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.

Briton Warband and Longhouse

 

Painted up my barn/longhouse and stuck it alongside my newly based and tufted Briton 10mm 1500 point KOW army.

Very happy with how it looks and now intend creating 3 or 4 more to create a little Hamlet or village.

I undercoated it black, then overbrushed some brown/mocha emulsion. Then I built up with dry brushing a a lighter brown emulsion and finally a light brush with Egyptian Cotton (Dulux test pot).

Think the tufts and rebasing the Celts have really brought the army together.

May have to create some Roman buildings now too.

Buildings, but very small

 

Yesterday I found some templates for some 1:185 scale or 10 mm/warmaster size buildings and launched into creating some cottages etc before I knew what I was doing.

Cardboard carcass, cereal packaging, worked over with matchsticks and tapers.

Das and PVA was used to sculpt the rough thatched roof and some PVAcrete on the base for strength.

Sorry, out of focus: cereal card was used for the tiles a small cube of 5 mm foamboard for the chimney, covered in PVAcrete and finally a cocktail stick stuck along the ridge.

I am going to make 5 of these initially then see how they go.

Looking forward to painting them.

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.

New Hill, new Method

This is a prototype for a set of hills I will be making soon. They will be constructed from insulation foam. Yes, I was given some so no purchase here.

This one is a bit square, my excuse is that I was experimenting to find out just how it would work and had thought I might place 2 close together to create a larger hill. I'll probably not bother with that.

So the next will be a bit more sculpted and smoothed. I do intend making some without any rocky outcrops too.

Also, very importantly, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't making a hill so steep that models would slip off or down. As it happens I'm happy with the test.

This angle is the only slightly dodgy one, and I know where I went wrong, so shouldn't happen on any of the other hills.