Just updating with some recent projects done over the Corona break, not that I've had that much free time off of work, but not gaming has created some opportunities.

This is a church for the Russian village for Bolt Action/Chain of Command. Roof comes off, 4x4 playable interior.

I still need to do a steeple, waiting to 3d print one.

2018

While I've started a fair number of projects I have finished only a few.  With the laser set up in a new location I resolved to overcome that and get to work on my new Infinity table.

To that end I built a ramen shop - trying to mix a sci fi look with some more traditional elements.

More Infinity

So this summer's attempts to get Infinity off the ground here have met with all of our usual distractions, half attempts, and false starts. Still progress is being made - as proof here are some WIP shots of the latest conversion I picked up, a 1:55 fire truck from Disney's Cars line.

I cut away the plastic ladder on top, added an old plastic Rhino end to the back, and covered the mouth on the lower front with a door from an old Rhino. For the other I cut rear doors from plasticard.

The tops are too large and open to leave bare, but I haven't decided what to put up there yet, probably a couple of vents made from aerator parts, some stowage, maybe a winch or mechanical arm from an old mech warrior.

I am going to leave these as civilian vehicles, so probably a white paint job with some sort of color accent.

Prepping for Infinity

Every year it seems Miscon gets a few of us excited about some old game that hasn't made it to the backwoods here.

This year it was Infinity - it's not like it hasn't been all over the net for years, but getting the impetus going locally has been hard. This year Mike U's great set up finally got the ball rolling. No problem for me, I had already started on the road to building 28mm Tomorrow's War so this coincides with that.

First part is putting together scenery and to that end I am soliciting opinions before I 3D print these. Are the square windows too Modern versus the Octagonal ones, or in other terms, insufficiently SCI FI? Square is more practical to build and for real world applications, but I wonder if they won't look futuristic enough?


Anyway,  input please.

Option 1           Square Windows

Over all layout

Option 2          Octagonal Windows
 

Tomorrow War Train

As we are getting into Tomorrow War I have been looking into some better terrain for 28mm sci fi than what  I already have.

The storage containers were the first large project and spurred on by a thread on LAF I was inspired to look at modifying the containers into a sci fi train. In looking at different images on Google I have been leaning more and more towards taking inspiration from the hover train in Firefly. That eliminates the need for a scale track and more important wheels which would be a bear to model.

So the issue becomes a low and wide train which is more practical from a reality perspective or high and narrow which makes the train as wide as a modern one and gives as much of a terrain visual break as most buildings.

Tall and Narrow

 

Any one have input before I make a choice and have it printed up?

 



 

 



Bloody Fields, Petty Kings

With the Game of Thrones campaign now at an end I am going forward with the rules as a more generic fantasy rules set, tentatively titled Bloody Fields, Petty Kings.

First - the focus; Like the GoT campaign, the rules will be for small level petty wars. Slightly larger than skirmish, but not mass battles. Too many fantasy rules try to include everything and I believe what is left out will be as important as what is left in. To that end it is assumed that;

1. The technology will be pre gunpowder, that sort of generic fantasy mish-mash time period.
2. The style of warfare is similar to all factions/races.
3. The battle rules should be able to play without campaign rules, but still be enhanced when they are included.

Also I need to remind myself of what I find engaging

1. The game should include both players at all times. Just rolling dice is not being included. There should be decision points at every stage of the turn and game.
2. All mechanisms should move the game forward and do so in a timely way.
3. Decisions should have meaning.
4. Tables are bad - I rely on them too much.

So what did I think worked last time?

1. The combat cards - I thought these worked well in concept (though bad in balance sometimes, ONSLAUGHT anybody?) because they allowed the player decision to be as important as the dice.
2. The surge - I still like the idea of limited command and control, even though I know it chaffed on others used to Warhammer.  For the initial move I want to go to what I discussed concerning an initial battle plan that has order chits - Hold, Take and Hold, Advance, and Withdraw probably. From there the game devolves into desperate measures to change the situation. To maintain this it is necessary for combat to be a tad bit less lethal.
3. Prebattle set up. It needs reworked for balance but the scouting and such seemed to flow smoothly.

And what didn't work?

• The combat was too lethal too fast and not very balanced.
• Army lists. These take a ton of balancing, so to help I would like to go with the broad asset method of selecting units.
• Rules on 3x5 cards. Sorry, this is purely a result of my distracted procrastination.
• Flying units - While the image of the charge of the Ghost Riders of Khos from Divine Right will forever be locked in my heart, flying is a powerful ability that has major implications for any game. Some brainstorming options to balance/hinder the ability include weaker units, can only fly once, easy to route,  hard to control, and high cost.
• Magic I am going to leave this one alone.
• Terrain needs to be better described in ability so that players are not too surprised.

As to new ideas;

1. Baggage
2. Unit cards
3. The storm of Doom

A low Fantasy Game

So last weeks Game of Thrones board game has given rise to the talk of a small miniatures campaign, either a GoT specific one or a broader low fantasy game.

It would be nice to play such a thing. I have several fantasy armies in various stages of completion that it would be nice to see on the table again, plus there have been some impressive displays on Lead Adventure Forum of adaptions of plastic minis to use for GoT.

For those who don't keep track of such things there has been a rash of plastic kits of late. Most of these come in boxes that cost only one or two dollars per figure, making a force a relatively cheap option compared to what some players are used to.

Conquest

Fireforge

Gripping Beast Dark Ages

Perry War of the Roses

Wargames Factory

Warlord

Using these and other figures as well as creative mixing of heads and arms a unique army can be built.

Rules wise there are many options, but there is much thinking to do on that subject.

New church for Swashbuckling

To prove that I haven't been slacking, here are some work in progress photos of the church for the 1650 game in May.  The total thing is 7"x15" with a playable interior. I'm not sure I'll be able to get the bell tower finished in time, but the main building will be with the possible exception of a couple of icons on the front.

 

The confessional and an altar will probably be the only interior items - I had to exclude columns to make room for hands during gaming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll also do a new fountain for the Plaza and at least one other building. For scale, the minis in the second picture are a Reaper nun, Brigade lady De Winter, and Tercio Creativo swordsman.

Psycho?

Trying to verify if this fellow is the "Psycho" from the original pre rogue trader space pirates line.

In response to a TMP question, I am putting up a size comparison photo of some swashbuckling/TYW figs.
As always please ignore the crappy photo and painting.

left to right
Warlord -Rengade - Ral Partha - Redoubt - Tercio Creativo - Brigade

Except for the Tercio Creativo these all had integral bases that were glued to the washer.

Painted in June

Fairly poor showing and an obviously mixed bag where I was unable to focus on anything. This doesn't include a couple of dozen more figures partially done that I haven't worked up the umpph to finish.

Left to right Brigade (?) plastic toy, Warlord P&S sniper, Warlord Count Tilly, Foundry extra, Musketeer IWI.

I swapped Count Tilly's bible for a plastic sword hand from the Warlord cavalry.

The plastic cow is from the old wagon full of toys at Finnegans with horns made from brass rod and green stuff.

OK, these two don't go together but they are emblematic of my just trying to finish something - they were done because they were simple and easy.

Cactus Field

For the summer old west games seem natural so I have been repairing some of the buildings and even found time to add some new terrain. Here is my test piece for some cactus fields.

CD base covered in a sandstone grout, drybrushed, and then tufts and some burrs added. Simple and fast!

Of course the lowly prickly pear lacks the majesty of some other cacti, but a dense field (and I need to make the next couple of bases with much denser cacti) will definetly slow a person down.

Cossack Cav

As I get started on painting the next 17 I thought I'd post up the first seven of the Cossack cavalry. They've been painted for months and have even seen a couple of games, but bases have finally been done.

They are from Foundry's SYW line except for the leader, a random Das Aus Schwarz (or something) figure I had lying around. One thing about these is the size of the horses - they are tiny! Truly these fellows are riding steppe ponies. These I was easily able to mount on 3/4' washers, though I've gone to 1" with the next batch  and will probably have to retro these.

Not exactly Cleopatra Jones, but after painting the dozen cavalry and some Scots with claymores I wanted to do something different. I have plans to use her in an upcoming zombie game, but in all honesty this was like the elephant man - something to change up what I had been doing.

Reaper Elephant

I finally finished and based this guy. It's a Reaper figure that I picked up on a whim several years ago but have never really had a use for.

Someday he'll probably show up in my D&D campaign as a Rakshasa lord or something.

Of course I also picked up a cheap 1" brass elephant headed Hindu god from Import Market, so maybe I'll just start an elephant headed Indian themed fantasy army.

Spring Painting I'll celebrate with crappy photos

Tercio Sacristanes and the Maltese

Not really rooted in any historical unit, I used a throw away mention of a Spanish Tercio in a history of the Spanish Road, called the sacristanes for their dark attire, to put together one of the two musketeer wings of my Thirty Years War mercenaries.

They are all Renegade miniatures as is the leader who I added a cloak to simply so I could paint a Maltese Cross on the shoulder.

Cossacks

A rare event - I not only finished painting two units of cossacks, but for once I got the bases dones as well.
As the guns are flintlock not matchlocks these TAG figures are meant for a few decades after the Thirty Years War, but for my purposes they are close enough.

These are the first TAG figures I have gotten my hands on and while they are a bit smaller in height and bulk than the Redoubts I started the period with, they work on the tabletop together. 

Left to right: Warlord plastic, The Assault Group, Redoubt, Foundry pirate

Pine Trees

I have finally gotten around to putting together some standing pines. Great for any temperate clime, can be used for the Rockies or the Carpathians.

The trunks are bamboo skewers. The upper ends were drilled out with a pin vise to take the bottle brush tops.

I glued six random length skewers to each CD, then reinforced each one with a bit of two part plumbers putty. Once dried I primed everything grey. The trunks were then streaked with a little bit of brown and highlighted with greys and even a bit of white.

The base is covered in a sandstone colored premix tile grout and any areas of the CD where the primer shows through painted with Americana Mississipi Mud.

To tie the base together I then drybrush both the unpainted grout and painted areas with a whitened highlight of Americana Fawn.


The tree tops are some old Heiki brand bottle brush style pines. I simply undid the first coil of wire and stuck a single strand of wire into the hole drilled in each skewer.

I left the bases fairly clear of litter or foliage and later I'll probably go back and put down some flock, but for now I wanted to facilitate moving figures.

This is my first time using the grout for large scale basing and I gotta say I really like it. The color matches the Americana fawn perfectly and I forsee using quite a bit of it.