Month: March 2020

I attached the sails to these canoes today, so here is the final product.

I am actually enjoying being self quarantined on the weekends. It minimizes the honey-do list. As someone who pegs out the “I” meter on Myers-Briggs, I have been practicing for self quarantine my whole life. I was able to complete quite a few figures this weekend.

The first thing I did was open a box and find four of these Eureka Miniatures Hawaiian war canoes. I bought them months ago when Eureka first released their new Hawaiians. I didn’t want to assemble them before the move. There is not much to them. Picture I found on line show these canoes and un-ornamented, so there wasn’t a lot of detail to paint. I had to reach out to Nic Robson in Australia to figure out how to mount the sails on the masts. I hope to complete that this evening.

The second thing I knocked out was two packs of Pulp Figures I purchased months ago. They are redesigns and re-issues of figure sets I already had. They may have been the free packs I got when ordering enough figures online.

Three conventions ago Chris and I split a box of Oathmark dwarves. My intent was to build them without heads. In the most recent duck Kickstarter from Star Hat miniatures, I convinced Darcy Perry to offer sprues of duck heads. As part of my Kickstarter I ordered several sprues. I finished the figures while painting some other Viking figures. The delivery of the heads is delayed based due to COVID-19.

Greg 3D printed three Saxon huts for me before I moved from Maryland, but I just got around to painting them this weekend. I think they turned out pretty nicely. This picture shows some Vikings that some of the HAWKs painted for me before I moved in front of one of the three buildings.

Before Cold Wars, I was painting Ozz figures like crazy, but I didn’t have time to paint these three personality figures. These are named brigade commanders for the Wars of Ozz rules.

As a club, the HAWKs is looking at running a large, spectacular What a Tanker game using Leonardo DaVinci tanks. Duncan has made some skeletons of trapezoidal tanks for us to complete, but I also ordered three 3D printed ones online in 1:48 scale. I assembled and painted them this weekend. The printing was somewhat crude, so they look good at “gaming distance” but don’t stand up well to close inspection.

I’d say that is was a pretty productive weekend, and I even knocked out a couple of honey-dos.

I had ten Oathmark Viking figures partially completed since before my household move and purchase a handful of Bad Squiddo shield maidens at Cold Wars. This weekend, I had a chance to get them painted.

As with most Bad Squiddo figures the sculpting and the casting of the shield maidens is excellent.

I can’t wait to get these on the table with Feudal Patrol.

I ran into Joe Corsaro at Cold Wars. He told me about these cool Russian mechanical grenadier figures for his Venus 1888 line of figures. I have most of his females on mechanical horses, but I hadn’t seen these. So I bought five and painted them up. The assembly was really easy, all the parts fitting nicely. He says he has some really cool VSF coaches coming soon, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them.

I saw this set of McGuffins at the Crooked Dice booth, but I originally passed on them until Greg convinced me that cats and dogs would live together if I didn’t buy them. I painted these up this weekend. I like the Holy Grail and the Maltese Falcon.

Next up is the assembly and painting of Leonardo DaVinci tanks and Saxon buildings.

Since most of us are “social distancing” and avoiding personal contact — sort of like Millennials with cell phones sitting in the same room texting each other — I have been painting a little. My daughter is home from school, and we’ve been doing things with her, so I haven’t gotten as much painted as I would normally. As we all work on our “lead mountain,” many mail-order business remain open, so make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

At Cold Wars last weekend, I purchased some the Black Sun “Deep Ones” from Pulp Figures. I painted them this week, because they weren’t very complicated, and I could easily pick them up and put them down as I was interrupted. I primed them white, painted them with Contrast Creed Camo, and then painted in the details.

I supplemented these with the female lizard warrior from Bad Squiddo.

When I return from a convention, I usually very quickly file, prime, and base any purchases so that when he muse strikes me, I am ready to paint. I have four Really Useful Boxes dedicating to holding my ready-to-go lead mole hill. Recently I re-discovered these armed frogs that will supplement my frog and turtle armies from Eureka Miniatures.

Well, it’s 0400, and I can’t sleep. So back to the painting table.

The race to get all my Ozz figures painted for Cold Wars 2020 is over. Last night I completed the last four figures. The other HAWKs are still working to get across the finish line, but since they are two hours away from the convention instead of 15, they have another day.

Russ sent me four sample Quadling cavalrymen to preview. We haven’t received all the mounted commanders for the infantry and cavalry regiments, so I decided to repurpose these samples as regimental and brigade commanders.

This is what an infantry and cavalry regiment in Wars of Ozz is supposed to look like: five bases plus a mounted leader. The regimental commander is really mostly for aesthetics in the rules, but doesn’t a unit look cool this way?!

I really like the looks of these “big battalions.” It reminds me a little of In a Grand Manner.

On the Facebook page and on some of the on-line fora, there have been questions about figure size. The range is nominally 28mm; however, the different nationalities are different sizes. From left to right in the picture you see Munchkins, Gillikins, Quadlings, and Winkies. The Winkies are probably the closest to 28mm, with the Munchkins and Gillikins being of smaller stature and the Quadlings being beefier and taller.

We are running FOUR Wars of Ozz demonstration / participation games at Cold Wars 2020 this weekend. One is Friday evening, and there are a morning, afternoon, and evening game on Saturday. Give the rules a try and see what a mass of Wars of Ozz figures look like on the table.

Today I finished the figures I will be using for the demonstration / participation games at Cold Wars next weekend. Several members of the HAWKs are also painting figures to be ready. You really need to come and try these rules and see these figures at Cold Wars.

Here is a brigade of five regiments of Winkie infantry. The brigade commander is riding a Zilk.

Winkies are cheap troops, because they have no firearms. But they do well in melee, and there are a lot of them.

I also recently finished three regiments of Quadlings.

I woke at 0230 this morning, and I started thinking about work and couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I went to the painting lair and continued work on the Wars of Ozz figures I need to have done for Cold Wars demonstration games.

Quadling land is made of three provinces: North, Central, and South. These are big farm boys. The Northern Province Quadlings have a roughly British Napoleonic look about them. The regiment picture above is nearly complete. I need to paint the officer’s sash (probably green) and base and flock them. Due to the race to get a LOT of units painted for Cold Wars, decoration of the bases will probably not be done in time.

The Quadlings from the Central Province have a roughly French Napoleonic look about them. These are getting close. I need to paint the three colors on the muskets (black, brass, and silver) some of the lace, the blanket rolls, and the bases.

The Quadlings from the Southern Province are meant to be roughly American War of Independence looking in their homespun brown coats. I have to paint the rifles and red stripe down the trousers. I also need to affix the flags to all the units.

For all three regiments, I need to paint the drums and attach them to the drummers. If I can stay up long enough this evening, I should finish the Quadlings and only have two regiments of Winkies left to paint by Sunday evening.

I have been painting at a feverish pace to get all the pre-production figures ready for FOUR demonstration games at Cold Wars in two weeks. Below you can see the work in progress pictures of many of the units. I don’t think any of these units have been previewed before, so enjoy this first look. (The figures are nicer than perhaps my paint job conveys, but these will give you an idea what will be coming soon.)

In addition to the four major nationalities (Munchkins, Quadlings, Gillikins, and Winkies), there are a number of other forces that can be used as “allies” or mercenaries when players create their armies. Below are pictures of one of those allies, the lesser pumpkin heads.

I have three regiments of Quadlings to try to finish by Cold Wars. Here they are on the table ready for a coat of apothecary white.