2mm ACW (with updates)

Amidst the mountain of rules I’ve downloaded over the years, I’ve recently found a copy of  Who Shall Rule this American Nation? - simple ACW rules written with the 2mm gamer in mind. They are aimed at divisional or corps level gaming.

Update: I have since discovered that the rules are part of a collected set by John Bobek, The Games of War: A Treasury of Rules for Battles with Toy Soldiers, Ships and Planes (2007): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37718/games-war-treasury-rules-battles-toy-soldiers-ship  A copy is on its way in the next week or two! I will review the rules in more detail then.

The mechanics of movement, shooting, melee and morale are provided but the set lacks a turn sequence and the morale rules are a bit unclear - but the rest is solid. I’m playing through a game to the identify gaps and will write up some homegrown solutions.

Update: thanks for a Review by Ryan Morgan on the above BGG page, I have learned that 'In chapter one Mr. Bobek lays out the ground work for interpreting his rules in the further chapters as well as discusses his philosophy for wargaming.'

At this point I just wanted to post some shots of the initial few turns and I will update on my thoughts soon. This blog has been quiet for too long!

I’ve also been experimenting with creating woods terrain for 2mm using Casuarina cones coated in flock - there are some WIP images below.  I'll post a short tutorial next.

A craggy protuberance

I need a craggy hill for the D&D adventure I’m working on - a great opportunity to try out my new interest in foam crafting! Still a WIP but here’s a progress shot or two.

Crafting for D&D 5e

At a pre-Christmas get together with some gaming buddies I was discussing how the Netflix series Stranger Things had reenlivend interest in Dungeons and Dragons with my kids. I had been using AD&D manuals that I had since my early days of role playing in the late 1970s. The chap I was yarning with suggested I try fifth edition (5e) suggesting there was a lot of news stuff we were missing out on. I was keen to see where D&D had gone over the years, so challenge accepted!

So, the young bloke’s Christmas stocking was stuffed with some Eureka dungeoneer miniatures, the 5e Dungeon Masters’ Guide and a DM’s screen as a bit of a kick starter. I find using some miniatures and dungeon tiles or terrain helps the kids engage with the action sequences better (although in many parts of an adventure we stick to ‘pure’ paper and dice role playing).

Of course, I need very little encouragement to take up a new crafting project and swiftly got onto making some dungeon tiles. There is a wealth of advice on YouTube for dungeon crafting and I adopted the 2.5 D dungeon tile approach used by The DMG with reasonable success. I used foamcore instead of cardboard which worked fine. I have created a basic set of about 20 tiles but am working towards the full set of tiles outlined by DMG:

While searching for some additional goodies to populate the dungeon with I happened across the Black Magic Craft channel on YouTube which, among the huge catalogue of really useful videos, has a great tutorial for crafting an Earth Elemental out of foam here. Here’s my attempt at the build - I’m happy with the results. I particularly think adding some areas of ‘dirt’ using model railway ballast gives the model even more of a feel of having just having been conjoured from the landscape!

I highly recommend you check out The DMG.info and Black Magic Craft - great channels.

More dungeon goodness will follow. Thanks for dropping by.

NB: this is my first post using an iPad - not a happy choice for Blogger - apologies for formatting issues!