Historicals: Only ordered 5 reference books for my lead barbies, any recommendations?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Historicals: Only ordered 5 reference books for my lead barbies, any recommendations?

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Arquinsiel posted:

They tend to be a little bendy, so some people recommend giving them a PVA glue wash before you start painting them. I haven't found that to be particularly effective myself though, and it obscures a lot more detail at that scale.

what do you use for primer then?

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 18:35

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 10:22

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Arquinsiel posted:

I use whatever rattlecan I have handy in an appropriate colour, but the PVA advocates paint directly onto it.

my army painter and citadel sprays flake right off from hat miniatures, i've found that only the pva method works for them

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 20:32

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Arquinsiel posted:

Which ones are you painting? They use different plastic for some of their miniatures for some reason. I have a bunch of WWII British that are basically like eraser rubber that's gone hard. The Napoleonics stuff is much sturdier.

napoleonics. and i washed them properly too, so it wasn't that.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2022 11:31

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Arquinsiel posted:

I dunno what to say then man. I never had a problem with the couple of boxes I half-painted before getting side-tracked into a different abandoned period. If the PVA method works for you though keep doing it. As long as you're happy with the outcome that's all that matters.

maybe it was some different plastic mix? eh, who knows

# ¿ Sep 8, 2022 12:11

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

coc is good

# ¿ Dec 16, 2022 11:47

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Pierzak posted:

Speaking of CoC (as in Chain of Command you filthy degenerates), I remember seeing a PDF with collected recommended fan-made fixes, houserules and rule explanation posted in this thread a long while ago. Anyone got that on hand?

i have only the official errata

some of the rules aren't written very clearly, and for some special circumstances there aren't rules, and the rules are quite wonky in certain situations, but on the whole, they're fast and excellent and feel realistic

# ¿ Dec 16, 2022 12:22

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Southern Heel posted:

I�m thinking primarily of the crunchy minutiae like rolling 2 dice and picking higher vs lower toll depending on whether obstacle is above or below figure eyeline, tables for injuries and tracking command initiatives for junior leaders which impact force morale, the need for Jo off points to be placed in the back of a cross delineated by nearest adjacent enemy patrol markers but behind cover too, etc. - lots of fiddly bits which I feel could be �sensible agreement� rather than bloodthirsty tournament rules lawyering.

after bad experiences with warhammer, i've never played in tournaments, only with friends

miniature games weren't meant to be played competitively

# ¿ Dec 16, 2022 16:11

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

JcDent posted:

Ok, so where does the image of gray Germans come from? Or is dark green a late war thing?

Ofc, if the spirit moves you to start posting pictures illustrating the evolution of uniform colors and kit...

black and white photos and movie reels

# ¿ Dec 24, 2022 12:27

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

it's clearly a goonmeet

# ¿ Jul 22, 2023 16:46

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Beerdeer posted:

In Sharp Practice, is a Leader part of a unit or is he a separate model? Like the French Peninsular list has a Leader over a unit of 8 dragoons. Is that 9 models or 7 and a Sgt/Leader?

9 models

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 13:29

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

spectralent posted:

Okay REALLY need to watch those assaults. Also, I do wish you got a few more toys - it's as simple as pumping the numbers a bit, sure, but it still feels like by default you just don't get a lot of support picks. It's also buck wild how good bombardment is, especially with how long it can take for a turn to roll over. The game was probably 2/3rds over before the third german squad actually appeared (which did admittedly give them the opportunity to deploy into assault).

lol looks like my assaults

bombardment is very luck dependant, and in some games it does nothing, and in some rare games it allows you to parade march to jops, but imo it's balanced because the defender can get entrenchments

one of germany's mistakes was bringing the schreck on table before the tank appeared, because they are very fragile even in good covers, and they didn't have any targets. the sniper could have been safely deployed, and with double shock they are good at slowing down enemies (if they hit that is)

and another was dividing fire between multiple targets (ofc i might be mistaken and the mg squads might not perhaps have seen the same targets)

winning coc is all about concentrating fire

a very good fight and report!

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 08:00

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

INinja132 posted:

I recently went on a bit of a terrain building and basing binge and wanted to test it all out. To that end (and in keeping with recent thread activity) I set myself up a solo Chain of Command game:

love the fields, makes it look real windy, and the track marks on roads are great too

bocage restricts and slows movement, so the defender will always know where the main attack will happen, and will have time to put forces there. perhaps bocage maps would function better as mini campaigns where the americans would get reinforcements and more supply after each attack? or give americans air attacks as support? iirc tfl's abyssinian war rulebook has rules for them. and there were some air attack rules in the blitzkrieg book too.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 15:04

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

INinja132 posted:

Thanks! The fields were actually quite a late addition, but a few sheets of teddy bear fur in the right colours gives a nice effect I think for not too much money.

Running it as a little campaign might be a good idea. I know they did a set of campaign rules but I've never used them, are they good?

I've liked the campaign rules for shorter campaigns. Larger official campaigns usually start to grind few maps multiple times which gets boring, but shorter campaigns are more interesting than one battle scenarios. In typical one battle scenarios the players don't have to care about how many casualties it takes to win, but in campaigns it becomes vital to keep your men alive, and it often is better to retreat than to fight to the bitter end.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 19:14

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

how does the playing experience of flames of war and o group compare to coc? are they as fun to play, and do they feel realistic?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 14:47

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

spectralent posted:

Don't know if that helps, but hopefully there's at least something useful there!

it does, thanks! :tipshat:

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 20:31

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Southern Heel posted:

Absolutely loving it - have you tried playing the game yet, even with reduced unit count? I don't know if it was any inspiration at all but I used PL with regiment bases and found it pretty bloody solid. My only complaint with the rules is that it has loads of stuff around honour, but you need something like 5-6 battles to actually gain enough honour to do anything and there are no rules whatsoever for casualties, experience, etc. - a bit of a missed beat IMO.

If I remember correctly these are Henry Turner minis? His SYW stuff is so tempting but I've barely got the P&S army out of the display cabinet since painting them and it feels very irresponsible to start something else without at least giving them an airing.

coc campaigns' morale and support affecting rules are a bit similar. you need to have a long rear end campaign before you get any meaningful differencies

otherwise i like the campaigns

# ¿ Aug 10, 2023 14:50

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

hot cocoa on the couch posted:

yeah i'll play solo probably around 1/3-1/2 the time. but when playing big BA or CoC it would probably still be 1v1 or potentially 1v2 or 2v2 if the stars can align for the schedules of adults with families. i was thinking the same, that they're already fairly quick affairs, plus with the "snap to" group moves/shooting in BA that could potentially cut down on any analysis paralysis that could occur when there's 30 units on the table. turn 1 for sure would be quicker as well

anyway i'm gonna go ahead with painting some ww2 15s and we'll just see where this goes

when you finally try big coc tell us how you liked it and post pics

# ¿ Aug 10, 2023 20:51

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

which ww2 miniature game would have proper realistic rules for artillery where it causes the most casualties?

# ¿ Aug 17, 2023 15:49

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

I've had interesting Steel Panthers (WW2 & modern) battles with realistic amount of artillery. That game has several restrictions on artillery, like it takes some time to change targets, the guns might run out of shells, counterbattery fire etc. And mortars and artillery have different roles they are good at. A good tactic against artillery in SP is to deploy your troops spread around instead of clumping them all on a road or on victory points. And even if artillery and mortars causes the most casualties, you can't win by them alone, but have to use infantry/tanks at some point.

I was basically wondering if there was a miniature game that handled artillery like that.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2023 16:08

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

thanks, blitzkrieg commander looks promising

# ¿ Aug 19, 2023 07:00

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

EdsTeioh posted:

That show is really good for the time and has aged pretty well. My wife got me a bunch of the dvds for my birthday a while back.

ANYWAY so after flirting with wanting to check out Flames of War for a while, a buddy of mine ended up dumping ALL of his minis and hobby stuff after his mother in law asking him "why he likes to play with toys so much" once she saw his hobby room. I ended up with, among other things, 2 Hit the Beach sets, an American Combat Command starter, a Cav Recon platoon, a 57mm platoon, and a platoon of Panthers. I think I'm totally good here as far as Americans go, but what's a good way to expand on the Germans? Tigers? 88s?

lmao at your buddy and grats on the free stuff

Cessna posted:

Sure, you get that sort of thing. But as spectralent points out in reality this sort of skirmish isn't a recreation of a big battle on a smaller scale with proportionate types of troops and formations. For example, a regiment of infantry form a square to defend against cavalry, but you wouldn't see a group of twenty guys in a square; it just doesn't work like that. Also, a force of skirmishers would be entirely of the same type; i.e., you'd run into a unit of all voltigeurs or all dragoons. You wouldn't have mini- combined arms battles with a group of line infantry supported by a dozen cavalrymen and a single canon.

This sort of odd miniaturization of army composition in skirmish games isn't limited to Napoleonics. Pretty much every Ancients skirmish game I can think of does this, to the point of forcing tabletop armies to be built at the same proportions as their larger army. So, a skirmish force of, say, Punic Wars Romans will have six Triarii, a dozen Principes, a dozen Hastati, and a dozen Velites, supported by a handful of cavalry. And somehow they end up fighting against a Carthaginian skirmish force of Citizen infantry, Iberian Scutarii, some Numidian cavalry, and (of course) a single elephant. (And, for extra silliness, if you try to take an army of i.e., "all Velites" you're penalized even though that would be a historically accurate army.)

It is utter nonsense, armies just do not work like that on that scale.

(This will not keep me from playing, of course.)

exactly

# ¿ Oct 19, 2023 17:48

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

spectralent posted:

Yeah, true, actually - I was thinking early modern is where the issue pops up but ancients has the exact same thing of "organised enough to not do stuff half-assed, no technological capacity to support the all-skirmish modern combat style". I don't know why it bugs me there, though - I realise generally medieval warfare would involve big armies but the fact it feels plausible that the local lord has gathered two dozen of his stoutest franks to rebel the pagan barbarian menacing his fief makes those skirmishes feel a bit more satisfying.

I probably just need to watch more sharpe.

Hear hear!

generally medieval era was not about big armies, but about skirmishes

# ¿ Oct 19, 2023 18:54

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

that's like stuff from some boomer sitcom

amazing to see it happen irl

# ¿ Oct 20, 2023 17:26

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

spectralent posted:

Thinking a lot about movement, flanking, and firing ranges atm. I feel like there's a kind of natural problem in this, mechanically, because any form of singular action system - not even IGOUGO but anything where resolution of one unit is resolved before another - there's the prospective chance for a unit to lunge into the side of someone by taking a circuitous route. A lot of ancient and medieval games sort this out by saying "a charge is straight forward", or something equivalent, and that works nicely, but there's an issue with games where firepower is dominant. In most of those, gameplay's simulating close range firefights and tend to give huge fire ranges in comparison to vehicle movement - the chance of lunging into a flank to take advantage of the juicy side armour is ameliorated by the fact it'd take several turns to get there.

But, then there's zoomed out big games. Understandably, these are usually aiming for more parity between movement and fire range - but in a number of them it does mean that anyone who can shoot their target is in immediate danger of being flanked. This seems to be an issue mostly in large-scale WW2 rulesets - it's a possibility in Spearhead and Fistful of TOWs, for instance, but Blucher and ESR also seem to allow units to just lunge through arcs of fire to get to juicy flanks.

But, I'm not sure what the alternative is - I also understand why that happens, because the game is aiming to emphasise the manuever bit over the fire bit - it's part of the appeal of big scale stuff. Thinking on it more I feel like maybe the easiest way to deal with it is adding a reaction fire mechanic of some sort - I do like ESR's threat projection system a lot, and I wonder if that's somewhere to go from it.

I'm probably massively overthinking this.

what's esr?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2023 22:23

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

hot cocoa on the couch posted:

Solo Nimitz on the weekend. I did a Savo Island refight. I put the start of the game basically at the moment when the IJN opened fire on the southern group. I put the American picket destroyers on the board, west of Savo, and allowed them to join the fight. I ignored the existence of the USS Jarvis, since it didn't affect the battle at all and was later sunk during the day. I also didnt allow for any eastern forces closer to the troop transports to be present, in the interest of fairness and also because there was never any attempt for them to join irl either. The only change to the rules I made for setup, aside from the initial dispositions, was that the IJN automatically won initiative, and that the USN could only move at "low speed" for turn 1. Apologies for phone pics, my photog guy wasn't around lol

The forces (Topside Miniatures printed on sticker paper at UPS, then stuck to 2 mm thick 3d printed bases):

Initial disposition (quick and dirty islands lol):

Some smattering of random gameplay as the battle progressed:

Regarding the scenario and action itself:
The IJN lost. It was a pyrrhic victory for the us, but a victory nonetheless. If I were to redesign the scenario, I may start the IJN further back to allow for some maneuver, and simply remove the USS Blue and USS Ralph Talbot, to simulate the IJN cruiser force having simply bypassed them without note. That may give the USN an even bigger advantage tho. The IJN really only has the Chokai, and a bunch of other mediocre cruisers, and irl was relying on surprise to do the damage. Basically as soon as the New Orleans class heavies arrived to help southern group, the IJN became badly disadvantaged. The USS Chicago did get some good hits off on Chokai before being sunk (and the Aussie cruiser went down almost right away, as in real life), and US torps failed to do much. But once those well armoured cruisers of north group with 9x 8 inch guns each arrived, well, the Japanese were simply outshot without much means to return the favour. Maybe I should have saved the excellent IJN torpedoes for the northern group, who were much tougher. Fun scenario anyway, may tweak it a bit to run it again with a friend.

Regarding Nimitz:
Really fun, and very tactically interesting, despite being simple and quick. The movement mechanics are brilliant, the interplay between the "move first, shoot first" rule where, obviously you want to shoot first, but you don't really want to move first, makes for interesting considerations. Having to move all the slow ships first, then moderate speed, then high speed, makes it a fun and challenging to predict back and forth with maneuvering to try to outflank the enemy. The movement rules are also not unnecessarily cumbersome but still preserve the philosophy of ship maneuver. It is also very hard to maintain your ships battle line, especially once contacting the enemy, which I appreciate reflects reality. Shooting and torpedoes are handled well, and damage tracking isn't overly complex, not quite Battletech levels (my point of reference for something like this), but maybe not quite as simple as Alpha Strike. I do like the progressive degradation of a ships ability to fight as it takes hits and criticals. But I'd say the most interesting part of the game is the maneuver. In the shooting phase, you can choose any contiguous line of ships to shoot simultaneously, which really encourages you to keep a good battle line, as that means if you're shooting first, you may be able to cripple or sink some enemies before they can return fire.

I need to print some high speed/low speed markers, as I used paper for that this time lol (thats what the H/L markers were). Also some indication of shooting, to make sure ships only get to shoot once (the book recommends cotton puffs), and "flash" markers, which matters for night fighting, which Savo Island was. Maybe I'll make double sided "shot/flash" markers as well. I also think I'll see about printing the individual unit cards and laminating them, so they are reusable.

Great game, will play some more!

drat nice!

# ¿ Oct 23, 2023 22:28

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Cessna posted:

Et Sans Resultat!

# ¿ Oct 23, 2023 22:28

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

could you post what the 15 minutes minis look like up close and at gaming distance, i'd be very interested in seeing them

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 14:57

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

SpaceViking posted:

So these ones are actually 12mm but a lot of the principles are the same:

I had to use the light box since I don't have an actual table set up in my house at the moment, but I hope it illustrates what you're looking for. I do these guys in batches of about 15-20 and it takes a few hours including drying times.

it does, thank you. and they look great!

# ¿ Dec 1, 2023 11:03

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Cessna posted:

I use fender washers; they're cheap and readily available in different sizes.

same, they work perfectly

# ¿ Dec 12, 2023 20:35

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

lilljonas posted:

Good thing I�m such a nerd I wrote a blog post on french greatcoats:

https://krigetkommer.weebly.com/napoleonics-blog/painting-french-greatcoats

But yeah it was very common but got regulated about 1807(?ish), I don�t have the exact year at the top of my head.

On campaign, you�d wear your shako cover most of the time afaik, snd then take it off for major battles. The French were big on looking slick at the battlefield. You�d keep it on if it was very wet, dusty etc.

There are also the so called �marie-louises�, 200 000+ hastily drafted recruits in late 1813, who were depicted as often wearing just greatcoats (not even boots!) as there were not enough time/materials to outfit them with proper uniforms. Shako covers could likewise cover up poorly made or damaged shakos. Infamously, a lot of the french uniforms in the Sharpe tv series look amazingly bad, and partly because of this - they stuffed burlap sacks with hay as makeshift covered shakos to save money!

Long story short - there are plenty of historical excuses to use shako covers and greatcoats if you like the look (and the time you save painting). There are also plenty of historical reasons NOT to use them if you don�t like them. If you are a super stickler to details, the men would typically be either all wearing them or all not wearing them for a battle. I myself have some units all in greatcoats, some all without, and some mixed. I tell you this - there is no way that even comes close to getting 28mm units on the table as quickly as getting a few boxes of minis in greatcoats.

oh that's your site, cool, i've checked some coc stuff there

# ¿ Dec 17, 2023 01:19

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

in my experience the most entertaining coc fights have been infantry vs infantry

if tanks are involved usually the side who wins the tank fight wins the rest of the combat too

# ¿ Dec 17, 2023 01:34

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Count Thrashula posted:

Painted up a Henry Tudor for my Wars of the Roses project. Is he basically wearing Henry VIII's armor? Yes but who cares knights are cool.

Also lol I'm bad at freehanding flags but it looks fine enough from 3 feet away

it looks drat fine

# ¿ Dec 20, 2023 18:09

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

StashAugustine posted:

Paint your levies in 6mm, the warriors in 15mm, the guard in 28mm, the heroes in 32mm

could someone with the correct sized minis show what this would look like?

# ¿ Mar 5, 2024 19:36

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 10:22

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Count Thrashula posted:

They're not Samurai, but I have Napoleonic French in various states of painted in 15mm, 28mm, and 40mm.

Playing Sharp Practice with 40mm minis is a dream of mine.

same energy

# ¿ Mar 5, 2024 22:14

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