Month: June 2011

Friday night, Dave Wood, Chris Palmer, Kurt Schlegel, and Eric Schlegel came over for the first official play test of LSNC: Napoleonic Wars.  I was most interested in trying out the skirmish rules and getting some ideas on the numbers for melee, etc.  The scenario wasn’t ideal.  I put a river down the middle of the table with three crossings.  The objective was to be the side that captured two out of three bridges.  An open field battle might have been better for this initial play test.  There was some good give and take.  The basics seemed to work okay, but the numbers I had assigned for morale, etc. needed to be reworked.  The next play test is scheduled for 1 July.

Despite advice to the contrary, we went with the name Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII for the original rules.  There were two issues with this.  First, because is said “sarge,” may people thought it was a set of rules for skirmish gaming.  Second, since the title sounded goofy, may people dismissed the rules.  For the ACW version, we made LSNC: American Civil War the subtitle.  The title is A Union So Tested, which is from a quote by Joshua Chamberlain.  We will do something similar for Napoleonics, but we haven’t hit upon the right quote yet.

Kurt will be running a LSNC: Napoleonic Wars game at Historicon, so come by and take a look.

Eureka Miniatures USA sent me some turtles riding alligators (or are they crocodiles?) that will be released soon.  I agreed to paint them up and use them in my frog game (Viva la Rana!) at Historicon.

These are fun figures.  There was very little flash except where the alligators’ legs meet their bodies.  This was easily taken off with an Xacto knife.  There was just one turtle body, but there were several right arms, so that you can customize the figures.  I saw these as mounted rifles, so I used mostly the rifle/musket arms.  I will pick up four more at Historicon to make a full unit of 10.

Killer B makes a bunch of figures of pulp science fiction games.  Their heroes are very large 28mm figures, so I don’t think they mix with a lot of other stuff I have.  Who knows (or cares) how tall aliens are, so their non-humans are quite usable.  These are their Gadfoz aliens.  I have 11 of them.  The two five-packs had enough variety that I was able to identify two as the leaders.  This allowed me to treat the single leader figure as an unattached main character.

I have been posting a lot of pulp and VSF stuff lately.  This has been driven by getting ready for the release of The GASLIGHT Compendium and getting ready for Historicon.  I still prefer historical games and think of VSF and Pulp as light diversions.  Most of my WWII skirmish collection is 20mm.  I started getting 28mm WWII when Foundry released their Home Guard figures.  Since then I bought some 28mm Americans to use in my GASLIGHT game against giant ants, as in the movie Them.

This tank game as a multi-part, mixed medium kit.  The turret, body, and tracks/wheels are separate pieces.  The machine guns and tank barrel were metal.  All the bits fit nicely.  There was almost no work to be done on the resin parts other than to wash them to get off the mold release.  I had to drill a hole in the top to insert a piece of wire for the AA machine gun.  The kit did not come with a mount for that gun.

Bronze Age Miniatures makes figures that are perfect as Green Martians from Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter books.  They are called swamp mutants or something like that.  In this picture, this mounted figure is facing off against two conversions that Chris Palmer made from plastic British colonial figures.

Here are five of 10 poses.  Note the figures have four arms and lots of weapons.  The rifles are particularly Pulp sci fi looking to me.

These are the remaining five poses.  The figures seemed to have a lot of mold release and didn’t take to super glue well at first.

For scale, the John Carter and Deja Thoris figures are full 28mm figures.

Wargames Illustrated magazine has produced a series of historical vignettes.  You get one (of your choice) when you renew your subscription.  This one matches the print of Lew Armistead at Gettysburg that I have over my entertainment center.  I think I’ll use this in my Historicon ACW GASLIGHT game.

We had a very busy weekend, but I had a chance to wrap up a number of things that have been sitting on the painting table for several weeks.  Among them were 80 or so Old Glory Second Edition ACW figures for my upcoming Historicon game.  I also knocked out 20 Union infantry in frock coats.  These were really fun to paint, and I think they look pretty good.  The Old Glory Second Edition figures are skinnier and more anatomically correct than many wargaming figures.

This “space car” is a resin kit.  My daughter picked the colors.

This is a neat one-man zeppelin.  I need to mount a weapon into it and decide what gunner I want to use.

I also finished this figure of Dr. Who as depicted by John Pertwee.  Growing up, Tom Baker was my favorite Dr. Who, but Simon Russell, a buddy from the UK, turned me on to John Pertwee.  He has become my favorite.  I really like the story arc with the Silurians.