Day 1 Progress

We started with the Pink Bears. They’ve been primed with spray primer. The Princess herself out the first strokes of paint on each bear. I put on the 2nd and 3rd coats as well as getting the detailed areas.

The Pink Bears Get Their Coats

I’ll likely do the same efforts for the red bears next. Then I’ll start batch work like the head, legs, muskets, and tricorns before putting on final touches like noses, eyes, and facings. 

I’m open to critiques of the painting plan. I’m aiming for playable, not museum quality. 

Let The Painting Begin

 I successfully got the minimum requirements for two bear-armies printed. Each force is made of four line infantry companies, a grenadier company, a squadron of cavalry, and a field piece with its crew.  

Army on the March

Both Armies Arrayed

The kids got to go to the craft store and selected the coat colors for their armies.  The princess picked Peachy Pink and the little prince selected bright red.  Her army will have purple, baby blue, white, and yellow facings. His army will have blue, green, yellow, and black facings. Perhaps Highlander (Grizzly) or Norse (Polar) companies will join as foreign mercenaries, but for now both armies will be comprised of light tan teddy bears. 

Peachy Pink for the Princess

Bright Red for the Little Prince and/or The Old Man

Fur Color for All Bears

Combining Buildings into Built Up Areas

One of the keys to my plans for wargaming in small spaces is keeping terrain requirements in check. All of my gaming ambitions need to be stored when not actively engaged.  I suspect the average wargamer has more storage occupied with terrain than miniatures or rulebooks. My plan is to be able to combine simple buildings into more complicated (interesting) built up areas, giving me more complexity with fewer starting components.  With a church, 2 cottages, a barn, and a fort, I was able to create a small town, a gated farmstead, and a small fortress.  The small fortress and farm can exist without creating duplicates of any pieces.  Putting the town on the map with either the fort or farm would require a duplicate of one of the houses. 

Small Fort with Barracks and Tower

Town with Church and Two Houses

Gated Farm with House, Barn, and Orchard Behind

I'm not completely convinced I've got the fences and gates right.  I'll keep working on them.  Only the Generals remain, and rightfully so, my daughter wants her pink army to be led by a princess bear.  I'm thinking that the coat would be the same for the Princess General as the other bears, but have a skirt covering her legs.

Army Pink

0 of 1 General Bears

4 of 4 Line Infantry Bears

1 of 1 Grenadier Bears

1 of 1 Cavalry Bears

1 of 1 Artillery Bears

1 of 1 Cannon

Army Blue

0 of 1 General Bears

4 of 4 Line Infantry Bears

1 of 1 Grenadier Bears

1 of 1 Cavalry Bears

1 of 1 Artillery Bears

1 of 1 Cannon

More Terrain Progress

 

The Current Terrain Collection

The terrain collection has expanded.  It now includes (left to right) a barn, two house variations, 2 forest variations, a church, and a blockhouse.  All structures fit in a 2" grid.  The barn, houses, and church have removable roof pieces which can conceal bears.  The blockhouse is a single piece, but bears can occupy the ramparts.  

I've also added corner embellishments that can be added to any of the building models.  These primarily add some visual weight and breakup large flat walls.  The corner supports also add rigidity to the structure when 3D printed, making it more suitable for smaller hands.

Over the past few days, the 3D printer has been churning out models.  I'm going to be out of the house for a considerable chunk of the upcoming week to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Hopefully I can get both sets printed before I leave.  

Army Pink

0 of 1 General Bears

4 of 4 Line Infantry Bears

0 of 1 Grenadier Bears

1 of 1 Cavalry Bears

0 of 1 Artillery Bears

1 of 1 Cannon

Army Blue

0 of 1 General Bears

0 of 4 Line Infantry Bears

0 of 1 Grenadier Bears

0 of 1 Cavalry Bears

0 of 1 Artillery Bears

0 of 1 Cannon

Terrain Progress

 Designing the bear-game terrain continues.  I've redesigned the roof texture to be more Mediterranean.  Smaller roof tiles allows smaller roof segments to have appropriate detail.  The church and cottage below have the same exterior dimensions and base roofline but I think they loos sufficiently different.  The church gets arched and taller windows and doors and a small steeple to differentiate it from other buildings.  These designs are heavily influenced by the simple terrain designs highlighted at https://gameofmonth.blogspot.com, and https://portlandlittlewars.blogspot.com.

Church

. 

Cottage

I've also made a breakthrough on the forests.  The trees are big enough to obscure the bears, yet small enough to fit in the same 2" grid as the bears.  Hopefully the straight section of trees isn't too top heavy.  If they do end up being too heavy, I'll glue them to a base that the bears would also stand on.  The sections with trees on two sides shouldn't be a tipping hazard.  

What Bears?

Terrain Yet to Start

Large Buildings

Fences: Linear cover away from buildings

Fields?: Slows movement & conceals some bears?

Field Works?

Rocky Outcroppings: Linear cover away from buildings

Hills?: Might avoid.  Tends to complicate rules.

Cliffs?: Might avoid.  Tends to complicate rules.

Terrain Work-In-Progress

Small Buildings

Forest

Modular Terrain

Now that I'm relatively locked-in on the bears' dimensions, it's time to work on some terrain.  I'd like to keep the style relatively generic so that it can be adaptable to wherever the bears might find themselves fighting.  (Bonus points if it can be used for humans later)  To that end, I've settled on a slate tile look with very simple doors/windows and stucco/flat walls.  

As with most of what I've designed, I try to use a core catalog of parts and re-arrange them to make different outcomes.  To make the bear project successful I'll need, a variant or two of small cottage houses, a few variants of larger houses, a church, some storehouses/barns, and maybe a few dedicated commercial buildings.  

Basic Cottage Variant 1

Basic Cottage Variant 2

biggest design constraint for terrain is determining if/how units on the board can interact with it.  I'm assuming that the games my daughter and I will play will be largely narrative based so bears will likely need to search houses for honey/treasure or hide from enemy patrols.  I've designed a basic building that the bears can fit in with a removable roof.  The underside of the roof has supports that keep it centered between the gabled ends.  I hope that the gabled ends of the building are rigid enough to survive play.  If not, I'll likely end up redesigning the roof such that it incudes the gabled ends.

Grenadiers Take Cover Inside the Cottage

The most challenging terrain designs are going to be the organic shapes needed for forests.  I could solve this problem by having the trees be removable from their stumps.  When a bear unit needs to occupy the forest, the human player would remove the canopy from the terrain piece and place their bears on the stump field.  This is probably the easiest to design but is somewhat immersion breaking.  The other option I'm considering is making lines of trees to mark the outside of the forest.  The downside there is that the forest would need to be 2x2 grid spaces to completely enclose bears. After I'm satisfied with a few different buildings, I'll make a decision on the forests.  

Terrain Yet to Start

Forest

Large Buildings

Fences: Linear cover away from buildings

Fields?: Slows movement & conceals some bears?

Field Works?

Rocky Outcroppings: Linear cover away from buildings

Hills?: Might avoid.  Tends to complicate rules.

Cliffs?: Might avoid.  Tends to complicate rules.

Terrain Work-In-Progress

Small Buildings

Artillery Bears Completed

I now have the bear minimum of bears designed.  (there are a lot more bear puns than I thought)  A bear army can now have a general accompanied by his bugler, regular infantry, grenadiers, skirmishers?, cavalry, and artillery crews with their gun. 

Gunners: Ready to Load

With the exception of the artillery each "game unit" is a single piece with two bears merged together.  The artillery unit has two parts; the crew and the gun.  Like the rest of the units the crew is merged together at the hip and shoulder.  This allows more bears to fit in a smaller frontage, giving a better massed effect.  Assuming the bears are 40mm tall and a 2" grid, the crew and gun can just bearly fit in a cell.

The Crew Needs to Stand Close

Yet to Start Designs:

Artillery

Artillery Crew

Drummer?

Standard Bear-er?

Pirates w/ bandana headgear?

Pirate w/ flowy shirt?

Cannon on Naval Carriage:

Sailing Ships?:  Would be very simple and probably gridded

Work In Progress:

Horses: Eyes, nostrils, tails, manes, legs?

Terrain: Buildings, Forest, Bridges.  

Horses & Cannons for the Marl-Bear-Ians

"Where a goat can go, a man can go. And where a man can go, he can drag a gun." - General William Phillips

Whenever I walk US battlefields, I'm always impressed with just how far armies used to drag cannons and how they managed to get them over some of the more rugged terrain features.  That being said, General Phillips would be very disappointed with the Marl-Bear-Ians' soft paws.  Their guns will stick to flat open terrain. 

Two Grenadiers Man the Gun

I was able to reuse the cannon from the 18th century commission earlier this year. I did increase bulkiness the carriage and barrel to provide a more toyish look. The crew will be a separate model than the gun.  I'm imagining as the kids get older, a more advanced game might see crews being forced off of their gun and pieces of artillery changing hands several times.  Proper gunners with swabs are in development to crew the pieces.

Profile of a Horse

The horses have been revamped to give more cartoonish details.  I opted against the legs, but did add eyes, manes, and tails.  The core body and neck may be repurposed for cattle, pigs, or sheep if necessary.

Cavalry Troopers: Ready for the Charge

Yet to Start Designs:

Artillery

Artillery Crew

Drummer?

Standard Bear-er?

Pirates w/ bandana headgear?

Pirate w/ flowy shirt?

Cannon on Naval Carriage:

Sailing Ships?:  Would be very simple and probably gridded

Work In Progress:

Horses: Eyes, nostrils, tails, manes, legs?

Terrain: Buildings, Forest, Bridges.