A Fistful of Sludge

With only FG and I free for our September game, we decided to try out the Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket rules, but with our Sludge figures.

The rules are pretty straightforward, but with each of us running two squads, we had to reduce the number of traits for the figures.

In the photos you can see the 32mm discs that I bought to use to indicate if a figure's weapon was loaded; fortuitously, they also fit a 20mm square base, which is what my Sludge figures are based on.

Sludge Fox #5 - White's Plantation

Game 5 of the campaign had the rebels attack a village occupied by Crown forces.

FG launched a two-pronged attack on my position. For a while the cover provided by the houses my forces were holed up in gave me an edge, but the superior numbers of the rebels soon took a toll and my commander fled the field.

We will be taking a break from the campaign while FG paints his cavalry up. We hope to be trying out the Battletech Alpha and the CAV: Strike Operations rules in the near future.

Sludge Fox #4 - Tearcoat Swamp

Game 4 of the campaign was another attack on a Crown position, except this time there were no defensible features for my troops to hide behind.

The Rebels came at the Crown forces from two directions; in retrospect I should have concentrated all my units on one side and dealt with the attacks in detail, but I hesitated, and allowed the tactical initiative to pass to the Rebels. To make things worse, FG won initiative rolls on all but one of the turns, which allowed him to fire on my units before I have a chance to do so. My commander barely escaped with his life, and all supplies were lost to the Rebels.

I continue to be impressed by the scenarios in the campaign. So far all the scenarios offer tactical options for both sides with some elements of randomness to keep things unpredictable. The Sludge rules are rather unforgiving, and losing the initiative roll at a critical turn can really send your forces into a death spiral.

We are now just a third way through the campaign, so hopefully my Crown forces can make a come-back.

Sludge Fox #3 - The Black Mingo

Crown forces defend their position

Game 3 once again saw the Crown forces on the defensive. I purchased an artillery piece as a support under the rules we use for the campaign.

The Rebel forces attack

FG had one Rebel Line Infantry unit exchange fire with my main body across the river, while the skirmishers and shock troops tried to outflank me on my right. I sent one unit of Line Infantry to intercept them - the resulting melee saw both units destroyed and left a huge pile of Gore tokens on the ground.

FG then sent another Line Infantry unit down the road, but my cannon managed to cause some casualties before it blew itself up on a misfire. The battle came down to an exchange of musket fire between the two sides, until at last the Rebels gave up and left.

Survivors of the onslaught

It was a Pyrrhic victory for the Crown forces, as they have lost more than two-thirds of their forces.

Sludge Fox #2 - Blue Savannah

Crown forces defend a roadblock

Game 2 of our Sludge Fox campaign saw my Crown forces defending a small farmstead against a Rebel force. I had my line infantry defend a barricade across a road, while my skirmishers deployed in the woods on either side, waiting for the Rebels to come down the road.

Rebel forces approach

FG had the Rebel skirmishers outflank the Crown position on the right, while the main body took their time to clear my skirmishers out of the woods, before the line infantry marched down the road to deliver a devastating volley against my position.

The Crown forces quickly lost their appetite for the fight, and abandoned their position.

This was a rather one-sided battle, as the Rebels took their time and waited for the right moment to launch their assault (Unstoppable Momentum). At the same time my dice were so poor that I failed to inflict even one hit on the Rebel forces. At the end I found myself pulling my forces back from all the Gore tokens to avoid having to make Nerve Tests at poor odds.

Finally, here is a shot of the roadside shrine which I built that FG painted for me.

Sludge Fox #1 - Skirmish at Kingstree

Crown forces form a defence line as the rebel forces approach.

With our forces completed and a test game under our belt, FG and I decided to play a Sludge campaign. To provide a framework for our campaign, I googled around for pre-made campaigns for the black powder period in the skirmish scale, and realised that Too Fat Lardies' Sharp Practice campaigns fit the bill. Specifically, we had the idea that our two forces represent the royal forces (represented by my cleaner-looking figures) and the forces of a rebel noble (represented by FG's sludgier figures). After looking through the various campaign, we decided to play the Swamp Fox campaign, renaming it our Sludge Fox campaign.

We kicked the campaign off with Scenario 2 from the campaign book, since we do not yet have a two-storey building required for Scenario 1. The scenario saw my malaria-ridden crown forces conducting a fighting retreat against pursuing rebels.

Rebel jaegers flank the crown position through the sludge.

We played with small forces and without magic, aiming chiefly to get all the rules right for our first game, which I think we managed to do. Even though there were only 3 units and 2 commander figures on each side, it was an interesting game as the scenario set-up gave both players a few options to achieve their victory conditons.

Major John Harrison is captured, and Holbein is slain.

I sent one unit on a headlong march for the table edge, while another unit and the skirmishers tried to delay the rebels with shooting. This went well for a few turns as I managed to roll higher on the Initiative rolls. However, as the game went on the greater volume of fire from the rebels started to tell, and on the last two turns I lost the Initiative rolls, and my commander was overwhelmed and gave up, while the officer who stayed behind to try to fend off the rebel skirmishers was killed fighting alone.

It was a fun game, and we plan to continue the rest of the campaign. We will still need to decide on how to translate the forces in the campaign book to Sludge units, including incorporating magic and artillery, but so far it looks workable.

A Tale of Sludge and Turnip

The two armies face off across a blasted field

FG and I played our first games of Sludge and Turnip28 last week. The two games have overlapping aesthetics, and feature roughly the same types of troops in around the same numbers, so it was natural to try both out.

Foot knights clash

We tried Sludge first, and as this was our first outing we got many of the rules wrong. I find the combat resolution a little too crunchy, but I love guessing ranges and rolling for bounce for the artillery. I am not too sure about the gore tokens, but I suppose once I learn more about my leaders and support characters I will appreciate the mechanic more.

Troops defend the redoubt

We then tried Turnip28, which I thought was going to be a simpler game. There was a bit of book-keeping with the Panic tokens, and we found that units fled too readily. I thought I was going to appreciate the black-powder smoke mechanic, but there were too few units in the game for it to be meaningful. We did play it without all the cult special rules, since none of the cults appealed to us, so perhaps the full game experience is different. I do feel that Turnip28 has the basics of a fun horse-and-musket skirmish game, but its retreat mechanic is obviously tied to its fluff and will need to be modified for a less comical game.

A group shot

This last photo shows (almost) all the figures which I painted for this project. It wasn't a lot of investment in time for me, since most of my existing WOTR/fantasy figures can be used in the game.

We will most likely give Sludge another go, and perhaps play one of the Sharp Practice campaigns if we can get the hang of the rules. I may also want to give Then Men Who Would be Kings rules a try, and see if we can represent some of the fluff with those rules.

Wayside Shrine for Sludge

Building the tower has whet my appetite for scratch-building terrain, and so I was looking around for some other little project to do, and came upon the idea of building a wayside shrine as a scatter terrain piece or an objective.

A quick search on google taught me that wayside shrines are a thing in many cultures, and even within each culture they come in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. For a while I was seized with choice paralysis and could not decide on a design.

Then I remembered the Castlecraft sprues I have lying around, and decided to make one based on them instead of coming up with a design first and then making the parts for it.

The eventual model is what you see above. The walls are made from the Castlecraft parts, with a plastic grille glued on the inside of the windows. The base is a 40mm square base glued to a 40mm x 60mm MDF base, and the steps are made from Renedra bases cut to size.

I made a roof with PVC foam card and another Renedra base, and then made the shingles with cardboard. Some gaps in the Castlecraft pieces are also covered with the PVC foam cards.

I will be handing the model to FG to paint, along with the Warlord ruined cottages I built for him, so stay tuned for the painted version on his blog soon.

Scratch Built Tower for Sludge

One of the terrain pieces I have been wanting to make for the Sludge project was a tower. Not necessarily a utilitarian piece of terrain, but something to put in the background - I think including verticality to a wargames table adds a lot to the look. I have put off the project on the basis that it was not really a necessity (is anything really a necessity in a hobby?), but the lockdown left me with a little more time than I usually have...

As it so happens I used up this bottle of handwash, and wouldn't you know it the size is just about right.

I cut off the top part of the bottle where the screw threads are, and made a conical roof for the tower with a piece of cardboard. I made a base for the tower with 3mm PVC foam board, which gives it rigidity and is not prone to warping. I glued small rectangles of 1mm PVC foam card along the walls to mark the windows.

I made a gable entrance for the tower using 1mm PVC foam card. The door comes from a CastleCraft kit - it is more 22mm than 28mm, but works well enough. I added a metal ring from a jewellery piece as the door ring.

The finial on the roof is the end of a ballpoint pen (that's to FG for the tip) and the end of a banner pole from the Oathmark Undead kit. I added shingles cut from cardboard to the roofs using double-sided tape, and sealed them with a coat of PVA glue.

I applied a coat of Modge Podge to the tower and base, and when that has dried, I glued sand and gravel to the base.

I sprayed the whole piece with a brown primer, and when that has dried I sprayed a layer of flat white paint in a zenithal fashion, leaving some brown at the bottom of the tower and in the recesses.

I then painted the base brown and dry-brushed it with some grey mixed into the brown, and then applied some weathering powder to the base of the tower. I applied some light wash to the body of the tower to show some streaking.

The joint between the entrance and the wall was rough on one side, so I hid it with some vines.

The finial was painted to look rusted. For the windows I just peeled off the PVC foam card pieces I applied earlier, and painted the space black.

I applied more tufts than I had expected to to hide the bits where there was too much brown paint on the tower.

This was a fun and quick build, not accounting for the drying times. The construction is pretty crude, but I think the door and the finial give it the details that make it look more refined.

Sludge Infantry Unit and Jaegers

I completed the last of the three units of Line Infantry for the Sludge project.

As with the other units, I added some scenic items on the base, in this case some fence sections I had in my bits box. I plan to use space on the command base for Stress tokens/die.

I also painted up the remaining figures as Jaegers. I'm not sure how important they are in the game, but it is good to have the option to field some skirmishers.

Sludge Infantry Units

I will probably take better photos of these two units when I complete painting the force, but I am excited to share some photos with my readers and the Sludge FB group.

These are pretty 'vanilla' as Sludge infantry go: Perry WOTR bodies with Perry ACW arms. They are painted in the same livery as my WOTR/Warhammer Empire force. You may notice that the command bases look different from the line bases - that's because I cheated and simply glued the command figures from my other units onto a 40mm square base.

The figures are not easy to put together, since I decided on painting the bodies separately from the arms. They paintjob is sloppy, but fortunately the Sludge aesthetics is rather forgiving.

The project does leave me with lots of ACW figures without arms, and already I am thinking of an ACW-themed sci-fi force...

Get Sludged, and an Artillery Emplacement

Like many wargamers, I have been sucked in by Sludge - or more accurately, FG had been sucked in, and had pulled me down as well.

It's not a very large investment for me figures-wise, as I already own a large WOTR force, many of which can be used in the game "as is"; I simply needed to paint 27 musket-armed figures. The base you see above are made using the Perry WOTR infantry bodies and heads, with their ACW arms. The line infantry in Sludge is supposed to be based three to a 50mm round base, but I decided to stick to a square basing as the rest of my WOTR army are on square basing. I am trying a new system of painting them, which is faster than my usual way, but gives a rather grimy appearance, which is acceptable in Sludge aesthetics.

What I was more excited about though was making terrain for the project, specifically gabion defences. I bought three packs of the Renedra gabions for this project, only to realise that they are much bigger than I imagined. I made seven redoubt sections, and one gun emplacement, which is shown here with the artillery and crew from my WOTR collection.

The design is inspired by this piece, although I have orientated the planks perpendicularly because it seemed to make more sense.

The base is made with PVC foam board. The wooden sections are balsa wood stained with a wood stain. The texturing is Modge Podge Matte with sand and gravel over them. The rocks on the sides are cork pieces.

I am quite happy with how the piece turned out. I think drybrushing with light grey is the secret here.