Monday 25 March 2019

More Paper Soldiers and WW2 Western Desert

Two more paper units have been completed, a Jacobite unit and the first British unit. I have yet to decide how to make the artillery, flat or 3D option. My leaning is currently towards the 3D version, even though it may be a bit fiddly. Pictures of a constructed cannon in the source of these figures "Battle for Britain - Jacobite '45" by Peter Dennis look very effective.

Jacobite Highlanders
British Army Infantry
I am pleased to be moving onto the British units as they are easier to cut out than the animated Jacobite units.

This past weekend I have been playing around with my WW2 Western Desert project and the effects of introducing dust clouds to increase the sighting distance for moving vehicles and reduce the sighting for stationary units. This in turn led to adding 'brewing-up' rules for armoured units which both restrict visibility and also provide recovery objectives and victory points.

Armoured cars move past some bowed up armour
An attack underway
Another change I tested out was the use of playing cards instead of dice (2D6) which the tank on tank rules use for combat. I keep the jokers in the pack and when one is drawn the game clock moves forward. Time on the game clock has an influence on visibility at dawn, dusk and the heat haze at mid-day.

Cards being used in the game rather than dice
The dust clouds, brewed up armour, and visibility rules are all influenced from my continued re-reading of Donald Featherstine's 'Tank Battles in Miniature - A Wargamers' Guide to the Western Desert Campaign 1940-1942'.

6 comments:

  1. Your 6mm Western Desert battles sure photograph well. Superb work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you. The 6mm models have been fun to paint and look surprisingly effective in photos.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your desert stuff is looking really ‘deserty’, a hard thing to do properly. Your paper armies - I have seen the books in the series and they clearly come in two parts, the excellent armies and the rules, have you had a chance to form an opinion on the rules?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you. The creation of terrain has been interesting for this project for reasons of scale having never done 6mm before and creating a desert look. I will using the rules that come with Jacobite '45 paper armies. The beginners rules have the feel of Neil Thomas rules from is introduction to wargaming book with a few tweaks to give it period feel. The main rules add a few more specific rules and interesting rules to setup the armies. The basic rules take 1 page and the main rules 4 pages. I plan to begin with the basic rules when I complete the units.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Peter, they seem ideal 'tools' to be sold in high street bookshops to introduce some new people to the hobby - or maybe even gifts for us to do the same for friends.

    ReplyDelete
  6. They certainly would make nice gifts.

    ReplyDelete