This week I finished the office and the road sign for the motel. The road sign was created in PowerPoint and printed from some ideas I got browsing for “vintage motel signs” on the Internet. The flower box is an old Copplestone Castings box painted to look like stonework.
The office was made from a Plasticville Cape Cod house.
This evening I finished the Plasticville trailer park kit. Now my town of Granville has its own trailer park that will be situated near the outskirts of town.
These kits were very easily assembled. The plastic on the Plasticville kits doesn’t seem to want to take paint, even after being washed. It took several coats of paint to get the basic colors to fully cover the base plastic.
These will be nice in a zombie game as well.
The kits come with a flag pole, but the plastic had warped. I’ll eventually make another flag pole for the center of the trailer court.
I mentioned to Duncan a couple of weeks ago that I was looking for the Bachman Plasticville motel in O scale. He works near a hobby stop and found two for me. I spent some of Sunday afternoon working on them. I made a sign that I will print out and affix to foam board, but we are low on color toner right now. The motel will be on the outskirts of town in my next Granville game.
A little at a time during the week, I’ve been working on some 10mm skeletons. I finished them Saturday morning and flocked them on Sunday.
I don’t know the manufacturer of these figures. There were in a big lot that Chris got on Ebay. There are more figures in the pile that I’ll work on a little at a time. I’m about to switch gears again, I think, and work on Russian Napoleonic figures in 10mm.
These dismounted, heavily-armored figures were part of that batch as well.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a picture of crystal formation made of plaster. Chris found a couple of smaller crystal formations by the same folks. You can see them in the background of this shot.
My buddy Sam Fuson hosted “FusonConII” at the War Horse Farm in Gettysburg yesterday. Dave Wood, Chris Palmer, and I ran games. Most of the gamers were Sam’s friends and co-workers, but Duncan Adams (of the HAWKs) came along as well. Among those attending were a couple of husband and wife pairs, a couple of father and son pairs, two brothers, and a niece and uncle pair. There were sixteen gamers, all told. The plan was for Dave, Chris, and me to run four games. Chris ran two back-to-back GASLIGHT gamers, Dave ran a Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars game, and I ran a Look, Sarge, No Charts: World War II game.
Dave was play testing his Battle of Laon (1814) game as a play test for Cold Wars. Dave wanted to show how you could easily make use of an old 25mm Napoleonic collection to demonstrate that the barrier to entry for LSNC: Napoleonics is low. You can see from these pictures that the old 25mm Minifigs, originally mounted for Empire rules, look very nice placed on magnetic “sabot” bases.
Dave didn’t remount any of his old figures. They were mounted on metal bases three or four figures across. He stuck two of those “strips” of figures onto a magnetic base and then also affixed the LSNC: Napoleonics label to the magnetic base. With a minimum of effort Dave was able to pull his old Minifigs out of mothballs and put on an enjoyable game.
This shot show how the “sabot” bases for cavalry look.
Dave and I are working on a series of 1814 scenarios. I ran one of mine, Vouchamps, last Friday night at our club meeting. He ran Laon yesterday. Vouchamps needs a little tweaking, but Laon went very well. It was a near run thing. When time ran out and we counted casualties, the Prussians had lost 6 bases, and the French had lost 5, while retaining possession of the road that would be used later to facilitate their retreat.
After lunch, I set up a six-player Poland 1939 game using LSNC: WWII and my 10mm figures. The game was supposed to be a Germans attack to seize a town along the Polish line of communications.
Instead, Duncan in the Polish center went on the attack with his horse-mounted cavalry. Duncan smashed through a German infantry battalion. Then he got greedy and tried to run down a German anti-tank gun. He took some casualties, and his heroic cavalry ran for cover.
Meanwhile the German armor was trying to push their way across a river. There were three bridges, and the crossings were only lightly defended by some Polish armored cars. The German armor seemed hesitant to take casualties and did not advance aggressively. As a result, most of the German armor was still on the wrong side of the River as Duncan was smashing the German center. It doesn’t happen often that a player is completely wiped out, but in this game Alicia’s (orange sweat shirt) entire German infantry battalion was reduced to a single anti-tank gun section. The game was a convincing Polish victory.
While these two historical games were going on in one room, Chris was running his two GASLIGHT games in the other. I didn’t get pictures of Chris’ first game, but check out his blog (link at the top of this page) for his AAR. This game was a Burroughs-only Mars game. (Typically we do a Verne, Burroughs, Wells, etc. mashup.)
Even Sam’s bride-to-be got into the act. This picture was taken just before a great white ape crawled out of cave and attacked one of Sam’s units in retribution for Sam poking fun at the GM’s singing.
This weekend I finished the Hinterland female Trench raiders that have been sitting on my painting table for several months. These figures don’t have the same charm as the hussars in the dresses, but they are nice, clean castings that paint up pretty well.
Typically, I only watch one football game each year. That’s the Army-Navy game. It’s been a disappointing decade (11 years actually). Occasionally we watch the Super Bowl, because we get invited to a party or my wife wants to see the commercials. This year we weren’t invited to any Super Bowl parties, but the kids were. With taking kids to Super Bowl events, church, and going up to Delaware for a friend’s promotion party, Sunday was largely shot. Saturday, on the other hand, provided a good opportunity for some light painting between other kid taxiing events. I used the time to work on some odds and ends that have been in my project box for a while.
Before he created Pulp Figures, Bob Murch sculpted for RAFM. His old Call of Cthulu figures are more 25mm compared to his current 28mm figures, but I think they are interesting and have some nice aspects to them. This roadster has been calling my name for a long time. I got it for Christmas and painted it up this weekend. The casting on the roadster (lead) was poor and required a lot of putty work. I think the final product turned out pretty good though.
In that same Call of Cthulu line are these neat policemen on motorcycles. I especially like the side car with the officer armed with a shotgun. In my Granville pulp games, the police tend to be outgunned by Venusians, gangsters, soldiers, sailors, and robots. These will help redress the balance a bit.
What’s not to like about female cultists to go along with the other cultists. I’m thinking the cultists will have a major role in the next Duke Morrison adventure.
In an earlier post, I showed pictures of the Sergeants Three from Pulp Figures. There are two Sergeants Three sets: one with “toad face” from Gunga Din. The other comes with these two characters from The Drum.
I’m thinking these Cub Scouts will have a major role in the next Granville game as well!
When we were getting ready to release The GASLIGHT Compendium, we had been in discussions with Nic Robson at Eureka Miniatures about a custom figure. They already had this one in the pipeline that was similar to what we wanted. I have a unit of 10.
When I ordered the flight stands for the FASA Hangar 18 ships from my previous post, I also ordered these larger Hydra pirate ships for War Rocket. The pirates haven’t seen action yet.