Sapper Joe’s Current Gaming Projects

Well, I know that I have been very quiet and a little distant lately, but I figure I should pop up and say what my current gaming projects are that I am working on and to also let you know that I will be redoing my blog in the near future. As for the changes to my blog, I am planning to create a couple of websites specifically geared towards specific period / game system. For an example, one website will be on my Vietnam gaming, which will include my 10mm & 20mm French Indochina and 2^nd Vietnam War gaming articles, as well as general information on both of those wars. Another will cover my UK’s troubles 20mm gaming and general information. I will still keep this blog for general gaming information and what I am doing, but the websites will be the “storage” areas of past blog entries and a more organized format for finding things. I don’t know when I will get stuff done, but I will post it up on my blog when it completed.

Now as for gaming, I have not been working on anything really productive for the last several months…err, year; but I am trying to get back into things. The following are the key goals for this year.

1 – I am still continuing to sort out and sell off miniatures, books, and other game related stuff for dead projects (which, sadly to say is a lot). I am also weeding through existing projects to see if I can reduce the number of figures that I need and sell off the excess, if any. I hope to make a major impact on my pile of unwanted and unpainted miniatures and books by the end of the year. Whatever I get from the sales, I am mostly turning around and using that towards the paragraph below.

2 – I just sent off my first batch of miniatures to be painted by a painting service. I have been looking into different painting services for about the last six to twelve months. I have saved up enough to make it worth my wild to give this a shot in getting some stuff done and hopefully on the board this year. The first batch has 20mm Post WWII Brits, including a Scimitar light tank, for various projects: Falklands, Northern Ireland, 2^nd English Civil War, Cold War Hot, and Zombies. (I plan to really make the most out of my 20mm UK urban board and vehicles). Also included were 20mm Argentines for the Falklands. The next batch will be 1970’s civilians, rioters, armed criminals, and some additional Cold War UK troops. The plan is to be playing Falklands, NI, and 2^nd English Civil War by the end of the year.

3 – I have been negligent into getting around and ordering the last of my buildings from Metcalfe for my 20mm UK residential urban board. I plan to order the remainder of them next weekend (finally). After they arrive, I will start finishing up buildings and streets part of the project. I will still have to pick up some more vehicles and street scenic’s (light poles, mail boxes, phone boxes, etc.) I have also bought some PDF files of additional UK buildings in 20mm that need to printed out and try my hands on them as well. I already have some buildings for the next board, which will be an industrial area – with a brewery for the Irish to battle for control over!

4 – I am dropping the use of “Cold War Commander” as my rules for 10mm Vietnam. While I enjoyed it, it was failing for a multiple player game system. I have been reading the Too Fat Lardies, “Charlie Don’t Surf” rules lately and got a set of CDS cards from Artscow.com. I also have an order out for some 7mm white & red dice and 7mm dice stands from S&S for keeping track of shock & kills on the different units. I am going to try to run a small trial game maybe at the end of this month to get more comfortable with CDS. If all goes well, I plan to start picking back up on doing 10mm Nam.

5 –Also on switching rules, I am dropping “Force on Force” for my Northern Ireland and other low level skirmishing (2-12 figures per side.) This is mainly due the results of my trial NI games of “FoF” for the low level skirmishing. The actions were too fast, making the games extremely short. Also, the results were too bloody compared to actual engagements. So I am looking into some different games systems that are designed specifically for very small actions, like “Geezers! Shut It!” by Killer B Games, “Cold War: 1983” by Wessex Games, and possibly “Flying Lead” by Ganesha Games. 

6 – I am also looking at Two Fat Lardies, “Troops, Weapons, & Tactics” / “Through the Mud & the Blood” for possibly doing my 20mm skirmishing, instead of “Force on Force”. Mainly this is because of the action / reaction / reaction to reaction / etc. system in FoF. Originally I thought it was good, but in each passing game, it became more and more bogging down of the fast flow of the system, especially if you have over a platoon with a couple of support weapons. I held off from pre-ordering the 2^nd Ed. of FoF, because I don’t know how drastic it has been changed or not from 1^st Ed. rules. If anyone buys the 2^nd Ed., let me know what differences there are and I will be willing to try it out. I know TW&T/M&B were designed to work for platoon size actions (20-50 figures per side) like FoF and they are suppose to be able to handle up to company size actions (50-100 figures per side). So I would like to try them out and see how they will work. Because, I am really looking for a system that will work well for small patrol actions as well as a two platoon assault without get grinded down into a standstill of dice rolling and reactions.

7 – While I am selling off a lot of miniatures and planning to do most of my work on the Falklands / Cold War troubles projects this year, I did finally decided that I will start one new project this year. By this, I mean a project that I do not have any miniatures already for it. It will start off as a medium size project (50 - 100 figures per side), but has the possibility to grow into a large size project (100-200 figures per side) over the next year or two. With that number of miniature involved, we are looking at 15mm for the scale. It is something that I have been thinking about for few years of doing, but just did not start over that time. I am going into the land war of the Great War, 1914-18. But I am going to do the Middle East / Asia Minor front with the forces of the Empire fighting Johnny Turk. I already had for years most of the terrain, several books on the subject, and the two rules sets that I will be using. What I am doing is mounting everything individually (except the MG teams) separately. This way I can use them for Too Fat Lardies’, “If the Lord Spares Us” (each stand is a platoon) and “Through the Mud & the Blood” (each stand is a man.) I looked up all of the ITLSU’s scenarios and made a list of what is required to cover almost all of the scenarios. I then decided on which scenarios had the most in common so not to buy too many figures and that is what I am going to buy for figures. Later on (next year), I will buy some more to do additional scenarios.

8 – In discussing of starting new projects, if I get time this year I will try to restart some old projects or add on to active ones. High on my list of projects to restart will be the Gangs of New York, especially with the beautiful Perry’s ACW rioters coming out (Dead Rabbits, B’hoys!) and add on to my 10mm Vietnam – maybe the “Snoopy” gun truck will finally be finished!

9 – In the non-gaming area, but sort of related to the gaming research end, I found out about a local monthly meeting of people interested in the Civil War. They normally have an author of Civil War books, or a university professor to give a one and a half hour presentation at their meetings. I have been to one already and really enjoyed it. Also with this being the 150^th Ann. of the ACW, I am planning more ACW weekend trips through Missouri. One of these trips will be to see the 150^th Ann. exhibit at the Missouri capitol (and hopefully see many more surviving flags), as well as visiting Wilson’s Creek for the 150^th Ann. I have been lay out a trip outline and will forward it on to anyone interested.

 

Well, that is about it for the planning of the year.

Joe