Was intrigued by using tea lights. Went down to the estrogen flooded Hobby Lobby, and found some cheap lights and polyester stuffing. Liberally applied black, gray and fluorescent orange spray paint.
Not bad, but the tea lights don’t shine through that well – polyester instead of cotton stuffing (?) – but the overall effect is OK. I actually like the stuffing without the tea lights a little better.
Anyway, it’s a good addition to the scenary/terrain box. Especially since you can whip up a Dresden-Like conflagration in a short time.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or, something like that. I flattered (sounds wrong) earlier this month after reading this post.
Instead of dowels, I used thin steel rod, and didn’t use craters but a wood base weighted with an old bolt. I opted to push the foam bits down through the rods, and then spray with glue. A lot cleaner than soaking the rods in glue, but the foam had some problems “taking”. I should superglue the top pieces.
Anyway, it turned out just fine. I could use a little more of the white overspray, but what the hell.
The Boxers took 80% casualties, most of them lightly wounded, during the melees. Both Boxer groups and the fanatic riflemen fell back into the woods.
The Marines suffered two dead and three lightly wounded. Treating the wounded and burying the dead, they pushed on.
The new Terrain Effects Card indicated a rifle range of 15 inches and a maximum movement of two D6 +3 inches in the woods.
The chance of new contact was20% . A percentage die roll of 80 resulted in no contact, and the Marines pushed deeper into the woods.
After that move, the chance of contact increased by 20 basis points, now at 40%. No contact again, on another roll of 80.
The next Marine movement die roll included a six, triggering an Event Card draw. The card was not appropriate and disregarded.
With the chance of contact now at 60%, the die roll was a 10, resulting in a contact. A D6 roll of 2, divided by two, resulted in one Boxer unit emerging in the woods. The question was “A rifle or other unit”. The die roll of “Yes” indicated a rifle unit, with a subsequent Directional die roll of approaching from the East. With a 3x D6 roll of “7” indicating 7 inches from the Marines.
The well disciplined Marines conducted an immediate action move facing the Boxer threat, and, luckily drew a “Fire” card from the Action deck.
In the ensuing fire fight, both sides took casualties. After two exchanges, the Marines charged. The Marines closed to contact, and the Boxers rolled a withdrawl, fleeing off the table.
The Marines detailed one lightly wounded Marine to take a more seriously wounded comrade back to camp.
The mission continues…….
Classic Wedge FormationBoxer Riflemen Emerge From The WoodsImmediate Action Drill. Contact Right. Marines Away From Contact Maintain 360 WatchFirefight. Both Sides Take Casualties. Boxer Leader Killed.Despite Wound To Leader, Marines Close To Contact. Still Maintain Overwatch. Boxers Flee.
Been slowly but steadily working with the game. Solo play requires a lot of imagination, assisted by “Yes, No, Maybe” dice and directional dice.
A simple scenario. A Marine squad is tasked with clearing a wooded area known to contain groups of Boxers. For the Marines, it wasn’t a wooded area, but a hornet’s nest.
Random die rolls generated three groups of Boxers the moment Marines entered the woods. It was a wild melee.
I’m using old wooden Risk cubes to denote light (pink) and serious (red) wounds. Pinned troops are marked with a brown cube, with shaken troops getting a yellow cube. Deaths are shown with black cubes.
The Marines fought well, and the Boxers were resilient….maybe because I messed up the retreats from melee. It was an entertaining slugging match, allowing me the opportunity to work with both Action and Terrain decks.
The two large groups of Boxers withdrew after heavy casualties. However, the one band of fanatical riflemen remain.
Initial Contact To The LeftBoxers Rallying For Second Attack
Still hacking away at this project. The rules and charts were becoming an annoyance, so I consolidated them into a three page cheat sheet. It’s a Beta, with charts limited to forces at hand rather than the rules’ presentation of all antagonists. The rule synopses are hand written.
Another problem working solo is random activation. My working scenario is a patrol action by a platoon of Western soldiers. It’s the classic situation; their movement triggers an enemy response.
Right now, I’m working with a crude grid, with two counters per grid hex randomly drawn. Each hex is marked for “yes” and “no” for activations.
Trying to figure out when to trigger a activation, as well as incorporating the event and terrain cards into the game flow. Somewhat vexing, but still enjoyable.
During the shed purge mentioned in my August 31 post, I found some old 15mm Minifig Sword and The Flame figures.
There’s some backstory. Back in the mid-80’s a few of the Kansas City stalwarts at Yankee Doodle Game and Hobby fantasized about a “World At War 1899” game. Easy to extrapolate with Fashoda and Panther incidents going sideways. I painted up some Brits and French. Game never happened, figures went into boxes, and decades passed. A couple years ago, I sold off all the French and most of the Brits. The exception was some very nice Highlanders that I figured could be used in a DBA knockoff game.
There was a package of Sihks, along with some stray British and Egyptian cavalry. Why not paint them up and play a big game. Can use all my Arab/East African figures for a mash-up campaign. Plus, this meshed well with my discovery over at Wargame Vault of the old Pluck vs. Science ruleset. It’s for big games, but I like the character creating possibilities for a campaign.
It’s not a big thing, but a good use of the old and forgotten to create some fun possibilities. Here’s a pictures of the recruits.
Continuing to jam 30 days of wargaming into a couple days posts.
One summer project was purging The Shed. This is where old miniatures and wargames hang out. Found my old MiniFig Boxer Rebellion figures. They had been painted to help augment forces for a large, and if I remember correctly, really nice Siege of Peking game back in Kansas City.
They’d been billetted in a cigar box for who knows how long.
Not Very Photogenic. But Angry After Being Cooped Up.
In keeping with my current retro miniatures phase, decided to start working with The Sword And The Flame (TSATF). I still have an original copy of the rules, along with a Yaquinto Bulletin that includes charts for the rebellion.
Not content to play with just the figures on-hand, I ordered more from Miniature Figurines. Old School can be pricey at roughly about $1.70 per figure.
I had originally painted up 24 Boxers, 6 Marines, 10 1st Chinese Regiment, and 6 “fanatic” figures, which according to the Foundry Press book, (Jeez, that’s expensive now) look more like Chinese Christians.
I’ve added Boxer standard bearers, Boxer riflemen, regular Chinese, more painted Marines (from E-Bay), but with officers, 3 British officers, 2 naval officers, and 10 Frontier Miniatures sailors. The latter are more or less generic, and useful in any number of roles.
I started painting and playing some introductory scenarios. Mission Creep set in. I will be ordering some German Asian Brigade infantry, along with more Chinese Regulars and some Boers to serve as civillian militia. Again time and money are factors.
The rules call for units of 20 individually mounted figures. I’ll work with Boxer units of 18, and regular units of 10 figures, plus an officer. Given my space limitations, movement and ranges will be halved. So far this has worked.
To augment all of this fun, I purchased some specialized card decks from The Virtual Armchair General. These eliminate die rolling and add uncertainity to a solo effort. A very nice addition!
This will be fun, especially when I can get the Germans and Chinese Regulars painted up to play all types of strange scenarios.
While procrastinating about Panzergruppe Guderian,managed to work on additional buildings for Fistful of Lead.
Decided to keep with the Southwest locale.It fits my lack of skill and precision.Adobe buildings require the roughest of construction skills, complemented by healthy applications of spackling paste.
Throw in layers of textured spray paint, random dry-brushing with earth colors, finish with white/gray, and there it is.
The results aren’t pretty, but functional.A topic I’m working myself into a rant about.
Want to take a minute to extoll the virtures of this ruleset. Is it the greatest ever……well, no. But, it is what it is and an excellent value.
The rules are just a part of what you get. There is a whole series of stand-alone scenarios, characters to develop, diagrams of buildings, and another set of scenarios that can be combined in a campaign game.
Everyone has there preferences, but I have no desire to try another of western skirmish rules.
Finally played a game after my earlier in the month misadventures with scale.
Scenario borrowed from the Butch & Sundance final fight. Had four figures each for the “Blue” Gang and “Brown” Posse. Blue Gang hiding in small ranch complex, when Posse approaches and dismounts.
First random actions were to determine if the Blue’s sentry spotted the Posse before the first turn started and at what distance. He did, at a distance of 12 inches. There’s no running in the Rules As Written (RAW), only walk (5″) and crawl (2″). I use a run move of 7 inches.
A card is dealt for each figure. The card values (face etc) are called out in sequence with the highest card going first. For solo play, I just lay them out, and then pick in the appropriate order.
Turn 1: The outlaws are warned and get the first three plays. The sentry runs to the house to give the warning. One gets out of the building, rushing to the gate, and another moves to the corral wall. The posse shoots down the cowboy at the gate, and takes cover behind the ranch wall.
Turn 2: One outlaw runs out of ammunition (firing roll of “1”). The posse’s rifleman shoots down the outlaw at the corral. The remaining outlaws are now in the building.
Turn 3: The outlaws have the first two turns and both miss aimed fire (one action to aim and one action to fire). One of the outlaws is then pinned by gunfire. A posse member moves next to the house, anticipating a rush.
Turn 4: The two posse shooters at the corral run out of ammunition. A bold attempt to rush the building leaves the one posse member wounded.
Turn 5: The outlaws manage to kill two posse members despite partial cover.
At this point, I had to shut the game down.
As advertised, Fistful of Lead is “fast and furious”. You can nitpick the rules, particularly the inability to shoot at a moving target, but you can’t dispute this is a fun skirmish game.
Posse shoots down one of the outlaws at the front gate. Another outlaw is outside the house using the corral wall’s partial cover.Two outlaws down!One member of the posse ready to rush the house.
