Sudan 1883, Scenario 1: Stop, Thief!

With the secret project revealed, I can do AARs for the first two games Gharak and I got through in August. This is the intro to the campaign and take place at the start of the war, though the events and places are of my own devising. 

Egypt: Spring 1883. Egyptian-held Sudan is in turmoil. El Mahdi has emerged and gathered his 'Ansar' around him: the tribes Korfodan, Beja and Nile Arabs. Yet Egypt maintains garrisons across the Sudan. The Egyptians attempt to extract these garrisons and mobilise its field armies to crush the uprising. They are aided by Britain, which provides military expertise, training and equipment to the Egyptian forces.  

Lieutenant Pilkington-Smythe is assigned to the Staff of Colonel William Hicks, chief advisor to the Egyptians.  The (fictional) garrison at Drongheda is uncomfortably close to the rebel stronghold in Kordofan. A stronghold and town on the Nile, it was chosen in as a trial location for to deliver British training in the Sudan. Training from the British army's finest: the King's Royal Rifle Corps, its small contingent led by a certain Sir Henry Huffington.  Huffington ensured he was given the assignment as he is partial to a little hunting and not so partial to soldiering, so prefers to avoid his seniors' watchful eyes. Worse, Huffington despises Hicks so much not even Cairo could hold the both of them. 

Hicks moves to extract British nationals across Egypt and the Sudan. To lose Huffington and his British trainers to the uprising would be embarrassing. But practically, Nile steamers cannot be risked in a rescue down the Nile. Instead, Lieutenant Pilkington-Smythe is dispatched with a small force to move swiftly over the friendly territory and command Huffington to return to Cairo. 

This first scenario was a little intro to ease us into the Brink of Battle rules.

Stop, Thief!

Day three of the march, with good progress made, all is quiet and our rescue party pitches for the night. 
Dawn comes, but something isn't right. Pilkington-Smythe stumbles from his tent. Where are the pack. Animals? They were right there...

The starting positions. Two Egyptian infantrymen and Pilkington-Smythe start awake, the others will rise as the racket starts (on a 5+ on turn 2, 4+ on turn 3 etc). Local tribesmen are paired, moving away with the baggage on mules and camels. Note the worst sentry in history snoozing on the hill!

Turn 2 orders phase. The rules were Brink of Battle, the 'any era' historical skirmish rules. I wrote quick rules for moving the baggage - mules were 4" or 8", camels D6" with +2 if there was an extra tribesman 'helping' them along. I bent the rules to allow group activations. The red gems denote troops who will activate in the coming turn. I wrote loose behaviour rules for the tribesman - they would both flee until threatened (i.e shot at), at which point one would turn to fight with the other making off with the loot! 

Pilkington-Smythe leads his men out to retrieve their essential supplies

I grabbed the 2012 National Geographic calendar from the wall as a rudimentary backdrop (leafing back to find a suitable one!), an idea I pilfered from someone's blog (I'll credit when I remember who!). I would like to sort a more permanent solution. 

With the commotion, the unfortunate sentry rises just in time to confront an angry tribesman...

The scenario played out over a few more turns, with the tribesmen being whittled down or abandoning their loot to flee. One nearly (oh, so nearly!) made it off. I think I made the scenario a tad too easy, while the stats for the Egyptian infantry were a bit pants, so werethe tribesmen, added to the fact they spent most of their time dragging animals rather than fighting. 

If I ran this one again, I'd stagger the pack animals, with some a longer distance from the camp, giving the tribal player the choice to play it safe and escape with a couple, or the whole lot if feeling bold! 

Our rescue party return with their baggage, having suffered just one casualty. 

Sudan: Mahdist reinforcements

My last post showed the British and Egyptian forces so far. While I already had a number of Ansar finished during Curt's painting challenge, I did add a few to supplement those. First up, I made up some more of the Perry plastics, this time as Beja tribesmen or 'fuzzy-wuzzies' (the nickname derived from the quite excellent hair they sport...). These will tend to be represent more elite warriors in game. These were painted in the same way as before, which is really quick to do and effective to get very dark African skin tones. 

I couldn't resist these camel-riders either. Great miniatures, they will be mobile and pack quite a punch. The above are loosely painted as dismounted versions of each. Perry Miniatures once more. 

A few of you commented you were looking forward to the project developing. Well, that's it so far, this was a little skirmish side-project and was never meant to take over. I'm quite pleased I painted everything to be honest!  I have some terrain I may do more work on and write up and AARs to post. But this is the most of it for now!

 Though, as I am a bit 'ooh, shiney', I would quite like a few more packs, which I may pick up here and there...

The Secret Project: Revealed!

I've not been doing that much hobby stuff recently, mostly as my hobby time has been eaten into by some quality time with the PS3 (mostly the excellent and damnably addictive Batman: Arkham City) But, to keep the post rate up, I thought I'd do a series of posts to this summer's Secret Project. 

You may recall there were a few clues:

-small scale narrative campaign using Brink of Battle
-miniatures by a preferred manufacturer

-I already had one force painted (well, most of it) 

-some of the minis would find a dual use in Pulp scenarios. 

So, imagine yourself in Egypt, 1883. Egyptian-held Sudan is in turmoil. El Mahdi has emerged and gathered his 'Ansar' around him: the tribes Korfodan, Beja and Nile Arabs. Yup, is time to dabble in Colonials! Much inspired by forums as wells as blogs such as 'Maiwand Day' and 'Horse and Musket',  it was a small-scale and entertaining painting distraction. 

First up, some Egyptian Infantry (Perry Miniatures):

I tried a new flesh tone on these and think it came out quite well. I reckoned they will be serviceable as North/African or Turkish military/paramilitary types for 1930s Pulp. 

Next, pith helmets galore, it's the stalwart British infantry (Perry miniatures)

Painted as King's Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC) from the incredibly useful Perry miniatures painting guide here. 

Another mini from the pack above, painted in a khaki uniform, he serves as character for the campaign (more on that later) this would be Sir Henry Huffington (he is actually a stand-in for Huffington, as there is more suitable figure I've got my eye on...). I put him on a beveled base as he also join my 28mm Pulp characters on some adventures, as a further well-traveled friend of the Professor. 

And finally, some members of the Naval Brigade running at trail (guess what...Perry Miniatures!) 

Short review and painting: Sarissa Precision Adobe Cantina

For the Secret Project, I bought a couple of the Sarissa Pecision Old West adobe line. I figured they were useful for a whole host of different games. The centrepiece was this two-story cantina. These are the bits out of the packet: basically, lots of precision-cut wood and a small instruction sheet.

I made two initial choices: to paint it unassembled (which is rare for me) and to leave the wooden boards the colour they were. So I started by dong a quick dry assembly to figure out how it went together before spraying everything that wasn't to be wood lightly with white spray primer. I split the walls into two batches to paint. Stage one was to pick out the brickwork in watered Vallejo 'Earth'. I used different consistency of paint and brushed it on lightly to give a varied texture. This avoided me doing any highlighting, but I may go back and dry brush some lighter shades on to reduce the contrast between the two colours. Stage two was to use watered down Vallejo 'Buff' on the lower portions of the walls and going up where walls would adjoin each other and other shaded areas (like around the beams). Here we are at stage two of the first batch:

Moving on, the walls got three highlights with 'Buff' mixed with white, up to a just off-white at the very tops. At all stages, I kept the paint quite thin to speed up the painting.  

Assembly now. I started off with superglue - don't bother! White glue works much better. The pieces all fit very snugly together. In fact, they can take a bit of jiggling and force to get them into the slots. I was a bit worried about breaking the thin pieces, but didn't so they much be quite sturdy. Getting them to fit in the right order is sometimes tricky, so test each piece before gluing.

Part assembled, I used elastic bands to hold the walls in while the glue dried. Probably not necessary, but a bit of a precaution.

And here we are assembled from the back and front. Quite an impressive building for its size. It also came with a ladder for roof access and I cut the doors out and mounted them on balsa-wood to make them openable. The kit was £18, a very reasonable price I thought!

I left off some of the window shutters of mine, but may add them later. You may notice that the second floor doesn't sit right from the back. For some reason the 'pins' holding the second floor on res on the beams rather than in the slots. So while everything else out of what was a pretty complex kit fit perfectly, these didn't. I emailed Sarissa these pics and they couldn't explain it either - apparently other kits in stock were fine and apparently I'm told I hadn't fudged the assembly either! Perhaps they were just being nice. Sarissa sent me another kit by way of apology - so full marks for customer service. In fact, service was impeccable, my order was dispatched very quickly and questions were answered promptly. With the price and custome service, I wouldn't hesitate to use Sarissa again, even among the booming laser-cut terrain market. Rather than leaving the unsightly gap, I fixed the issue with my kit by just clipping off the tags and filling in the slots with discarded tags. This worked fine and those particular noggins didn't seem important structurally - the rest of the structure, particularly the internal walls holds the second floor on.

I'm Back!

So, I vanished for a few weeks. Sorry about that, completely unintended, just some frantic hobby time and a bit of real life got in the way of blogging. 

So, what have I been up to? Well, finishing off the secret project, as my brother visited at the end of August. I got almost everything done, probably the first time ever. The miniatures turned out great, as did the terrain that I got finished. we got two games in over the long weekend, between sightseeing, babysitting my niece and some board games. Both games went well considering to hadn't play tested them, but I will make some minor tweaks the the scenarios. We should be able to finish the campaign in another session. I'm also less convinced Brink of Battle rules are well suited to the era. They did the job, but weren't quite right - perhaps too many miniatures on the table. 

I did take pics, but won't post them yet - Samulus will also get a play through (of the whole campaign i hope!) and I don't want to spoil the narrative.  

Anyway, after that weekend I took a self-imposed week off the hobby. Nice to take some time out, I got to spend some time on the Playstation - a chance to finally rattle through Skyrim. 

So I sat down last night looking for a little something to ease me back in. I had some 15mm SciFi prepped but languishing for a few months. A few hours work and hey presto (with fluff): 

++++++++++ INCOMING TRANSMISSION ++++++++++++

                  ++++++++ DECODING ++++++++

Arbiter Assessment Report (AAR)

---------------

---------------

Sighted: Kravaak system, 2516

Race: Presumed Human

Affiliation: Unknown

Weapon systems: Unknown

Armour: Advanced Therm-Optic Camouflage (ATOC) suits of unknown origin

Assessment: Further intelligence is required for a full threat assessment. All sightings should be reported to the Confederated Systems Arbitration Authority (CSAA) Intelligence Directorate. 

---------------

These are actually Khurasan miniatures modern US Special Forces, but they are so modern I thought they looked quite SciFi. Made sense to me anyway. These are the most elite of  New Vedith's military forces, utilising Advanced Therm-Optic Camouflage suits. of course, New Vedith doesn't officially acknowledge the existence of and Special Forces Units. 

I basically painted them the same as I'd done the bases, almost a shame to dry brush such finely detailed miniatures. But I think the effect works, with the weapons and helmets in a lighter shade to define the miniatures. 

Brink of Battle playtest/Review/AAR

The first reveal (didn't take long...) is that the Secret Project will probably use the Brink of Battle skirmish ruleset. The idea of a ruleset which covers any era while retaining some flavour of each is intriguing. A concept which Gharak has considered before and I've shown healthy scepticism about. But I'm happy to try these things.

So, to test the rules I dug out the below miniatures and terrain to give BoB a try with Samulus. This is not the secret project! It's just something I threw together with the miniatures and terrain on hand. A British Commando raid (Me) against either another short-lived Indian mutiny (Samulus), or perhaps some post-WWII war games! Set somewhere suspiciously like Spain, using the terrain I've built up for Napoleonics. Humm, pity I had no Germans to hand really.

The Commandos advance through the rough rural terrain (Blue tokens denote ambush, where concealed miniatures in can't be attacked from a distance)

The forces (six commandos against eight Sikh infantry, with a variety of weapons and profiles on each side) hunker down in cover and trade shots. (Red tokens are for assigned orders which haven't been used yet).

Surprise! Late in the day, in a desperate push for victory, a Commando rounds the corner to face off against a Sikh veteran.

Game end came shortly after, with two surviving commandos melting away, having inflicted four casualties on their opponents. I suspect my aggressive tactics and bold moves (to test the rules for grenades and combat, honest!) were to blame for my defeat.

And what did I think of BoB? Perfectly serviceable actually, I like the alternating orders system, and Break (interrupt) and Edge (initiative) mechanics well enough. You need to keep on your toes as there are a lot of opposed rolls, but I'm used to that having played Infinity. Combat worked fine, though it produces quite a lot of variation given it is opposed roll with a D10 plus stat and modifiers. I am tempted to try more variety in the profiles next time, but they are pretty easy and quick to cost up once you've got a handle on the skills.

And my one gripe? No quick reference sheet and no sample or blank profiles. I had to spend an hour or so knocking a template up on the computer, including weapon profiles for each force. Made things easier as I could et the profiles neat and easy to review in-ame, but as I say, it would probably take 30 minutes to an hour to do it with each new force.

I think it will work nicely, you do lose some flavour but the rules are perfectly fun and run quickly once you've played a few turns. I should be able to write a range of scenarios which will work with the system and vary the game length by scenario as well as the force sizes.

A mystery and interesting hobby news

First up, things might be quiet here in terms of me posting recent painting, there is a good reason: I've a new mystery project. All will be revealed when the painting is nearly finished. In the meantime here are some hints:

-it's a skirmish game using an intriguing new ruleset.

-it will be a narrative campaign (Samulus, Gharak, I hope to play through it with both of you at least)

-it was inspired by a recent issue of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine

-half the work is already done with minis I've already got and painted.

-the minis are primarily from one of my favourite manufacturers.

-of the minis I've bought, most are also useful to another period I often play (bonus value for money)

Any guesses from my more attentive readers?

Hopefully not as much of a headache as this causes


Anyway, I will still beaver away at my more public projects and post them up as and when I get stuff finished.

In hobby-related news, Tamsin highlighted controversial announcements by two relatively big players in the historical Wargames market - Battlefront and Slitherine. The former seem to be getting a GW-esque superiority complex and are banning the use of non-Battlefront miniatures at all official Flames of War tournaments. While it doesn't affect me directly, I think this is one step too far to . I wonder what the backlash will be. I did have some respect for what FOW did in terms of making WWII more accessible, but can't quite understand their logic to preserve market share amongst what is by-all-accounts a relatively small number of tournament gamers.

Next up, Slitherine, (publishers of Field of Glory which I've eyed up a few times times) have announced that the long-awaited second version of their ancients and medieval rules will be digital-only, with no option to print a PDF. While I can see it plays to their strengths as a digital publisher and it could improve the rules and balance through easy application of updates, it has caused quite a stir. While I do generally applaud innovation, there are clear issues of portability (not everyone owns a tablet or small laptop) which might seriously damage the prospects of V.2 being used as widespread tournament rules. I myself prefer hardcopy rules if possible, I've got Gruntz only in soft copy and must say it is a bit of a pain to navigate even when gaming at home. What do you think?