Back in late January, two of the gamers of our group put together a 28mm Napoleonic “Retreat from Moscow” game that was a blast – everyone had a small group of French officers and soldiers, all the main officers had personal side missions or special motivations they could do for extra VP, and the GM ran all the Russian forces.
Pretty much every Frenchman died by the end of the game, mostly run down by the pursuing Russian light horse, often after being distracted by their side mission or after attempting clever things like cutting through the forest instead of just following the road. Oh, and at least one was bashed over the head by an angry Russian peasant!
I contributed my nominally-Russian Civil War buildings to the game; the rest of the figures are from the collections of the two guys who ran it, and the base rules were GW’s out of print Legends of the Old West (LotOW) which are a good, flexible, sane set of blackpowder skirmish/light RPG rules that work well with small parties of figures.
The four photos I took are all up on Flickr; click on any of these photos to see the full-size version over there.
Just to prove that there really is progress being made around here, despite the relative quiet on the blogging front, here’s a fairly bad late night photo of the motor yacht, with it’s second coat of white paint applied!
Motor yacht, with paint on it! Click for full size.
Because of the board expanses of plain, untextured surfaces on this thing, and the tendency of those broad expanses to show brush strokes really well, I’m using very diluted paint, pretty much just using layers of washes to get colour onto the thing. It means a couple of coats to get a good colour, but also no visible brush strokes!
I’m going to do the bow and rear decks dark, glossy wood, and then pick out the railings and other details either in white or in brass — haven’t decided which yet.
Slow but steady progress on the 28mm pulp motor yacht. I hit it with a light coat of grey primer, to better show the seams and bits that needed additional putty and sanding work — that sort of thing shows up so much better under a thin coat of primer than it does in the blindingly-white bare plastic!
I’ve re-done the edge of the bow deck around the curve of the bow, and several areas on the cabin roof and around the flying bridge. Here’s a pair of low-res after dark images showing the boat in it’s current state.
Easier to take photos of now it’s not blinding white, too. Low quality image, but click for larger.
The cabin roof/flying bridge assembly is still removable, and I glued a 1.25″ washer to the roof then skinned over it with another layer of styrene plastic. With that ballast and reinforcement, the roof is a lot more solid and stays in place much more easily. It also visually makes the boat seem more solid, somehow.
Stern quarter view. Low quality image but click for slightly larger.
The rear view shows the cabin door and the ladder up to the flying bridge. The three round windows started out with a hand-spun drill bit, then got carefully and slowly reamed out with a sharp Xacto blade. I thought about doing window frames or something around them, but ultimately decided the boat would have to manage without in the interests of my own sanity!
Second, proper coat of primer tonight, then paint later this week. The paint scheme is going to be pretty simple — white hull and walls, glossy wooden decking — so it should be fairly quick to paint up.
Part One is here, for those of you just joining in. The project is a small 28mm motor yacht for pulp gaming, based loosely on real motor yachts from early in the 20th C and built entirely out of styrene plastic sheet, because I have a lot of it hanging around!
I finally got the hull sides done this weekend, using one long strip of .020″ styrene plastic per side. To accommodate the slight rake of the hull side and the curve of the bow, I cut the strips slightly too wide and wider toward the bow of the boat. After gluing one side at a time, I trimmed the thin plastic down with knife and sandpaper to match the actual lines of the boat.
Adding the hull sides. Right-hand side glued all the way to the bow but not trimmed; left side glued along the stern and cabin. Click for larger.
The stern and cabin area was simpler, except for being careful where the curve was placed that fits the higher bow deck into the hull side. Initial glue was quick-acting Plastruct Bondene solvent; after that set up I used superglue along the bottom seam to strengthen it.
Boat from the stern quarter, with cabin roof in place. Door frame and ladder in progress. Click for larger.
I’ve also gotten panelling into the cabin (see the first photo), door frames on either side of the door at the rear of the cabin, and started in on the ladder up to the flying bridge on the cabin roof.
Boat from bow quarter. Lots of putty work and detailing to do, but it’s structurally complete! Click for larger.
There’s a large amount of cleanup and detailing needed with Milliput and modelling putty to get everything cleaned up and smoothed out, a bunch more details to add, then the first spraycoat of primer to show up any glitches and things that still need to be fixed. The cabin roof needs some weight on it to get it to sit properly on the cabin walls; the seams all need cleaning up, especially around the bow deck and the bow itself; and I might yet put another layer of styrene down on the bow deck, as the single layer there currently is quite thin and I worry about it standing up to the wear and tear of gaming and transport.
Still, it’s great to have the major structural parts of the boat complete!
Back in the long-lost days of mid-2009 (OK, four years back…) a contest called “Build Something” was held over on the excellent Lead Adventure Forum, with the contest theme of “Transportation”. I decided to build a small motor yacht/large powerboat sort of boat for pulp gaming, taking inspiration from and got as far as cutting the base of the hull, the cabin walls and the sides of the stern out of styrene plastic before inspiration fled and I moved on to other projects.
The now-lost original plan, from October 2009. Click for larger.
Lots of other projects, in the intervening years, but I never actually threw out the barely-started boat, it just gathered dust and got used as an impromptu container for scrap wood and other bits. Late last week I finally got around to cleaning up my long-neglected hobby bench, didn’t feel like painting, and decided to dust off the motor yacht instead of starting an entirely new project. I still have a large amount of styrene plastic (plastic card) hanging around, so it was still the material of choice for this project.
I’ve added frames to the bow and a deck, then added a removable roof to the cabin and a flying bridge on top of that.
The boat restarted, October 2013. Click for larger.
The hull sides will be the next big step. I’m planning on doing each side with a single long strip of styrene, and then use putty up at the bow to properly form the actual point of the bow.
After that there’s still a lot of detail work and cleanup to do. Door and window frames, a ladder up to the flying bridge, and a lot of putty to smooth things out and hide seams.
From the stern quarter. Scale provided by 28mm Pulp Figures reporters. Click for larger.
This last photo shows the curves in the aft end of the boat quite nicely. I’m going to use steel wire for railings on the sides and back of the flying bridge, and might put a removable canopy over the rear deck. Also need to come up with a name, to be painted across the stern in large gold letters!
Sunday’s five-player Pulp Alley game set a number of “firsts” locally, as our biggest-ever Pulp Alley-powered game with five players and about thirty figures on the table, and as the first appearance of the “Weird League” rules from the new PA supplement, Perilous Island. It was also the first on-table appearance of my newly finished urban buildings from Sarissa Precision.
Sean pulled out his half-painted The Shadow figure and quickly thrashed together a League based around The Shadow, using the “Dark Pact” League Perk to add a number of powerful and creepy Shadow-like abilities, notably the ability to vanish from the gaze of men (and women…), and the ability to seemingly teleport straight through solid walls, among other things.
Neither of us have built Leagues with the new “Weird” abilities, but as far as I know The Shadow & friends are properly constructed and we used the rules correctly. The “Weird” abilities certainly add a very cool flavour and some great new powers to the Pulp Alley game, and I’m looking forward to future outings of The Shadow, and to building new Leagues (or re-building old ones) to incorporate more of the “Weird” abilities.
I’m also pleased to report that Pulp Alley moves along just fine with five players and thirty figures; it’s naturally a bit slower with that much stuff going on and that many people, and the tabletop can be gloriously crowded, but the system works just as well for a big crowd as it does for two players with six or ten figures total!
I took a few photos, but only one of them turned out OK. Here’s the setup right near the beginning of the game; only Dale’s Red Air Pirates are visible on the rooftop they arrived at; the other four Leagues are lurking behind buildings or off the edges of the photo! I like how the buildings look, but they really show how I need to crank out a bunch of alleyways, sidewalks and other urban filler/background scenery bits now…
A Pulp Alley game setup, before the action starts. Click for larger, as usual.
Finally have the Sarissa CityBlock 28mm lasercut MDF buildings to a table-ready state, including another hand-painted advertising sign on the side of one of them.
Here’s all seven buildings (six CityBlock plus one Narrow Townhouse from the Gaslamp Alley range) stacked up somewhat awkwardly:
All seven MDF buildings, ready for the tabletop. Scale provide by three 28mm Pulp Figures reporters. Click for larger.
In one of my earlier posts, Chris had asked in comments about how these buildings came apart, so here’s the Hotel Atlantic spread open:
The Atlantic Hotel spread into it’s constituent parts; three floors and a roof. Click for larger, as usual.
You can see I haven’t (yet) done anything with the insides of any of these buildings; beyond possibly splashing a coat of plain paint in, I’m not sure how much I’ll do inside them.
So, having built seven of the things but not actually written a full review, what did I think? First off, I like them, and will definitely be ordering more of Sarissa Precision’s buildings at some point. They’re solidly built, well designed, have enough detail to look good right out of the box, and are also easy to add extra detail to. Everything fits together very well, the laser-cutting is crisp and precise, and the CityBlock & Gaslamp Alley buildings are good generic city filler buildings, similar to thousands of real-world buildings all over the world, pretty much anywhere Europeans influenced architecture. Use them as-is, you could be nearly anywhere in North America, the UK or much of Europe; add a few “local” touches (different street furniture, a few different buildings for flavour, etc) and you could be in Shanghai, Cairo or Singapore just as easily!
I’ll do a couple of things differently on the next batch of MDF buildings I build, though. First of all, painting MDF is like painting a sponge. The stuff absorbs paint and water like crazy, and is actually quite hard to paint as a result. You go through a surprising amount of paint to get decent coverage; and because of the absorbency you can get streaky or blotchy paint coverage very easily. A couple of my buildings required a second coat of their base colour, and painting details like windowframes and the signs was harder than it should have been because you needed thin, wet paints and a well-loaded brush to get good coverage. So I’ll be doing as much painting as possible before assembly next time, instead of rushing assembly this time just for the joy of having complete buildings sitting around!
Spray cans or an airbrush might actually work better than brushes for basecoats on MDF, if you have access to an airbrush or a better selection of spraypaint colours than I do currently.
I’ve got a whole pile of small scenery detail bits that have been building up on the edges of my painting desk recently, so with these buildings out of the way it’s on to them to get them done and into play, then onto more figures! We’re having a Pulp Alley game tomorrow that should feature all my new buildings, so look for photos of that soon too.
Progress continues on my seven Sarissa Precision buildings, albeit at a slower pace than I’d intended!
Basecoat and drybrushing is done on all seven buildings, gravel roof details likewise in place on all seven, most of the doors and windowframes are painted, and I’ve started cleanup and finishing.
I’ve always liked the looks of the big hand-painted signs and advertisements on the sides of older buildings, so given the wide blank side walls of the Sasrissa CityBlock buildings, it seemed natural to break out the smaller paintbrushes and go to it!
Newly-painted Hotel Atlantic sign on the side of the three-storey Sarissa Precision CityBlock building. Click for larger, as usual!
Still some cleanup to be done on the basic lettering, and I might yet redo the red ornamenting in both top corners, but the basics are done and I like how it turned out. This was all done freehand with a brush over some light pencil lines for guides, after I used Inkscape on the computer initially to play with letter sizes and spacing and figure out some basic guides. The “Hotel Atlantic” seemed like a good generic name, likely to occur anywhere in the English-speaking world, or even in non-English-speaking areas as the hotel set up to cater to English-speaking travellers.
One of the other buildings has a blank white square on it currently; later this week I’ll figure out what sort of sign or ad I want on it, too.
Having assembled my new Sarrisa Precision lasercut buildings, it was time to consider adding some extra details to really make these buildings “pop” and bring them to life. One of the things I wanted to do was add detail to the fronts of the buildings, especially the cornices at the roofline, which are often quite elaborate on brick or stone urban buildings built in the late 19th or early 20th Century.
As I’d assembled these buildings I’d reflexively kept the bits of MDF from inside the windows and other openings in the models, and looking at the little pile of lasercut leftovers, I realized they’d be perfect for basic detailing and adding some relief to the fronts of my new buildings.
The three-storey Sarissa Precision building, and the sorted offcut bits of MDF. Click for larger, as usual.
There were more than enough bits and pieces to do the fronts of five of the seven buildings, with leftovers to keep going on the remaining two if I decide, although I’d like to use some light card in layers for a slightly different look on the last CityBlock building and the Gaslamp Alley townhouse.
Here’s all six of the CityBlock buildings stacked up, five of them with basic ornamentation added with “scrap” MDF.
All six CityBlock buildings stacked up, five of them with front details added. The statue is roughly 28mm tall, just for scale. Click for larger.
Next step is chimmneys and other rooftop detail. I’ll use basswood and plastic tubing for chimmneys, and create roof hatches, vents and roofwalks from basswood and card. Masking tape for tarpaper or paint and fine gravel will complete the roofs, then there’s painting to be done!
In my last post (two+ weeks ago!) I mentioned I’d bought a bundle of Sarissa Precision’s lasercut 28mm CityBlock buildings to bring our pulp gaming into an urban realm. I’ve finally got all seven buildings assembled; here they are on the counter.
All seven Sarissa Precision 28mm lasercut buildings. Click for larger, as usual.
The six similar buildings are from Sarissa’s CityBlock bundle, with one extra floor purchased to give me five two-storey buildings and one three-storey building. The seventh building is the Narrow Townhouse from Sarissa’s Gaslamp Alley Victoria SF line.
The CityBlock buildings go together quickly and easily; the walls and floors are 3mm MDF, and the window frames are seperate sheets of 2mm MDF designed to slot in behind the walls. The first several buildings I put together with more enthusiasm than consideration and glued the windows in right away; for the ones I’ve finished more recently have had the windows left out for now to make them easier to paint.
The floors and roof all come apart to allow access to the interiors of the buildings during games, and the simple tab-and-slot system should survive many games with no issues. The buildings all feel very solid once assembled.
The Narrow Townhouse from the Gaslamp Alley range is one of Sarissa’s most recent releases, and there’s a number of tweaks, refinements, and added details compared to the older CityBlock buildings. The interior floors have wood planking engraved on them, some of the etched and cut detail is a bit finer, and instead of 3mm & 2mm MDF, the Gaslamp buildings use 2mm MDF and laser-cut light cardstock, called “greyboard” on Sarissa’s website. This makes the Gaslamp buildings lighter than the CityBlock ones (although just as solid) and somewhat more detailed. The windows have both inner and outer frames lasercut from cardstock, for example.
Having assembled the basic buildings, I’m now turning toward detailing them before painting. I want to add some details and bits on the front facades and cornices of the buildings, and to the roofs. I’ll use fine modelling gravel on some roofs for a tar-and-gravel roof, and narrow masking tape on others for tarpaper roofs, and add details like chimmneys, roof walks and possibly even rooftop signs.
After that it’ll be time for paint. The engraving on the CityBlock walls is too large to “realistically” be brick, but I’ll likely paint several of them up in traditional red bricks anyway, as well as some as stone.
Detailing photos and writeup in the next couple of days!
