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Post by jenburdoo on May 22, 2017 2:14:29 GMT
Greetings, folks. Glad to find this site. I've been playing miniatures games for about 20 years on and off - mostly Warhammer 40K since no one had historicals, though my college had a great collection of the books, including Peter Young's Charge!, HG Wells' Little Wars, a history of Britain's, and several Featherstone books. These were my intro to gaming and I went straight to the nearest game store ... which only had 40K. Luckily there were plenty of ways to insert historical allusions into my armies. But now I have space and enough disposable income to order online, and have recently picked up a bunch of Armies In Plastic figures with vague ideas of running Little Wars at my local historicals club with them. No spring-loaded guns, of course, but Nerf dart pistols seem good substitutes so far!
I'm a teen and children's librarian, and have been experimenting with both role-playing and wargaming at work. My second vague idea is to have kids paint up Revolutionary War figures, play a simple game, then take them home. Currently I have twenty of British and American each in 54mm, blue and red. The theory is to have them paint everything but the coats, and run some sort of skirmish battle.
I welcome ideas on both of these. Hope to contribute soon!
- Jennifer
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Post by Mike Lewis on May 22, 2017 14:48:57 GMT
Welcome!
You can pick up some of the Britain's spring-loaded cannon from ebay fairly cheaply - I have about 10!
When I started wargaming as a 12 year old with Little Wars we used matchstick firing cannon and a second set of small cannon with the guns from the Ambush! boardgame that fired plastic bullets.
Looking forward to hearing how your plans go.
Mike
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Post by JohnY on May 24, 2017 13:54:14 GMT
Welcome Jennifer and greetings from a fellow librarian (well, by training. I don't work in a library but I do work in the "library space")!
I love the idea of having kids paint figures to play a game and take them home. I've seen people pull off the "everything but the coats" paint jobs, although I'm always wondering what paint they use, since painting unprimed plastic never goes well for me.
Please keep us updated on your projects!
-John
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Post by jenburdoo on May 25, 2017 4:14:12 GMT
Thanks for the comments, gents. I've experimented in the past with a painting craft, and it does help to undercoat them. The newer Games Workshop paints have enough pigment to work on an unprimed figure, though I have no idea how it would work on the soft plastic of "army men." One possibility is to heavily drybrush them first, which doubles for picking out the detail and making the figure look a little more realistic. I'm also looking for my paint pens, which worked fairly well on smaller figures.
For the game, I'm thinking of a Featherstone/Necromunda hybrid - basic six-inch moves, move or fire, and an injury chart to make it less likely that some kids will be out of the game on the first turn. Not sure how, or even if, to differentiate Americans and Brits - Americans being better shots versus Brits being better in close combat may work.
Springloaded guns are probably out of my budget, though it would be cool to have one for collecting's sake; dart guns are just a few bucks each. What I'd really like would be the mountain artillery mule set with a broken-down mountain gun! I'm thinking of using the Little Wars appendix rules for firing, which include allowing one shot per five infantry and a shell template for the cannon.
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Post by Mike Lewis on May 25, 2017 8:23:01 GMT
If you want to keep the kids in the game then instead of a figure dying it gets sent to the base line to hospital for a number of turns (depending on seriousness of injury) and then comes back into the game.
The shell template for firing makes the game more interesting - in Funny Little Wars, the shells have different weights (you paint the matchstick a different colour) and this gives a different burst radius. We also played with some shells that might be duds and a box of limited ammo which added some interest as you can't just blaze away every turn.
I would suggest not using the Little Wars melee rules as written as they are very simple (everyone kills everyone until one side outnumbers the other by 2 to 1) but use dice and a 4-6 to hit. It'll make it a bit more exciting...
Mike
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Post by kugelfang on May 25, 2017 17:17:41 GMT
Welcome, Jennifer,
You have a worthy project! For the budget minded toy soldier (emphasis on 'toy') enthusiast looking at the American Revolution, check out BMC figures. You can usually buy them by the bag full for considerably less than other figures. They're not the prettiest figures around (understatement!) but I believe they are molded in PVC rather than the softer plastic that most other manufacturers use. The PVC seems to provide better adherence for the paint. Nevertheless, undercoating will help considerably. I have found that artist's gesso works best for undercoating plastic figures. Gesso is available in both black and white colors. I typically undercoat with black and then dry brush with white before applying color. I'll occasionally mix a little Aleene's Tacky glue with the gesso if it is rolling off the figure as if the surface was oily.
Or you might consider using a spray paint designed for plastic. If you use red and blue for undercoating, then the kids could do the 'everything but the coat' as part of the project. I've not used these 'plastic surface spay paints' before, but I've heard positive things about them.
Good Luck!
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Post by jenburdoo on May 26, 2017 23:28:38 GMT
Thanks for the painting tips. Not sure how much effort I can put into pre-painting, but we'll see.
Re: Little Wars, I'm looking at using just quickfirers and Gatling-type guns, and allowing one shot for each crewman. (A Lewis gunner would also get one shot.) This would give them a more significant role as opposed to the riflemen, who in the appendix are given one shot per five men. I'm not sure what I want to do CC-wise - the appendix has rules for charging cavalry that give them significant power, but one of the schticks of Little Wars is that it isn't random. I imagine that maneuvering to ensure one's ascendancy in combat is an important element of the game - especially the supported/unsupported mechanic that basically requires a battle line rather than scattering your figures all over the board.
The alternative for shellfire, so long as I haven't actually got any 4.7 guns yet, might be to toss balls of cotton onto the board (I've seen this as an innovative way to simulate a pre-bombardment in a WWI trench game). To give the ball range, perhaps sticking a screw or the like into it would work. Once it lands (and does not bounce away as a regular dart would) hold a six-inch template over it.
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