What I've Been Working On

 As it says somewhere on this page, this blog is dedicated to what I'm doing in the wargaming hobby at the moment. This post covers a broad spectrum of the hobby. So, let's get started.

 

 Here is the Bristol Scout D. This is the first airplane model that I designed.

 This is the Roland DII fighter. Not a very good fighter, but a cool looking one. This model was designed by myself and is 1/285 scale, as are the next two.

 This is the AGO CI observation plane. Only about 60 were made, but I think it is one of the most unique planes of the First World War.

 Here is the Vosin 3, the first bomber of the Great War. It is a French aircraft, but the British built 50 of them for their use and this one is marked as a British plane. All of the above models will be available (as STL files) from 4P Models on Wargame Vault.

 

 How's this for different, Martian tripod walkers from "The War of the Worlds". This is a model I designed for 4P's Halloween bundle.

To switch gears, this is a 1/600 scale cardstock model of the Queen of the West, based on the Osprey painting. I designed this (and many other) model nearly 30 years ago. He originals are in 1/300 scale, but by printing at 50% I reduced it to the smaller scale (I found 1/300 too large for the table).

  Here is a generic ram, based on illustrations from contemporary newspaper articles.

This is the CSS Arkansas. Had I been doing these models today, they would have been for 3D printing, but that wasn't an option back then.

 Switching gears again, next up are women's American tackle football teams. This is the uniform of the Rocky Mountain Thunderkatz, my local team (only about two hours from my place in the sticks).

 

 

These are the Wasatch Warriors, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, I believe.

 

Next, is the Kristianstad Predators. They are from Sweden.

 This is the uniform of the Brno Amazons, from the Czech Republic. The four photos above show the standard electric football figurines.

 These are the Rodgau Pioneers, from Germany. The left figure was posed by myself, from an STL I actually paid for (a rare occurrence). The right figure is the QB that Tudor Games sells.

 These are the Helsinki Wolverines, from Finland. Both figures are different poses of the STL mentioned above.

 The final photos are of the Tabor Taborites, of the Czech Republic. This is the only team that is not an actual women's football team. This is a conjectural uniform based on the town colors and history of Tabor. They were suggested by a dear friend, so I painted them. I also wanted to show all of the poses I did.

I hope you enjoyed this variety. Next time, I'll be back to more ship models.

Happy Gaming! 

French Predreadnoughts

 Over the summer I created over a hundred STL files that are now or will soon be for sale exclusively by 4 P Models at Wargames Vault. The models are 1/2400 scale but will print well up to 1/1200 scale. Now that summer has wound down, I have had the opportunity to paint some of these new models. So, here are some of the French predreadnoughts along with some cruisers.

Suffren

Iena

Charlemagne

Bouvet

Charles Martel 

Carnot

Brennus

Jaureguiberry

Massena

Amiral Charner

Pothuau

Dupuy De Lome

Over the next few months, I will post more photos of the models of different nationalities.

Galleys and Galleons - There Must Be Something Wrong With Our Bloody Ships Today

 I ventured out to the Barn today to give Galleys  and Galleons, by Ganesha Games a try. The game seems fairly simple, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The primise is that the active player desides how many "Action" dice he wants to roll (1, 2, or 3) and he can perform one action for each die roll equal to or higher than the vessel's quality. This means the player can take one action, (turn, shoot, reload, grapple, etc.) for each passing die. However, if  an activation roll has to dice below the ship's quality, the opposing player becomes active. But, before that happens, any ship on the side that has failed the ativation roll must move any of its vessels that have not yet moved in the turn. That's all they can and must do, move. Unless a vessel has a special ability that allows it, a ship can only make 1 forward move and 1 direction change per turn.

A carrack - all models by Valiant Enterprises Ltd.

With that understanding, Let's look at the game. I pitted 3 Race Built galleons versus 1 War Galleon, 1 Carrack and 1 merchant. The Race Built ships can spend and activation die to move an extra short move during its turn. The Carrack can only turn 1 point instead of two. The other two galleons have no modifiers to their movement.

A Race Built Galleon

Each side started in opposite corners, the Race Builts won the initative, and moved first.

Numbers and Compass Rose by Litko

Ship 1 rolled two passes on activation and used one for the Razee bonus (the extra short move).

Movement and shooting ranges are measured with the three range sticks. The red one is for long range / fast movement, the green is for short range / slow movement, and white (not shown) is for medium range or movement (note: the colors are notspecified, its just what I did). In this instance, ship one passes on its second activation because it doesn't have anything else it needs to do.

Ship 3 rolled triple 5s. This is 3 activation passes and any pair or more causes the wind to change direstion by a compas point (not the two shown above). So, he makes a turn to starboard and uses the Razee bonus move.

The other side rolled poorly, failing two of the three activation dice. Ship 4 (the one rolled for) got to use its one pass to turn, then all three made their mandatory forward move.

Skipping forward a bit, Side 123 is moving between the islands while side 456 tries to regroup. Then, disaster!

Ship 1 fails on two activation dice. Since he was the first roll for their side it means ships 2 and 3 can only move straight ahead. So, while Captain Foghead contemplates the shapes of the clouds, his ship plows into the island at fast speed. The Queen will not be amused. For his one action, ship one fires a shot for no effect.

Fleet 456, gaining some semblence of order (for a moment), have Ship 1 nearly surrounded. Ship 2 is sailing to the hinterland and Ship 3 has taken up residence on Gilligan's Island. Fleet 456 fires at Ship 1 and inflicts one point of damage.

While ships 4 and 6 merrily sail on their way, ships 1 and 5 continue to fail activation rolls and sail off the edge of the board. Neither the Queen or the King will be amused. (Ship 5 was the War Galleon and managed to keep him self well away from the two merchant ships he was supposed to protect, as well as from the enemy for the most part.)

And Ship 2 watches his intended prey sail off into the sunset.

As I said at the beginning, there is more here than meets the eye. I now see that rolling three activation dice when a ship only needs one, is courting disaster. Rolling one die may mean that that ship only moves straight ahead, but it will give the other ships a chance to activate. It is also wise to choose which ship to activate wisely.

The mechanics are easy to grasp and the rules are generally well written, though there are a few holes needing patching (for example, they allow chain shot to damage rigging, but don;t tell you how this damage affects the vessel. In all other instances, damage is damage which affect the ships overall ability to function and is allocated to the vessal as a whole and not a particular area of the ship.)

When I bought these rules, I was looking for something to recreate "Spanish Armada" style actions. I think with the "Special Rules" (like the Razee option) and a couple of other minor tweaks these rules would make for an interesting fleet game.

In the future, I'll do two things differently. First, I'll make square measuring sticks so that they don't roll off the table. Second, I'll make 1 and 2 point turning guages.

Thank you, and happy gaming.