Friday, 5 April 2024

Some thoughts on my 'Battle Cry' project.

We are now comfortably settled into our new permanent home and enjoying bungalow life. After the upheavals of the last few months it feels good and as I said to my wife the only way I'll be leaving here will be in a box!  It's quiet, as it's over 55's only, and my painting desk is set up beside a large south facing window overlooking a green with some tree cover for the Summer. With the natural light coming in from my left where my two lamps are placed on the desk I have also added a standing lamp at right with a small lower 6500 or daylight bulb that can be extended over the desk for additional light. This is about to be put to the test as I finally begin painting Geoff's next batch of 2mm bases.

I just wanted to share a few thoughts about the Battle Cry project that I am doing on the side. I have been researching the game in both it's original form and the variations that bring the game more in line with the later Napoleonic C&C games. For those who do not know Battle Cry was the first game in the C&C series put out by GMT games, the rules are quick to learn and play whilst still offering tactical challenges and scenarios can be played out in a round 45 minutes average. This really appeals to me so I have firstly decided to stick firmly with the original rules. Whilst I don't own the original box game (it's very hard to find now at a reasonable price), I do have the rules and access to the command cards etc. 

My game will be played on a printed 13 x 9 hex grid of 75mm hexes and in order to stick with the boardgame look as far as possible I'm having it printed on PVC by Tinywargames. Further to this I have made the decision to keep everything on MDF tiles only, with all scenics just printed 'top down'. This will be quick and I hope should look quite effective using satellite images of woods, fields, rivers hills etc that can be placed around the board as per the scenarios. I will probably raise just the hills using 10mm foamboard. The reason behind this is that I will be doing a lot of scenic detail work on my model railway shunting layout so wanted to keep this really simple and in line with the board game concept just played on a larger board and using Epic scale units.

More Union Zouaves, New Yorkers in pale blue jacket and trousers.

Latest video features the growing number of ACW bases for the project.



7 comments:

  1. Glad you’re settling in to your new home. I like your approach to the Battle Cry terrain. For CCN I have made hills by gluing together 2 x 3mm hexes (from Warbases) and sticking colour photocopies of the original cardboard ones - just enough height to suggest a hill on the standard board.

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  2. Thank you Ian :) That sounds a good solution as I do feel you need to raise the hill tiles slightly to represent height/line of sight etc.

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  3. I think sticking with the Battlecry look is the way to go …… but, 🙂 you might want to checkout the resin hexed hills at battlefront, as from memory they are 75mm across (may be 80mm?). If ghe resin hexes are the right size, then I can highly recommend their river sections.

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    1. Cheers Norm :) Steve's resin hexes are 80mm but really nice product. Of course I COULD go to 80mm and would not increase the table size significantly, I had not thought of that! I'll go and take another look at them.

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  4. Really enjoyed your you tube video, very inspiring for me. Interesting idea for your scenics and I will be looking forward to seeing your work on them.

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    1. Thank you Donnie, glad you enjoyed my gruff rambling video :)
      Cheers,
      Lee.

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  5. Nice Lee. FWIW I bought MDF hexes from Amazon (and very, very cost effective too). You could get all sorts of sizes, depending what you require. Good luck with painting my 2mm’s - I know they are a challenge. Who’d have thought 2mm was so small? 🔎🎨🖌️
    Cheers,
    Geoff

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