In war (-gaming) your soldiers needs protective cover!

Tired of army men loosing their paint?

Perhaps you have experienced that your Army men  starts to loose their paint after a while, and ruins your paintjob? Especially if they're regulary handled and if you use them for wargaming. That happened to me. After a just a few gaming sessions my painted plastic soldiers earlier mentioned in this blog, was starting to take their toll and the paint started to flaking (!). It was actually worse on the soldiers from the 'Toy Story'-collection as their plastic seemed softer and 'oilier' than their Matchbox-clones Brothers in Arms (which had harder plastic and took primer and paint better).

As I have a 'budget-approach' to wargaming, I painted them with cheap acrylic paint  from the craft store. This paint works fine with my model railroading, but was it also usable for miniatures which shall withstand some handling during gaming? I was not sure, so therefore I initially followed 'The book' here and washed them, primed them (twice as the first coat was with plastic-primer), painted them and sealed them flat clear varnish. Despite of this the paint was still coming off shortly after some handling:

This one was the most heavily attacked. It does not look good!!

The solution

So, how could I provide some First Aid quickly and save my plastic army men? I found a possible solution with another product from the craft store. In model railroading I've been using (Matte) Mod Podge for scenic glue and sealant. This dries without the slight shine often found on PVA-glues, so I decided to give the Matte Mod Podge a try as a varnish for my miniatures. If you want flat figures, it's important that you go for the Matte Mod Podge and not the 'glossy' or semi-shine versions:

Still wet of a cover of Matte Mod Podge (yes, it IS Mod Podge!!) it still doesen't look too good...

First I tried a thin layer of Matte Mod Podge as a varnish, and found out it turned out pretty flat and transparent and gave a resistant and flexible surface. It still had a slight shine to it.

I wanted to try to make the surface even more durable and resistant and tried a thicker coat of Mod Podge. After it dried, the figure was still pretty flat but with a slight more shine to it. The coated surface felt very durable yet still completely transparent and flexible:

This is how (flat) it looks after it's dried after a heavily coat og Mod Podge.
Note that I modified his rifle as well to give it a more generic look of assault rifle like the G3 or from the FN-family. This way they looks even more different that their 'foes' based on the same figures.

Despite the slight shine, the clear cote from Matte Mod Podge is still very flat and your figures are fine if you leave them like this. I wanted a even more 'dull' and 'dead flat' look to them, so I finished them off with a thin overspray of 'Army Painter' "Anti-Shine":

With a thin coat of Armypainter "Anti-Shine" added

I'm sure the whole problem with flaking paint can be avoided if you use 'right' primer and  'right' paint or using metal or hard plastic figures. Perhaps Enamels are better suited on stubborn plastic than (cheap) acrylics. I'm also sure there are a lot of other ways to fix it if you run into problems with paint coming off your (plastic) figures. I found my solution and fixed it with a liberate cote of Mod Podge, and it seems to work just fine!
A benefit is that you can buy Mod Podge in craft shops, and it's cheap. Another benefit is that if "glossy figures" is your thing, you can get Gloss Mod Podge as well. I have not tried the glossy version and don't know if it acts differently than the Matte.

For future painting-projects, and especially for figures made of soft plastic, I'm going to coat them with Matte Mod Podge directly. If I still might find them to shiny I'll just give them an additional coat of something very flat, like the Army Painter "Anti-Shine".

Once upon a dice in the west

Budget tabletop gaming

As previously mentioned in this blog, I've found bags of cowboys and indians clones in the store, so cheap that not buying them was actually not an option. I wanted to use them for some kind of tabletop gaming, but for figures this cheap I did'nt want to spend a lot of money on buying rules. -Which often are complicated and take a lot of time to read anyway. I wanted some fast, very simple, skirmish, playable and fun rules which captured the cinematic feeling of western-movies and didn't demand more much more than a tapemeasur and some d6' besides the miniatures.

On 'Whitewash City' I found some links to a lot of both cheap and free Wild West rules, but many rules were no longer available. I ended up with creating a homebrew I named 'Once upon a dice in the west'. Please have a look at them and feel free try them out. Feedbacks  are appreciated.

Veteran's day!

In Honour...

Today it is not only the 'liberation day' and 75 years ago VE-day, but it's also the Nowegian  Veteran's day.

In memory of those who stood up for something much bigger than themselves. All gave some, but some gave all!

I salute you all! Thank you for your Service!!

The good, the bad and the.... -cheap??!!

Cowboys and Indians

Bags of cheap figures

From time to time I've seen these small plastic bags with cowboy and indian figures in different dime stores or in the toy-section in food stores, but they haven't actually caught my attention. Well not before now, as  I found them 'dead-cheap'; only £ 0.80, $ 1.04 or Euro 0.95 for each bag of approximately 24 figures. For a fistful of dollars, I was able to buy some few bags....
There were slightly more Indians than cowboys in each of the 3 bags I got.

The contens of 3 bags. Not any specific numbers of poses, numbers of Indian/cowboys or cheerful colors in any of them

The 6 different cowboy-poses. Looks familiar??

The 6 different Indian-poses. Looks familiar too......

The clones and their originals

The figures them selves seems to be clones of the Airfix 1/32 scale cowboys and Indians, somewhat 'smaller'. Maybe actually closer to 1:43 or 40mm scale? Unfortunately there are only 6 of the original 12 poses from both the original Airfix cowboys and Indians available in the bags. Their bases seems smaller and makes them more wobbly. The copies are not as crisp and sharp in the mold as their originals. I don't have any Airfix Indians to compare  them with, but I do have some old, half-painted, well-used cowboys from my childhood to compare them with.

Airfix to the left, and clone to the right.

Again the original to the left, and his smaller cousin to the right

Popular pose. Britains Deetail to the right, Airfix in the center, and the clone to the right.

This is one of my absolute favorites. Britains to the left, Airfix in the middle, and the copy to the right.

Conclusion

Not as nice as their Airfix originals, but for this price they'll make great gaming pieces. They seems to be pretty common, so wherever you live, you should be able find something similar I think.

With these nice cheap figures, I now only need to find some nice, free, simple and fun rules for (wild west) gaming.....

Creating a 'ghost army'

Fog of war in wargames

During battle-conditions there exist a 'Fog of War' due to consealed units and consealed movement of units, which make a complete overview of the battle impossible. This also makes it difficult to make plans ahead, as all enemy positions may not be known. It's said that no plans survives the first encounter with the enemy. Usually when we're playing wargames we automatically have a pretty good overview of the whole battlefield, as we're usually playing on a table or similar, and usually we can see all the enemy units too. Some units may be in cover or behind obstacles, and the different units may therefore not see each other, but the players know they are there, and what kind of unit it is, and it's strength etc.

Fog of war in miniature

There are several ways to incorperate 'The Fog of War' into a miniature wargame and make it even more challenging. Some simply write down a unit's size and whats in it on one side of a small piece of paper, and a unit-number on the other. Then the pieces of paper are laid down on the gaming-table with the unit-numbers "facing up" and the unit's data "facing" the table, and are moved around at the 'speed' of the slowest unit in that numbered unit on the note. This way the players know that there is "something or someone there", but not the exact size or type before it gets in line of sight or close enough to bee seen by other units. When such a unit comes in the line of sight of another unit, they are both exposed and the papernotes for those units are flipped and replaced with the gamingpieces of those units, which are then placed on the battlefield.

Instead of small papernotes with units numbers, there are another way to move such miniature 'ghost units' around the miniature battlefield. I got some figures left after the army-building from the Tobar-sets reviewed earlier, and decided to use some of them as 'ghost units'. I painted them all solid black, and drybrushed them with khaki. On their stands I painted different numbers, which will go to a reference-note made by each player before the game begins. On such a reference-note each player writes down what kind of unit, size etc. a numbered figure represents. When one such figure are spottet by another or by another enemy unit, the unit (s) is revealed , and all its miniaturesare placed on the battlefield.

Now reconnaissanse units will become usefull in your wargaming, as they will help you to get a better overview of the battlefield and what to expect. This way of adding 'The Fog of War', can be used with a lot of both free and comercial rulesets, eventhough they do not specify a Fog of War"-element in their rules.

The advancing UN-troops are soon to find out who and how many they're facing... 

The 'Fog of War'-miniatures are replaced With the units and miniatures they were reprecenting according to the refrence note made before the Battle.

Improvising some Fighting Vehicles for wargaming

Improvised Fighting Vehicle

As I wanted to add further intrests and challenges to wargaming-scenarios, I decided that I wanted to include some vehicles as well. For combat use Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFV) like tanks, Armoured Personel Carriers (APC) and Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV) seems like the natural and best choise. There are avaiable some models in 54mm/1:32 scale for use with Army Men, and if you add  different 1:35 scale military kits to the list, the range become almost limitless. I want to use the models aimed for the Army Men-use since they are sturdier and takes handeling well, often comming ready assembeled and ready to use, and often cost less than the 1:35 scale kits which are often more fragile and takes time to build. My challenge is that 54mm scale ready made AFVs are not easily to find in Norway, and must be obtained thru the internet. As I'm waiting for finding the right and credible models for my generic 'Green vs. Tan'-armies I decided to do as the real army in the meanwhile; I'm improvising some fighting vehicles...

Prototypes for Improvised Fighting Vehicle

Improvised Fighting Vehicles exists in the real world, and you've probably seen them on the 9 o'clock news; Pickup trucks armed with HMGs, AA-guns, reciolless rifles or some other anti-tank weapons and even missile pods, in use in Libya, Somalia and lately in Syria with the ISIS. These armed Pickups are often refered to as 'Technicals' or sometimes 'Toyota Wars'. The term 'Technical' appeared in Somalia in the 90ies when western organisations there were buying security services from local warlords, and named these expences as 'Technical expences' in their budgets. The somali warlords on the other hand, used their new income to buy Pickup trucks and arm them. The use of Improvised Fighting Vehicles are older than the 'Technical' though, and goes almost back to the vehicle it self, or at least to back when it was possible to combine a civilian or unarmoured vehichle with a machinegun. One of the first might have been the russian Tachankas, a horse-drawn carriage with a mounted machine gun. During the WWI different civilian and unarmoured cars were fittet with machineguns and upgraded to machinegun carriers. During WWII the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and british SAS-forces in Africa and Europe used Jeeps and light trucks fitted with machineguns. After WWII several Improvised Fighting Vehicles were used in conflicts in Algeria, Vietnam (Guntrucks), Libya, Tchad, Iraq, and Syria and many are in use with some modern armies today as well.

Does these small, unarmoured 'Technicals' gives any strategic advantages? - Yes, I would say so. They are cheap and easy to get, and you can arm them with whatever weapon available. You don't need special training or skills to drive them, and therefore it's easy to replace crew due to casualties. They run on regular petrol, don't use much, and have a long range and can be repaired with regular tools. They usually have OK offroad capabilities as well. Their weakness is also a strength; They are unarmoured and therefore wounrable, but that also makes them light, fast and very mobile. Experience shows that their best in use in conflicts with low troop density, and wide open landscapes. They provide high mobility weaponplattforms with much firepower and can turn up from a direction their enemy didn't expect. This is a modern 'light cavalry'.

Another example that would probably qualify as an early improvisation of a fighting vehicle happened during the German attack on Norway in april 1940. The poorly equiped Norwegian army was facing one of the world's most modern and mechanized armies in battle. Norway didn't have any Armoured Fighting Vehicles at the time, but the German army had several. Since Norway didn't have much anti-tank weapons at the time either, the German occupation forces only needed to bring light tanks like Panzer I and Panzer II to this campaign. During the battles in Gausdal on 26th of april 1940 Major Brock and a Norwegain force was holding Segelstad bridge, as it was important for a planned Norwegian counter-offensive on the German forces. The Germans on the other side was heavily bombarding the bridge with artillery and mortars from a distance. This made the situation untenable for Major Brock and his men who was located at and by the bridge, and he armed a truck with a heavy machinegun for breaking through the German lines, and  planned to drive to and combat those artillery- and mortar positions. They made the breaktrough, but was later stopped by German forces. Major Brock fell in the following hand-to-hand combat.

Major Andreas Hauge's drawing of Major Brocs dramatic breakthrough in Gausdal towards Aulestad in april 1940.

And the Norwegian Army still uses a variant of this kind of vehicle. Since it is not a purpose-built combat-vehicle, I assume the the Norwegian Army's 'Multi-Vehicle' is considered a Improvised Fighting Vehicle. The vehicle was made as a offroad-vehicle for both the military and civilian market. When the Norwegian Special Forces in Afghanistan needed a mobile attack-plattform, ordinary Mercedes Gäledewagens was converted for this purpose and armed with a HMG (50. cal), a LMG (MG3), a Carl Gustav 84mm reciolless gun and smoke discharges. It has a crew of 4; The driver, the commander, the HMG-gunner and a loader. They are now in service with the Homeguard.

Norwegian army's Multi-vehicle

Improvised Fighting Vehicle for wargame

So there would be suitable to arm my armies with some Improvised Fighting Vehicles while looking for some AFVs to use as well. My best source for looking for usable civilian cars, was through my old toy cars. There I found an about 40 year old Police Pickup truck in about the right size. I removed the police-signs, disassembeled it, painted it, and put it back togheter again. On the truck-bed it's room for placing the standing HMG-figure I converted earlier, among a few other soldiers as well. Now my 'Tan Army' had a 'Technical'.

Eventhough I've seen it on photos, I didn't want to make a 'Tecnical' for my UN troops. I wanted a more military-style light vehicle for them. In my local toystore I found a Jeep almost the right size. It's a little small, but Jeeps are not large vehicles anyway, and it was also a little too modern for what I wanted. But again, it was available. Again I dissasembeled it, removed some parts, painted it and reassembeled it again. A chopped off figure was placed in the driving seat, and again the earlier converted standing HMG-soldier was placed in the back.

So, You don't need to have tanks or armoured vehicles to be able to have fighting vehicles to go with your toy soldiers or wargaming, as Improvised Fighting Vehicles are prototypical for a lot of different campaigns, scenarioes and periods. As they are softskins, they are knocked out when hit by heavy weapons. I'm not sure if a singel riflebullet will stop a such vehicle if it doesen't hit anything crucialor the driver directly. -So unless the rules you're plying by adresses this, you should perhaps allow either 10 rifle hits in the cab or bonnet in total, or 5 such hits in one move.

If I finally find some usable AFVs for wargaming, I think I'll need to add a couple of 'Technicals' armed with anti-tank weapons as well. The best of all; You might allready have some of them in an old toybox or you can easily find them in a regular toyshop. It's all about improvising.