HOTT 52 - Week 19 - William Walker vs Wonderland

It's not generally known that, in the 1850's, after taking over Nicaragua and establishing himself as President, filibuster William Walker led his forces down a rabbit-hole and imposed himself as the ruler of Wonderland too.

William Walker - President of Wonderland and Nicaragua.

Of course the locals were unimpressed by this outrageous imposition, and the true Queen (of Hearts, naturally) led a force of rebels against Walker's forces, aided by an extremely large little girl who had also gone down a rabbit-hole.

So the stage was set for this week's HOTT game. William Walker's filibusters (based on Alex Cox's film from the 1980s, hence the rather eclectic elements) defended against an attack by the forces of Wonderland. Both armies are covered in an Army Showcase: Walker HERE and Wonderland HERE.

(I chose this week to get out Wonderland because May 4th was Alice Liddell's birthday and, apparently, the story is also set on that date.)

Walker's Immortals formed the centre, facing the Queen of Hearts, Alice and some unusual creatures. Meanwhile his Nicaraguan allies were opposed by Wonderland's fearsome playing-card soldiers.

As the armies advanced towards each other, US marines launched an airborne assault on Wonderland's right flank. The gryphon and mock-turtle fled in panic.

The Nicaraguans prepared to receive the Wonderland assault, whilst Doubleday recorded it on canvas.

The airborne assault had broken up Wonderland's attack, but they pressed on regardless. Walker advanced his Immortals to receive them.

Prelude to battle.

The Marines made heavy weather against their next target - flamingos. Indeed they were driven back a couple of times.

Walker dispatched some Immortals to assist the Marines.

But battle was being joined all along the line. Wonderland started with an attack by their soldiers on the Nicaraguans ...

... whilst the Queen of Hearts and Alice attacked Walker's centre.

The Nicaraguans fell back in good order, whilst Wonderland's attack in the centre was repulsed.

The Immortals moved to surround Alice, and brought her down. Oh no!

This left the Queen of Hearts very exposed indeed.

Assisted by the Immortals, the Marines dealt with the flamingos.

The Queen of Hearts attacked Walker himself, but she was driven back.

Some of the playing-cards swung round to support their Queen, threatening Walker's flank.

Walker responded by ordering a massed attack on the Queen and her bodyguard. It was led by Baron Bruno von Natzmer. Riding a cow.

She drove him back.

On Wonderland's left they had drive off the Nicaraguans, and were advancing on Walker's stronghold, but more Nicaraguan allies appeared to block them.

And the inevitable end came in the centre, as the Baron rode down the Queen.

Final positions.

Wonderland had lost 10AP and their general. Walker lost two hordes, but brought them both back.

Wonderland had a difficult job, matching an army that's 50% spears and has no anti-aerial capability against an army that's 50% warband and which has an airboat. Attacking beasts with the airboat wasn't actually a great move, as the beasts have better factors and can maintain contact when they win. If that first combat against the gryphon had gone the other way, then it would have secured Wonderland's flank for a turn or two, and maybe given them more of an edge in the centre. Alice was taken down with seeming ease, but it was done with warband, so a lost combat by Walker's army would have seen one or two elements lost, and a pursuing behemoth in his rear.

So whilst Walker had the edge throughout the game, a couple of combats going the wrong way could have seen a very different result.

Epilogue

I remembered that in my photo archive I had these pictures - Alice Liddell's grave in the New Forest village of Lyndhurst. She died in 1934. They were taken in 2008, on one of our last weekends away before we emigrated. As you can see, it rained.

Galley Progress - Update

I had a social Zoom call this morning, so whilst we all sat and nattered I did some more work on progressing my Renaissance galleys. I did all of the oars last night; this morning I added sails to the galleasses, and yards with furled sails to the galleys. The latter are strips of card cut from a creal packs, using the internal crease of the card to act as the yard. I'm on a roll at the moment.

Oh yes, those striped galleass sails? More Photoshop.

So all that's left to do for the galleys is to paint the yards, and finish the awnings, then glue them to that pile of completed bases.

Yes, completed bases. During the call I stripped all of my ships from the bases, added the texture, trimmed them and then reglued the models. I do still have to edge some of the bases, but I can do that over time. Maybe.

So all in all a good morning's work. And I mowed the lawn.

Galley Progress

Back around the end of October and beginning of November last year I started work on some Renaissance galleys, in the same style as my cheap and cheerful lolly-stick ships. You can see the posts HERE and HERE. I did actually progress them a little further, but didn't document it. Then, like most of my projects, progress stalled. This was partially because I wasn't happy with how I was doing the oars. When I made my cheap and cheerful ancient galleys last year (HERE) I painted the oars on to what is kind of the base. I certainly had no desire to cut and glue individual ors; I needed a cheap-arse solution to go with the cheap-arse nature of the models. Painting the card blue, then painting the oars on seemed the way to go.

But really, it looks a bit bollocks. And it's terribly tedious to do. So when I got to that stage on my Renaissance galleys, I lost heart.

Until today, when I had a flash of brilliance (or, as we like to call it in this house, a 'brain fart'). The 'oars' are basically a flat piece of card. I can't paint as nicely as a computer, so why didn't I just generate strips of paper with the oars printed on them, and just glue them on? Brilliant!

So I found a suitable stripy pattern via a Google image search, angled it a little, cleaned it up, resized it and dumped it into a Word table. Like this:

The red border is part of the margin in the Word table cell, and gives me some leeway; the red strip goes against the hull of the ship. Basically I just have to cut out one each of a port and starboard strip, trim it to the length of the oar banks on the model, and glue it down. And you can see it on the go here - some ships already have their oars, one is in progress, some just have the blue edging on the card and some ... remain to be completed.

The only bits left to be painted after that are the awnings and masts, and then I need to decide if I want to fit the gallets with just yards (realistic) or some lateen sails (prettier). The galleass will just get sails, since in Galleys & Galleons they are a form of sailing ship with secondary rowing capability.

Anyway, in the middle of that previous picture you can see the beginnings of another project that came out of this brainwave - proper bases for the ships. They've spent the past three years fighting on pale blue card, and I felt they deserved something better. To be fair my 'proper' metal Napoleonic ships fought on blue card for 30 years before getting textured bases, so three years is nothing really.

Anyway, doing the fancy bases I did for my proper models wasn't something I fancied they look great but take time. I wanted something quick. And having done the oars by means of Photoshop and Word, I though, why not the bases as well? So I produced this:

I used this photo I took 10 years ago at a local promenade, and mercilessly processed it in Photoshop.

I then pasted it into another Word table. Print and cut ...

... and away we go. They are larger than the bases, so I can easily trim off the overlap and so they will work with some of the more eccentric sizes I have. This is a 'proof of concept'. I'll do the bases once the oars on the galleys are finished, and once the ships are stuck down on their new artistic backdrop I'll look at painting in a wake and bow-wave for each one. Maybe.

 Anyway, I have a 2-3 hour social Zoom session tomorrow, so I can sit and do the bases then I hope.

The Clan of the Wolverine

For our regular Thursday evening game this week, Catherine chose Paleo Diet, so we set up the Clan of the Cave Bear scenario from the book, which is confrontational rather than cooperative. In lieu of the cave bear we used a giant wolverine.

Catherine had three hunters from the Wolverine Clan. I had five Strangers. The Strangers were aiming to kill the wolverine.

Catherine's three hunters had to kill all five Strangers, but could try and use the wolverine to do some of their work for them.

I adopted a plan. My two club-armed hunters would move around one flank to engage the opposing hunters and keep them occupied. In the centre my two spear-armed hunters went into ambush, whilst my lone slinger moved to pepper the wolverine with stones and draw it towards the ambush.

The plan went tits up almost immediately. The Clan attacked the strangers, and their lead hunter was wounded, which attracted the wolverine.

It growled and roared, and the hunters fell back.

One of the Clan hunters crashing through some undergrowth really upset it; it charged and tore the already wounded man to pieces.

This brought it into range of one of my clubmen, who inflicted the first wound on it.

Elsewhere a Clan hunter attacked the hapless slinger who, in advancing around the hill, and blundered several times, keeping the wolverine in a constant state of annoyance, and making it a very unpredictable target.

The slinger was wounded, and the wolverine moved away from its fresh kill to investigate ...

... only to swing back when it saw the Strangers advancing on it from behind. Their lead hunter struck another wounding blow on the beast; one more would kill it ...

... but he took a savage clawing in return. Unfortunately the wolverine then proceeded to roll some appalling combat dice and just couldn't finish off the injured hunter.

In the distance the slinger was killed by a member of the Clan. No-one would miss him.

The second clubman closed in, but also couldn't inflict the killing blow.

The Strangers with spears advanced off the hill and engaged one of the Clan, wounding him and, once again, attracting the wolverine.

Things then happened very quickly. The Clan spearman took down one of the Strangers, thoroughly arousing the wolverine. As it lunged past him, the other Stranger threw a spear, which missed, but caused the wolverine to turn on him. A second spear failed to finish the animal, who returned the favour by savaging the Stranger.

So I was now down to my last two hunters, both armed with clubs. The wolverine only had one wound left. A blunder by my wounded hunter saw the wolverine charge towards him. But before it could reach him, the other clubman stepped forward and this time his mighty blow shattered the animal's skull for the kill.

So the Strangers had won, killing the sacred beast of the Clan. They'd lost three hunters out of action, and one wounded, so the Clan came close to a win. The Clan lost one hunter and a second wounded.

Early on this looked like an easy win for the Strangers, but the wolverine's propensity to roar when reacting kept seeing my club-armed hunters forced to back away, limiting their attacks. My hunters with ranged attacks never really got involved in the hunt, being tied down by the Clan. This is one to play again, as the Clan's strategy is actually quite interesting; their best weapon is the predator, as it really does even the odds against them but, of course, the predator is also the objective, so they have to be careful about driving it at the Strangers too aggressively. Wounding Strangers and then using the wolverine to finish them off before they get an attack against it would seem one way to go.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and it was also nice to win against Catherine for once.

Japan Supernatural

A few months ago the Art Gallery of NSW ran a major exhibition called 'Japan Supernatural'. This featured artwork covering depictions of  Japanese ghosts, goblins and other monsters (Yokai) from the 18th century to the present day. We went earlier this year, and it was definitely an exhibition worth the visit. I took a few photos, but contrived not to take much in the way of notes concerning them. But I thought I'd share what I had, since there's some great imagery.

The first part of the exhibition covered 18th/19th century art, and featured two lengthy scrolls depicting a whole range of Yokai.

There were masks.

We all know that this is a Kappa. Don't we?

The main exhibition gallery had a range of 19th and early 20th century art. There were heaps of prints, but I didn't take that many pictures of those. I did photograph some of the netsuke, though.

This was one of my favourites - a depiction of a Gashadokuro. These giant skeletons roam the countryside, ripping off people's heads and drinking blood. Giant skeletons were depicted in some 19th century art, but this form of the creature is relatively modern, dating from the 1960s/70s. I have a plastic Halloween skeleton waiting to be converted into one of these for giant monster gaming.

The last section of the exhibition were modern artworks, some commissioned especially for the exhibition. For example there were these two massive Oni:

And the highlight was this mural by Takashi Murakami, featuring monsters, samurai and a giant cat which looks like our Pandora. Maya and Catherine had their picture taken in front of it.

Obviously you've missed the exhibition (it finished at the start of March), but the guidebook is available to buy from a range of booksellers, and features hundreds of pictures which would make great reference material for anyone wanting to inspiration for fantasy RPG or wargames, as well as a number of essays on yokai and their depiction in art. I got a copy at the exhibition, and it's beautiful.

'Japan Supernatural - Ghosts, Goblins and Monsters 1700's to now' by Melanie Eastburn.

Anyway, I hope some of these pictures are of use to someone out there.