Vicksburg & CabinCon

I've just returned from a successful CabinCon and I have to say I had a great weekend of wargaming with some spectacular people!  I'll cover all the miniature games we played this past weekend in this post, but will initially focus on my Vicksburg game that I've been so focused on since September.

Apologies - this is along/picture heavy post.  The games covered in order are:

1. Vicksburg (28mm ACW)
2. Tiny Triremes (Ancient Naval Warfare)
3. Breaking Lances (54mm Knights)
4. French Foreign Legion in the Desert (28mm Colonial)
5. Miki Maus (28mm WW2 Bolt Action)

Vicksburg (ACW)

Saturday morning I woke up early and got to setting things up for the first time.  This was primarily a play test of the scenario to see were I need to make small tweaks for balance before running this game at KublaCon in May.

The boys all gathered together at the start of the game.

Pictures up first from my SLR camera with my zoom lens ...

Below are the pictures from my phone camera ...

The game went very well and I just need to make a few tweaks to the scenario rules and it is done.  I'll be writing up the final scenario and order of battle in a separate post.

I have some small brass telescopes I picked up from Amazon.  They are great for giving you a real feel for being in the game.

We figured out that you can use these with your phone if you position the telescope just right and set a persistent focus point to the area you can see.  Took some pictures using this method and the results are below ... kind of a neat and different way to see the games ...

Tiny Triremes

Thomas Foss treated us all to a play test of his new game he is designing called Tiny Triremes.  As is common with Thomas's games, this is fast paced, deadly, and a ton of fun!  Each ship holds dice that represent crew and hull points.  Ram, board, kill and capture!

Breaking Lances

Thomas Foss put on a Breaking Lances tournament.  This is a very faced paced and easy to learn game with beautiful looking 54mm knights.

French Foreign Legion in the Desert

Matt Hilzendrager ran his French Foreign Legion game.  I played on the Arab side running two units of cavalry that recycled.  I had a ton of fun and managed to finally get over the wall on the FFL left flank - opening the door for some infantry to break through and secure one of the three buildings (each building was an objective).

Bolt Action WW2 - Miki Maus

John Lantz ran his Miki Maus game.  This is late war when the Russians are closing in on Berlin.  They come across a secret German weapons facility and are surprised to find the beastly Maus ... all hell breaks loose!  The Russians did manage to finally destroy the Maus, but much carnage was had in the process.  This was the game that wrapped up our little mini con.

Wow, if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Project: Siege of Vicksburg Update #11

Well, this is it folks!  The next post after this will be the battle report and fully dressed table!

Pictures below of the big push since last update to finish basing units and painting new buildings and odds and ends.

First up, just put the last brush stroke on this building ...

I guess the home owners are big into Christmas :-)

On to new Union units ... mostly painted by the glorious Steve Dake.

And new Confederate units, painted by the most excellent and honorable Steve Dake.

Not pictured are several other odds and ends, and the Confederate picket lines.  I still have 5 Confederate units to base, but they are not needed for Vicksburg so I'll finish those up later.

So, next up is the big cheese, the prom photos, the main event!  CabinCon starts on Friday, Vicksburg I'm running on Saturday morning.

Huzzah!

Project: Siege of Vicksburg Update #10

The Confederate artillery is done!  I have also done up an extra signaler and flag pole.  The final two siege batteries are pictured below ...

The gabion sections for each battery are done, now to finish all the sections for the rest of the Confederate positions.  Each of the 5 siege batteries are pictured below.  

Note that I have brown sand to sprinkle over these positions and batteries to blend in with the table ...

I've also finished all the gabion sections now.

At this point I primarily have two things left to do:

1.  Assemble the dock.
2.  Cut foam for river bank and shape the 3rd fur mat to it. I'll be using the same sand to create the river bank between the fur mat edge and the water mat.

3.  Finish the bases of the new units.

Then it is just a matter of playing the game.  Stay on target!