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.

The New Re-Launched “The Warbard”

This website is devoted to wargaming, mostly in pulp adventure, hard science fiction or fantasy settings. The rules we play include Rattrap’s .45 Adventure, Dirtside II (Ground Zero Games), Stargrunt II (GZG), Full Thrust (GZG) and Fantasy Rules! (Chipco). We’ve got house rules, Galleries of my own and other people’s pictures of miniatures & games, reviews, how-to articles, and even some free stuff you can download.

This is the slightly-belated twelfth (!) anniversary edition of my wargaming website, with new shiny WordPress-based backend that we’re slowly converting all the old content over to. (the original site was founded in November 1998 as “Brian’s Wargame Pages”… I’ve gamed with players younger than my website…) The still-relevant parts of the old website are almost all converted now; with possibly another short flurry of postings of half-forgotten things still to come.

I’ve invited my brother Corey, who I do a lot of wargaming with, to join the site and add his own material. That’s the other part of the reason for the name change – “Brian’s Wargaming Pages” just wasn’t right for a multi-person site, so we’ve gone back to the site’s domain name for a name – welcome to “The Warbard”!

We each publish our own stuff here, and if we work on a post together we’ll publish it as “The Editors” instead of under our individual names. We’ve also been known to add interjections to each other’s posts, when we want to add something.

— Brian Burger
Last updated 11 April 2011; first published 11 Jan 2011.

Gradient Backgrounds for Photography

I’ve created a number of simple colour gradient backgrounds that I’ve printed out for use in miniature photography, and recently decided to bundle the most useful of them up in a PDF and make it available.

Eight smooth gradient backgrounds included; on North American 8.5×11 paper by default, but they’re all vector-based so they should scale to whatever size paper you can print them on.

The list:

  • Pale Grey
  • Grey
  • Dark Grey
  • Black (shades to grey)
  • Blue
  • Sea Blue
  • Blue Grey
  • Tan

These backdrops MAY be used for commercial uses (photographs for a webstore or similar) but the file & printed backdrops MAY NOT be sold on any medium.

Photo Backdrops PDF (60Kb)

Enjoy – let me know how you’re using these, and if you have any suggestions for more colours or other expansions on this idea.

Links: General & Personal Wargaming

General & Personal Games Sites:

Update, 22 May 2011: Work has started on weeding this list. Don’t expect fast progress, but at least it’s something. This time, I went through and tagged all the Geocities URLs as Dead Links. Actual link fixing will be happening as and when I get to it – feel free to contact us if you have suggested links or want to report a new URL for a site!

Because this section has gotten so large, I’m working on some ways of reorganizing it. I don’t want to go to an alphabetical listing, and many of these sites cover a lot of different areas of the wargaming hobby, so I’m going to start organizing by “Mostly…” categories, using the (in my opinion) most prominent, interesting or best area of a site to figure out where it goes. Eg “Mostly Painting”, “Mostly Galleries”, etc etc. I’m still going to wind up with a large list of unclassified sites, but at least a rough subject sort will be possible… I’m always looking for feedback.

So far, I’ve got The Essential Wargaming Sites, General Wargaming Sites, Mostly Painting, Mostly Paper Models, Mostly Scenery & Terrain and Mostly Links.

Continue reading Links: General & Personal Wargaming

Terrain: 15mm Cardboard Fantasy Buildings

I put the first of these buildings – the Short Tower – up on the site sometime around 2000, and for ten years they’ve been consistently popular. I think I’ve gotten more feedback on these (and some of the other cardboard/paper stuff I have available) than on anything the website’s ever hosted.
Continue reading Terrain: 15mm Cardboard Fantasy Buildings

Photos from a Fantasy Rules! Battle

More old photos resurrected – this time a few from a Fantasy Rules! 2nd Edition game we played years ago. Human medieval knights & footmen vs orcs and goblins with necromancer help. I’m pretty sure this was the first outing of Tony’s undead; years later he’s finally got enough to field an all-undead army without help from my figure collection.
Continue reading Photos from a Fantasy Rules! Battle

Fantasy Gallery #1

15mm fantasy figures, based for Hordes of The Things (HOTT) or Fantasy Rules! (FR!). Many of the figures are long-out-of-production Ral Partha 15mm (from when they held the AD&D license, before WotC bought AD&D from TSR and started producing plastic crap); the rest are a mix of Reaper & Ral Partha 25mm monsters and Chariot 15mm (now produced by Magister Militum/Navigator.
Continue reading Fantasy Gallery #1

Pizza Box 25mm Skirmish Scenery

PIZZA BOX SCENERY: This 25mm science fiction scenery was inspired by a 25mm pirate tavern from a now-vanished webpage. That one was designed for a tavern-brawl skirmish; mine is designed for SF skirmishing on space stations or other large indoor facilities. The two pizza boxes still fold up for travel & storage, and the various walls, columns & partitions were carefully laid out so they’d mesh together when the box was closed.

The interior walls are mostly matte board, which is strong and thin – and it was on sale very cheap at a local art supply store! The hazard striping, signs & other decorative bits were printed off on my colour inkjet, and created in Photoshop. Some of them are available free on the Sci-Fi Signage post.
Continue reading Pizza Box 25mm Skirmish Scenery