This is the 50th blog post since we started last year following Salute 2016 (here is a link to the very first post) – no big parties lined up or memorial statues being carved but there is a certain level of satisfaction involved – I am celebrating the occasion rolling a few ones and having a few crafty beers.

We spent last week in Southern France visiting some friends with the compulsory sampling of the local produce to the small hours.  The Little One practiced his camouflage skills and apart from the bright NERF rifle it was difficult to spot him and his friend in the undergrowth.

On the Wargames front there is not much new – all the Stuff for Salute is packed.

We have told you where to look for us at Salute in the last blog entry (see here) and here is the general blur about it (see here) – hope we will see you there!

I had to rearrange a little bit so the Russians got out of their box anyway in their full glory.  Here are a few shots showing 24 of the total 32 bases that will be present on the day.

And finally and most important to create some dimension on an otherwise relatively flat battlefield – the trees.

Below is a link to an PDF file with the details of the bases for the Battle and game statistics for both Polemos GNW as well as The Twilight of the Sun King.  See the notes below on regards on what each bases represents in the Polemos rules which should make it relatively easy to translate the overall list to whatever rules you are using.  Note that this list is slightly different to what I have presented in previous postings as some corrections in the list have been made.

I think we will run the Demo game using the Twilight of the Sun King rules on the day, see more here.

Link to Kalisz Bases Polemos GNW and TOTSK

With regards to the Polemos Basing the following act as guidelines.  Note that the leader/commander bases are markers indicating where the leaders are located on the field of battle and not active combat units.  I tend to base them with 1 to 3 models on the front row representing quality (1 – Poor, 2 – Average and 3 – Excellent) and models on the back row representing Tempo points (used in the Polemos rules).

The extract below is from the Polemos GNW Rulebook (Page 5).

“The actual ratio of figures to real men will vary depending on how many figures you put on a base.  A base represents the following: 
 
 A base of infantry, except skirmishing infantry, represents between 400 and 600 men.  They can be a single large battalion, a pair of smaller ones or a group of subunits up to this approximate strength.  
 
 A base of cavalry, dismounted dragoons and skirmishing infantry represents two to three squadrons or similar groups, representing 200 to 300 men.  A cavalry base is assumed to include wide intervals between squadrons, allowing friendly cavalry bases to pass through each other.  
 
 An artillery base represents four to eight guns.  The number of guns that a base represents varies depending on the size of the real guns.  Four heavy guns will be represented by one base.  While eight light guns will also be represented by one base. “

And there was another thing…

A delivery of some Corrugated Sheet Metal

I get a fair few deliveries from Amazon (google it if you are not familiar with them) and I noted that their packaging have a very nice and tight corrugation.  I have seen this being used in the past to simulate corrugated sheets but had not tried it myself.  I wanted to give it a try as I want to expand on the terrain I have for using with the Scrappers Mutant 1984 project I am working on (See more about it here).

Armed with a sharp knife I set slowly cut away the cover sheet on one side (I hope it is bleeding obvious but be careful when you use a knife).

After a few minutes I had plenty of uncovered sheets (I only cut them on one side).

After this I cut out small 40 by 20 mm pieces.

I got a nice pile of them.

I then built a simple test structure using some coffee stirrers (like the ones you get at Starbucks), matches, and my corrugated sheets. Using superglue and PVA to stick the things together,  The two colorful pieces on top are made from some Kinder Egg rubbish the Small One had lying around – I and the Little One speculated that these could be part of some semi-portable wind based energy system. They had some interesting detail that will look good when drybrushed later.

I gave it a spray with a grey primer and I think this will paint up reasonably well (here with some unfinished miniatures to understand scale) and I think it looks ok with the 28mm figures.

Next week the Scrappers rules should arrive (from Amazon) with some new building materials! (although the little structure hardly caused a dent in the pile).

/ All revved up and certainly a place to go to…