will's toy soldier blog
Sunday, 11 May 2025
Jamjhar Insurgents
Saturday, 10 May 2025
More Eastern Front WWI - The Road to Monasterzyska
Lisa stopped by this afternoon for a playtest of the next scenario in the adventures of the RNAS armoured car squadron on the eastern front in WWI. In this scenario, the Russian army is in retreat, and the armoured cars are assisting Russian infantry and Finland Dragoons in escorting ambulances on the road to the town of Monasterzyska in Galicia (now part of Western Ukraine, but in 1917 this was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). As usual, my WWI Germans proxy in for the Austro-Hungarian KuK forces.
We rolled for leader traits before starting the game. Amusingly, we ended up with negative or neutral traits for almost every unit. Unfortunately for Arthur, the veteran Finland Dragoons ended up being led by a shirker, so these guys were prevented from charging anyone who hadn't already attacked them! One of the KuK infantry units had the same trait, so there was a built-in resistance to action right from the very start.
Here is the table. The Russian ambulances enter on the left and must exit by one of the two roads on the right. The telegraph poles have no effect on the game, and are likely anachronistic for this part of the old A-H empire.
KuK infantry move up to cover the fork in the road.
Saturday, 3 May 2025
Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles on the Eastern Front
Last night, Lisa invited Arthur and me to try another game in her WWI Eastern Front scenarios featuing Lt Cdr Locker-Lampson and the RNAS armoured section during the Kerensky Offensive. Write up for game one is here.
This scenario featured a scramble between Locker-Lampson's armoured cars, two sotnias of Cossacks and a zug of königlich und kaiserlich Austro-Hungarian infantry to control the village of Kozova in Galicia in what is now Ukraine, but was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the start of WWI. In this scenario, the three forces enter the village from different sides and seek to control the town. Points were given for each enemy unit wiped out. In the historic battle, the Cossacks turned on the local Jewish population. Lisa simulated this that when the ammo dump exploded, Cossack units were required to attack the nearest group of civilians unless the RNAS were within 8" to stop them.
Here is an overview of Kozova. It was fun to have a chance to get the UmBum buildings and the Bolsheviks and Russian civilians onto the table!
Bolshevik agitators march past a collection of Orthodox and Roman Catholic clergy.
Two sotnias of Cossack cavalry move onto the table.
Cossacks and RNAS move into Kozova.
And the KuK troops (proxied by Germans in this case) enter at the other end of the village.
KuK infantry face down Cossacks advancing along the railway.
In the end, each side took significant casualties, each force lost two full units, but the Russian/RNAS side were penalised for the attack on the civilians. As a result, the KuK force squeaked out a win by one point. Thanks, Lisa, for inviting us to try out this scenario, and we are looking forward to seeing the further adventures of the RNAS armoured cars on the eastern front!
Saturday, 26 April 2025
Characters
Here are a few character models that I've just finished up.
First up are a couple of French resistance fighters from Wargames Atlantic Digital, printed by Only Games. Officially these are WWII French Resistance, but I anticipate they will show up in gangster and other games.
This bloke was fun to paint up. He's a Reaper Miniatures model that Doug gave us. His headgear reminds me of Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
Starship Boarding Action including more Xolk terrain
A few weeks ago I was able to host my spaceship boarding action at the local tabletop gaming convention, Trumpeter Salute. There were six crews battling for control of the ship including two ship's crew - the bridge crew and the engineering team - and 4 teams of boarders.
A fierce firefight took place in the hold, with a bridge crewman (crew-alien?) distracting the boarders as his colleagues dashed to the bridge. The poor fellow was thoroughly suppressed, as shown by the plethora of shock markers!
Ultimately, the engineers held the boarders from capturing the engine room, but to no avail as the boarders captured the bridge and thus managed to keep the ship from escaping.
In the photos above you can see the extra Xolk containers in the cargo hold. My mail order arrived a few days before the convention, enough time to assemble them and prime them - good enough for the table but I found some time after the con to splash a bit of paint on them.
The collection now includes eight containers in two styles, 2 larger cisterns and a bevvy of smaller crates.
The cisterns are fun - the kit provides a frame. The cistern itself is an empty 355 mL pop tin which fits inside the frame.
Sunday, 6 April 2025
Medieval clergy, cargo containers and a mock vargr
Arthur and I visited Imperial Hobbies last week, so of course I made some impulse purchases. First up, I picked up a pack of early medieval clergy from Bob Murch's 1066 line. Although they are intended for 1066, I will take advantage of the timelessness of their garb to use them in more modern settings, whenever a monk or nun would fit in.
I slightly modified the Mother Superior - she has a greenstuff veil added on top of her wimple (hopefully I got those terms correct!).
My other purchase was a pair of MDF containers from Canadian company Xolk. I liked them so much I sent in an order to the company for more! They go together very quickly and paint up easily. They will do nicely as scatter terrain in the cargo hold for starship boarding actions.
Our recently started Traveller RPG campaign includes a vargr NPC, so I decided to convert one of Fletch's 3d printed werewolves to represent him. This is clearly not an accurate representation, as vargr are typically shorter then humans, with an average height of only 1.6 m. So this is a particularly jacked vargr, as he is notably taller and bulkier than Captain Handsome!
Next week is Trumpeter Salute - I'll hopefully fit in lots of gaming :)
Sunday, 30 March 2025
Spaceship scatter terrain plus train crew
I'm still assembling terrain for spaceship boarding actions. Cory from Trumpeters generously gave me a whole bunch of 3D printed consoles, cargo pallets and more, and I've also painted up some pieces from Terrain Crate, AK Wargame Series and others.
Cory's 3D printed cargo pallets.