So, as the year has passed, I have turned out a whole bunch of terrain for Operation Spring Awakening- the Bolt Action event I hosted at the end of September- and so I took a break and painted some WW2 Soviet infantry while travelling for work, as obviously they were much easier to transport. But while finishing up the infantry (or; as far as I could without my painting light to see the detail of belt buckles and a couple of other details!) I was thinking about the huge quantity of miniatures required to be a big game venue- just how many would be enough?!?
In fact, that had me thinking about what the starting point of the process was-or should be- in order to avoid wasted effort and ensure my efforts were optimised. So far I have been working on the following principles;
- 1.Maximise efficiency and avoid 'dilution theory' (Thank you to the Meeples team for this gem of terminology, and Rex for recommending it to me!) by concentrating effort into certain periods of collecting and painting only, being;
- a.World War 2;
- i.Normandy and Market Garden operations.
- ii.Eastern Front.
- iii.Mediterranean-Sicily & Italy.
- b.ACW (further details to be decided in the future); and
- c.Napoleonic- Peninsular Campaign.
Thus far I have been concentrating on WW2, and intend to do so until I have reached the quantities I need to play both sides in at least one of the three theatres listed, then I might choose to move on to one of the other periods.
- 2.Collecting only in 28mm.
- This will allow terrain to be useful across these periods where possible, i.e; pantile buildings and scenery being used across Napoleonic and Mediterranean WW2, certain log buildings etc suitable for ACW in addition to Eastern Front WW2 etc etc.
- Despite higher cost of 28mm models, this can be defrayed by this versatility, as well as providing a more easily observed big game situation for players and umpires. In addition, 15-20 mm offer no substantial saving in time through the painting process in my humble opinion.
- 3.Avoid distracting periods, and 'dabble' in other theatres of war only in small projects as a pallet cleanser, or to prepare limited terrain to add table variety for my wargames events, such as the Pacific/Far East theatres of WW2 etc.
- 4.Utilise second-hand armies and 3D printing where possible to reduce costs and safe time and effort.
- a.Repainting- where required to fit with the collection's scheme and standard;
- b.Rebasing only- where paint standards are good and match the existing collections;
- c.Respecting the time sink required of friends and family into 3D printing- taking care that I don't place excessive demands on them and being aware that I may need to source 3D prints off others at higher commercial prices, yet still saving on cost over retail kits and figures. This allows said friends and family to do their own hobby.
- 5.Plan to build forces that allow 5-6 commands per 'side' of the battles, allowing a total of 10-12 players taking part.
- 6.Collect to a plan where possible.
So its this last point that I wanted to tackle with this post. Collecting to a plan is important because the focus allows conservation of both my efforts (and the efforts of others- for instance, getting Rex to print me off four Jawa sand crawlers and then I'm not painting forces for the game isn't the way to win friends and influence people through respecting their time!) and my cash- after all, it would be nice to retire someday so I can play some games with what I'm creating.
Some thought into planning has brought up many points already. Firstly; knowing how many models I need will depend on choosing rule sets, the battles I have chosen to play within the theatres and how many players I am planning to involve in each experience.
Concentrating on WW2 to begin with, I have been thinking about playing big battles by scaling Bolt Action upward by using the ratios adopted by Rapid Fire; 1:15 infantry and 1:5 vehicles. As a rough idea this would have a section/squad size element representing a Company for instance. Or, perhaps Crossfire which has even further model abstraction. I feel like further consideration will be required but I'm also happy that crossfire element bases can be made up by individual models being placed into sabot bases, so multiple rulesets can be played with the same models so this means that further playtesting and decision-making regarding rulesets can be made later.
Regardless of the final direction this takes, I have acquired older campaign books produced for Rapid Fire, which have fantastic orders of battle for the historic forces taking part. Even if I was to play with the exact numbers later in certain areas, they provide me with an EXCELLENT starting point to build forces in ratio for these campaigns/theatres.
I have started with the old Market Garden campaign book, and created my own document which allows me to hit my collecting, modelling and painting goals and know what is outstanding and therefore to concentrate my efforts in bringing them to the tabletop.I have attached examples of my spreadsheet work below so you can see what I'm talking about.
Identifying numbers of models has also been very useful in getting my collection insured. In the event of something particularly nasty happening, I truly can concentrate on the more important things in life knowing my insurance company has got all the details they need! It also allows me to search for the absolute unicorn that is a well-made, well-painted Sdkfz 11 at a bargain price, or source some more of those die-cast Pz IV models that I have found previously!!
This also allows me to keep an eye out for astounding deals on 'doer-uppers' like the soviet infantry army I found a couple of years ago which comprised of a load of the now out-of-production 28mm PSC Soviet infantry sprinkled with many Black Tree Designs models. Looking for a pallet cleanser between terrain projects, I saw this as an opportunity to knock some of these out, and although they actually turned out to be substantial repaints- plus a lot of work re basing- only $80 NZD was a bargain for 130 of these guys!
Although the figures are a little bit 'green plastic army man'- and details are quite 'soft', both issues from having been scaled up from 15 or 20 mm to 28's. I'm not sure if they were originally 15mm, or if they were both scaled up and down later from 20mm…either way, those sculpts have been working their butts off for PSC! It must be said that once painted they actually hold up under scrutiny -mostly. Where there are very 'flat' poses for the moulds this is of course accentuated in 28mm, so that's where the 'Toy Story'- squad- look comes in just occasionally, But I found that with appropriate highlighting the eye is drawn away from these shortcomings mostly.I have attached a photo of the work I did on them while travelling to the US, obviously basing and repairs to some weapons are to come as a batch.
As chance would have it, I actually got a packet of the Soviet Heavy weapons PSC 28mm from War & peace games years ago, and this has inspired me to get them together too, and I'm pretty sure the soviet light AT guns I have acquired a few years ago in a bulk soviet army buy were their final set of the three as this had two guns with crew and many variant models of the guns that could be built.
So where does all this planning leave me? In a good place with progress and knowing what my goals are- even down to knowing what type of paint scheme vehicles have and uniform patterns that were available and in use which allows me to focus searches for reference material etc. unfortunately the actual painting doesn't get done any quicker around these time savers mentioned, but this is also helped by knowing what Im looking for if second hand models or print files become available allowing savings.
Thats it for this instalment of my crazy brains workings...im off to paint the rest of these PSC Soviets and get ready for the arrival of the new Warlord Games Soviet infantry, which are a quite brilliant set and Im looking forward to getting them done!
Dan