Stargrave: Loot Tokens

 

These are 6 Loot Tokens I have just recently made for playing Stargrave with,

Very simple to make, a base from card with half a wooden Jenga block stuck on top.

Then some weapon parts from my bits box and some cereal card to make the crates look more...cratey.

Data Loot tokens I made to look roughly like a consul of some kind, just used very small bits of cereal card painted appropriately.

A quick drybrush all over to give them a slightly worn look and some wash to bring out the details, finished with a bit of varnish.

Could easily use these in 5Parsecs as well. 

Seems that I am not really getting my finger out when it comes to actually playing a game of either Stargrave or 5Parsecs at moment, its because real life has opened its ugly maw and swallowed me whole. Work and elderly parents are really taking up my time and they have to be the priority, however I will get to it eventually.

Cheers for looking in.

Folly Number Two: Solo Wargaming?

Another "Folly" that has been rumbling along in the background for the past few months has been my attempt to organise solo wargaming. Mr Don Featherstone has been scribbled in and drawn upon for the past few months on and off.

I've produced a range of materials to help me play solo, from cards to maps and have been researching information from a variety of sources. Mighty Empires-GW, Solo Wargaming-Featherstone, Oathmark series- McCollough and of course old ideas I had of my own and things gleaned from the internet. 

So I have produced a map using my D&D map making cards and laminated that. Then using the Mighty Empires markers I drew some tokens for villages, cities, fortresses, armies and direction arrows.

I drew the tokens much larger and then shrank them once coloured on my printer.

As I was going to use these with 10mm Romans/Celts I created some unit cards, as Don would have done, to enable secret deployment.

Then tactical cards to aid in play once the game has started. Now these are the most problematic part of the process, basically they might well give silly orders to the AI army that follows them. Only time will tell. 

The illustration gives movement instructions and underneath are further combat suggestions.

Finally I added something I made a very long time ago. It is a set of terrain cards that creates a very wide number of possibilities. I did not design these I found them here , so thanks very much to Avian.

These cards by Avian I have used loads of times and they work really well in my opinion.

Finally Don Featherstone talks about having a system of rewards and fines for units that do well or poorly and also weather related tables etc. Well the Oathmark books have a wealth of material about this and other ideas, most notably battles that are linked together through scenarios. So I will be using Joe's rules to help create a more interesting battlefield development.

There you go, my latest folly, but not the last.

More to come next month.

Frostgrave Second Edition, Solo Wargaming and Scum and Villainy

 

Last month I went a bit purchase crazy, getting my grubby mitts on the three books feature here and, not shown, a plastic gang of Soldiers Knights and Wizards for Frostgrave.

Looking forward at having a go at running a game of Scum and Villainy sometime in the future, and hopefully this week, "covid" allowing will be playing its inspiration by playing Blades in the Dark, run by the same system, Forged in the Dark.

Mr Featherstone's book has been a revelation to me and a source of great inspiration, I have made cards and written notes for myself to play more organised solo battles. Also, not shown here, I have been re-reading my old copy of the original Mighty Empires book and been suitably inspired by that too. Watch this space for further develpments, as have been organising my 10mm Roman and Briton armies.

Been looking forward to getting my hands on this, although have had little time to read too much as yet.

Oathmark: Battles of the Lost Age by Joseph A. McCullough

I bought Oathmark: Battles of the Lost Age by Joseph A McCullough the other day. 

(The first plus was that it arrived very quickly, within 5 days of ordering.)  

I have read the basic rules and it sounds a very interesting game, its clearly set out, and would expect nothing less from Mr McCullough and Osprey. I have much enjoyed playing Frostgrave off and on for the last 5 years and this lovely hard backed book delivers clear and concise rules without huge amounts of over complicated examples.

The system runs on a D10 set of dice and your not likely to ever need more than 5 of them at any one time. Troops are organised into units and models are removed from play when they become casualties. There is also rules for characters, monsters (this is fantasy after all) and even the ability to split units mid game, which will be interesting to read.

However for me the attraction of Oathmark is the campaign system which I am hoping will give life to interconnected games and promote story telling.

As I already play battle games like KOW and Saga I'm not exactly sure where Oathmark fits into it all, but I will certainly be trying out the rules with the figures I have and seeing how it plays. 

If it grabs me anything like Frostgrave did its onto a winner and then I will have a crisis on my hands as most of my models are based for KOW!

North Star Military Figures Limited do a lovely range of figures for the game, Goblins, Humans, Elves and Dwarves, very reasonably priced. More temptation!

Anyway when I've read through the whole book and digested it thoroughly I'll try to give it a review in my own stuttering and befuddled manner.

Cheers Darryl

Home Made War Game Mat

A couple of weeks back I decided to finally have a go at making myself a war games mat. Since it was finished it has been rolled up and left on top of a cupboard to see how well it would do when unraveled.

Its only 3ft by 4ft, sort of thing for playing Saga on. 

I was very much aware that I didn't want to have too much flock on the mat, as it would probably all fall off, so i didn't put too much on. Also I wanted to make sure it looked different from my boards.

I made it to take either to the club or my friend Mick's when we play Saga.

With some terrain on it looks fine to me, may have a go at ironing the reverse at some point as I forgot too when I was making it.

It was made from a heavy painters cloth from EBay, which bought about 4 years ago, yeah I like to work nice and slow... 

The painters cloth, cut up gave me 3 mats 3ft by 4ft and one that I may get a 2ft by 2 ft mat from.

I covered the cloth with a thin layer of decorators caulk with some brown acrylic paint mixed in.

Then I sprinkled and pressed into the caulk a good smattering of flock, dark, medium to bright green.

Then later when it was dried I decided it needed some more flock so added some more with PVA watered down to hold in place.

All in all, this is a mat that will be an experiment and get used until it falls to bits. One thing I must do is secure the one edge that is not hemmed. Will be used next time I play away from home, will review it then. 

Flat Development: formally Known as Standees

After my bit of an experiment the other day with a few different Standees, I really hate that term, so from now on I will refer to them as "Flats", I started to think how I could use the idea to help out in any of my games, particularly D&D.

So first off I made 10 Trolls and their bases.I soon realised that I was never going to have to make these 10 bases ever again, which I liked, as in a game of D&D it was very unlikely I would ever field more than 10 such models.

Then it struck me I could use 5 models to create a KOW regiment of Trolls, just have to make a regimental base with slots and away we go. That's for another time though.

Then I needed aChuul for game last week so thought, here's an opportunity to see how well this works I'll make a Flat Chuul or 2, actually I copied the sheet 4 times, but decided 2 was enough for the game.

Larger bases for these, I have only made 5 of these for future use. Interestingly I painted the Trolls with acrylics, GW paints but the Chuul I did with cheap old water colours and were a lot quicker to complete.

Here they are getting to know Teclis, for size.

One thing led to another and I started to think how I could use the Trolls en mass so started to plan a scenario where the Trolls were cast as victims and my PCs would come to their aid and gain there friendship, which could be useful. That way I get to use all 10 Trolls plus their leader, as below. 

Flats all separated, this is another aspect of them I love, they are so easy to store. 

All of it in one simple box, great.

Here are a few WIP shots, so you can see how I made the bases.

In total I made 5 very large

5 cavalry

10 large

15 small

Which I think will do me.

Fresh from the laminator before cut.

I have in the pipeline a Bugbear, Umber Hulk and a Otyugh, should be all done next week.