In the Spirit of Remembrance

In the spirit of remembrance, I re-watched A Bridge Too Far this weekend. This is one of my favorite World War II films ever, and I've lost count of how many times I've seen it.

Not only is Operation Market-Garden one of most dramatic, and thus film-worthy, operations of the war, but the movie itself is amazing as well. It was directed by Richard Attenborough (who also directed Ghandi, as you may recall), and has an incredible cast: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O'Neal, Wolfgang Preiss, Robert Redford, Maximillian Schell, and Liv Ullmann (there's even a bit-part for John Ratzenberger, aka Cliff Claven of Cheers fame).

There aren't a lot of films, apart from The Longest Day,* where one can see so many big names gathered in one place. No matter how many times I've seen it, I never get tired of this film.





*The Longest Day, like A Bridge Too Far, was also based on a book by Cornelius Ryan. It too had a spectacular cast, including Eddie Albert, Paul Anka, Bourvil, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Sean Connery (again!), Fabian, Henry Fonda, Curt Jürgens, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowall, Robert Mitchum, Wolfgang Preiss (again!), Robert Ryan, George Segal, Rod Steiger, Robert Wagner, and John Wayne.

New Recruits: Painting Progress

Not much to say beyond the fact that I've completed four more riflemen for my U.S. squad. Just four more and my basic rifle squad will be finished. Then I'll get to work on larger task of painting the Germans.

Four new riflemen.

Squad in progress.

Terrain Project: Ruined Building

I spent some time yesterday and today working on a ruined building for my WWII project. I used a method similar to one shown on Tim's Wargaming Stuff blog, only where he used wood, I used foam core. But the idea for this totally came from Tim's blog, and I want to give him credit.

First, following Tim's technique, I printed a Dave Graffam "World War Ruins" model on card stock, and cut out the wall and floor parts I wanted to use. Then I traced the card stock print-outs onto pieces of foam core and cut them out as well. My cutting of the foam core was not perfect, so the printed images and the foam core did not always match exactly. But it seemed to turn out okay for a ruin (I think one would have to be much more careful if doing a "clean" building this way). I then glued the print-outs to the foam core.

I wanted the two walls to have a flush corner. To make this work, I had to cut down the floors slightly to match the space lost due to wall overlap. Then I used a hot glue gun to put the pieces all together.

This left an unsightly joint on the outside corner, so I did a "Microsoft Picture It" editing job on one of the corner layers that comes with the Graffam model which I then cut out, trimmed to size and glued onto the outside corner.

Finally I painted the foam core grey along the edges and on any spots in the walls (e.g. window areas and wall edges) where the print cut and the foam core cut did not match exactly.

All in all, I'm fairly satisfied with the final result, especially considering it was a first try. This is an inexpensive way to go for building terrain, and I could probably make enough of these by November to have a small village as part of my terrain pool for a Platoon Forward campaign.

Operational Plan

In order to get myself up and playing with Platoon Forward as soon as possible, I've come up with a plan to form a "starter" pool of miniatures that should suffice initially, though of course I'll want to expand later. I detailed the why's and wherefore's on my other  blog, but here it is in a nutshell:

1. Limit myself to "patrol" scenarios
2. Limit myself to a single player-controlled squad
3. "Proxy toward the mean." For example, instead of having LMGs, MMGs and HMGs, I move toward the mean and on any enemy MG result, treat it as an MMG
4. "Aim short of the ceiling." About 50% of enemy positions are empty in patrol scenarios, so I should be able to get away with half to two thirds of the maximum possible numbers of enemies
5. "Force pool limit re-roll." If an enemy result would exceed my enemy force pool for any type of troop, I simply re-roll.

With this in mind, the following should work (again, as I say, just to get started):

Americans (my player-controlled force)
One Rifle Squad (1 x SMG, 1 x BAR, 10 x Rifle) = 12 men

Germans
2 x Rifle Squads (1 x SMG, 1 x LMG, 8 x Rifle) = 20 men
2 x Mortar (2 crew) = 4 men
2 x MG (2 crew) = 4 men
1 x Halftrack

Total = 40 men + 1 vehicle

Move Out!

I'm taking the plunge. I have decided to prepare a WWII campaign for Solo Nexus' Solo Gaming Month in November 2011. I spent this weekend painting my first set of WWII minis in several years.

1/72 Plastics from Valiant

I'm planning to use 1/72 plastics mostly because I already have four boxes of American and German Infantry on hand, purchased some time ago but still unpainted.

At 1/72, I won't be able to produce the same level of detail as I do with my 28mm fantasy minis, as can be seen in this close-up shot: 

The squad leader

But still, while less detailed than my 28mm fantasy figs, I think the photo at the top of the post shows that these minis pass the "arm's length test." And as I work with the scale more, I suspect I'll get better at it.

This blog will chronicle my progress toward the 40+ minis I need to get done between now and November to be able to run a minimal "starter" Platoon Forward solo campaign for Solo Gaming Month.