KEGSCon 2025

 September is KEGSCon month and I made the pilgramage to Chatham. I had planned things well and was able to attend the whole day.

This year, attendance seemed slightly down, but the quality of the games being played was up. I participated in three games.

The first game was a battle between 18th century Mughals vs Durranis (Indo-Persian empire) in the battle of Manupur (I think). Historically, the Mughals got massacred. This game was much closer, but the quality of the Durrani troops and timely reinforcements made eventual defeat inevitable. I had command of the Turks on the right wing. Things went well for me at first but a couple of ambushes slowed me up. Additionally, there were a couple of times I failed my command rolls that also put sand in my gears. Eventually, I ran out of troops at the front and could not rally the troops in the rear. A similar thing happened to the rest of the Mughal troops but to a lesser extent.

Mid to late in the game. My units are pushing hard with some success but also with significant losses due to routs (the units to the bottom of the pic)

At the end of the game. Despite heroic charges by two units of cavalry that routed four units in total, I don't have any units available to follow up their success. I have five units in poor shape that I will not be able to recover. We called the game at this point. The other Mughal player was in similar shape.

My second game was General D'Armee 2 with French-allied Bavarians defending a village against a Russian attack from two directions. I had command of the division on the upper right plus a reserve force that I could have come on. I chose at the beginning of the game to have the come on to my right. 

The start of the battle.

Initially it was a mixed bag for me. I lost an infantry unit to a cavaly charge and some poor die rolling. The other Russian player lost his cavalry unit early and spent much of his time trying to protect against the Bavarian cavalry on his right while pressuring the Bavarian infantry to his left. 

Mid to late in the battle. The Bavarian cavalry is being stymied by my squares while my skirmishers, having previously sent off the Bavarian skirmishers, are now firing away at the advancing Bavarian line. My artillery was making life miserable for the line as well. The line routed shortly afterwards. 

Meanwhile, my cavalry units in my reserve hit the Bavarians in the flank, seeing off a unit of infantry and a unit of artillery. They pinned another unit into square, which the Russian artillery subsequently started to pound. The Bavarian cavalry continued to threaten the Russian right, but the square managed to hold them off long enough for my charge to take effect.

About the same time on the other flank. 

The Bavarian morale basically collapsed at this point, but they had been able to hold the village for long enough that the GM declared a draw.

The third game was a Wild West shootout with every figure for themselves. I think we started with 14 players.

The view down the main street before things heat up.

I started off in the blue building in the lower right.

I had placed my figure early. Three players joined and they placed themselves close to where I was. They started shooting at each other. One was shot dead right away and another one was wounded. I seized the opportunity to go to an open window and gun down another player in the back. Every man for himself!

Me about to shoot someone in the back. I guess my hat is more black than white.

After a while, I got tired of trying to kill someone who couldn't do much (down to one action per turn, severe movement and firing penalties). While it was easy to hit someone, killing them was tough to do.

This was near the end. Bodies everywhere. I'm near the fence and starting to draw fire from the buildings on the other side of the tracks. 

Pinned!

 I used my 3D printer to create some pinned markers. The first 4 were not successful because of various mistakes, but I fiddled with the model until it worked.

I then painted the metal of the tack silver, painted the body red, and painted the tops of the letters white. I put some watered PVA on the surface and dipped each one in fine turf.

A final step that I will do later is to spray a PVA water mix to seal everything down.

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.

Chain of Command 2

I got in a couple of Chain of Command 2 games in July. The first was a 2 on 2 battle of Canadians vs Germans in 15mm. I was doing well on my flank but progress was slow because of all of the open ground I would happen to cross. But my team mate on my right completely collapsed and that ended the game. He had not been in the greatest of positions but a run of 4 straight phases against him sealed the deal.

My position on the left getting ready to attack to the left.

Frank on the right just before the collapse occurred.

The second game was a 3 on 2 battle with the Germans holding two objectives. I took a tank platoon for something different. We were slow getting going so action was just heating when we had to call it. I could not make the second half so I do not know how it went.

Position at the end of the session. The Firefly had just done a reaction shot to the Pz IV that rolled into the woods at the very top of the screen. The Firefly missed. It is now our turn but the Germans have a COC die that they were going to use on our turn. It is likely that they will use it on my rapidly charging Sherman near the top of the screen.

To the Limit

 I've added AMS Lite to my 3D printer. AMS Lite is an attachment (not literally) for the A1 Mini and it allows you to print in up to four colours. I also ordered a spool of black, dark blue, light blue, and a sort of fleshy colour. Also in my order was a 0.2mm nozzle. Naturally, I wanted to see how tiny I could go. Pretty tiny, as it turned out, using the smallest layer height (0.6mm).

I decided I would also try my hand at designing some figures. I worked in Tinkercad creating 8mm American Civil War figures, which I knew I would scale down by 25% in Bambu Studio. I sort of knew beforehand that the figures would be too skinny, but I also wanted to see if I can get "realistic" and "proportional". Here's a more close up photo with a 15mm Zulu mounted on a penny.

I'm pretty impressed by how these turned out. Yes, there's some fuzz between the kepis, the flag didn't survive removal from the plate, and it is extremely wasteful of filament, but it was a worthwhile experiment.

I'm already working on 2.0. I'll make it much sturdier by having the figures slightly overlap, thicken up the flag a bit, and make the base thicker. 

Hot Lead 2025

 I have been looking forward to Hot Lead for some time. It's a chance to see some people that I used to play with. As it turned out, David was the only one but it was really good to see him.

I got into two games. The first was run by David and was a Japanese civil war game. Each player had two clans of varying strengths and composition. It was fun with both our flanks winning but our centre collapsed, resulting in a narrow loss.

The next game was an English civil war game featuring the Parlimentarians trying to hold off the Royalist attack. The objective of the Royalist was to exit three cavalry units off the far edge by turn 15. Due to plucky resistance, the Royalists didn't come close to these victory conditions.

1st Project With a 3D Printer

 So I got a 3D printer for Christmas. It's a Bambu Lab A1 Mini and it has been great. 

I've printed the obligatory Benchy (that's what it was doing above) and some accessories (printer poop basket, toolbox, and scraper). It's now time to put it to its true purpose: printing stuff for my miniatures.

I've had 300 15mm Zulus for a while and I've stagnated in painting them. I also recently (relatively) aquired The Men Who Would Be Kings rules. These rules use individual figures for casualties, so the obvious solution is to create movement trays for them, because why move 12-16 inividual figures when you can move just a couple of trays?

I've started with an artillery tray because it only have 4 figures on it. I have quite a few figure bases saved (courtesy of the Canadian government) and so I designed the stands to fit them. I should have enough to base all of my Zulus and British, but then I will have to look for alternatives for other periods.

 In TMWWBK, every unit has a leader, so I wanted to have a specific spot for him. I experimented with pausing printing and swapping from the grey filament to a white filament, and it worked reasonably well. The text a little smudgy, but it should look OK after I apply some flock and other terrain.

The leader also has a rating. But because the leader rating can vary from unit to unit, I didn't want to make it a permanent feature of the stand. Instead, I will be creating some labels and an area on the stand to put them. To keep the labels in place, I'm using mini magnets.

These pictures are showing my prototypes. I think I've got them pretty much dialed in to how I want them, so now I'll start cranking them out. I'll be  swapping out the grey filament for brown, and if I'm lucky I may not even need to prime the trays.

Any way, here's a more close up of the trays with some Zulus to show what the trays look like with figures in them. You can see the white letters aren't perfect, but they are definitely good enough.

Neglected Blog

 Wow, it's been basically a whole year since I last posted.

Basically 2024 was mostly a write-off as far as gaming. I did go to KEGSCon, which was very enjoyable, and there's a group of local gamers, who I joined for the occasional game. I did a little painting of some 15mm Zulus.

But really I've spent the year either not being able to game or haven't had the time or energy. A rambuctious puppy and two family medical incidents will really sap away gaming time.

But December and January have seen a renewed intest in miniatures. That's been helped by the acquisition of a 3D printer.

I'll post more about that next time.