Disposable Heroes

I had a look at Disposable Heroes & Coffin For Seven Brothers (DH&C7B) waaay back when I started getting into WW2 gaming but I overlooked it in favour of publishers who provided pdf versions of their rules (cheaper you know). The other thing that I didn't like was that you activated squads and teams, I really wanted something smaller, individual men.

Well after playing Nuts! for a few years now I'd really like to be able to field more of my collection on the table. Nuts! is a great system but really doesn't scale well without resorting to house rules (group activation and so on). It still can bog down with the reaction rolls but simply anything above a platoon a side can get result in a lot of dice rolls.

What I'd really like though is to be able to play a game with 3-4 platoons on the table, lots of artillery and few tanks. Something like that would really show up the *cough*hammer guys.

After a fair bit of research and a small dash of procrastination I decided to pick up DH&C7B, a couple of the army books (British, US and German) and one of the scenario books (Without Fortune). All paper ones too, my bank account would have preferred PDF versions, cheaper and no postage, but I'm sure I'll appreciate these when they arrive.

Gutshot

For the first time since forever I actually bought a real life rulebook. You know the ones made of paper. I've been a pdf convert for so long that it actually felt weird not being able to download the rules right away.


Anyway I'm always looking around for new rules and when it comes to westerns you've really only got a couple to pick from. Six Gun Sound, The Rules With No Name and Gutshot are the ones that keep popping up a lot on the web. It wasn't until I listened to episode 36 of the D6 Generation where they discuss and review Gutshot.

I won't go into any real detail about the rules until I've had a chance to read and play them but I will say that after listening to the D6 Generation guys I was sold on the "Hollywood action RPG" aspect of the rules. I already have Six Gun Sound for those quick and the dead type games but every now and then you want to bust out a set of rules and be like Clint (Eastwood that is).

I'm pretty impressed with the service so far too, I placed the order around 3am Sunday morning (my bad cough won't let me sleep) and then at 8:24AM I get an email from co-author Mike Mitchell stating that my order had been received and when I should expect the book to be shipped. Consider me mightily impressed.

Whitewash City - Bakery and Cafe

Continuing the trend, I've completed another two buildings for Whitewash City. This time the bakery and cafe.

I've also started work on the water tower for the train station, it's mostly done I only have to add the water pipe on the side. I'm not sure I like the way the design has the pipe sticking out in a gooseneck type fashion so I'll have a think about it and see if I can come up with my own implementation.

I've probably got enough buildings for some small games so I'll put them all out on the table tomorrow and work out how many more, if any, I need to put together.

Whitewash City - Bank and Ranch House

Two more Whitewash buildings tonight, well... actually it was just the one building tonight (the bank) while the ranch house was done earlier this morning. Around 5pm in fact. I woke up extra early and had to choose between this and cleaning up the kitchen... nuff said.

The ranch house was probably the trickiest building to put together so far. The fact that it's three seperate boxes that attach to each other means that if you get one edge wrong then everything that hangs off it is wrong as well. A slower setting glue helped here as it gave me time to jostle the pieces into position.

I'm really starting to get through the buildings now and it just begs the question: where am I going to put them all? I'm really not sure, where I am putting them right now is here:

And up here.

Another solution is needed, I'm thinking of a couple of those 20L plastic storage bins with some form of shelfing. What and how eludes me at the moment, a project for the weekend I think.

I want to get these all out on the table this weekend and run through the Six Gun Sound rules a few times to get a better grasp of the rules before I try to teach everyone else how to play. I'll post photos and an AAR.

Whitewash City - Sheriff's Office and Some More Shacks

Only one building tonight, still haven't gotten over the worst of this cough. Should provide a focal point for many Six Gun Sound scenarios.

With only a couple buildings left in the Whitewash City sets I picked up Set 9 and Set 4 which should give me enough to make a nice looking table. It's not that Six Gun Sound actually needs a lot of terrain but the more cover you have then the longer your characters will live.

I also picked up two sets of Precis Intermedia's Disposable Heroes standees: Western Statix 1 and Critters Statix 2: Domestic Animals. Some cardstock townsfolk and animals should help the town come alive, and you can't go past them at $4.72 a set for 30 standees. The quality is excellent and they offer all the standees in flat, triangle and token formats. They also offer army versions where each character is repeated on a single page and each one is numbered. Should be very useful for my When Chickens Go Bad and Cows With Guns scenarios.

Em4 Tokens and Dice

I found my order from Em4 waiting for me in the mailbox tonight. These should be rather useful for Bag the Hun and the reaction based games from Two Hour Wargames (Nuts!, Six Gun Sound and so on).

The 7mm blue dice will be rather used as altitude markers in Bag the Hun.


The coloured tokens are also the right size to be used as a reputation marker in the Two Hour Wargames systems. This should make games of Nuts pretty much record sheet free.

Also some of the coloured discs will be used for Bag the Hun as squadron markers.

I just need to find a case/caddy big enough to sort these out, another trip to the thrift/hardware store methinks.

Whitewash City - Train Station and Tool Sheds

Not a large update tonight but I managed to get the train station and some tool sheds finished.

With only 5 buildings, a few smaller sheds and a sheet or two of tents left to go I may have to order those other sets sooner rather than later.

Whitewash City - Grand Hotel and Dry Goods

It's been a few days since I worked on these, work and a cough so rough that it would be just plain foolish to put a sharp blade anywhere near my fingers. With my coughing fits becoming fairly predictable I decided to finish off the Grand Hotel that I started a few nights ago. The veranda on this model is fairly tricky and the whole building took me close to 2 hours this time. The Dry Goods took on 15 minutes this time though as I've worked out a few construction tricks, especially with attaching the roof. I even attempted to attach the chimney to the Grand Hotel. I think I've thrown out the chimney cap with the offcuts from the other night so I'll have to print another one out.

The veranda on the hotel is strong, it took six metal miniatures with no visible sagging or bending.

The bending you can see in the hotel veranda is due to me bending the tabs too short and in turn making the upright struts too long, the uprights are really eye candy and offer little to no real support to the veranda.

I should easily get through both sets of the buildings before the next Badga meet in under a fortnight, I may even grab another set or two and try for a really impressive table.

Bag the Hun

I didn't manage to get the western stuff ready in time for Badga so I took along the trust Bag the Hun and set that up. Mick played the Germans who had to escort a Dornier off the table. Once again I strapped myself into the cockpit of a Spitfire and tried to bring the big guy down.

I forgot I had the camera with me so the first shot is sometime in the third turn. The three Spitfires had the Dornier surrounded and hit it with everything they had. Gunner killed and temporary loss of control followed by another hit that stopped the bomber from climbing and performing hard maneuvers. The next two cards though were the Bomber Move and the bomber Pilot character card. The darned thing made it's roll to regain control and quickly (for a Dornier) ducked out of there. Soooo close.


Another shot of the Dornier trying to make a quick getaway. The pilot character card really helped the Germans in this scenario. What should have been a 6-7 run across the table ended up being 5 turns, not a lot of time to take it down.

One lone Junior Ace desperay left trying to catch the bomber when three BF109's swooped in to make things even harder.

Result: A win for Mick and the Hun. The British managed to cause some serious damage to the bomber and rattle a few of the BF109's but at the cost of two downed Spitfires was too high a price for so little a return.

The coloured tokens in the bases really helped move things along. The smaller dice for altitude should also tidy up the table, possibly even being able to blu-tac them to the base also.

I think next meet we'll try a game with 3-4 players and give every one a section or two each. Hmmm I'd better paint the rest of the 109's and the Hurricane's then.

Whitewash City - Pioneer Hotel & Bath House

Really should have gone to bed hours ago but stayed up and got two more of the Whitewash City buildings completed, the Pioneer Hotel and the Bath House. The railings on the hotel are pretty thin compared to the others I've done. Usually they're a mirror image folded over and glued to give it some strength, these ones however are just one layer of card. I may look at fixing this up in the near future but right now I don't want to waste time fixing something that isn't necessarily broken.

Even the privvy is included, sans the flies thankfully.

Ok now I'll go get some sleep.

Whitewash City - Freight Office & Saloon

Put together some more of the Whitewash City buildings tonight and none of them were the ones I planned to do. Instead I put together the Overland Freight Office and the Gold Star Saloon.

These ones took maybe 40-45 minutes each with a few interruptions from the kids. The saloon in particular took the longest as there are a lot of cuts in the veranda. Very slow going.

I'm happy so far with the progress, two buildings per night with a bit of an all-nighter on Friday should result in 12-15 buildings, just need to find some time to paint the miniatures and re-read the rules.

Hmmmm Saturday doesn't look that far away at all. I'll keep going and reevaluate things on Wednesday night.

Whitewash City - First Buildings

I started out with the tents as some practice as it had been a while since I'd put anything like this together (I really should get the rest of that zombie infested shopping mall done).


All full of confidence I started on the Mail Express building, it took maybe 20 minutes to cut out and glue. The hardware store took a little longer, maybe 30-40 minutes as the veranda was pretty fiddly.

Looks good though, and the miniatures fit nicely too. I had heard some people were having trouble getting miniatures to fit that were based on the industry standard (ie GW) 25mm round bases).

I haven't tried putting on the chimney of either building yet as it looks fiddly, I'll get some more buildings under my belt first. I'm undecided if I'll leave the buildings as is or if I'll mount them onto foam card or MDF bases. Either way will be a bit of work but should add a little heft to the buildings and help them sit on the table better.

Tomorrow night: Sheriff's Office and the Hotel.

Whitewash City

I've had the starter set for Whitewash City from Hotz Stuff for a little while now and haven't had the time to start it. With my Artizan Cowboys getting some attention on the painting table I decided to splash out and grab set 8 and actually start putting them together.

I needed to go down to the thrift store to pick up some stuff for Bag the Hun (pipecleaner smoketrails) so I added some glue and cardstock to the list.


A quick spray of glue onto the paper and the cardstock, wait 30-40 seconds and then stick together. Once dried it should make a nice sturdy card-laminate-type-of-thing that should make a pretty strong cardstock building (with internal floorplans too boot).

And after 30 minutes of fumes I ended up with this:

I'll put some heavy books on top and give them a few hours to dry then later tonight I'll start putting some of them together. With around 15-20 buildings (if you count the tents) I'm aiming to put a couple together each night and I should be done and all ready by this Saturday.

But you know that old saying: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Wargamers...

Tiddlywhatsits and Teeny Tiny Dice

I just ordered around 240 odd of these things from EM4 Miniatures . The idea is to use them under the clear base of my flight stands for Bag the Hun and they, at 22mm, should fit nicely under the base of my 28mm minis for Nuts! and Six Gun Sound. The concept is to use colours to mark flights/schwarms in Bag the Hun and for Nuts!/Six Gun Sound the colours will represent the reputation value of the miniature (eg none for rep 3, White for 4, Red for 5 and Yellow for 6).

I also ordered 40 7mm six sided dice to use as altitude markers in Bag the Hun. Should stop them getting mixed up with the hand fulls of combat dice getting thrown around. At that size they could possibly stuck on the base with be blutac.

It's all great in theory... more info and photos after they arrive, which fingers crossed, if before

A New Hex Mat

Managed to finally get my new hex mat for Bag the Hun laminated today. It took a bit to find someone who could laminate oversized B0. The laminate is matt finished and looks fantastic on the table. The finish eliminates the shiny reflective surface of most other laminates and also mutes the map image somewhat which helps the miniatures stay the focus of the game.

So to celebrate the new mat Toby and I decided to drag out the miniatures and have a game. Three squadrons of Spitfires vs two schwarms of 'Schmitts escorting two DO-17's. The British needed to down one of the bombers to get a minor victory and both for a outright victory.

The planes starting to group up forced a lot of altitude changes and desperate manoeuvering in order to shake planes of their tail. A lot of the sprogs did rather well this game with only a few failing their manoeuvre rolls.

You can see in the shot below that even up close the mat doesn't get lost in the flash.

The bombers absorbed a lot of gunfire with a lot of minor damage results, eventually though after one of the Dornier's lost a gunner and an injured pilot they decided to bail out. With time running out and the edge of the map getting closer every turn it proved impossible to take out the second bomber when it dived below the fighters altitude. The most intense dogfighting took place in the 5-6 band range with the bombers hovering around 3-4 and eventually snuck down to 2.

In the end the British scored a minor victory taking down one of the bombers. The Germans achieved a tactical victory by accounting for three of the spitfires with another 3-4 in imminent trouble.

I really need to get some different coloured dice to minimise the chance of getting mixed up with the attack dice. All up the game was over in under an hour which is pretty good considering we were pushing around 22 planes. Next time I'd like to try a 3 player game with 30-40 planes and have some bombing runs to give the big guys something to do other than head for the other edge of the mat.

Artizan Wins!

My Artizan cowbows arrived today and they were definatley worth the wait. The casting is nice and sharp with little to no flash. The only complain is a minor one and that's that the bases of some of the minis are quite small, may 10mm around for the smallest. This made it a little tricky to mount them onto washers. I was tempted to drag out some of the 20mm GW round bases but the height of those just looks wrong now that I've switched to washers.

One pleasant surprise is that the miniatures all came in blister packs. This is a rarity amongst Internet based suppliers but it mean that all the miniatures came nice and safe in their original packing.

I'm keen to get some games of Six Gun Sound going this week so I think I'll have to get the paints out and get started on a couple of these.

Giant Monster Rampage

As expected today was pretty busy with gardening and work but I did manage to get the rest of the Black Tree miniatures based. I'll try to get the basing done this week and hit them with the airbrush this weekend.

What little time I have had to play some games has been taken up with a game called Giant Monster Rampage by Radioactive Press.

The system is simple (but not simplistic) and play is nice and quick. An interesting twist is that while it is technically a miniatures game it has been designed around using action figures for the monsters. Funnily enough I started looking on e-bay for some Godzilla toys when it suddenly hit me: kids... toys... TOYROOM!

I'm putting together a simple campaign system so that the kids and I can play a few games and make up a story as we go. I'll take some photos of the games in progress and the kids can make up a story book from it.

I picked up the two expansions Swarms (bugs and so on) and Red Alert (military) so I think I'll place and order for some 10mm Pendraken WW2 minis to help bring down the giant skeletal T-Rex that will be the main monster in our campaign. I'm also playtesting a new game called Power Warriors which is a stand alone product but is compatible with Giant Monster Rampage, this focuses more on your Dragonball-Z, TMNT & Ben-10 type characters.

If you like skirmish games in the Songs of Blades and Heroes style then I think you'll find something to like here. And it's cheap too at $9.55AUD for the core rulebook and $2.99AUD each for the expansions. Best of all is that if you have kids then you've probably already got all the figures you'll need, all pre-painted too :-).

Bada BOOOM!

I've been pretty busy with work latley so I haven't had a chance to do too much with my Black Tree minis. I did manage to put the three guns together and if I can get all the gardening done quickly I may even have time to get the airbrush out and give these a base coat.

Remember to click on the images for a bigger version.

Black Tree Getting Closer

Some more of my Black Tree arrived today, all I'm waiting on now is the Flak38 and the crew for the Pak40. So I can add these to the silver mountain:

• Fallschirmjager Platoon (30)
• Fallschirmjager with MG42s (4)
• Fallschirmjager with MP44s II (4)
• Wehrmacht Officers (2)
• German le IG18 75mm Infantry Support Gun
• 2 x British 6lb Cannon & Crew (1)
• U.S. Para Bazooka Team (2)

*sigh* Three more guns to work out how to build, they really should come with instructions.



Now I really need to get painting.