Some of the skirmish wargame rules I've been playing, both the free and commercial ones, suggests some kind of 'Army Building' and how to make up units for the game (mostly limited to make balanced forces). Most of the rules and games I play however, does not. This is not a problem if you know what kind of units you want to bring to your tabletop battles, or you're into military history and know how to create those specific units for your game. I've found some websites that can help you create realistic Squad and Platoon level units for 20th and 21st century:
The Hobby Blog for Model railways, Wargaming and Military modelling
A blog on my model railways, model railroads, wargames, military modelling, and other thing related to scale modelling
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Add realistic Squads and Squad Tactics to your Wargames
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Old West Mini-Wargame: Showdown at High Noon - A Wargame in a Matchbox Epilogue
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Old West Mini-Wargame: Showdown at High Noon according to my scenario and interpreted by ChatGPT |
Last year I attended the 'Wargame in a Wee Matchbox Challenge' with paper miniatures from Junior General and rules made by ChatGPT; Old West Mini-Wargame: Showdown at High Noon.
The rules was really simple, fast playing and easy, and I had to keep everything small to make it fit in a matchbox (which it eventually did). -Since the Challenge I've played the game several times with my oldest son. The game feels perhaps a little too simple, as gamers usually ends up behind cover exchanging fire with the opponents until one of them runs out of health. I wanted to see if it would help to this feeling and make the game more interesting if a little more was added to it than what would fit in a matchbox. So I decided to try out the very same simple rules and scenario with larger terrain and miniatures in 3D as I wanted to use my 54mm -ish Cowboys in a game. I'm curious to see if a more '3D-game' gives another impression or 'deluxe version' of this simple game.
I had almost everything I needed to convert my 2D-game in the matchbox into a fully 3D one, except for a female hostage to rescue. I found one 28mm scale at Thingeverse and 3D-printed her to match the size of my 54mm -ish cowboys. I guess she can double up and I can use her as a civilian or a missionary in my Congo Crisis games too.
Scenario: It's loosely based on the scene from 'A Fistfull of Dollars' when 'Joe' frees 'Marisol'; 3 outlaws are holding a woman hostage in the house, and our 'Hero' is there to free her.
Forces: Are dictated by the rules; 3 outlaws with health of 2 and hits on 5+ Vs. 'The Man with No Name' with a health of 4 and hits on a 4+ and activates first each turn.
The Rules:
The Game
Conclusion
- Man of TIN blog
- Grid based wargaming
- Wargame Hermit: Solo Wargaming
- Deathzap
- Projects and Procrastination
Friday, March 14, 2025
A quick and easy military figure conversion followed by a 'Day out'
Just after I came home from our tour to the exhibitions at Neumünster and Hamburg, one of the travelling companions invited to a day out and running session on his garden railway the following weekend. It's been a while since I've been running my Roundhouse W^D livesteam locomotive, so I decided to bring it along.
I've felt that this locomotive missed 'something' and decided that I wanted to add crew to it before the running session last weekend. There wasn't much time to arrange something, and when taking a look inside the locomotive's cab not much space for crew either:
It's a military locomotive and I wanted a military crew for it. On Thingiverse I found a couple of free figures (one military and one civilian) I resized to 1:19-ish scale to fit the locomotive which I then 3D-printed:
The locomotive-cab was so cramped by valves, cranks, servoes and tubes that the figures didn't automatically fit. Some cutting and drilling (to make them partially hollow) was necessary to make them fit. Thereafter they were hastily painted olive green mixed with a little brown to make the uniformes resemble British Battledress':
The Lance Corporal to the right needed to be stretched all directions but the height to make him partially hollow and fit on the lubricator cap![]() |
The 'original' driver to the right for comparison |
Despite that the 'chopped' figures didn't look so good, they looked much better when fitted inside the locomotive-cab:
I managed to get them just about ready for the day out at my friend's garden railway last weekend. Since operating my Livesteam locomotive takes so much attention, I usually don't get to take any photos of it during operation. This time however Tom Arild Sørli took some great photos of it. -Thanks mate!
This is a LGB-model of a Heeresfeldbahn steam locomotive HF110C, and is closer to 1:19 scale than the more usual 1:22,5 for LGB models, and belongs to a friend. The livery is civilian postwar though:Here are some impressions of other trains from other companies operating the line last sunday:
It's not too obvious on this photo, but the 2 flatcars are still civilian in an American livery, so I'll guess they will be 'militarized' as future workbench project.
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