The Västerbotten Infantry Regiment 1708 ....and a few things more

I have manged to finish another unit in my Great Northen War Collection. This is a unit that previously painted, but with the appearance they had in 1676. This is the Västerbotten Infantry Regiment in the uniform they wore in 1708-09. The unit participated in a number of important battles until  Poltava 1709, when it became more or less wiped out. It was raised again and participated in a couple of more minor engagements. The fact that this unit was raised in the northenmost part of Sweden is emphasized by the fact that the do have a Reindeer on their company flag.

This is more Great Northen War Swedes. This time with the unity uniform( the uniform worn by most Swedish units during the war. The head gear is the same as the one worn by the Västerbotten Infantry. It's a Karpus - a better suited head gear for a Northen climate than the Tricorne. The exactly unit these gentlemen will velong to is still an open question. Since it was a standard uniform there is are number of options.

Something slighly diffrent....

These are civilan onlookers that I intended to use for my Scanian War Scenery. It's an aggressive peasant, a lady and a preacher. Since the Scenery and the miniatures have a winter theme these miniatures have some snow on the bases.

These are miniatures that will be used in our Donnybrook games. The unit in question is the Gorham's Rangers. The unit in question was raised during the French-Indian War. Intially it was recruited among Indians loyal to British. However it eventually became more of a mixed unit with both Anglo- Americans and Indians being part of it.

Finally something  very different....

This is miniatures to be added to my Pulp collection. We are currently playing Pulp Alley at the club. The strange piece of machinery(a domesday machine - a must in a Pulp game) and the oil can will be used as objectives( in this particular game known as plotpoints). 

Pulp Alley Terrain - Building a Mayan Pyramid

Pulp Alley has become a popular game at our club. It's game based on the stories found in the pulp stories of the 1930's. The stories are often outragous and filled with action, adventure, wierd artefacts, glorified colonialism and hostile locals. What not to like? Think Indiana Jones and you get the picture!

We plan to run the Perilious Island campaign. This campaign starts at an archeological dig somewhere in Mexico. This led us to the conclution that we needed a Mayan pyramid. There was was one at the local game shop( a piece do terrain from the manufacturer Ziterdes). Unfortunatly I failed to buy it in time and someone bought the one before I finally got to the shop. What to do in this situation? Well I decided to build one.....

So how to do this?

You need a piece insulation polystyrene foam.(Also known as pink foam). You also need some foam core as a base. 

Tools needed are

A) a foam cutter

B) a scapel

C) a bread knife or a model saw

D) a pen

Stage One

Cut the shapes out of the pink foam using the foam cutter. The breadknife is used to cut out smaller pieces or pieces that needs sharp angles. The structure consist of three pieces/levels. Each level a bit smaller the higher you go in order to create a pyramid. The top level is hollow, since this level will hold the ceremonial chamber. Finally a roof piece is created. This is a fairly large slab. The roof will not be glued to the top level since I wish it to be detachable.

The cut out pieces 

Stage Two

The pen is used to etch a stone structure to the exterior of the pyramid. Press fairly hard. You need deep groves. Otherwise the paint will cover stone structure.

I used the pen to outline the stone structure

Stage three

Each piece is glued together. I used pvc glue.

Stage  Four

Once the pyramid is glued together I will will create ground structure and and add some irregularities to the pyramid by adding some model gravel or aquarium sand.

Stage Five

Once the glue is dry it is time to apply a base coat. I use black acryllic paint. 

Stage Six

The base coat is now dry. I will dry brush green paint on the entire model in order to give a Moss effect to it all.

Stage Seven 

Time to give to do the main painting. The pyramid is painted with dry acryllic paint. I use three 

shades of grey with a bit of brown and green added to each shade.  The groundstructure is painted 

with burned umber, raw sienna and ivory white.

Stage Eight

Time to paint some details. I added some fake Mayan script to the stairs and some panels.

I googled Mayan script on the net in order to get a feel for it.

A close up of the stairs with the scripts

Stage Nine

I added some static grass on the ground as well as on the pyramid. This is after all supposed to be a long forgotten structure.  I added some model plastic fibers in order to create some vines. Finally added some plastic bushes. These plastic aquarium vegetation.

The finished pyramid....

Now it's finally matter of putting in on the game board and set the campaign in motion.

If you wish to know about our club's previously exploits in the world of pulp I suggest you check out the follow blog by our fellow club member Joakim Ström. He has been recording our latest game sessions in a number of AARs.  My legue is usually refered to as"The Belgians".  I have not been that succesfull, but I have had good time thus far.

The Great Northen War Project - new units

The comming weekend my club will stage a participation game at game convention known as Lincon in Linköping Sweden. The basic idea is to set up the battle of Hollowcyn1708( previously mentioned in this blog). Well things are drawing to a close and things needs to be ready for the upcomming event. So things have been put together in the painting shed( not really a shed rather a table). 

First we have Swedish Unit known as "Livgardet"( Royal Guards). We needed more than one unit of these for this game event. So I painted up two battalions of this unit. Other club member, Mark, has also contributed with a battalion of this unit. Check out this link for more details about his efforts. He also added some details regarding the unit itself. In short this is an elite unit of the  Swedish army at the time in question. The minatures are mainly from Warfare Minatures and their new Great Northen War range. 

Then we needed more Russians. First up is the Repnin Grenadiers. Repnin was the Russian commander at the battle of Hollowcyn. He didn't do good job at this particular battle and he was court martialed afterwards. His Grenadiers looks rather cool though. If you want to read more about Repnin I suggest you check out the following blog. It belongs to Sören who is also involved in this project. He has recently published some information about the Swedish commanders in this battle, the King Charles XII.

I also needed Russian commanders and some artillery. 

This will be our General Repnin in this game.....

This will be Repnins second in command General Illfand...

...some artillery is always useful

Finally I am almost finished with this Russian infantry unit. It's generic and can represent a number of Russian units. 

Donnybrook AAR - Reconnaissance

The tranquility before the storm

Time to return to the French Indian war. As usual we use the Donnybrook rules,  bassically large scale skirmishing. It's quick, easy and fun.  Most of the photos have been taken by Pål who is my usual opponent in these games. He has recently helped Micke with photos for an article in the latest issue of  Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy. (Issue 78). It's an article about the medieval Danish Queen Philippa and the Hanseatic legue.

This  particular AAR is based on a game that we played a few weeks back. Due to other commitments, amount them helping my friend Micke(Dalauppror) stage his game at Salute 2015,  there were no postings last week. I can however recommend you all to pay a visit to his blog. I suspect that many of you  have already done so...

This game scenario started up as an idea to create some kind of scouting mission. It turned out to be something very different.

The battlefield 

The basic set up is as follows....

The table is divided into three sections of equal size. A small objective marker is placed in each section. In this game we placed them in the middle of each sector. This may have been the reason the game turned out the way it did. Some kind of random placing mechanism needs to be invented. An other sollution is to just place the objectives on terrain pieces that seems to be best suited to be placed that needs some serious reconaissance.

The basic idea is to scout each sector. This is done by being the first that reached the objective marker and at the same time succed with a basic ability die roll. This means, using the Donnybrook rules,  that a drilled unit needs to score to score 6 on a d8, a veteran unit 6 on a d10 and so forth. The attempt to scout the objective is full action. No other activity is allowed while scouting. Thus you need to rech the spot on one move and then in the next move do the scouting.

Scoring

In this game we gave two victory point to each objective succcesfully explored. Only one side can claim a particular objective. If a unit or a character is wiped out then this gives the successful side one victory point.

The narrative

Captain Castroulle and his henchmen of feral French (more or less regular) Infantry, woodsmen and
Injuns are planning to to probe the Anglo- American defenses along the Pnaumuxet River.

The Streets of New Cafarnaum...soon to be a battlefield

Advancing French Marines...

Captain Castroulle is the one waving the hat, behind the rest..a courageous man indeed

Mohawks allied to the Anglo- Americans advance through the settlement towards the French 

Hurons and British regulars fight it out just outside the settlement 

Rangers soon to back up the British regulars

The Militia that twarted Captain Castroulle

Near the settlement of New Cafarnaum they start to see the signs that an opposite force of Gin sipping villans are gathering strenth. They start to advance towards the village. However a old crone in the village spots the approaching French forces and is able to raise the alarm. The local militia is called out. The militia manage to turn the remains of an old French into a makeshift defense work. As Captain Castroulle and his regulars advance towards the village they are greeted with a hail of bullets from and an angry and well armed mob( that is what Cpt Castroulle calls the militia in his official report a few days later). In the meantime a group of Huron and Algonqin warriors tries to approaching the village from another flank. They soon run into Brittish regulars( who must have been nearby already) and a group Rangers. The fierce battle that follows is a bloodthirsty one. The Indians manage to fullfill their mission and they do reach their objective. However casualties on both sides
were heavy.

Captain Castroulle force( French regulars and compagnie de Marine) and a few scouts sent ahead ( Coreur de Bois) were stuck in firefights with the local militia. As the day reached noon both sides saw the futility of it all and the French withdraw unopposed to their original position. The fight was draw. The French did reach some of their objectives, but the casualties were to high to claim a victory. The Anglo- Americans saved their settlement, but the enemy had good idea about the presence of Brittish forces. None of the two sides could say that this was success.

Conclusions

To summ it all up. I will try to tinker with this scenario a bit more. I wish to create something a scenario more focused on movement and tactics rather than a straight firefight.