Summer Doldrums

Well not exactly. Summers get busy around here for all sorts of reasons. Not too much going on on the modelling front. Some birthday  gifts have been cleaned up and epoxied to  the requisite washers, some have even been undercoated.

Gaming paradoxically has been good. We were off camping in August which oddly saw me play a number of games of Resistance, Skull and Roses and several incomplete games of Saga. Hardcore gamer all the way.

The printing front has been quiet with a large print of a 28mm Martian Skiff failing just before we went away. That has been sorted out and will be reprinted after I add more detail.  On the camping trip, I came into possession of the Aeronef rules. I had given up on these as a set I had ordered and paid for a couple of years back never arrived. They look to be good fast play rules and I love the ships. So what does this have to do with the printer?

Here is my first pass at some 1200 Aeronefs. There were some issues with the fins being too thin and the support for the carrier flight deck.

These faults have been rectified in the upgraded designs. I am not sure if the fins are too big here.

The original DD beefed up a bit in the fins and the funnel left solid. Otherwise I am very happy with this model.

A slightly larger DD variant, I added the sponsons as this will be a common feature of this fleet. I am also a bit of a torpedo junky so this one gets a quad tube mount. It could also be a leader for a flotilla of the smaller ships.

So quite a bit accomplished for a lazy/busy summer.

RAFM Scores a great new line of figures!

RAFM Airship Pirates  Yes folks, Abney Park and RAFM have banded together to produce a line of 32mm heroic scale Airship Pirates.  At the moment the pics are only on Facebook but I am sure they will be showing upon the main RAFM page as they become available.  This should be a very very  cool line of figures.  And now to go crank up some Abney Park

Cangames Day I - Day III

Well this certainly took a lot longer than expected to put up. In brief, I forgot my camera, squirrels attacked the house cutting short my Cangames and then work got very, very busy. Fortunately, Rob of Captain's Blog kindly sent me the photos below a few days after the event.


My game on Day I went very well. Five of six slots were filled and the players seemed to have a good time. As with every event, something important got left behind and that was the camera and of course my fancy new movement bases.

The Objective - An Ancient Martian Temple

I learned a great deal about running convention games. The play aids went down pretty well. However I did learn that a good percentage of players won't even look at a QRS, I found myself explaining things that I thought were pretty clearly laid out on the sheet.  I also found out that players will do the unexpected especially when they are not familiar with the time period.

Hill Martian light cavalry survivors flank the Earthers after charging formed infantry. 

On the Earth side, the three players had a good understanding of colonial era tactics and deployed and moved accordingly.  On the Martian side, this was not the case. I really didn't expect to see hill Martian light cavalry charging in the open against a formed British company (it wasn't pleasant). Later, another player told me he had never heard of an enfiladed line. Again no criticism of the players and a clear sign that keeping things simple is absolutely critical in a convention game.  The young lady whose Hill Martians charged the British with disastrous effect later routed a rifle company with her High Martians so player skill was not in question.

Watch the Monkeys..... 

Of course, the game brought out a number of sticking points with the rules - or rather my understanding of them.  A close re-reading after the fact cleared up some problems we had with opportunity fire - it is there, just not obviously so.  My only real complaint was with the initiative system. The Martians won initiative something like 5 times in a row leaving the Terran players twiddling their thumbs until the defensive fire phase. This wouldn't be a big problem in  a club game but it really isn't good to have players standing around in a convention game.  Card activation by unit is probably a better route.  

Please, Sir - Can we move?

A good game for a first time outing and many lessons learned on my part.  A big thank-you to all the players.

Martians Sir! Dozens of them!

Day two - Saturday was a slow one with some non-game related frustrations.  It began well enough when I found that the naval game I thought had been cancelled had been moved to later time period.  I had missed the game last year due to a scheduling conflict and was really looking forward to it this year.  I did my shift on the information desk and then the missus came by and we walked home together taking in a street festival along the way. Very pleasant indeed. 

I was cooking up some chicken burgers for an early dinner before heading back to the con for the naval game when I saw our attic squirrels were all grown up and ready to be booted out. To keep it short, a mother squirrel had chewed through a roof vent and nested inside. We had been advised to leave her be if possible because if we sealed her out away from her babies she would do a lot of damage getting back in and to put it bluntly, dead squirrel babies in your roof create quite a stink. Having been considerate to momma squirrel we now found she had torn away some of the shingling and of course it was going to rain the following day. 

I went back that evening to play in the home brew WWII naval game put on by Chris Evans from Ottawa Miniature Gamers.  Buckets of dice fast play but with a good level of detail. One of my Italian destroyers put a full load of torpedoes into a British light cruiser sending it to the bottom. I also learned a lot from Chris on how to run a convention game.

On Sunday, I went in for my volunteer shift as promised. I flipped part of my admission refund into Air Force, Tactics II and Lufwaffe from the gamer's market and headed home to repair the roof. I missed a WW I Naval game and sadly the DBA tournament.The only good side to this was that the damage was much less severe than we thought.

So a great learning experience and some great gaming with good people sadly cut short. I will go back next year - and may be run another game.

Rogues Gallery

A very big Thank You to Rob for allowing me permission to use his pictures.

Hill Martians advance past Shield Gunners

The regulars advance supported on their right by stragglers and staff from the Officer's Mess

What? Another flipping hedge? Canal Martian infantry tell the ref some area features
would go down well in the next battle.  

Using Earther tech against the invaders! A Whitworth gets ready to fire.

Temple Fanatics Charge the thin Red Lin!

Cangames 2013 Day 1 - preparing for my first convention game.

Last night was volunteer training. I am on service desk this year so more talking and less hot glue. The shifts are long but one gets you a day pass refund and two gets you a full weekend refund and of course you are helping out the local gaming community. This year I will take the refund since that will be my toy money.  After watching the kids standing around while the old guys moved table last year, I decided I wasn't able bodied this year and besides - I had final preparations to carry out.  

Because tonight's the night. I will be running my first ever convention game.  With life revving up at home and work over the last few months, I have not been able to put in as much time or to be honest money as I would have liked into the project. However, as an old mentor said about teaching, the participants will leave with more than they came with.

So some samples:

Martian artillery

Yes Bob, they are regulars so get the shaken state. ;)  I am calling them European trained Askaris who have gone over to the rebel side. Loyalties can be changed by swapping the rammer figures. A roogie is a small pack hunter. I have decided that the martians will use banners since they have bannermen in their to&e

Hill Martian Light Cavalry

The only true cavalry unit on the table for this game.  I have some Sikhs to paint up for the Earthers.  

Colonial Rifles

Not quite my old regiment but close. I left the field craft at 2 because we didn't do so well at Cutknife Hill.
Part of the reason for going with big earth units was to allow for a square formation because: You yellow  yellin', yomper - for you broke a British square!

Pictures and full report to follow. 

The Push Part III More Paper Work

Since I am aiming at a potentially newbie audience and Soldier's Companion is an older more dice intensive rules system, I wanted to put together a QR sheet. It's not perfect and I have intentionally omitted a few things but I hope it will help make matters clearer.

Some of the formatting could be better and I caught one spelling mistake as soon as I printed it - always the way. On the whole I am quite happy with the results.

One interesting discovery was how working methodically through all the little details brings up some of the finer points of the rules that you don't see when playing. The morale rules in particular have some subtleties I hadn't noticed in the heat of it. Next up Unit Cards again.

The Push - Part II

This last weekend was spent finishing up the last of the figures for my game at Cangames

On the Painting Table

I while back, I had ordered up a pair of Whitworth 12 pounder Rifles to reinforce the Martians. They will count as rod guns but being breech loaders will have an improved rate of fire of 1 and will be able to fire shell. Their back story is that they are American Civil War ex-CSA surplus sold on to the natives by unscrupulous Yankee traders. To support this, I decided to paint them up some what accurately. The included instructions said the carriages were painted "olive" a somewhat vague description. I went on-line and poked around various historical and re-enactor sites then mixed up a batch of something fairly close. The whole process took a bit of time but I felt it was worth it. Later in the day, I was rummaging around in the paints box and came up with a pot of GW Catachan green - an almost  identical match for what I had mixed up. Live and learn.

After painting was complete it was into the dip for everyone. I really like the block paint and dip method. It doesn't always do justice to the sculptors' art but then neither does my level of painting skill.  What the dip does do is encase every model in a hard wearing shell that is unfortunately glossy. I am cheap so my dip is Future floor polish with a healthy dose of brown paint. To kill that gloss the next step is:

Form up for Dullcote!

I use Krylon Matte Finish rather than Testors Dullcote mostly because it is what I have. For me, painting is something to get out of the way so I can play the game. For others, painting and basing is central to their enjoyment. This is one of the things I like about the hobby, there are many ways to enjoy it.

Onward to the play aids!

The Push - Part 1

As mentioned previously, I will be running an 1889 game at Cangames this year. With school work out of the way and things at work calming down a bit, I was able to get going on terrain this past weekend.

Dollar Store Goodies

An earlier trip to the Dollar Store gave me some of the materials to work with. Woodlands Scenics it isn't but the price can't be beat. One note: try to buy all you need of a certain item in one go - you may never see the exact same item in stock again.    

Red Weed

Plastic plants are always useful. As you can see above, most are made up of smaller sprigs that can be separated out. Be sure to wash all plastics well to remove any mould release agent especially if you will be painting or dry brushing later.

Stacked up ready to go

My rifles still needed some touch ups and I had purchased some guns to even the odds for the Martians. Saturday was pretty grey wet out so painting was the order of the day.

The bird houses were slated to become a Martian swamp village. Weapon ranges are rather long so the Martians need all the cover they can get. The first step was to give them a good coat of gesso.

Doors

The next step was to add some doors cut out of recycled three ring binder cover card and cereal boxes.

Garish....

 The back story material for Space 1889 talks about the Martians ability to fuse sand to create their canals. I thought that the same technology would be used in house construction. Canada is now, or rather was home to a rather ugly form of pottery known as Blue Mountain. I used that as a inspiration for my swamp Martian huts.  While Blue Mountain primarily used a subdued dark green, I went with brighter colours. I am going to rationalize this by saying that Space 1889 can quickly devolve into "North West Frontier in Space".  I wanted to mix some "strange" into it so that the players know this is not just India on another planet. 

Ready to move in.

Sunday was bright and sunny so construction moved outside. The various bits of plastic greenery were cut down, reconfigured and applied as thatching to the huts to produce the rather fetching trio above. Bits of ceramic fruit and silk flowers were used to add a feminine touch.... not sure why exactly but there you go.

Hedges

Other bits of  greenery were hot glued onto more recycled binder card to produce a series of hedges for the Martians to hide behind.

Cheap Walls

A final project for the day was to make up a series of broken walls out of recycled Styrofoam scrounged by a friend on garbage day. I used the beaded variety because it was what I had and the beads give a rubble like texture to the breaks. It is not particularly robust so for longer term use I would look for insulation board and possibly even add an MDF base for strength.

Next up will probably be the temple complex. Work is also ongoing on the unit cards and quick reference sheets.  When does a hobby turn into more work than your actual work?

New Steampunk Miniatures from Meridian

Yes I am an unrepentant RAFM fan-boy but sometimes you want to order off a different menu. Andrew May over at Meridian Miniatures has been working on a new line of steampunk miniatures.  He has a few pictures up on his Blog and has posted quite a few more on the most august of all war gaming boards: WD3. Be sure to check out his Facebook page as well.

Although there are other steampunk lines on the market, Andrew has come up with a range of heads that cover the usual subjects but also add in some diver's helmet and post apocalyptic variations that capture the genre very nicely. But, what I am really excited about is his range of weapons. Most steampunk weapons I have seen have been influenced by  WH 40K. Andrew's are unique and beautifully capture the creativity and variety of weapons created by steampunk cos-players and authors. 

Post Apocalyptic Heads

Diver Helmet Heads

Great Steampunk Weapons

Be sure to check out some the contract work he has done. He is a very talented sculptor.

Magnetic Movement Trays Part II

With Cangames fast approaching I have been trying to fit in bits of modelling here and there. Unfortunately, the weather has been less than cooperative, reducing my time in the man cave. So painting the movement trays I made earlier it is.

Above is a selection of the three types of bases. The small ones on top are for regular troops in base to base contact, the larger rectangles are for massed irregulars and the larger ones are for your sneaky skirmisher types. All are made up of thin MDF drilled to take rare earth magnets at appropriate spacing.  I am still deciding to flock or not. So let's put the boys on the cat walk.

We begin with a quintet of Oenotrian Fusiliers. Though most of these lads are from the Cutter company, they have brought along one of their riflemen to balance out the party.

Next up is a mass formation of Oenotrian citizens army irregulars demonstrating the close packed formations so often seen in the streets after the Gashant Polo Matches let out. The fuzziness of the image is as much due to the intoxication of the fearsome fighters as it is due to the incompetence of the photographer.

And finally, we have 5 young Martian chaps down from the hills showing off the latest spring fashions while they demonstrate their renowned skirmishing skills.

The bases work quite well and can even be inverted without the minis falling off (as long as you don't shake them too much) As noted in the first post keep them away from your credit cards etc.

Next up we go terrain shopping at the dollar store.

Flocking Day

Last Saturday was Flocking Day. Given the lingering cold weather, I worked inside.

Everything laid out before I begin. In the recycled (and thoroughly washed) meat tray is my standard flocking material - spent tea leaves. These are collected,  dried out and stored in the blue tin in the background. The texture is fairly coarse but it works well with a little dry brush.

A soldier of the Queen gets glued up. I use a good quality PVA glue to stick the leaves down,

And into the tea leaves he goes.

Also due for some attention are some 15mm Ancient Britons. In either scale, I take care not to get glue where it shouldn't go. I am not too worried about getting flock on the boots or legs as it comes of very easily while the glue is wet and is still fairly easy to to remove once dry.

And onto the leaves they go. I don't press the flocking material down at all just give the base a good dunking. That helps keep the coating light and natural looking - well as natural as massively over-scale tea leaves can look.

And part one is complete. The Martians got the same treatment but using sand instead of tea. Once the flock is dry, I knock off any loose bits. Then using a brush or dipping, the bases get a dollop of PVA thinned with water to which a very, very small amount of dish soap has been added to break the surface tension.   This soaks easily into the basing material and locks everything in nicely. Once this is dry, all that is required is a quick dry brush and you have a serviceable base for your soldiers.

The Mechanic

The RAFM babbage engine has been update with new paper tape and the clockwork assistants are ready to take your Aethernet orders: The Mechanic

Big Mechanic, Little Mechanic

On Tuesday, I received a package in the mail. The missus aka +Geeky Godmother  asked if she could do a special un-boxing post for her blog and here it is: Geeky Godmother


Enjoy!

Friday DBMM Yuan Chinese and Javanese

This Friday past I was able to escape from a house full of teenage girls and head down to the club for a little 350 point DBMM.

Nicholas had set up the game and provided the Javanese forces while Ben brought his Chinese and Mongols to the table. Thank you to both for bringing some very nicely painted troops for us to play with. With the armies selected, the next step was to assign sides. Given my inability to handle horse, I, Pat, teamed up with Nick on the Javanese side and Patrick went with Ben on team Yuan. (Yes we get confused too.)

Next up was rolling for the battlefield. The terrain picks were a good assortment of woods, hills and marsh. The dice were fickle, and with the exception of one small wooded hill on the Javanese left flank, it all wound up crammed into the right side of the table leaving the centre wide open - perfect for ravaging horse.

We split the Javanese into three commands. A light command of horse and foot was tasked with holding the rough country on the right. Two roughly similar commands of bow and warband covered the centre and left. We set these up one behind the other to give us two lines of bow on the left and two lines of warband in the centre. Nick took the front line and the right and I took the second line.

The Yuan were also laid out in three commands. The Mongol horse on their right, a mixed force of blade, bow and artillery in the centre and a mixed light force on their left opposite the rough terrain. Ben took right and centre while Patrick took left. Both armies were pushed up fairly close to the centre line. I must apologized because being focused on my own troops, I didn't pay much attention to what was going on in the rough terrain.

The game opened fairly conventionally. Nick and I pushed forward across the board as did Ben and Patrick. Ben pushed his horse forward on our left hoping to flank and disrupt the bow line. Nick was able to adjust his line and caught a couple of bases of Mongols in range. One was the general. The option was to take a high probability shot at a base of troopers that would break up the line or take a much riskier shot at the general. Nick went for the general and he went down.

In the centre, we got a couple of moves in with the warband blocks. Then I rolled a 1 for pips and in they went. Nick let his go as well, leaving two lines of heavily caffeinated Javanese charging into artillery, bows and blades. On our right, Nick was able to push his lights almost the whole way through the rough going and he and Patrick began fencing with Lh and Ps.

In the centre, the Chinese man-powered artillery punched holes through the oncoming warband while bows nibbled away at the edges. The blades braced for impact. Ben's leader-less horse were able to harass the edges of the warband block but ultimately pip starvation meant that they fell under Nick's bow and broke.

As I said above, I am not sure what was happening in the rough on the right but Nick retired 4 or 5 dice that night so I suspect it was bloody. The centre saw the warband sweep away the artillery and get stuck into the blades. Going sponno freed up pips to protect the flanks and keep the front rank gaps filled in. A good thing too since the co-mingled warband lines were four deep in some spots. Casualties were heavy, but being only 0.5 ME meant that the warband had considerable staying power. Finally holes were ground through the Yaunline, a second command broke and the Yuan were driven from the field.

A great game with some great gamers.

Planning for War!

Given the size of my Space 1889 collection, I decided I better do something with it. So, I put in to run a Soldier's Companion Game at CanGames 2013 in May of this year. This will be the first time I have run a proper convention game.  I have been doing a fair bit of painting but nothing really worth putting up yet. Given that the Soldier's Companion rules are a little old school for modern gamers and that I wanted to run an introductory level game, I have been working on a number of play aids.

Below is a draft Unit Card:

A little plain right now but it captures most of the information the player will need to manoeuvre their unit on the table. Each card will have a picture of the actual miniatures in the unit as well as a national flag to identify what side it is on. The Oenotrian flag above is not canon, just something I threw together in Gimp.

Once I finalize the data I will add some decoration and other fluff. Then they will be printed on heavy card and laminated. The players will be given erasable markers to track casualties, morale levels and other changeable information. 

I am also working on quick reference sheets and movement sticks.

More to follow

I Am A Space Marine!

IP enforcement is one thing, trying to take over a generic term is another.  Sadly Games Workshop has gotten just a little too heavy handed.

M.C.A. Hogarth has had her book yanked from Amazon because GW claims they own the term "Space Marine" despite it being used in literature since 1934.

I Am A Space Marine! 

Into the New Year - Magnetic Movement Trays

Antevaxx' Kraag is on hold until the weather gets warm enough to spray paint outside again.

As is our custom, the holiday season was spent holed up with the family all in our PJs, noshing on good food and just spending time together, thus my lack of the usual seasonal posts.

Santa was good to me this year, dropping into my stocking an assortment of RAFM Space 1889 Martian Infantry, a full company of RAFM Canadian Militia Rifles from their Riel Rebellion line and a Gashant Gatling Train:

While the Gashants are very pretty and very much appreciated, the Rifles are special because they were funded by Santa's helpers 1 and 2 - aka my daughters and the troops they represent were drawn from  my regiment, the GGFG. 

Another welcome gift was a certificate for Lee Valley Tools, a purveyor of fine woodworking tools and hardware as well as a range of garden and home accessories. Part of that went toward these:

240 1/8" rare earth magnets and a drill bit to match. So what possibly could I want with these? Units in  the Space 1889  Soldier's Companion Rules can take several different formations such as line, column open order and square. Further, units are made up of up to 20 single based figures each on its own 3/4" washer.  Making and moving formations of 20 figures can be a little tiresome. I decided to make things a bit easier.

At the top of this picture are the templates for two sizes of tray - 5 men in closed and open order. The overall size is pre-measured as is the spacing for the holes to take the magnets. Because I based my figures on washers, I had to off set the magnets slightly so they were not under the hole in the washer. Testing on scrap really helped reveal little problems like this and to get the spacing right. The ends of the bases were rounded with the scroll saw to a reasonable profile. I wasn't too worried about aesthetics yet as I will be bevelling the base edges. At the top of the picture is the two part epoxy used to glue the magnets in place. To the right of that is the rather extensive warning sheet for the magnets. The little ones I used aren't too dangerous but the larger ones can draw blood if the wrong body part gets pinched between a pair.

Here we see some of the magnets glued into place. Any excess epoxy has been smeared around the magnets to  better hold them in place.  The bases are being left flat until the glue hardens. I used wax paper underneath but I expect some will stick to that. I was going to set them on edge to dry to avoid this, but the magnets are strong enough to pull the bases together and in one case, pull a magnet right out of the base and send it flying across the room.

Cavalry and Martian Horde bases are to follow.

A happy New Year to you all. 

Handsome Devils

Work has kept me busy the last while and with the cold weather coming in, it has been harder to work on the big projects. However I have some fine examples of steampunk sartorial elegance ideal for the games table. The first is Steampunk Montreal's Baron Celsius von Fahrenheit:

Elegantly dressed in coat and top hat, the Baron is equipped with his patent steam powered aethric communication apparatus, ideal for long range conversation in English et en Francais.  The Baron is available form RAFM miniatures a fine Canadian purveyor of miniatures and gaming accessories.

Next up we have a preview of the Winter line:

His trusty bowler hat firmly seated, and sporting an A. Smith designed armgun,  The Mechanic is ready for action at a moments notice. He too will be available from RAFM. Stay tuned for updates.

Further details on the RAFM Facebook page

A short game of DBMM

A while back, two of the guys of the club scheduled a game of DBMM for last night. They were kind enough to let me take over one of the commands on fairly short notice. The battle saw the Abbasid Caliphate defending against the Ilkhanid horde of which I commanded one wing.  The Caliphate forces cowered in a fortified town and oasis, leaving their their pathetic horsemen to defend against the oncoming horde. The glorious Mongol army swept forward in a double envelopment their vastly superior steppe bred ponies charging around the unprotected flanks.

Sadly the game had to be called when one of the players fell ill. As always, it was good just to get out of the house and game. I learned a little bit more about how to use horse - always a weakness of mine and I got a much better handle on march movement.