As I explained in my last post, I am just starting to get into tabletop wargaming with miniatures. As such, I want to start slow. That means, when it comes to painting my first army, I will not amassing huge quantities of paints, washes, bases, etc. - at least not at first! In this post I describe how I painted my first set of minis with almost nothing other than materials I already had laying around the house.

The Finished results. Read on to see how I got here!

After some research into various scales and rule systems, I decided that 1/72 plastics was a good place to start. A box of 40 figures costs around $10, which is good for the budget. The figures are large enough to base individually for small scale skirmish games (which is where I am starting), but small enough to be used well on a small table. 1/72 plastics are also compatible with many of the very nice 20mm metal figures available, if I ever want to upgrade, or perhaps add a few heroes to the table.

As I said, I want to ease myself into the hobby as inexpensively as possible, so for my first project I determined that I would only use paints and materials that I already had on hand. In fact, other than the minis themselves, the only thing I purchased for this project was a small dropper bottle of Army Painter Quickshade.

Priming and Basecoating

I primed my minis with a can of spray primer I had out in my garage. Grey seemed to work well, although in the future it might be fun to experiment with different colors.

For basecoating, I used my wife's old dollar store craft paints.

A few figures in progress.

A selection of American Infantry, base coat finished.

The paint may seem a bit bright, but a coat of quckshade toned the colors down quite a bit. At this point, with the quickshade wash applied so think, I thought I had ruined my mini! Thankfully, however, the wash lightened up quite a bit while drying.

For basing single figures, I used pennies, wood filler, and homemade flock. The pennies are a perfect size for 1/72 figures, and the wood filler is a nice base for simulating dirt. I watered down some brown paint and dabbed it onto the filler while it was still freshly applied. The filler soaked up the paint unevenly which gave it a varied look.

For basing weapon teams, I simply used an old paint stirring stick, cut to appropriate lengths. It worked well, with no need to go buying all different sizes of bases. A 10-pack of 1 Gal. paint sticks cost me $0.98. Here you can also see what the wood filler looks like unpainted.

A finished figure! Completed using almost nothing other than materials found on hand.The flock is a combination of sawdust mixed with paint, and dried landscaping moss.

German Infantry

For my German Infantry, I used much the same process. However, as Apple Barrel craft paint doesn't have a "World War II" line of paints (perhaps they should!) I had to get a little creative in painting the German uniforms: I mixed my own feldgrau. I used two parts dark grey, one part hunter green, and a splash of black.

Applying the color. Looks close enough for the game table, I'd say.

The finished results. I decided to paint the old grey trousers on some of the German figures to delineate "Veteran" units. This is before applying a wash.

After a coat of quickshade wash, I based the individual figures on pennies, as before.

Add the wood-filler and flock, and done!

And here is a shot of my completed American Infantry.

I learned quite a bit during this project. Mainly, you don't have to break the bank when you are first starting out! Just take a look to see what you have around you and try to think of creative ways to use what you have on hand. I definitely want to keep learning and improving, however. Next time, I think I will try to take my time adding a few more little details, and especially use highlighting and dry brushing techniques. For now, I just hope to get these guys on the game table soon. Thanks for reading.

Ever since being introduced to hex and counter wargaming a few years ago, I’ve wanted to get into miniatures. I enjoyed modeling as a kid, and painting miniatures seems like a fun, relaxing, and rewarding creative outlet. Further, Wargame tables are often beautiful in their own right – not to mention the enjoyment of playing on one! There is just something deeply rewarding about interacting with a physical environment. And the games themselves just sound like good ol’ fashioned fun.

One thing has kept me at arm’s length however:  the cost. And not just the financial cost either. There is also the cost in time needed to paint, assemble, and build everything needed for play, as well as the cost in storage space when not in use. All three are limited resources. However, with more time having opened up this year for hobbies, I’ve decided to take the plunge.

Where to start though? With so many rulesets out there, selecting the “right” one can seem a little daunting. To begin, I broke down my gaming priorities as follows:

1. Prioritize theme and “feel” over historical realism. I already own (and enjoy!) lots of big, crunchy hex and counter wargames with endless charts and tables. For a miniatures game, I just want to have fun pushing some figures around the table and rolling dice at my friends.
2. Related to number 1, I want a game that is quick to set up and quick to learn, so we can get right into the action.
3. I have limited time, funds, and space. I would like a game that plays well on a small table (3X5 maximum) and needs a relatively small number of minis to play.

Next, I identified my three main gaming interests:

1. The historical setting. Based purely on my own personal interests. Broadly speaking, I am most interested in gaming 20^th century land warfare.
2. Creating a narrative. I love a good war story. Even while playing the aforementioned crunchy hex and counter games, I create a running narrative in my mind that unfolds as the game progresses and the dice go hot or cold.
3. A small scope. Leo Tolstoy, in his work The Raid, wrote “War has always fascinated me. I don’t mean the tactical maneuvering of whole armies by famous generals – movements of such magnitude are quite beyond my imagination. I have in mind the real essence of war . . . all that interested me was the state of mind that pushes a man, without apparent advantage to himself, to expose himself to danger and, what is even more puzzling, to kill his fellow man.” Likewise, I am less interested in gaming grand strategy and huge conflicts between armies, and more interested in watching the personal struggles of a few desperate men unfold on the table.

After doing a lot of reading and research, I think I have found the rules system that best fits both my gaming interests and my gaming priorities: Five Men in Normandy (5MiN) by Nordic Weasel Games. Here is why.

Historical setting, theme, and feel

Play out a few skirmishes from the TV series? Yes, please.

5MiN is a set of skirmish rules for land combat during WWII, which fits my interest in 20^th century ground combat. It is also, comparatively speaking, a light ruleset – what I would consider to be the core gameplay rules numbers only 12 pages. The rules for character creation, skills, campaigns and encounters, on the other hand, number nearly 40 pages. Needless to say, this is a game that does not lean to heavily on the simulation side of things, but from what I have read from others, “feels” right. Ivan Sorensen, the designer, states that he wanted to design a game that felt like a war movie – and that is the kind of miniatures game I want to play.

Scope, Size, Scale

My need for a low footprint game combined with my interest in the individual soldier in battle makes 5MiN a natural fit. The game can be played on a 2X2 table, with only 5 – 8 miniatures needed per side. The rules are quick to grasp and, by all accounts, quick to play.

This offers me a few practical advantages, especially as I am getting into tabletop wargaming completely from scratch. First, I will not have to build huge armies before jumping in nor will I have to invest in much terrain. I can start slow. Second, I do not have much space available for play, so a small-scale skirmish game is ideal. Third, the simplicity of the rules will allow me to teach the game quickly to others so that we can enjoy getting right into the action. Time is precious!

Narrative

Probably what I am looking forward to the most with 5MiN. I enjoy a good tactical puzzle just as much as the next wargamer. However, when gaming with miniatures why not add a little more character?

Character skills for your soldiers.

With randomly generated characters that progress from mission to mission, campaign events, etc., 5MiN sounds as though it will provide me with no shortage of narrative. This is also the reason why I am choosing to start with Five Men in Normandy over some of the other, similar Nordic Weasel products such as FiveCore and Five Men at Kursk. I am looking forward to getting to know the men in my squad, seeing them progress through a campaign, and grow in the process. I imagine I will be witness to many small, interesting stories. And I can’t wait to start playing.

Nordic Weasel is here: https://fivemennormandy.blogspot.com/ 

Five Men in Normandy is here: https://www.wargamevault.com/product/223411/Five-Men-in-Normandy-30-cal-edition

Undaunted: Normandy is a game designed by David Thompson and published by Osprey Games. It is a squad level tactical game with a strong deck building mechanic. It is also a blast to play, and probably one of the better "light" games I've played this year. Because I liked it so much, I decided to fiddle with the artwork.

Let me start out by saying that I love the original artwork in the game. Roland MacDonald did a phenomenal job; I am in no way trying to make the artwork "better." With Undaunted, I simply saw an opportunity to practice designing a cohesive set of cards and counters. I am entirely self taught when it comes to graphic design, and working on a project I enjoy helps to keep me plugging away. With that out of the way, on with the fun part!

Skip to the end of the post for download links.

I used Affinity Publisher to do most of the layout and design work, along with a little bit of doodling in Designer. What follows is my creation process as I documented it.

Document Set up and Master Pages

Adding Content

Creating Counters

The Finished Results

As seen above, here are some samples of the finished results. Overall I am pretty happy with how the cards and counters turned out. I enjoyed learning how to use Affinity Publisher throughout this project, although I will have to re-think my work flow on a few things. I've already done a few printing tests and am happy with the results; I am looking forward to putting the full print and play together.

Download Links

You can download the full card and counter set as a print and play PDF by clicking here (Google Drive file).

I've recently gained two new interests: Affinity Designer, and twobuckgames' AWI series. So I decided to combine the two and do a "Brandywine" map remake as my first Affinity project. I also decided to document the process and post it here; hopefully others can benefit from my learning process. In this post I cover the process of creating a hex grid from scratch, share a few tips on creating realistic looking tree lines, and generally just explore Designer's features.

Getting Started

Create a new document, set it up for print (CMYK) and set the margins for 11 x 17. Create a new layer and name it “HexGrid.” Select the polygon tool and, using the contextual tool menu, set its sides to 6. Set its stroke to the desired width and its fill to “none.” Open the arrange dialog and, with “Align to” set to margin, align the hexagon to the top and left corners of the page.

Create another new layer, naming this one “HexNumbers.” Use the text tool to place the first number into the hex, aligning as necessary.

Enable snapping with the options shown. Select all, and duplicate with Ctrl-J (Cmd-J on Mac). Repeat this process across the page, snapping each new duplicate to the appropriate hexside. Notice two things, first, the two elements we are duplicating (the hex number and the hex itself) automatically get duplicated into their appropriate layer. Very useful! Second, Ctrl-J also duplicates the last movement (transformation) of the object being duplicated. This will come in handy in just a second.

Select all, duplicate with Ctrl-J, and align the second hex row under the first. Now, as duplication also duplicates the last movement, simply Ctrl-J all the way down the page. Once this is complete, you may have to do some fine tuning inside the transform dialog to get everything to fit. Next, enter in all the correct information for the hex numbers and viola! We have set up our hex grid. Now let's start adding some terrain features.

I imported the original map as an image so I could see what needs to go where. Let’s start with the woods hexes. The simplest way to get the effect we want would be to trace along the border of the woods, and then “Fractalize” the line. Unfortunately, Designer does not yet have this feature, so to Inkscape we go. Thankfully, the process I used was still fairly simple and time efficient, and generated good results. First, use the pen tool to trace around all the woods hexes, stroke the line, and export the line as an svg.

Open the svg in Inksape. Select the node tool, select the object, and go to go to Extensions -> Modify Path -> Fractalize. Once you have a result you like, save the svg.

You can now open the svg back into Designer and set the fill and stroke however you like.

Next, I populated the hexes with a few trees, sourced from here: https://www.pixeden.com/vector-objects/trees-vector-collection-pack Pretty good results!

Adding Details

You can create hills by using the pen tool, with the stroke set to dash, to give the ground some contour. Next, switch to the pixel persona, select a brush, and with a good opacity setting, go over the contours to add a little more “depth” or texture.

To create the marsh hexes, first I opened a new document and copy pasted into it a hex outline from my main map. Second, I opened a swamp cartography element found online. By placing this graphic as a sub-layer attached to the hex, it constrains the graphic to the perimeter of the hex (or any layer above it). Using this method I can then move and size the cartography element however I like, and then trace over it with the pen tool.

Using the same sub-layering principle I was able to create some nice swampy looking areas. I used texture brush for stroke the lines, to give it more of a hand drawn feel.

I used the same principle to make the roads.

Creating custom curved text is easy. Just create a shape using the shape tool, and then select the shape with the text tool active (you will see the tool icon change). Your text will now wrap around whatever shape you made. After I put down all the text, I just had to add a few finishing touches, like the fords over the river. As one last note, I thought the export options Affinity has were quite useful. I think it would be worth it to spend some time in the "export persona" and learn in better.

Finishing Touches

I put some more work into my Brandywine map, this time scaling the map up to 17x22 inches and adding a map key, turn sequence summary, and turn track, among other things. This is my first time trying a map of this style and I like the results. The stylized charts were created with the help of the the corner tool. Playing around with the corner tool's various settings generated some nice custom touches.

The Final Map.

Map Details.

twobuckgames: https://sites.google.com/site/twobuckgames/home
Where I sourced my trees: https://www.pixeden.com/vect.../trees-vector-collection-pack

A common practice in DIY wargaming is creating counters. While there are many templates and other artwork resources available on the internet, it can be useful to know how to generate a countersheet from scratch. This tutorial will show you how to do just that, using the free vector art program Inkscape (available here ). I don’t claim this to be the best way to make counters, but it is at the very least a useful exercise, especially if you are new to using Inkscape.

First, create a new document in Inkscape. Next, go to File / Document Properties to set the size of the page. This countersheet will be designed for US Letter 8.5 X 11 inch paper in landscape. However, we want the document to be print-and-play friendly, and most home printers have a “print range” i.e they won’t print to the entire width and height of the page. The print range varies, but .25’’ margins are a safe bet. So we are going to set the width of the document to 10.75, and the height to 8.25.

Next, use the square tool to draw a square. These will be 5/8 counters so change the width and height to 0.625 inches.

Open the Fill and Stroke dialog box and set the fill to none and the stroke to 0.010 in. This will allow some room for cutting the counters out.

Use the Align and Distribute dialog box align the square to the top and left edges of the page. Next, go to Edit / Clone / Create Tiled Clones.

Ensure the setting are as pictured and create a nice 8 X 2 grid. Make sure to group them all as one object.

From here, you can simply copy and paste four more of the same object. Align them all to the left edge of the page, and align the bottom most grid to the bottom edge of the page. Under distribute, select “make vertical gaps between objects equal.”

Group the entire object, copy and paste once more, and align to the top and right edges of the page.

Open the layer dialog, and create a layer named “counter outlines” and move everything we have so far to this layer

At this point I decided to add a title to our countersheet and re-adjusted the vertical gaps. So far we have created a blank countersheet template. Save the file for future use!

Let’s create a few companies of Marines for a Platoon level game, starting with some infantry markers. First make a new layer, and name it “infantry.” A quick Google search will yield plenty of NATO symbols to make use of. Add one and center it in the first counter. From here, we have a couple different options. We could individually copy, paste, and align each symbol we need into each individual counter. This is a good technique when there are just a few counters to make, or when dealing with many different unique graphics. However, we want to automate things a little bit, so let’s create a tiled clone. Inkscape tiles clones based on a percentage of the original object’s size, so we are going to have to use a little bit of high school math to tell Inkscape exactly where to put every one of our infantry symbols. To find out what percentage we need the Infantry symbol to move along the x axis, divide .625 by the width of the symbol and multiply by 100. To find how far along the y axis to move, divide .625 by the height of the symbol and multiply by 100 once more. Placing the appropriate numbers in the x and y columns of the Clones dialog box, making sure that the "exclude tile" checkbox is checked for both.

Using a combination of the techniques we have learned so far, we can now fill in the rest of information we want on the counters, remembering to assign them to their own layers. Here, I have added information for unit size, nationality, platoon and company markings, and placeholder text for game system information (like movement, range, etc.) The alignment tool is your friend!

Now we add color! Select each layer one at a time, and, using the Fill and Stroke dialog, fill the elements you wish to add color to within each layer.

Finally, to export as a ready to print image, go back to the document properties and change the document size back to 11 X 8.5. Next, select all and group everything together as one group. Align this group to the center of the page. Export at 400dpi, and make sure the export area is set to "Page." There you have it!

If you would like to use the files created in this tutorial, you may download them from my google drive here.