Tiny Italian Wars

I had previously mentioned that I made a purchase of some tiny 3D print, 6mm (Baccus are a bit bigger) Italian Wars armies and quick-play rules from a new company called Podrek Miniatures at Historicon. I painted up some before that project stalled a bit due to personal matters (more on that later).

Anyway, because I haven't posted recently I decided I would post some pictures of those tiny Italian Wars figures. 

Here you can see what I've painted up. Everything are on 1 inch bases as per the corresponding rules, Battle-Axe, suggest. It's enough for a French army for the rules although I have more figures for the French army that will need to be painted (in addition to a Spanish opponent and some Italians and Lansknechts).

First up are the Swiss Pike. In the rules they are pretty deadly. Each base has 4 strips of pile and I decided to place the strips with flags in the middle. I think it's historically accurate and hides any sloppy painting. 

Next up are the cavalry. From left to right: stradiots, mounted crossbowmen, "light" cavalry (think francs-archers or demi-lancers) and gendarmes. The gendarmes are also pretty deadly in the rules. 

Missile troops. In this case handgunners, my crossbowmen are half-painted. 

Artillery. As you can see the "sculpting" style is a bit cartoonish and simplistic. I like that. They paint up rather easily with a black prime, a light drybrish of tan or grey and block painting. I didn't give these guys highlights, everything was painted bright and I didn't ink them.

Commanders. I have one gilted armor. The sculpts remind me of the craftee wargames figures some people make with bits from the craft store. My old gaming buddy Matt Kirkhart used to make some really awesome armies and host incredibly fun games. Anyway, I look forward to finishing this project when I get back into the mental groove to paint them.

Cannon, Cross and Crescent Play Test

I finished up my initial 1/2400 Tumbling Dice renaissance galley Turkish and Christian fleets so I decided to play a very small play test of David Manley's Cannon, Cross and Crescent ("CCC") quickplay rules for the period. 

A little about CCC. They are, as mentioned, quickplay and have some DBx feel to them. Ships have factors for heavy and light guns, boarding, stoutness, movement and turning ability (there are a few others). Different types (and nationalities) of ships have different values for these factors to reflect how the ships were constructed and how their peoples like to fight. 

Heavy guns have a 6" range and light guns 3". Light guns have a much wider arc of fire however. Shooting combat is straight forward: roll a dice, add your gunnery factor and any other modifiers and your opponent rolls a dice and adds it to his ship's stoutness factor. If you win small, expect some damage or crew casualties. If you win big, you may wreck your opponent outright. Boarding is similar: get stuck in, roll to attempt boarding (anything but a "1" is good to go), roll dice and compare boarding factors and modifiers. 

A turn is comprised of a command phase where you attempt to make repairs and check morale among other things which is followed by a series of action phases (3 action phases per side). You determine which side's action phase it is by drawing a card. I opted for a randomly drawn colored die (I had three red dice for the Turks and three white dice for the Spanish). This creates some additional uncertainty from the normal IGO/UGO system.

Here is the Turkish fleet comprising of three light galleys and one regular galley (2nd from bottom), the Turkish fleet is also accompanied by four bases of small boats. In the CCC rules, these can tag along to the big ships and add their manpower to boarding actions. The Turks are already fairly powerful with boarding actions as it is, so you know what they will want to do...

The Christian fleet, comprising of two galleys and two light galleys. For today's game I opted to make them Spanish. The Spanish are strong in boarding and have good firepower for their light guns. The light galleys don't have heavy guns however...no small boats for the Spanish since they have two regular size galleys in this fight.

Here is the relative dispositions of the fleets looking from the Spanish side of the table.

No real tactics will be on display for this play test, Don Juan and Barbarossa are probably very disappointed in the simple scrum planned. The fleets close in to each other...

The fleets close in on each other. At this point you may notice little white beads on the starboard bows of the center Spanish galleys and a black bead on the port stern of the Turkish galley. Let me explain...in CCC, you will want to denote a few situations/status of ships: who has fired heavy guns, which ships have suffered crew casualties (halving your boarding factor) and which ships have suffered damage (halving both boarding and gunnery factors). To keep bookkeeping to a minimum, I have small pegs inserted onto 3 of the 4 corners of the ship base. I place a small plastic Perler bead on these pegs to show status. The white pegs show the Spanish galleys have fired their large guns and one of those salvoes damaged the Turkish galley (black bead).

The fleets have come to grips with each other. The Turks closed in and were successful in boarding attempts on three of the four attempts (the light galleys on the far right came close but didn't make contact). The Spanish light galley on the far left has suffered damage when the Turks fired their heavy guns on contact.

Based on the prevalence of the yellow beads, you know something has happened! The yellow beads indicate crew casualties. If you notice the Spanish light galley has been replaced by a near sinking wreck. From what I recall, they were previously damaged and had crew casualties. They took a second crew casualty which turns to a damage but since they were already damaged, they became a wreck!

The beginning of the 2nd turn saw the end of the battle. Three compromised Turkish ships ganged up on the left Spanish galley, damaging it and inflicting crew casualties. On the right , the remaining Spanish light galley was captured when it was finally boarded by the Turkish light galley who then backed up and fired its heavy guns into the right Spanish galley. 

With both of their light galleys lost and the remaining galleys damaged along with crew casualties, I decided to call the battle and declare the Turks the winners. The Turkish fleet lost two bases on small boats but that's it... The game only lasted a turn and a half and went for about 30 or so minutes.

I'm sure I did some things wrong but I still had a blast. I will reread through the rules and run another play test. I highly recommend these for simple but nuanced renaissance galley combat.

 

1/2400 Renaissance Galleys

Continuing on with my barrage of photos of miniatures I painted previously, I decided to post some snaps of my 1/2400 renaissance galleys from Tumbling Dice miniatures. I picked these miniatures up because I am a fan of quickplay rules, a fan of naval wargaming and a fan of David Manley publications.

David has a set of quickplay renaissance naval rules called "Cannon, Cross and Crescent", I purchased them and really like the mechanics. It motivated me to pick up some fleets from Tumbling Dice and I managed to paint up a portion of my Muslim fleet.

Here are some "large galleys". These buggers come in several pieces: hull with masts, sails and bases with the oars sculpted into them. They sound fidly but they aren't that difficult to assemble. I decided my Muslim galleys will be mostly green.

Here's an aerial view showing all of those lovely galley slaves rowing to their hearts' content.

We have an overhead shot of the single-masted "small galleys", I made these guys a little more diverse in their coloring. 

Right now, you are probably wondering how small the "small galley" is compared to the "large galley", well here you go: small galley, small boats and large galley. Funny story about the pennants on the large galley, I picked them up from Tumbling Dice and had a helluva time gluing them to the ships and thought the paper was very thick and difficult to work with. I realized some time later that these are adhesive backed flags on a backing paper. Yikes! Very nice flags and I highly recommend!

Now you are probably wondering what the hell those small boats do. In the rules, they essentially feed crew to the galleys for boarding purposes. Here is another picture of them. 

The last picture here is of a large galley next to a wrecked and sinking galley. While the floating galleys are from Tumbling Dice, I picked up a bunch of galley wreckage from Hallmark's 1/2400 range. Cool right?!

I hope to finish this little project off sometime in 2021. Fingers crossed!