Sunday 28 February 2021

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.

Friday 26 February 2021

Oathmark Folly?: One Amongst Many



I realised some time ago, perhaps had already known really, that I can get genuinely excited about a new project. Excited in the same way I used to get excited as a youngster, as a teenager. 


Thumbing through Oathmark by Joseph McCullough a few weeks ago, I had just that feeling.


I love Joe's games, but recently have lost the umph to get one played, new Frostgrave languishes on my shelf, Rangers - much loved, sits unplayed, Oathmark also.


Looking through the book it came to me that I could create 15mm scale armies to play with. Perhaps just two so that when Pandemic allows I can play with a friend. I love the idea of 15mm armies and the notion of playing a campaign/narative style wargame. 


Also I enjoy the challenge of designing and making the models to play with.


So my challenge this Autumn is to create two armies to start playing Oathmark with, before Stargrave hits the stands in April. 


So interlaced with my mad ramblings are some shots of the 15mm "card " flat models I have been making for a while now. I have halved the base size and made trays to move them about, they are very light which is a problem still to be resolved.


So far I have constructed:
20 Spearmen
20 Warriors
20 Archers
10 Linebreakers
1 Wizard



In the pipeline are their opponents, the Oathbreakers, undead army, still being designed.
These humans are the 30mm designs I posted a while back shrunk on my printer down by 50%.
It makes the drawings seem more detailed as the the marks are all crammed together in a small space. I believe this is a comic book trick and works well. 


The sheet I copied was already painted so they then just needed cutting, sticking on black card and gluing to a base. 70 models for the cost 2 sheets of A4 and some black card, very very cheap.


Also, by tilting them slightly across base you don't get "disappearing army syndrome" the curse of Flat armies, Ha :-)









Will post updates on progress in coming weeks.
Cheers all, stay safe.

 


Saturday 20 February 2021

D&D: River Sections

 


This is a set of four river sections I have made for my lad, to play D&D with but really they could be used for KOW or any wargaming system.




Just three straight...ish sections, each slightly different and one as a ford.



The one section with a curve to it, perhaps a bit clumsy now I look at it.


Some details.



Pieces all put together as a stream.





Before I finish this post I would like to point out that I know water is not blue. I live in Yorkshire for heavens sake. Its artistic license.



Due to covid these are going to be parceled up and sent via mail to my son, bit nervous about that!


All the tufts and foam flocks used in these models came from Geek Gaming.