Running From Bull Run tweaked

In a couple of weeks I'll be taking Running From Bull Run to Posh Lard in Peterborough. 

I'm making a few tweaks to the game to fix issues that came up at Steel Lard. When Terry and Stewart ran the Union forces on the Saturday afternoon it became apparent that, as the game entered its end phase, they were incentivised not to engage in combat with their Confederate opponents who in turn were not particularly incentivised to advance up the table. 

Accordingly I'll be modifying the victory conditions as follows:

1. The Union forces gain one victory point for each Confederate soldier killed.

2. If the Confederates manage to occupy the Cub Run bridge, any non-rallied Union forces still on the table are counted as if they had routed off the table. Hopefully this will allow for more dynamic play.

Do you know the way to Rīga please?

A few hours playing with leftover bits has given me a piece of location-suitable scatter terrain for the Livonia 1812 campaign.

Here we see a peasant woman standing next to a distantsionnyy stolb or distance post. This would give the distance (in postal miles) to various cities.

Here's a preserved one:

I made mine from some MDF "sprue" left over from a building kit. The top was carved to a shallow pyramid shape and the name boards and ground-level socket were made from thin card. The base is another piece of MDF with the edges chamfered down and coated with filler. 

My stripy pattern isn't quite the same as the preserved one but I think it works. A little static grass around the pole completes the picture.

Here we see some French-allied Prussians marching past while Colonel Têtard-de-Crapaud, the French master spy, reads off the distances.

An alternative situation, allowed for in my Livonian Scenario Generator, is that withdrawing Russian troops have chopped down the post and hidden it in the forest to avoid giving information to the invaders.

This version of the post was a lot easier to build! I simply made angled cuts into a similar piece of MDF to simulate axe blows before snapping it off. The same card socket and ground work complete the piece, much to the Prussians' frustration.

Steel Lard 2025

Saturday was a long, tiring, but ultimately rewarding day as dozens of like-minded gamers converged on Patriot Games in Sheffield for the latest Steel Lard gaming day.

Seven different Too Fat Ladies games were presented and all of them proved popular with players. In fact every game received votes in the "Best Game" category of our awards (of which more later).

The most popular game in terms of pre-event expressed preferences was Ken Welsh's Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death! This was an American Civil War Sharp Practice affair depicting a period of hard fighting during the First Battle of Bull Run.

The Louisiana Tigers' battle line

The Louisiana Tiger Zouaves (a bunch of reprobates from the wharves and docks along the lower Mississippi) played a major role in the action.

A grey-clad New York regiment advances
across a wheat-field

Ken's terrain made great use of varying ground textures.

The Stone House - now an historic
monument on the Bull Run battlefield 

A unit of US regulars crosses a wheat-field

By coincidence my own game at Steel Lard was also based on First Bull Run (or First Manassass as the Confederates knew it). Regular readers of this blog will have seen the development of Running From Bull Run over recent months.

This time I set the game up on a four feet by twelve feet table. The reason was two-fold. Firstly I wanted the option of running a large, multi-player battle across the short dimension of the table in the event that any of our game runners was forced to withdraw at the last minute.

Mainly, though, I thought it would be fun to have the retreat run from the battlefield to the Cub Run bridge in the morning and then go on from the bridge towards Centreville in the afternoon.  

The morning set up with Union wagons
lining the road to Cub Run bridge

The other half of the table, in each case, was filled with spare troops and vehicles, some of which would appear in the active sector according to card play during the game.

Running From Bull Run uses a card-driven system to represent the forces of Fate as they make life more and more difficult for players who represent Union officers trying to establish some kind of coherent rearguard from a fleeing rabble.

Because of complicated scheduling and one of our attendees crying off due to illness, I had only one player, Chris Clark, during the morning session.

And you know what? It worked brilliantly. Chris ran all of the Union leaders and I drew and played Event Cards. 

Maddened by thirst on the hottest day of the year, Range's newly 
rallied man dash to the Cub Run to fill their canteens

When suddenly the bridge comes under
Confederate artillery fire

Some US Congressmen (and a journalist) have come
out to observe the battle

In the afternoon session, by contrast, I had two Union players (Terrry Pilling and Stewart Goldthorpe) and two (Ned Willett and James Crawley) representing the Forces of Fate. A different experience but no less enjoyable. 

In this game my own Louisiana Tiger models saw action in a victory for the Forces of Fate.

Elsewhere we had a repeat offering of Ian Garbutt and John Elwen's It's a Shit-Show, a very pretty late WW2 game using the What A Tanker rules. Since this game was offered at last years' event it has seen some development work. Jagdtigers made a menacing appearance!

The results for the Americans were perhaps predictable...

Dex McHenry put on a lovely-looking game of Chain of Command 2 based on the Japanese amphibious landings at Mauban in the Philippines in December 1941. 

I understand the fighting was hard in both games. I believe the Japanese were thrown back into the sea in at least one of the actions.

Rather like 6mm games, the terrain really dominates a 15mm Chain of Command presentation. Dex's was very impressive.

Incredibly popular at many Lardy Days are the Kiss Me Hardy 2 games presented by Charley Walker.  This time we had The Battle of Pantry Bay.

I'm not a huge fan of naval games personally but Charley's offerings are always over-subscribed with players engrossed in the detail of stern-rakes and weather-gauges.

Printed game mats have transformed the look
of modern miniatures games

Ian Hemingway gave is his What a Cowboy-based post-apocalypse game What a Scaver. 

I'd seen this recently at Ebor Lard. Very impressive terrain! The son and heir was one of several attendees keen to give it a try.

Last and far-from-least of our games was Mike Wilkins's The Eagle Has Larded. This was a Chain of Command 2 game based on the BBC TV series Allo Allo.  

The terrain was terrific and I understand the game-play was fantastic. Madame Edith playing her piano on the back of a truck may well have constituted a mobile war crime! 

This game was voted as winner of the Wee Derek Award for "Best Game". Congratulations Mike; well deserved!

I should mention in passing that the Wee Derek "Spirit of Lard" Award went to yours truly. I'm deeply touched although I suspect voting chief Dex may have lobbied on my behalf given my stated intention to pass on the reins to him. Kind of like one of those late-career Oscars where the Academy suddenly realise, "Hey, we've missed out so-and-so". Thanks guys!

Afterwards we repaired to El Paso; a Mexican restaurant not far from the venue. It was loud but the food was tasty; thanks to the Barnsley gang for finding this for us.

Finally beers were taken and tales were spun at the Rutland Arms near the station and another day of very satisfying Lard gaming was complete. My heartfelt thanks go out to all who attended and especially to Dex for agreeing to carry the torch forward.

Running from Bull Run Again!

This afternoon I had a very productive run-through of my Running from Bull Run scenario prior to next weekend's Steel Lard.

The objective was to test the changes I made to the Union Leaders, to the options the Fate players have for spending Flag cards, and to revisit the calibration of Victory Points. I also wanted to see how the game looks with my recently painted terrain bits and using the "Rocky Grass" Geek Villain mat.

I was pleased with the visual effect on a 6'x4' table.

This was the first outing for my piles of stores and discarded equipment and for half of the twenty ACW-period telegraph poles I created this last week.

At least part of the turnpike road to Centreville was asphalted (new technology at the time). My version includes an asphalt section made from a couple of lengths of MDF that turned up among the packaging of some household goods. I may add a bit of sponged or stippled paler grey to give an appropriate texture.

I'd already painted a Union officer as a surgeon (a green sash is an indication of his status) and a hospital steward with his medical knapsack (actually not issued until 1862; I guess this was an experimental one being field tested) but today saw the first appearance of the 1st Corps stretcher bearers.

The game begins with Groups of varying sizes strung out along the road. They are from more than one regiment and they begin with two points of Shock per figure. At the start of the game the Union Leaders need to rally them into some kind of order.

Since the last play-test I've added a Surrey (without a fringe on top) to carry the party of members of Congress who followed the army to observe the inevitable Union victory and who now find themselves caught up in the retreat.

The 1st Corps ambulance is another recent addition to the collection. Contemporary reports have ambulances being used by unwounded men who simply didn't want to walk back to Washington!

The feared Black Horse Cavalry again made an appearance.

And Confederate artillery brought the Cub Run bridge under long-range fire.

Confederate infantry were late arriving. This time they took the form of some Louisiana Tiger Zouaves.

It's hard to say who won on this occasion as I was playing the game to calibrate the victory points to be awarded. I think I'm happy with this. Balance is part of the equation but more relevant is how the victory points incentivise players to behave in a way that captures the historical feel of the retreat from Bull Run.

I'm really looking forward to giving the game its first serious outing at Steel Lard.

Making the most of spare parts

Since I first got into making models as a kid I've always followed the advice (from books and magazine articles) that you should hold onto any unused kit parts. You never know (goes the theory) when they might come in useful for later conversions. I have boxes full of bombs, missiles, undercarriage components and other parts from Airfix and Matchbox kits that I completed (or in some cases didn't complete) in the 1970s and 80s!

With the advent of 28mm plastic soldiers from the likes of Victrix, Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures, and Gripping Beast I now have a multitude of limbs, bodies, and heads awaiting a future use.

Manufacturers want to make their sets as flexible as possible so you aren't limited to building a single type of unit from a given set of sprues. As a result they often provide multiple options for particular parts.

The Warlord Games War of the Spanish Succession Cavalry box is an example here providing heads with tricorns and cuirassier helmets and alternative torsos (torsi?) with armour or in a variety of unarmored uniforms. Coupled with bits from other sets, the extra bodies have contributed to my American Civil War armies as reported here and here.

The ACW figures are generally produced by sticking together existing parts in new ways. The amount of surgery needed to change an arm holding a sword into one holding a revolver is not beyond any modeller's capabilities, particularly as hard plastic figures can be cut with a craft knife and glued securely with liquid polystyrene cement.

The next stage in using spare parts is to try some more advanced surgery.

Having bought some Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Hussars 1792-1815 to act as the basis of French contre-guerilla cavalry in Mexico, I had enough parts left over to cobble together a wounded French hussar officer for my A Spy in the Suburbs Sharp Practice game.

This involved taking modelling tools to a pair of overall-clad hussar's legs. After carving off the stirrups and associated straps (not done in the picture below) a number of cuts were needed on each side. First the green cut took the leg off at the groin. 

Next I made a cut at the level of the knee (turquoise line) and bent it outwards to remove the slightly bow-legged effect. A bit of plastic filler and maybe a small piece of plastic card to wedge open the cut were used to repair the join.

Next I removed a wedge of plastic (between the two red lines) and glue the leg back on; effectively gluing the two red lines together. When that was set, I rebuilt the outer thigh with Green Stuff. Because the "red wedge" was half the width of the thigh, the effect was to preserve the overall length of the leg.

With the other leg done in a similar way I had a reasonable standing figure.

In this case I didn't have a hussar torso but I was able to make a figure in shirtsleeves using a body from the Warlord WSS Cavalry set and a pair of ACW arms. A hand with a pistol from the Warlord set, a scabbard, sabretache an busby-ed head from the Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Hussars 1792-1815 box completed the picture.

The Perry Napoleonic Allied Cavalry box is particularly guilty in terms of providing an excess of body parts. Because it includes parts to make both Russian and Prussian dragoons in short jackets (Kollet) or longer coats (Litewka) the box contains enough parts to make twice as many riders as there are horses!

I've used similar techniques on this set to produce some dismounted Russian dragoons...

The running figure was made by cutting one of the legs at the knee, again removing a wedge of plastic, and rebuilding the front of the knee with Green Stuff. The arm with the musket is an ACW infantryman's with the bayonet carved away.

Finally, I've built a Prussian Deployment Point base using the same set and similar techniques.

The figures are gathered around a chess board (plastic card with tiny pieces of fine plastic rod) glue onto a 3D printed tree stump. A 3D printed anvil provides the seated guy with somewhere to perch.

The two bare heads are stolen from Wargames Atlantic's Citizens of Rome set. Shakos were carved from unused heads and glued to the base beside the two bare-head guys.

Even more supplies littering the road...

My order from 1st Corps has arrived and the first products of a seriously concentrated period of painting and gluing are ready to use.

I ordered "Ambulance with driver and two horses", "Stretcher bearers wearing kepi" and "Battlefield Debris". The last of these has provided more debris to be strewn along the side of the Warrenton Pike.

The Battlefield Debris pack includes about a dozen small resin castings with discarded muskets, kepis, haversacks, pistols, careens and the like. They are generally well-cast although there were a few bubbles that had to fill with Humbrol Model Filler.

Taken with what I did previously, I now have about 12 inches length of debris. It's not enough the truly match the described state of the road after the Union defeat but it should go some way to reflecting historical picture.

“Supplies littered the road back to Washington”

For my "Running from Bull Run" game at Steel Lard, I need to capture the feel of the Warrenton Pike being scattered with stores abandoned by the collapsing Union logistics system as well as personal equipment discarded by fleeing Yankees.

I have some suitable castings on order from 1st Corps but whilst I'm waiting for them to arrive, I thought I'd have a go at creating some of my own.

This pile of crates was 3D printed from an STL 
downloaded from Thingiverse

Richard Phillips gave me these barrels. I've scattered
around some bits from various plastic sets

Likewise: 3D printed ammo box, hatchet from Warlord
Colonial Militia, shako and drum from Perry ACW infantry, 
carbine from Warlord WSS cavalry.

The bases are off-cuts of cheap floor tile from Poundland. I painted them with Modpodge and then poured on sand. Once the first layer was dry I sealed the whole with a second coat of Modpodge before painting and dry-brushing.

More to follow when the 1st Corps order arrives!