Friday Workbench 31 May

I was intending my post today to be AARs of the ADLG games I played yesterday. But I forgot my camera, so there were no pics. I was giving my opponents some practice ahead of the club's one-day competition later this month - the theme is late medieval, so I took a Burgundian Wars Swiss army.

My first game was against Mike R's Order of St John; followed by Dave S's Medieval Spanish (Castille) list. I lost both games, but could have won both if my dice rolls for some crucial combats hadn't been so awful.

However, it was a useful learning experience for me as I now know how to adjust my list for future games - less pikes, more halberdiers (and upgrade some to Elite) and more light troops to make the army a bit larger and more resilient.

With that wittering out of the way, on with today's workbench post.

Today I have mostly been drybrushing the Gaslands scrapyard terrain pieces. I've also glued the spare cars onto some of the bases to add some height.

Tomorrow will see me giving them all a dirty brown wash and when that is dry I will be adding some static grass tufts.

Bank Holiday KotB Big Game 26 May 2019

I mentioned in my last post that yesterday was a big game of King of the Battlefield at the club. I got there slightly before 1pm and helped setting up the tables.

The game started shortly before 2pm, with 5 players:

Clive - British and Hessians; Right Wing
Stan - Prussians; Left Wing

Mike R - Austrians and some Russians (on a flank march, arriving quite late); Right Wing
Richard - half of my Russians; Centre
Me - the other half of my Russians; Left Wing

We were joined by three other players at various points - Jerry took over the centre portion of Clive and Stan's army; Ian G arrived with more British and took the left wing, with a big cavalry reinforcement donated to Clive's right wing; and Mike C with more Austrians on our right wing (with a small reinforcement of cavalry sent to my wing), who arrived just as Mike R's Russian flank march arrived on table.

It was a fabulously chaotic game. Clive and I both started out with equally poor dice rolling for our combats, which saw a fairly even distribution of units leaving the table. Unfortunately my dice rolls didn't improve as the game went on, whereas Clive's improved significantly. The one bit of good dice luck that I did have early on was that all my control tests for redeploying infantry from column to line and unlimbering my artillery passed on the first attempt. We did have some wonderful cavalry melees though.

Further down the table, everyone seemed to be having better dice luck, with less units being killed early on.

I took a fair number of photos throughout the game - here they are for your delight.

 

 

Yes! I've killed all of Clive's cavalry!

Yoiks! He's got more!

I'm sure we had more infantry than that a few minutes ago...

Hmm, the Serbskiy hussars are dead. I guess we will be too, soon.

I thought there was another gun in this battery?

Crikey!

 

Phew! Austrain cavalry are here - guess I'll scoot out of the way!

Hah! So long and farewell, British guard infantry!

As we called an end to the game (shortly after 9pm), I was left with 4 unbroken infantry units and 5 generals. Having started with 16 infantry regiments, 12 cavalry regiments, 3 Cossack regiments and 4 artillery batteries. And a reinforcement of 5 Austrian cavalry regiments.

OMG! She's Alive!

aka the hitmen you hired all failed!

It has been rather a long time since I posted last, mostly because I haven't been doing anything hobby-wise since Salute. Until today, that is.

The other day, someone on the club's email group was proposing a multi-player Gaslands game. Just over a year ago, I had painted up a bunch of cheap cars with the intention of making some junkyard terrain pieces. But, inevitably, never got around to doing so. Today I finally made a start on doing so.

As well as the cars, I had cut a bunch of EPVC bases. I glued most of the cars onto these (leaving a few loose, to be added on top of piles later). I then left them for a couple of hours for the glue to cure. It was at this stage that I realised a big mistake I'd made - on the multi-car bases, I should have pre-textured or at least painted the central areas so that white didn't show in the gaps between cars. Oh, well.

I made up some basing gunk - a mix of brown acrylic frame sealant (from Poundland); some bird sand and a little bird grit (both from Wilko) and a splash of water to help make it a little more fluid for spreading. And then I got on with the job of adding gunk to the bases, including in the narrow gaps.

And here's the workbench after all that was done:

I also decided to test glue a strip of scouring pad onto an old painting stick (aka tongue depressor) to see how well the glue would hold it:

The plan is to make up a bunch of hedges for the club's terrain box. If this glue holds the strip firmly, I'll cut a load more and get them glued to sticks, trim them unevenly, add basing gunk, hit them with brown spray paint  and then flock them.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday in the UK, so my plan is to join in a big game of King of the Battlefield at the club - my Russians deserve an outing, having missed the games earlier this year. Of course, that means there won't be any progress on the terrain until Tuesday.