Army Accommodations

 

A recent posting on Bob Cordery's blogspot, Wargames Miscellany reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for a long time: tell of the accommodations of my war games armies. His own accommodations look to me convenient and handy - especially the 'army in a box' concept - something I have striven for but never quite achieved to my satisfaction. We begin with these 'tray towers'.

The coloured ones house most of my Napoleonic inventory. We might call this an 'army corps in a tray', in accordance with my Big Battles 4 Small Tables game system. Some 'double up', such as the two French Cavalry Corps in the picture below. I Cav Corps comprises 3x12-figure brigades of dragoons and a park of 1 gun with 3 crew figures; II Corps comprises 3x12-figure brigades of 12 cuirassiers. Also present in this tray are Marshal Murat with his aide-de-camp, and Generals Milhaud and Lasalle. Some sort of horse grenadier staff officer seems to have accommodated himself there as well.

In the following picture, a single French Amry Corps takes up only about half the room. One of the Divisions (the 5th) has been taken out for some work that needs doing on them. This Army Corps (II) comprises 3x24-figure Infantry Divisions, a light horse brigade and a park of 2 guns each with 3 crew figures. Those triangular and trapezoidal profiles you see are bases for the artillery in action. I prefer (for the moment) not to fasten the guns to these bases.

Below are a couple of Austrian Army Corps in their trays. Top tray, looks like I Corps: 3 Line Divisions, 1 Jager Division (rather larger formation than historica1!), and a unit of Uhlans. Again we have a 2-gun artillery park, but with 4 crew figures each. The artillery scale is determined by the number of crew figures, at 1 figure representing 8 guns, and 200 artillerymen. So this formation's artillery park represents 64 guns and 1600 gunners.

The bottom tray shows part of the Reserve Corps of Austrian grenadiers and cuirassiers.

The next two trays hold my British army: foot in the top, artillery and horse in the bottom. The Royal Scots Greys were an indulgence. Now, these trays measure 26cm x 34cm. The plastic being rather soft, the heavy metal figures tend to sag the floor of the trays. This was a real problem with the next tray tower, whose trays measure 33cm x 37cm. That extra width was enough to cause a sag that would compromise the safety of the figures in the tray below. 

Stack of trays. the whole unit can be wheeled around
or the separate drawers removed. I damaged this 
somewhat several years ago when I tripped over an 
impediment I might as well have placed in order 
to do so, slammed into the thing, and took a hefty gouge out of my 
knee. The bottom tray still sticks a bit... and I still
bear the scar.

This I solved by transferring all the metal figures to the less roomy coloured towers. The armies here are all - very nearly all - plastics. The top 5 hold my 30YW armies. The picture didn't come out so I am not showing any. The next two hold my War of the Spanish Succession Imperialists.

WSS Imperialists: 36-figure foot and 
24-figure horse units. I rather wish I had adopted
a different plan...

... and the next two my Prussian Army, inherited when their previous owner was about to deep six the lot. The Paul 'Jacko' Jackson added to the infantry, Italieri plastics, enough to build the army from 7 to 9 units; and I bought some Italieri cavalry. So 'antispiring' (outspiring?) were the figures that it took me an age to get them painted.  And then, just because I liked the look, and had forgotten what Prussian horse I had, I added a couple of metal (Minifigs). The whole army comprises 3 Army corps, each with 3x24-figure Divisions, an park of 2 guns and 4 gunners, and two or three cavalry formations. This army, like my French, has far too much cavalry! At any rate, the whole lot goes into just two of these trays.

Prussian Army

***

A very useful ... thing ... that I could use more of!

Now, the sort of thing pictured above would have been very handy: hardish plastic, deep enough to accommodate flags and uhlans. This is where my Napoleonic Russian uhlans live, together with Aeryth Chromatica Turcowaz cavalry. Not all the drawers have much in them at the moment.

WW2, some board games I've hardly ever looked 
at (including SPI's Fighting Sail), and 
logistics elements at the bottom.

But that brings me to something I discovered several years ago: these 3-drawer cardboard archive tray thingies. There is a word for them, I'm sure. The white box at the upper centre of the picture holds most of the army of Altmark-Uberheim - one of my 'War of the Imperialist Succession' armies.

My rather inefficiently stacked WW2 and such 
cupboard. The white box with the blue apostrophe 
is what is intended to engage the interest here.

Just lingering in this tall cupboard for the moment, all the other random boxes here contain WW2 items: tanks, vehicles, guns. I really must go through and sort it all out.

Altmark-Uberheim army box.

Altmark-Uberheim foot and horse.

Now this set was deeper than wide, unlike all the other cardboard storage that I picked up over the years. Pity, as for several reasons this was the better design.

Not Quite Seven Years War army barracks.

Here we have it. Everything in those 5 boxes belongs to my War of the Imperialist Succession/ Not Quite 7YW armies. Atop the left of the pile as you see it two flat boxes hold the Imperialist Infantry, and I do believe one Archduke Piccolo might be found there. Four of my five Sengoku armies are in boxes to the right, and that little black box contains my 'Jono's World' aircraft stands. The labels on most of those boxes will have to be redone...

The main drawback of these otherwise splendid units, is that they are not very robust. I might yet end up replacing them once they start to disintegrate. Mind you some of these are twenty and more years since their purchase.

Infantry of Hessen-Rohr 5 regiments of 36 figures in all 
4 companies of 8 plus HQ of 4.

What the boxes contain: 5 x 36-figure infantry and 4x19-figure cavalry. 

Imperialist horse: 3 dragoon and 1 hussar regiment.
I have a notion that the green dragoons are below establishment 
at 15 figures.

RED and BLUE armies, and my really tiny
navies overall

Then there are these two. The contain my Chromatic Wars armies Ruberia and Azuria - and badly in need of relabelling. The armies of Turcowaz and Izumrud-Zeleniya have slightly different accommodation that I forgot to photograph: same idea, but metal-bound plastic. Very large drawers on that one. 

Here's where my ACW armies live. Mostly photographic paper boxes, with the occasional chocolate box thrown in. The whole arrangement is sufficient to hold something like 1500 figures. Not ideal, though. Mainly one box will contain a brigade or possibly two of infantry, the artillery have very shallow chocolate boxes of their own (except for my South Carolina Brigade, which has a 2-gun battery in the same box.  The cavalry have separate accommodations.

ACW boxes.

My Chromatic Wars navies live in a chest of drawers, two of which accommodate the 'whole worlds' navies'. Top drawer: 20 vessels of Ruberian Royal Navy; the 6 torpedo boats of Chervenia; some landing barges; the 8 Hellenic and 9 Turcowaz vessels.

Third drawer: 7 merchant ships (2 armed); 19 Azurian vessels (including the two overscale 'flatiron gunboats'), the light cruiser and 3 torpedo boats of the minute Rhumbarbarian Navy; and the 8-ship navy of Izumrud-Zeleniya. Separating the Zeleniyans from the others, are two riverine boats: a sternwheeler steamship, and a Ruberian  'Fly' class gunboat.

The above is what separates the naval accommodations: my Roman Fort. This featured as the fortified wall of the riverine market town of Kachinga in the 'Darkest Aithops' campaign run by 'Jacko' and myself that was kiboshed by COVID19 2.0. 5 years ago. I don't think it will ever be revived, worse luck. It promised to be very interesting. The colonial army was about to be ambushed at Getmai Drift by what remained of the m'Butu tribal forces, though it was very doubtful that the colonial tide would have been stemmed. 

In another chest of drawers one might locate my 'Byzantiad' armies - and my ACW vessels, which, again, I forgot to photograph

Some 'Byzantiad' stuff. Those galley hulls are from a project begun 
decades ago. Still don't know what to do with them.

Other bits and pieces have their own storage spaces - this unit of bins contains several HO-OO scale buildings, some cardboard railway buildings, some Usborne mediaeval, a few plastic, and a number home made. These days I find myself using more often several underscale buildings that I have stashed elsewhere.

Assorted buildings

Below, counters, dice, little magnetic chessboard, and my hearing aid stuff. 

That folded thing divided into green squares
and tucked in between furniture was one of those
  'could be useful' buys. Still not sure what to do with it

And finally, I have found a place for my 1:600 'Jono's World' expeditionary forces. One change I will probably make. I combined the AA and logistic elements, which seemed to make sense, and perhaps those elements will remain so. But I think some separate AA elements are called for...

'Jono's World' Armies. The aircraft stands are 
for my 'Mighty Armada's' game system that needs 
a fair bit of work to complete...

Well ... that isn't everything, but it is most of it. At some future time I might say something about my folders of notes, sketches, maps, ORBATS etc. I had a look at my ACW folder, and discovered that over the years I had accumulated a fairly useful resource. More of that sort of thing another time...

A Reminder for Me...

A recent Bob Cordery posting concerning the use to be made of a spare piece of pasting board reminded me of something I've been walking on for well over a year, now.  

I have an interesting piece of carpet I picked up off the street a few years ago. Somebody has dumped it.  But the thing seemed to be in reasonable condition, so I did the civic-minded carpetatarian thing, and rescued it.  You know: before it rained. Or something.

What made it interesting...?

Salvaged carpet for war games?

Coloured a sort of  'sea green', the thing got trimmed off to 28"x70" (72cm x 180cm). It's lying on my bedroom floor (goes fairly well with the walls) as the most convenient (least inconvenient) storage location.

I've been thinking of cutting the thing in half to make, when reoriented, a 35" x 56" (90cm x 144cm) game surface. Conveniently,  I have some off cuts from this carpet, plus others of a rather lighter hue, that can form elevated ground. 

Off cuts for elevated ground.  The paler items I have had
 much longer, from some other source.

Were the playing surface divided into 6cm squares - the exactly right size for my Chromatic Wars armies - that would make a field of 15 x 24 squares.  The question is, though: do I really need yet another playing surface?  I seem to have plenty as it is...

An old hotel quilt thingy - great for deserts or possibly 
winterish - square grid. Salvaged from an earthquake site 
(over a year after the earthquake that wreck the hotel).

PW3x3 

Memoir '44 game board - great for my mediaevals
and for Sengoku battles as well

An alternate Sengoku board... Made from ceiling tile
(I think). The grid cells are a whisker smaller than 
the Memoir '44.

10x10 square grid, used for the First Blacklands War.
Plywood surface that was intended for earthquake repairs.

A quilt I bought in 1976.  In 47 years it has 
faded some... Ungridded

Ungridded blanket I picket up somewhere about 40 years ago,
 specifically for its colour, to be used for War Gaming...

Artificial lawn - ungridded.  Good size for One Hour Wargames.

Probably my favorite: my hex board...
Another, larger, piece of plywood. Very versatile.

I didn't fully realise before I began this inventory just how many war games surfaces I have available. All this probably explains why, after two or three years, I never got around to doing anything with this piece of carpet.

Doodling...

 Doodling - my word for doing odd little projects whilst listening to a podcast or maybe watching a sports event on TV.  They don't usually involving drawing something inconsequential, like this ... 

But rather finding something that looks vaguely as though it might be turned into something useful. Such as this piece of plastic surfaced board.

This 45cm x 38cm board was rather too quickly drawn up into hexes using my usual method, but the corner to corner distance going UP the board ought to have had maybe 5mm added.  Never mind: it does the job - a 77-cell board for small games. The paint's coverage being problematic on such a surface, I just drabbled it on.  Looks OK to me!

The figures, by the way, I would like someone to identify if someone can.  I'm told they are the old Minifigs 'S' Range Crimean War, or maybe recastings.  I would like to add a few to these to 'round off' the rather awkward numbers.  

And then there were these that follow:

These were built as light, rustic bridges, capable of carrying small vehicles up to light armour, say.  Being too short convincingly to span my wide river sections, over the last two or three evenings, I placed them on bases with blue cellophane river sections 'flowing' underneath. They seem to have come out well in these pictures. The top one features, without a base, in the recent Zugdidi battle.  

This last one (below) I made a couple of nights ago, starting with an corrugated cardboard piece that became the foundation for the central section. The construction was match stick - the type you buy without match heads for this type of project. It could just about stand for a military bridge, with or without the addition of pontoons.  

I think I'll label all future such side-projects under the label 'Doodles'...

Bits and Pieces

My last posting showed an interesting and useful pile of stuff sent to me by a fellow blogger from the Land of Oz (Mark, of One Sided Miniature Wargaming Discourse} .  Here is what I have done with them in the last week or so.  The T70 and the BA64 I touched up with a lighter green and some weathering, and added identifying numbers (usually, I paint them on, as here, rather than using transfers)

This picture compares the assembled 122mm howitzer with the semi-scratch-built I made some years ago,  This new addition doubled by 122mm howitzer inventory!

The Nebelwerfer came already assembled: you've seen it before.  The metal 7.5cm infantry gun, limber and RSO tractor I assembled, and I've given them a very basic paint job.  The tracks and washes and such have yet to be done.  The half tracks are still awaiting their weaponry. The background buildings I will touch on later in this posting.

Before I do, I should mention these items.  The civilian volkswagens were given me by a friend quite a while back.  I don't know whether these models were ever used as staff vehicles by the Wehrmacht, but painted with camo, they do look the part.  The white metal 15cm howitzers I bought at a bring-and-buy several years ago, but assembled only this last week.  The recoil slides are a bit munted, about which I couldn't do much, but I figure that if the thing looks like what it's meant to be then that is what it is.

...And these four items made up half my purchases from last Saturday's bring-and-buy at the Club: two Daimler scout cars, and two Bedford light trucks.  These are die cast models, something I didn't fully appreciate until I got them home (my eyesight really is becoming a problem...).

Now, these things.  Having got myself inveigled into grid war games, I needed to obtain buildings that were suited to my 4-inch square and 4-inch 'short-diameter' hex grids.  I have seen some impressive approaches to the problem on several blogs. The 2D (or 2.5D) approach by Foss1066 (Skull and Crown)  and Chris Kemp of Not Quite Mechanised. I find attractive, and it is only storage issues that give me pause about taking that line.  The former very kindly offered my a sample of his work, but as they are designed for 5-inch grids, and felt I had to decline.

I have gone instead for the 3D approach using very under scale buildings, rather similar to that taken by Bob Kett ("A Village Hex").  What gave me the idea was in fact the wooden 'town in a box' building set used by Bob Cordery and others for their games.   What you see above is a town or city-scape of home made, downloaded and assembled, and commercial card buildings.  For twentieth century warfare, I felt the need for some 'high rise' edifices, simple, '5-minute' jobs that at least look the part.  They are simply tea and Tabasco sauce packets, painted overall grey, given a low parapet and with doots and windows drawn on.  The large ones exactly fit the oblong formed by the opposite sides of my grid hexes.

Considering my interest in the Western Desert campaign, not to mention Medifluvian (Mesopotamian) operations carried out by the Ruberian Army against the Turkowaz Enpire, I bethought myself to make a few vaguely Middle Eastern/ North African style buildings - mosque, administration blocks and what have you.  

I don't show them in the above pictures, but here are a few  'built-up area' profiles that will be used for my hex-grid.  If buildings need to be removed to make way for soldiery of equipment, the grid area will (I hope) still be recognizably representing a village, town or city block.