New Convention Project for Historicon 2019.

      After a great success at this last Historicon, my wife and I enjoyed the trip up to the convention. It gave us a chance to visit some relatives on the way and was not as bad as it could of been. As for Historicon 2019 being held in a new venue with some interesting questions, Kalissa has somewhat committed to the idea of going next year. We were on the fence about it, even before we went up this year. It still comes down to one point: Having fun! So after several thoughts, I have chosen my next year's project.
   However, before I do, these were some project ideas for the future that are still not out of question worth mentioning.

1.  A Safari game during the Imperial Expansion Era.
2.  A WWII aerial night interception against the Luftewaffe bombers over English cities during the Battle of Briton. 
3. Black Powder Era Samurai game.
4. Operation Nordwind of WWII
5. Bleeding Kansas raids.
6. Indian Wars during the American Civil War
7.  Battle of Val Verde, NM 1862
8.  An Aliens game on a space station. I like Xenomorphs!
9.  I still have my Sharknado idea!
10.  A Gangs in Florida in the 1950's.

    In the end, I am going with this project.

       The Battle of Peleliu in 1944.

   
       This has been a project coming for a while. I remember playing war games in the woods of Georgia pretending to be fighting the Japanese or the Vietnamese depending on the toy guns my friends and I pulled out. We even had actual grenades to throw at each other without the explosive part, though they hurt like hell when you got hit buy one. Good thing we wore actual WWII helmets.
The Army Navy Store was a great place to shop off of Hwy 41 in Marietta, GA.
       But what made this particular battle as a focus to me was the fact a friend of mine showing me his Grandfather's guns. Apparently, he had fought in this battle as a Marine. I got to hold his Grandfather's Tommy gun which was marked with tally marks on the but of the gun engraved in the wood. I did not realize until later that they were tallies for the Japanese he knew he killed. This was probably why he had some Japanese swords and some rifles as when store with the Tommy gun. After reading up on the dangers of collecting souvenirs and the booby traps often accompanied by them, I began to understand how wild that battle could be.
      The other reason for making this project is the next terrain challenge and a new theater of conflict I have not cover much on in previous games. I can blame Dan Kerrick for his Scariff Project on this decision as well as one of secretive local players, Joe with his lethal Japanese. Directly below are some examples.

       The idea I am having for this future game is to cover the assault onto the beach on the first day of Sept. 15th, 1944 with the 1st Marines and have players fight their way to the airfield on the island. The whole game has potential for multiple cool terrain ideas. One is making not only some jungle, but heavily bombarded jungle riddled with craters, foxholes, and bunkers. Plus, they are coming off the beach under heavy fire. There are tanks on both sides. Possible airstrikes. Banzai charges! For me, it is going to be a fun filled terrain-fest! Below are some photos of the actual battle. The modelling is going to be fun. I only hope to do the battle justice in honor of the men who had fought there.

Commission Mission: Showcasing a Desert Project.

       Well, it is back in full swing for some projects I have to finish up. The Olustee Affair and the wild month of June had put me behind. But fear not! I will have some future goodies to post about. I have two projects I am doing at once to get them to my patient and kind clients. This one is just one section of the desert project. The other project is finishing off Scariff. I am not to a point of photographing it to it's full glory yet, but it will be very soon. It will just be some weekend warrior attack!
    Needlessly to say, I have gained some other projects, which tend to happen after a convention. It always seems like musical chairs on the order in which they will commit. I found myself complaining to my wife about why she lets me take on commission projects when all they seem to do is inspire more of my own projects. It is a never-ending vicious cycle. Make cool board; want new board and army or in the real case, armies. Kalissa has to have the opposing force. Anyway, enjoy!

Product Review: Impudent Mortal's New Historical Line.

          It has been a while since I have done a review of any products. However, I had just built a building from Impudent Mortal's new line of historical building designed for the early American games for periods such as AWI, The War of 1812, ACW and other applications. The designer, Walt and his lovely wife, Michelle are good friends of ours in the convention scene. They have helped us in supporting our Bolt Action tournaments with prize support and terrain to use for a couple of tournaments. They are really nice people and we like their items.
           Recently, Walt had confronted Kalissa and I at this year's Nashcon to pick our brains about trying to make a new historical line. They have made quite a few lines of buildings for the city and factory warehouses. I have a warehouse from them that I have not built, but it is one the list. I plan to make a board for our tournaments using the factory building I have. However, it occurred to Walt that they had been to more historical conventions than Sci-Fi and Fantasy ones. And so, we suggested various building types that would be useful for the first run. These ideas panned out to be showcased at this last Historicon.
      Needless to say, through some communications on some designs, Impudent Mortal did a great job a designs. I do not think their line is up a running on their site yet. However, they ran out of everything they brought and more. I suspect they will be busy for the next couple of months. Out of luck between running games, I made to the vendor hall to pick up one of the last gems. This was a two-story stone farm house.
   The great thing about their designs is that they are simply easy to build. I used Loctite Control Gel to put mine together in ten minutes. That is right! Ten minutes! I could have been quicker than that if I was not looking for were I put my spare glue at. If it was not night time and raining, I would have had this primed and painted this evening. I will share that when it comes about.
   
Points of interest about these models:

1. They are large models that fit the size of 28mm.
2. The design is simple, but crisp.
3.  The doors are not attached, so you can open and close them however. Or you can glue them in place at your leisure.
4. They do not have multi-floors, but they are simple enough designs that you can easily make such arrangements. I probably will in the end. Nothing some square dowels and hardboard cannot do.

   So there you have it. That is my review!

      

AAR: This Hallowed Ground: One Last Olustee Game

          After getting home from our great time at Historicon, Kalissa and I took the next day relaxing. Somewhere in that timeframe, we were asked to try out our scenario at home. Part of this stemmed from still having our tables up from our playtest a few days before heading North. We had no problem with hosting a game on a Saturday.

         Instead of six players like we had a Historicon, this was a four player game. Danny and I took the Confederates while Kalissa and Tim took the Union side. Not to insult my side too much, but Danny and I were facing off against two gaming foes that are fantastic at rolling. And both Danny and I are still know for doing bold daring actions. In this case, I costed our possible win with a highly aggressive assault against Tim's line. After stating his ability to roll dice, I am sure you know how it turned out. The rest of the game came down to mini-goals. If you are going to surely lose, mini-goals are the way too go. Danny's was to kill a regiment from each Union player. He did succeed! Mine was as simple as to get my reserve troops into action, since all of my starting forces were destroyed by turn two. In either case, this was a fun game to play out. I am glad for the request, since it was be a bit to play a game that big. I have project to finish, and new ones to start. The good news is that it will inspire me to play more game types. Below are the rest of the photos.

Highlights of my Olustee Project at Historicon 2018

       I must say that I am very happy with how my games turned out. After setting up the table on the Thursday of the convention, several people were able to identify the battle without any need for signs. That is a honor for me to represent a battle in that way. About 38 people knew the battle without the signs throughout the convention. Several people were re-enactors of the battle and plenty had recently been to the battlefield this year. And quite a few people told me some interesting stories as re-enactors. It was really cool to have that kind of connection to a battlefield we had all been to.
    As for the games, I ran five games with six players. I had one on Thursday, two on Friday, and  two on Saturday lasting roughly six hours. I say roughly, because Friday night's game ended early due the Confederate players having to leave early. Four of the people who signed up for Saturday morning did not show, so we had to find players which has not happened before in any game I have run. I am pretty sure that heavy drinking was involved that prevented the attendance. However, that was probably for the best, since the Saturday morning game still ended up being the most violent of the five games. One turn saw 6 regiments destroyed in a melee. The game ended with 13 regiments lost and I ran out of casualty figures! Some other games had a cavalry line, ridiculous assaults, and six-fest in rolling sixes on  D6 dice. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
     This game won two awards. One was the PELA Award given for great inspirational games for that time slot. I won that on the Thursday game. The PELA Award you can only win once per Historicon. My wife, Kalissa was a judge at that time and had to abstain for obvious bias reasons. However, the other judges thought it would be great for her to pick out the award. She said that there were no American Civil War modelled awards available, so she picked on with Napoleon on it. She knows I do not like playing the French in wargamings. I usually loose horribly with them. So thank you, my lovely wife!
     The second one I won was "Best in Show" Now, I am not going to toot my own horn to say I knew it would happen. There were some good games out there like the St. Elmo game and the Stalingrad game next to mine. However, several judges told me they were disappointed that they could not give me another PELA Award, because I had already been awarded one. That gave me an idea that it might happen. Besides, my real successes were that everyone was well involved and having fun with the game. I did not have anyone waiting long for their turn. So no drooling guy asleep waiting for their turn (I've actually witnessed this once!). There was plenty of dice throwing and action! The point is that I showcased an American Civil War battle with the actual visual violence and field problems of the day while still using an engaging rules set that gave people the fun to play and possibly inspired more people into gaming ACW. If that is not an awesome goal attained, I don't know what is!
    Lastly, this is a shout out to all the people whose fault this project was:
           
             Thank you, Sash & Saber for your support and awesome figures.
             Thank you, Flag Dude for you research and beautiful flags.
             Thank you, Rich of Fire & Fury for writing up a nice scenario to this battle.
             Thank you, Jay White for making me want to do an ACW game after making some of your                                                                                 commissions and your This Hallowed Ground rules.


  Below are some more pictures of various game highlights. Enjoy!

This is the beginning set up. The table was 6' x 18' long.

Union infantry columns on the road to battle.

Dismounted Confederate cavalry fighting in the woods against the U.S. 8th Colored Troops.

The pond was a natural impassible obstacle that caused many problems for the Union troops.

Confederate Artillery Train Car.

Into the woods!

Saturday Morning's Turn 5 Melee before rolling!

Saturday Morning's Melee Aftermath on Turn 5. Six regiments were destroyed!

Confederates in march column.

Saturday evening game with a Confederate cavalry line.

Saturday evening game with a Confederate cavalry line.

A mix of a melee in Saturday evening's game.