On With the Vimy Project!

With ToonCon and REGINA TRENCH! out of the way it’s time to get cracking on the Vimy Project once again, So I thought I’d just post a quick update on the state of the project – as much to remind myself what still needs to be done as any of you our there in bloggerland. I have 19 weeks until the Winter Wargaming Weekend/birthday Bash and 25 weeks until the big show on the 100^th anniversary of the battle – 9 April 2017.

(For those that are new, the plan is to make a roughly scale model of Vimy Ridge and enough figures to make 48 Canadian battalions and 18 German battalions – at 15 figures/battalion – plus staff and support models it will total well over 1000 figures - and have this all ready for the 100^th Anniversary of the battle on 9 April 2017 – I posted the initial Vimy Project plans almost 10 years ago and have been working on it on and off since then. More “off” than “on”, I’m afraid. But now it’s Go Time and I am all “ON” for then next 6 months!)

I have between 19 and 23 battalions of British Canadians to finish before then… There are 19 battalions I need to finish the Canadian Corps – but 4 of them did not participate in the battle on 9 April 1917 – the 10^th Brigade was being held in reserve to assault The Pimple – a redoubt just nort of the ridge – on the following day. So I don’t REALLY need to have them painted for the game… There are four battalions of British that were attached to the Canadains on the 9th, however, that I should get done.

There are between 9 and 12 battalions of German infantry I need to cast and paint up as well.

I also need some more support teams (mortars and machine-guns) – some still need to be assembled, some still need to be acquired! I need to finish up 7 machine-gun and 6 mortar teams for the Canadians and 5-10 machine-gun and 3-8 mortar teams for the Germans (depending on how many I decide I’m going to use per Regiment)

This means I have 28–35 battalions of infantry still to do about 20-30 support teams to do in 15 weeks. I should probably be trying to get two battalions of infantry and at least one support team done each week (because I still have terrain to do!!)

Sooooo… no more Zulus (or any other distractions, for that matter!) until next may!! (Although I probably will try to get in a few games of The Men Who Would Be Kings with stuff that I already have).

And then there is the terrain…

I can say this weekend I resumed work on the Vimy terrain. I am starting with refurbishing the original terrain for the 4^th Division that I started building almost 10 years ago. A little over four years ago I started refurbishing the terrain (as the original terrain was a bit rushed and I didn’t get to doing all the details in the trenches I’d originally intended (revetting, duck boards, sandbag parapets, etc). Also the original trenches were a lot narrower (as I’d made them for miniatures originally based on smaller bases than my current miniatures are! I have three (of the four) terrain block to refurbish and a dozen more, or so, to build from scratch.

The Fourth Division's terrain - at the north end of the Ridge - with parts that I previously refurbished (bottom left), parts I'm just cutting into (mostly on the right) and stuff I haven't gotten to (everywhere else). 

Parts of the Nothern half of the Fourth Division terrain - including the parts I previously refurbished.

Northwest corner of the Fourth Division Terrain where I've don most of the cutting so far. What a mess. 

The Southeast corner of the Fourth Division terrain - with a few figures thrown in for scale. Haven't done any cutting here just yet - so you can see the terrain pretty much as it was.

Detail of the old trenches as they are (with a few markings where I'm planning to cut).



I’ll admit I’m not the most organized of planners. I’ve also been spending a lot of time going through old boxes trying to find notes or sketches or plans or maps I used to make the original terrain and studying them to try and figure out how to connect the existing terrain in with the new bits I’m going to have to make. These are some of the sketches from various different parts of the planning process at various different times over the last 10 years. Some make more sense than others. But none exactly match the terrain I made. I’m guessing in the process of actually MAKING the terrain I just made changes on the fly to deal with things that came up… or I simply treated the plans a little like the “Pirates Code”… “They’re more like… guidelines…”

In the process of making this mess, however, I got to realizing I hadn’t included any support or communication trenches on the Canadian side. In game terms they weren’t really necessary – and most of the support trenches wouldn’t fit on the planned are of terrain – but I got to wondering if I should at least add in some communication trenches while I’m at it?

This also led me to wondering if I should include all of the subways that were build to help bring troops and supplies forward for the assault – safe and out of sight of the Germans on the ridge! If so, how should I depict them – just model the subway exit points in the front line? Or should I make underground subways (with removable tops) that we can store all the second wave troops in until after the first wave troops have left the frontline trenches!? 

I should definitely make some dugouts for all the trench mortar teams! I’ve started doing so on the Germans side of things (as well as posts for MG teams). But I should probably do the same for the Canadians (which gives me another reason to do Communication trenches as the Trench mortar dugouts would be off the communications trenches…

What about forward command posts for the brigade staff I’ve been painting? Should I do the same on the other side – have command posts on the other side for Regimental staff? I have no idea where these would have actually been historically and no idea where to start looking. So do I bother? Or just put some in for fun in a reasonable/likely place?

I also need to make some more Barrage Markers.

Oh and I’m going to need to make a whole lot MORE Barbed Wire!

So… the plan… After sitting down and thinking things over this afternoon I decided ideally things should go something like this:

October

Finish refurbishing 4^th Division terrain

Finish plans for the rest of the terrain

Paint 1^st Brigade figures and 2 German MGs and 1 Canadian MG

November

Start on 3^rd Division terrain squares

Paint 4^th and 5^th Brigades (8 battalions) plus available support weapons

December

Finish 3^rd Division Terrain squares, start on 2^nd division

Cast and paint 3 regiments (9 battalions) of Germans

January

Figure out budget for the year

Order remaining figures (6^th Brigade plus assorted support weapons)

Cast and paint 3 more German battalions and British Brigade

Finish 2^nd Divison terrain, start on 1^st Division

February

Paint 6^th Brigade

Finish 1^st Division terrain

This would get the bulk of the work done by the end of February so I could do some playtesting on the annual Winter Wargaming Weekend/Birthday Bash…

This would leave March to finish up anything not quite finished up and to make barrage markers and wire and measuring sticks and maps and divisional/brigade order sheets, etc.

Oh yeah… and somewhere along the line I’ll need to recruit some more players… If I had one player per Canadian Brigade (each commanding 4 battalions) and four “helpers” to run the Germans, I’ll need 16 participants.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Not Zulus… Great War Stuff!!