Testing Lake Champlain

 

The Waters of Valcour Bay

 

Yesterday was the 244th anniversary of the Battle of Valcour Island, where Benedict Arnold led a small fleet of hastily built gunboats and ships against an also hastily built fleet of British vessels located on Lake Champlain between Vermont and New York.  While the battle ended in an American defeat, it also ended the 1776 campaign season for the British attempting to come down out of Canada to take Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence.

The anniversary reminded me of the Battle of Valcour Island game that I had been putting together last year.  In September, I build the American ship Enterprise.  I had so much fun with that build, that a couple of weeks later I assembled the HMS Inflexible.

Over the winter, I dabbled a bit with putting together the game.  War Artisan's Workshop has a great set of papercraft ships, covering the vessels that took part in the battle, as well as a free set of naval rules called Away Boarders!  My original intention was to build both the American and British Fleets, a game board, and some custom player sheets then play out the battle this year on or near the anniversary date.

Unfortunately, I didn't make much progress on this project.  I ordered a couple more ship kits, and started to assemble them, and played a bit with creating a board.  Away Boarders! uses a sort of grid system, with dots in triangular formations representing ship locations.  I wanted to create a board that both looked good, and was functional with the rules.  The above photo was the result of my one test.  A 2'x2' piece of hardboard was sprayed with a rattle can of greenish-blue texture paint that I had used on the bases of the two ships that I build.  I then used a white paint pen to add very small dots in the grid system used for the game.  Overall, I liked the look, however, that's all the progress I have.

With this project in mind again, maybe I'll add it to my winter project list and see about hosting a Valcour Island game on the 245th anniversary.

Setting The Scene - Quick Review

I've been remiss in posting lately, but real life and other projects have taken priority lately. Here's to getting back to it.

A few weeks ago, I sent for and received a copy of Setting The Scene: Winter Wargaming – A Guide For Creating A Winter Layout For The Games Table by Pat Smith. I'd been reading Pat's blog, Wargaming with Silver Whistle, and his Chain of Command reports. Each post is filled with beautiful photography of some really great scenery, so when I had the money, and they were available for purchase again, I decided to snap up a copy of his book.

The short review: I'm not disappointed.

The book is laid out so that, with a couple of exceptions, each chapter is a single project. The projects are written as step-by-step tutorials, and include notes on materials and how to use them. Projects range from roads to buildings to figures and backdrops. There's a lot of information that covers just about every part of the game table.

The photographs in Setting The Scene focus on gaming set in World War II in the Ardennes, but the techniques can easily be used for other settings. With my preference for AWI, for instance, the projects could be used to build a Battle of Trenton table, or more likely for me, a small skirmish set at the Shelburne Blockhouse.

The only drawback that I found to the book is that the photos seems small. They actually aren't, but I'm used to seeing the same scenery on a bright large screen blog format, so the printed versions seemed, less, somehow. This is a minor nit though, and one of my own making, so it's not really a fault of the book.

For anyone interested in obtaining a copy of Setting the Scene, head over to "Painting & Gaming" at www.stevenlampon.co.uk.

Game Board Testing

I've been going back and forth on ideas for creating a game board. I've been reading a number of blogs where the players use a flat terrain map, sometimes with risers beneath to create hills. Roads, rivers, and buildings are then placed on top to complete the terrain.

I'm not sold on above table rivers though.

Another option is to build a table with foam, where rivers and entrenchments can be carved down below the main surface. I like this look, but that potentially means creating a new board for each scenario.

The mid-point between these two would be a modular board made up of tiles. Several years ago I read about hexagonal pieces made from foam-board that could be mixed together to form a play surface, similar to old-school hex maps from games like BattleTech. I thought I'd take a crack at a small proof-of-concept version of that.

First up, I used a roll of flocked paper that I picked up at our local art store. I found some 1.5” foam-board in our basement, and a scrap piece of 1/4” plywood that I used to make a template from. With these in hand, I used my favorite spray-on tacky glue to attach the flocked paper to the foam. Since I don't have a hot-wire foam cutter (note to self, buy a hot-wire foam cutter), I tried a few different ways of cutting out the hexes. Scoring the lines with a hobby knife, then cutting them out with a small hacksaw seemed to work the best. The dust is messy, but a quick vacuum cleared that up.

Grass mat, foam board, spray glue & template

Flocked paper down and drying

First cuts

With the supplies I had on hand, I managed to make 8 full tiles, 4 half tiles, 4 end triangles, and 2 corner triangles. This gave me a playing surface roughly 2' x 2'. Three more sets will get me a surface suitable for some Smooth & Rifled skirmish games.

A decent start

Rough assembled board

Assembly after trimming tiles

Time and cost-wise, I'm not sure if these are worth the effort. I like the idea, especially once I start adding rivers and multiple levels, but some of the retail version out there may actually be cheaper in the long run.  The other issue with hand-made tiles is getting a tight fit.  These aren't bad for a quick test, and a hot-wire foam cutter would help.  I'll have to play with the idea some more before I make any purchase decisions.

With a bit of terrain and some troops..

Low angled shot shows the gaps a bit too much

Ground level view

Warner's Regiment in the sun