A Global Wargame

While some of our armies parade on shelves or rest in their barrack boxes, others are engaged in a battle that spans the globe.

Those who follow the blogs of the Duchies of Stollen & Alzheim
 (links:  Grand Duchy of Stollen  Duchy of Alzheim )
may have noted talk of 2 PBEM Charge! games being hosted by Greg.  Since I enjoyed playing in the games and am the stay at home one with time on his hands, I offered to take a turn at hosting and they rather rashly agreed.

Ahh bold young lads, listen to your mothers and beware the Recruiting Sergeant!

 Here's what they have signed up for.

Instead of a well known set of rules and a clear scenario with a chance to write turn by turn unit orders they have only an undependable summary,  order of battle with vague arrival times and only a handful of cluttered photos on a blog and the occasional brief report to go by and have to issue mission orders to Brigadiers and trust them to carry out the orders, only intervening if right in the thick or observing something in a photo, or hearing reports that suggest they need to issue new orders, encouragement, advice etc.

They have graciously agreed to share the game with the blogosphere through a  page attached to my blog. (see list of other sites on sidebar or use this link:
http://gameofmonth.blogspot.ca/p/battle-of-rushvi.html )

I will be posting to the page after every turn. My hope is play 1 turn each morning and each evening but there may be delays if I need to wait on a crucial decision while family, work and a 12 hour time differential provide "friction". The game is set for 15 turns or 7-8 days if all goes well.

Meanwhile, if I continue to enjoy this as much I am at the moment and aren't lynched by the players I will be calling for volunteers for a future game.
(Cesar still interested in another? )

Meanwhile on a Table top in Atlantica

I still have some detailing, drybrushing and touchups of various sorts to do over the next few weeks but its time for a test game. Atlantica c 1830, or maybe the Eastern Townships of Quebec, near the US border.

4 inch grid on 4x5 table. First pass at painting.Detailing to follow.

More ere long.

Make and Mend

Yesterday was largely occupied with spousal duties which in this case involved a trip to a social event,  not of the wedding variety, an hour & 1/2 away along backroads. Today we gave ourselves the day off. So "make and mend" in modern navy lingo but also in another, older fashion as in making things and mending personal effects.

In my case, my wargames table.

Last year, I set myself the task of building a sit down solo wargame table. Experiments have shown that while various sizes of grid square are best for various things,  4" was the best all around size for me. I also found that while smaller grids could be made to work, 12x12 was the smallest that I was prepared to accept. At the same time, 12x4" was too wide for a sit down table but that  12x9cm was just possible if one stood up to reach the farthest row. It was one or the other so I chose the sit down table and proceeded.  Suddenly I could realized that I could recover some lost wall space for shelves by moving one of my bookcases to the middle of the room and using it to support one end of the table as I had done previously. So I adapted the plan .

Once all was done I was happy with the result but it was painfully obviously that while you could perch on a tall barstool you could not sit comfortably and play. It was also obvious that the table was about 6" shorter than the bookcase it rested on and it didn't take long to realize that with the table being several inches higher and geometry and my shortlegs being what they are, I was no longer able to reach all the way across the table, even when  I stretched my utmost.  So much for the sit down table, I might as well have left the table at 4 feet wide! Ah well. No way to stick the trimmed  bits back, press on.

Several games later I had proved to myself that the table would indeed work but that my suspicions were right. The grid was a VERY tight fit for many units and much, if not most, of my secenery needed adjustment or replacement.  I started thinking whistfully of  4" squares and looking at various scraps lying about waiting and  suddenly I thought "why can't I stick a bit on the side? I already patched back on a 2" wide strip?"

Restored to 5ft x 4ft.
An initial overcoat of paint dulls the old grid and I'm almost ready to start adding a new grid to be followed by detailing later. I need to get it playable by tomorrow night to get ready to host an imminent pbem game.

So that's how I spent the morning.  Luckily, being a pack rat I stil had a strip, never even painted, that I had cut off the original 4x8 sheet when building the 6x8 table in 2009, and some more bits of the 1" pine shelving that frames the top, and some metal brackets from a long gone 1979 water bed. (Did I mention pack rat? Its both nature and nurture)  Needs a bit of crack filling but its had an overcoat of random green and in an hour or so will be ready for the new 4" grid. Its only an extra 2.5sqft or not quite 10% expansion but the modified table looks ginormous to me now even though its the same number of grid squares.

I might not be so hot at planning but improvising, kludging and mending, I can do.