Chop chop, hammer hammer

Progress is being made!

Here we have the final layout The over all dimensions are about right ground scale wise  for a large fort while the layout is not too  far out for a small one and it doesn't look too wonky with the 40mm toy soldiers. Actually I think it has a certain toy soldier playset look to it which is a bonus. There's even a cabin for the officers and the gate still works. The firing step should be an earthen embankment but I had the walkways in hand so figured I might as well save time and trouble and use them. In place of a 2nd blackhouse/bastion I've made a battery position on top of the cabin.

Here's the original with 54mm figures for comparison.
The new bastion/blockhouse is the only part still the original stockade height.

I'm not over confident about the sticking power of white glue on foam so I've used bamboo skewers to hold the various bits and pieces in addition to the glue. The temptation was strong to fix the whole thing to a base but apart from the awkwardness for storing, I will want to use the fort on various table tops and a base would fit some and not others. I also want to be able to use part of the fort on a table edge/corner and/or be able to replace the bastion by a blockhouse. 

Here we have the 3 sections. Once the glue has set overnight I'll start painting.

Meantime , here is an example of a fort with bastion instead of blockhouse. If I can find which fort this is and thus where I got the picture from, I'll add credits.  Thank you to Annonymous for letting me know that this is Fort Joseph in Michigan a French furtrading post .The illustration can be found at http://www.wmich.edu/fortstjoseph/about/history.html   I must have looked at 50 fort sites on line this winter as well as checking books and I was sure it was a western one but hadn't labelled the picture and was having trouble finding it again.

Reconstruction or destruction?

My old grenadiers, shiny and red at last!

I've finally finished refitting my old 30mm British grenadiers. At last they are sporting red coats and "real" grenadier caps and I have to say that they look better as glossy toy soldiers than they ever did as military miniatures. That's the last battalion of the old guys. There are 4 left overs that I could convert to a company of light infantry if I wanted to do the work of cutting down the coats and caps but I'll leave them for now, I've been eyeing a selection Willie and Scruby SYW & AR rangers, light infantry and Indians. In the meantime, I'm over due to get back to work on Fort MacDuff for Huzzah!

Its a good thing that I'm getting farther and farther into Toy Soldier mode. Trying to turn this old Barzso 54mm Davy Crocket fort into a usable prop for a 40mm 1812 game is even more trouble than I expected which is rare. In many ways it would of course have been easier to start from scratch but I am determined to make some use of it even if it is glue resistant.

I did have a reasonably easy conversion laid out until I realized just how much real estate the finished thing would occupy. OK for the main event but this is a game about Indians in the woods more so than the fort so I need to keep the foot print as small as practical. Forts are one thing that really test the imagination of 40mm gamers. Many of these frontier forts were tiny, given the ground scale I need to employ, the square bastion is not an reasonable size for a fort like Stevenson all by itself. but looks nothing like a stockade. I don't have the dimensions for Fort Meigs but it was unusually large, something like 9 acres and on the plans is long and narrow not square. A few calculations show that something like 6" x 15" or perhaps 8" x 12" would be not unreasonable for a foot print. That would have to include several blockhouses and batteries as well as log curtain walls, quarters and a ditch. OK for use with 10mm figures but its not going to work for 40's. Doing Marx Fort Apache style blockhouses that perch on a corner of the stockade was a tempting thought but at the end of the day it looks like I'll have to make do with one  vertical log blockhouse/bastion.

Remnants of the  Barzso wilderness refuge, practical meets proportion.

The bastion itself is a problem. The standard sort of square, roofed, horizontal log cabin construction blockhouse was used by both sides but the British  usually put them inside the walls while the Americans used them for corner bastions and gatehouses. The British used open palisaded corner bastions which is basically what the Barzso fort had although the angles are wrong. I looked at building a proper blockhouse and may do so yet but since the darned thing should only about 1"  square from a  ground scale angle while being big enough to fold a 40mm gun and crew plus infantry,  its going to take some compromises which I haven't worked out yet.  The roof also tend to make it awkward to handle the toy soldier garrison. At least my unlikely compromise is a formidable fortification holding 2 guns and a dozen toy soldiers with all around defence should the perimeter of the fort be breached..

Then there is the ditch. This seems to have been major obstacle in several cases, deep and fraised or combined with an abatis. The abatis might work but the combination of ditch and toy soldier stockade just looks wrong and would just distort the ground scale even more.  I think I won't waste any more time on ditch ideas, it can be assumed and built into any assault rules.

So there we are, I'm only using barely 1/2 of the original fort though I've destroyed it thoroughly in the process of experimenting. The result should be small enough to not dominate the table and give the impression of a stockade while holding 6 x 8 man companies of 40mm troops. Hope for their sake that it doesn't rain, there doesn't appear to be room for tents let alone barracks!

Colonial Tabletop Teaser Battlecry

In a comment to the last post, Mr. Kinch requested some intel about the Colonial games Ron & I have played using BattleCry.  Wherever something isn't specified, the original rules, or such other rules as the players agree upon,  will apply.

We have experimented with various ideas but what follows is the final choices we agreed upon for the types of units that we have available to field. The intent was to put Grant Scenarios/Tabletop Teasers on the table so that translation will be part of this post.

It may not look like it but this was a costly British victory in the making. (see here)

UNIT CHARACTERISTICS. & RULES

Unit	Move	Battle	Special Notes
Imperial Hvy Cav	0 - 3	3	Take Ground, Overrun
Other Cavalry	0 - 3	3	May retreat 3 on Flag
Dismounted Cavalry	2	No	None
	0 - 1	3/2/1
Imperial Infantry	2	No	Emboldened
	0 - 1	4/3/2/1
Field Artillery	1	No	None
	0	5/4/3/2/1
Light Artillery	1 - 2	No	None
	0	4/3/2/1
Any Arty (on hill)	Add +1 hex at 1
Native Infantry Fire arm weapons	2	No	May retreat 2 on Flag
	0 - 1	2/2/2/2
Native Infantry Mixed weapons	2	No	5 figure units
	0 - 1	3/2/1/1	May retreat 2 on Flag
Native Infantry Melee weapons	2	No	5 figure units
	0 - 1	4	Take Ground, Elite or Ghazi may Overrun
Native Artillery	1	No	None
	0	4/3/2/1
General	3	Emboldens or allows Take Ground

2. Embolden means that a unit may ignore a flag (retreat)  in addition to any other  terrain, leadership etc effects.

3. Get out of trouble quick. Units that may retreat more than 1 hex on a flag, do not need to do so and are only penalized if they are unable to retreat at least 1 hex. The idea was to allow skirmishers and non-melee troops like Afghan Jezzailachi (sp?) and irregular cavalry to fade away quickly.

4. Shooting. The Battle dice numbers are read left to right starting at range 1 so Imperial infantry roll 4 dice at range 1, 3 at range 2, 2 at range 3 and 1 at range 4 while native snipers roll 2 dice at range 4,3,2 or 1.

5. After Combat Moves.  Units that may "Take Ground" which initiate a melee attack (adjacent) and destroy their opponent or force them to retreat may occupy the hex the enemy was in. If they are allowed to Overrun they may also conduct a melee attack after taking ground.

6. Zone of Control. This is our one rule change and is one we have carried over. A unit which moves adjacent to an enemy unit must stop. A unit that begins adjacent to an enemy may not move to another adjacent hex during normal movement. This does not affect taking ground.

7. Game Length and Victory Conditions. We generally play until the card deck is exhausted or one side reaches it break point. Since our time is not unlimited, we tend to ignore the "reshuffle the deck" event that is on at least 1 card but that is purely for convenience. If the deck runs out before either side is broken, the scenario victory conditions apply. Since the armies are often asymmetrical in numbers of units, extremely so in the case of Zulus, instead of basing the break point on the size of each army, we make the break point of both sides equal to 1/2 of the larger side. In the case of Brits vs Zulus this means the Brits are often able to fight to the last man or nearly so. 

8. On the Move. If a player is unable to play any of the cards in his hand, he may move one unit in any sector but may not battle. If the discarded card is a scout card then the player may scout (ie draw 2 cards and choose one). 

9. Hills. I almost forgot hills! Hills in Battlecry are 1 hex things. Hills in the scenarios and on Ron's table can run for a dozen hexes and be of several layers. This has provided us with some of the thorniest conversion problems. I think our current ruling is that Hexon slopes affect line of site but do not count as Battlecry hills, only hill top hexes count. Hill tops ignore lower contours or slopes  for LOS and vice versa but otherwise, you can see into but not through another slope or hilltop hex. 

The Holy Sheikh El Airfix has led many a warrior to Paradise while remaining to guide more.
See here.

SCENARIO UNIT TRANSLATIONS

1. Imperials. The Imperial troops are a pretty straight forward translation of unit to unit. We did look at different grades of Imperial troops but since the only non-British units Ron has at this point are Sikhs, Gurkhas and Bengal Lancers, we dropped it. We also looked at special movement or terrain rules for Gurkhas and Rifles as light infantry but it ended up being more trouble than it was worth with little justification. We classified Gatlings, Gardiner Guns and Mountain Guns as Light Artillery. So that leaves us as: 1 infantry unit per scenario infantry or light infantry unit, 1 cavalry unit per light, medium or heavy cavalry unit. 1 gun of the player's choice per battery. If the troops are available and appropriate, Irregular cavalry such as Frontier Light Horse may be substituted for Light Cavalry and Native firearm troops for Light Infantry.

2. Zulus.  Any scenario units become Native Infantry with Melee Weapons. To reflect the disadvantage  of not having ranged combat and give that "t'ousands of 'em" feel, each scenario unit is replaced by 2 spear units. However, if desired, scenario light infantry units can be fielded as a single Native Infantry with Firearms unit. A reasonable proportion of Zulu units can be fielded as Elite. (In our case limited not only by a sense of fair play but by the number of White Shield figures Ron has.)

3. Afghans.  All scenario units are 1 for 1. Cavalry units become Native cavalry, light infantry become Native Infantry with Firearms, Artillery becomes Native Artillery and Infantry are usually Native Infantry with Mixed Weapons. A proportion can however be made Ghazis and as such are fielded as Elite Native Infantry with Melee Weapons. The Mixed weapons units seem to be about the weakest units on the board and we considered allowing extra or changing them but since the Afghans have been winning more games  than they lose (even if one was won by a sniper card and a crossed saber roll on the 2nd to last card in the deck).

4. Mahdists. The Mahdist forces are similar to the Afghans except that we do not field any mixed units, instead each scenario Infantry unit becomes two Native Melee Infantry units. The Hadendowah are rated Elite.  

FINAL NOTES.

The scenarios often produce situations not covered in the rules, for example, blocking train tracks not to mention, moving a train. Be prepared to improvise!

 The Mahdists ambush a train. Twice in one day! (see here and here)

 (ok ok we ruled that it could move a maximum of 4 hexes per turn but could only speed up or slow down by 2 per turn. No card was required to move, the train moving at the start of the owning player's turn. However, a card was required to change speed.  )