Fantasy

And Then the Golem Threw Another Stone…

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Always interested in a new gaming system and being pen and paper roleplayers, Brian and I have been playing a little bit of Songs of Blades and Heroes recently. Like many of our gaming experiences, this one has been long delayed in coming but it was well worth the wait.

Our first game was a wonderful and thoroughly-illegally built three-way match involving two groups of Orcs and my Reaper Mouselings, his Dwarves and my Mouselings have had it out. The game is interesting and fun and very fast (we played three games on an hour and a half ferry ride) but has a few weak points.

Our current warbands are both tricked out minimum figures, maximum damage warbands. Neither has more than 7 figures, each worth at least two dozen points apiece. Hordes of zombies these are not. My mouselings have half their 300 point standard warband allotment between my mounted-on-an-owl, magic-using leprechaun leader, Shamus O’Reilly, and his familiar, Mossy, a captive stone golem with shooter(medium) and combat 5. Brian’s dwarves are just as nasty, with the two flanking dogs and a leader with Quality 2 and Combat 5.

A note about the game: In order to get units moving and fighting, you need to score successes by rolling at or above the quality on a d6. Combat is a simple oppposed d6 + Combat Value + modifiers. Lower Quality scores are better, higher Combat scores are better.

The game itself plays well, with some bad break points. Specifically, magic-users are useless as ranged combat figures, but deadly when they transfix. Combined with Mossy’s powerful combat and throwing ability, this gave my team a one-two killing “punch” that was hard to beat. Add in the dwarves (and mouselings) short-move and you can see where it will go wrong quickly. Where the dwarves beat me was when they were able to get their dogs around into my magic user (only combat 2) and made him move did things go badly.

And then there was the rout. Or maybe I should say “The Rout.” Brian apparently cannot roll combat rolls. I cannot roll quality checks to get people moving. These two phenomenmom manifested in one game where I never made it more than one or two short moves away from the table edge (basically less than 4″). When Brian got my leader to book it off the table, this triggered a morale roll every other warband member. Which I failed. And so my entire warband ran off the table. In a single turn.

In sum, we do enjoy playing the game, but I am not certain if its simplicities truly make me happy. We need to try some different warbands, including zombies, skeletons and cheap soldiers and see how that works.

And where are the pictures? I haven’t taken any and Brian didn’t either, so no pictures for all of you. Besides, we were playing with basically no scenery on a cafeteria table for most of our games, so they wouldn’t have been great photos anyway…

Pulp

Cannibals on a Rope Bridge

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It’s been one of those weeks around here, hobby-wise and otherwise. I overdid a black wash on the Armstrong-Whitworth armoured car and am having to redo a significant amount of the basic green painting, the top wing of that Nieuport for the Bolshevik forces won’t damn well stay attached, and real life has been busy. Oh, and I’m getting ready to build a new computer and replace my nearly-seven-year old desktop, so much time has gone into planning and buying stuff for that.

So here’s a blast from the past. This was one of the first big pulp games we ever ran, a five- or six-player gongshow with several groups of competing explorers, spies, Neanderthals, cannibals and dinosaurs. Cultists and giant apes, too. Damsels in distress, doomsday devices, villains both outright dastardly and simply misunderstood but noble, every pulp trope you can think of packed into a huge 9’x5′ table. The game predated the rebuilding and rebirth of this website, so it never got written up here.

These figures are by a gaming buddy, I can’t recall exactly, but I think they’re Lord of the Ring GW figures repurposed as cannibals. The gorge and rope bridge piece was built by another friend, and haver appeared in several games since.
Cannibals on the Rope Bridge

The rest of my photos from that game are over on Flickr. Enjoy!

Inspiration, Links

Links of Interest, 1 May 2012

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A few things to start your month off right!

Paul of Paul’s Bods has a rather clever nearly-math-free method of getting a perfectly fitting roofs. It would need a bit of adaption to work with the removable roofs I usually give my structures, but not much!

I’ve also just discovered the Flickr account of the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives, which is full of all sorts of great interwar aviation imagery!

They’ve got autogyros:
Pitcarin Autogyro

The famous zeppelin USS Los Angeles:
USS Los Angeles

…and this fantastically pulpy looking volcanic island, with (unfortunately) no location information. I’m absolutely certain that steaming caldera houses a Mad Scientist’s Secret Headquarters or a Lost World, however!
Interior of volcanic caldera

The San Diego Air & Space Museum Archive’s Flickr account is all part of the fantastic Flickr Commons scheme, which has great museums, libraries and archives from all over the world putting their material on Flickr with no known copyright restrictions.

Historicals, Painting

Armstrong-Whitworth Armoured Car, Part Two

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The first armoured car for my Russian Civil War forces now has wheels attached, and I did the first round of weathering with pastel chalk dust. Before I talk about my model, though, check this photograph out:

rcw_ac_real
A 1917 photograph showing soldiers of the interim Russian government (after the February revolution but before the Bolshevik Revolution of October/November) posing with an awfully familiar looking armoured car. The word chalked on the side of the hood is “Freedom”.

That photo also nicely answers the question about the scale of the Copplestone vehicles — they’re pretty much right on scale!

Weathering with Pastel Chalk

You can buy pre-made “weathering powders”, but I’m not sure why you would when a couple sticks of cheap pastel chalk will set you up for life. I bought a black stick and two shades of brown (burnt umber, technically) for a few dollars from one of our local art supply stores. Run an Xacto knife edge along the pastel stick to create powder, then use a beat-up dry paintbrush (trust me, don’t use good brushes for this) to dust it onto your model. You could also use a bit of pastel dust on your fingertip for more definite smudges.

Apply the pastel powder much more heavily than you think is reasonable, because to fix it in place you spray it lightly with Dullcote or other matte sealer spray, and that always dissolves some of the powder. I might do a second round of powder weathering on this vehicle, depending on how much the Dullcote takes off.

Here’s the current state of the car, with figures for scale. On the left, two of Brigade Games’ Storm in the East line of Russians, painted up as White Russians. To the rigt of the car, two of Copplestone’s Back of Beyond Bolsheviks, one rifleman and one sailor. The car has not yet been sprayed with Dullcote, so this is unfixed pastel chalk dust on display.

ac_26apr
My 1:56 Armstrong-Whitworth armoured car, alongside figures for scale. Click for full size, as usual.

Speaking of things on display, this is the first photo I’ve managed to get of the Bolshie sailors I painted last month. Must get proper photos of them soon!

Still to do on the Armstrong-Whitworth: the minimal base, just big enough to go under the wheels, then Dullcote and possibly more weathering. Oh, and a name for the thing, which is going to mean doing freehand painting of Cyrillic, which should be fun. The thread I started over on the Lead Adventure forum for this vehicle build has become a great source for possible vehicle names — having a Russian local active there helps with local sources (he supplied the great historical photo at the start of this post) and translations.

I’m away for the weekend, but should have the armoured car done early next week.

Asides, Misc

The “Salute Bump”

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We track basic visitor stats here at the Warbard, as most websites do. What people are reading, which links they’re following, the usual stuff, including how people find this site – what inbound links they’re following, and (to some extent) what search terms they’re using to find us. We use the open-source web app Piwik for most stats, and the built-in WordPress Stats for a few details.

Over on Flickr, both Corey and I can track views on our accounts in a similar fashion, which photos are being looked at and what search terms people are using.

We’ve both noticed, this year and last (in other words, since we rebuilt Warbard in it’s current format) a mildly amusing thing: every year after the huge Salute wargaming show in London, over the water and far away in the United Kingdom, we get a big jump in viewership stats. The reason? About a month before the world-famous Salute show, we have the Trumpeter Salute show in this part of the world, and for four of the last five years, I’ve been there, taken lots of pictures that’re up on Flickr, and for the last two years, posted here about it as well.

So gamers hit Google looking for eyecandy from Salute, and get our blog and our Flickr photos because of the similarity in event names. Oops.

Trumpeter Salute is a great convention, the highlight of my gaming year in many ways, but it’s not the immense and justly famous show in London, which I got to in 2000 and badly want to go back to one of these years! If you’ve come looking for Salute pics, sorry to disappoint you! But have a look around, you might find something else of interest, and thanks for the bump in traffic and the minor amusement!

Historicals, Painting

Armstrong-Whitworth Armoured Car, Part One

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My recent order to Copplestone Castings included the first armoured vehicle for my Russian Civil War forces, a very nice resin and metal 1/56th scale model of an Armstrong-Whitworth Armoured Car. It’s a pretty typical design for a WW1/RCW Russian armoured car, with a pair of machine guns each in their own turret on a six-wheeled armoured body.

The resin and metal are all very cleanly cast, with practically no flash, no casting errors, and minimal seam lines on the metal parts. You get the resin body, two resin turrets, two metal machine gun barrels, a metal front axle, and six metal spoked wheels. The body is roughly 3.5″ long

After cleanup I drilled and pinned the gun barrels to the turrets, but haven’t bothered pinning the turrets to the body — I think there’s more than enough contact area, despite superglue’s notoriously poor shear strength.

Here’s the beast in bare metal, with a Brigade Games 28mm White Russian priest for scale, and below, as it currently sits on my workbench.

ac_25apr
Copplestone’s 1/56th Armstrong-Whitworth armoured car. The lines on the cutting mat are half-inch.

The paintjob so far (all paints Reaper Master Series acrylics) is a basecoat of 2:1 Swamp Green:Pure Black, then a GW Devlan Mud wash. The green is gradually highlighted up with straight Swamp Green, a 1:1 mix of Swamp Green:Military Green, then straight Military Green.

The skull on the armoured radiator cover is freehand from Leather White, with a bit of a highlight of Pure White.

The undercarriage got a basecoat of Blackened Steel, then a mix of browns (Earth Brown, Muddy Brown and a couple of others) to muddy it up. I used a cheap, stiff brush to stipple the browns up the body for the muddy effect.

The paint job so far on the Armstrong-Whitworth has to trace it’s inspiration to Sidney Roundwood’s spectacular article on painting British tanks for the Western Front. The plan from here is to get the wheels on and the base installed (a minimal “shadow” base from styrene card and Milliput) then break out the pastel chalk for another round of dust and dirt.

Historicals, Painting

A Red Nieuport, Part Three

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Got the star insignia finished up on the Bolshevik Nieuport 17. Some of the stars are a bit wonky, but frankly that’s historically accurate — a lot of actual insignia during the Russian Civil War had a definite hand-painted look to it!

I gave up on the red-and-white striped vertical tail as a bad job, and went with solid red to go along with the red cowling at the nose.

red17_23
Painting all done on the Nieuport, Now to swear the upper wing into position!

Now to get the upper wing into position, always a job likely to provoke swearing. At least the Nieuport only has six struts, instead of the even dozen on the SPAD! After that there’s just the landing gear and prop disc to do.

Historicals, Painting

A Red Nieuport, Part Two

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Got started on the insignia for the Bolshevik Nieuport. This is going to involve at least six freehand red stars; to skip one pair I’ve decided to go with a red-and-white striped tail, although freehand stripes might make freehand stars look easy…

Anyway, here’s the current state of the beast. Like the SPAD, this Nieuport has roundels moulded right into the wing surfaces, so I’ve used those to put the stars in white circles. This appears to have been fairly common on Bolshevik aircraft, for the simple reason that the Imperial Russian Air Service roundel had to be blanked out somehow!

red21apr
The Bolshie Nieuport upside down, showing four of the six Red stars on it. The upper wing has insignia on both the upper and lower surfaces of the wing, which was fairly common for Nieuports.

The insignia and tail stripes will get at least one more coat of paint, and they need some cleanup, then highlighting. Colours, for anyone following along at home, are Reaper Master Series Clotted Red and Reaper MS Leather White; highlights will be with Reaper MS Pure White and Carnage Red. I might yet abandon the striped tail in favour of a red tail, possibly with white star. It depends on how frustrated freehand pinstriping gets me…

Historicals, Painting

A Red Nieuport, Part One

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Having built the White Russians a SPAD (Parts One, Two, Three), it’s time to build the Nieuport 17 for my Bolshevik forces!

As I mentioned in my original RCW Aviation article, the basic scheme for the Nieuport in Red service will be silver/grey dope with as many red stars as I can stand to freehand onto the thing. At a minimum, I”m committed to six: two on the vertical tail, two on the upper surface of the top wing, two on the lower surface of the bottom wing. Nieuports, because of their very small bottom wing, often had insignia on the lower surface of the upper too. We shall see.

Thankfully the Reds freehanded their star insignia too, so lumpy, misshapen and odd stars abound!

Here’s all the kit parts laid out on my cutting mat. Only about two dozen parts all told, and a much simpler strut setup than the SPAD which will hopefully be easier to assemble than the SPAD’s upper wing… (the fuselage is in two halves, I just had them popped together to check the fit when I took this photo.)

red17_19Apr
The Testors Classic Nieuport 17 kit all laid out.

Here’s the current state of the Nieuport. Basic assembly of fuselage and lower wing done, and basecoat of silver, red (on the nose) and white (on the tail) done.

red17_20Apr
The Bolshevik Nieuport 17, base colours done, ready for insigia then weathering.

On to freehand stars!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Inspiration, Links, Terrain

Half-Timber & Rural British Architecture

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The English Civil War has become a definite back-burner project around here, but it is still around, along with ambitions to make some more Western European/British buildings and other scenery for dual use in both ECW and pulp gaming. Dark deeds in the pastoral countryside, that sort of thing, whether it’s with horse and musket or Mauser and sporty roadster!

It turns out that the ever-valuable Internet Archive (previously here on the Warbard) is stuffed with old books on English traditional architecture and buildings. Here’s a fairly random sampling of ones that caught my eye as being useful for inspiring suitable wargaming terrain.

Finally, you can find many more books in this vein by searching the Internet Archive’s Texts collection for Architecture, Domestic — England.

The Shire Publications book Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings is one I’ve seen recommended several places. As usual, check the various other recommendations Amazon and other customers make, good stuff there too. Shire do a whole series of inexpensive English history books that look very useful for those of us who aren’t in the UK but want some inspiration and authentic local details.

Inspired and begun by a thread over on Frothers Unite, of all places.

Wargaming & Such (formerly Brian's Wargaming Pages)