Just ran across this interesting note about the sand composition on Omaha Beach:
“University of Texas geologist Earle McBride analyzed samples from the beach…Further testing revealed the shards to be magnetic shrapnel from the Allied invasion….He and his colleagues also identified iron and glass beads formed by the intense heat of explosions. Up to 4 percent of the sand is made up of this shrapnel, the researchers report…
Ed: Fixed links. Not a lot has been going on in my D-Day preparations this week. My brother-in-law has been in town visiting, and I have been covered up with work. Number One Son and I managed to progress one single turn in our game, although it is still set up to be finished! Anyway, I was poking around the web looking for D-Day stuff and ran across some nicely detailed 1:7920 maps of Omaha beach. I don’t anticipate doing bluffs for a while, but I made sure and saved copies of this for when I do.
A nice modern picture of the length of Omaha beach, showing the bluffs.
I have ordered some Hotz fields, and bought some thin scouring pads to make small, non-hedgerow fields. I’m considering doing some Utah flooded fields…but the telescoping FoW ground scale is kind of throwing me off. I initially didn’t think the game scale would extend into the flooded fields, but I read in the FoW rulebook that 24″ in a half mile…what is five feet? Miles? Heck, I may need the FAR side of the flooded fields… Does that make sense? No, because then by width, I’m covering all of Utah beach and then some! Kinda strange. But it would give an excuse to have paratroopers…
Ed: I think the thing to do is treat it as roughly tank skirmish groundscale, with the scaling only affecting the shooting ranges. And try not to think too hard about it.
I bet this movie will be very good! Daniel Day Lewis is an amazing actor, and I’m sorry to see somebody as distinctive as Tommy Lee Jones or even Hal Holbrook in it as well to pull me out of my suspension of disbelief. I will no doubt be hauling Son and Daughter Number Ones to the theater to watch this with me!
Got the German 10.5cm battery done. That was, I think, the worst painting experience from any Flames of War figures I’ve done! It came with nicely sculpted resin bases, with recesses for the crew. That sounds like a good idea, as hiding figure bases is always an issue. However, getting the gun AND the crew onto a base is a bit of an art. The recesses actually messed with that. I wasn’t free to locate the figures in such a way that I could get the gun back on the base after I had completely finished painting and flocking it. So, I had to paint the figure bases separately, trim their bases so they actually fit in the recesses, glue them onto the base with the gun now in the way of everything, then go back and try to fill in and hide the gaps around the figure bases. It actually tacked on a couple of nights to the entire process and started to really irritate me.
But, the firk ding blasted things are done now! And, they look pretty good. I was glad to get figures with the scissor/rabbit binoculars. I was always fascinated by these as a kid, and the wide rangefinders as featured on the box art of the Tamiya 88 kit.
I also grabbed some scale angle iron and started throwing together some very rough Czech Hedgehogs to litter the beach. I didn’t get time to spray paint them this weekend, and it looks like it will rain all week, so they may stay white a while.
On Sunday, I laid everything out and set up the rest of the table. It looks to me like I really need some non-bocage fields to fill up the table. Looking at D-Day maps, there were no forests, just nothing but fields. That or houses– looks entirely possible to come off the beach into an urban firefight. It’s hard to tell how much real bocage there was, but there was definitely some, as they marked hedges on 1:25,000 maps! So, I will probably shoot for a combination of hedgerows and simpler LOS blocking borders like bushes and such. Besides, fields are a terrain item I have been seriously lacking for a while, it will do my table good to get some on there.
Number One Son and I took a stab at it yesterday! We only had time for 2 1/2 turns, but it was long enough for him to make his first assault on a bunker– which I was able to repel, barely. It became pretty clear the Germans could make do with some AA, too. We took a picture of a lost LCVP, which my son stacked hedgehogs in front of, as it was delayed all three of his turns!!
I am getting stuff painted for my D-Day game, but I don’t actually seem to be getting any closer to running it! But I had a good weekend otherwise…
On Friday night, we played a Might of Arms Renaissance playtest variant game of Louis XIV’s Dutch War. I played Turenne, and only my personal intervention with my cuirassiers in the center allowed the French forces to win the day. Or so I remember it, anyway! We followed it up with a game of Dominion. I came in third out of five. Glad there were two people there who’d never played before I could beat! 🙂
I finished up my first aircraft for Flames of War, a P-47 Thunderbolt. I painted it up as a high-res picture I found on the Internet. I ruined two sets of decals trying to get the side numbering on it. Even the third and last set I tore in half, but manage to align them acceptably, I think. Man, I really, really hate using decals.
I also finished the DUKWs. That should have been the last figures I needed for the 1750/1000 point Hit the Beach game! So, I printed out rosters and started assembling troops, thinking I might get Number One Son to playtest it with me over the weekend! Got all the Americans together, no issues. Then I started on the Germans. Let’s see…the 10.5cm battery needs a staff team…hmmmm…I’m pretty sure I have never painted a German staff team. How could I have painted the 10.5cm battery up and never have painted a staff team…UGH!! I haven’t painted my 10.5cm battery yet!!! Not sure how I convinced myself that I had. So…onto the queue it goes. I started on it over the weekend, and am maybe 2/3 the way through. Soon…
Things are coming along well for my D-Day beach landing game. I finished painting up the water and sand, and I think they look pretty good. Here it is set up on the short (five foot) end of my table– the grass mat is rolled up on the other end, giving me room to work with my sons. There’s a few more inches of water depth hanging off the end. It didn’t seem necessary until I put the LCT out there!
I sat down and started reviewing the scenario and the rules, thinking about putting everything on the table. In doing so, I ran across the Overwhelming Force special rule– “The Allied force has 75% more troops than the Axis Force.” Whoops!! That’s a bit of a bummer as my Germans can be used for anything, so I have lots of them. But it’s the American forces that will limit the size of this game…
I’m not in terrible shape. The suggestion is 1,000 points of Axis, and 1,750 points of Allies. I can get to 1,490 Allies no problem:
| Unit | Points |
|---|---|
| Full company– command, 6x boat sections in LCVPs | 790 |
| General Cota | 25 |
| DD Sherman platoon (proxies of normal Shermans) | 345 |
| Off-shore naval support | 200 |
| Priority P-47 support (unpainted!) | 130 |
1,000 points of Germans just doesn’t seem like much, so I feel like I need to maximize my Americans. So, a lot of crap just got added to my painting queue.
Assuming I go one section 3 57mm AT guns and a two gun battery of 105s with the DUKWs, here’s what I end up with:
| Unit | Points |
|---|---|
| MG platoon | 100 |
| Mortar platoon | 120 |
| 3x 57mm AT guns in 3 DUKWs | 75 |
| 2 gun 105mm battery in 3 DUKWs | 145 |
| Ranger platoon (allowed 1 but painting 2 for Total War) | 135 |
That gives me a total of 2065 points. That’s…a lot of effort for not a whole lot more points! And would let me use 1180 points of Germans. The Priests would edge it up a couple of hundred points. That ought to be good, though. It seems to me that our group has found games much above 2,000-2,500 difficult to complete in a night, although that may be due to our infrequent play. Plus, another player has, I believe, four boat sections of infantry with LCVPs. That should all be quite large enough and with some variety for a big, multi-player club game. And, I always have the option of making them 1st ID instead of 29th, making the same figures better and thus more expensive.
I also picked up the FoW German HQ objective, as it seemed fairly apropos for this scenario. Any suggestion for a US objective? I can always use my Airborne objective, which is fairly appropriate for this as well.
Here’s what it looks like on the table. Pretty nice!
For my own reference, here are the paint colors I used for the beach and waves. Other than white, of course.
It’s been quite the family hobby time lately. Number One Son has taken some real interest in things since getting his Spinosaurus at Historicon, and I’ve had the gaming table covered up with his stuff lately as much as mine. And to keep Number Two Son, four, involved as well, I picked up some chubby plaster statues for kids for him to paint right alongside us. It has frankly been a blast, as they both have their own little projects to work on, and I can even work on my own stuff a bit. A little bit. The Mumak is now in, and our last two evening have been spent gluing that behemoth together. It’s a pretty sweet kit, simple for its size, and pretty accessible to an eleven year old.
The Mumak is about 5.5″ at the back, topping the Spinosaurus by about 3/4″. The howdah looks like it will add another 4″ or so!!
This thing is ridiculously large. Tonight, we finished up the body and the head, other than the ears.
Number One Son also completed painting my converted firestarters for Tusk. I went back and added the smoke/fire, which is a dark grey blend of wool roving. Pretty cool stuff, although nothing will stick to it. I wound up using the red “fire” paint to adhere to the branches!
After the kids went to bed, I cleaned up a bit and worked on my D-Day terrain. I took excess cloth and painted it up as I have been thinking about. Frankly, it was more effective than I thought, so I think I will have a go at the real cloth in the same scheme. I simply used a wadded up kleenex to paint on two successively narrower shades of light blue, followed by a big hog bristle brush of white. The beach was just kleenex of two light tans.
Please link to http://www.littleleadheroes.com/ as this site’s main URL.
The hobby and general fun blog for Andy, a.k.a. The Gonk on various miniatures forums. I play historical and non-historical miniatures games, role-playing games and board games.
My gaming began in the early ’80s with 1st edition D&D as a youth. It expanded into Battletech, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, and especially Car Wars. I painted some Ral Partha D&D character figures and some 1/72 and 1/35 WW2 figures. Unfortunately, living in a small town, other enthusiasts were rare. I do recall seeing painted AWI units on display at our local library and being very impressed.
Gaming was largely dropped through high school and college, and was rekindled in grad school when I found a guy in our department with a custom calendar decorated with Squat trikes. We hit it off, and he introduced me into Epic and Blood Bowl. A local Blood Bowl league was formed, several players of which still stay in touch– and some even game weekly some seventeen odd years later!
I’ve been gaming historicals for the last ten or so years. I started cold, not knowing any local historical gamers, but have since connected with other historical miniature gamers in Knoxville, TN.
I am married with three children thirteen and younger, not leaving an especially large amount of time to game.
I listen to a lot of podcasts while commuting and painting figures. Lately, I have been trying to fill my time with podcasts on the history of the Dark Ages. Saga has been a lot of fun, rules wise, but I can’t claim to be very knowledgeable about the period. Rome fell, the Vikings came, Western governments started to be entangled in questionable Middle East wars, and the Normans conquered England. Getting more in depth in the period, though, has really revealed a lot more interesting history. Here’s what I have been listening to:
The History of Rome: I have mentioned the History of Rome Podcast here before. It is complete now, and a wealth of material, covering the ENTIRE history of Rome from the mythical origins to the fall of the Western Empire. Most of it obviously isn’t directly related to the Dark Ages, but it is almost necessary background material. I’m continually surprised at how much of the Dark Ages still revolves around and is directly influenced by the Roman Empire.
12 Byzantine Rulers: The natural place to go after the History of Rome, 12 Byzantine Rulers is highlights of the Eastern Empire, starting with Diocletian and ending with Constantine XI and the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans in 1453.
Norman Centuries: By the author of 12 Byzantine Rules, Norman Centuries follows the founding of the Normans by Rollo until– so far– William the Good of Sicily.
Europe from its Origins: I listened to Europe from its Origins a while ago, and honestly, it just didn’t take root at the time. It’s really due for a relisten now that I have a much better context to place it in. Irritatingly to me, this is technically a video podcast, but the video is largely superfluous, making the extra space it takes up wasted. Also, some of the background music combined with the narrator’s mild manner can lull you to sleep!
Irish History: I recently discovered the Irish History Podcast on the Miniatures Page. It appears to be very slowly published, but what I’ve heard so far has been pretty interesting. It also has links to some related podcasts I haven’t checked out yet.
British History: I made note of the British History Podcast a while back, but forgot about it until gathering info for this list! I haven’t listened to it yet, but it certainly looks interesting.
General History: There are some general history podcasts out there, notably Hardcore History and History According to Bob. I’m not crazy about the presentation of either of these podcasts– Hardcore History is ridiculously overdramatic, and Bob’s presentation is a little monotonous and irritating. However, it would be useful to scour these for applicable episodes. Also, In Our Time from BBC4, another regular listen of mine.
Well, that didn’t last long! Warlord Games’ Bolt Action is on a lot of people’s horizons lately. Our local Hobbytown USA ran a bunch of demos today. I wasn’t really expecting much from the place, honestly. They run a fair amount of 40k and some Flames of War, but I never get down there for a couple of reasons. I already have plenty of gaming with pleasant people I already know in the comfort of our beer-filled domiciles, and their hours of operations don’t really jibe with my own need for late night gaming. Nevertheless, I was curious to take a look at the rules, and had the time today, so Number One Son and I headed over there.
I won’t bother with a real review, since I only played a quick demo game. (More info on Bolt Action here) More were offered, but I didn’t have that much time. They looked like a slick, professionally produced set of rules, as I would expect. My initial impression was that the rules were quick play targeting large forces. There was random side activation– chits were pulled from a cup, and if your chip was selected, you could move a squad. Shooting was buckets of d6s against a target number. A rifle gave you one die, and the highest I saw on the chart was a 3 for full auto weapons. Count up your squad and roll against the target number, which was a 3 for troops in the open. The target number increased by one for various factors– having cover, shooters having moved that turn, beyond half range for the weapon, etc… Hits were then confirmed, based on the quality of the target (I think; regulars seemed to have a 50/50 chance of dying). Pistols had 12″ range; rifles, 24″. Nothing really bowled me over mechanically, but there was nothing objectionable, either.
The big surprise to me was how well the demo was run. It was themed around Operation Market Garden. They had four tables set up, one of which was the end of the Arnhem bridge defended by Paras against the German attack. It was fairly well done, and they had a wide selection of vehicles around. This table was a full fledged game instead of the demos, but I didn’t watch much of it. They also had A Bridge Too Far playing quietly on their display table, which also held a tri-fold display board full of historical information on Market Garden. All in all, it was much more than I expected from a Hobbytown.
I had hoped to be able to pick the rules up there, but I guess they haven’t been released yet. Hobbytown didn’t even get the one they were promised to give away. However, the highlight was the prize drawing. They gave away a fair number of prizes, and Number One Son won a Warlord Sd.Kfz. 251/1D. That’s pretty cool– I already have about 30 101st and 30 German paras painted from many years ago, so it can slot reasonable well right into that. And honestly, the rules seemed quite uncomplicated and, not meant insultingly, probably something an eleven year could really get into. And, I mean, I already have the figures, I might as well use them for something!
Anyway, I suppose that puts Bolt Action onto the queue. Plus, I should really have added 40mm French and Indian War, as I have recently been painting those, and am near having enough for a reasonable game. Oh yeah, and cowboys. I bought Wargames Illustrated issued 283 on vacation, which included a Legends of the Old West scenario for the Cimarron county shootout in the Cimarron-Ingalls county seat fight. I don’t have a courthouse, though…but I do have everything else.
The newly updated QUEUE:
The reason I need to save my shekels is that I broke down and went in on the Reaper kickstarter. It was just too ridiculous a deal to pass by. I will trade the motorcycle Sophie in for some of the extras, and threw a little extra money in for more.
Little Lead Heroes 
