Hallo Sailor (part 2)

Here are all the Victorian era sailors all painted and all massed together. When I say "all the Sailors" I do in fact mean all the enlisted men.|I have a couple of officers to add so you will no doubt be seeing this lot again when I manage to finish them. All they need now is a coat of varnish and to be stored properly.

Meanwhile back in my own thoughts. I think I will start working on a few projects this week. Obviously we have Crooked Dice coming to the club tomorrow which may (I hope) allow me to have a decent chat with Karl. So many ideas I am bound to forget some of them. Anyway my current thinking is that I should start building some desert terrain now. Not for anything Crooked Dice or Zombie related, but if I start making some desert terrain pieces I can use them for a couple of projects that are hanging around in the edges of my consciousness. Desert hills, cliffs, rough ground etc can be used in a few projects. 15mm Apaches, Empire of the Dead, and 15mm sci fi. I was not going to do a desert setting for 15mm sci fi but it makes sense not to start too many projects which would need very different settings. Better I feel to make scenery which has a variety of uses.  I won't start anything until later in the week, but at least I can start thinking about it. Certain terrain feature like hills don't scale so can be used for 28mm as well as 15mm as such these are the most likely places for me to start. As mentioned a long while ago I want these peaces of terrain to be free standing and not a complete terrain board.

Club day tomorrow I'll try to remember my camera and photo the Crooked dice game as much as possible to share on Monday. All the best Clint.

Empire of the Dud!

You have seen the figure in the dark purple dress before. While at Broadside Crooked dice had a deal on for this sculpt so I bought two of them. They are supposedly stone angels from a Not "Dr Where!" Tv Programme or something quite similar. But I thought for the price why not paint them as Vampires. All this is old news and has been covered before when I showed the figure on the left. The figure on the right though is new, finished it yesterday. If you are incredibly observant you will have noted that I have changed the base colour though from Grassy Green, to Sandy Yellow. There is a method to my madness (.... maybe!).  I have purchased the rules "Empire of the Dead" Being honest I have very mixed feelings about them. They are very like Necromunda, obviously with a different background setting and "gangs" but the rule mechanics are very similar. I know Necromunda works so I am not worried about that, although it might give a very retro game experience and might make me want to play that again. My main gripe with the rules is the campaign system. It really is minimal. Just checking for wound results sorting out money and possible character advances, shopping and then back to another random disjointed game. This is fixable. It will take some house rules and some hard thinking, Take for example buying equipment. As it stands in the rules any hero could have a "steam exo-skeleton" a "Tesla projector" a "steam cannon" a "pneumatic stake" a" possessed weapon" and ride a steam powered gyro copter. From what I can see there is no research or development rules, no mad inventors/scientists or the like. If you've got the cash you can just buy it. To me this seems like a missed game opportunity as players soon work out their favourite shopping list pop down to the "Acme Steam Gizmo Emporium" and do a supermarket sweep to get everything they need. Maybe this does not bother younger players but it does bother me. It seems a very half hearted way of doing things. The rules designers will no doubt say "we were trying to keep costs down" to which I would point out the 20+ pages of background material and countless paintings and images in the book counter that argument, as does the £30 price tag!

I have not given up on it just yet, but at this stage I am yet to be convinced! So coming back to why I painted the Vampire bases again. As a club we have quite a lot of cowboy 28mm buildings. So I thought IF I was going to do "Empire of the Dead" that would be a much easier setting than building a Victorian London terrain board. But for now I will not be working on EotD as I feel vaguely disappointed by the whole thing!

All the best Clint., I'll Blog again on Saturday. And to my Club Members Don't forget Crooked Dice will be running a game for us on Sunday. Game starts at 10:45 am.

Rough Langing!

As you can see I have finished my second objective marker for PBI. Slightly different from a wrecked tank we have a wrecked plane. This is an adapted "Academy" 1/144th scale P51 D Mustang. It looks like the pilot would have managed to walk away as it is not a total wreck, more a bad landing.. The whole marker was painted in acrylics an given a Satin Varnish. I can imagine a commander saying something like "When you come to the crashed airoplane, That's the town we need to take!" So it's not as literal an objective as a stack of crates or some barrels, but to me that's a good thing.

 The base does make it a little large for an objective marker, but it all adds to the battle field scenery. I could not tel you which squadron it is from as I just painted what I felt was correct rather than going 100% accurate. Therefore if it is not historically spot on I don't really care. I am sure there are those that do care about such things but as it's just an objective marker I am not one of those. To me it's just a spiffy bit of purposeful scenery.

The tufts are homemade from a wall papering brush they work quite well. Not as easy or as good as commercially bought tufts, but a whole lot cheaper. Sometimes you just have to try things to know how they will (or won't) work. The base is just plasticard (quite thick) wall filler and sand and then painted.

Well that's it for today. Most if not all the 15mm PBI stuff is finished now so on to something new in the next few days. As ever loads of ideas. Could well be some scenery as I seem to have been neglecting that recently and just painting. Or is could be something sitting on the paint table as we speak as there are about 20 figure on it half finished and waiting to get that final push. 

Anyway that's today's offering, more on Thursday. See you soon all the Best Clint.

Hallo Sailor!

A very predictable title given the things I have painted this weekend. I have another 6 to do so you'll no doubt see them soon.  I think they are the Copplestone castings. It seemed really odd to paint them having worked for a while on 15mm figures and space ships. Took me a while to get in the swing of it they seemed so large! It's definitely what you get used to. I have no immediate use for these figures, but as I jump around among projects it won't take that long for them to surface in a game.

I am considering using them in Empire of the Dead. They are not my first choice though despite the fact they are of the correct era. Until the rules arrive (I'm told they are in the post) I can't really focus on what I will do with the game. I have ideas of course. More ideas than I can shake a very wobbly stick at. One thing is for sure I will not be building a Victorian London. I have far too many ideas that I wish to bring to fruition.

That's it for today, I'll post again on Tuesday. All the best Clint.