"Stew art's WIDTW thread" Topic

Stew art's WIDTW thread

See this thread here by PrivateSnafu..

TMP link

Seemed like a good idea and can be enjoyable. I like seeing what others do in their wargames and talking about wargames in general.
______________
So my plan is to update this maybe once every two weeks or so. Kinda something like a blog. Maybe it will be interesting after awhile if I'm able to keep it up. I think project threads that show progress over time to be kinda fun. Also if anyone replies it's nice encouragement.

My main focus right now is ACW. Last year I managed to cobble together a decent sized force of union troops (a buddy did the confederates) and there's still a little more union reinforcements on the painting table. Now I'm starting my own rebels and still plugging away on terrain. This is so I can play Picket's Charge, Sharp Pratice 2, and my favorite Reg. Fire and Fury.

I also have collections for WWII, Dark Ages, and other stuff. I also enjoy board games.
Last weekend I got in my first game of the new year, Chain of Command. But I didn't take any pictures so that doesn't count.

Next update as soon as I can sit down at the hobbydesk and take a pic of something.

alright, first update! nothing too exciting. No games since last time but squeezed in some painting.

i added some ground colors to these ACW union stands. they are shiny because they are dipped in the army painter strong tone, but there hasn't been a day over 50 degrees yet so i can't hit em with the antishine yet. it goes cloudy if not at least 50 degrees. these are based for Regimental fire and fury, and include some more infantry stands, out of ammo markers, and casualties / disorder markers…

but i had no fear in priming some confederates..

yes, i am one of those weird guys who bases the miniatures and then paints, and i've tried out some shades of grey.

side note: these Normans were damaged by some clumsy oaf who dropped his tape measure on them… can you see damage where I fixed them? No? good.

finally a shot of the whole paint desk..

so, Normans go back into their storage box, eventually i'll finish the union stands which will actually 'complete' the union army (is any army ever complete), and engage in some production painting for the confederates with just adding shades of gray and browns…

thanks for looking.

Nice work. You should probably take that clumsy oaf out back behind the woodshed and tell him to be more careful.

I have never done anything like that .

yes, that clumsy oak WAS me… I tried to turn it into a motivational speech, like 'look what happens when you fail me' but it was un effective…

last weekend we threw a board game weekend for my 40th birthday. the idea basically was we invited a ton of people over and played games all weekend. I got out of watching the kid since it was MY birthday and my wife really was amazing with helping with the food and running the show while I goofed off.

People brought their favorite games and we had people playing of all ages. We tried to focus on games that were easy to learn and over in an hour or 2.

here I am as the red player…

I've always like Small Worlds…

We did squeeze in one 'serious' game of X wing, which I haven't played in forever so that was fun. we threw together a mission where the rebels had to shoot down the shuttle, which was successful but with heavy causalities.

other good games were Ticket to ride, Carcasonne, Formula D, and others that I forget now. I also got a lot of board games as presents including Starwars Rebellion so I am stoked. a great weekend but not much painting done. it did warm up so I managed to spray the union soldiers with the antishine spray so will flocking and adding flags next, so expect pictures of the Union army next.

Hey back within a short time period!
Remember those almost done Union ACW stands? You don't, then scroll up 2 posts and see as I wasn;t that long ago in TMP post time. As I was saying I added the flock and what not, and now my ACW army is FINISHED!
Well, not finished-finished. There's always more to do right? I still have some more cannons to do and more bases as well to make the army larger, but this makes it a playable size so that I can guilt free start on the confederates. This represents about a year and half of effort so when I completed those stands I couldn't resist throwing a game cloth down and taking a few photos of the entire army. Especially because I had a narrow window of time where the kid was sleeping at nap and the wife was away and I had unrestrained access to the kitchen table.
So here's some photos.
Markers completed…..

Out of ammo markers (guys reloading)

Disorder markers (or casualties)

Brave colonel markers (or staff officers, or for anything where a guy waving his hat and sword might prove useful)

And now onto the army. The stats:
106 infantry stands
18 command stands (gives me a total of 122 stands to form units in a game and up to 18 different units)
6 cannons. This needs more I know, and some limbers.
8 cavalry (mounted and dismounted). I kinda gave up on cav, for as I got into ACW I learned that most scenarios that I'm interested in playing don't feature a lot of cav AND it's pain to make 2 versions of the same base.
6 brig generals
So I just threw them down into units of around 8-10.

As I tend to play union a lot, these rear photos represent what I would see more often. : )

While I am a basic painter, I think these DO look good while on the table, especially all lined up like this.
Next up, I'll continue to plug away at the confederates. I'm hoping to put on a game of ACW at the next conquest Sac, but we'll have to see how much I can get done before I commit myself.

This week I've plodded along with some painting. Surprise surprise it's more ACW troops as I continue to build up my ACW confederate forces. It was easier to paint the Union, as they were all in the same uniform, but the confederates have to be varied up a bit with some different shades of grey and browns.
So what I do is poor a little bit of a color and then go down through the minis applying it here and there and where ever I think it'll look good. In this case I tend to focus on 10 or 15 bases at a time versus everything at once like I did with the union.

plus! In a week or two I am going off on a short trip with my wife, something like a small vacation. We're off to a convention that she wants to go to (as I get to go to game conventions), so during the day I'll be left to my own devices in the hotel. I figured that this was a good chance to really bust out some figures. So I'm basing up / preparing some more troops for painting as I'll have about 4 days of uninterrupted paint time. With any luck I'll be able to increase my Confederate ACW collection to a full fighting force very quickly (as opposed to the Union which took for-ev-ver).
Shot of the whole desk:

on a related note; if anyone reading this is in the Sacramento area; I'll be hosting some games at Conquest SAC in early April. An ACW game called "the battle of Rodger's field" which is really just the scenario for Brawner's farm out of the RFF scenario book but with some minor tweeks. Feel free to stop by and say hello.

This week I played a game of Starwars Rebellion!

Yes, I know pics of board games are super boring, but that's the rules of the thread, it's a picture post or nothing!

But honestly, that game is great and would recommend it to anyone that like board games and starwars. I've only played it 3 times or so, but it just gets better and better.
I played the empire, so naturally hummed the imperial march while thinking about my moves.

I ALMOST won.

Next week is the vacation where I'll have at least 2 days of like 8 hours (um, so like 16 then)
of painting so hopefully that will let me finish lots of confederates.

And so the blog posting continues.
I've actually had a very productive time, mainly because as I mentioned above I had several days off from responsibility where I accompanied the wife on a small trip and the kid went off with the grandparents. so while the wife was off doing stuff during the day I set up shop in the hotel room and hobbied away. When she got back then we would hang out together at night. She doesn't mind paint on my fingers. And I managed not to spill anything so the hotel didn't mind my painting, though I got a confused look from the cleaning staff about what I was doing but also the expression of ‘we've seen stranger things being done in here than what you are doing."

Of course, while one says that they spent all day painting that's never really the case because you do have to do other stuff. We also squeezed in some workouts (as we try to get back in shape) and I did some reading, and everything takes longer than you think, so I did not accomplish all that I wanted….
But still not bad overall. This is all in preparation for some upcoming conventions where I want to run some ACW games. Conquest SAC is in the beginning of April and Kublacon is at the end of May. At Conquest SAC I'll be running "The battle of Rodger's Field" Saturday and Sunday. I have not entered the game yet for Kubla as I'm still deciding on the nature of the game / scenario. I might just do the same scenario of I might do something a little bigger.

By the way, for ACW folks, I finished reading "the Bloody Wheatfield" by Jay Jorgensen. I thought it was good.

First thing I did was make another 4-5 feet of worm fencing. I'm always surprised about how much f-ing fences you need. I probably now have around 10 ft of fences and will likely need 10 ft more. These are kits bought from BTC. I just glue them together while watching TV. These are the ‘long' sections and I make some about half the length for short sections. I found it hard to take a picture of 4 feet of fence so here's just some sections and a figure placed in for scale.

So before my marathon of painting here was the state of my paint desk.

And now:

I know, you can't really tell the progress. But I painted 48 stands of infantry, 7 command stands, 6 out of ammo markers, 3 Brave Colonel Markers, and 7 disorders makers. A grand total of 308 individual 18mm miniatures! Not bad! And basically moved my confederate force from the planning stage to almost reality! What's left to do on confederates is wash them with the Army Painter strong tone, paint the ground, spray the antishine, and flock. Some closer up shots when complete.
Those 2 big black bases are going to be Union Divisional Commanders – eventually.
And apparently that Norman Kite shield lives on the desk as well.

Coming up, more ACW troops in the making. I'm doing very good at having HOBBY DISCIPLINE (sticking to one project at a time) and it is paying off as my ACW project is coming along nicely.
Game wise; I should be having a run through of the ACW scenario within the next two weeks, and I've got some other games lined up as well.

Thanks to anyone who reads the thread. It's kinda like an experiment to see if I can keep it up and if having a blog or something is worth the effort. I enjoy the other WIDTW threads, especially those that post the pictures.

-Stewart

Last weekend I was able to squeeze in some ACW gaming. This was a play through of the scenario that I mentioned earlier, for the Conquest convention on the 7th, 8th, and 9th of April. It went well enough that I also signed up to run it at Kublacon as well all the way out in May.
Two small wrinkles, my friend who was supposed to come over and provide the confederates had to cancel at the last minute due to child care! So instead of using his very pretty and complete confederates we had to use mine which were mostly complete, and as I didn't have enough we also had to use some blank bases…
And due to family strife, I mean family life, I was not nearly as prepared as I usually am so was scrambling to get things set up, and then run the game with being down a player, so I did NOT have the presence of mind to take a lot of pictures….

Here is a shot of the battlefield. I usually just try to make the terrain look like a reasonable presentation of the era, but this was the first time I tried to set up terrain going off was prescribed in the scenario map. It actually was kinda hard to do and I need the practice. That's why we have run throughs….
In this scenario, whomever holds the big enclosed field in the middle scores some victory points. The elevations are made with blankets / towels under the mat and can be hard to see in a picture.
You can see some Union reinforcements coming down the high hill.

Here is a shot of the leading elements of each side going at it.

Reinforcements for the confederates moving into position.

All that probably happened in turn 1 and 2, and I didn't take anymore pics….

Now, I was planning on using my friends figures for the con, but since he couldn't show it means I don't have them, leaving me short 20 infantry bases, 6 cannons, 2 generals, and 1 brace colonel marker for the confederates. All these have to be assembled and painted in 2 weeks….

Challenge accepted!

Last weekend I was luckily invited to come play an ACW game at a nice man's house. He is doing the cornfield at Antietam scenario, which is one that I want to put on someday as I like the punch-counter punch-counter counter punch of the scenario. IE; Union pushes toward Dunker church, South counters with reinforcements and push toward the cornfield, the north gets more reinforcements….

It was a LONG game and we didn't finish. Somewhat slowed as it's geared for 6 players and we had 4. But good mix of guys and I had fun running the Union right and center.
Here's a shot of the table at set up. The green field in the middle is The Cornfield.

Shot of the battle in full swing. LOTS of figures….

So on the hobby front, as I mentioned I am rushing to complete confederates for my own ACW scenario THIS WEEKEND!! Nothing like a deadline. So started the process last weekend ….. paint desk below, all that bare metal must be painted…..

And lastly, here is a closer shot of the WIP confederate troops. These guys just need a lighter dry brush over the base and some flocking.

[/URL]

As you can see, I paint to a gaming standard and I think they look good on the table. Besides, 2 turns in and you barely look at the figures anymore anyway.

Photo bomb time!

Last weekend I went to Conquest Sac, a local convention here in Sacramento Ca. it is a pretty small convention actually, which has it's perks and downfalls. The perk being that any game you want to play you most likely can, whether you signed up for it or no, and drawback being that some games that well with 6 players will only get 2, and there can be a dearth of offering. For instance, Sunday morning I was the only historical miniature wargame, out of a total of 3 miniature war game. This is the opposite of Kublacon which I'll be going to at the end of May.

Yet the con was great, I had a good time gaming free of real life worries with good people. I'd call that success. I primarily focus on miniature wargames as that's my favorite, and there were several real nice tables at the con. I kinda wish that I went around and took pictures of them all, but I didn't so you're stuck with just the stuff that I did….

On Friday night I played in a friend's FIW game. The rule set was Highlanders and Habitants or something like that. I've never played it before but I was a good convention rule set as it was fairly simple but with enough meat on it to be interesting.

I had the BEST troops on the table, the british regulars and highlanders, and managed to get trounced by the stinking French and the partner who was playing the colonials managed to rule his side of the battlefield…..

I really liked the set up.

FIW

After the FIW game ended I had some time to kill before the flea market, so I got into a board game with a friend called ‘defenders of the realm.' I didn't really like the game, though the people playing it were very nice and we joked all the way to our doom. I just don't really like cooperative games where the system kills you and it feels more like you win or lose not so much because of what you do but what order the cards come out of the deck.

Did I say it was a small con? The flea market was unremarkable, but then again I am broke these days so wasn't looking too hard….

Saturday morning and in another's friend game based on the Battle of Ligny. I don't know Napoleonic history very well but this time I was the French (who were no longer stinking but brave and honorable) pushing the …..Prussians?….. I think it was Prussians… out of a village. The system is Rank and File which I like and am familiar with. The pictures don't show well how BIG this game was. I probably had 70 stands in my command alone, and I was only the right wing. (with four 15mm miniatures per stand, and Napoleonic uniforms!). I managed to take my village and be set up for the counter attack but had to leave a little early to set up my ACW game for the evening.

Ligny

Saturday night and Sunday morning I ran my ACW game, ‘the battle of Rodger's field.' That's right, I ran it TWICE! How's that for volunteer spirit. Because I ran it twice and it was my game, naturally there are more pictures. Both games ran pretty well. The only kink was that I had rules for the setting sun / darkness that everyone kept forgetting because the lights in the building stayed on….
I'll be running this at Kublacon in May, so I'll adjust the QRS to include those rules.

Pics are from both games mixed together and only organized by how many troops are on the table….

Set up

Early ACW

Mid ACW

late ACW

More good ACW

So I DID manage to paint up all the confederate soldiers needed, was painting right up the night before, but did not flock any of the bases. Just can't burn the candle at both ends these days. Well I can, but miniature soldiers are not worth it… : )

So with Easter coming up and my wife's birthday, gaming might be limited for the next couple of weeks. The next big out is Kublacon, so if you're there feel free to stop by and say hi.

Thanks for reading!

Excellent AAR and pics of ConquestSAC
Thanks
Clif

thanks Clif!

sorry I missed your comment. I was busy doing Easter and family stuff and not paying attention to the thread.

Good luck at Kublacon, maybe see you around the gaming table.

This week I finished up my confederate force for the time being… as in the last post, all were missing flocking on the bases and I added the last 4 infantry bases that weren't done so now everything I had ready to painted is painted, and displayed below.

Force consists of:
68 bases of infantry
7 infantry command stands
6 cannons
2 brigadier generals
And markers for brave colonels / ADCs (4 total), disorder / casualties, and out of ammo.

Those two large bases are the Union divisional generals that also needed some flock on their bases.

I think these came out pretty good provided it's just block and base coats and AP dark tone. I think I managed to get the overall look to be varied enough to NOT be uniform but still grey enough to be confederate ACW.

Here's what you see when you play, as you stand behind the lines directing the action.

The next outing will likely be Kublacon at the end of May. I'll be hosting the same scenario as I did at Conquest SAC using these figures. It's always fun to play with the figures / project as you make progress on it, as this is rewarding and keeps you motivated to continue on.

The next scenario I'm wanting to play is in the RFF scenario book 2 called ‘Caldwell clears the Wheatfield.' Like most ACW gamers, we all seem to have 1 or two battles or locations in a battle that really fascinate us. One of those for me is the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. First I'll play the published scenario above but I'm working on my own version as well.

The ACW project can't pause until each force is over 100 bases. But I've hit a snag because I am out of confederates.. all I got left are some generals, some command figures, and some wounded. For the union I have on the lead pile enough for about 20 more infantry bases and 6 more cannons.

So I'll have to order more, and in the meantime maybe I'll put some work into getting some better terrain set up. I want some fields; plowed, corn, and wheat; streams and rivers; and always need more fences (gah! The amount of fences). I have some terrain ideas and already in the works and I like making terrain. I need my terrain to be portable, at least for storage as I don't have a permanent game space.

That's all for now. Thanks for looking.

Hello again!

So taking a break from painting figures for a bit. One) because I have everything I need for any upcoming games in the near future and two) I'm tired of it, and my brush is worn out.
I'm also in the fun position that almost all of my ACW lead pile is complete. But let's not despair, more is coming in the mail as I've just ordered enough CSA troops to make my goal of 100 stands.

So now, I want to focus on some terrain. To start I'll make some general purpose terrain for any game, and not for a specific scenario, though that will come. The next historical scenario for the ACW that I'm looking at is centered on the Wheatfield in Gettysburg, so naturally I'll need the wheatfield.

First off, I made a bunch of trees, which is not exciting but functional. RFF and most ACW games have large areas of woods so I needed some more trees to bulk out the areas. These are just woodland scenic trees, 3-5", and all I did was put a large washer and some concrete patch on the bottom to make them bottom heavy so they stand up and don't topple easily.

Rather easy that was.

Next I made some plowed fields. I've actually had some issues with this and it's been an on going project. I've been trying to find something suitable 'groovy' to make into the plowed fields and was having a lot of trouble which surprises me.
I haven't been able to find a door mat that had small enough grooves for 15/18mm troops… they're all way to deep or the mat is too thick. Corrugated cardboard I can't get to work, I'm never able to peel off the top layer without ruining it. Carpet samples with ridges; couldn't find ridges that were big enough, wrong color, tried to paint but didn't really work. So that leaves Corduroy fabric.
Corduroy; let me tell you of the trials I've had with corduroy. First went to every local place that sells fabric (Joanne's, Hobby Lobby).. and nothing there, didn't even have corduroy. so I ordered some online. I learned late that the ridges are measured in ‘wales' per inch; the smaller the number the larger the ridges and the larger the number the smaller. it'll tell you how many wales in the fabric by "# wale fabric." I got some dark brown '14 wale' bc that sounded right, but it wasn't the right size. you can't even see the ridges. Also tried to spray paint and then dry brush the ridges but it was all too soft and really wasn't working.

I tried again and with an order for 6 wale mocha fabric (as brown wasn't available). However, the mocha was more like a tan, but the scale was better.

So I went on with doing two experiments. First I spray painted the tan cords brown:

Then to make the furrows a little more interesting, I layed down some lines of glue and dumped grass on top.

And it came out like this:

The second one I tried to dry brush which wasn't really affective. I could of painted each row a lighter shade but that seemed like too much effort at the time. Might do it in the future as I'll always need more fields. Also, instead of using flock and static grass I tried it with small clump foliage.

Overall, I think they came out alright, the real test will be using them in a game surrounded by fences and what not and see how they look. I didn't have the time to do that yet. This is nothing that other people haven't done, and done better, but I like to make terrain and the project was fun to complete. Terrain is also very personal as it has to conform to your own space, storage, and playing style.

The next big project will be a cornfield most likely, as hot from this success I itching to try it, and to add further variety to the game table.

Thanks for reading!

Stew,

Time – and past time – you had a reply. Thanks for posting all the photos. Yes, it is a small convention but with great potential for great games. A couple of key game masters didn't make it because of mild and serious illness situations.

The paint job only has to be 'good enough' to put figures on the table – then it is all about moving figures far more so than the paint job.

As long as the participants have a good time, all is good.

thanks for the comment Early Moring Writer. there needs to be a feature where when someone replies to this thread I get notified…anyways..

oh yeah, I like Conquest Sac. it's only my second or third time going and plan on continuing to host games there. I met you for the first time last year there even, so there's something positive to be said in that.

I agree, and as I've said before, people aren't looking at the paint job after turn 2 anyway…. but actually I do think my games have a good level of aesthetics (as do yours).

yes, the most important thing is that the players have fun. easy to do at home because the people you game with tend to have the same ideas of what is 'fun.' harder to do at a convention just because people can be an unknown factor but I think I can proudly say that games I host are fun, and when I play in someone else's game I bring my 'lets have fun attitude.'

Now for an update….

(This is almost the same post I did over on the terrain and scenic board)
So over the last week or so I've been chipping away at this project.

The idea is to make some corn fields using the ol' pine stems in the base method.

Got the 12mm pine stems from Ebay for about $6. USD Starting cutting them about an inch long. Seemed a little short so it slowly crept up but as long as it was around an inch I didn't mind too much. I got 45 stems, each was a foot long. Lets say I got 11 out of each stem so that's 495 stalks.

It'd looked cooler if it was all in a pile but that was messy so I put them in ziplock sandwich bags.

When my order from Litko finally arrived I broke out the 50mm circle bases. I played around with some configurations of the corn stalks, and arrived that 14 per base looks about right. In rows of 3-4-4-3.
So before going all gung ho into mass production I put together a test piece. Drilled the holes in the base (it's much easier by the way to drill all the way through the base then to try to drill half way).
Spray painted it brown and glued in the stalkes, and it looks like this…

Not too shabby. Looks to be about the right height, maybe a little too long but then it'll be a good medium height between my 15/18mm and 28mm figures.

Now, when I think of a corn field, the colors that come to mind are yellow and green. So I had planned to use a yellow – brown moss mat for the base of my corn fields, as pictured below…

Something was jarring, not setting right. And to be honest, I don't like the dark brown base of the corn stalks on the yellowish mat. I tried my other shade of brown on another base as well which is also too dark. They look good on a dark brown fabric base, but that's not what I was planning. FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS eh? I think I'll go back to the hardware store and get some yellow brown / tan / khaki spray paint for the bases and knock out another test, but I have a feeling that will make it come together.

Glad I put together a test piece. So with 495 stalks and 14 per base I should have enough for 35 bases. I order 50, so if I need more I can just order more stems (so far the cheapest component).
I would call this labor intensive in that it'll take time and effort, but not intense labor. Though it was sometimes hard to cut through the wire stalk…
But time and effort are often rewarding.

Oh, and with the help of Jay from "Jays' Wargaming Madness' blog I learned how to make decent scenario maps. Jay was super helpful by not only responding to my question on TMP, but through email sent resources and how-to's. and I imagine I wasn't the first to ask so he even went and posted a video… nice guy.

So to practice I made a map of Barlow's Knoll. This scenario is from the ACW scenario book by Brad Butkovich called "Summer Storm." In Brad's books he does all the heavy lifting on historical scenario design by finding all the troops strengths, OOBs, etc….. His books are rules neutral so really all I did was convert the scenario to be used with the rules "Picket's Charge." I only re-drew the map really for practice and to make it easier for me to grasp what is going on in the whole scenario.

Anyway, I'll be using this new skill for my own scenario designs and maybe battle reports…

More gaming coming up as I have plans with a friend this weekend to play something / anything, and the weekend next is Kublacon.

I'm really enjoying all the pics. I have to admit life has become rather busy where I can't read everything but you are visually making a great show of things.

glad you're enjoying the thread.

don't worry about reading everything, I'm not doing anything too earth shattering but you are missing the riveting commentary… : )

hope other people are enjoying the thread as well. at the very least, especially with the terrain, enjoying seeing what I did so they can copy / improve on it.

Small update.

Most of my activity has been doing stuff other than gaming, as happens to us all from time to time.
But I can't complain, because I'm off to Kublacon at the end of the week for 4 days of gaming.

But I managed to drill the holes in the bases for the corn field. And I got off to home depot for more spray paint. The context of this is in the thread above. 14 holes in each 50mm circle. I did it all with a small black and decker drill.

I feel that drilling the holes for the pine stems was the last major effort. The rest should be easier as it's just spray paint and glue. Looking forward to finishing the project and then doing an ACW game with all my new fields out on the table to see how it all looks.

I also squeezed in a game of Starwars Rebellion. I love this game. I was the imperial side again.
You can't tell from the picture, but this is the moment of triumph for the empire, led by Palpatine himself as he leads his forces to crush the rebel base.

Such high drama.

So now time will be spend making sure everything is set for kublacon for hosting my games, and looking at the schedule one more time to see which games I want to try and sign up for, and figure out a budget.

I'll of course write back with an AAR all british style like they do for salute. : )

(I also posted this in the Wargame conventions section.)

Kublacon report!

Kublacon is probably the biggest game convention in Ca. I don't have stats for that. It runs from Friday –Monday over Memorial Day weekend. I love this con. This year I stayed through Sunday night, though because of poor planning I had to stay at a different hotel. Usually I just stay at the convention hotel, park in the hotel parking and never leave, so I was a little nervous about parking and lugging my stuff around. However, it all worked out just fine.

I was totally planning on walking around taking pcitures of many games being put on… but I didn't. I was just having too much fun and I was either playing a game myself, getting food, or talking with people that I didn't have time to just walk around taking pictures.

I arrived late Friday morning, found parking in what I hoped was the right parking lot. There is always an announcement late in the evening about cars being towed because they parked in the wrong spot. And since I was driving my father in law's car (for reasons too boring to write about), I wanted to make sure. There were signs about parking EVERYWHERE. So I was pretty sure but still asked a staff members if he knew where the theater parking lot was. The staff at registration didn't know for sure but the miniature coordinator did, and he even walked OUT of the hotel with me and pointed to the correct parking lot, which was the best confirmation I could get and super nice of him (thank you!)

So after some socializing with some friends, got in the first game, which was Pike and Shotte. Basically because I like Hail Caesar and wanted to try out P&S. It was a fun game. The GM was named David, and he had ‘surprises' for each side; like he told my side that we had a cav unit that could come on the flank, and some off table artillery. The other side had surprise reinforcements. I am not familiar with the period of history but the scenario was called "crossing the river' and we were defending our crossing. There was something about the Pope. Good game, very fun.

The rest of the night I played some board games. The first was a team super hero game called ‘chronicle of guardians' or some other such nonsense. In the opening scenario; the super hero team had to rescue a girl from the clutches of a soviet mad scientist, his robots, and his Japanese ninja lieutenants. Oh, my character was called ‘Sergeant Freedom.' Hi-larious. Like all team vs the GM games, we all end up rooting against the GM. But he deserved it. We played to a draw; we rescued the girl but it was obvious that we were not going to catch the main baddie.

And then some food, and a turn around the flea market, while playing again my favorite game Starwars Rebellion:

And then I checked the clock and to my surprise saw that it was super late, and I still had to drive to the other hotel and stuff, and finally turned in around 2 or 3 AM.
Back early in the morning after the buffet, I played a Napoleonic sail game and now I am fighting the urge to buy ships. Had a blast in the 3 games I played. Early on I pulled off the ‘splitting the line' (where you sail between two enemy ships and hit each with a broadside) and later on fell victim to my ship blowing up. The rules are ‘Form on Admiral's Wake' and I'm trying to buy them now. Bob, who ran the game, put me in touch with the rules author. Bob also did a good job running the game. This was a hi-light of the con for me.

Seriously, how hard is it to get six ships and a hex mat? Especially as the ships he used were just sails of glory ships removed from the bases. Those red disks are ‘fired' markers.

Seriously… might depend if I actually get the rules. Seems they are somewhat hard to come by. Going to go look up ships right after this….

Saturday and Sunday night I ran my ACW game. I was very tired on Sat so had low energy. On Sun after a good night's sleep I was much better at GMing. Lucky for me Sat was full of more veteran players.
Overall my games went well. I was told both times that folks enjoyed the game and that I did well running and explaining it. Also, I'll say my presentation / look of the game was at the level higher than average which made me feel good. So let's say a grade of B, because I am too school for cool. There were some games that were AMAZING in their presentation, most were average, and some struggled.
In another thread already Sotek4836 posted some of his amazing games. On Sat night I was next to one of his ACW games. People came up to mine and said "hey that look pretty good.. OH MY DO YOU SEE WHAT'S OVER THERE!" : )
Some more shots of my games. Same as previously. Union lost both games! After winning the last 2 times….

After the game some socializing, a drink, and off to sleep because I was tired, and knew that Sun woulod be another long day and would have to drive home for 2 hours that night,
Sunday morning I played in Bill's large ACW game based on the cornfield again (because I played in the same game earlier this year). I wanted to play the union again so I could drive the attack but he made me play the rebels. My troops are in the middle of the picture…

Another good game but I'm starting to think the scenario is too big / takes too long. I find that is the case with a lot of RFF games. If you need to do any instructions / teaching you need to add about an hour to the game length. Got about 5 turns in before I had to run and set up my game.

Sunday night was my game again (you've seen enough pictures), and left to drive him back to SAC around 10 PM, meaning I got home little after midnight.

So that's what I did. Another great experience at Kublacon.

I'm going to assume that some people are coming back to thread wondering about the next update, eyes scanning the WIDTW forum anxiously… perhaps not.

Thanks for any comments so far, and please feel to leave some as encouragement.

Anyway, after Kublacon there is a pause in gaming, naturally. It's like after and overload and ignoring the family you have to return to more boring endeavors…. But I was able to squeeze in some small progress here and there, namely, the cornfield.

So as you recall, I was AGONIZING over the color of the base, because I wanted to more closely match the Lemax moss mat I was planning on using as the ‘ground' for the corn field. So I went and bought some more spray paint in different colors, and did some experimenting.

Here are the 4 colors, from dark brown to a light yellow… seemed to me that the third one up, called "nutmeg" was the winner and close enough.

So I sprayed all the bases with that color, and started to glue on the stalks. Curiously, I ran out of stalks so have close to 10 bases left… so might have to order more stalks. Popped some bases down on the moss mat and came out like…

Final product. And now some actions shots of a union brigade crossing the cornfield….

Stirs the heart doesn't it? It does tend to look better when you place more bases on the field, and I am glad that I went with round bases as it allows me to just kinda scatter them everywhere the troops aren't.

when gluing on the stalks, you have to remove the bottom 'leaves' so now I have this pile…might start gluing some onto the bases to hide the edges some.

I'm glad I did the process, and will likely do a bit more just so I can have a couple of fields (or one big famous one that was a feature of some famous batter perhaps that starts with A).

Since this weekend is father's day, I get a day to play games and will have an ACW game at my place that night, so I'm going to be throwing all my fields on the table and see how it all looks.

Over Father's day weekend I was able to do a day of games. 1 day to escape, 1 day to spend with family, a nice weekend. In the morning I played a board game called ‘blood rage,' which was lots of fun but I forgot to snap a picture. Something about Vikings and the end of the world. Really awesome miniatures, way too cool for a board game.
And then later on that day I had an ACW game at my place, more RFF action.
I really just wanted to see how my new fields looked on the table. Looks pretty good to me. but the scenario was off some because I was rushed in the set up and little distracted, so turns out the union force had no trouble beating the CSA. The idea was that one had to hold the high ground that ran down the middle in a meeting engagement. USA had more regiments but were low in experience, CSA had less but better troops (sounds like every other ACW scenario). I'll need to tweek the scenario some and have ideas.
Here are some shots

Poor photo of the table…

Down the line

Fields! The fields look alright eh?

The lines move closer.

Left flank of the CSA was around the cornfield and the houses..the USA starts a flanking move…

CSA lines crumble (I moved to house, it doesn't matter in the game anyway…).

I also did some organization and storage for all these guys. I have a bad habit of not thinking ahead about long term storage. My ACW minis were flopping all over the place when I transported them.
So I lined the bottoms of each base with a little flex steel from Litko, and line the bottom of the plastic case I use for storage with a sheet magnet. This provides just enough stick'em to keep the rows all neat during mild shaking.

All nice and tight!

After father's day weekend I was invaded by in-laws, and birthday parties, and to make room for guests I had to (gasp) disassemble the hobby room where my desk is set up and place it in the garage, so I had no permanent set up place to paint / glue or what not, and no time anyway.
But now everyone is gone and the room in clear, but I haven't gotten around to setting up the desk / area yet, so haven't been doing much of anything… except checking out some rules for Age of Sail.

I've been updating this thread for about 6 months now. I think I might just go ahead and start a blog. I do check out blogs from time to time, and blogger seems to produce good blog set ups.
But I don't know. like most people, I have limited time / energy / resources for wargaming and starting a blog might be a further dissolution of that time. This thread is usually done during down time at work, but I can't get blogs while at work due to having restricted internet. So the blog would have to be done at home, which cuts into time for other wargaming stuff. I must think on it some more.

so as you can see, I am a victim of photobucket changing their policy about 3rd party hosting. kinda sad, as not only is this thread nuked but all my others where I posted pictures; some game reports and how to make a wargame mat…

as my prose is not very entertaining without pictures, I'm just going to retire this thread. it was fun while it lasted. I hope someone enjoyed reading along.

i'll just continue to ponder about starting a blog. I could just start over a new thread with images hosted on another site as well I suppose….