Roman Marching Encampment in 1/32 Scale

 

1/32 scale (54mm) Roman marching encampment.
The manufacturer is TSSD (Toy Soldiers of San Diego)

I want to have a Roman marching camp fort in my Historicon game in 2025. One of the games might feature a Roman assault on a Carthaginian city. The Romans would typically construct a fortress made of dirt and timber where ever they made an encampment while on the march. I wasn't looking forward to making my own camp walls out of pink insulation foam board and the one made by John Jenkins Designs is prohibitively expensive. I was pleased to find this fort model from Toy Soldiers of San Diego (TSSD) for a reasonable cost, relative to the other options. The model pieces come preprinted, but I think that they might need a different color of paint plus some dry brushing to finish it off.

The following two pictures provide a view of the interior of the camp:

My plan is to set the fort up on the back edge of the table and only represent the front and sides of the fort. The interior will have some Roman camp tents and vignettes and, of course, some soldiers to man the walls of the fort. The idea is that some of the game players will be attacking the Carthaginian city on one table while others are involved in attacking the Roman camp (which comes under attack from a Carthaginian relief force.

Both the Carthaginians and Romans set up walled camps while on the march so each side could have a fort on their back table. They march out of the camp and then deploy for battle. I will run multiple convention games at Little Wars and Historicon, so one day might have an assault on the city walls game, an assault on a marching camp, or some conventional set piece battles. Then, a second game on the day will have the reverse of the morning game, i.e. a set piece battle in the evening and a city assault in the morning game. Rinse and repeat for Friday and Saturday.

The front gate of the walled camp

Some of the soldiers' tents inside the camp.

Roman engineers use a groma device to survey the ground so that they can set up 
the location of the tents. These figures are from John Jenkins Designs.

I have a 32-figure unit of Celts/Gauls on the painting table right now and hope to have these finished within the next week. Hopefully the Thanksgiving holiday will give me some spare time to devote to figure painting.

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.

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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.

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U.S.Sharpshooters at Gettysburg

 

USSS concealed in a cornfield and taking pot shots at Confederate artillery.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

If you have ACW armies to fight the Eastern Theatre (largely in Virginia) then you probably have had the urge to add a unit of the U.S. Sharpshooter's to your army. They are akin to the British rifle regiments in the Napoleonic wars, such as the 60th Royal American and the 95th Rifles regiments that fought in Spain.

The 1st USSS ("USSS") fought at Gettysburg, attached to Daniel Sickles' Third Corps (everything Gettysburg eventually comes back to Dan Sickles),  fought in Pitzer's Woods, basically on a scouting mission to see what Confederate forces might be in said woods. They were driven back, of course, as only several companies of USSS were sent on the mission and didn't have sufficient numbers to hold back the formed regular regiments of Confederates (as opposed to being trained open order skirmish troops as were the USSS).

They are probably better suited for fighting small actions rather than being part of a larger battle such as the Peach Orchard/Wheatfield or Pickett's Charge battles at Gettysburg. Nevertheless, I wanted them in my Union army so I painted a force of 30 figures, all sourced from Armies In Plastic. I divide the unit into two groups of 15 figures and base them 3 figures per stand rather than the 6 figures per stand that I use for regular regiments.

A group of sharpshooters run up the road to take up a position.

The sharpshooters have moved out of the cornfield and onto the turnpike road,
resting their rifles on the post and rail fences for better aim.

In my rules, I don't want the sharpshooters to be more powerful than their numbers would indicate, so I divide them into smaller groups of 6 to 15 figures. They "hit" on a die roll of "1" on a D6 dice, but even with a 17% probability of getting a hit, they are still fairly deadly. Do I think that I will resort to using D10 dice and scoring hits on "1" only. This will make them annoying to their opponents, but not turn them into walking machine guns. 

I had this problem when I used skirmishers in my AWI games, allowing hits on a 1 or a 2. With up to 20 figures at a time rolling for 1 and 2, the skirmishers were too deadly. They could hit up to 4 figures per turn using 20 figures, which is almost a full stand of formed opponent's figures. Two regular players in my SYWA convention games, Tom M. and Daniel H., were particularly adept at finding loop holes in the rules and they quickly figured out the favorable math in which the skirmishers were hitting more opponents per turn than a formed regiment of 30 figures could inflict on them.

So I broke them down into smaller groups and decreed that there could not be more than 6 skirmishers in a group. Of course Tom and Daniel still got around the new rules by amassing three groups of 6 figures, generating similar deadly results. You have got to hand it to them, they are good. LOL!

OK guys, now I'll fix you by scattering the skirmishers over different ends of the game table so that they could not gather in the same area of the table. And I reduced the "hit" score down to hitting only on a 1. That seemed to solve the problem, although Tom and Daniel were still searching for a way to utilize their skirmishers to deadly effect. My final counter-measure might come down to removing skirmishers from the game completely. I have to say that I had fun trying to match wits with the fellows.

So getting back to the USSS in my Civil War games, I want them to be a little bit annoying, but not too powerful that they produce better results than Confederate formed troops. I could paint some Confederate skirmishers to (he, he, he).

In any event, the U.S. Sharpshooters are a good looking unit with their dark green uniforms and brown leather equipment and are probably a unit that any ACW gamer should consider adding to their armies.

War Bases casualty dials

 

Casualty disc to denote the number of casualties on the unit.

In some of my recent games I was using a red D6 die to denote casualties in my 54mm ACW regiments. Each regiment has five stands of six figures, so a D6 made a lot of sense. One would simply move the die to the appropriate number of pips that corresponds to the accumulated casualties on the stand. When six casualties were recorded, then the stand would be removed from the game.

However, I found that having red dice scattered all over the game table did not look good to me. I wanted something better. I recalled seeing a round numbered dial disc that other gamers were using in their games and I noted that these looked quite nice. So I did a little bit of internet searching and found a company called War Bases located in the U.K.  They had exactly what I was looking for: 40mm round discs with moveable numbers.

This picture demonstrates the use of the dial discs with my ACW regiments. One disc moves about the table with its regiment. The casualties are dialed up on the disc until it reaches "6" and then the stand is removed from the game. Note that the dial goes from "0" to "12" so it can be used for a variety of gaming systems and games.

Marshall's North Carolina brigade at Pickett's Charge.
Note the use of the dials and compare to the picture below.

The use of a red D6 to denote casualties - the die is rather distracting 
to the visual appearance of the game.

Here is a teaser photo of things to come:

A company of U.S. Sharpshooters in a cornfield, picking off officers and artillery crewmen.

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Iconic ACW Photo Comes to Life in Miniature

 

Speira Miniatures Vignette in 1/32 scale (54mm)

The colorized version of the original photograph that most of us have seen.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE PIX

I wanted to add a special figure vignette for my Pickett's Charge game at Historicon this year, so I contacted a 3D printing company called Speira Miniatures. The company is located in Sweden. It has a large variety of sculpts in the ACW, WW2, Napoleonic and other eras available for purchase. You can have your figure selection printed in any size and scale. I commissioned the company to make the three figures that comprise the famous photograph of three prisoners taken after the battle of Gettysburg. The company accepted my idea and in approximately four weeks they had finished the computer renderings of the figures and then they sent me a set of the figures.

As you can see in the pictures, Speira did a really good job of creating the three Confederate soldiers shown in the original figure. I suspect that anyone who takes a close look at my Gettysburg tabletop at Historicon is going to recognize the three Confederates.

My vignette in black and white.

I will also have a number of other vignettes scattered about my game table. One of the things that I am working on is a field hospital at Gettysburg. Here is one of the Speira vignettes that will be included in the hospital scenery.

Speira surgeon, nurse and wounded soldier vignette.

Another view of the field hospital vignette.

The hospital set up will include some horse drawn ambulances, orderlies carrying wounded soldiers on stretchers etc. The only thing that I won't do is depict a pile of amputated limbs. That would be crossing the line in my book.

In general, I like to put my vignettes in the corners of my game table where they may be scene, but they are out of the way of the tabletop action and don't get in the way of moving one's troops.

I am pretty much done with painting Union and Confederate regiments for my game, so I have the next two months available to work on vignettes and terrain features. Stay tuned for more posts in the genre.

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Play Test #4 - Pickett's Charge Scenario

Click on the pictures to enlarge

or Double Click to make them humongous

Yesterday we conducted our fourth play test of the rules for my Pickett's Charge game scenario for the upcoming Little Wars convention in April. With respect to the rules, we are down to making a few minor tweaks here and there that really don't have much impact on the way that the rules work. So we are mainly just running more iterations of the game to see what types of outcomes the rules produce.

On the terrain side of things, this was the first time that we had enough game mats from Cigar Box Battle Mats to cover the entire surface of three 6ft by 24ft tables. The difference in the look of the ground before and after using the mats is remarkable.

The two pictures below provide a "Before" and "After" view of the Union position on Cemetery Ridge with and without the Cigar Box mats.

Union position on Cemetery Ridge shown without the use of game mats.

Union position on Cemetery Ridge shown with the game mats from 
Cigar Box Battle Mats.

Here is a view of one of the back tables showing the starting deployment position of the Confederate army.

Joe Davis's Brigade of Mississippi and North Carolina regiments.
This is the starting back table for the Confederate advance.

Davis's brigade shown on a bare green painted table surface.

I'm kicking myself for not taking many "long distance" photos that show all three of the tables with the new game mats. As you may recall, we are using three 6ft by 24ft tables, arranged parallel to one another and with aisles running on each side of the center table. The aisle space does not exist in terms of table top distances. For example, if a Confederate regiment is on the back table and has 20-inches of movement and starts only 8-inches away from the edge of the back table, then the player measures the 6-inches up to the edge of the table, and then hops across the aisle to the center table, and then measures out the remaining 14-inches of movement that his regiment has. In other words, the aisle area effectively doesn't exist.

This can create some interesting moments in a game when, say, two opposing units are on opposite tables and the players do not realize how close they are to each other because their eyes have been fooled by the three feet of aisle space between the center table and one of the back tables.

Here are few more random views of the game tables with the new mats:

The Confederate back table showing the starting point of the Confederate advance.
The tree line represents Seminary Ridge. The Confederates will be moving from left to right.
This table is 6ft wide and has a length of 24ft.

Confederate's starting point on the back righthand table.

The Confederates "jump across" the aisle between the back righthand table onto the center table.

A move or two later, the Confederates approach the Emmitsburg Road while
maintaining rather orderly lines and formation.

A Confederate brigade attempts to cross the Emmitsburg Road. It takes one full turn to 
cross each post and rail fence on the road. Thus Turn 1 the regiment crosses the fence
but then that is the end of its movement for the turn. On Turn 2 the regiment can
now cross the second fence and resume its movement for up to half of its allowed movement.

And now a look at the Union deployment on Cemetery Ridge:

A Union artillery battery supports troops located in The Angle.
The famous Copse of Trees can be seen in the background.

Front view of The Angle

A Union regiment deployed behind the stone walls.

Union regiments defending The Copse of Trees which was the directional
focal point or landmark of the Confederates in Pickett's Charge.

We had to cut short the play test around 3PM because it is a one hour drive from Keith's house to my house, plus we needed about 30 minutes of post game discussion time to go over some of the things that we saw in the game. We plan on resuming the game this coming Friday, on Good Friday. After that there will be one final Dress Rehearsal play test game in early April and then it is time to pack everything up and get ready to take the show to Little Wars.

On Friday, I will make a point of taking some long view photos that include all three game tables and try to see if I can do something about the lighting so that I can produce some better looking photographs.

I am pretty much done with painting figures needed for the game so now I will be turning my efforts towards terrain pieces such as more post and rail fences for the Emmitsburg Road and perhaps a couple of 2-ft square fields using Teddy Bear Fur

A Little More Table Space Couldn't Do Us Any Harm

 

The new 2.5ft by 12ft back (or side) table expands the depth of 
my 54mm ACW game table.

The other day I decided that my ACW game table needed more depth, so I set up another parallel table. The table layout consists of (from left to right) a 5ft wide by 12ft long back table; a 6ft wide by 12ft long center or main table, and the new 2.5ft by 12ft back table. The center table has 3ft wide aisles separating the parallel table. In practice, the aisles do not exist. When you move your unit up to the table edge you simply hop on over the other side without any movement penalty. So the entire game table is actually 13.5ft wide by 12ft long.

The view from the far back table looking out at the center table and
the new 2.5x12ft side table.

Ground level view, of sorts, looking from the new back table across the
game room towards the center table and back table. At ground level one can 
barely make out the gap between these tables.

In a pinch I could probably make the new side table 5ft wide rather than 2.5ft wide, but it would put a crimp into the amount of area available for walking around and between the various game tables. It's not something that I want to set up permanently, but I could see doing it for a game specific event. This has all been done to accommodate the large 54mm toy soldier size figures. Now imagine what I could do if I scaled the terrain down for 28mm figures. There would be no shortage of maneuvering space and open flank areas on the table.

The set up having a center table and two parallel side tables is done to provide depth to the battlefield. Rather than lining up my 54mm ACW figures from table end to end, the extra depth enables me to either (1) start the opposing forces further apart from each other, or (2) add a supporting second line of infantry regiments in the game - this creates more area for maneuvering on the center table.

For my Pickett's Charge game at Little Wars and Historicon conventions in 2024, the Confederate army will deploy in line on one of the back (side) tables representing Seminary Ridge/Warfield Ridge. Their artillery will deploy on the higher elevation while the infantry advance across the center table towards Cemetary Ridge. The center table is where most of the action will take place. Pickett's Confederates will cross the open ground and advance toward the Emmitburg Road. The Emmitsburg Road will run diagonally across the center table as it is furthest from the Union line on the south edge of the table and gradually come closer to Cemetery Ridge where the road hits the north edge of the table. The further back table is where I will place Cemetery Ridge where the Union army will deploy. There will be some dead ground behind the ridge where I will set up Meade's HQ, reserve infantry and some reserve artillery units.

Painting Update

As of today I have completed 11 Union and 12 Confederate regiments of 30 figures each. This brings the total up to 690 figures painted since the beginning of August 2023. I have not included any of the mounted command figures or the artillery crewmen that I have painted during this period, but my guess is that we are talking about 20+ figures at most. So suffice it to say, I have painted over 700 figures for my Pickett's Charge Project.

I will need 4 more Union and 3 more Confederate regiments (7 units x 30 figures = 210 figures) to complete the infantry component of my game forces. That is to say that I have painted approximately 75% of the figures that I will need for the game. The organization breaks down into 5 brigade commands per side and one artillery brigade command per side. I am considering adding one more infantry brigade per side to give me 6 brigades per side, or 12 players in the game. However, I am not sure that the size of my eventual convention game table(s) will provide sufficient frontage to accommodate the additional figures.