The passing of legends

We often hear of the graying of the wargaming hobby. Ancillary to its graying is its dying. I know, I know. I'm bordering on the morbid again. Most of my friends and acquaintances in the hobby whom I've lost were still pretty much in their prime. Occasionally, one of the legendary warhorses goes the distance.

I heard from my friend Rick today that an old friend from our San Jose, CA days had passed last week. Al Tilley was almost 88 when his heart gave out (today would have been his birthday). He'd suffered from ill-health for a number of years mostly due to the effects of his being a lifelong chain smoker. (Kids, don't smoke.) I was saddened by the news. I've generally had a happy life, so it's hard to experience the loss of people and things that contributed to that happiness. Memories are no substitute for the friendships of which they're the remnant.

I met Al way back in 1977 through Rick, who was part of a group that met in Al's garage every Wednesday night to play Judge Fernandez' Square Ancients. He pulled me into the group where I played occasionally for the next few years. Square Ancients was probably my first prolonged experience of miniature wargaming. From there, Rick and I went on to playing Al Margolis' Legion rules, which for me were the gateway drug to WRG 5th edition Ancients.

Still, the old, formalized Square Ancients game we played with single-mounted minis on a 1.5" square grid remained a fond memory. I still have a mimeographed—yes, mimeographed—copy of the rules that Al wrote out in his meticulous engineer's hand on some old Lockheed graph sheets. That's old school.

Al loved the regularity of a square grid game. Measuring with rulers was a bit too fudgey for him. I remember him giving his impression of playing Legion with Rick and me. He told me he liked the rules except for—and then he picked up a ruler and shook it making a face at it, his wordless disapprobation of Legion's means of spatial calculation. He also disdained dice, preferring a precision random number generator he'd put together from electronic bits he bought at Radio Shack. You couldn't put some English on the random number pull like you could a dice throw, but it didn't make the results more palatable. I can still hear Bob Turner, one of the Wednesday night stalwarts, crying out, "I can't believe these pulls!" whenever a undesirable number came up.

I had a project not too long ago where I started painting some figures for a Square Ancients revival. I used Al's hand-scribed pages as my starting point and fleshed out a bit of the lacunae that had always just been filled in by memory and tribal custom. I also adopted his experiment in using a hex grid instead of squares.

I managed to complete only a few pieces: 8 single-mounted peltasts and a 6-figure phalanx block. Apart from phalanxes, all the figures for Square Ancients were single mounted. I also have the rules I drafted in Adobe InDesign—except I used fonts that I lost in the Great Hard Drive Crash™ earlier this year, so it's kind of a mess until I can find a way to restore them or buy new copies.

A phalanx and a peltast—with a busted spear

I last saw Al on a trip I made to San Jose in 2012. I hadn't seen him in a very long time before that. We had a good chat and caught up on the intervening years. Al's mind was always sharp and he was always interesting to talk to. Talking to Al always left me wanting to talk more.

Apart from wargaming, Al and I shared some other things in common. Al was a cat person and cared for the local ferals as well as his own. He was also a Korean War vet, serving aboard USS Henderson (DD 785) at Wonsan Harbor. My dad was also a Wonsan vet, serving aboard USS Blue (DD 744).

There are a handful of adults from my youth (Al was 30 years older than me) who stand out as highly memorable. Al is part of that crowd. You don't realize at the time how much someone you look up to subtly influences you with the things they say, the way they say them, how they express their interests, etc. I haven't inventoried the memories or anything, but I can think of a few a few brain-seeds that Al planted that matured to become part of my own thinking. Al thought a lot about Winston Churchill's Life of Marlborough, the big, sprawling, four-volume version. I made it my quest in my 20s to find a set, which was no easy task before the Internet. I still have the set I found. It's as good a read as Al said it was. Al was a sci-fi fan and I picked up some of my interest in H. Beam Piper from him.

I'm sorry I didn't manage one more get-together with Al before his death. But I can still relive those Wednesday night trips to Orange Blossom Drive long ago: The anticipation of well-planned game played on a 4' x 4' square grid (marked on a board painted chalkboard green) with the terrain carefully drawn in with colored chalk, a fridge stocked with every variety of soft drink, an inexhaustible bowl of candy, and setting up a perfect attack only to be foiled by the random number generator spitting out 01. (I can't believe these pulls!)

Ave atque vale, Al. You had a positive effect on those who knew you and you'll be remembered by them as long as they live.

Into the wilderness (don't mess with Corporal François)

Kevin Smyth, Dave Schueler, and I played a first game of Song of Drums and Tomahawks this Saturday down at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland. It was also the debut of Kevin's and my Flint & Feather armies. It was a fun little foray into the North American wilderness ca. 1640.

This has been a serendipitous project for me. I'd been looking at the Flint & Feather range since early in the year, but held off buying. The website listed several packs that weren't yet available and I wanted to wait to order until they were. Then Bob Murch came to Enfilade! this year with minis to sell—including the ones that showed as unavailable on the website. What could I do? I came away with 29 minis, which is enough to be getting on with in a true skirmish game (i.e., actual 1:1).

I painted the lot by the end of June, which is pretty fast work for me, especially when I'm not under the gun to get minis painted for a game. Kevin got a later start on his because he didn't buy in time at the convention and had to wait three weeks for his order from Crucible Crush to arrive. By then, he was preparing for a cruise around Eastern Canada. Despite all this busyness, he managed to complete five figures to get into the fray.

We originally planned a game for four at Meeples in West Seattle, but the West Seattle Grand Parade nixed those plans and only three of us could get to The Panzer Depot. I set up a 4x6 table that was very woodsy with some hills and river bits.

Field of battle

I made up three forces of 8 figures each. Two with all Indians and a third that was half Indians and half Europeans. I took the mixed force, Kevin had his five figures plus three Mohawks with Muskets, Dave took the others. Each of the all-Indian forces included a hero figure, who fights and activates better. The mixed force had Corporal François, who had the Leader trait, which I pretty much forgot to exercise the whole game. The other Europeans, Pierre, Jean-Louis, and Etiénne, had muskets and swords. All the Indians had the Woodsman and Scalper traits. The latter requires them to spend an action scalping any foe they kill.

I thought it would be a game of cutthroat 1:1:1, but it wound up being me against two. Dave and I came in from opposite sides at one end, Kevin came in from the far end.

Some of my boys at the start

My Frenchmen, not being woodsmen like the Indians, could only move a short distance. But I trundled them up to musket-range and prepared to blast away.

Corporal François encourages the men forward

I quickly got entangled with Dave's forces. He had two musket-armed warriors and several other with bows.

Old school Indian warfare

Newfangled warfare with Dutch-supplied muskets

While I slowly positioned my musketeers, Corporal François rushed out to meet the foe head-on. His impulse in this was matched by Dave and his hero. Soon we were locked in dire combat.

Corporal François, with an Indian ally, takes on Dave's hero

Combat in Song of Drums and Tomahawks can be alternately frustrating and lethal. Many times it seemed that you'd have someone at your mercy only to have them escape. Dave and I both managed to get an advantage over each other at times only to blow the attack with a bad die roll. At this point, a lot of the action revolved around the big rock that dominated the center of the battlefield.

Ring around the rock

Ironically, in the fight between Corporal François and Dave's hero, it was one of my Indians that gave Dave's hero the killing blow. Dave managed to extricate himself from being outnumbered and then rushed in to attack my non-hero Indian ally. Unfortunately, he rolled low and I rolled a natural 6. In Song of Drums and Tomahawks, a figure armed with a Primitive Weapon, as mine was, always kills on a natural 6 if they win the combat—even if the result would normally be fallen or pushed back. Thus ended Dave's hero.

His scalp adorns my lodge-pole

Because my Indian ally had defeated him, he had to spend an action taking the obligatory scalp. Big medicine!

Dave and I kept up a desultory exchange of gunfire and bowfire. Shooting had a few successes (or maybe just one), but otherwise seemed pretty futile. For musket-armed figures, there was the added inconvenience of needing to reload.

Gunfire in the wilderness

It takes two actions in the same activation to reload. That requires rolling at least two dice for activation and thereby risking an end to your turn. There was a lot of dice failure in the game. In Song of Drums and Tomahawks, a figure can activate by throwing 1, 2, or 3 dice. Every result that is equal to or greater than the figure's Quality rating (4 for everyone except the heroes and Corporal François) allows an action. But if two or more rolls fail for an activation, the player's initiative turn ends.

Mostly, we just tried one die to activate figures. If that fails, you can just move to the next figure. We didn't want to risk double failure before we'd moved a lot. Sometime figures just never managed to pass an activation. Which brings us to Kevin.

Kevin started at the far end of the board, so he had farther to travel to get into the fight. He was plagued by bad die rolls and managed to get very few figures moving towards the sound of the guns. One figure managed only two activations for the entire game.

Chief Stands and Waits standing and waiting

He survived the fight, basically because he never got into it. As for the rest of Kevin's force, because it managed to come in only piecemeal, it didn't have the impact it might have. Being outnumbered 2:1, I never really felt overwhelmed. Nevertheless, Kevin's warriors slowly crept in to make my right flank a bit dicey.

Kevin's troops come on

Spearheading the advance was Kevin's hero. Before long, we had a standoff on the other side of the big rock, which eventually erupted into more of a fight.

Standoff at Standing Rock

I was beginning to take a toll on Dave's forces. The death (and scalping) of his hero, deprived him of a major asset. His other troops kept falling prey to the same fate as the hero: Attack and die after being whacked by a big Primitive Weapon. Before long, he was at half strength.

The fight against Kevin was getting hotter. His hero was making his presence felt, having killed one of my Indians. I had to pull Corporal François away from fighting Dave to deal with the new threat.

2:1 again, but no win

Dave managed eventually to kill off three of my force: 2 musketeers and an Indian. Kevin managed to kill off one of my Indians. Both Dave and I needed to take morale tests, which sent most of our surviving forces running back for a turn. Corporal François, however, remained firmly locked in combat with Kevin's hero.

Then the worm turned, despite being abandoned by all, Corporal François and his death-dealing halberd (which counts as a Primitive Weapon), clove Kevin's hero in two. Thus another enemy hero dispatched to the Great Spirit.

Smyth, last of his tribe

Corporal François hadn't been long enough in country to pick up the Scalper trait, so Kevin's hero went to the Great Spirit with a full head of hair.

The fight continued a bit longer after Kevin's hero went down. After Dave and I mutually fled, I only had one musketeer on my left. My remaining two Indians and Corporal François were facing Kevin.

The fight moves to my right

After a bit more sparring, I managed to kill four of Kevin's warriors, provoking a morale check, which sent all of his remaining four scurrying back.

The last kill

Dave's three remaining warriors were just creeping back, Kevin's force was potentially still potent, though in disarray. I'd managed to hold off against 2:1 odds and get a better than 2:1 kill ratio.  We called the game at that. Corporal François was the stand out champion of the game. He moved back and forth between the 'fronts' and managed to dispatch at least four of the nine casualties I inflicted against Kevin's and Dave's forces.

Among my native allies, one figure stood out, having killed Dave's hero and taken at least one other scalp. He didn't have the Hero trait, but he wore wooden armor and wielded a Primitive Weapon (plus a fearsome bearskin on his back!). That Primitive Weapon came into play more than a few times when I rolled natural 6s in combat.

Heroic, though not technically a hero

Afterthoughts

I really like the Song of [X] system from Ganesha Games. Song of Drums and Tomahawks is an adaptation of Song of Drums and Shakos done by Mike Demana et al. He tailored the available traits for the period, though there were some omissions. Several Indians wore wooden armor and/or carried shields. Mike does include a trait for Cuirass, which give an armor bonus to figures with metal breastplates, but otherwise doesn't account for the Indian armor and shields. To address this, I grafted in some rules from Song of Blades and Heroes. I gave figures wearing wooden armor the Armored trait (+1 to combat result if defeated, thus lessening or negating a loss) and figures with shields the Block trait (loss result lessened by one degree on a roll of 5 or 6). However, I only allowed them against native weapons. Against bullets and steel, they had no effect.

Muskets are potentially deadly, though I think we had only two musket kills in the game, both inflicted against my French musketeers by Dave's musket-armed Indians. The +2 to combat within the first range band and the potential for a -1 to the opponent for an aimed shot (requiring 2 actions instead of the normal 1 to shoot) mean that a shooter with a Combat value of 2 shooting an opponent with the same Combat value could have a net +4 versus +1 before the dice roll. Even without the aimed shot, a +4 to +2 is good odds. We just kept rolling badly. Plus, the need to reload reduced the amount of firing by how many times we could manage to get 2 actions for a musket-armed figure to reload.

It was a fun game and I'm glad we had a chance to get our new minis into battle. Kevin and I agree that they were a pleasure to paint. I hope to see a lot more coming from Crucible Crush/Pulp Figures for this range. We'll be running a game of Song of Drums and Tomahawks at our Fix Bayonet! game day in September. In between, I'd like to get another few games in. I think I may need to look into getting a stockade and some native longhouses...

I just received reinforcements from Crucible Crush: another 24 Indians to paint. That'll give me a total of 53 plus my Europeans. I have 12 of those (10 musketeers, 2 officers) and have another 8 I could bring in. The minis are from The Assault Group Thirty Years War range. I started several minis a while back, some of the first I painted using the Miracle Dip™, with the intention of making some units for Pike & Shotte. I still want to complete that project—and have many more unpainted and partially painted minis—but I'm sorely tempted to add more Europeans to the mix.

I also just received an order from Galloping Major Wargames: Some Candian militia and some Hurons plus a few free figures. That'll give me 24 milita, 25 Hurons, and 3 sailors. I'm not sure how the sailors will figure into this. They're very nice minis, but bare feet and blunderbusses didn't often find their way onto the wilderness frontiers of New France. I'll base these individually so I can use them for a variety of rules: Song of Drums and Tomahawks, Sharp Practice, Patriots and Rebels, etc.

Tank you very much

We had a great game day on Saturday down at Dean Clarke's house in Bonney Lake, WA. We played Too Fat Lardies' What a Tanker! using 15mm Flames of War tanks. The game was set in France 1940.  I have lots of bits and pieces of 15mm WW2. Among them are some Quality Castings Pz IICs and StuG IIICs in dark panzer grey. I needed to do just a bit of finalizing to get them game-worthy and off I went to Chez Clarke. I have a couple Pz IIIEs, a Somua S-35, and a Char B1 bis in progress (well, actually, so far I've just opened the blisters to inspect the parts), which I'll get into a game in the near future.

Mike Lombardy and I were the Germans. We each ran two Pz IICs. Dean and Troy Wold were the Allies. They each had one British A-10 and one French Somua S-35. A few turns after we started Paul Hammerschmidt arrived and started playing a single Pz IIIE.

The game started slow, but then got bloody. With early war tanks, the guns don't have a lot of punch. Even if the armor is weak, the chance of killing a tank outright (3 unblocked hits) is low, so instead, there's a lot of temporary damage being done. In our case, our Strike value (the gun punch) was lower than their Armor and their Strike was higher than our Armor.

The Pz II is a pretty puny tank overall. Its Armor value is a mere 2. Its 20mm autocannon is just barely an AT gun with a Strike value of 3—but it has the Rapid Fire characteristic, which means that in a single turn, it can shoot multiple times without reloading in between. It also has the Small characteristic, which makes it harder to hit. These characteristics helped, since were were out-gunned and out-armored by the Allies' A-10s and Somuas.

We played the Longball scenario and entered on opposite short ends of the table. Ranges are generous in WAT!. It's unlimited, only shooting past 48" incurs a +1 on your hit number when shooting. We could have started taking pot shots immediately, but terrain factors in. The only blocking terrain were several buildings, but there were several hedgerows as well that require extra effort when acquiring a target and hitting it when shooting.

Scene of action

WAT! uses a ingenious command dice system. Each tank rolls six D6 for their activation. The results can be used for specific things: 1s let you move 2xD6 inches, 2s let you acquire a target—basically spotting, 3s let you aim at an acquired target, 4s let you shoot, 5s let you reload, 6s are wild dice that you can use in place of any of the other five—or bank them to use in your next activation.

There are a lot of subtleties also. For example, acquiring a target may require no 2s or multiple 2s. If your target is in the open and your tank is unbuttoned (i.e., TC and/or crew poking out of open hatches), acquiring is automatic. If you're buttoned up, then one 2 is required to spot. Intervening things that obscure (e.g., hedges, low walls, bocage, burning tanks, etc.) will require additional 2s to acquire your target. If the target is a tank with the Low Profile characteristic, an additional 2 is required to acquire. At some point, acquiring a target might require a whole lotta 2s.

We engaged each other pretty soon after starting. One of my Pz IIs got a pile of 1s on my first activation and I was able to speed up and take position behind a hedgerow. Dean's Somua was soon taking shots at me, but being a small target and obscured made me hard to hit. His A-10 was slow out of the gate with few 1s to get him moving and low D6 rolls when he did move.

For a while, Dean and I stood off and took mostly ineffectual shots at each other. I suffered some temporary damage, which I recovered. Recovering temporary damage is another thing you can do with 6s. Damage reduces the number of command dice you can throw, so recovering temporary damage is important to stay in the fight. Once you lose all your command dice from damage, your crew bails out.

Mike and Troy sparred on the German left flank. Mike made use of the buildings to sneak about and get flank and rear shots on Troy's tanks. These shots give extra oompf to your Strike dice. Against a targets front, 5s and 6s are hits, with 6s being critical. On a flank 4s - 6s hit with 5s and 6s being critical. On the rear, it's 3s - 6s with 4s - 6s being critical. Things can go bad quickly. I think most of the kills in the game occurred from flank and rear shots. Mike eventually brewed up Troy's Somua, but lost one of his Pz IIs to Dean's Somua.

Troy's A-10 burning brightly

At this point, Mike took out Troy's A-10 with a rear shot with his surviving Pz II and started stalking Dean's Somua while Dean was stalking one of my Pz IIs.

Taken out by a Somua

I had one Pz II get shot up early by Dean's A-10. Both my Pz IIs found a nice spot behind a hedgerow. I was loth to move, but found myself suddenly under fire to my flank.

Me brewed up by Dean's A-10

I got my other Pz II moving against the A-10's flank while Paul was engaging him to the front. I think I managed a few hits, but most of the damage was Paul's. After a few shots, Dean took out my other Pz II with a flank shot and Team Dave was out of the game.

Das Ende

Mike took out Dean's Somua and Dean's A-10 was reduced by damage down to having just one command dice available. Paul just drove past him on to the Meuse!

It was a great game day and included an excellent lunch provided by Dean's wife and some fine single-malt Scotch, of which Dean is a connoisseur. Slange var.

Postmortem

What a Tanker! is a fun game. At first it seems that a game entirely devoted to tank v. tank would be dull or simplistic. However, the dice management keeps things interesting and it's harder to kill a tank than it seems. We went through several turns before the first tank got brewed up.

There is also a lot more moving around than you'd think. Getting flank and rear shots is important, while sitting in place trading frontal shots can be ineffectual. Movement also help to force the tanks shooting at you to re-aim and/or re-acquire. Aim is always lost when one or the other tank moves; acquired status is lost if the target is no longer within the shooter's 60° vision arc or has gone behind blocking terrain.

I'm digging through my lead-pile to see what kind of tanks I have partially completed or as unbuilt kits. I'm also looking at the Flames of War website


I'm dashed!

To keep track of tank status, What a Tanker! uses a dashboard for each tank in play. You can download dashboards from Too Fat Lardies in PDF to use. I almost printed some in color and got them laminated at Kinkos, but I figured Dean would have dashboards and I just needed to bring my tanks.

To our delight, Dean gifted each of us with a nifty MDF dashboard produced by DarkOps in the UK. He'd picked up a bunch at his recent trip there. (Dean's an expat Brit and knows pretty much everyone in the wargaming industry over there.) They need to be built—and can be niftied up in camouflage colors 'n' stuff. They come plain. He had a few finished on hand and Mike had a couple also.

I'm so taken by it that I ordered another five from DarkOps when I got home. I'm now regretting that I didn't order the 8-pack, where you can get eight dashboards for the price of seven. I don't think I'll ever need more than six, however.

I'm thinking through how I want to finish them.


Adventures in GPS

My Kia Soul has Apple Car Play, so I can use Apple Maps on my iPhone as a GPS system for driving. I haven't used GPS before. I usually look at a map and then trust to trial and error. But Dean lives in an area of new construction Southeast of Tacoma. That's pretty much terra incognita for me and most of the human race. The current Google Maps satellite image of it still shows a gash of excavated land, so I figured I'd never find it without GPS.

Satellite photo of installation site under construction

I got there, but there were a few stumbles. Just south of Renton on I-167, I stopped for coffee. When you turn off your route, the little tin GPS gods become confused or angry—or maybe it's me who gets confused because they're angry. The GPS immediately starts telling you to turn here, there, anywhere to turn you around whenever you deviate. Obey the machines.

Part of my reason for stopping was to reset my route. I initially set it as a link from an email where Dean provided his address. The link opened Google Maps, which provided audio guidance, but didn't display onscreen. Stopping for coffee gave me a chance to switch over to Apple Maps and get a screen display of my route.

But switching to Apple Maps didn't shut down Google Maps GPS—though I thought I'd shut it down—so I had both systems giving me instructions. I guess Google Maps wasn't finished pushing me around. I wound up going the wrong way and was guided by two voices through a strange roundabout trail to get back on I-167 South.

Once on my way, I was good for several miles until I got off I-167 in the Sumner/Bonney Lake area. The roads twist and turn, which isn't—or shouldn't be—a problem with GPS. Except that in some places the roads have a funny way of changing names when they twist. A very slight bend in the road was being announced to me as an instruction to turn, but there was no actual turn. I felt a bit disoriented and wondered if something had gone all glitchy. I U-turned, which only got the dueling GPSes grumpy, and retraced my route back to see if I could re-find my way. I stopped to figure things out and saw on the map that there was a long stretch of road. I guessed that it was doing the turn instruction because of the name change and plowed back through until the instructions started making sense again. The Sirens of GPS were luring me onto the rocks, but like Odysseus I overcame them.

Going home, I also used GPS—only the one this time—not because I don't know where I live, but because I needed it to work like Ariadne's thread to get me back out of the Bonney Lake labyrinth.

Thus my first adventure with GPS. I won't use it much because I mostly know where I'm going, having been almost everywhere by now. However, it's nice to have when I need to navigate to someplace off my beaten path.

Summer fun

As the song goes, it's summertime and the livin' is easy. Sort of. I still have to work 5 days a week, but the evening meeting commitments I have for parish activities are suspended until September. The days are longer and warmer—well, occasionally warmer here in the Pacific North Wet. I have more leisure to devote to the fun projects that I put in abeyance while I toiled to get The Irish Project completed for Enfilade! 2018.  I can re-focus on projects that are just pure whimsy. I won't start my pre-Enfilade! panic/death march to the exclusion of all else again until at least February.

So what's in the works? Much.

Rampant Hussars

At this point, I'm only committed to painting 12 figures for Enfilade! 2019. Rampant Canadian Doug Hamm has proposed a grand Napoleonic cavalry skirmish using a home-brewed Lion Rampant variant to be called Hussar Rampant. We've determined that it will be set in the Waterloo Campaign and we're divvying up who'll paint what. I'm planning on doing two 6-figure units of the British Life Guards. I've always fancied the hard-charging, wholly undisciplined British heavy cavalry of the Napoleonic Wars. Perry makes some beautiful figures in metal—metal, mind you—so I'm in.

I'll get around to ordering them soon, or I could postpone it till January and honor my more-honored-in-the-breach-than-in-the-observance commitment to not buy figures for new projects this year. Hmmmm...

Singing Natives

Since the day after Enfliade! 2018 I've been working on the Flint & Feather minis I picked up at the convention. They're very nice and very far along. I have 13 figures dipped and in the process of getting based.

Freshly dipped (and shiny!) and ready for basing

The remaining 16 figures are 99% painted and soon to be dipped. I just have a few fiddly details and touch-ups to complete on them.

In progress - almost ready to dip

They'll all be mounted singly. I plan to use Ganesha Games Song of Drums and Tomahawks (SDT) as the rules. SDT uses the same game engine as Song of Blades and Heroes, which I use for my prehistoric Europeanoids (who have their own Stonehenge about which to prance for their pagan solstice rites). The system has become a favorite of mine and the SDT variant is very nice. The basic rules are quite simple and allow for a 2-3 hours of enjoyable gaming with fewer than a dozen figures per player.

This project was a gross violation of my vow to start no new projects this year. Since I'm already in for a penny (well, more than a penny), I'll just go in for a pound. Not really that much, however. I'll get a few more packs. The figures I bought were labeled Iroquois. Other figures in the range are sold as Hurons. They were, in fact, part of the same linguistic-cultural group. The figures are indistinguishable. One can't look at one and say, "Yes, that's clearly a Huron." So, I'll just grow the collection with both Hurons and Iroquois and divide the figures ad hoc for games, which I what I do for the prehistoric Europeanoids, who are clearly not this tribe or that tribe.

I'll also pull some of my unpainted The Assault Group 30 Years War figures into the project. I have a pile of these and I can spare a few musketeers to use as French/Dutch/English in the New World ca. 17th century. The SDT rules are meant to cover the period from first European contact with the Native Americans through the War of 1812.

In addition to the rules, I picked up a couple campaign booklets for the period. Beaver Wars and The Pequot War. Both are from Ganesha Games and are tied to the SDT rules. There are lots of great scenarios as well as some good background material.

Kevin Smyth jumped into the Flint & Feather project and we're planning to host a game for the Fix Bayonet! game day in September at historic Fort Steilacoom. After that, I'll probably plan a game for Enfilade! 2019 based on a Beaver Wars scenario.

Revolting Rebels

As I mentioned in January, The first breach of my no new projects oath occurred in January (almost immediately after I made the oath) and I bought a pile of Perry American War of Independence minis. I have started this project with about 20 figures currently under the brush. They look like they'll paint quickly. It's odd that fully dressed men in homespun are a lot less fiddly to paint than nearly-naked men in breechclouts.

Mostly primer colored at this point

The purchases from January are mostly militia, which can be either Patriot or Loyalist. I have two units of mounted militia and 4 units of foot militia. I also have 12 riflemen, 12 Lee's Legion foot, and 6 Lee's Legion mounted.

These minis are being done in anticipation of the release of Patriots and Rebels in January. PAR is another official published variant of Lion Rampant from Osprey.

I'm not sure yet how I want to base the minis, but I have some ideas I'll post about later (yes, I will). I'd like to use a multi-figure basing scheme that is more linear-looking than the round 3-2-1 basing I've done. It seems more appropriate for the era.

I've also found a few Perry British infantry in slouch hats and roundabouts, which are leftovers from an earlier aborted AWI project. I wish now that I'd kept the rest of the minis. I'll eventually get to painting British/Loyalists, but I don't think I'll buy any until I complete the American force.

And the Rest...

Like Maryann and the professor in the original Gilligan's Island theme song, I have a lot of projects that I won't go into detail about. They're just "the rest."

English Civil War - I hope to get to these as the mood strikes. I have a lot partially or even mostly painted, so completing another few units—especially the mounted ones—would make a nice add to the units I already have.

ECW with some Dixon Grand Alliance grenadiers

Aztecas y Conquistadores - I need to flesh some units out a bit and make some forces that I can use for The Pikeman's Lament, or for more adventures with Quetzalcoatl Rampant.

What a Tanker! - I played the What a Tanker rules at Enfilade! and there's some interest among a few of us to add them to our repertoire of games. We've got a game scheduled for July 7 at Dean Clarke's house. I have several one-off 15mm tanks either painted, partially painted, or in the box. We're doing France 1940 as our first theatre. Those are in the "in the box" category, so I need to get at them pronto.

30 Years War - This is a very inactive project, but I'd like to get a tertia done for Warlord Games' Pike & Shotte rules. I'm looking to do a big Imperial tercio with a couple large (36 figure) pike units and several small (8 figure) shot units plus battalion guns. I'm not looking to paint enough for both sides of a game, just something that let's me get some units in the game when the other boys play.

Just a bit of the TYW minis in progress

The Irish Project - There is still work to be done here. I have the English cavalry, which wasn't part of my Enfilade! scenario, to complete—well, to start, actually. It's all raw lead right now. I have enough minis to do 2 six-figure demilancer units and 2 six-figure petronel units. After all the effort getting the project ready for Enfilade!, I need a break. I may get to them in late summer maybe.

The rest of the rest - While digging through my closets and the garage of wonders, I stumble on so many batches of partially painted minis, testaments to my wargamer's ADD. They're formerly shiny things that subsequent shiny things distracted me from. In some cases they're the unfinished bits of projects I mostly completed and then sold. I may get to some bits of these. Don't be surprised if I post something about finishing a project I started decades ago. The mood to get back to long-forgotten models and minis may strike any time.

Hey! Are those 28mm tanks?

Death of a hobbyist

I learned this evening that Al Ernat, an old co-worker of mine, passed away in January. I came across the news by accident on a Tamiya Models forum.

I knew Al from back when I was about 15. He started working at D&J Hobby at that time. I'd been going to D&J to buy tank models 'n' stuff since they opened around 1970. Eventually, I worked there myself from 1977-78.

Al was a consummate plastic model builder and a long-time member of International Plastic Modelers Society (IPMS). I had the opportunity to see a lot of his work from back in the 70s. I was just a dabbler and his skill amazed me. He won several awards when I knew him and got a write-up about him in Finescale Modeler magazine in the 80s, I think.

Oddly, he was well known to the people on the forum because Tamiya Models gave his name to the first named driver of their scale R/C cars, the Tamiya Super-Champ.

I don't think I'd seen Al for at least 10 years. I always made a point of stopping by D&J when I had occasion to be down in San Jose. Al was still there behind the counter. The last time I was in San Jose, D&J was gone—or almost gone, or gone except for the name. The big shop was gone and one of the owners' children was running a much smaller version of the shop at a new location. Al wasn't there. I assume he'd been at the old shop until it closed when the owners retired, or maybe Al retired first. He was a bout 10 years older than me.

For me, working at D&J was my first job. It was something to move on from. I sometimes wondered on my trips back to San Jose why Al was still there and hadn't gone on to a "real" job. But it struck me that he was doing what he loved and that doing what you love can be a real job, too. In that sense, I think I envied him.

You can't go home again, Thomas Wolfe wrote. But you can, really, in your mind. And when I go home to the days of my youth, Al Ernat, with his white man's 'fro and acerbic wit is there with me chatting away a Sunday afternoon while we work together at the hobby shop.

Rest in peace, Al.

Brazen Biscuits: Enfilade! 2018

Enfilade! 2018 is over. I had one of the best times in years. One great factor was that I stayed over now that I have the bigger car that can haul more stuff. I didn't have to make trips back and forth 80 miles to get everything I needed for the games I hosted.

I only hosted two games this year: My Bronze Age Skirmish game using Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes from Ganesha Games and The Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits using The Pikeman's Lament. Both games went very well and the players were great.

The crowd at the convention still showed a lot of familiar faces, but fewer of the old guard were on hand and a lot of newer faces (the young guard) were there—or newer to me; I'm sure they've had their faces for a long time. It's funny and a bit poignant to reflect that we've been doing Enfilade! for 28 years now, more than a quarter century. The children I recall coming with their dads ages ago are now full-on adults. Many of the spry (or spryer) young men of that time are grizzled old men now or have passed away.

But we go on and the hobby goes on with us. For all the remembered glory of gaming past, now is the best time to be in the hobby. There is so much that is new and exciting coming out from figure manufacturers, terrain pieces, etc. Nostalgia addict though I may be, I wouldn't go back to the old days. I saw a pack of old, old 25mm MiniFigs amidst a lot of recycled/used gaming bits on vendor had. They were some mounted Napoleonics. They were way dinky compared with current "25s" and minimally detailed. I remember when they were the cutting edge. Times change.

Enfilade! is just on the cusp of outgrowing the space we've had at the Red Lion Hotel Olympia. This year's attendees numbered 410. That's nothing compared to Historicon or Fall In, but a lot for what was once a wee convocation of local gamers. Our first Enfilade! was held in Lynnwood, where I live now. We outgrew that space long ago (and the convention rooms have been demolished, so there's that) and have been at RLHO for 16 years with two more years to go on our current contract with them. It's a great space, even though it's an 85-mile drive for me—and much farther for the Canadians who come down. It's hard to imagine anywhere in this area with a larger convention room attached to or very near a hotel—certainly not something affordable.

Games I ran

As I mentioned above, I ran two games over the weekend.

Bronze Age Heroes

Mayhem beneath the megaliths

I'm kind of an old hand hosting this game. I have my beloved 40mm Bronze Age minis from Monolith Designs/Graven Images, sculpted by the late Jim Bowen. I've augmented the ones I painted years ago with some new, as yet unpainted, reinforcements. I hoped to have some to add for Enfilade!, but the other game took all my effort to prepare.

I was happy to bring back to Enfilade! the megaliths that I bought from Darryl Nichols, who used them in his game last year. They're the perfect size for the 40mm minis and add a great look to the game board. I don't suppose I can use them in every game I play...

I love the Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes rules. For skirmish gaming they really flow well and leave a lot of tactical choice. I cut out some of the advanced bits because it's difficult managing them in a multiplayer game with a lot of newbies. The reaction rules are very nice, but only suitable for a smaller number of experienced players. Otherwise, a turn bogs down as multiple players keep reacting.

The scenario had two sides rushing in to capture and drag off the 4-figure cult group, who of course scattered as soon as their potential abductors showed up. One escaped, one side captured one and the other side captured the remaining two.

There was also a lot of hacking and slashing between the rival sides, with several gruesome kills and heroes/leaders lost.

The Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits

This is the culmination of the year and a half of The Irish Project. I'm quite pleased with myself. Large projects have always been my undoing before this. I have 120 English and 132 Irish minis painted for this now. I have only six Irish cavalry unpainted, and I just finally ordered some English horse—two units of demilancers and two of petronels. I didn't need any mounted English to do the game, so I didn't bother getting or painting any before this. Going ahead, I'll want mounted for both sides. My hope is that after all my effort, I'll be able to get a lot of gaming out of the 250+ minis I have.

Irish Pike crossing a stream

The game scenario was an attack on an English column marching to relieve the beleaguered garrison of Enniskillen. I didn't have a chance to playtest the scenario. If I had, I would have made some tweaks. Even then, the game went well and the players enjoyed themselves.

English on the march

The English got some units across the ford, but fell victim to the fire of the Irish calivermen manning the demilune.

Defending the ford

The English did, however, manage to shoot up the Irish horse and at the end of the game, the English general (Sir Henry Duke) with his body guard of armored billmen managed to kill the Irish leader (Hugh McGuire) and his bodyguard of gallowglass.

The growing dead pile

The Irish won, even though there was a lot of loss on both sides, so a very historical outcome. The main factor was the loss of the supply wagons and all those biscuits (i.e., 16th c. hard tack). I'll play it again soon at The Panzer Depot and get the tweaks in that will make it a bit more competitive for the English.


Games I played

I managed to get into a few games as a participant as well. This is rare for me at Enfilade! I'm either hosting a game or kibitzing or eating or shopping. I rarely play in other people's games, but the new event sign-up system we have enables online event sign-up, so I don't have to content with the huge line of people signing up for events at the con (which we've now done away with).

One game I had to drop out of, which was a shame. Spencer Fisher ran a The Pikeman's Lament game of the Battle of Fornovo. It looked very nice. I preregistered for it online, but it was being played in the first period on Friday and I started out from home too late and the traffic was too bad that I didn't arrive at the con until the game had started. C'est la guerre. Spencer was one of the Irish players in my Ford of the Biscuits game.

What a Tanker!

I managed to get into a game of the new Too Fat Lardies game What a Tanker! I wasn't sure what to think of it, but it played very well after  a few learning turns. There were six of us playing. I ran a Russian IS-2. The other Russian players had a T-34c and and SU-85. We faces a StuG III, Pz IVh, and a Panther G.

Setup and terrain

Dean Motoyama, playing the T-34, got a hit on the StuG, but failed to do any serious damage. I managed a couple shots at it and blowed it up.

However, trading shots with the Panther, I managed one hit that did little damage, then failed spectacularly (rolled snake-eyes) on my next shot. Alas, the Panther took me out. Then, off to bed rather than mount another iron steed.

Doomed IS-2

I liked the game so much I ordered a copy from TFL and have been scouring my boxes to see what I have in painted/partially painted/unpainted tanks in 15mm. I have a lot, despite selling off most of my WW2.


Mad Wet Max

Some years ago Dave Schueler and Kevin Smyth made variants of the Formula Dé racing game for air racing and hydroplane racing. These have been crowd favorites at Enfilade! conventions in the past. They sent a copy of the hydroplane rules to David Manley in the UK. His group played them, but decided they needed some weapons fire to really make them work. Thus was Mad Wet Max born.

Tigershark: Armed and dangerous

The game is a lot of fun and very unlike a real race. For one thing there is no general direction. Players go (mostly) full throttle in any direction to drive past hexes containing one of three numbered buoys. After passing all three three times, you exit past the finish buoy. However, there is much danger from collisions, getting upset by going through another player's rooster tail—and weapons fire from other players and aggressive spectators (with RPGs, stinger missiles, shotguns, etc.).

Ornery spectators

Most games come down to a couple—or one—survivor. To my own surprise, I managed to be one of the last two boats afloat, but was still trying to get my last buoy while the winner raced past the finish buoy.

I took hits from other boats and spectators, but I gave better than I got. I had a few turns where my gunner was doing much damage, until he was killed by shotgun fire from a crowd of rural Americans in the bleachers.


Stuff I bought

I can't escape Enfilade! without getting some new toys. Though not much this year. I didn't sell much either, but did get $200.00 for a pile of 28mm Dixon ACW figures.

Iroquois

Bob Murch of Pulp Figures came down from Kelowna, B.C. with toys to sell—including some of the excellent Flint & Feather minis from Crucible Crush. I got a boxed set of the Iroqouis warband, but Bob brought some yet unreleased packs of Iroquois great warriors, striplings, and musket-armed warriors, which I promptly snagged. I've spent some time this morning cleaning several of these. They are very, very nice minis.

WIP—straight to the painting table from Enfilade!

The range covers Native Americans (for now Hurons and Iroquois) in the period just before or just after contact with Europeans. The warriors are mostly armed with bows and some kind of close combat weapon. However, most have one or the other. Some also have wooden shields and/or wooden body armor. Then there are the musket armed figures who have 17th c. matchlocks. Very cool.

I've had my eye on the range for a while, but was waiting for the great warriors and muskets to be available before I ordered any. I'm glad Bob showed up with them in tow.

Getting up close and personal while cleaning them, I can see just how beautiful the minis are. They'll be pretty simple to paint. The color palette is mostly tans and browns with some more colorful highlights for feathers. They'll be singly based, but I'm not sure whether to go with Litko bases, round metal washers, or my plastic cut-outs.

I plan to use them for Song of Drums and Tomahawks. These rules are an official variant of Andrea Sfilogis' Song of Blades and Heroes (the rules I use for my Bronze Age games). The rules are for the French and Indian War, but can be used for any North American conflicts involving Native Americans, whether inter-tribal warfare or clashes with Europeans. I have several 30 Years War minis from The Assault Group that I think will work for early colonial French, Dutch, English.

I've lured Kevin Smyth into the event horizon of this project and he's gone and ordered some Hurons from Crucible Crush (he wasn't sure about buying some at the convention until it was too late). This is really a perfect project for him since he's already done so much with early America and the clashes between the various native and colonial peoples (and post-colonial 'Mericans of course).


The home front

I had a cat sitter mind the munchkins while I was at the convention. I've done this before. It's a comfort that a professional will be taking care of them. This is especially true because of the cat v. cat situation at Stately Chez Dave. Bogart is still a pariah to the girls, especially Maebh.

When I came home on Sunday afternoon, Bogart was out and about the house and the girls were shut in the bedroom. After I played with Bogey for a bit, I went upstairs. The girls don't like strangers and I figured they'd hide from the sitter, as they have done in the past. No change from this year.

I found Rhiannon under the bed, but no sign of Maebh. I checked every nook and cranny, called out her name, but nothing. I started to get worried. I texted the sitter and asked, "Where is Maebh?" She texted back that when she left that morning Maebh had crawled under the covers of my bed. I didn't see a lump, but I pulled back the covers and out she popped like a jack in the box. She was snuggled right up against the pillow. Perfect concealment.

All the cats were glad to see me. Bogart couldn't stop nuzzling me with his face. Maebh sat on my chest purring loudly as I relaxed on the couch and later in my recliner. Rhiannon head-butted me and snuggled up to me on the couch. It's nice to be missed.