Long March from Hopfurst

Managed to arrange for a game of Turnip28 quite quickly after finishing my terrain set! Ben's regiment is only partially painted but he completely restarted the project with new conversions. He suggested just starting the campaign from the Taster book. He took the Tall Man cult and I took Grand Boombard.

 

I previously played Ben back in February or so (no photos) and a new version (v17) of the rules had come out since.  So there was a lot of rule looking up.  Luckily, the tri-fold QRS that is now available is super helpful and a lifesaver.

In the Taster-version of the Long March there are five objectives, one basically in each quarter of the board and one in the middle.  We were both able to claim the two in our halves and Ben got to the center one first.

The next turn was just sort of back and forth. There was a biggish melee on my left, and I ended up losing my objective marker over there.  The Grand Bombard kept firing but not hitting anything.

At some point at maybe turn 3 I realized the utility of the Grand Bombard cult's ability to have Toffs and Toadies (commanders) seize objectives - every objective I had added +1 to the Bombard's to hit roll.  At the beginning of the fourth and final turn I was able to momentarily capture 3 of the 5 objectives.  +3 to hit!  But the Bombard rolled a one and since it already had 3 panic tokens (making it "unstable" as an artillery piece) the whole thing exploded.

Ben was then able to fairly easily recapture some of the objectives since they were defended by a solitary individual, and he picked up the win.

Appropriately, this piece of dangerous terrain was responsible for consuming many figures!

This was only the second time I've played Turnip28 this year so I wasted a lot of game time looking stuff up. In theory we will link our future games together using the system proposed in the Taster book.

Up next? I need to finish my fourth and final piece of dangerous terrain its about 50% done), and I need to make some obstacle pieces (crumbling walls, waddle fences, etc.). I need to make tokens to denote which objective is currently in control of whom. I need to make/convert a stump gun (i.e. a regular artillery piece) to go with the Bombard.  I have the pieces to create some cavalry and a procession of woe cult, so I should do that sometime soonish.

Turnip28 Terrain Set

 

 

Feeling confident from the recent refurbishing of older buildings, I pushed forward with the necessary terrain pieces for a Turnip28 table.   Turnip28 has three types of terrain: dangerous (usually on a 9"x9" base), defensible (on a 6"x6), and impassable (also a 6"x6).  After making a few kitbashed custom regiments, I managed a casual game using available terrain created for other games, and was immediately struck that the effort that went into the figures was diminished by the lack of matching terrain.

 

The first new piece was this dangerous terrain board (8"x10", so close enough to 9"x9") featuring a ramshackle and broken foot bridge. I had two goals for this piece: (1) to try using Woodland Scenics Realistic Water effect for the first time, and (2) to resolve a perpetual thorn in my side when making terrain, which is that the base MDF board always warps like crazy.

On the second point, it turns out that I have been using way too much water in my PVA mixes and too much water when thinning paint for terrain.  I also discovered the habit of applying a "primer" coat of un-thinned PVA to a side of the board, then using a brush just wet enough to help spread the glue evenly, then immediately doing same for other side.  This greatly helps control warping during the various steps. As to the Realistic Water effect, I think I did not "push" the effect to the edges of my pond enough, which caused the effect to have a raised surface-tension appearance like a puddle of oil instead of water.  I painted the pond area black to create illusion of depth, which seemed to work.

The second piece is this 6x6 impassable terrain, featuring a house sinking into a pool of water. The recent refurbishing of the older buildings using DAP joint compound and individual shingles was applied here. The white fungal stalks growing at the side of the house are stems from the leaf stalks of the horse chestnut tree that grows behind our house.  I pre-soaked these in a water/PVA mix, and after letting them dry, discovered that if you cut them they had a hollow tube in the middle, which gives them an eerie organic look. They also have some natural little bumps that look that part.

Speaking of those chestnut leaf stems, the next piece is a boggy dangerous terrain piece, 8x10, featuring little islands with fungal growths all over them. Here you can see how different parts of the chestnut stems can look very different based on what part you use and even which direction you glue it to the board.

The only fault here is that I poured the water effect a little too thin, and you can see granules of coffee grounds which I used for texture that got into the "water" portions of the board. These reflect light and create all those little white spots. Otherwise, I am quite pleased with use of some thinned dark green paint I applied before adding the water effect.

This house and bridge is a 6x6 defendable terrain piece. I think I originally was envisioning a bridge with a toll gate, and maybe a warming hut/guard hut on the side. But this is what actually came out. The house has a rhomboid footprint, so I got make an irregular shaped, warped roof.

This was a fun exercise in trying to cram the visual features I wanted into a small space.

This last one was very fun and definitely did not end up being what I originally intended.  The initial idea was a piece of dangerous terrain consisting of a bog or marsh with a few small muddy islands, with two Reaper Bones giant toads lurking around. 

I painted the toads first and while looking at them was struck that it would be funny if they had little crowns. So I made little crowns out of paper, carefully cut with spikes and sealed with superglue. And toad monarchs need a throne, right?

The idea of an ancient stone set of thrones as a terrain piece for fantasy wargames is an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a while, so making a stepped dias and two simple chairs out of foamcore scraps was easy enough. I then covered in joint compound and sanded down (and coated in PVA before painting!).  I did a base coat in very dark gray and then did two coats of drybrushing in progressively lighter greys.  The toad on the right came with its tongue extended, but I trimmed it out.

Now the next game should be a real treat!

Refurbishing Buildings (or, Yet More Fool's Errand)

I've been playing around with two new techniques in scratch-building houses for gaming terrain.  One is the slightly maddening but also meditative application of individual 1cm square "chipboard" cardboard shingles (chipboard being similar to the backboard of a notepad).  Previously, I would cut a strip of chipboard as wide as my roof, and cut very narrow wedges to suggest individual shingles. When these were layered and offset, the end result looked the part. 

Individual 1 cm square shingles, however, create a very striking effect and are totally worth the effort. A key trick is to stop after you've glued a row or two and use a wet brush to break up any globs of glue that are visible. After an initial coat of paint, a drybrush in a lighter color really makes the roof visually pop.  Since we as gamers always have a bird's eye view of the table, having these distinctive rooftops really improves the table experience.

The other technique is plastering the foamcore walls of the building with DAP-brand joint compound.  I apply with a craft stick, being careful around doors and windows. After this dries, I sand it flat and remove any obvious directional drag marks that my applicator stick left.  Then I apply a layer of PVA (wood glue) over all the plastered surfaces, dampening the brush as needed to get a better spread.  This gives the joint compound some additional durability.  Since my terrain is basically for the late medieval or early modern periods, I do a base coat of white acrylic and then a wash in a medium brown, which I then dab off the excess with cotton balls.

A new old house.

The four walls of the above house have now been refurbished twice. The original dated back to 2017 or so and the only texture was small squares of card glued on for random brick effect.  Its actually part of the larger compound to the right in the below picture of an early Italian Wars game.

I separated the house from the rest of the compound and covered the original walls in texture paste and painted an antique white.  For the current refurbishment, I sliced the bricks off with an old kitchen knife before applying joint compound to the entire building.

A Reaper Miniatures wizard for scale.

I also made it so the roof is removable, and added a floor at the top so that units can easily be understood to be in or moving through the building.

I then repeated the same process for these two buildings.  They are meant to be more Mediterranean because they have a less pitched roof and a terracotta color to their roof shingles. These were in tough shape as I used model railroading plastic sheet with a tile pattern for the roofs, which were not very durable for gaming.   

I don't know why I made the windows so small!

To better facilitate units moving through the buildings, they also now have removable rooftops.

Here's all three of the refurbished buildings together.

Too much organ gun

At some point, you end up with a collection that make two almost solid lines of figures across an eight foot table. This is same table as prior game, but Italians are now on left side and French are on right.

I did not take as many photos of Saturday's Italian Wars game of Kings of War Historical, which had a full four players and was played to a final sixth turn. But the game confirmed a growing suspicion by all involved... that organ guns in large numbers have an unbalancing effect, at least against the historical flavor of the period.

I should have brought different buildings that units could occupy - these ones just ended up being unpassable terrain created a weird gap in the center of the lines of which ever army was deploying on this side of table.

For deployment in these games, each side took a turn deploying either all their cavalry, all their pikes, or all their ranged units and artillery.  While deploying pikes early on, the Italians deployed all pikes towards the center and left the extreme right flank open. The French then two Swiss pike units opposite of that opening. The Italians, having already deployed all their pike, remedied this by placing two organ guns, a cannon, and a troop of Spanish arquebusiers in a tight line facing the Swiss, supported by some Balkan cavalry.

The concentrated firepower of the organ guns then proceeded to absolutely shred and rout one Swiss pike regiment and then the other. For those unfamiliar with Kings of War Historical, a cannon throws one dice to hit (on 5+) and then rolls a 1d6+1 for potential casualties.  An organ gun, however, throws 12 dice (also hitting on 5+).  The troop of Spanish arquebusiers added another 8 dice to the two organ guns, so the output in ranged attacks was overwhelming.

Swiss pikes facing their doom in form of Spanish organ guns.

"But isn't this exactly what happened at Cerignola in 1503?" you might ask. Yes and no? Because while gunpowder weapons were critical at Cerignola in repulsing French cavalry and Swiss pikemen, they were part of a more involved defensive deployment by Gonsalvo Córdoba.  This game, by contrast, had a few organ guns, without any additional support, out by themselves on a flank, which were able to entirely route multiple French units.  Rather than defense in depth, the French player commented that it felt more like attacking a machine gun nest via frontal assault. 

Swiss pikemen by Essex miniatures.

After the game (a devastating French defeat - the entire left side of the French army was routed), some discussion was had about what to do about the organ guns.  Perhaps modify their stats? I didn't like that as I want to avoid tacking house rules on to rules-as-written as much as possible. Better solutions pointed at simply not having too many organ guns, or creating deployment stipulations about where and how guns could be deployed (deployment stipulations might also work well for Spanish coronelías, or pike and cavalry blocks). 

French attacking the Spanish-Italian left flank (to some good effect).

I struck on a simpler solution a few days later at home.  Part of the issue is that I have two organ gun models and four 'Burgundian carriage' light artillery models, as well as six larger cannons. I have been treating the Burgundian carriage pieces as organ guns.  I usually give the French four of the larger cannons and two organ guns, with the Spanish/Italians ending up with an inverse of two cannons and four organ guns.  The Kings of War Historical book, however, includes a unit profile for a "small bolt thrower", which is actually stats-wise a down-scaled cannon (shorter range of 36" instead of 48", throw 2 dice instead of 1 but on success roll 1d3 instead of 1d6+1).  If all the Burgundian pieces use this stat line then there would only be a max of two organ guns available, and they could stipulated as "Spanish only" and be required to be deployed as in support of a coronelía.

Lance Fournies debut

Last weekend was a special treat, as I got to play two games of Kings of War Historical in two days. The first game was on Friday evening. This featured the first tabletop appearance of my newly painted/reorganized French lance fournies (pictured above). 

Armies still being deployed. French to left, Italo-Imperials to right.

A lance fournie (French for "equipped lance") was a French cavalry organizational unit consisting of a gendarme (noble heavy armored horseman), a coutillier (a more lightly-armed fellow combatant), a non-combatant page, and three mounted archers meant as infantry support. The archers were intended to ride to battle and dismount to shoot with their bows, and did so until late in the fifteenth century, when they took to fighting on horseback as a sort of lighter variety of gendarme, though still called "Archers." For wargaming, a useful shorthand for this organization is a trio of units consisting of one gendarme (elite heavy cavalry), one coutillier (heavy cavalry), and one 'Archer' (regular cavalry).

Deployment done.

 
I already had three units of Gendarmes, and had six Old Glory 'archers' already painted as well, so I added 20 War of the Roses knights on unbarded horses as the coutilliers, and got another 10 'archers' to add the the four unpainted ones I already had. Now the French can field 70 cavalry in a lance fournie set up (30 gendarmes, 20 coutilliers, 20 'archers'). 

Landsknects in Italian/Imperial service.

The game was at a leisurely pace and went smoothly. The French cavalry retained its punch with the new lance fournies organization but didn't feel unbalanced as much as before.

Balkan cavalry (stradiots and Romanians) in front of Elmeti heavy cavalry.

This game also featured the addition of several new banners to cavalry units.

Spanish infantry in my best impersonation of a 'colunella' formation - troops of arquebusiers interspersed between regiments of pike.

I also tried out a deployment scheme for the Spanish that mimicked the colunella formation.  This consisted of troops of arquebusiers alternated with regiments of heavy pike, supported by a few lighter artillery pieces ("treat as"organ guns). In the early rounds this formidable line was able to easily dispatch a French crossbow regiment with concentrated fire. However, the French generally kept their distance until the colunella began to advance, which created gaps in the formation which the French were able to exploit when they made their big attack in the center.

French coutilliers and 'archers' clash with Balkan light cavalry while heavier troops wait in second lines.

The decisive moments were around the third and fourth turns, when the French threw gendarmes and Swiss pikemen up the center of the table and were able to land flanking attacks (double attack dice) against several Imperial units.

The Spanish general directs the defense against a charge of French 'archers'.

Spanish infantry. In the distance another Spanish pike block is being flanked by coutilliers.

Landsknecht have taken the hill in the center. French heavy cavalry and Swiss pike starting to close in on French left.

Gendarmes flank a landsknect pike regiment.

French gunners look up to see Landsknecht above them!

French making a big push in the center, to good effect.

Things seemed dire for a second for the Imperials and their Italian allies, but they were able to counterattack with several flank attacks of their own, effectively routing and repelling the entire French attack in the center.

By end of game, French are doing okay on their right flank. But Swiss regiments are a bit far from the action still, despite engaging the Landsknechts on the hill.

Situation at end of game - Spanish have effectively routed the French left (crossbow unit at center right is all that remains) and are facing towards the center of the field. French attack in center reduced to an 'archer' and Swiss pike regiment each, both whom are vulnerable to flank attacks from advancing Spanish.

So another victory for the Imperials. I'm thinking that the Spanish colunella might need its pike components downgraded to 'regular' pike instead of 'heavy,' just to make the pikes and arquebusiers more dependent on each other.