Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Cardboard Guns...


... Well - cardboard, paper, wood and plastic tubing!  Here is a battery of Kiivar Field Artillery under construction.  Plastic felt pen (exhausted) for the gun barrels, cardboard shield and other bits, half a spring-loaded wooden clothes peg for the trail.  The axle is a short length of balsa.  I would have preferred the guns to have been half a centimetre broader overall, but the length of axle was all I had.

 The wheels are downloaded images of wagon wheels glued onto carton cardboard (the type in which the corrugations are sandwiched between two flat bits). A row of four image squares were glued in a whole rectangular strip upon carton cardboard, separated into individual squares, then cut into circles. The reverse then had further image squares glued on, these being in turn cut out into the circular shape according..
The inner carton board not presenting a good look, cardboard tyres were added.  These were cut from the cardboard inner of a dunny roll.  Somewhat serendipitously, the circumference was so close to that of the wheels (this was just luck, really) that almost no trimming was required, nor (except once) was a gap left to fill.  Even that was hardly worth troubling with.
 The limbers were simple box shapes made from cardboard, clued onto a carton cardboard base. The beauty of this material was that I could thrust a toothpick axle through one of the corrugation gaps without having to fiddle around gluing it to anything. The front and rear offered convenient gaps to fit foot boards(?) and tow 'bar'.
 I found it best to pierce the wheel - at least the inner side - to accept the toothpick axle.  My first effort omitted that and simply glued the axle (PVA) to the centre of the wheel.  The resulting wobbliness can not be corrected.
The finished artillery battery complete with limbers and draught teams.  The horses - horrible figures these - came from a bunch of cowboy and indian figures.  Had the horses been capable of standing alone (leaving aside carrying a rider) they might well have been kept to their original purpose.  Lacking that stability they are become paired draught teams for artillery and carts or wagons.


 The method of draughting the horses was to thrust through the holes meant for the riders a piece of plastic rod or tube (toothpick would have been as good), except that in between the horses is placed a small piece of carton cardboard with the connecting rod run through it.  This has two functions.  It keeps the horses apart (slightly less than a centimetre) but also gives you a reasonably sized surface to which you can glue the 'tongue' of the limber.
The result looks very successful.  I've added a few more pics of this artillery, mainly because I am quite pleased with them..  The last of these shows my artillery grid, my own invention.



 Below is a pic of my artillery grid, drawn on a piece of clear plastic (the type used for overhead projector transparencies).  Its function is to determine the fall of shot relative to the point of aim, but also serves to define the beaten zone of an artillery stonk.  Gunfire is by battery, which may vary in size from 1 gun to 3 (maximum)  for my Army Men rule set.  This particular grid is for direct fire, in which the fall of shot can be observed from the gun line.  The grid is laid over the point of aim (POA), with the arrow along the line of fire. 
Two dice (Red/Blue, say) are thrown to determine deviation.  The POA is moved according to the result indicated (e.g. a roll of Red 6/Blue 2 would result in an 'Over' 5 cm, and 'Left' 10cm.
The  Artillery grid 6x6 25mm squares.  Place the centre point over the Point Of Aim (POA).
Roll a red and a blue die, read the score on the grid and move the centre point (labelled POA) according.
Every figure vehicle or piece of equipment even partially under the grid has to be diced for.
A gun firing high explosive (HE) at 'anti-tank' range will be a bit more accurate than at longer ranges. Therefore the fall of shot is determined by rolling 'Average Dice' (D5s) which effectively eliminates deviations outside the dotted orange perimeter.  This 'short range' effect is is available only to guns and gun/howitzers. It is not available to mortars, and the Jury is still out on whether it will be allowed to howitzers.  Grenades? I consider grenades as close assault weapons and their effect is to be subsumed within close assault mechanics.
Kiivar Artillery battery compared with the (Raesharn) field piece (25pr)
that came with recently bought Army Men types.  The latter
is quite a nice piece, except that you have to turn the gun
the right way up, and trim some off the front part of the trail
to get the shield to fit properly.
Having determined the fall of shot, everything under the plastic grid - the beaten zone - is at hazard. The effect depends on type of target, and how well protected it is.  If the target is entrenched, it will obtain protection from entrenchments unless an 'On Target' result - i.e. a direct hit - was obtained in the 'fall of shot' roll.  A target in a bunker with overhead protection loses some, but not all, such protection in the event of a direct hit.  I am aware that this makes such protections somewhat less effective than in 'real life', but it is worth mentioning that relative to the figure scale, the 'beaten zone' is quite small - just 6 inches square.  Infantry in the open won't be happy to come under artillery fire, but with reasonable dispersion may find only two or three figures at hazard.  Mind you, multiple guns make survival much more problematic. 

15 comments:

  1. Great vehicles and tutorial-thanks for posting..

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    1. I have to admit these pieces were highly experimental, and done over the last couple of days. On the whole, though, the results I find very encouraging.

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  2. Another excellent use of simple materials to produce something that looks the part.

    Well done!

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    1. It's getting high time these dudes saw some action. Quite when that's going to happen is hard to say, though...

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  3. Great looking guns. I look forward to seeing your Tchagi MRLs.

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  4. Yesssss. Still down the track a bit, although certain ideas are percolating around in my head. I think I'll have to make a concerted effort to rationalise my stuff. I'm getting to the point I don't really know what I've got!

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  5. Excellent work Archduke. I love these guns and the armoured cars in the previous post.
    Card is such an underrated modelling material considering that in most households it comes free with the groceries!

    all the best

    Ian

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    1. That's the attraction, Ian - it's cheap, readily available, very forgiving, and fairly easy to work with.
      Cheers,
      Ion

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  6. You sir, are a cheapskate even by my standards! I know of no higher praise.......

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    1. Thank you Tim - I take that as a very high compliment indeed. The wife (this household's bread winner) tells me I'm 'low maintenance'. Barring the enormous amount of room my stuff is starting to take up!

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  7. I agree with all of the above - excellent scratch-built models with inexpensive readily available materials, and the results look great. Well done!

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    1. Thanks, Fitz-Badger - you know, it's this sort of encouragement - not to mention some of the resources available on the internet - that makes this sort of thing possible.

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  8. As a latecomer to following your blog, just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed the Jono's World theme. I haven't read all the posts yet but it's already inspired me to think about my cheap clone army men playing upon a more engrossing stage than "Green vs.Tan". Really like the creativity and eclectic approach shown here.

    Regarding your rules, not sure what you're using but I like the look and scale of your battles. To be honest, I'm struggling to find a rule set which hits the sweet spot between "Plastic Army Guys !" and armor penetration tables for Sabot rounds fired against early model T-72's. Perhaps it's in the skill of the presentation, but your games seem to combine the fun of simple skirmish gaming with an aura of larger unit actions.

    Regards,
    Steve

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    1. Hi Steve -
      I really just knocked up a really simple rule set, a little bit like Panzer Marsch, but less detailed. Jono - who left the project about a year or so after it began - had quite an engaging line in creating imaginary worlds, with the fauna, flora, politics and technology that went with it. But he was a complete wargames novice, and I rather think he decided that after all the war gaming side wasn't for him.

      But that hasn't stopped me carrying on with it, though it is actually quite a big project. The 'Green vs Tan' idea I like, and maybe should have gone down that track, though as everyone else things of the Green as the good guys, and Tan the baddies, Being a perverse sort of fellow, I might have reversed this.

      But the idea of a fairly basic paint job to difference not only nations but also units, inspired somewhat by 'Uncle Thor's' 'toy soldier art', is an attractive one. Units are to be scaled down a bit so that a squad might have 8-10 guys, a platoon 20-30 or so, a company perhaps 70-odd and a battalion possibly 150. Equipments will be kept to a minimum, though having discovered a paper modelling blog, I may well add simplified versions of what I find there!

      Finally, in respect of armour penetration, matters are simplified by keeping the technology to early to mid WW2. At that I use a species of matrix to determine the nature of any given weapon carrier: Armour: Soft skin, light, medium, heavy; Speed slow, medium, fast; Gun (cannon): light, medium, heavy. As a 75mm L48 gun is considered heavy, you can see how it wouldn't 'fit' a modern scheme. What I'd do there is redefine the categories, and probably add some. Super detailed it ain't; nor was it intended to be.

      If you like I could do a bit of a posting on this rule set, or possibly even send you a copy.
      Cheers,
      Ion

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  9. Ion,

    Thanks very much for information. My tentative moves towards starting “Green vs. Tan” can be seen here on the blog with more to follow shortly:

    http://castlesoftin.blogspot.com/2012/03/green-vs-tan-send-in-clones.html
    http://castlesoftin.blogspot.com/2012/02/modern-stuff-54mm.html

    Suffice it to say, the original plan was to use Cold War to Modern era plastic figures in 1/35 – 54mm. I’ve since settled upon shrinking the scale to ~ 1/48 - 40mm using mostly cheap clones of larger figures which can be had off the rack in stores anywhere in the US. Your blog has been an inspiration in rekindling this project, not the least because the pragmatic approach to mixing figures and vehicles makes a virtue of necessity. And reading about Jono’s World is altogether more engrossing than random tactical battles lacking the context of some larger campaign or casus belli.

    I mentioned the armor penetration thing in jest. I’m fine with playing well towards the “plastic army guys” end of the realism spectrum but some of the rule sets I’ve collected where things like soldier's actions being circumscribed by their pose or squad members having to maneuver together like Siamese twins need at least some modifications. Hence I’d be delighted to see more posted here about the rules, or if you prefer to take it offline, my e-mail account is “cpl_trimATyahooDOTcom”. And thanks for the heads up on Uncle Thor, I’ll check it out.

    Regards,
    Steve

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