Category Archives: Misc

Things miscellaneous or otherwise not neatly sorted into other categories.

Misc

Nov. 11, 2011

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Adding Poppies

Went down to our main Cenotaph on the Legislature lawn this morning for the Remembrance Day ceremony, as I almost always do. Good turnout despite the threatening weather, and while it rained off and on through the ceremony and marchpast it had at least stopped bucketing down like it was earlier in the morning.

I’ve always thought those of us who study war for recreational purposes should pay extra attention to Remembrance Day or the local equivalent. It’s not always lead soldiers and dice, after all.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

I’ve got a few more photos from our ceremony over on Flickr.

Conventions, Misc

BottosCon

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Off overseas (ie, to Vancouver) Friday afternoon to spend the weekend at one of the area boardgame conventions, BottosCon.

Boardgames? It’s likely to be a pewter-deficient gaming event, true, but it’s mostly an excuse to get out of town for the weekend and hang out with an old friend who has recently moved back to Vancouver. Who knows, I may see some familiar faces from Trumpeter Salute, and I may even sell a few more t-shirts. We shall see.

If you happen to read this and are going to be at BottosCon this weekend, leave a comment below, the magic of smartphones means not being cut off despite being away from our computers!

Regular pewter-based gaming content will resume next week, no worries. There’s a huge crowd of 28mm Russians on my painting desk wondering when I’m planning on telling the world about them…

Misc

13 Years of This Nonsense!

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Sometime in November 1998 I sat down in the computer lab at the college I was going to at the time, signed up to Geocities (remember them?), and got busy creating what is now, 13 years later, this website.

The glory years of that first version of the website were roughly 1998-2003, with content for most of the Ground Zero Games science fiction rules as well as 15mm fantasy gaming. I still own all those figures and rules, although some of them haven’t had an outing in longer than I care to think about…

I did very, very little gaming from about 2003/2004 to 2008, although I did maintain the site, and moved it to the current warbard.ca URL in August 2004. I knew people were using the site, I’d get a couple of emails a month about it, so it wasn’t going anywhere, but I wasn’t adding to it.

In 2008 I got myself over to Trumpeter Salute 2008 in Vancouver, discovered 28mm pulp adventure gaming, and was back into gaming with a bang! The site had to wait a bit longer for a proper revival, though, being rebuilt in the fall of 2010 in it’s current WordPress-based form, and “officially” reopened in January 2011.

(More about the site can, if you really want to read it, be found over on our About page.)

So, here’s to many more years of this nonsense, in whatever form it takes!

Asides, Misc

Testing, testing…

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Assuming this works, I can now post to here from my shiny new Android smartphone, in other words from pretty much anywhere, anytime… Be afraid, be very afraid…

Proper wargaming content soon, I promise. Been painting a new batch of Copplestone RCW Bolsheviks, quite pleased with how they’re coming along. Photos soon!

Historicals, Inspiration, Misc

Messrs. Clarke & von Clausewitz

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“Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult.” — Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Richard Clarke of TooFatLardies has written a fascinating post over on his Lard Island blog about friction in games and in reality. Short version: real war is full of things going pear shaped; most gaming systems aren’t. Go read the full article, I’m doing it a terrible disservice with my one-line smartass summary!

Should you want to read old von Clausewitz yourself, Project Gutenburg has an English translation of On War, Vol. One free to download. The short chapter Richard refers to in his post is Chapter VII. Friction In War — even for those of us with short attention spans, well worth a read!

This counts as another prod to get more figures painted for Through the Mud and the Blood, too!

Misc

Greetings, TGN!

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The excellent editors of Tabletop Gaming News have just added The Warbard to the TGN Blog Network!

Assuming the TGN feed works the way I think it does, this will be the first post out over the TGN feed. So what’s on The Warbard? Mostly pulp and pulp-flavoured historical gaming, some science fiction, some fantasy, a lot of terrain, and some painting, among other things.

We’ve talked Inkscape and designing for gamers (once, twice, thrice). Being into pulp gaming, naturally we’ve talked zeppelins. Recently, we discussed some Online Resources for WW1 Gamers. A lot of the older material — most of it, in fact — is still around and still useful too. How about pizza boxes for skirmish terrain?

Who is “we”? I started this website in 1998 (!) as “Brian’s Wargame Pages”, then when I relaunched it in January 2011 as The Warbard I invited my brother to help out.

Have a look around, make yourself comforatable, comment on anything that takes your fancy! Glad to have a chance to reach a wider audience!

Misc, Science Fiction, Stargrunt

The Dropship Drops Out?

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Over on the excellent 15mm science-fiction focused Dropship Horizon blog, a rather startling notice that Mark, the blogowner, is planning to “bring the tyres to a halt and turn off the engines for the final time“.

The pace of posting had slowed slightly over on Dropship recently, but with interesting developments still going on in 15mm SF, it’s unfortunate to see Dropship Horizon shutting down so abruptly.

Hopefully Mark leaves Dropship up and running even if he isn’t actively posting, as his links and articles are an invaluable resource for 15mm SF gamers. Having done basically nothing with this website for quite a number of years before reviving it late in 2010, I certainly understand that people’s gaming interests wax and wane and sometimes it’s time to move on, but even a somewhat dusty resource is better than nothing — Dropship’s collected information can still help 15mm SF gamers for years, as this site was doing even during the years I was neglecting it.

Best of luck to Mark in his other gaming interests, and here’s hoping that some day in the future he relights Dropship’s engines, brings up her running lights and starts posting cool 15mm SF things again!

(I guess this means I should update, refurbish and republish my mothballed list of 15mm SF miniatures companies, just in case Dropship does go entirely offline!)

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Links, Misc

ECW Painting, Other Randomness for 28 May 2011

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An entire week since my last substantial post! The horror, how will our dedicated readership cope?

I’ve been painting up an English Civil War/Thirty Years War storm this week, filling that inevitable post-Lead Painters League void with 40-odd plastic pike-and-shotte foot and a dozen horse. You all saw 5 of the horse in one of my LPL entries, of course, the rest are taking shape nicely and all of the foot now have most of their basic paint on them. Sunday the 29th we’re running a 1000pt Field of Glory: Renaissance big battle, and I’m breaking one of my long-standing rules by fielding figures that aren’t even anywhere near finished just to get something on the table. At least they’re not straight-up Primered Legions — there are depths to which I will not stoop.

No pictures of my WiP paintjobs, but I’ll take the camera to tomorrow’s big game and try to get some reasonable shots to share here.

The Lead Adventure Forum is, of course, one of the greatest collections of creative wargaming minds I’m aware of. A random sampling of current coolness there that should be more widely known: Chicken Race on the Arumbaya, in which the estimable Hammers plans a pulpish steamboat race with a South American feel and some great-looking boats. Also, Boggler’s converted Improvised Back-of-Beyond Armoured Truck, very nice conversions of diecast toy trucks.

Elsewhere on the web (elseweb?) An Evil Giraffe has done his own versions of my riverbank pieces, and very nice they are too. He used broken cork sheet for his banks, so it has more texture (but also more height) than mine.

Finally, also via LAF but worthy of being mentioned on it’s own, Sarissa Precision have started selling a very, very nice looking line of 28mm laser-cut and -etched urban buildings that are perfect for pulp! Information here on the Sarissa site, and on sale here in their online store. I can’t wait to have some spare money to throw Sarissa’s way, the buildings are a good size (6″x4″ or 8″x6″ footprints and stackable for extra floors) and a fair price with enough detail to be interesting but not too fussy that they’re impractical. Hopefully at some point they offer their windows, doors and other details seperately, or even just the building fronts for those of us comfortable cutting our own side and rear walls.

Photos tomorrow or Monday of the ECW/TYW big-game madness, I promise!

Asides, Misc

New Painting Category and Page

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I’ve created a new “Painting” category, and a new page to collect all the Painting-category articles. You’ll find the page as a submenu item under Inspiration on the menu at the top of each page, or in either the Content or Category links in the right-hand column.

Misc

First of May

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What? It’s gaming related, WoW was used for the video. Besides, how could I resist?

Link to “First of May” video on YouTube just in case the embed gets munged by your RSS reader or similar. Enjoy!