The flats are marching in stop-motion

I did a replay of the scenario shown in this blog post, but this time tried to create a stop motion animation instead of just one single photo per turn. Here's the result:

The order of battle is the same as in the first playthrough of this scenario. The first and second line of the Prussians have been improved to a 3 bataillon first line with the grenadiers on the flanks, and a single Fusilier bataillon as second line.

The (non-written) orders were the same as in the first playthrough, so the general sequence of events was similar, too.

I did re-use most of the die roll results from the first game, in particular the devastating first volleys fired by the imperial infantry, to get a similar overall result as in the first battle. This was also helpful for the stop motion filming (see below).

So it is no surprise that you will recognize some main points from the first battle, like the wide sweeping flank movement of the Imperial cavalry, the defensive line on the hill, the devastatingly effective volley fire of the imperial infantry etc.

You will also notice some changes, e.g. the Prussion infantry wheeling to form line of battle even earlier, more frequent use of square formations to defend against the cavalry threat, and the Cuirassiers actually charging home, first riding down one square and then being shot to pieces by another one.

Note that I did indicate some musket fire from the squares by some cotton wool - although the game rules don't allocate a separate die roll to defensive fire from squares, they do implicitly include it in the melee results of cavalry against squares as you can see in the second attack of the Cuirassiers.

Regarding the stop motion technique, I really like the outcome.

I took 12 photos per Shako turn (i.e. 1.5 inch per step for cavalry, .5 inches for infantry in line). Even at low frame rates of 5 pictures per second, the motion is fluid enough to feel like a movie rather than a slide show. This works out to a bit more than two seconds per Shako game turn, which makes the minis move fast but not dash across the table too blindingly fast.

It is much better to play a scenario through without stop motion filming first, take photos after each turn and then more or less reproduce the battle in a second playthrough, using the first play through as story book. In the stop motion, you want all units to move simultaneously although the game has Igo-Hugo mechanics, and you want to fluidly include volley fire and melee results in the same X photos per turn that would be taken up by just plain movement in less eventful turns. You also want to complete formation changes before the end of the turn in some cases (even if they take up the whole turn as per the rules), i.e. before a unit that just formed square is hit by an attacker. In fact, I noticed that it is hard to spread out formation changes like left turns or forming square over 12 individual motions.

I still have to work on

• picture quality (better camera)
• less shakiness (keep the camera in place without interruptions, get a remote trigger to actually close the shutter to take photos without camera vibrations)
• right balance of
1. frames per second (I think the fluidity of motion at low frame rates of 5-6 pictures per second is better than I expected) and
2. the effective movement speed in inches per second of video (no matter how smoothly the minis move over the table due to the length of each individual step, if they zoom around too fast it's hard for the eye to follow the movements and catch all of the events on the table).
• better approach to zooming in on the action, and changing perspective. In general, I like the fly in effect created by moving he camera tripod a couple inches after every shot, but again it makes the picture very shaky. Maybe it's actually better to keep the camera perspective fixed completely, or to make hard cuts with a bigger repositioning of the camera at key junctures where some text might be introduced into the movie anyway to separate scenes.
• the smoke effect to indicate units firing - in principle, it works much better than I anticipated and is more necessary to show what's going on than I thought. I also like the animated effect of the smoke drifting away and eventually vanishing from the table. I just need to make the smoke move less - the current movie looks like it's taking place in weather conditions of extreme autumn storms...
• smooth movement (no stop-and-go, no erratic changes of facing and speed, no riding backwards) for the brigade commanders.

SOM Negro League plans: Teams

In this post, the question is which six historical Negro League teams do I want to use as namesakes and ballpark locations for my replay league?

I will not work with historical rosters, but some considerations apply:

• use popular / well known teams
• use teams where I have ballpark effect information from Stratomatic
• teams represented by the candidates for seeding the draft (see there) 

From the SOM player guide, I read the following teams with pitchers ballparks

• Chicago American Giants (Schorling - biggest ever -   and Comiskey parks)
• Baltimore?
• Indianapolis?
• Forbes, Griffith(?), Greenlee (Pittsburg)
• NY Lincoln Giants?
• Kansas City
• Memphis Martin Park

Hitters ballparks

• St. Louis Stars (short left field)
• Detroit (acc. to ballpark effects)
• Hilldale (same)

Initial candidate list:

• Kansas City Monarchs (Satchel Paige and many other high profile players)
• Chicago American Giants (Rube Fosters team)
• Hilldale Daisies (hitters park)
• Lincoln Giants (in the hitters park "Catholic Protectory" in the Bronx starting 1920)
• Cuban Grays (Dihigo, no home ballpark?)
• St. Louis Stars (Cool Papa Bell, hitters park)
• Homestead Grays (played in the Pittsburg pitchers' parks)

SOM Negro League plans: Draft

So how do I distribute the 103 players from the Stratomatic Negro League set to the six teams I want to start in my replay?

I do want to use the small rosters (about 15 players) described in the guide book for the Stratomatic card edition. That means I can easily get six teams worth of rosters out of the available 100+ cards, with a few cards left to account for position imbalances across the set and a chance to bring in a few "free agents" during the season.

I need

• a good mix of player qualities across teams, esp. a good spread of the big names and HOF caliber players
• a way to give each team some identity (focus on pitching, hitting, defense, versatility...)
• each position covered with at least one way to substitutein case of injuries

I'm thinking of this approach:
1. seed each team with one or two players strongly associated with the team
2. sort the remaining players by position and strength (se the primary positions indicated in the player nots of the guide book to identify the main positions played)
3. write down one or two priorities for each team (strong pitching, deep rotation, offense, defense, hitting vs speed...)
4. draft the remaining players according to team prios and the need to have at least one player per position

Let's see whether sorting the player cards along these ideas will yield six teams that can field a proper defense.

Here are a few notes on the obvious and not-so-obvious candidates for an initial round of seeding teams with one-two high profile, possibly team related names:

Candidates to seed teams

• Bell, Cool Papa (St Louis Stars, CF)
• Charleston Oscar (Indianapolis ABCs, 1B/CF)
• Dihigo, Martin (Cuban Grays, OF / RHP)
• Gibson, Josh (Homestead Grays, C, top hitter)
• Mackey, Biz (Hilldale Daisies, C / everything, hitter)
• Page, Satchel (KC Monarchs, RHP)
• Rogan, Bullet Joe (KC Monarchs, CF / RHP) - I'll probably not seed him so I end up with six seeds and no double seed for the KC Monarchs

For the record / for cross reference durnig drafting: the other HOFers

• Brown, Ray (Homestead Grays, P)
• Brown, Willard (KC Monarchs, OF)
• Cooper, Andy (KC Monarchs, LHP) - seed?
• Dandridge, Ray (Newark Eagles, 3B) - seed?
• Day, Leon (Newark Eagles, RHP / UT) 
• Foster, Andrew Rube (Chicago American Giants, RHP, in HOF for later mgr career, too)
• Foster, William (Chicago American Giants, LHP)
• Hill, Peter (Chicago American Giants, CF)
• Johnson Judy (Hilldale Daisies, 3B)
• Leonard, Buck (Homestead Grays, 1B)
• Loyd, John H Pop (Bacharach Giants, SS)
• Mendez, Jose (KC Monarchs, RHP / SS)
• Santop, Louis (NY Lincoln Giants, C)
• Smith, Hilton (KC Monarchs, RHP)
• Stearnes, Turkey (Detroit Stars, CF, HR hitter)
• Suttles, Mule (St. Louis Stars, 1B, hitter, bad defense)
• Taylor, Ben (Indianapolis ABCs, 1B)
• Torriente, Cristobal (Chicago American Giants, 1B)
• Wells, Willie (St. Louis Stars, SS)
• Williams, Smokey Joe (New York Lincoln Giants, RHP, one of the two best ever) - seed?
• Wilson, Jud (Baltimore Black Sox, 1B/3B)

Other: Smith, Chino (New York Lincoln Giants, RF, great hitter, died at 30 so no HOF)

SOM Negro League plans: League format

My Stratomatic Replay of the 2013 MLB season has been on a rather long hiatus, first due to other projects, and now I've lost access to the game stats and scoresheets I had stored on the iscore website after a refresh of the tablet I use to score :( I'm not sure yet whether and how I will continue the 2013 replay (I could just continue with the standings I have documented here, and the limited stats and game history I have recorded on paper, or I could redefine the games I played so far as a kind of spring training and start the regular season over again).

But the pause in the 2013 MLB replay made me think about other, possible projects, and I revisited the stack of Negro League player cards that I bought some time ago. The idea would be to create a handful of teams via some kind of draft of players, and then play a short (fifth of a full) season with a similar approach as for the 2013 replay schedule.

However, even if I go for the smaller rosters of about 15 players per team, the cards in the set will only be enough for about six teams, so I'll have to look at was to make that work (without any reference to historical league structures, the players are a mix from five or six decades, anyway...). So here are a few options I've been toying around with.

The goal would be to come to 32 or 33 total games per team so I can compare the resulting counting stats with the benchmarks one has in mind for modern day 162 day MLB seasons by simply multiplying with five.

I could also try to play a double header or three and squeeze the whole schedule into a calendar month to keep the pitching rotations busy and avoid that teams have the chance to start their aces nearly every day.

1. Six teams, one division (35 games per team, 105 games overall)

If each team plays each other team seven times, there is a 35 game season for everyone - a bit too much for the simple comparison but manageable total of games.

2. Six teams, two divisions (32/33 games per team, 96/99 games overall)

To get closer to the easy "x5" comparison to a 162 game season, I'd need each team to play nine games against the two teams in their own three team division and five games against each of the other teams.

Having two divisions would also allow for a nicer championship finals between the division champs.

An alternative could be to play 7 games within the division and six outside for a total of 33, but that would mean the intra- vs inter-division games are too close, or ten games within and four outside for a total of 32, but that way many of the team-against-team series could be tied.

3. Five teams, one division (32 games per team, 80 games total)

This would mean 8 games against each other team for a total of 32 (again, many chances for tied team-vs-team series) and a more manageable total. It would also mean more rest days for pitchers because each day one team will have to sit out.

Obviously, splitting five (or less) teams into divisions doesn't make sense anymore.

4. Four teams, one division (33 games per team, 66 games total or 39 games per team, 117 total for a fourth of a full season)

This would allow larger rosters, but also less differentiation between teams (e.g. pitching heavy, offensive vs defensive focus etc.), and less variation as most teams will rely on the HOF level stars and not need the rest of the players so much.

Now that I look at the list, the option 2 (six teams in two divisions) looks best, even though such small divisions look a bit artificial on paper.

Workbench: Stages in the life of historical flats

In my last workbench post, I showed a few snapshots of current work in progress. This time I want to illustrate the steps each flat mini takes from the box to the final tabletop unit.

Here is a picture of the minis as they march out of the cardboard box delivered by Grünewald Zinnfiguren: 

Austrian infantry, firing (Grünewald pack 165 "dt. Füsiliere im Gefecht, feuernd"). Test setup in two bataillons, with gaps in all positions where I need to order additional minis to fill the ranks.

Although Grünewald does sell individual minis (at a slight premium) it is always best to start with the unit packs. In my case I need 24 minis per bataillon, so I can build two infantry bataillons out of one box of 37 minis (illustrated above) when I add a handful of single ordered individually, like additional flag bearers and officers. The mounted officer included in the infantry boxes can be used as division commander, general staff etc.

Cavalry boxes have 17 minis each, so they are sufficient for one unit with 16 minis each, without the need to add anything (in fact, one mini is left over for other uses like army staff etc.).

For the Austrians this was particularly tricky, because they have one kneeling and two standing poses to support the normal Austrian three-rank formations, but I will use them in two ranks like all other tabletop units for Shako. So I needed to figure out whether the mix of poses in the unit pack actually supports getting to two batallions by just adding minis (the good news: it does work).

In the next picture you can see the various stages the minis go through.

Top to bottom: 1. blanks in the cardboard box from shipping - 2. first base layer (protective layer) - 3. second base coat (white) - 4. half painted.

When they come out of the box, the minis have to be cleaned up (removing leftover grates from the casting process) and washed with warm water and a little soap. After gluing them to a wooden stick with PVA, two base layers of color are sprayed on: a protective layer (with the kind of primer you also use to base coat car parts), then a white base coat as the carrier of the real paint (I use tabletop modelling base coat from Army Painter or Games Workshop).

For the actual painting I use artist's watercolors. You can see the box in the photo below. These colors work perfectly with white base coating, because for "raised" areas they can be applied a little thinner with the white shining through for highlights, and there is no need to apply multiple layers of color anywhere. They also allow for very fine freehand and easily provide bright colors, even in light tones like yellow or sky blue that are hard to do with acrylics on dark base coat.

I only use acrylics very occasionally for silver and gold flag or uniform embroidery (I use water color tones of grey for other metals), and acrylic white to clean up fine details on top of water color painted areas.

The beauty of working with these colors is the extremely small amount of time and space needed to set up. I often need to use short, twenty to thirty minute chunks of time for painting. With colors like acrylics or oil which require individual containers per color, palettes, thinners etc. the time to set up and clean away things is too long for me. It takes me about two minutes to take the material shown below out of storage and start painting...

I learned this technique at the Munich Klio meetings of flats collectors in the early nineties.

Prussian Hussars in process, with the water colors and my main reference for Prussian SYW unifirms (Bleckwenn, pocket edition) on top.

Once the minis are painted, they get to dry for at least twelve hours before they get a solid (shiny) coat of spray varnish to pretect them from humidity (these colors remain water soluble at all times).

  

I have already shown how the minis are based for tabletop gaming here. I'm not sure yet whether I'll start to flock the bases with some static grass, so far I actually like the simple brown paint job on the bases because it doesn't distract from the minis themselves with their colorful uniforms (I have found that green bases visually block out a lot of the uniform colors).

To see what they look like on the tabletop you can take a first look here.

For comparison with more conventional painting methods, you can check out the incredible historical dioramas in the Plassenburg flats museum (I went to elementary school in Kulmbach, that's where I got infected with the flats bug...)

The flats are marching - encounter 1: delaying action

(Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch: erster Ausmarsch der Grünewald-Figuren, die ich bisher angemalt habe: die Reichsarmee versucht, den Vormarsch eines kleinen preussischen Korps zu verzögern. Regeln: Shako, Figuren: Grünewald, ich hoffe, die Bilder sprechen für sich selbst. Ein Klick auf die Bilder bringt eine größere Version auf den Bildschirm).

I don't really have enough minis ready for a proper game, but couldn't resist giving them a chance to take a first walk on the tabletop after finishing the seventh unit.

I used the Shako ruleset (not Shako II), but without written orders and with flexible interpretation of the division and army morale rules (considering there was a total of seven units on the table...). I did use the special SYW rules for deployment of the battle lines from the march in columns, though, because this kind of maneuvering is part of the visual and tactical appeal of 18th century battles for me.


The idea is to string a few practice games into a loosely connected series of games with a simple narrative. Maybe something like a fictional intrusion of a regular Prussian force into Franken (similar to the real 1759 campaign in Franken by the Wunsch Freikorps). This initial engagement will be a simple delaying action where the Imperials try to gain time to organize their forces.

The order of battle is the small fraction that I have already painted of the OB present in the 1759 combat of Zinna, the theme of my first historical flats project in a long time.

Prussians (on the right side of the photos)

• I. Bat. Salmuth Fusiliers
• II. Bat. Hoffmann Fusiliers
• Converged Grenadier bat. Burgsdorff
• Converged Grenadier bat. Willemey

Allies (coming from the left)

• I. Bat. Hohenlohe 
• I. Bat. Kurpfalz Foot Guards (should be the II. Bat., but I couldn't resist painting the more fun combination of life and company flags)
• Hohenzollern Cuirassiers

I took a photo after most turns, here we go (as always, click on the photos to see enlarged versions):

After turn 2: columns marching onto the table, Prussians start deploying into line of battle first to avoid being caught unprepared by the opposing cavalry

Turn 3: the Prussians are deploying into two lines, the Imperial troops are taking the high ground on the hill.

Turn 4: both sides have deployed, the grenadiers on the Prussian left form a square to fend off the Imperial cavalry (there are no hasty squares allowed in the SYW version of Shako, so you better get prepared in time...)

Turn 5: the initial infantry deployment is done, the Hohenzollern Cuirassiers on the Imperial right are starting to bypass the Grenadier square on the Prussian left in a wide, sweeping flank movement.

Turn 6 (viewed from behind the Prussian lines): the Cuirassiers continue their movement around the left flank into the Prussian rear, the Prussian second line is turning around to face this threat. Meanwhile, on the hill the infantry lines are closing in - the Imperials retreating slightly after reaching their hold position on the hill to give their cavalry more time for the flanking movement.

Turn 7: on the hill, the first volleys are being fired. To the surprise of everyone, the Imperial foot severely hurt the Prussian grenadiers on the hill, swinging the momentum in their favor. (In rules terms, the Kurpfalz foot guards, usually considered second rate at this stage of the war, stagger and cause a kill on the grenadiers in their very first volley, taking no damage in return).

Turn 8: the surprises continue - the Kurpfalz infantry charge the staggered Grenadiers on the hill, cause another two kills in the approaching fire (I do assume that chargers get to fire before engaging, although it isn't 100% clear to me from the rules), enter melee unfazed by the return fire from the Prussians and break the Grenadiers in the ensuing melee. At the same time, the infantry at the foot of the hill exchange a first volley, this time with the more expectable results in favor of the Prussians. The Cuirassiers have nearly finished their ride around the battlefield, distracting half of the Prussian force without engaging them or giving them a chance to fire a volley.

Turn 9: The Prussian fusiliers at the foot of the hill break the Franconian infantry in their front. Happy with a successful delaying action and the surprising performance of the Kurpfalz foot guards, the Imperial troups retire from the field to preserve their troops to fight another day.

Overall a fun game. I'm very positively surprised in many ways: 

• the flats move well on the tabletop - if you handle the stands carefully, with stable plastic bases they feel like they can take being moved around on the tabletop, although I will look into magnetic regimental bases going forward to avoid too many direct touches of the minis themselves.
• the flats look great, as well - in linear battles most units tend to face the same direction, and as long as they do I like the photos that come out. In many ways I think the neat rank and file presented by flats with more realistic body proportions is more visually pleasing and easier to "read" than a similar number of the usual full-bodied 3d tabletop gaming minis with many different poses and oversized hands and faces - these tend to look fantastic in skirmishing games but dissolve into an indistinguishable mass of colors and movement in larger numbers.
• the Shako rules are easy to use. Although this was my first Shako game in many years, I had to reference the rulebook very infrequently, and find that many aspects are not only simple enough to fit on the two page Quick Reference Data Sheet but could also be memorized nicely over time.
• once the battle starts, SYW battles are much more restricted than Napoleonic battles fought with Shako (as they should be). But this is not only historical, it is also counterbalanced by the really challenging task to deploy your army from the initial march columns entering the field. I really look forward to trying this again with more units. The only challenge will be to find a large enough battlefield when the number of units involved grows. Maybe I'll have to use the "Marching to Glory" supplement as a partial replacement to a full on-board deployment.
• With six bases per infantry unit, I like to visualize the unit state via the arrangement of the bases - cleanly aligned for good order, slightly out of order for staggered, facing backward for "fall back" etc. I just need a good idea how to distinguish blown from staggered cavalry. I'm even thinking of removing bases to reflect kills, that might look more appealing than counting kills with dice or other tokens palced next to the units.

Coming up next: a rearguard action where the units that took losses in this ancounter will start with a a kill or two each to introduce some continuity.

Ankerbausteine Freestyle: Turm

Wieder einmal haben wir die Muße der Ferienzeit genutzt und Jakob hatte die Idee, einen Turm mit Ankerbausteinen zu bauen.

Als Steinvorrat haben wir GK-NF 14 zur Verfügung. Wir haben kaum die Hälfte der Steine genutzt, allerdings auch einige Steine die erst in den höheren Kästen drin sind wie fast alle steilen Dachsteine und die ganz kleinen, flachen Torbögen mit lichter Breite von einem halben Würfel.

Wie immer sind die Fotos verkleinert dargestellt, wer draufklickt sieht mehr (click on pictures to see a larger version).

Das erste Stockwerk mit Seitenfenster und breiter Eingangstreppe (der "Lieferanteneingang" hinten hat eine viel schmalere und steilere Treppe).

Stockwerk zwei mit sehr schmalen Fenstern und Anfänge von Stockwerk drei.

Finishing Touches, Anlauf eins

Die erste Version des fertigen Turms

Im ersten Anlauf wurde das Gebäude optisch etwas gedrungen, vermutlich weil wir die höhere der beiden roten Etagen nur eine plus anderthalb Lagen hoch gebaut hatten.

Da man das Dach zum Glück in einem Griff abheben und beiseitestellen konnte, haben wir dann noch einen zweiten Versuch gemacht und die obere rote Etage etwas erhöht, danach gefallen mir die Proportionen etwas besser:

Zweiter Versuch, Hinteransicht (mit neu eingesetzten kleinen Rundfenstern aus 126)

Der fertige Turm (Vorderansicht) mit seinem (Mit-)Erbauer Jakob.