Compact Wargaming

 A Beary Simple Wargame made it out of the box today. My daughter set out the terrain while I cleaned up lunch and we played while the boys took their naps. I didn’t grab any other pics but the game featured both armies moving up to the center and slugging it out. Her artillery scored some good shots from range early. My general (grenadier caps) failed to rally the scared bears which made my counterattack much less effective. Eventually, her cavalry were able to team with the line infantry and break my lines from the flanks.  

The game was easy enough for a clever 6 year old to understand and make strategic decisions. She managed her turns independently, but we did discuss advantages of potential attacks before committing. She did the addition of advantages and subtraction of the dice. Well count it as education. 

 

One of the secondary goals of the Bear Project is creating 2" square grid terrain.  I hadn't liked the walls I had previously designed, but I think the latest variant will work well.  The bears will likely not be re-enacting specific battles of history, but if they would, they fit nicely.  For those who are not as steeped in history, any of these buildings could fit into any warm weather climate.  Painting the buildings darker gray could probably give a convincing stone look.  

Painting has not progressed.  Facing colors have been selected by the Princess.  The order of precedence has not yet been.  The full suite of four facing colors will only be needed for the infantry. The exact paint matches might be slightly off from what is shown below.

I now have the bear minimum of bears designed.  (there are a lot more bear puns than I thought)  A bear army can now have a general accompanied by his bugler, regular infantry, grenadiers, skirmishers?, cavalry, and artillery crews with their gun. 

Gunners: Ready to Load

With the exception of the artillery each "game unit" is a single piece with two bears merged together.  The artillery unit has two parts; the crew and the gun.  Like the rest of the units the crew is merged together at the hip and shoulder.  This allows more bears to fit in a smaller frontage, giving a better massed effect.  Assuming the bears are 40mm tall and a 2" grid, the crew and gun can just bearly fit in a cell.

The Crew Needs to Stand Close

Yet to Start Designs:

Artillery

Artillery Crew

Drummer?

Standard Bear-er?

Pirates w/ bandana headgear?

Pirate w/ flowy shirt?

Cannon on Naval Carriage:

Sailing Ships?:  Would be very simple and probably gridded

Work In Progress:

Horses: Eyes, nostrils, tails, manes, legs?

Terrain: Buildings, Forest, Bridges.  

"Where a goat can go, a man can go. And where a man can go, he can drag a gun." - General William Phillips

Whenever I walk US battlefields, I'm always impressed with just how far armies used to drag cannons and how they managed to get them over some of the more rugged terrain features.  That being said, General Phillips would be very disappointed with the Marl-Bear-Ians' soft paws.  Their guns will stick to flat open terrain. 

Two Grenadiers Man the Gun

I was able to reuse the cannon from the 18th century commission earlier this year. I did increase bulkiness the carriage and barrel to provide a more toyish look. The crew will be a separate model than the gun.  I'm imagining as the kids get older, a more advanced game might see crews being forced off of their gun and pieces of artillery changing hands several times.  Proper gunners with swabs are in development to crew the pieces.

Profile of a Horse

The horses have been revamped to give more cartoonish details.  I opted against the legs, but did add eyes, manes, and tails.  The core body and neck may be repurposed for cattle, pigs, or sheep if necessary.

Cavalry Troopers: Ready for the Charge

Yet to Start Designs:

Artillery

Artillery Crew

Drummer?

Standard Bear-er?

Pirates w/ bandana headgear?

Pirate w/ flowy shirt?

Cannon on Naval Carriage:

Sailing Ships?:  Would be very simple and probably gridded

Work In Progress:

Horses: Eyes, nostrils, tails, manes, legs?

Terrain: Buildings, Forest, Bridges.  

Line Infantry, Grenadiers, Advancing Line Infantry, Cavalry

The line of teddy bear soldiers continues to grow.  I 3D printed a sample of three bears merged together at approx 40mm tall.  This seemed like the right height/mass to play with young kids.  The downside is that they ended up 2.25" across the widest point. My historical ranges are based on 2" grids. Ideally, I'd be able to reuse most of my terrain. Unfortunately, I don't think much of my existing terrain will work for the bears. They're just too wide at 40mm tall. Reusing the game mats is a worthy compromise though.  To fit the existing grid, I decreased the units to two bears. I increased the spacing a little bit so that they don't overlap their neighbors so much, and sit in a 1.75" square.  This should allow me to have a little space around to make scenery.  

Assuming square grid, the scenery will probably be limited to linear scenery on 2 of the sides.  I'll be utilizing some 2.5D ideas I've seen floating around for inspiration.  Limiting the scenery to two sides does allow it to store very compactly (a plus).  There are other options for terrain I'm considering.  

    Purely Linear Terrain:  Purely linear terrain would form the border between two grid cells.  It would inhibit/limit movement between cells vs. assuming that the terrain occupies the entirety of a cell.  

    Two-Part Terrain: Terrain disassembles into two parts; a base and an upper.  When a unit occupies a terrain feature (woods/house) the upper part is removed and the unit sits on top of the base.  For a forest, the base could be a layer of stumps and the trees trunks/leaves form the upper layer.  

Lord Bearington's Cavalry Trooper

In keeping with the toy-like theme, the Mal-Bear-ian cavalry rides into battle on bouncy horses.  I'm still debating whether or not the mounts need eyes, nostrils, manes, legs, or tails. I suspect at least eyes and tails are forthcoming. Keeping the bears' feet on the ground makes 3D printing much easier and results in a more stable model on the table at the expense of the historically obvious height difference between mounted and dismounted troops.  I'm not sure which I prefer yet.

The Command Element: A General and Bugler

Yet to Start Designs:

Artillery

Terrain: Buildings, forest, bridges

Drummer?

Standard Bear-er?

Pirates w/ bandana headgear?

Pirate w/ flowy shirt?

Work In Progress:

Horses: Eyes, nostrils, tails, manes, legs?

 

Musket, Blunderbuss, Modern Pistol, Flintlock Pistol

    I set out to make 18th Century Teddy Bear officers more distinct.  There might be a possibility of the Marl-Bear-Ians needing to deal with some "scurvy dogs" (probably still bears).  No self respecting pirate would be caught dead-or-alive without a few pistols.  The first pistol I've designed so far looks much more at home post 1911.  If I'm getting my history correct John-Bear Browning invented.  Maybe adding a lager cylinder could make it look something more like what a Cow-Bear would wield.  

    Also fortunately for myself, the weapons the bears use are the same size and scale that the humans in my other ranges have been using.  I think the bears unlocked quite a bit of variety.

 My 4 year old daughter has been asking for her own armies.  I could probably just print her up any of the ranges I've already made and as long as they're pink, she'd be over the moon.  But... she saw the Eureka Bear ranges, and now she  HAS to have them.  They seem near impossible to get a hold of so I've been commissioned by my daughter to make her a bear army.  After looking through Napoleonic, 18th Century, Roman, and Late 19th Century Uniforms, she selected the 18th Century as the "prettiest".  So that's what we're going with.  The current plan is to have very simple unit types of infantry, cavalry, and artillery.  I'm open to any kid-friendly rules that are available, especially if I can cheat to help her win without her realizing.  She's good enough at counting that I can't "misread" dice anymore. 

The Duke of Marl-Bear-O

The Duke's Line Infantry Arrayed for Battle

Now to start another painting project that I'll never finish...

I got my second 3D design commission this week.  When I started 3D design, I shared some of my first models on Thingiverse.  Someone interested in an 18th Century army found my models and reached out to see if I could add a base with dice holder.  I told him that I had done some updating to the models he found and could expand the updated range to meet his expectations.  

Using my general design principles, and reusing assets wherever possible, I set about updating the range.  Below are some of the finished units.  

 One of the critical sub-hobbies of wargaming is acquiring and preparing miniatures.  There are many highly detailed miniatures sculpted by expert craftsmen and precisely casted to preserve the fine details available to purchase.  Unfortunately, my budget for wargaming doesn’t allow for great miniatures and my painting skills wouldn’t do them justice anyway, forcing me to either design my own or use 2D counters or stands.  I do have some basic 3D modeling skills developed through planning my house so I embarked on 3D design.  This will not be an explanation of design theory.  Some of that is covered in my contribution to the Second Portable Wargame Compendium.  This will be a more technical walkthrough of how I convert models designed in SketchUp to ready to print files.  In general the steps from design to print are as follows: Design, Export, Repair, Slice, Print.

The first step is the actual modeling.  I do all my modeling in SketchUp.  There are other free options that are better than SketchUp.  Fusion 360 is better than SketchUp for highly precise and technical models and Blender is much more capable of modeling organic curves and can behave much more like digital modeling clay.  Both have learning curves that can be overcome but will take practice.  Most basic work can be completed using only the free suite of tools in SketchUp.  I have expanded my SketchUp skills be searching out how-to’s on the internet.   

After you are satisfied with the model the next step is exporting it in a format that a 3D printer can use.  All modern 3D printers use the .stl file format.  SketchUp online now has a simple downloading function that saves the file to your drive as .stl files.  

If you’ve designed your model in Sketchup and downloaded it as an .stl file, you may need an additional repair step before you are ready to print.  For 3D printers to process a. stl into the type of code it requires, the item being printed must have a continuous exterior skin with no internal geometry.  If (like me) you’ve designed your models by overlapping many simple shapes into complex shapes, the model will have a lot of internal geometry.  This will certainly confuse the slicing software to the point where it will produce unusable slicing or refuse to slice entirely.  Luckily on Windows PCs there is a free program called 3D builder.  If upon opening the .stl file an error message about improperly defined models appears, you will need the repair step.  Fortunately repairing the file is as simple as clicking the error message.  3D Builder does the rest.  You will need to look at the file in detail after 3D builder repairs it.  The software tends to fill in very small, sharp “canyons”.  Most of the “fixes” it makes will not be significantly noticeable after printing, but rework on the modeling will be required if 3D builder isn’t giving good enough results.  Once you are satisfied with the repaired model, save the repaired file as another .stl.

Now that the file looks correct, the next step is to translate it into something useful for the 3D printer to use.  3D printers work by squeezing layers of molten plastic on top of each other.  Eventually these very short layers build into the shape of the final product.  The purpose of the slicing software is to generate the path and instructions that the printer should follow as it squeezes out the layers.  If you’re familiar with MRI imaging, each image is essentially a layer.  I use Cura as my slicer.  It is again free to download and use.  There are many settings to tweak and each can have significant impacts on the success and quality of the print. Most 3D printing communities will have proven profiles of settings that can serve as a starting point.  You will still need to tweak it for the exact brand/color of filament used.  I’ve needed to adjust printing temperature about 7% even in the same brand to account for the differences in color.  Mastering the exact settings that work for your printer and filament at the required level of detail can be a hobby all to itself.  Once the model is sliced, save the g-code to whichever data storage drive your printer uses.

Finally, the model is ready for printing.  Follow the printer’s instructions for startup and beginning a print.  I’ve had best results letting the heated bed warm up for a few minutes longer than the printer would do on its own.  It gives the whole bed a better chance to equalize in temperature and I think it reduces the number of prints that fail by becoming disconnected from the bed.  The next step is waiting patiently for the print to complete.  This will likely take several hours.  Checking on the printer from time to time is good, but watching the entire print process is certainly unnecessary.  If there is a failure mid-print, being available to stop it is certainly preferred to wasting the plastic that will be consumed in continuing to print an already failed model.  After the print is complete, let the model set on the print bed until it fully cools (reduces chance of warping) and remove it. 

At this point the print can be treated like any other plastic model.  If there is support material required to allow overhangs to print, the supports will need to be removed.  The model can be lightly sanded to remove any bumps or inconsistencies.  If the model is to be painted, a good coat of primer is very important.  The most common plastic used in 3D printing (PLA) is very slick and will require several coats of acrylic paint to get desirable results without primer.  

I hope this has brought some clarity to the 3D printing process to anyone considering purchasing a 3D printer for wargaming uses.  If the process seems too daunting, there are many small businesses that will take over the process starting at the repair step.  If you only need a few models printed, this will certainly be less expensive than purchasing a printer and dealing with the frustration of failed prints yourself.   

 It has been a particularly rewarding week for my wargaming hobby.  I received my copy of The Second Portable Wargame Compendium.  It is a great read, and full of interesting ideas.  It has been inspiring to see what everyone is doing with The Portable Wargame system.  It is probably the most adaptable system I've seen yet.  

My first commissioned 3D print work has also been completed.  In a matter of a couple early mornings before the kids wake up and a couple hours after they went to sleep, (using the theories discussed in my portion of The Second Portable Wargame Compendium), I was able to adapt existing models to fit a roughly Napoleonic force.  I would have probably expanded on some of the included detail but the customer preferred speed over detail.  I would have also tried to get a bearskin for the guard units and/or some more elaborate cavalry helmets.  The models printed over the course of a couple days, with a relatively high and unexplained failure rate.  I'm sure there's a setting off somewhere causing the failure rate.  The models shipped from Illinois to Wisconsin for $4.  The customer received them and immediately got to painting. Within a day or two he posted the following pictures.

It's great to see my work on the tabletop.  Hopefully this set gets some good years of use.  I retained the saved files for the set so if the customer ever wants to expand the set, it should be as easy as printing and shipping.  These are printed at 25mm.  I am confident that they could also be printed at 15mm or 20mm without too much hassle.  

Colonial, Napoleonic, and 18th Century Line Infantry

Saber Cavalry, Field Artillery, Light Infantry, Line Infantry, Lance Cavalry

I've spent the past few posts explaining how the ruleset I've been developing working with digital models.  I enjoy explaining with the digital models because they are very clear, but the main reason the previous posts didn't have physical miniatures is because they weren't painted.  I've written a longer article for an upcoming project explaining how I designed my 3D models, and how/why they might be a good fit for you.  This effort wouldn't be complete without images of the end result.  With the deadline for the article looming, my miniatures are finally getting the paint and attention they need.  

Shock Cavalry

12mm dice for reference

Three units of regular infantry

I still have to paint the bases, the hands and clean up some details, but the majority of the colors are in place.  The miniatures are painted in a color-block/toy soldier look.  They will get a coating of varnish to protect the paint and making them shiny toy soldiers. The base painting is still somewhat undecided.  The top surface will be a monochromatic green representing grass but the sides are undecided.   have considered painting the sides of the bases in the same color as the unit's distinguishing cuff color.  This will accentuate the differences between units, at the expense of immersion.  Being a game first and works of art second, I'm leaning toward matching the side of the base to the cuff color.  

Each force has 4 units of infantry 1 artillery piece and a shock cavalry unit

A better painter with better paints could get better results but, I think the miniatures are serviceable at arms distance for now.  They're definitely something that button counters should avoid, but they're durable,distinguishable, compact, customizable, and cheap.  I definitely have more money invested in cheap acrylic craft paint and brushes than the miniatures themselves.  

 Progress is being made.  I have printed functional test prints of pickelhaube wearing cavalry and infantry as well as pith helmet wearing artillery.  

Primed artillery, infantry, and unprimed cavalry

The wheels printed quite wobbly

Top view: infantry in forest

Front view: infantry in forest

Primed Infantry

The terrain shown in previous posts has also been test printed and is awaiting priming.  I have not yet attempted painting, but am realizing there are going to be a lot of hard to reach areas.  The undersides of the artillery pieces and transitions between legs and bases look especially challenging. I should have realized this during my design phase, but it didn't occur to me.  One option is to remove the bases and print the grouped figures as one piece and then attach to a base later.  Unbased figures are appealing if I want to commit to gridded games that don't need a base anyway, but one of my primary goals for this project was to keep flexibility.  

Another option would be to leave an indentation in both the base and figures to fill with small magnets.  With two small kids running around, I don't like this option.  My 2.5 year old daughter loves to pick up the test prints and admire them (at least I have one fan).  Once she's a little older I'll probably be designing a teddy bear army for her.  Ganesha Games sells a very compelling introductory wargame which I think she'd like (https://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?products_id=13).  I'll probably end up sticking with the pre-based figures and just deal with the difficult painting.

I have a workable first draft to my NASCAR themed, compact, grid based (war) game.  Below are some quick pictures showing just how compact it is.  What you don't see in the pictures is a separate page of notes describing driver/car skills, current focus points (bonuses), and wear points for each car.  In the future, I will likely design information sheets for each car, hopefully playing card size, to replace the notebook. 

Table Space Requirement about 6"x12" grid and one sheet of paper

The game played pretty well.  I set it up a few times for some of the more complex decisions.  Sometimes the AI doesn't act like I want it to, but it did OK for a first run.  The player controlled decisions seemed interesting but not paralyzing, a good sign.  Because I didn't play a whole game end-to-end, but set up small vignettes of potential situations, I didn't get a good feel of how the narrative aspects would play out.  

Down the Front Straight

Close-up of Lead Pack

With the release of Bob Cordery's new book, The Portable Napoleonic Wargame, I imagine there might be a surge in new Napoleonic players.  I have previously designed models for a Napoleonic project I had started, but never completed.  Renderings of them can be found in my blog post titled "Model Ranges".  If there is sufficient interest, I would rework them to at least the standard I am using for my 18th Century range.  This would involve designing some amount of period appropriate hair, cleaning up some of the headgear, and making everything modular so that people could design their own units and I would supply them with the printed models or the files to have them printed locally. 
I currently have models for Shako with and without Pom, a French style bearskin (needs work), a Landwehr cap, and a crested cavalry helmet (also useful for Austrian infantry).  Currently, all models are wearing coats with turnbacks, but I would consider designing a longer coat for the Landwehr and maybe even a great coat.  I'm open to designing more models critical to the period if you have any suggestions. 

I've been editing/tweaking the rules for a while and playtesting as I go.  I printed the models I've designed for Horse and Musket games at 18mm scale.  They were a challenge for my printer.  Their small size tricked the printer into thinking it could go a lot faster than it should.  I manually reduced speed to less than half of my normal printing speed for larger items. 
LINK https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2956951. 
I painted some of them with spray primer craft store acrylic paints.  I'm still working on the paint scheme.  I need a way to differentiate the dismounted dragoons, irregulars, and militias from the regulars.  My ruleset does not currently have elite or inferior units, so don't have to worry about making each unit unique.  Perhaps in the future national identities and imagi-nations may develop, but for now they're going to be army red and army blue. 
My lovely wife designed a template for making hexagons with 2" between parallel sides which she cut out of printer paper on her Cricut.  I used the template on a piece of packing paper to make a field 9 rows of 8 or 9 columns of hexes.  This size results in a compact playing  surface of18"x16".  It certainly isn't pretty but it works.  I think I have a piece of 1/8 hardboard laying around somewhere that might work if painted.
I conducted a solo play test to surrender this morning.  Occasionally referencing the rules, it took me just under 45 minutes from deployment to surrender.  The surrendering player did not make an effort to salvage forces by continuing play and retreating units off of the board, choosing to surrender once defeat was inevitable.
Lessons Learned:
Distinguishing unit types from a distance is critical. Irregulars and Dragoons look similar. 
Keeping units near the center of the hex makes determining facing easier.
Keeping track of initiative points is critical.  Solved by keeping dice off board with each pip representing an iniative point. 
Keeping your general alive and relevant is very helpful.  The combat bonuses are important, but the inability to rally can end the game quickly. 
I like that each unit completes its activation before activating another.  This prevents the problem of handling combined attacks.  The only real downside is that a unit could make multiple moves worth of retreated distance. 
Things I Might Change:
Currently two units of regular infantry can form a regiment and execute identical orders as one unit.  This can make their firepower overwhelming.  It makes them seem a little overpowered.
All units get a +1 bonus when attacking militia and a +2 when melee attacking artillery. 
Currently irregulars can engage in melee.  Based on the exact period in history irregulars could represent light infantry which would engage in melee or skirmishers who would not.
Currently artillery can reposition during the battle.  For most of the 18th Century, artillery was largely immobile once the firing began. 


I've done enough tweaks to the rules that I should re-upload them soon.  I'd like to upload them as a PDF.  What is the best way to do this? 

Here's an overview of most of the models I've designed for wargaming.  They are all 3D printable at 28mm scale (middle of head @ 27mm) or larger. I have not tried printing any smaller, but there's no reason to think that it wouldn't be possible with the right printer.  They could be used to replace blocks in Command and Colors type games, or ranked up and based for any number of games. 



18th Century
I'm still working on this range, but thought I'd share my progress.  I'm pretty happy with how the hair under the tricorn turned out.  Militia units will be based on the same models, but painted in muted/non-uniform color patterns.  Regular troops will have natural hair colors, while generals retain the powdered wig.  This range will likely expand to include grenadiers mitres and bearskins as well as cavalry units wearing Tarleton helmets.   



Colonial
This range was created out of a desire to actually play a game and not fiddle with rules.  They are intended for use with The Portable Wargame.  I have not yet finished a "native" army for them to fight.  The plan is for the native counter army to wear Ottoman style fezzes, with roughly half of the units wearing zouave style pants.

I think I successfully got a believable enough tricorne model designed.  Now to print and paint.  If it looks like it will be a success I'll put it out on thingiverse.  I know more people do imagi-nations with tricorne wearing troops than shakos.  Maybe someone will find a non-descript model useful for their imagi-nation army, since it isn't supposed to be just like an existing nation's uniforms.  Most people are probably good enough at painting to add extra details like cuffs and facings.  I'd really like to see what a better painter could do with these.  I think I'll stick with the shakos for my army though. 
I got to the tricorne by trying to make a believable bicorne.  The bicorne has eluded me for some time now.  I really could use a General to lead the Napoleonic armies, but have yet to develop a bicorne model that doesn't look exceedingly stupid.  Maybe some day...





Opinions/thoughts/feedback on the tricorne model is greatly appreciated.