Returning to painting Anglo-Zulu war units

Anglo-Zulu War Project

This past week, my Anglo-Zulu War project returned to the painting desk, and it is now slowly getting closer to completion. I think I have around five more units to finish, including some artillery, but this week’s focus was on building and painting some supply wagons.

Four wagons completed.

A close up. I am keeping my painting very simple and loose for this project.

The wagons themselves are made from blocks of wood which are shaped. The horses, oxen, wheels, and crew are taken from a wagon set. I found the soft plastic wagons that came with the wagon set had too many fiddly pieces that needed gluing together, and would probably be too fragile for my liking. So I opted for my usual approach of making the wagon bodies from wood and adding the other components.

The wagons are not glued to their bases, allowing them to be removed and used as defensives when required.

The wagons are not stuck to their bases - another reason for using a robust wooded approach in their construction.

The British forces seek protection behind the wagons.

I now have some more British units on the painting table, as I aim to complete this project by the end of the year.

All the completed British forces so far.

Napoleonic Artillery

Before I returned to painting units for the Anglo-Zulu War project, I was fortunate enough to pick up some second-hand Napoleonic artillery online at a good price, with the added bonus of low postage costs.

Artillery additions.

My rather rag-tag Napoleonic armies have been in need of some artillery for a long time. The infantry at the heart of these armies consist mainly of old 30mm Spencer-Smith plastic figures, which were kindly gifted to me by John of Wargame Hermit blog around a decade ago. Until now, I have been making do with artillery bases borrowed from the Spencer-Smith Seven Years' War armies.

The newly acquired artillery and crews are mainly 25mm Minifigs, along with one set of Hinchliffe figures (I believe). Although these figures are smaller than my 30mm Spencer-Smith infantry, the difference is not particularly noticeable once they are on the tabletop. I also help disguise height difference by giving them a slight boost in height by packing out their bases by a millimetre or two.

Spencer-Smith infantry unit beside the 25mm artillery (a wargamer's view).

Most of the figures were showing signs of wear and had clearly seen plenty of action on the tabletop over the years. Some needed only a few minor paint touch-ups here and there, while others required a more extensive repainting. Anyway, they are a useful addition to my rag-tag Napoleonic forces.

Battle of Britain Campaign – Game 8

I thought it was time to return to my Battle of Britain campaign this week. It feels like it has been quite a while since I had last played a game. Looking back through my blog posts, I found the last game (Game 7) had actually taken place way back in July!

Time for an air wargame after a break of some months and weeks. Drawing courtesy of ChatGPT using one of my game photographs.

Fortunately, the campaign is an easy one to pick up again. Everything is tracked on a single page, and the bombing missions for each campaign week are randomly determined by dice rolls.

The campaign map and tracker.

For a reminder of the campaign setup, see here. The games use Warlord Games' Blood Red Skies rules from Airfix's Battle of Britain boxed set.

Background

During the week of 2nd–8th September, the Luftwaffe have returned to bombing London after spending the previous three weeks (12th August–1st September) targeting RAF airfields and RDF (Radio Direction Finding) installations. These earlier raids had only achieved partial success, but enough to give the Luftwaffe an advantage in this game with RAF aircraft having to start the game at low altitude.

The weather was clear, with just one cloud in the sky. The target is protected by a couple of barrage balloons and flak.

Forces

Luftwaffe:

1 × Heinkel He 111

1 × Dornier Do 17

3 × Messerschmitt Me 109

All the Luftwaffe pilots are rated as regular.

RAF:

2 × Spitfires

2 × Hurricanes

Both Hurricane pilots are regular, while the two Spitfire pilots are novices.

The Game

The game began with the RAF fighters scrambling to gain altitude quickly to engage the incoming Luftwaffe bombers. The Me 109s swept forward to intercept the attacking Spitfires with no success. While the Hurricanes took advantage of the solitary cloud, using it for cover.

The German bombers heading to their target.

The bomber escorts engage the RAF fighters.

Having survived the Me 109 escorts, the Spitfires managed to land some early hits on the He 111, with vapour appearing from one of its engines. The German fighters soon returned, shooting down one of the Spitfires and its novice pilot before the RAF could inflict any further damage on the bomber.

A Spitfire is shot down.

Emerging from the cloud, the Hurricanes launched an attack on the Do 17, damaging its engine. The bomber began losing altitude and would eventually crash.

The Dornier descends with both engines lost.

Once again, the Me 109s turned their attention to the Hurricanes, piling on the Boom tokens. In the rules these tokens represent the accumulated effects of light damage, pilot stress, dwindling ammunition and the breakdown of squadron cohesion during a dogfight. With the RAF fighters steadily accumulating tokens, it looked increasingly likely that they would be forced to break off their attack, leaving the remaining He 111 free to attack its target with just barrage balloons and flak for defence.

However, the RAF fighters regrouped for one final attempt to bring down the He 111. First, they had to run the gauntlet of the Me 109 escorts, but all three fighters successfully dodged the attacks and pressed home their own attacks against the bomber in quick succession.

RAF fighters swarm on the remaining German bomber.

The first attack forced the He 111 to lose altitude, leaving it vulnerable to the next fighter, and the attack proved decisive, bringing down the bomber before it could reach its target.

Wrap up

A successful defence of London with the RAF managing to disrupt the Luftwaffe raid, destroying both bombers despite losing a Spitfire early in the game.

For a while it looked as though the German escorts would succeed in driving off the RAF fighters. Fortunately, the RAF fighters were successful at evading the attacking Me 109s and delivered a decisive final attack.

Another ChatGPT drawing derived from a photograph of the game.

With such a gap between games, I may well play another game or two and make some good progress in the second half of the campaign.

Making a dice tower as a present

It was recently my daughter’s birthday, and as she started playing Dungeons & Dragons earlier this year. I thought it would be a good opportunity to make her something a little different for her present. I decided to build her a dice tower and paint up a Halfling miniature to represent her D&D character.

The completed dice tower. The blue spider is attached to the lid which can be removed.

The drawbridge is hinged to drop down.

After looking online for some ideas, I settled on a straightforward castle tower design, complete with a working drawbridge to catch the dice as they tumble through. I was going to use a combination of MDF and cardboard to make the tower.

The tower in use. The drawbridge has sides to keep the dice from escaping across the table.

The sloping shelves inside the tower, which break the dice’s fall as they travel through, were made from some leftover upholstery foam I had from a previous project. I cut the foam into triangles, covered them with grey felt, and glued them into position. The reason for this approach was that my daughter did not want a noisy dice tower. I also covered the inside surface of the drawbridge with felt to help minimise any noise.

A closeup of the painted halfling.

Before gluing the foam shelves in place, I decorated the tower with various bits and pieces from my bits box to give it a little more character and colour.

Battle of Nagakute 1584 Game Report

Over the past few weeks, I have been making some dice trays and mountainous-looking terrain, with the aim of getting my Samurai armies onto the tabletop for a game. I have decided to try a slightly modified version of the Arrowstorm rules, part of the "You Command" Series of rules by Daniel Mersey and on Wargames Vault.

The rules being used with some house rules for managing Sonae as units.

I have used the Arrowstorm rules before for some Hundred Years War games, and I have always thought they could work quite well for Samurai battles. There were a couple of things in particular that made them appealing for this use.

The first is the limited number of actions available to units. This naturally encourages units to operate in groups, which fits quite nicely with Sendoku period combined-arms formations (Sonae). For my house rules, a Sonae is treated as a single group consisting of Arquebusiers, Ashigaru and Samurai, with the three elements remaining together throughout the game.

The second is the tactics chart and limited number of orders. These provide some interesting choices during a turn, while also allowing units to be ordered more than once. I like this combination of limited choices and the ability to give units additional orders, as it provides more player decisions especially when all your units (Sonae) are essentially the same.

I made my own tactics chart so my Samurai messengers (Tsukai-ban) could fit and used as tokens.

I did make one house rule change to the combat rule. In the original rules, I found combat to be a little too advantageous for the attacker, as the attacking unit rolls for hits first and removes casualties before the defender gets a chance to respond. Instead any Ashigaru in the defending Sonae roll first, with casualties being removed from the attacking unit before the attacking Samurai and Ashigaru get to roll for their hits. Finally, any remaining Samurai defenders roll for their hits. This seems to even things up a bit.

This house rule is intended to reflect the role of the Ashigaru, particularly those armed with spears and longer weapons, in absorbing and holding off the initial attack before the Samurai became involved in the fighting.

A game underway using a mix of miniatures I have collected over the years. Most of the models are from Minifig S-Range, but there are some Dixon models, 25mm Minifig Samurai, and even some plastic 1:72 scale (which work best with the S-Range).

For the first game, I wanted something relatively simple, so I had a look through "The Samurai: A Military History" by S.R. Turnbull, and I found a useful diagram of the Battle of Nagakute, 1584. 

The battle was part of the Komaki Campaign, where a series of battles were fought between the forces of Hashiba Hideyoshi and those of Oda Nobukatsu and Tokugawa Ieyasu. The Battle of Nagakute ended in a convincing victory for Ieyasu.

A battle map from "The Samurai: A Military History".

Battle Setup

The game uses a hex grid with each Sonae consists of seven bases: two Missile bases, two Ashigaru bases, two Samurai bases and a commander base. 

Dice trays containing 3 dice are used to track the strength of each Sonae. Black dice represent the Arquebus and bow troops and start with 2 pips, white dice represent the Ashigaru with 3 pips, and red dice represent the Samurai with 5 pips. When the overall army commander is attached to a Sonae, the Samurai receive an additional pip, giving them a starting strength of 6.

These starting strengths are based on the equivalent unit strengths used in Arrowstorm for bows, spears and men-at-arms units.

The tabletop can end up looking a bit messy when two units move into the same hex as an enemy unit so they can engage in combat. The combined 14 bases do not fit in a hex. Fortunately, this does not matter, provided the commander's base and the dice tray are in the correct hex. Any remaining bases are simply positioned around or near the hex as neatly as possible.

For the game, initiative was diced for, with Ikeda winning the initiative. On the tabletop, Ieyasu's forces are represented by the red army, while Ikeda's forces are represented by the blue army.

The battle setup on the tabletop.

Battle Report

The battle opened with Ikeda's right wing advancing and engaging Li Naomasa. Ikeda's forces gradually gained the upper hand as additional Sonae from both forces were fed into the battle. Oda Nobuo moved up from Ieyasu's left reserve, while one of Ikeda's Sonae joined from the centre reserve.

The battle begins on Ikeda's right wing.

More Sonae move up to engage as Ikeda's forces gain the upper hand. (I should have painted the backs of the mountains!)

As more Sonae moved up to join the battle, the fighting gradually shifted towards the centre. Ikeda's right and centre continued to hold the advantage, while Ieyasu with his Sonae on the right flank eventually joined the fighting in the centre hoping his presence would help to turn the tide. Despite these reinforcements, the momentum still remained firmly with Ikeda's army. 

Ieyasu and his Sonae join the fighting in the centre.

Things are looking pretty bleak for Ieyasu.

In a final attempt to change the course of the battle, Ieyasu committed his last remaining Sonae to the fight. By this stage, his forces were heavily outnumbered, but they fought on bravely against the odds. In the end, however, numbers told. Ieyasu's Sonae was finally routed, and Ieyasu himself narrowly escaped being killed in the fighting.

All Ieyasu's Sonae are committed to battle.

The sound of musket shots,

Echo beneath the mountain tops.

The brave stand and banners fall,

While dice and fate decides it all.

Wrap up

A convincing win for Ikeda and a complete reversal of history!

The Arrowstorm rules create some interesting decisions throughout the game, particularly when picking the four orders on the tactics chart and having to trade-off between movement and combat. On more than one occasion one side or the other wasted a battle order as there were no units to battle.

When a Sonae has lost its Arquebus strength, it needs to close quickly with the enemy. Else, it risks having its remaining strength gradually whittled away by enemy shooting. 

The special tactics also add to the decision-making, as some tactics improve movement, combat or shooting, and they need to be used at the right moment to maximise their effect.

One of the things I particularly liked was being able to treat the Sonae as combined-arms units, with Arquebusiers, Ashigaru and Samurai all operating together. This seemed to work well on the tabletop and is the way I want my Samurai armies to operate.

The house rules all seemed to work well, with the changes to combat reducing the alpha strike effect and making it important to retain some of a Sonae's Ashigaru strength to help against combat attacks.

I now plan to carry on using these modified rules in a few One-Hour Wargames scenarios and see how they play out.

Making some dice trays to track unit strengths

I am currently playing around with some hex-based rules for my Sengoku period samurai armies, and one of the things I needed to do is keep track of each Sonae-sized unit's strength. I do this using three dice, with each die representing one of the three elements of the Sonae: arquebuses, Ashigaru armed with Yari and pikes and Samurai.

I have been using 12mm dice in different colours to track these strengths, and I soon found they were quite fiddly and easily knocked out of position when moving units around the tabletop.

Messing around with some Sendoku period rules.

There was definitely a need for some sort of dice tray. My initial thought was to make them from MDF, but I felt that they might end up being a little too bulky as well as fiddly to make. In the end I opted to make them from cardboard, the type you get from cereal packets, which proved to be to be a neat and tidy option.

The dice trays in use.

The base of each tray is cut from cardboard, measuring one and a half inches by half an inch, with an additional quarter of an inch on each side to form the walls. These dimensions work well for 12mm dice. Once cut out, the sides are bent upwards and strips of masking tape are used to hold the corners together.

The tray measurements are drawn on the cardboard and cut out.

The sides are bent upwards and strips of masking tape are used to hold the corners together. Masking tape proved to be easier than sticky tape as it can be repositioned if you attach it crooked.

All the trays prepared and tested with the dice.

Once all the trays have been assembled, they are glued to another piece of cardboard. This adds some strength to the tray base and also makes the remaining painting and flocking stages easier.

The trays are then given a coat of PVA glue. This does cause the cardboard sides to warp slightly, but once the glue has dried it is easy enough to bend them back into shape.

Once the glue is dry, the trays are painted green to match the bases of my armies, then a second coat of PVA glue is applied.

The trays are glued to another sheet of cardboard and given and overall coat of PVA glue.

The trays are given a coat of paint and once dry a second coat of PVA glue.

The final step is to glue flock to the sides of the trays. This serves two purposes. It ties the look of the trays in with the unit bases, while also adding some additional strength to the sides. Once the flock is in place and the glue dry, another coat of PVA glue is applied to seal it and hold everything securely in place.

After all the glue has dried, the individual trays can be carefully cut away from the cardboard they were mounted on.

Flock is added to the tray sides and sealed with a final coat of PVA glue.

The trays are cut away from the cardboard they are mounded on.

Having now used the trays in a couple of games, they have turned out to be a simple and cheap solution. The dice fit quite snugly inside the trays, but can still be easily lifted out, rotated to show a different face and placed back in position. On the occasions a tray gets knocked over, which has happened once, the dice remained in the tray.

The next post will likely be about one of the recent Samurai games.

The trays in action. It can get quite congested in a hex when two units melee.

Scratch building some mountains for my Samurai games

I am always impressed by the screen paintings of Samurai battles. Many of them depict armies fighting in mountainous terrain. So I thought it was time to have a go at making some mountains for the tabletop.

A scene from one of the screens I always enjoy looking at again and again.

I decided to use upholstery foam to make the mountains. It is a firm foam that can be shaped with a large, sharp knife, and for this job I used my sharpest carving knife. I cut out two identical pieces of foam, or as close to identical as possible, then placed them back to back and began carving them into shape.

The foam is carved using a large sharp knife.

Once I was happy with the shape, it was time to start painting. I use a household acrylic paint. I have a tin of green paint which I use for my basing and other terrain pieces so I have a consistent colour tone to my tabletop. When painting the foam I occasionally dipped my brush in water just to help make the paint flow better when using a scrubbing motion with my old brush.

Before the paint was dry, and it does take a long time to dry when applied to the foam, I added some brown paint which I blended in with the green. Finally, I used a sand coloured paint to lighten up areas, again blending it in with the brown and green.

A completed mountain.

Once the paint has dried, you can dry-brush a lighter sand colour over the surface to highlight any raised areas if you wish. I decided not to do this, as I was happy with the overall effect as it stood.

The mountain can be used as a single large feature, or the two pieces can be separated and positioned along the edge of the tabletop.

The two halves of the mountain.

The mountain was looking a little barren, so I decided some vegetation was needed. The simplest approach was to take some cocktail sticks, push them into the foam and hang pieces of lichen from them to represent vegetation.

Cocktail sticks are pushed into the foam at different angles.

Lichen is hung off the sticks.

A game in progress using the mountain along the table edge.

This is not the first time I have used upholstery foam for terrain. I have previously used it to make English Civil War fortifications and hills for my Sci-Fi games. As I still have some foam left over, I plan to make another two mountains.

One of the benefits of using foam for terrain features is it is light weight, pretty much unbreakable, and easy to store away (generally thrown on top of cupboards or shelving units).

A little bit a painting

The past few weeks of posts have been mostly about gaming, but I have not neglected the painting side of the hobby. I have been adding a few more models to my Star Wars collection and also making steady progress on the Anglo-Zulu War project.

My Star Wars collection generally only grows these days when I spot something in a sale and can pick it up at a reduced price, or when there is a particular character I want to add to the collection.

A rebel squad.

The Mandalorian (Din Djarin), Grogu, and Boba Fett. The Grugu figure was converted so he sits in a hovering saucer, the figure just looked too small on the base without the saucer.

A WLO-5 Speeder Tank as used by pirates.

Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, and their friendly K-250 robot.

Moff Gideon. A useful villain figure.

The Anglo-Zulu War project began at the end of March this year and is now into its seventh month. There are still a few more British units, wagons and pieces of terrain to complete. I reckon I am now about 75 percent of the way through the project and hopefully in the next two to three months will get the figures onto the tabletop for a game.

2 British infantry units added, along with a mounted rifle unit and some lancers.

I had great fun with the lancer unit, which were converted from some spare mounted infantry.