Quick terrain

This is by way of a recommendation. If you're at a show where Richard Phillips is selling the Scotia Grendel resin terrain, it's well worth having a look at what's available. 

They come in blister packs and, once undercoated in black, they paint up really easily. These two dungeon terrain bits took me about a hour to paint this morning (I'd undercoated them a few days ago).

I'm not sure how much longer Richard will have them in stock so it's worth making a purchase while they're available if you think this sort of thing will improve the look of your fantasy games.

Value for Money 28mm

Of late I've been painting some of the figures I picked up cheaply at my local friendly local games shop (Wargames Emporium in Sheffield).

First up is a small selection of Bavarians. They come from a Victrix command sprue that was cheap because the horse was damaged. I thin they look fine.

Next up is a familiar chap who came from the assorted-bits-for-a-fiver bag I picked up six months ago. In the words of Charles Boyle, "Yippee-ki-ay other buckets"!

And finally, we have this WW1 German officer from the same bag as Mr McClane above. I don't have an obvious use for him. Maybe useful for a Pulp Alley game?

A bit of a catch-up

I've been most remiss about posting here for the last few weeks. I just haven't felt that motivated to do so despite getting loads of painting done.

I'm within three figures of completing a second (Italian allied) legion for my To The Strongest Republican Romans.  I'd like to get them all done before I show pictures here.

Ive also nearly finished a second pack of Turkish infantry for Crisis Point. Again, pics when done.

So what can I show you?  Well, I have managed to create some more zero-cost plot points for Pulp Alley.

First up is this fire marker...

The base is a 0.02 Euro coin 'glooped' with tile grout.  the flames are made from Green Stuff. Whenever I have some left over I use it to make these wiggly shapes and when I have enough it goes onto a base like this.

Then we have a... well... one of these...

It's a mysterious alien artifact poking out of the desert sands, I guess. This is literally a found item; some bit of child's toy that I found lying in the street. Painted and given a couple of coats of progressively lighter dry-brushing (which don't show at all in the photo). As usual stuck to a coin with texture applied - in this case a two pence coin.

And finally, a cactus for the Mexican desert...

Obviously a coin and some basing gloop are involved but there's an Order of Andreivian Artists (Second Class) to anyone who can identify the freebie source of the cactus itself.

Freebie Pulp Terrain

Inspired by Dave Phipps's Pulp Alley videos over on Youtube I've had a go at making some vaguely Pulp-y plot points and terrain pieces recently.  For one reason or another they've cost me nothing...

At Gauntlet last year I picked up a bag of bits of white metal on the bring-and-buy.  "Oh you can have them" said the owner.  They proved to include a number of vaguely useful bits.

First up is this recently dug grave:

Just the thing for many a Buffy the Vampire Slayer scenario!

Next in the bag of disregarded white metal was this:

Not sure when I'm going to need a dark-ages-head-impaled-on-a-stick-with-an-arrow-through-its-eye but you never know....

And then we have this generic fantasy shield.  It just cried out to be painted as an ancient relic, always good as a plot point...

The verdigris-bronze finish on the shield also came in handy for a Salute give-away figure from Warlord Games.  I've never been to Salute but my mate Simon Miller has and very kind me sent this one last Christmas:

I see this as absolutely ideal for use in some Andreivian town square one day soon.

Finally we have this piece of vaguely pulp-ish industrial machinery:

Made from assorted pieces of plastic pulled out of the "bits box", it took about five minutes to stick together using my hot glue gun and about as long again to paint in a gunmetal colour.

Graveyard on Denley Moor

Jamie came over at the weekend (it was my birthday) and as well as going out for a meal we managed to get in a game of Pulp Alley on Saturday evening.

It’s been a while since we played an episode in my very slow PA campaign “The Quest for Faulkner’s Balls”. Over a year in fact! I knocked up a simple game using my new graveyard terrain module and the standard “Trail of Clues” scenario from the rule book.

Jamie played the Friends of the Reverend Featherstonehaugh and I looked after those vicious London criminals The Muswell Hill mob.

I wanted to have a go at using the vehicle rules from Gadgets, Guns and Vehicles. I gave the Rev’s Friends a Rolls Royce.  There was also a chap from the GPO working on the telegraph line that runs over the moor.  His van was a possible source of vehicular mayhem.

The main objective was to gain control of Captain Faulkner, the shell-shocked veteran of the trenches now often found wandering the moors with his dog Sergeant.

We each placed one minor Plot Point at the start of the game. Jamie placed a large earthenware pot beside the road and I put a wooden crate at the corner of the old graveyard.

Notter of the Muswell Hill Mob reached the crate and managed quickly to prize it open. Looking up from the contents he saw a Raven perched on the graveyard wall. “C’Mon Sergeant” it squawked!  (That was the next Plot Point that I placed).

Miller and Notter interrogate the raven

In the meantime the earthenware pot was proving harder to understand (I played a Peril) on Jamie’s character. As a result it took him longer to go for his second Plot Point (a hand drawn map).

A gun battle then developed between Notter on the Mob's side and The Count and PC Newthwaite on the other.

Miller, meanwhile, managed to get over the graveyard wall and persuade Faulkner of the wisdom of accompanying a man with a strategically placed automatic pistol.

One of Jamie's reward cards allowed him to extend the game to seven turns but it wasn't enough to prevent the Muswell Hill Mob making off with Faulkner and, presumably, his ancestor's mysterious journal too!

Look out for the next episode of the Quest for Faulkner's Balls - coming to a theatre near you soon! Well, eventually anyway.

Crisis Point 2017

I had hoped to blog continuously during Crisis Point using our new iPad but it turns out that Blogspot and the iPad browser are incompatible.  You need to download a specific app and I wasn't going to do that during the event.

However, I did manage to take a load of photographs and here are some of them:

Action started immediately on the Caucasus Front table
with Ian Shaw (left) valiantly defending the Andreivan
trenches against Andy Sangar and Kevin Tingle's Turks.

Setting up the Black Sea Coast table

Bloodbath at the National Museum - Will, Ron and Andy C
 played in Jamie's Pulp Alley game.
The Andreivian Police prevented the theft of an Andreivian
national treasure but did so without subtlety!

SMS Koblenz accidentally pushes aground an
Arab dhow.

A highlight of the afternoon of Day One was Jamie's
refusal to allow Woosterforce to pass down the road to
Tcherbevan until he had (a) checked their paperwork
and (b) spoken personally to Wooster himself. 

Turkish troops reach some of the frontline trenches;
their Andreivian defenders have fled!

Casualties mount up on the Andreivian baseline!

The Australian Light Horse dismount to defend the
Tuzkhur Valley...

... as unidentified Russians enter the area.

Leo's camel train comes under artillery fire killing
one of his pack camels

The Dhow is afloat again and makes off for the Dardanelles.
And look! There in the background is the missing German submarine SMS Haifisch
(one for the Rammstein fans there). 

By the end of Day One the Germans had landed a small force on the Black Sea coast.  it would have been a larger force but the Andreivian Air Force (in the form of a Fokker D.VII) arrived at the crucial moment and bombed SMS Koblenz.  The bomb struck and jammed the Koblenz's steering gear.  Unable to stop or steer out of the way, she ploughed through the string of towed barges taking the first wave (armed Kriegsmarine sailors) to the landing beaches.  The second barge was sunk. All aboard were lost!

However, the Germans did manage to tow off their stranded submarine and so completed one of their aims.

The Turks broke through a lightly-manned section of Andreivian trenches on the Caucasus Front and forced a general withdrawal.

In Eastern Andreivia, Woosterforce reached and occupied the town of Tuzkhur despite a distinct lack of cooperation from the Andreivian commander on the scene.

Two groups of Arab 'merchants' had completed some kind of deal but it was not yet clear what had been exchanged for what.

On day two there would be some adjustments.  There would be some fighting in the capital Tcherbevan as Russian Bolseviks tried to forcibly correct the doctrinal error of Andreivia's Left Social Revolutionary government.

We restructured the Black Sea Coast table to accommodate a fighting withdrawal by Ian's Andreivians and a hasty attack by Kevin's Turks.

Andy S and Arthur took charge of more Turks pursuing Woosterforce from the south.  The Eastern Andreivia table saw fierce fighting along the Tuzkhur Road.

The Bolsheviks advance past the grain warehouse in industrial Tcherbevan

A random event saw the ammunition carrier of the British MG team panic and flee.
That's him, top right above.  Doubtless he'll be shot at dawn. 

Woosterforce comes under artillery fire from the pursuing Turks. The also suffered mysterious gas attacks from an unknown attacker.

A gunnery duel between the Andreivian armoured train and SMS Koblenz
went on for much of the day.
In the end German troops took the train by close assault.

In all I was reasonably pleased with the event. We ended up with 11 players including myself whereas at a relatively late stage in the planning it had looked like we might have as many as 16. For this reason some of the events and forces I'd originally planned for, The Spanish university archaeologists for example, found themselves on the cutting room floor.

Arc of Fire stood up pretty well under the strain of handling larger-than-designed-for forces.  I was pleased with the variant card activation process.

I'll reveal more about the inner workings of the plot in future postings.

What Santa Brought

I received some nice gifts this Christmas and a few of them were game-related.  

First up: Love Letter.  This is a card game in which players compete to smuggle letters of devotion to a cloistered princess in an attempt to win her hand in marriage.  It comes in a rather nice red velvet bag.  I haven't had a chance to play it yet but will report back here when I do.

In passing, I ought to mention that daughter Millie received another card game; Exploding Kittens.  We did play that.  It's very silly.  I won! Yay!

I also received a couple of packs of the excellent Bob Murch's Pulp Miniatures.  Unfortunately I've put them away somewhere safe and now can't find them to photograph.

And then yesterday I was passing the WarGameStore at Brimstage (Wirral) with some Christmas money waiting to be spent. It would have been rude not to stop by. I decided to blow some of the cash I received on some more ships for my developing (I won't yet say burgeoning but give it time) X-Wing Miniatures Game collection.

As you can see I got the Most Wanted pack.  This is a starter pack for the "Scum and Villainy" faction - smugglers, pirates and the like.  It also features third-faction adaptations for some models I don't currently possess but am now very tempted to buy.  Clever marketing that by Fantasy Flight Games.

Oh and I also bought a new detail brush and some GW Cadian Fleshtone paint.

On the Workbench

Just out of the paint-stripper are these old, true-25mm Napoleonic infantry.  They are of just the right size to go with my existing plastics.

I'm not sure what manufacturer they were by.  They came in a big tin of mostly plastic miniatures that passed through my hands a year or so ago.

I'll be using these for Sharp Practice 2 and may paint them as Italians or Swiss as I already have plenty of French.

Also for Sharp Practice is this ammunition caisson:

It's by HaT; one of three that come in the box.  I'm going to build a second one as "parked"; without the horse team and with the lid open.  I may well turn the third into a British equivalent using spare Airfix Royal Horse Artillery riders.  I'm sure they will have used some captured French wagons.  The question then arises do I leave it French green or will the RHA have repainted it?

Finally, in large 28mm scale we have a couple of new figures for Pulp Alley games.

The policeman was a freebie for people attending Partizan a few years back.  The bruiser is from the Pulp Miniatures Doc Savage set.