Tabletop Terraformation

Only God, the poet writes, can make a tree. But you can make or buy all manner of miniature facsimiles that will enhance your wargame table and make your game pop. The same goes for rocks, hedges, hills, rivers, etc. In my early wargaming days, one of my group expressed his approach to tabletop terrain by explaining that he was a wargamer, not a dioramist. I understood, sort of, but I did not concur. I'm not ashamed to say that I do like me a good tablescape.

Pursuant to that passion, I've invested much over the years in buying and creating the bits and pieces that transform bare space into miniature fields of battle with high visual appeal. The following is a summary and commentary that unfolds the evolution of my experience with tabletop terrain.

In the beginning

My non-dioramist friend referred to above owned a game store in Campbell, CA where I got my start with miniature gaming in the 70s. We played a lot of WRG 5th ancients and also 25mm Napoleonics and ACW using a set of rules he'd written (Brigadier!). 

The terrain we used was, shall we say, symbolist in its antipathy to verisimilitude. The table we played on was a large 12'x6' platform made of 2x4s and thick plywood sheet (actually two 6'x6' tables joined together). I call it a platform because it was so solid you could likely have held a hoe-down on it without fear of collapse. The plywood playing surface was covered by green indoor/outdoor carpet, the kind people used for their patios. Woods were just another piece of the same material cut into an irregular shape. Rivers were two strands of blue yarn used to delineate the river's edges. Roads were two pieces of brown yarn arranged sort of parallel. Buildings were cubes made out of black cardstock. Hills were chunks of rough cork sheets that could be used for bulletin boards and were also, for some reason, considered a prime element of decor in the 70s, along with electric-blue shag carpet and avocado-hued kitchen appliances.

The 70s were an era of not-yet-there as far as wargaming terrain was concerned.

My other gaming experience in the 70s was the "square ancients" game we played in Al Tilley's garage every Wednesday night. Al created a 4'x4' table of masonite board that he painted chalkboard green, then meticulously marked it off in 1.5" squares using an indelible ink marker. Al would come up with scenarios to play and would have the terrain features drawn on the board with colored chalk ready for the weekly game. I wish I had pictures. In one sense, they were works of art, but they were also all 2-dimensional. 25mm figures on a flat surface seemed to me an inadequate tableau. I often thought it would be cool to introduce 3D terrain on that square grid.

Geo-Hex

I think Geo-Hex was a revolution in tabletop terrain. Kieran Rohan ("KR" to everyone) created it back in the 80s as a versatile 3D terrain system that used styrofoam hexes and partial hexes that fit together to create any kind of surface you wanted.

My first experience of Geo-Hex was around 1989/1990 at the long-gone but magnificent in its time Emperor's Headquarters in Chicago (the building Todd Fisher had remodeled in Empire Style for his store is still there). After oohing and aahing over the goodies to be had there, I went into the back area where there we several tables set up, some of which were covered by Geo-Hex. I did not think such things were possible for men to achieve.

When I moved out to Washington and got involved with the regional org NHMGS, I was pleased to learn that KR was one of us and he regularly brought his product up from Oregon to sell at our annual convention. I even got a tour of his shop when I went down to Portland for a game day event. I never bought any Geo-Hex. It was out of my price range and I had nowhere to store it. It wasn't as onerous as a set of big game boards, but it required several boxes to get a tabletopful of terrain. I had many friends with Geo-Hex, however. Kevin Smyth used his until it wore out, then he gave it away.

Geo-Hex has a lot going for it. It's heyday as a wonder of tabletop transformation is past, but it's still available. There have been a lot of creative additions and the BattleScape option provides a hex grid for them as needs one.

I actually did buy some Geo-Hex a few years ago, but just a hill set. I bought it out of necessity, too, because I'd forgotten to bring my pinkboard hills to the convention and there were the Geo-Hex hills sets on sale. I used it maybe twice. It now sits neglected in a box in my garage. 

My only other reservation, which is true also for game boards (see below), is the gap. Piecing things together to create the tablescape leaves a lot of gaps between pieces, which diminishes the aesthetic. That's likely my own obsessive pet peeve, but it's always bothered me to see a surface cut up by the joint between boards or hex bits.

Game boards

At the same convention where I saw Rich Hasenauer's blanket terrain (see below), my group played a game of Guilford Courthouse on a set of boards that were originally created for a Second Day at Gettysburg game in the previous convention. The boards were very beautifully made by Dennis Bergum (long deceased now) for Phil Bardsely. Phil had those game boards in his pool house for 25 years. I don't believe we ever used them again. When Phil died and I was helping his wife Karen to sell his collection of toys, my advice was to toss the boards, assuming that no one would want them. However, to my great surprise, someone bought them. It goes to show that one person's peeve is another's pursuit.

Another experience with game boards was with the more generic ones Dennis made for Bob Mackler. Bob and I played many games of Napoleon's Battles on those boards. I recall that Bob paid Dennis a lot for the boards, but he got a lot of use out of them. Maybe because he didn't have a pool house to ignore them in. I suspect that Bob still has them somewhere.

Finally, Kevin Smyth and I made a game board for our Tarawa game for Crossfire. Kevin wrangled the plywood and particle board base in his garage with occasional kibitzing from me (no actual work, mind you). My main part was making the above-ground bits like the palm trees, bunkers, redoubts, etc. We created it all for a convention game and were able to play it a number of times after that, but at some point, the boards sat in Kevin's garage (no pool house) until they went into the landfill.

I still have the palm trees. I believe they're the sole remaining bit of that game in my or Kevin's possession; everything else has been sold off (or tossed) in the many years since.

My thinking about game boards generally is that they're something to avoid. They look great (usually), especially at first before continued use (if any) or long storage leaves them warped and dodgy. More so than diamonds, game boards are forever and don't store neatly and easily, even if you have a pool house.

Even if you wind up reusing your game boards, their lack of versatility must start to wear. You'll be fighting over the same hill or over the same ford in the same location game after game. It's almost sisyphean in its repetitiveness. 

Happiness is a felt blanket

The first time I saw a blanket used for wargame terrain was in the early 90s. Rich Hasenauer was a guest at our Enfilade! convention (at that time held in beautiful, almost still bucolic Lynnwood, WA) and hosted a game of Fire and Fury. What was interesting is that he had a styrofoam base carved into all kinds of undulations over which he laid an old olive drab army blanket. He had a lot of miniature trees with pins coming out of the trunks. He stuck those through the blanket and into the underlying styrofoam. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. 

I'd never seen terrain created that way and what struck me was the simplicity of the idea. Why hadn't any of us thought it up? I guess someone had to say, "Let's slice the bread before we put it in the package." After that, it was up to everyone else to say, "Well, of course." 

I think, actually, that blankets may have been used in the olden days of the hobby, H.G. Wells and all that. 

Robert Louis Stevenson used blankets but they were laid over books, which hardly have the contours of a real hill (image from The Man of Tin blog).

I searched various Army surplus stores for blankets and got a few that worked. Laid over various thicknesses of builder's pinkboard with a bevel cut on the edges, you get a perfectly seamless tabletop on which to place the rest of your terrain. Army blankets, however, have their limitations. Size is the big one. Trying to stretch a blanket made for a standard army cot over a 6' x 8' table is an exercise in dismay. Enter felt.

There's a plethora of craft felt that can be bought in widths of 6' and cut to whatever length you want. Early on, we found that the best color was something called Reets Relish. It's a mottled green, so it doesn't have the dull monochrome effect that a solid green would have. The 6' width became hard to get in the craft stores, so John Kennedy used to get a bolt at his store and you could buy it from him by the yard. The tables at The Panzer Depot were always covered in Reets Relish felt. Even without a styrofoam or pinkboard substrate, they were a good ground cover. I have several such felt mats of various sizes.

I used felt, too, for naval gaming. "Big Blue" is my 8'x6' felt mat in a mottled blue which has seen numerous naval actions from the Mississippi to the North Pacific over the years. (Yes, I know Big Muddy isn't actually blue, but it is when my ironclads fight on it.)

Going to the mat

Dave Schueler fell in love with thick neoprene game mats. At the time, I was sort of "meh" on the idea. My biggest concern being hills. The blanket method allows for creating seamless hills that obviate any need to blend with the surface because they're under it. The neoprene mats are too think to fold effectively over the hill shape below, so the only option is to have the hill sit on top.

What changed my initial reaction to mats was inheriting two of Dave's Desert Planet mats that he got from TableWar. This was right at the time that I was working furiously on my first Xenos Rampant detachment. I planned to use them on the standard felt blanket terrain, but Eric Donaldson was painting his XR detachment with a desert scheme. The light went on.

I tend to avoid idiosyncratic terrain, i.e., terrain bits that have very limited use. I suspended that aversion to create a lot of terrain for Xenos Rampant that matches the yellowy Desert Planet mats.

Soon after my Desert Planet experience, I had an I Don't Have A Job experience, which afforded me the option to play Saga in Tacoma on Wednesdays. This experience resulted in adding a number of new mats to my collection. It was just easier to use a 3x3, 3x4, 4x6, etc. mat to define the playing area than to have to somehow delimit a space on a big 6x8 felt blanket.

I have sea mats, too, that replace Big Blue. Two 4x6 mats cover the same area. I just ordered another 4x6 sea mat with a 2" hex grid on it to replace the felt mat I've used with my ancient naval rules, Row Well and Live!

The hills are alive

Having gone over to the mat side, I was again challenged by my initial concern, namely that modeling hills with a thick neoprene mat is difficult. I tinkered with the idea of making hills from builder's pink board that were properly flocked to match the mat surface, but I really kind of hate that. Pink board chips and never looks right. It's better left below the blanket.

However, I found some cast resin hills on Etsy that got me excited. They're very heavy and have good detail. The seller was going out of business because he wasn't making the sales he hoped for. Large, cast resin hills are apparently not what people want these days. I, however, am delighted to have found them.

I got three of the four he produced. The fourth was out of stock and he had no plans to cast it again. They arrived all white and shiny. I did a size comparison. Great for 28mm scale, but a bit undersized for Maebh scale.

They have a lot of rocky bits, which I highlighted in gray and did a few light drybrushings over before I flocked them.

The result was pleasing. They don't blend perfectly, but they don't stick out like a sore thumb either.

I love the hills, but they're all rocky. I wish I could find cast resin hills of similar size that were just smooth, with no rocky outcroppings. 

Etsy

Speaking of Etsy, where I found those hills, it's been a great source for terrain materials. I got several rocky pieces that I've used for my Xenos Rampant terrain and for Tribal.

Almost all come unpainted and are 3D prints. I like them unpainted and I had to negotiate with a seller who only wanted to sell finished bits. When I finish them, they're consistent with my other pieces and match the mats.

Etsy is a good source for 3D printed terrain, especially buildings. I'm not a fan of the MDF products. They're too much work and I'm fundamentally lazy.

Hedging my bet

Despite being fundamentally lazy, I did opt for a more involved method for creating model hedges. Doing ECW and 1672 projects as I am, hedges are important. I came across an idea that used popsicle sticks and that coconut fiber stuff used for lining hanging planters.

I cut it into strips, glue it to a popsicle stick, distress like anything, then flock it with medium coarse Woodland scenics. I use a combo of light green and yellow.

The result is a wilder, woolier look than what I had been using before. The result on the table is very satisfying.

That's all for now. My posts have a way of growing, so I'll curtail it here. I hope you've seen something you like. I recommend the hedges. They're a bit of work, but not too much. You can also make smaller versions for 15mm or smaller. Just use smaller popsicle sticks.

The naked and the bronze

On Saturday, I was able to run (and play) one of my aborted Enfilade! games. It was planned both at Enfilade! and here as an intimate four-player affair using the Tribal rules and my beloved 40mm Northern European Bronze Age minis, but it generated a lot of interest, so it to grew to an eight-player mob scene. Four players with normal warbands is about the max I have figures for, so I enlisted Troy Wold to bring his collection and together we were able to create eight small warbands.

Side A, all using my figures, were Eric Donaldson, Dean Motoyama, me, and Kevin Smyth. Side B, using Troy's figures (and one warband using mine), were Gene Anderson, Troy, Scott Abbott, and Mark Wensnahan. Everyone had four units (warlord, hero, warriors, marksmen) and two honor points.

I modeled the terrain after the site of a large prehistoric battle that took place in Tollense Valley ca. 1300 B.C., only my river was less loopy. If I'd had more setup time, I'd have added loopy bit, but straight as an canal worked in a pinch.

I meant to bring a little bridge to span the river. Tollense seems to have been fought over/around a wooden causeway that spanned the river and marshy ground around it. As it was, I used a ford piece of river that became a rather fiercely contested place in the game.

Side A won initiative on the first turn and Dean galloped his horsemen across the river in a bold bid to sweep Scott's troops away. He wound up getting shot at and attacked. He was shortly reduced to a single horseman remaining.

The action around the ford was fast and furious compared to the slow dance that went on on our end. I used my nifty objective cards that I had professionally printed up. 

My objective was On This Day We Die. It's pretty cool, but I was at a disadvantage. I started every player with a pool of two honor points. I soon realized that getting two of my units killed would cause me to lose by getting to zero honor points. I had to gain a few honor points before I could afford to get everyone killed.

The moment I realized it was just after I got my warriors unit killed (not intentionally) by Troy's spearmen. He pulled a combat deck entirely of high black cards and I pulled a pitiful deck. After surrendering the blood payment, I had only one honor point to go and three units left to die, including my warlord who would have to surrender two honor points as blood payment.

To add to my dilemma, Troy had a standard bearer with the Rally Round The Flag skill. Essentially, beating his units in combat would gain me no honor points. Only killing them would because I'd get blood payment from him. Troys troops stood at the river's edge mocking me.

Heedless to good sense, I threw my warlord and hero in against Troy, won neither combat, but got well bashed for it. At that point, I pulled back. Unknowingly, that triggered Troy, whose objective was to kill my warlord with his warlord or hero. He had to follow me, which took him out of range of his standard bearer's effect. I managed to win a couple combats and pick up a few honor points.

Kevin and Gene went cautiously towards each other across the stream. I have no idea what their objectives were, but I assume they were acting in pursuit of them (although I do not assume the same for myself). They eventually wound up in several clashes that pushed Gene back across the river, only to reappear.

As the fighting at the ford intensified, Dean became the first casualty when his warband's honor points fell to zero. 

He had little left at the time, but it all went away, leaving Eric alone against two warbands.

Back in my world, my clashes with Troy's hero and warlord were going better for me. I managed to get a few wins, which put my honor point total right for getting all my units slaughtered. Ultimately, the battle came down to fighting between our warlords and heroes. For me, they were y only viable fighting units, battered though they were. For Troy, he needed to kill my warlord to win.

It was a near run thing, but in the end, I killed his warlord and that pesky standard bearer for the loss of my warlord. At this point, I went atomic and charged my wounded hero against Troy's undefeated spearmen, and lost as I assumed he would.

Troy ended the game with his spearmen and archers intact. The archers stayed on his side of the river, mostly providing fire support for the fight at the ford. My archers, who'd done good service whittling away at Troy's warlord and hero, attempted suicide against Troy's spearmen, but he was on to me. I survived the game with a lone archer alive, thus losing my bid.

By this time, the fight at the ford had petered out. Eric had a badly diminished hero and a unit of slingers. He kept the hero and hiding and was stalking Mark's warlord, who was going from one hiding place to another seeking refuge from flying rocks.

I was a great game and everyone had a good time. Tribal is catching on with several players, who are buying the rules and planning warbands. We have a Tribal game day coming up later this month in Tacoma. We'll be creating Tribal warbands from our existing Saga armies. I hoping for a small 2-round tournament this summer.

Memento mori (the big C)

Remember death. In Catholic tradition, the phrase memento mori is a call for us to contemplate our mortality. It's both a call to fully embrace the good, the true, and the beautiful in life while we may, but to be aware that life ends and we'll eventually—or suddenly—be facing the four last things: death, judgement, heaven, hell.

My apprehension of death has always focused on having a heart attack, there's family history. I had always ruled out cancer as a concern because there's no family history of that. I had a colonoscopy two years ago that showed a perfectly healthy colon. My PSA levels for prostate cancer are near nil. I don't smoke, I drink only in moderation. I am, however, a bit on the fat side. Both my parents are long lived. My father turned 97 in April, my mother will be 97 in November. My greatest fears as of last month were outliving my money or a long period of decline in my old, old age. My father has been in assisted living for years and I would never wish that for myself, though I'd be resigned to it if it came years hence.

In the past few weeks, my abstract thoughts of aging, death, and dying became very real. On May 21, I was told that I had cancer of the pancreas. On May 26, it was confirmed to be metastatic, i.e., stage 4, inoperable and terminal. With treatment, I can hope for another year or two; without treatment, I can expect only three to six months. 

As a Catholic Christian, I long to go to God. I'm not afraid of what lies ahead. I have held to my hope that after enjoying a full life I may, in Yeats' phrase, be gathered "into the artifice of eternity." I am at peace with knowing that the full life I expected will be shorter and a part of me longs for that denouement. With the outpouring of love and support from family and friends, I am also aware that my sickness and death affects those around me as well. No man is an island, as Donne wrote. For love of them, I will fight to be with them as long as I can. As St. Paul wrote to the Philippians (1:21-24), 

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

I'm no apostle, but there is with all of us an obligation to keep ties to life and all the relationships it entails while we may. 

I assume that treatment will be no picnic. I only came to choose that path after a long call with the nurse navigator for my treatment. I feared it would be painful, unpleasant, tiring—and futile. But if treatment provides a few more months or years with quality of life, I will be grateful for every moment. I will savour the time spent with family and friends, time spent with my parish and being involved where I can be: teaching RCIA, leading a Bible study group, serving as an extraordinary minister of holy communion.

I'm encouraged by Dave Schueler's example as well. While he struggled with cancer, I was too sanguine in my hope that he had years of life left. He didn't and he likely knew that better than we did. Still, he kept us together and hosted games on his lawn during the COVID isolation and later in his house. I hope to get a lot of gaming in during the time I have left and I will plan for Enfilade! 2025, even though I wound up missing Enfilade! this year except for a brief visit on the second day.

I'll continue to work on current projects, maybe even backlogged projects (there are many). I completed several 28mm buildings in May to use for general Medieval through 18th c. skirmish gaming. The impending release of One Hour Skirmish Wargames ancient and Medieval edition will be a great inspiration too.

In the time I have, I will have plenty to do.

I'm also still working for as long as I can. My employer is very supportive.

Overall, then, I don't know what more to say now. I've had friends offer to be a sounding board for any venting I feel a need to express, but it's never been like that for me. Of the five stages of grief, I started at acceptance and remain there. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." (Mt 26:39)

I won't stop praying or hoping or fighting. If, or rather when, the fight becomes impossible, I will not despair. I can only echo the words of St. Paul:

We do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 

(2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

One-hour Skirmish Wargames: Papa's got a brand new bag

Encased within my freakishly thick skull is a monkey brain sans pareil. It's inevitable that however well focused I may be on anything, everything else seems to crowd in as the monkey brain dances and plays until it latches onto something solid. Enter One Hour Skirmish Wargames—et voilà, papa's got a brand new bag.

The rules were written by John Lambshead back in 2018, but I only encountered them on Saturday, Feb 24 at our Drumbeat game day in Tacoma. Phil Williams ran a four-player game at the event using his French and Indian War minis. (That's Scott Appleby in the pic. For some reason, Phil's image does not reproduce on any media.)

Eric Donaldson played in a few games and was taken by the rules and sung their praises fulsomely. In the following week, there was much email exchanged about the rules and the potential for them. I bought a copy of the rules for Kindle (as well as a yet-to-arrive hard copy) and read them through. They're simple, elegant, and fun. There's a lot of room for homebrew modifications, plus a good fan group on Facebook. They are, according to the categorization I outlined some time ago, true(ish) skirmish rules. The slight exception is that the force checks morale as a whole and there is almost never a situation where less than the whole force checks. (The exception is armored vehicles, which check every time they suffer a penetrating hit to see if the crew bails out.)

Like Tribal, they're totally diceless. Everything is driven by a standard deck of playing cards.

My mind turned and turned, as it will through no effort of my own, and I imagined a lot of dead or moribund projects that I could restore to vibrant life for these rules. The investment in figures for a single force is roughly 12-15.

I prevailed on Eric for a game and he eagerly obliged by setting up a Napoleonic skirmish using figures that he'd had hidden in darkness for more than 20 years. Our latent skirmish enthusiasms with Saga, Tribal, and now One Hour Skirmish Wargames have brought a lot of forgotten figures into the light.

The game was a simple learning experience set up where Eric ran a British force and I ran a French force. We set up on opposite sides of a 3x3 board and had at it.

The game flows smoothly. Our only glitch was with the turn-end mechanism. The rules stipulate that a turn ends immediately when either player draws a joker during game play. We played it that, in a ddition to other turn-end activities, we reshuffle the decks whenever that happens. We kept getting jokers pop up just a few cards into play. Finally, we pulled one joker out of each deck and things went more smoothly. I've since learned that the author's intention is that decks are only reshuffled when all the cards have been drawn. That's consistent with Tribal and Pig Wars, which use standard card decks.

In general, it drives me crazy to plop figures on their sides to indicate hits/losses. 1HSW does this whenever a figure is hit by shooting. When a turn ends, players check morale for their force and then go through checking every downed figure. On a black card, they're back in the fight; on red, they're gone ("red is dead!"). In the end, it wasn't a big thing to drop the figured on their side and felt sort of natural. The rules do note, however, that a suitable marler is also an option.

The rules are consciously uncomplicated. There's area terrain like trees, scrub, rocky places, etc. and linear terrain, like walls, hedges, ditches, streams, etc. Terrain gives cover for shooting, but not for hand-to-hand combat. Simple shooting is just a comparison of drawn cards; if the shooter's card is higher, the figure is down, but not dead—yet. If the target is in cover, the targeted player draws extra cards depending on the type of cover and uses the highest card in his defense. Similarly, if the shooter has extra skill or a weapon that can shoot promiscuously (think automatic weapon), he may draw multiple cards for his shot, keeping just the highest. Eric's two riflemen were the only skilled shooters.

Being in the open was generally not a good idea. Shooting can be nasty. Drawing extra cards for combat is an interesting dynamic. It's very different from a simpler +1, +2, etc. to the value of the card drawn. It's adds a whole different level of calculation. In out first game, I had several figures behind a stone wall, which provided heavy cover (+2 cards). Eric's skilled riflemen drew two cards, so my ability to draw three cards and keep the highest made shooting at them, even with skilled rifles, a bit more difficult.

If I shoot at something several times and it doesn't go down, I'm likely to fix bayonet and go in for close combat. It was kind of that way in our games. I had three grenadiers with the Brawler (1) ability, that gives me an extra card in hand-to-hand combat. When you attack someone hand-to-hand, you already draw two cards to the defender's one. The third card made the grenadiers pretty formidable close in. In the first game, I kept them together and managed to cut a swathe with them.

Now, we kind of maybe did things wrong with hand-to-hand. Let me backtrack a bit. At the beginning of his phase, a player draws a card and its value is the number of actions he can can do. Most actions cost 1 point and figures can combine actions like move and shoot (1 point to move, 1 point to shoot). A figure pays extra points for multiple moves. For example, it can make a second move for 3 points and a third move for 5. Whatever you do with the figure, the rules clearly stipulate that when a figure shoots, all actions for it end. It doesn't say the same for hand-to-hand, so we figured that if a player had the points, he could keep going after a successful combat: Charge in for 1 point, fight hand-to-hand (no cost), if he wins, go on to another figure within move distance and fight for 3 points (second move), then on to another figure for 5 points (third move). For an expenditure of 9 points, a single figure could rampage through another player's troops taking out three times its number. Being a grenadier helps with that and I had a couple fun moments of rampage.

In subsequent chats on the Facebook group, we learned that the author's intention was that hand-to-hand also ends a figure's actions. Valde erat Rambo, sed non licitum. However, it's a nice thing to keep in mind for a special skill, like Rampager (x), where (x) is the number of hand-to-hand combats the figure can extend past the first.

We managed to play two games in under three hours, which time takes in a lot of pre-game, inter-game, and post-game chatting. While not timed precisely, each game took about an hour. The title is not a lie.

I'm considering projects now for this as well as looking at what I have on hand. For the latter, what comes most to mind is sci-fi. All my Xenos Rampant figures are on single bases and would make for a cracker-jack 1HSW game. I can also count among my painted figures the 40mm ACW that I inherited from Phil Bardsley. We played a few games of Smooth & Rifled with them (12 years ago!). There aren't a lot, but more than enough to make opposing sides for 1HSW.

I have a lot of ECW, especially the excellent Bloody Miniatures range, that can be made into 1HSW armies. ECW is one of those periods I deeply love, but there's not a huge enthusiasm for it in Western WA. I have enough painted for a The Pikeman's Lament army, several in some stage of being painted or painted but not yet based, then the great mass of figures that are still raw lead. I just keep acquiring them. Making 1HSW armies from my vast pool of figures won't put a dent in the number of available figures I have for a project. ECW is likely my next move with 1HSW. I just ordered some 3D printed buildings that would be perfect for an ECW skirmish battlefield.

I inherited a lot of painted Wild West cavalry and Indians from Dave Schueler, which would make for a good game. I could probably build two opposing forces for my Flint and Feather Indians and Dutchmen. I have many more that I can paint—or finish, since there's a lot more that I started a few years ago.

There's my warlord Chinese from Copplestone Castings and the two FT-17s that I bought from a company that's been out of business for decades. As I contemplate the contents of my Garage of Wonder, the possibilities are endless.