed from the southeast

Attacks by the RDPC to the south of that town were halted and driven back  In the center part of the table UFBV artillery and direct fire badly damaged another couple of RDPC battalions.

On the northern flank neither side was making much progress.   Artillery and direct fire from a Leopard 2 tank battalion damaged another BTR battalion.

Combat had taken a full rules day of six turns.  Both sides paused for the night and combat resumed in the early morning of the next day.  At this point UFBV artillery and direct fire took a toll on RDPC units. By the end of turn eight the two RDPC brigades on the southern half of the table had two exhausted battalions with possibly more by the end of the next turn.  It was judged a UFBV victory. We had played for about four hours with a short lunch break included.      

End of turn five.   RDPC tanks would occupy the hill in the left center and their infantry would occupy the town to the left of it.  UFBV infantry would advance up the road towards the town and the tank battalion on the road in the right center would advance through the town in the bottom center then deploy above it.

                                                                                                             
We have tried several different rule sets including Fistful of Tows, Spearhead, Cold War//Blitzkrieg Commander and others.   These played the fastest of all of them and were easy to comprehend and use.  The rules are available for free from https://groups.io/g/LWRS