[irishserb]

Thanks guys.

Yeah, I thought that the bazooka team had them, but then it only tracked the PT-76 and they were in trouble.  It was witnessed, though whether the witnesses will have a chance to report what happened, I don’t know.  It was a cool little mini-battle in the big battle.  The PT-76s were just trying to get into some cover, and found themselve in a even more frantic situation.

I’ve been kind of surprised how well the 20pdr armed Centurions have stood up to the T-55s, but I against the T-10, they can really only penetrate the power hull front.  The T-10 has to get close to hurt them, so maybe, if and when that encounter happens, the Centurions will be able to mix it up, maneuver and get some flanking shots.

There is going to be at least one more of these big encounters between ^6 AD ad 10 TD, and i’m going to try something a little different on the Soviet side.  British forces will likely be about the same, though I don’t know where that battle will take place yet.  I’m trying not to get too far ahead in any one sector.

The next battle will involve West german forces equipped with M47s and infantry in Borgward B2000 unarmored transports.  I’m hoping to find a way to execute the more mobile German phylosophy in the game, but we’ll see.

 

[irishserb]

A year and a half late ( I lost a little fire for this project after world events february), but I finally played the next battle in my WWIII-1958 campaign, so AAR-3: West of Ohrum has been posted on my blog.

It was a follow-on battle between elemts of the British 6th  Armored Division and the Soviet 10th tank Division.  Basically a big fight between Centurion IIIs and T-55s.  Here are a couple of pics:

Above, early in the battle, three battalions of T-55s lead the attack.

Much later, the British have stood their ground, given better than they’ve received, but the red hoarde keeps on coming.

The full after action report is on my blog with a lot more photos.

I hope it might be of some interest and thanks fr looking.

irishserb

 

 

[irishserb]

I had forgotten about ituntil reading your toothpick suggestion, but many years ago, I used drywall screws to hld the laers together until the glue dried.  They could be removed afterward to allow shaping with out running into them later.

[irishserb]

I would do that with modular tiles with edge profiles that match up, but with different detail in between the edges.  Dimension would vary with the scale that I intended to use it for.  For say 15mm figs, a one inch thick base tile with inch thick rims glued along two edges.

You could cut the bed into the base (Dremel with router base or free had with surform tool), and have say 1.5 inches of rise on the edge sections.  It would work something like my shorter 28mm canyon walls, except the walls wouldn’t be separate pieces, and there could be a lot more unique detailing.

Canyon/Cliff sections

In the past, I would have used styrofoam spray adhesive to avoid the glue hardspots in the seams, but they quit making it, and I haven’t looked for a replacement recently.  3M Super 77 can be used if you spray lightly, and from a little distance, it will slightly attack the foam, but I succeeded in using it on my last batch of cliff sections.

[irishserb]

Probably right about the Russians.  Thanks for the suggestions, I was hoping that there may have at least been some Dutch figs available.  The French idea will give some contrast in appearance should they be on the table the same time as the Russians.

I’m still not completely sure about how I will represent them, but figured I’d use regular infantry stands once they were fighting.  I’ll probably use some ratio of cav figs and infantry stands to indicate when they are on the move, as I really don’t look forward to painting a lot of 6mm horses, just something that I don’t enjoy.

Thanks again,

irishserb

 

[irishserb]

I tend to reduce it to more of a base probability of hit being modified by type and or magnitude of cover.  And, the base probability has to be built out of more data than simply cross sectional area v. weapon’s grouping at range on the range.

I mean some soldiers are vetaran snipers, warm and well fed, other times they are green, using an unfamiliar weapon from the dead guy in front of them, hungry, tired, freezing and lost their glasses.  Their groupings probably arean’t the same.  And even if both are 50th percentile within their racia,l cultural, and whatever other groups, they may not represent the same size target in in the same pose.

But, yes, I do like rules to try to invest some element from this type of data.

And I don’t mean any of this in an argumentative way.  Reading my type sounds a lot drier than the tone and inflection of my typing.

[irishserb]

We have a “big” one that we made at work with 14″ and 38″ bows, and can create profiles on the table mounted version (though I haven’t used that in more than 20 years).  Works great but would probably coast a few hundred dollars for the bits to make.

Some years back, I bought the one that Micromark was offering at the time.  It had a small scroll table, a small bow (tensioner, maybe 6-8″) and a “pen/knife”.  I still use them from time to time, and they work fine for rough cutting, and some types of detailing.   The wire on the table isn’t rigid enough to create profiles for detailed final cuts.  They have worked reasonably well, and I have definately gotten my money’s worth out of it.  The “Foam Factory” tools located here are more or less of the type that I got:

https://www.micromark.com/search?keywords=hot%20wire

Many years ago, one of the guys in the shop bought a really cheapy (maybe) battery powered one, probably the Woodland Scenics one, but at this point, I’m not completey sure.  It lasted about twenty minutes before being tossed in the trash.  Before doing so, he handed it to me, and I tried cutting a chunk out of a 1 inch piece of blue foam.  It was stupid slow, and I gave it back to him, seeing no real use for it.

What type of cuts are you needing to make?

[irishserb]

My understanding is that they are having trouble with the people who manage their web site, and that they expected to be back up on 7-24.   I am told that they can e-mail a pdf catolog to you, and are taking e-mail and phone orders until they are back up online.

[irishserb]

That’s awesome!  Thanks for sharing it.

Years ago, I had a project to make a full size white rhino as a marketing display for a Zoo.   Unfortunately, shortly after starting it, They pulled the plug on the project.  They actually wanted to take it around to schools and  libraries and whatnot; and somebody from the zoo realized that it would be too big to handle and wouldn’t fit into a many of the buildings where they planned to use it.

The dragon is just too cool.

[irishserb]

Everything that I’ve listed from that time frame has readily sold, WWII is always popular, and there are a few Cold War guys like myself, who are always looking for those sets that we wish we’d picked up back in the day.  I’d list them.

 

[irishserb]

Thanks, was hoping it might be just a little closer, and that I could take a shot at going.   But it’s a 926 mile drive (each way), can’t squeeze that into a four day weekend very comfortably.

 

[irishserb]

Great looking model.  Where is the game being played?

[irishserb]

Quite an interesting solution to your space problem.

[irishserb]

I think the painting and modeling came about as part of the hobby out of necessity.  In a time when there was almost nothing available, as “the hobby” basically didn’t exist, if you wanted to play, you had to paint and build to some extent.

The broad market of unpainted figs is simply a result of how the hobby evolved into being.  Since the time of Lionel Tarr making his own plaster tanks, things have evolved quite a bit, but I think that there is simply not a large enough (or large enough perceived) marketplace to justify the risk of investment into providing a broad selection of pre-painted models.

My expectations regarding the quality of figure painting is probably lower than at least half of all miniatures gamers, yet still notably higher than most of the prepainted figures that I’ve seen. Additionally, the extra cost of prepainted figs to a standard that I would want, would have reduced the size of my collection by somewhere between 67 and 85%.  A trade off that I would not want to make, especially as I enjoy sculpting, modeling, and scratch-building every bit as much as playing.

My experience is that the majority of gamers that I have regularly gamed with over the years fall into a group that enjoy or at least can tolerate the painting and/or building side of the hobby, with most getting into the hobby at least partially because of their creative/artisitic interests.

I think that you simply have the misfortune of being in a minority of gamers that appreciate and enjoying gaming miniature, but not the production of the miniatures.  Given that the collective hobby is very niche, most potential manufacturers don’t appear to find enough market place to appeal to your interests.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there are actually enough people to support such a format, building pre-painted miniature gaming armies, the problem is that it would probably take decades to find and evelop that marketplace, as the path to pre-paint miniatures gaming will certainly be different from what has happened over the last 70 years.

Andrew Beasley, On a side note, the last Origins game convention that I attended (8000+ attendees) had GW tournaments, where some players not only had unpainted models in their armies, but also unassembled figures.  That is, they had space marines with torsos glued to bare bases, and little piles of parts that included the arms and weapons that they were moving around next to the armless marines.  I was shocked at seeing this, given the rules that GW imposes.  Not sure if it was a one off thing by the overseer of the tournament, or something that happened as a result of beng distant enough from the “homeworld” to get away with it.  But there they were, little piles of space marines.

 

 

 

[irishserb]

My thinking is that climbing would be instinctive, so I would probably make roof areas be functional and accessable.  I think they would be less prone to waste virtical space, though I haven’t really given consideraion to how that space would be used.

I’m quite looking forward to seeing the pics.

 

 

[irishserb]

Yeah, the Soviet commander was inexperienced, not well respected, and had really bad intel (probably should have included a paragraph about the intel report in the blog post), so was expecting something quite different to happen.  He also didn’t expect to get an RPG up his nose first thing.

The two Soviet BMP platoon leaders rolled up as well liked, though inexperienced; thus, their troops followed them, but neither would try anything too creative.

I was also curious as to whether the two Soviet forces would have opportunity to shoot at each other, especially with the commander’s plight.  The parachute officer rolled up as experienced, maybe a tour in Afghanistan or something, so maybe he would have stopped a friendly fire incident, at least from his side, though the forces never got close enough for that to happen.

The ULF fighters were mostly (about 2/3 of their forces) semi-fanatical being lead by a great leader, and had greater morale than the usual ULF guys, which made the fight even tougher.

It was actually really interesting trying to step into the respective Soviet leaders roles, making decisions based on the situation and their characteristics, which often created sort of an ambiguous situations during the game.

[irishserb]

I’ve got  a few books that address construction of English houses and buildings circa 1100-1800, and despite all of their dimensional information, there is remarkably little data related to your question.  They tend to address ranges of dimensions of room types, bays, or dimensional information in the X and Y, but not the Z dimension.  Unfortunately, I purged what would have probaby been more useful volumes some years back.

If noone here can offer any specific information, one idea might be to take a look at some of the structures presented in show from British television, maybe something like Midsomer Murders or Doc Martin.  You can roughly scale some of the info that you are looking for using the height of the primary actors, which is typically available online.  It might seem kind of abstract, but I’ve done this for other things on occasion.

If you are looking to create models with particular character, you might want to explore some relatively inexpensive books that do offer a ton of other information for relatively little investment:

The English Mediaeval House by Margaret Wood (under $3 US on Amazon)

Houses and History by Maurice Barley ($6)

Discovering Timber Framed Buildings by Richard harris ($7)

Best of luck, and hopefully someone here can offer better informaton.

[irishserb]

I posted the last instalment of “The Comm’s Station” on my blog at:

https://irishserb.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-comms-station-journey-home-part-3.html

It was a fight with the greenies, heres a couple pics.

More pics and story on the blog.

 

Thanks for looking.

irishserb

 

[irishserb]

Thanks, I haven’t roled the dice on the APCs yet.  I have three current possibilities, but have a couple factions to add, that could be involved.

[irishserb]

Yes, I think foam would be the way to go with some detail being made of bass wood and maybe some brass wire.

[irishserb]

I revisit this idea with some frequency, and if the Eureka figs had still been available, would probably have done it several years ago.  If I did it today, I’d probably start with the Crooked Dice figs and try to find other sources to supplement them.  28mm would be my scale as opposed to 15, as all of my fantasy and sci-fi stuff is in 28mm, which makes building the terrain and other stuff more fun for me.

My preference is heavily in favor of the 1968 version of POTA, and I would base an ape city on the style of that presented in the film, but would make it more vertical and in some ways more jungle-like.

I’d probably include the humans as depicted in the movies, but haven’t given much thought as to specific figures, probably using a variety of historical pre-gunpowder peasants and sci-fi cultist types for the core of the figs.

Organization for the ape army would be rather simple, as they weren’t built around fighting other armies.  I don’t see them as having complex organizations, so much as small teams and leaders, maybe something like squads building up to companies, but probably not with platoon type structures, or larger organizations.

I’ve never read the orignal book or other writing associated with the series, so my only inspiration is from the movies, and at that, mostly from my perspective seeing the movies as a child.

[irishserb]

I posted the report for the next scenario in my post apoc campaign.  The Confederation troops encounter some resistence, while starting their trip back home from the comms station.  Story and more pics on my blog at:

The Comms Station: The Descent (part 2)

Thanks for looking.

irishserb

[irishserb]

Thanks!!

I still love those old Imperial Guard figs.  In general, I much prefer their old figs to the newer stuff.

Inside the building is communications equipment that still talks to functioning satellites, and provides a means to talk to anyone else with access to them.  It may provide access to other resources, but I haven’texplored those ideas yet.  There is also something powering the site, which could be of interest.

Funny that you mention “Amtrak Wars”.  I created most of my PA world and factions before discovering the series, but in reading it, there were several instances, where it felt very familiar.  Plus, you might eventually see a couple things in my games taken almost directly from the books.

They didn’t occupy the site, as that simply wasn’t part of the mission.  Go out, add it to the maps, see what it is, report.  They found it opened up (dice), and do have the ability to lock in down until they return.  Their expectation is that noone else can really do that, and I don’t know if that is true yet (back to die rolls).

They still have to get back to share what they have discovered.  I’ll start that process next weekend.  We’ll see where the story takes itself.

[irishserb]

I tend to react to tutorials using airbrushes the same way.

I’ve got two or three of them downstairs, and haveat least hundreds of hours with an airbrush, You can do some fantastic stuff with one, but, I don’t enjoy it.  Having to fiddle with the airbrush turns fun into work.

It is one of those thinks that makes me feel less connected to the “art” of the process, making the models and miniatures feel more “manufactured” than “created”.  I’ve considered this at some length, and realize that it is just a tool like the paint brush, or my knives and sanders for making terrain, but never the less, I find it to be the experience of using it to be dispassionate.  Somehow, for me, it feels like “cheating”.

I would say that if you don’t feel inclined to try it, you aren’t missing anything.

[irishserb]

Regarding playing AI, is playing AI inherently different than playing any other intelligence?

I mean, if you endeaver to play different armies based on historical cultural and doctrinal charactistics, then isn’t playng AI conceptually the same thing?   The player just steps into a diffrent “culture” and doctrine.  No?

Or if the AI resorces/weapons/elements function autonamously on the table, then isn’t the player simply playing at higher command level,  acting at whatever level real humans would act to direct the AI.

My impression is that if players are playing the AI, the “magic” of the game is to be able to step into the “character” of the AI, and executing action consistent with the AI behavior, rather than just watching as if a spectator at a sporting event.

The trick is in defining the parameters of AI behavior, if particularly different than a human, but that would be generally the same as establiching how a human player, would play ants, a Tyranosaurus, or any truly alien species, would it not?

[irishserb]

In my homebrew rules, they are just aircraft, with their own relative performance ratings.  I tend to approach them much like John suggests up above.

[irishserb]

For whatever it is worth, I tend to enjoy threads like this where gamers share their thoughts and preferences about tehe hobby, even if we don’t all make the same assumptions.

In my case, when you say “workhorse” rules, I tend to think of something that I think fits your (Ivan’s) description maybe with the addition of the word “dependable”, modeling whatever period/setting/amies that I am trying to play in a way that I understand.

I tend to be suspect of what people sometimes refer to as “clever” or “innovative” mechanisms, as I often find issues with abstractions associated with them.   “Workhorse” rules tend to be my preference for most of my gaming, though in my case, that means either my own or a friend’s homebrew rules.  Unfortunately, given that neither is published, my offering doesn’t add much to the conversation.

[irishserb]

Ivan,  I would probably prefer the “phase” option over the “unit” option.

I think it would offer a more fluid representation of what happens in during combat.  With the “unit” option, where a unit would move and fire before other units do either, makes me feel more like I trying to beat the rules, rather than my opponent.

I’m also considering this with respect to 20th century warfare (what I play the most), which I realize might not be the target period(s).

[irishserb]

I don’t know about being a true wargamer, but that was a shameful rant.  Where was the exagerated, inflammatory outrage?  There was no OMG factor what so ever.

Shameful.

[irishserb]

I find that it varies with the writing style of the author.  One type of AAR written by one person will work for me, written by another in the same style, it will not.  I generally like a story form, rather than an description of the rules mechanisms and die results, but  again, it is all dependent on the author.

Some photos are always nice, hopefully both overalls, and some close-ups for a little atmosphere.

 

[irishserb]

I’m currently watching it, seven episodes in so far.  I found the first three episodes a little slow, but was interested enough to keep going, and am enjoying it.

While I loved Star Wars at age 12, I didn’t see Empire until the late 1980s, so I’m not really a big Star Wars fan, though I have watched most of the movies and series at this point.

Thus far, Andor strikes me as being “different’ from the rest of the Star Wars, and I am curious to see where and how it goes.

[irishserb]

Lots of badly painted micro-armor for for an east front Barbarossa campaign, and both 15mm and 6mm 1950s Cold War aircraft.

[irishserb]

What a great game!  Thanks so much for sharing it.

I struggle with the idea that every game has to just be a big battle, and really enjoy that there is more to the game than that.

 

[irishserb]

Hi all,

I just wanted to share that Old Glory followed up with me regrding the True North line of figures,  filling me in on the status of the figures, and making every effort to put me in touch with the new owner.

The True North line has a new owner, and the line will be made available again in the not too distant future, likely with new product/codes that were never released.

Teresa at Old Glory was really exceptional in her follow-up, going above and beyond what any customer could reasonably ask for.

I just want to put the word out there that Old Glory was a absolute class act in responding to my question, and I am completely impressed with the level of customer care offered.

Brian O’Leary

[irishserb]

Norm, I check your site, more or less, on a daily basis on a machine with Norton and have never gotten the message.  I have checked it several times since this thread was started, without warning.

If Norton has flagged it, should I not be getting the warning?

 

[irishserb]

Thanks for the replies and ideas, not sure what route to take yet.

I tried contacting “Old Glory 25s”regarding the status of the True North figs and got a fast reply saying that another company was selling them, and the name of a caster that might be making them.

I was also directed to  a different e-mail address for more information.  That address was to a different “Old Glory” e-mail address (merrimac shipyards), but it turned out that the account was closed.  So, no info on True North.

Funny that wanting to give a company my money for figs that they have is so chanllenging.

In any event thanks again for the suggestions and information.

Brian/irishserb

[irishserb]

A little late, but I would probaby go with the Cromwell, more of them were built than any particular mark of Churchill, and it was medium tank as were those mentioned for the other nations.

[irishserb]

Just wanted to share that Miscmini.com came through for me and added British type “D” raoundels, French, and Soviet Cold war decals to their site at the following link:

https://miscmini.com/shop/ols/products/modern-british-french-soviet-roundels-stars-1-slash-100-1-slash-144-1-slash-300-scale-decals

I bought a couple sets of each, and they are very nice.  And, service was outstanding also.

[irishserb]

Norm, Your post is much appreciated, as I’ll be jumping into Barbarossa later in the year, and am gobbling up pretty much everything I can read on it at the moment.

[irishserb]

Fantastic work!  I love that large Zone inhabitant.  Maybe its friendly?

[Author]

Posts