Projects just ticking along

With Dave away for six weeks our regular Chain of Command games have been on hold. I've also had a bit of time away myself, but there have been a few projects just moving along at a steady pace in the background. 

Last year at the MOAB show in Sydney I bought twenty of Eureka Miniature's 28mm Ragged Continentals figures. My intention was to paint them in various colours to use as additional militia figures. However, Brendan Morrisey kindly pointed out that militia were very unlikely to descend to such a ragged state, as their campaigning was nowhere near as arduous or as long as that experienced by the Continentals. So I decided to paint them up as all part of the same unit, using the 1778 uniforms as the base colour scheme. 

Originally, I bought twenty figures, because a militia unit for Sharp Practice is made up of a group of ten. However, a regular unit like the Continentals has only eight figures per group. So, little surprise, this inspired the purchase of a few more figures - another four men of the line so that I can make up three groups of eight, a drummer, two leaders and an ensign. This hobby is so predictable. 

From what I understand, once on campaign the Continentals were most likely to be unable to replace their small clothes like waistcoat/breeches and trousers/overalls and so would have worn civilian versions, while their hats and coats tended to be the most commonly provided items. So for the next batch of painting, I'm going to mix up the colours a bit for these clothing items to break up the uniformity even more.

I've begun playing the Westwind Konigsberg campaign for Chain of Command with a friend, one that I've not been recording for the blog for various reasons - we play at a venue not great for photography and as I've been teaching my friend the rules I haven't had time to make notes or take pictures. The second game in the campaign features a large girls' school, the Kronprinzessin-Cäcilie-Schule, and I've pondered how best to represent it. Here is a pre-war image and as you can see the building is substantial.

I wasn't aiming to replicate it exactly, but a building in the Sarissa range caught my eye. Described as a Russian town house it looked like something I could make use of in several different setting across eastern Europe. Two of them together could work well to represent the school.

While I think it will serve that purpose well enough, I can see quite a lot of uses for these, so a worthwhile addition to the terrain collection.

Talking of terrain, I have an article in the most recent edition of Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine (#137) on building huts for the Far East. 

The article is a tutorial on how I've used textured craft paper to enhance MDF buildings, as I've done with this one below.

Aside from playing Chain of Command I've also been playing a lot of O Group at the club. Two of us have worked our way through all the games in the Normandy supplement and are close to completing all those in the 1941-43 eastern front supplement. We are playing in 15mm with my opponent's vast Second World War collection, which he has rebased from Flames of War to suit O Group. Difficult to photograph and we've spent much time getting ourselves accustomed to the game mechanics, so that's where our focus has been. 

I've also been playing regular games working our way through the Undaunted Stalingrad campaign for a second time. My opponent is a board gaming friend I've been playing against for more than thirty years. We played through the campaign last year and we've decided to start again this year, but swap sides. I like the system, it's simple, but with plenty of nuance. Perhaps best of all, it plays quickly. There are a fair few abstractions, but for such a playable game I can live with these.

So, no big projects to report, but plenty of small ones just ticking along, hence it's been a bit quiet here on the blog. Dave is back from Europe soon and so it won't be long before we will get back to the Scottish Corridor campaign and more regular game reports.