All posts by Brian Burger

Started this site way, way back in November 1998, when the web was young. It's still here, and so am I.
Conventions

GottaCon, Today!

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… it’s past midnight, so yes, technically it is today as I write this.

Anyway, Victoria’s big gaming convention started last night (Friday) and runs through to Sunday afternoon.

Saturday (today!) I will be running Jurassic Pulp II: Rex Returns for, hopefully, a sellout crowd. I’ve got six teams of two characters each, and last year’s game got five players, so hopefully I equal or exceed last year’s player count.

I”ll even try to remember to get some in-game photos, although I have a lousy track record of remembering the camera even exists while in the middle of running a game! Still, there will be at least some photos. The game will feature some new terrain features that have never been photographed before, too!

Final prep, bed, up early for the convention tomorrow.

I’m getting up earlier, on a Saturday, for a gaming convention, than I usually have to for work. Sheesh. The things we do for our hobbies..

Historicals, Terrain

Onion Domes, Part One

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Finally made it up to the local branch of Micheal’s craft store after work Wednesday to hunt down material for the two domes of the Russian church. I had planned on using 1″ wooden spheres, but the shelves of random wooden shapes were fairly well picked over and they had no wooden spheres of that size at all.

They did have 1″ wide turned wooden shapes advertised as “decorative rod ends”, though, and I realized they’d make much more interesting onion domes than the simple spheres I’d been planning on.

When I got them home I drilled holes in the top and inserted lengths of wire. One useful thing about turned wood shapes, it’s usually fairly easy to find the centre point, as the lathe tools always leave small ring impressions on the wood. The wire got superglued in, then I used a twist of tinfoil to form the core of the uppermost section of the onion shape. Terracotta Milliput is cheap, sure, but tinfoil is even cheaper!

After that I mixed a small batch of terracotta Milliput and worked it around the wire and foil. I used a 1″ circle I’d cut out of styrene as a rough guide to keep the upward concave curve consistent, and smoothed things down with a wet fingertip. I didn’t fuss with the surface finishing much, a bit of wet sanding after the milliput is dry and another thin layer of putty will finish everything off nicely in due course.

So, behold the domes of the Church of St. Boris the Intoxicated, with the putty still setting on them!

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The onion domes take shape. Click for slightly larger, see text for details!

Aside from the domes, the roofs are finished structurally, all shingles and trim in place. I still have to finish the trim around the door and windows, then it’s off to painting.

Historicals, Terrain

Small Russian Church WiP

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A quick pair of photos of the small Russian church I’m building for Russian Civil War gaming in 28mm. Earlier in January I discussed some planning and thoughts I had for a wargame-scale small church, and while it isn’t going as fast as I had hoped progress is being made!

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My work-in-progress Russian church, alongside the two earlier Russian huts.

As with the huts, the basic structure is mattboard with coffee stirsticks providing the woodwork.

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A slightly more recent work-in-progress shot. Shingle roofs are slow going…

The roofs of the church are going to be shingled rather than thatched, and while doing shingles with built-up strips looks good, it is frankly tedious… The smaller roof is done except for trim, though, and the main roof is about half done, then it’s on to the domes to provide that very Russian look that’s so distinctive.

Historicals, Terrain

Russian Huts Finished

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It’s been a bit of a slow ten days or so on the wargaming front around here; I wish I could say there was a proper reason, but I just haven’t spent much time at the workbench. One of those weeks.

Regardless, earlier this month I did finish both small Russian huts/farmhouses that I started over Christmas, and the Russian church is coming along nicely.

Here they are together, with a pair of Brigade Games’ 28mm White Russian officers for scale. The walls are mattboard and wood from coffee stirsticks, the roofs are towel with cardboard structure underneath.

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The fronts of a pair of Russian rural buildings – huts, small barns, possibly small farmhouses.

The smaller one on the left is 3″x2″ and roughly 2″tall, the slightly larger one on the right is 4″x2″and about 3″ tall.

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Removable thatch roofs from towel.

The hipped roofs are mattboard and light card underneath with towel soaked in diluted white glue as the thatch.

The roofs removed, showing their structure slightly.

Here you can see the roofs removed and flipped over. The structure of the roofs is all just cardboard and I’ve had no warping at all despite the towel for thatch being fairly liberally soaked in diluted white glue after it’s glued down.

Both buildings got a basecoat of black paint mixed with white glue (my standard scenery basecoat), the woodwork was drybrushed with a grey mixed with some tan followed by a second drybrush of paler grey. The thatch got the same black/white glue base then a couple of drybrushings with various brown/tan/grey mixes. The towel soaks up paint and glue as well as you expect towel to, even during drybrushing — expect to go through paint like crazy.

I have vague plans for a couple more buildings for a Russian hamlet, maybe something in whitewashed plaster more suited to the southern portions of the country, and of course the Russian church is nicely underway. More about that tomorrow!

Painting, Tutorials

Flags & Banners from Greenstuff

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This is not really a new idea, but it’s one that I only twigged to in mid-2011, so it’s fairly new to me. The idea of using greenstuff for flags and banners came to me one evening as I was experimenting with a small blob of greenstuff putty. I sculpt about as well as whales fly, and I find the rubbery used-bubble-gum consistency of greenstuff quite frustrating to actually do anything with (the clay-like feel of Milliputt is far more agreeable) so I was messing around wondering what I could do with the 36″ roll of greenstuff lurking in one corner of my desk.

Pressed out very thin, I discovered greenstuff is actually strong enough to hold itself up even before it cures. Once it’s cured it’s still moderately flexible, with a springiness to it. You can actually gently press folds flat to paint them, which is a bonus. It takes three dimensional folds and ripples better than paper, and unlike lead foil it won’t crease easily. A quick shot of primer and it paints up nicely.

The excellent Brushthralls website has a great Greenstuff Gizmos article with more detail, including the use of light vegetable oil to keep greenstuff from sticking to things, which I must admit I hadn’t heard of before. (link dead, alas, the entire Brushthralls site is no more – Sept 2020)

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Greenstuff flags in progress. Click for full size.

Above, my greenstuff flags in progress. Squash greenstuff into thin sheets on the back of a CD, cut flag-shapes with a knife, wrap around lengths of wire donated by paperclips, gently prod some folds and ripples in with a sculpting tool or just a fingertip, stab into a scrap of foam to cure. Done, pretty much.

Incidentally, I love big paperclips as a source of wire. Not as strong as piano wire, true, but far, far easier to work with and more than strong enough for most modelling purposes.

So, there you have it, flexible, good looking flags from greenstuff, and a use for greenstuff even a non-sculptor like me can manage!

Historicals, Inspiration, Terrain

The Next Building Project

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I don’t usually like to talk about plans and ideas before there’s at least some progress to show off, but while I was away over the New Year I had time to do some quick sketching and thinking about a building that would be at the centre of any Russian village or hamlet during the Russian Civil War, and which really is iconic when you want to remind players the game is, in fact, set in Russia.

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Some pages from my notebook – possible plans for a feature building for my RCW table!

Google Image Search is really indispensable when looking for prototypes and inspiration, although it’s very easy to get a building that’s just too big for the table. The church at top left would have been over 8″ long and 4 wide, far too big for a scenery piece that is basically just a Line of Sight blocker. The design shrank from there (top right page) then grew slightly on the bottom page and I’m fairly confident the finished result will be something like the two-part double-dome design on those pages, with a footprint roughly 5″x3″ and an overall height somewhere around 6″.

I saved this image from the web but forgot to write down where I found it or any details of the actual building, but it’s become my main reference. I also can’t currently find this picture again via GIS…anyway, it’s a perfect-sized building for my purposes and should help me get a lot of details right.

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Russian Church found via Google Image Search, except I didn’t save any info on where I found the image… sorry.
Misc

A 2011 Review

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Happy New Year! Just back from a week away from my computer and my workbench, spent visiting the folks inland, and counting down the hours until it’s back to work and such.

Although this website has been around on various hosts and under other names since 1998, 2011 was our first full year in this relaunched blog format, powered by the awesome WordPress and a renewed and expanding interest in wargaming! So how did that first year go, anyway?

Random Stats of Possible Interest

We started rebuilding the site back in September 2010, officially relaunched in January 2011, and we’ve been going steadily since then! According to the web statistics package we run, there were just under 17,000 visits to the site, with just over 20,000 pageviews (just over 1 page per visit, in other words). Most of our visitors are from (top 5, in order) the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany.

April 2011 was the busiest month we’ve had so far, with just under 2,000 visits.

In terms of posting, this post is the 149th posted to Warbard, with the vast majority — roughly 130 — being from 2011, giving us a rough average time between posts of under 3 days. Not bad!

The most popular single article was the review of .45 Adventure 2nd Edition, with various terrain articles and gallery posts filling most of the rest of the top ten. We talked about Inkscape quite a bit, lots of pulp adventure, and more recently the Russian Civil War.

Going into 2012, expect more RCW, more pulp, more terrain & buildings, and of course the two main gaming conventions locally are rapidly approaching in February and March/April 2012! 2011 was a great year, and I expect 2012 to be even better!

Historicals, Terrain

Second Russian House WiP

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Started another Russian farmhouse on Boxing Day evening, this one slightly bigger than the first at 4″x2″.

I mentioned in the previous article that I used coffee stir sticks for the wood siding. The workbench photo below should explain some of how I’ve been doing these buildings.

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Two WiP photos of Russian huts. See text for details, click for full size.

Basically, I split stir sticks lengthwise, then glue them along mattboard walls I’ve already cut the doors and windows out of. It’s easier to go back afterward and cut the stir sticks out of the openings than it is to premeasure! You can see one long side already trimmed above, and the other three sides waiting for trimming.

Incidentally, for this kind of trimming, I highly recommend an X-Acto #17 chisel blade instead of the classic scalpel blade (the #11 blade). Being able to cut straight down makes clean cuts in the windows easier, and it’s an easy way to trim thin wood and other strip materials.

The second photo of the pair above shows the new house with the walls assembled but no trim addded yet, and the first hut finished, except for the roof which is drying off-camera.

I’ve already assembled the thatch roof for the new building, and didn’t get any WiP photos of that, but I”ll try to get some progress photos of the next thatch roof I make, I promise. It is kind of difficult to smear glue everywhere and handle a camera, though…

Off for a week tomorrow, so see you all next year!

Historicals, Terrain

Night Before the Night Before…

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… and over at my place, I was hiding out, enjoying the last evening of solitary, productive peace and quiet I”ll have for a while, as the holiday season proper lands on us tomorrow.

In between beer, sending out festive email, and a little bit of painting on some White Russian troops, I cranked out this:

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A very small hut is investigated by a pair of Brigade Games 28mm Russian officers.

It’s tiny, only 2″ x 3″ – but I’ve always liked the philosophy of making your buildings a bit smaller but having more of them. A hamlet of four or six buildings looks more convincing as a hamlet than a pair of buildings taking up the same space on the wargaming table.

Construction is almost all mattboard, with the siding created from thin wooden coffee stir sticks split lengthwise. The roof is towel over a mattboard framework, and removable. There’s a door to glue into place as well.

The roof needs a lot more painting, which it might get on Boxing Day or else in the New Year, but I’m fairly happy with the greyish tone of the walls at this point. I might wind up rebuilding the roof, as I got a bit too enthusiastic with the scissors and haven’t left much in the way of eves over the walls. The simplest fix for that might just be to slap another layer of towel down over the existing one.

This little building was mostly a test of the wood siding idea, and of building the hipped roofs so typical of rural buildings in early 20th C Russia (and elsewhere, of course). They’re fussier, but this one works and so does the woodwork, so the new year should see a nice little Russian hamlet taking shape here.

Hope everyone has an excellent holiday season, however you celebrate it, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and such!

Historicals, Inspiration, Links, Pulp

Templates for Cards

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Because I happen to have a stockpile of them around the place, several years ago I started using pre-punched Avery business card sheets as gaming cards – Encounter Cards and vehicle cards in .45 Adventure, stats sheets for minor characters, more recently the Russian Civil War initiative cards for Mud & Blood. Even if you haven’t got pre-punched sheets around, the 2×3.5″ size is easy to use and handle printed onto ordinary cardstock and cut out.

There is of course a Microsoft Word template available right off Avery’s own website but I created my own templates from scratch in Inkscape, first because Word is a lousy program for actual graphical work, and secondly because the Avery templates are set up with vertical (portrait) orientation of the sheets, while for most gaming cards having a landscape setup makes more sense.

Accordingly, I kicked Inkscape to life, took some measurements from the Avery sheets and from their template and created a new template with the cards set up on a landscape (horizontal) sheet, which makes laying the cards out like small playing cards much easier.

I’ve uploaded three versions for people to use: a PDF version, a PNG version (probably the most generally useful) and finally, for those of you who have taken up Inkscape, an SVG version, which is in a ZIP file as WordPress doesn’t like SVG,

If you’re not sure which version to use, grab the PNG version, any modern graphics program should read PNG. Most should also be able to import PDF, which might get you a more accurate template.

CC0 To the extent possible under law, Brian Burger/Wirelizard Design has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Card Template Blanks (various file formats). This work is published from: Canada.

The little grey block basically means that whoever downloads these can do whatever they like with them, including use them in commercial products. Go nuts. And if you’re from that rather large part of the word that doesn’t use Letter-size paper, sorry, but you’re going to have to come up with your own templates!