Monday, August 28, 2017

Leven Miniatures 6mm ACW Buildings

I recently finished painting up a few 6mm resin American Civil War buildings produced by Leven Miniatures. I bought mine from The Wargaming Company booth at the Little Wars Convention.

Since my American Civil War miniatures are 10mm, the 6mm buildings do represent something of a compromise between the figure scale and the ground scale. Because of this they look too small for the figures, but take up a more reasonable amount of space on the table. I thought 10mm buildings would just take up too much space and dominate the rest of the terrain. Even with 6mm buildings, obviously each building needs to represent more than one building given the amount of ground it takes up. For convenience, I intend each building to represent enough buildings to be occupied by one regiment during a game.

I think the end result looks pretty good, given that there is almost always going to be this compromise between figure scale and ground scale for buildings. Even playing games in say 28mm where each figure represents an individual, buildings tend to be in scale when it comes to height, but take up a much smaller footprint than the actual building would.

This was my first time painting small scale buildings, and it was a challenge. I'm sure there are just some different techniques that could be used to make small scale buildings look a lot better than these, but I'm not sure what they are. Below you can see some pictures of the newly painted buildings along with some of my roads, fields, and an infantry regiment. Have a look and let me know what you think of the painting and the scale difference.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report: Daybreak at Hangman's Creek

I finally got around to trying out the American Civil War scenario from the Black Powder rulebook. Daybreak at Hangman's Creek sees a small Confederate division advancing on the town of Hangman's Creek at dawn. A small Union division is in the area, but they are not expecting trouble and most of them start off the table. All of the Union officers start in the town, and they will have to scramble to get their brigades moved up and deployed once they realize they are under attack. To the Union left of the town is a large Union camp. To the right, across the river, is a gun foundry. The Confederate objective is to capture the camp, town, or gun foundry, with a greater victory earned by capturing two or all three of them.

At the start of the game, one Union regiment is deployed in skirmish order in the fields north of town. They are allowed one free initiative move each turn until they are given an order, but the Union commanders (in the town) are not allowed to issue any orders or move until the alarm is raised. The alarm is raised at the end of any turn in which any unit fires or fights a round of close combat. The Confederates split their forces to attack all three objectives at once. They will need to advance quickly on their objectives before the Union officers have a chance to organize a proper defense if they are to secure victory.