My Little Wars Games Have Been Entered

 

Carthaginian elephants with light skirmishers providing protection.
54mm HaT Industrie figures that I painted

Click on the pictures to enlarge. 

Double click to make them REALLY large

Yesterday I entered three games for the upcoming HMGS Midwest Little Wars convention. The show will be held from April 24 to 27, 2005 at the Sheraton Lisle Naperville hotel (3000 Warrenville Road, Lisle, IL). This is the same hotel venue as last year.

Hannibal and his retinue. These are metal figures from John Jenkins Designs.

I am running three 54mm Hannibal! games during the convention:

Thursday April 24, 2025    Scenario TBD

Friday April 25, 2025        Battle of Zama

Saturday April 26, 2025    Battle of Zama

Here is a link to the HMGS Little Wars convention web site where you can get more information. Game sign up begins on April1, 2025 at Noon CDT (Chicago time).

Little Wars 2025 link

As with my two previous 54mm convention games (Khartoum and Pickett's Charge), I hope to have three tables 6ft by 15ft running parallel to each other. The games at this convention and at Historicon in July 2025 will be the third part of the 54mm Big Game Trilogy that I have hosted over the past three years. After this year, I will retire the large 54mm games for a year of two and go back to hosting smaller 28mm games.

The first game on Thursday evening will feature a general encounter between Republican Roman and Carthaginian forces somewhere in Italy. The game will include elephants, of course, so it is not the recreation of any particular battle since Hannibal had lost all of his elephants while crossing the Alps.

The Friday and Saturday games will recreate my version of the Battle of Zama. The battle is to Hannibal as Waterloo was to Napoleon, a final defeat that followed a string of famous victories.

Preparations 

I was going to include a Roman town on one of the corner areas of the game tables, but I think that it might take up too much table space and interfere with the movement of troops. Instead, I will have several Italian farm houses set up on a corner of each of the two back tables in my game. I am also working on the construction of a Roman aqueduct that will span the entire width of the three game tables. The aqueduct will be set up on one of the table edges. I have five feet of aqueducts in various stages of completion so I have another six feet of structures to build from scratch.

My Roman army has three Roman legions and one Italian allies legion. I need to paint one more set of 32 figures to complete the Italian legion. Other than that, my painting of units is complete and I have shifted my time over to terrain building.

Two of the three units that comprise one Italian legion.
HaT 54mm figures that I painted recently.

I now have a bunch of Roman buildings in various states of construction that I probably will not need for either of the two conventions this year. What to do with them? My thought is to continue modeling 54mm buildings and over time, build a complete city that will fit on a 6ft by 12 ft table in my basement. This way I can add a few bits here and there over time and end up with something fantastic. This is sort of how a model railroader constructs his train layout.

A view of the town from across the river. You can see the "shells" of the aqueduct pieces
at the rear of the city. The black buildings are works in progress and need to be finished.

A view of the city from another direction.

Another view of the town forum. You can see the start of a basilica structure
(white foam core board) at the top end of the forum.

The carpenter's workshop 

Dockside in the town

The town forum or central square in the city.

The table mat is made by Cigar Box Battle Mats and these are a recent addition to my table top set up. The mat looks really great, but I wish that the company had the option to order it with grey stones rather than the earth tones used on this mat. Despite that, I like the mat because now I don't have to make city roads. I just lay all of my buildings on top of the mat.

I am considering creating a scenario called "Who Killed Julius Caesar?" that is based on the board game "Clue" (or "Cluedo" as it is known in the UK). I am working on some other ideas for skirmish style gaming events inside the town. The Gangs of Rome rules look a bit complicated for my taste so I will write my own Roman Skirmish Game Rules in the future. The idea is to have something that uses the many civilian figures that I have accumulated in recent years.

You can never have too many pictures of 54mm (1/32 scale) elephants. These were ones that I painted in 2024.

More later...

cc

Battle of Antietam Game: Hooker's Attack in the Cornfield

 

My tabletop setup for the Antietam war game.

CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE

Yesterday I cleared the Ancients off of my game tables (that took about 2.5 hours) and set up the table (about 2 hours of set up time) for my ACW 54mm game featuring Hooker's attack through the Miller Cornfield.

I made a four minute video in which I take you for a tour around the battlefield tabletop. I have not included any video of the playing of the game, which could get rather boring to watch. Here is the You Tube link to the video, below:

My Antietam Game You Tube Link

I am using the infantry regiments that I painted for the Pickett's Charge game last year, but rather than using them as "regiments", they are representing "brigades" in both armies. For example, General Meade has three brigades in his division so there are three units of painted figures, each representing one of his brigades.

This set up gives me 9 brigades per side for the game. These can be divided into three brigades per side, each of which are commanded by a player. Thus there are three players per side in this game.

My plan is to play this as a solo game over the next two days and then I have to tear it all down and pack it away so that I can carry everything to Kenosha, Wisconsin  where I am hosting the game in a local Civil War museum. How cool is that!

Here is a picture of the game flyer for the convention. If you happen to be in the area on Saturday February 22nd or 23rd, the please feel free to stop in, see the museum and watch or play in some of the  Civil War games that will be hosted. I believe that there are six games scheduled. I will be hosting my game on both days.

I will be running my 54mm Pickett's Charge game that you may have seen at last year's Little Wars and Historicon conventions. It will be a smaller version of those games because there is only space for me to set up two 5ft by 18ft tables instead of the three 6ft by 20ft tables used at LW and Historicon. I will probably have only Pickett's division on the Confederate side versus a similar number of Union troops. I might be able to slip in an extra Confederate brigade if the table top area permits.

Here are several more pictures of the game table and terrain set up. I will play the game solo and probably post an after action report next week.

The Dunker Church lies at the intersection of the Hagerstown Pike (left) and the Smoketown Road (right).

The Dunker Church

Union artillery crew look down the Smoketown Road towards Dunker Church.

Union artillery battery positional view down the Hagerstown Pike. The Miller Cornfield is seen of the left.

The Smoketown Road leading up the the Dunker Church (white building) in the background.
The lefthand road is just a smaller local farmer's track.

The Miller Farm - the stepping off point for Hooker's attack.

I hope to see some of you in Kenosha this weekend.

Roman Quincunx

Roman 54mm Project Update

Three 54mm Roman legions formed up in the Quincunx formation

I have been busy basing a lot of the 54mm Punic Wars figures that I painted so that I would not face the day when I would have to base hundreds of figures. In other words, it was time to stop putting off the unpleasant part of painting and assembling war game armies: the basing of figures. Doing a few at a time is no big deal, but when I let the number of unbased figures accumulate, then an easy task turns into drudgery. Yuck!

So I have painted three Republican Roman legions so far. I finished the third legion last week. My legions consists of 32-figure Hastatii, Princeps, Triarii and 16-figure Velites (light skirmishers). That adds up to 112 figures per legion and they all needed to be based. I put the figures on 40mm round bases and then use movement trays from Litko (4 figures wide by 2 rows deep = 8 figures per stand). Four movement trays of 8 figures equal the 32 figures in the principal units in the legion.

The Romans would often deploy their maniples into staggered formations of three battle lines. I do not subdivide my units into maniples because this is too granular for the type of game and rules that I intend to use in my convention games next year. The Velites (light troops) would be out in front of the main mass of formed units with Hastatii in the front row, the Princeps in the second row, and the veteran Triarii forming the third and final row in the formation.

Apparently this formation must have worked for the Romans, but it seems that the open lanes in the battle lines would be a major weakness as it would allow enemy troops to move into the gaps of the battle line. I suppose that the Velites would retire through the gaps and maybe the Hastatii, etc would close ranks to form a continuous battle line. In a war game, I would not want to leave gaps in my battle line. My version of the Quincunx formation is depicted below:

Velites in front on the left, Hastatii in the second row, Princeps in the third line, and Triarii in the last line (shown on the left center of this picture next to the command tent).

Here are some pictures of the Princeps figures that I finished two weeks ago

Princeps troops

Hastatii troops in the mid-ground and some Velites in the foreground.

Triarii wearing chain mail.

I also painted 16 more Roman cavalry figures, bringing their contingent up to 32 Roman and 32 Italian allies cavalry figures, or 64 total figures. My Carthaginian army has 96 cavalry, half of which are Numidian light cavalry.

Roman cavalry organized into two 16-figure units:

I am slowly catching up on my figure basing. I have all of the Velites to base and 16 Celt-Iberians in the Carthaginian army.

Next up on the painting table: 16 Celt-Iberians and 32 Celts.

After all of that it will be time to start making Roman buildings for my town. One of my convention game scenarios will feature a Roman assault on a Carthaginian fortified city.

cc 

More Carthaginian Elephants

 

HaT 54mm Carthaginian war elephants

Click the pictures to enlarge

The past couple of days have seen me working on repainting a pair of HaT 1/32 scale (54mm) Carthaginian war elephants and getting them based. I also assembled three more elephants that are still on the painting table.

The following two pictures provide close ups of the individual elephants after they have been based on MDF board. Note the Carthaginian light infantry skirmishers protecting the elephants from attack by the Roman light Velites.

Roman elite plans on chucking a spear into the hyde of the elephant.
Some Carthaginian skirmishers have a different idea. The elephant and Romans
are HaT figures and the two Carthaginian soldiers are from John Jenkins Designs.

Close up view of the elephant being defended on the ground and from
the howdah (the wooden tower) where the soldier has a very long spear
that is capable of reaching any Romans on the ground level.

There is nothing like a bunch of elephants that identifies a war game as one from the Punic Wars of Rome versus Carthage. The beasts are fun to paint, add some color to the overall look of the game, and I imagine that they will cause a lot of interesting situations and tales on the war game table top.

I will have five elephants once I finish the remaining ones on my painting table, however, I would imagine that four would be enough in a game.

Does anyone care to share some rules ideas on how to use elephants in an Ancients game? I'd appreciate some input because I have no idea of how to write rules ideas for them. I plan on writing my own rules for my Punic Wars Project, something along the lines of what I used in my Khartoum game for hand to hand combat. The rules have to be easy to learn so that they can be used in a convention setting.

ccc

Whoa Nellie!

 

HaT plastic 54mm Carthaginian war elephant and Roman Elite. The Carthaginian 
figures are 60mm metal John Jenkins Designs figures.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

I had purchased three already-painted Punic Wars elephants on eBay back in 2022 and I decided that it was finally time to repaint them and add them to my 54mm Carthaginian army. These figures are fun to paint, so much so that I assembled and primed two more new elephants, from the box, and will be working on them this week. This will give me a total of five elephants which should be enough relative to the size of my planned Carthaginian army. I have a sixth elephant that I could paint and add to the armada of elephants. I am thinking of "brigading" two elephants together plus twelve light skirmishers into one game "command" for one player. But for now, I think that four elephants is sufficient.

One of the weaknesses of elephants is that they are vulnerable to attack by light infantry skirmishers who are nimble enough to "hit and run" attack the beasts. As a counter-measure, the Carthaginians would usually surround their elephants with their own light skirmishers who would engage the Roman infantry, thereby enabling the elephant to advance into the formations of heavier Roman infantry.

The elephants proved to be rather ineffective because once the Romans got over their initial fear of the elephants, they were able to develop tactics that effectively neutralized the elephants as a threat. These included attacking the elephant with light infantry rather than waiting for the elephant to close with the regular infantry, and opening up gaps or lanes between the Roman cohorts and herd them through the Roman line where they could be eliminated by the regular soldiers. Also, in some cases, the Romans were able to panic the elephants and cause them to run amok in every direction.

Hannibal brought something like 30 elephants with him from Spain, but all but one elephant died while crossing the Alps. Elephants seem to have been used more often in the battles fought in Spain. Hannibal is reported to have had some 80 elephants at the battle of Zama, but these were largely untrained animals that were easily scared in battle and rendered ineffective by the Roman army.

Carthaginian light infantry protect the elephant from the attacking Roman
light infantry Velites.

Here is a "before" and "after" comparison of the elephants:

Elephants, as purchased on the left, and after repainting on the right.

The elephant, as purchased, had a basic war gaming standard paint job.

The same elephant after I repainted it.

I still have a little bit more work to do on the repainted elephant, namely painting a design on the red shield on the side of the tower and painting the metallic color on the chains that hold the howdah onto the back of the elephant.

I have two more "repaint" elephants on the painting table and two more new out of the box elephants are in primer and are ready to be painted. I am looking forward to getting all of the elephants painted and based. They should look spectacular.

ccc

Some Conversion Officer Figures

 

Actor John Patrick Stuart portraying Colonel Porter Alexander,
Longstreet's corps artillery commander at Gettysburg.
(image from the film "Gettysburg")

Artillery played an important role during Pickett's Charge on Day Three of the Battle of Gettysburg, as it will in my 54mm Pickett's Charge war game at the upcoming Little Wars convention (April 18-21, 2024). I thought that it would be a good idea to have an overall commander of the Confederate artillery in my game so I endeavored to make my own version of Colonel Porter Alexander.

Longstreet: how old are you son?

Alexander: I am 28 years old, sir.

Longstreet: uh huh

I like the color of the Confederate artillery soldiers with their red kepis and facings as the uniform adds a bit of color to the otherwise drab grey and butternut uniforms of the Confederate army. I wanted Alexander to be looking through his binoculars, as he does frequently in the movie "Gettysburg" (1993), however, I could not find a suitable 54mm figure of a mounted officer with binoculars, so I would have to convert some figures and make my own Porter Alexander figure.

Colonel Porte Alexander (left) and Brigadier General James Kemper (left).
Standing figure is a generic Confederate officer.

Colonel Alexander and Brigadier General James Kemper figures were made from one particular Americana brand figure. The picture below shows the figures used to make the conversions of Alexander and Kemper. The officer standing figure from Armies In Plastic donated his arms and binoculars to Colonel Alexander, for which the latter is no doubt grateful to have.

Basic Americana mounted officer (left); Kemper figure (middle) and Alexander figure (right)
Armies In Plastic Union artillery officer shown standing.

As you can see, I made both commander figures from the same Americana officer and did some head swaps from other figures that I had. To start, I lopped off the head of the Americana officer and also decapitated the head of a Confederate soldier wearing a brimmed hat and I put the brimmed hat head onto the Americana torso to make Kemper. I also carved off the reins of the horse and made new ones out of florists' wire and put the reins in Kemper's hands.

Colonel Alexander conversion work in progress

Porter Alexander proved to be a more difficult conversion operation to perform. Doctor Fritz started by beheading the Americana officer and removing his arms. I took another Americana figure wearing a kepi and put his head on the officer's torso, using a pin to connect the head to the torso. Some green epoxy putty was used to fill in the gap around the neck of the figure.

Next step was to carve off some of the torso below the arms to thin the piece down and make it ready to attach the arms. The Armies In Plastic officer had removable arms to I did not have to do any surgery to remove his arms. Then I drilled holes into the shoulders of the mounted officer and fit in the set of arms with the binoculars. I made sure that the binoculars fit in at eye level for the kepi head and then I glued the arms onto the torso using Super Glue. Then I used more green putty to fill in the gaps around the arms and to smooth out some of the cuts that I had made to the lower torso of the officer figure.

At this point the converted figure is finished but it looks rather rough. I knew that the figure would look fine after it was painted. I would have liked to have put Alexander on a standing horse, and I have no doubt that I could have done this work on the horse shown in the pictures, but I didn't think that it was worth the time spent, so I left him on a walking horse.

Here are some pictures of the converted figures from various angles. The officer on foot is merely a head swap conversion.

So now all that is left to do is to glue the officer figures to bases, using epoxy glue, and then terraining the bases with my usual mix of spackle, paint and fine ballast material. I have another, final, play test game tomorrow so the bases will likely not get the usual static grass and tufts to finish them off. This will be done on another day.

The Devil's Den Recreated

 

The famous Gardner photograph of a dead Confederate sniper amongst 
the boulders of the Devil's Den at Gettysburg. Historians determined that
Gardner posed the picture, dragging a corpse to the site and setting the rifle upright.

I posed a similar picture using a 54mm figure and a musket casting among some large rocks from my back yard.

Same diorama, different soldier casualty figure.

The other day I was removing my 54mm Civil War figures from my game table and getting them ready to transport to my friend Keith Leidy's house so that we could conduct a play test of my Pickett's Charge game. At the last minute I decided to create a mini diorama of the famous Garnder photograph of the dead Confederate rifleman at the Devil's Den at Gettysburg.

One of the pluses of 1/32 scale or 54mm figures is that they can be used to make some war dioramas and they look better than using, say, 28mm war gaming figures.

Now I am looking around for suitable figures to recreate the famous photo of the three Confederate prisoners after the battle of Gettysburg. I did find a nice 1/32 figure of Alfred Waud sitting on a tree stump, sketch pad in hand, getting ready to draw the picture of the battlefield. Stay tuned to see that figure painted.

Update

We ran a successful playtest of Pickett's Charge yesterday, setting up the terrain and troops at Keith's mammoth game table of three 6ft by 32ft tables. I will post pictures later this week. 

And now that I have cleared all of 54mm Civil War figures off of my table, space has opened up to set up a Seven Years War battle. This will be largely an all cavalry game between the Russians (boo!) and the Prussians (huzzah!). Recent events in Ukraine reminded me of the various Russian raids into Pomerania and trans-Oder River Silesia. The Russians wantonly looted and burned down villages so in this scenario Frederick has had enough of this and has set a trap to stop and/or capture a Russian raiding party. I will be posting pictures of this game within the next week or two.