TSOGers Escape from Colditz!

We started the years fortnightly catch-ups with a good feed and a game of Parker Brothers Escape from Colditz!

Picture thanks to Boardgamegeek!

So it was pizza and a sea of dips washed down with ample amounts of amber liquid to start proceedings! Dave left after dinner as he had work to do leaving Al, Stu and myself...

Out came the game and Stu took up the Cudgels as the Germans (black) while Al selected the USA prisoners (blue) and I used the Polish inmates (green)...

Play went on slowly while Al and I gathered gear and planned our escapes, Stu kept the cells of Colditz full arresting our prisoners as often as he could. During play Al's Yank prisoners (blue) changed nationality to British ones (red) as he and Stu were having a hard time distinguishing their pawns!

One of my Poles made a dash over the walls from the safe space near the Guard House only to be shot dead 4 spaces from safety. After that the British got a prisoner to safety outside the walls employing the Canteen tunnel. And then Poles were planning to make a dash to freedom with the Staff Car when our time ran out!

Final Stats;
Colonel Al +1 for carrying out one successful escape
Pulkownik Pete -1 one dead prisoner shot trying to escape
Oberst Stu a transfer to the Russian Front for allowing an escape!

Our game just before the British successfully got a prisoner out!

Good fun was had by all and we'll definitely be revisiting Escape from Colditz in the future!

Home Made Cornfields!

A period picture of Yankee Zouaves emerging from a lush cornfield, Northern Virginia 1861...

Well you can never have enough terrain for your ACW Skirmish games...and I suppose any other theatre of war where corn crops were grown! Anyway to make a short story long I wrote a review for the 61-65 rules for the ACW Gamer, The Ezine and got a copy of it so I could check out my handiwork and in it I noticed on page 16 an article, Planting Corn intrigued I went to page 16 and low and behold there was an article on making your own cornfields. Now these were for 54mm figures and included pumpkins but the corn stalks made out of twistie ties looked good so I decided to give them a go for my 1/56 figures!

From Ebay I order 800 ties for the princely sum of A$4.89. I then followed Mannie Gentile's instructions; I proceeded to twist bundles of 7 and 8 while my partner watched the two Annebelle movies which are far too horrific for me! Later I snipped and sprayed the 'stalks' and attached them to 2mm styrene plastic squares (6cm x 6cm). finally I dry brushed the stalks with a second shade of green and made the bases look a bit earthy...

The finished lot!

Sorry about the picture quality on this post they taken with an old phone...

The first picture without effects...

I didn't document the process its all on the Toy Soldiers Forever blog...but used some off cuts once done to make a baby stalk so you can see the original colour of the ties...

The whole process for making cornfields can be found on Mannie Gentile's Toy Soldiers Forever Blog...
Toy Soldiers Forever Blogspot

And if you're interested the ACW Gamer, The Ezine detatls can be found here...
The ACW Gamer

That's all for this time folks...