And a closeup of the medals

A request for help from the readers:

Hello
I have a picture of our Great Grandfather in Uniform and I have been trying to find out what battle it was from. I don’t know if you can help or not. He was from Essen Germany born 1845. I am thinking a time frame from 1862 to 1873. One battle I was looking at was Hradec Kralove but can’t get a good look at the uniform. Your help would be most appreciated.

Does anyone have any information that can be gleaned from the uniform in the photo above? It’ll obviously be impossible to tell which battle, but perhaps we can narrow it down to a war.

Please leave any insights in the comments. The comments won’t appear immediately, since I have comment moderation turned on to stop the spammers. Thanks!

Every year near Halloween, I present a horror-themed extravaganza for my gaming group. Past games have featured Cowboys versus Victorian Horrors, Weird War II, Science Fiction Horrors, Victorian Werewolf and Vampire hunters, Dr. Frankenstein’s Monsters versus the Villagers and a Cthulhu Monster Hunt.

This year, I was inspired by Ambush Alley Games’ Ambush Z rules and the excellent 15mm Zombie figures from Rebel Minis, Khurasan, Splintered Light and 15mm.co.uk. In the end, I painted about 200 zombie figures—far more, it turned out, than I needed for the Ambush Z rules.

The scenario involved three squads of troops—Special Forces, Police and HazMat specialist charged with leading groups of survivors out of an infected town. The police began in town; the HazMat team just outside, and the Special Forces on the other side of a large stretch of fields and woods outside town.

The police and HazMat teams moved quickly to hook up—there was only a foot of heavily zombie infested tabletop between their initial positions. Once in support of each other, they were able to amass a large quantity of survivors from the buildings and quickly dispatch any zombie hordes that appeared. But a lucky roll for the Zombies increased their die quality from a d6 to d8, making them more difficult to kill. The zombies were, however, no more focused than before. Taking advantage of the angles between the buildings, the human teams were able for the most part to keep them out of the line of sight, and thus milling about aimlessly.

In the meantime, the Special Forces team was having a hard time crossing three feet of open terrain. Their player was too cautious, and that allowed the zombies to build up between his position and the police and Hazmat teams. The Special Forces killed Zombies by the dozens, but were unable to clear a comfortable path to town. We decided later that in this game, you just need to keep pushing forward, creating a pocket of safety around you with firepower.

But even as the Special Forces failed to make headway, the other two teams kept slugging forward, each losing but a single figure in getting out of the town. Finally, they managed to dash into the open terrain, leaving the confines behind.

Then disaster struck. The police unit had a run of extraordinarily bad luck, allowing a couple of zombie units to close and ultimately eat all of the police and the citizens they were escorting. The Hazmat team and its citizens, however, finally managed to settle under the covering fire of the Special Forces, who by this time had also lost a man to a zombie assault. Finally, they managed to beat off one last zombie attack and pull back off the exit end of the board

The Ambush Z rules played very well, and within a couple of turns we no longer had to reference the QRS. We did run into a couple of points of confusion, however, concerning how to proceed when multiple groups of zombies are close enough to react into contact with the living players. I’m still not sure we did it right. The rules were good enough, though, that I’m planning on painting some Rangers, Delta Force and Somalis and using the sister set of rules, Ambush Alley for a “Black Hawk Down” game . I also think they’d do well with a Colonial marines versus Alien Hordes game.

The buildings in town were created with the help of Evan Designs’ Model Builder software. While the software has a 15mm scale setting, I found that it looked too small, so the ones you see are in a 1/76 scale. The images were printed out on a HP inkjet on 110lb paper, then folded, glued and taped. I had thought about gluing the printed images to foam core frames, but ran out of time. The fieldstone walls and piles of debris are from Tactical Conflict Systems (which I believe are no longer in business).

The figures came from a variety of sources, including modern zombies from Rebel Minis, zombies of an indeterminate period from Khurasan, and fantasy zombies from Splintered Light and 15mm.co.uk. The Rebel minis were the best for my purposes, being clearly modern figures. They were smaller than the others, but had a nice amount of detail, considering that they are 15mm. My only regret is that there isn’t even more variety. The Khurasan minis were slightly larger, and reminded me of the sort of zombies you’d see on a Scooby Doo cartoon, with long hair, snarling faces and tattered, draped clothing. The Splintered Light zombies were designed for fantasy games, but at 15mm they worked well enough. At any rate, they were very nicely sculpted and cleanly cast. There were, however, several unusable figures, such as the “dwarf” zombie in a helmet. The zombies from 15mm.co.uk were the largest, and most crudely sculpted of the bunch. They also were clearly medieval, with period clothing and belt purses.

In addition to the metal 15mm figures, I also bought a bag of railroad figures on Ebay from a company in China. They were slightly smaller and thinnner than the 15mm figures, but painted up and based, looked nice enough. I used these for the civilians.

You can see more photos of the Zombie game here.

The figures are large (1/20 scale), die cut from heavy cardboard and printed in vibrant colors. They are kept upright by placing them in round plastic bases. They may be flat, but the illustrations are animated, colorful and full of character. You can’t help but smile when you hold one.

Creator Christopher Walker writes:

I made the first figures for my nephew and myself.  I’m not a marketeer.  I try to make pictures,  perhaps beautiful (the widest definition of the word) ones(?).  I wanted to create a romantic object in the spirit of my interest and fascination with things ‘military’. I also loved the notion of an expansive floor filling battle… in colour…  like that in final scenes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

... of course they have historic resonance in the costume research and poses, (I posed for them all myself! - I’ve come to realize this makes it a weird type of self portrait… ha! Walkerloo) - but its still all just pretend… and made of cardboard 200 years after the event… The costumes are accurate.. and not. After a day and and night of rain not to mention the previous engagements the costumes would have been very scruffy…  Philip Haythorthwaite told me that many of the British Dragoon jackets had not had their dye ‘fixed’ ... and so their trousers and horses after the night of heavy rain would have been streaked with red dye.

The scale was an instinctual decision. I wanted sufficient detail so as it could be read easily.  Later 1:20 seemed to work well regarding the blade manufacture for the die-cut process.  And 1:20 was familiar from my time as an architectural student…  that was also where I began making card models!  I coloured the first soldiers in marker pen…  but yourre restricted with colours so I experimented with paint… Gouache pigments made the colours really sing and gave the pictures an attractive solidity… The original paintings have been getting bigger with each new regiment as my eye for detail becomes more attuned.  The figures are now about 50% of the original art work.

While I wouldn’t roll pots and pans at the figures like Grandpa Potts and Lord Scrumptious, the figures surely will stand up to regular tabletop (or floor) play. My seven year old has been playing with the samples I was sent, and the only damage they’ve suffered is a little bit of dirt dulling the vibrant colors.

A table full of Walkerloo Napoleonics would make a spectacular game at a convention show, or as a neat change of pace for your regular group. They’re perfect for a skirmish game (assuming you can find appropriate trees and buildings—but I think you can), or given enough space, a larger scale encounter. I’d love to see a dozen of these in each of several units massed for combat.

These figures would lend themselves well to two games I’ve been planning for years. The first is a cavalry - swordfight skirmish game. With each player controlling two or three figures, the sides would charge together, and the fight would devolve into a whirling skirmish. Turning templates would help control the movement of the horses. The second game would involve battery and counterbattery, like a tabletop version of that old computer game where two cannons blaze away at each other from opposite ends of the screen. My game would use actual, but scaled down artillery tables.

For those short on time, or weak on eyesight, the Walkerloo figures would be a great way to get started in Napoleonics. I’ve always wanted Napoleonic armies, but have not had the time to start painting. Now I can have them ready made. I’m going to order a bunch of these figures as soon as I scrape together some extra cash.

You can find the Walkerloo figures here.

Then I ran across a site called Specialty Bottle. They carry bottles in a wonderful variety of sizes, in glass, plastic, and tin. I think I’m going to get a bunch of smallish ones with eye droppers.

Speed Rally is easily learned and quickly played and thus is an ideal game as a filler when your regular game ends early. Gamers can just leave the previous game’s terrain in place and designate points for an off-road rally. For more complicated races, there’s always the option of printing, pasting and cutting out track segments to create a road track course.

One of the most clever aspects of the game is the car design process. Author JP Trostle has identified a number of toy car type archetypes—the “Bug”, Muscle, Stock, Formula, Wacky and so on. When picking a car to race from your kid’s car box, you match the car against a silhouette in the rules to determine the general type. Then, you build the car with various racing modifications and weaponry. Each has a point value, so cars can be made evenly matched.

The points values generally work well, but we thought that the “double engine” option was a game imbalancer.

Players also need to create a driver. Each has two basic stats: Skill and Reaction. The basic driver score can be improved at a points cost. Other advantages can be purchased, and the costs offset with “disadvantages” as with the GURPS role playing games. There also are rules for a campaign game that lets you improve your driver over time.

What I did to speed setup was to use a spreadsheet to create a score of cars in different classes before the game. After each player chose a car from the box, we agree on what silhouette best represents the vehicle, and a random vehicle of that type is chosen.

In terms of the racing mechanisms, it feels a lot like the board game Formula De. Each gear in the car is assigned a dice size, from the D4 representing first gear to the D12 representing fifth. A roll on the d4 will move you one or two spaces; on the d6, two to four spaces; the d8, 4-7 and so on. The lowest roll on each die will move you the maximum for the previous gear. A chart is used to determine movement, but the author encourages players to make a special set from blank polyhedral dice.

Movement is measured by a standardized car length and width—1.5” x 3”. The rules recommend that you attach the cars to the bases with blue-tac and this works well. For races on a track, you simply move the required number of spaces. In free form games, there’s a special ruler that you can print out use.

Turning is done either in the curved marked spaces on track, or with a turning template. The tightness of a turn is restricted by the gear that the car is in. Trying to make a tighter turn requires a dice roll check against the driver’s skill.

As a basic driving game, Speed Rally is moderately fun. The good times really begin, however, when the “combat” elements are introduced. In addition to basic maneuvering, drivers also have the option of blocking or bashing passing cars by expending an action. Cars with weaponry can use the action to attack other players. Drivers also can use their action for defensive maneuvering.

Another nice touch in the game are options for playing on the floor of your living room. Rules are provided for driving on various types of flooring and furniture.

If there’s one thing I’d like to see done with the game, it’s having some more options to bump up the combat. While it was fun shooting machine guns and rockets, we didn’t inflict nearly enough damage to satisfy the more bloodthirsty players in our group.

Overall, I think this is a terrific game. At just $10 for the pdf, it’s an affordable buy—and you likely already have all the “miniatures” you need to play in your kids’ (or your own) Hot Wheels car box.

You can buy it at http://www.speedrally.net

A professor at Northwestern Michigan College has discovered what appears to be a site of Stonehenge-like standing stones 40 feet under Lake Michigan. One seems to have been decorated with the carving of a mastodon

More on the Lake Michigan Standing Stones.

Lego Aircraft Carrier. More photos here.

This year, the muster featured a recreation of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, the original of which took place in Missouri on August 10, 1861. In addition to the battle re-creation, there also were infantry, artillery and cavalry drill demonstrations and a large encampment area where participants were more than willing (sometimes too willing) to tell you about life in the Civil War. 

Later that night, the Muster featured period dance instruction, a military ball and a night fire artillery demonstration.

In addition to the camps and battle, there were a dozen or so large tents selling everything you would need to get started in Civil War re-enacting: muskets, uniforms, hats, boots, accessories and so on. Some of the tents also carried framed art (Mort Kunstler was everywhere), books, and Civil War DVDs. And there was, of course, food and drink. The boys each got a root beer in a pseudo-period blue glass jug with a cork-and-wire spring top.

You can see photos of the camp and battle here.