Gettysburg - the Madness returns

Part 7- The Beginning of the End

In theory this was the session that would see the whole thing finished off. In theory...but I get ahead of myself.

Just for a change, when we arrived, we both know exactly what was to be done - the problem was that neither of us could agree in what order. This was decided by the simple method of me taking charge and Chris doing a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and saying, 'Yeah, Whatever....'

So without further ado we glued all the small buildings and farms into place. For all the buildings we have used items from the Irregular Miniatures 2mm range and quite pretty they looked too. The next stage was to add the trees. Supplied by the ever-helpful Keith Warren of Realistic Modelling these came in large sections which we carefully put in place and glued securely. In our terms, 'securely' translates as, 'It's stuck down now, but we'd better take some glue with us to the show as I think some bits are going to fall off.'

The whole thing as taking shape as you can see:

And it is now where the fun started. I say, 'Fun'. Actually it was as far removed from jollity and belly laughs as you can get. It was time for us to get well and truely Flocked.

We were using the standard short strand flock supplied in the BBS so as to match the figures that Derek had done for the game. However in a mad moment I'd acquired a second hand Noch 'Grasmaster' dooberry for applying the green stuff. The principle is fairly straightforward. The Grasmaster is basically a hopper containing flock which you shake over the prepared area, but the clever thing is that the flock is given a static charge aligning all the strands and giving you a much better finish than simply scattering the green stuff and hoping for the best. Here you can see this process in action:

I must admit to being a little sceptical that this would work, but to my surprise it did exactly what it said it would do. All the the little strands came out aligned giving a much better finish than just scattering the flock and hoping for the best.

What we did find what was that we were depositing a lot more flock than was actually sticking to the surface of the board and we needed to continually refill the hopper. We reclaimed the unglued flock from the table using out patented 'bit of cloth stuck over the end of a vacuum cleaner nozzle' technique which worked very well indeed. Here's some action pics:

The aim was to break up the regular grid pattern when viewed from a distance, but to leave it readily identifiable when close up and playing the game. This meant leaving strategically placed bits of brown showing. I think we pretty well succeeded in doing this, but I'll leave final judgment up to the viewer.

There you have it. On this scale it's hard to portray all the iconic features of this famous battlefield. The scale is simply too large to depict areas that are measured in tens of yards, but we have representations of the Seminary, Devil's Den and the Wheat field. What we have tried to do is to give a feel of the sweep of the overall terrain and give the players the challenges that the Commanders in Chief of both sides met. Not the prettiest Gettysburg you'll ever see, nor the most accurate, but it should do the job asked of it very nicely indeed.

All done? Well, not quite. We had to fit in one more emergency session to finish off the actual town of Gettysburg and add catches and fittings. This consisted of us constructing a sort of jigsaw with the Irregular town sections trying to get them to fit into the area and yet maintain the road system. This proved impossible with the pieces as they stood, so we had to resort to sawing bigger bits into pieces and reassembling them, hoping that no-one would see the joins.

The bits were all glued in place, and the gaps filled and painted:

The final job was to paint in the roads and tidy the whole thing up with strategic use of flock. You can judge the quality of the bodge job from this final piccy:

And that, Dear Reader, is almost that. You have followed this chronicle of muddling through and example of how not to undertake project planning to this point. For that you deserve a reward, but alas, I have none to give you. However, the story is not over yet. The next posting will show how the game fared at its first outing at the Derby World Championships 2010. Fingers crossed it doesn't all fall apart in transit...

Part 8 - 'I have some good news and some bad news...'

So there I was. The Friday night before the unveiling of the game. Chris and I had got the boards completed and they were safely ensconced in the van ready for the journey down to Derby the following morning. I was relaxing with a glass of wine and awaiting the arrival of Derek who was staying with us for the weekend of the show. All was well with the world and I was relaxed. I should have know at that point how utterly stupid that really was.

Firstly Derek turned up much later than normal. He'd been traveling over from Manchester only to find the Snake Pass closed and the subsequent diversion meant that he did not arrive until after ten. I sat him down with his traditional cup of hot sweet tea and he dropped his bombshell. 'I have some good and news', he said, 'and some bad news.' I knew that I was not going to like this.' All the figures are painted, and all have flags - it's just that none of them are based yet.' I knew at that point, it was going to be a long, long night. Armed only with the contents of a couple of Baccus Basing Systems, regular inputs of white wine and some sleep deprivation we launched into the job in hand. After an hour, Chris get in, poked his head round the door and with a resigned look on his face picked up a brush and joined in. He later explained this atypical volunteerism in the following terms - 'If I hadn't have offered to help you'd have whinged at me until I did. I just thought I'd save us both the hassle.'

After three hours of applying glue, sand, flock and paint at random intervals we were able to look at both armies looking splendid and ready for action. One look at the clock and a quick bit of mental arithmetic showed me that I was now heading for a maximum of just four and half hours of sleep before having to get up and drive to the show. Sleep may be for wimps, but right then I was firmly in the Wimp camp...

Part 9- 'Shouldn't there be a roundabout in the centre of Gettysburg?'

So there we were. Derek and his willing co-opted helper, Dave were ready to go. Would anyone actually want to play the game? As it happened that never proved to be a problem. It was a huge hit. By eleven the game was fully booked with players until the end of the day. The planned lunch break had to be cancelled and the umpires had to eat their food in shifts .

A fine shot of Derek in Chief Umpire mode.

I was working the Baccus trade stand which was about 20 feet away from the game. One chap came up to me and asked if we'd brought the game because he couldn't see it anywhere. I pointed it out to him only to find out that all you could see of it was a two deep crowd all round the table.

Dave showing that being an Umpire is about retaining one's cool...

It would seem that quite a lot of people read The Miniatures Page. In a recent thread posted there, some chap had pointed out that the road network inside Gettysburg was incorrect and that there should be a circle in the middle where all the roads meet. I don't think that he'd quite understood the level of abstraction and wholesale mucking about with reality that we'd undertaken with this project. What it did mean was that all weekend we had people walking up to the table and saying, 'Shouldn't there be a roundabout in the middle of Gettysburg?' I promise - next time I do this I'll put one in.

The game in play with the confederacy storming to a victory. Little Round Top (left) is occupied as is Cemetery Ridge. Pickett eat your heart out!

Sunday was a repeat, although we had to finish earlier as Derek had to pack up and go home to his family. Over the weekend he'd received invites to three more shows and was frantically trying to work out which ones he could make. Stay posted for more details.

I'm sorry there are not more pictures. I forgot my camera and my phone battery packed up so I was only able to take these three. I'll get more on a later outing. The rules themselves will be made available once Derek has put them into a more usable format. I would like to thank Chris, Derek and Dave for all their hard work in helping get this little project up and running. It has been great fun working on it and I hope that as many of you as possible will get a chance to play it at shows in the coming months. We plan to tour it until 2012 when our next game will appear. We know what it is, but you'll have to wait for that one.

There may yet be more come in this project blog as Derek 'I am not mad' Pitman has made clear that he wishes to put HIS side of the story to you all...