Day: March 23, 2011

The HAWKs are painting up 8 sets of figures given to us by friends of Wally Simon.  We will be running games at Historicon 2011 for kids under 10 years old.  They will get one British army, one Continental army, a ground cloth, two paper buildings to assemble at home, a copy of Big Battles for Little Hands, and perhaps a couple of hills.  The intent of this project is to help grow the hobby.

This weekend we finished painting the figures.  This has been a club effort.  It took four Saturdays to paint all the figures, even though we are applying just a very simple block painting.  We just need to finish up the terrain bits and play test the scenario.  Finish the figures provided a great sense of accomplishment.

We plan to solicit others to donate their unused armies that we might continue this effort in future conventions.  Chris and I both have a bunch of old plastic Airfix ACW figures we plan to donate.  Jay Hadley recently handed us a bunch of WWII ships.  This could turn into a very nice tradition.

At Historicon, Sam announced that she wanted to make her own wargame.  We talked about figures, because she wants to paint.  I bought her a bag of Old Glory Cowboys to paint at a convention a couple of years ago.  She said she wanted to do something different.  Eventually, we hit on the idea of her using the teddy bears and toy soldiers I have painted from Eureka so she could concentrate on terrain.  She plans to use GASLIGHT for this game.

She plans to find miniature building blocks to use as barricades and defensive positions and jacks as obstacles.  In this picture she’s painting roads.  Note the colors are supposed to look like a game board.

The “trees” for her game are meant to look like candy on a stick.  This shot is of her painting them to look like peppermints.  The bases are wooden wheels from the craft store.  The tops of the trees are round sponges from the artist supply area of the craft store.

She asked that I NOT play in this game when she runs it the first time for the HAWKs.  She wants to do it on her own.  This should be cute.  I’m glad she’s showing an interest in the hobby.