Buck's Blog

On Saturday at Historicon 2015, Eric Schlegel hosted the 5th Armies for Kids Giveaway game.  The event is for kids under 10 years old.  Each younger gamer who participates in the event walks away with enough PAINTED figures (for both sides) to run a game at home, some terrain, some unpainted figures, some paints, etc.

This year’s event featured 40mm ACW figures, mostly Sash and Saber, through the kind donations of many folks.  Maynard Creel, Ed Mohrmann, Phil Kearnan, Keven Pinder, and Eric Von Reyn provided the figures.  Ed hired Phil to paint all the Confederates that Ed purchased, and Phil subsequently donated and painted the mounted officers.  Chris Johnson once again provided terrain for the kids to take  home.  These included wooden fences and a  paper bridge over which to fight.  I realized after I got home that I need took any good close-up pictures of the figures that Phil painted, but they were amazing.  The HAWKs held a couple of painting bees during the year to paint up all the unpainted figures that had been donated.  Our figures did not look nearly as good as Phil’s.

Eric used his ACW rules he has created specifically for kids games.  They flow nicely, and the kids always have good time.  Eric’s rules also include his “test of history education in US schools.”  When a specific card is drawn from the deck, he asks one side or the other an ACW history question.  If the kids on that side get it correctly, one unit gets an extra activation.  If they don’t get it correctly, the other side gets a chance to “steal” the extra action.  I learned a lot from these nine year olds, like the “fact” that Grant commanded the Army of Northern Virginia and that Robert E. Lee was the president of the Confederacy.

The game involved both sides trying to capture the hill seen in the center of the picture (above).  The Rebs got there first, but they were eventually driven off by the Yanks.  The boy on the far left of the picture was the last Reb in the game.  His single remaining figure killed five or six Ynaks before being gunned down.

This was our fifth such giveaway event.

We hosted four games specifically targeting kids at Historicon 2015:

• The Armies for Kids Giveaway.
• Geoff’s Lego pirate game.
• Duncan’s game based on the Warriors books involving tribes of warring cats.
• A version of my Defense of Schloss Iter game tailored for kids.

While my buddies are at Historicon gaming themselves into a sleep-deprived stupor, I had to work today.  After work, I finished a few figures that were sitting on my painting table.

They are all nice figures that paint up easily.  The detail is clean.  Some of the facial features on the Daredevil Pilots were a little obscured after I primed them, but otherwise, I am very happy with the figures.

The silver-faced man is a “cybernaut” from a couple of episodes of The Avengers television show, and he is facing a very nice likeness of Emma Peel from the same show.

Tomorrow after working a few hours, I will brave the insane and obscene DC traffic to get to Historicon.

In previous posts I have described my town of Granville that I use for pulp games.  A few months back, I bought a bunch of buildings on Ebay.  Now that school is out, my daughter has been painting again.  She doesn’t paint figures, but she enjoys painting terrain.  Below are some buildings she completed recently.

I realized that while the real Granville has two churches, my Granville had none.  This perhaps explains the lawlessness in my town.  I really like this one from Plasticville.  It has a nice small-town look about it.

This house is perhaps a little too modern looking for Granville.

In addition some weeks ago, I posted a review of the corner hotel from Multiverse Gaming (www.multiversegamingterrain.com).  At the same time I ordered the hotel and gargoyles, I also ordered their fire escapes.  In fact, it was the fire escapes that brought me to their site in the first place.  I assembled them right away, but this week I got my daughter to paint them.  Below you can see the Multiverse fire escapes attached to a Litko building with some 25mm and 28mm figures for scale.

I think they are quite nice.  When assembled they include “hooks” that enable you to mount them on the windows of most buildings in my collection.

This weekend I finally got around to painting some of the Crooked Dice figures I ordered a couple of months ago.  These are UNIT troopers for Dr. Who games.

I don’t know if I got the uniforms correct — I didn’t do my historical research.  I went with a simple khaki and green camouflage pattern.  I think that looks better than plain black or something sinister like that.  I figure Greg will paint his correctly, so when I put mine on the table, it will be easy to separate them at the end of the game.

I wasn’t sure about the headgear.  I went with a blue that is meant to be reminiscent of the blue berets worn by UN peace keepers.

A couple of months ago, Greg and I put together a big order from Crooked Dice.  While I have had the figures filed, primed, and based for many weeks, this weekend was my first change to paint any of them.  I plan to work these figures into my zombie game in a shopping mall next weekend at Historicon.

I have been using Roman Circus for light chariot racing games.  The rules are the right balance of beer and pretzels as well as what seems to be a good representation of chariot racing.  I have been using reproductions of Marx Ben Hur play set chariots in 54mm (see a previous post on this subject).  I wanted to replicate that game in 10mm for easy transport on airplane flights, etc.  While there are a number of manufacturers of accurate racing chariots in 10mm and 15mm, I was wanted that Ben Hur look.  When I found the right looking chariots, they had the wrong drivers and vice versa.  I sent an Email to Richard at Magister Millitum.  He combined chariots from one catalog item with drivers from another.  I finished painting them this weekend, and made two tracks for them:  and typical oval one and one in a figure eight.

These were inexpensive enough that I even ordered six chariots without horses or drivers to make wreck markers in the game.  All of this will fit into a single Really Useful Box, so I will likely bring the game with me to Historicon next weekend for pickup games.

I have begun picking up the crescent root buildings one or two a month.  They are awesome!  The price is good, the construction is solid, they were designed for gamers, they’re light, and the pain jobs are terrific.

This one is 28D3.  I received this one from my sister for my birthday.

From a scale perspective, they mix quite nicely with MBA, if you already have a lot of their buildings.

At Historicon in two weeks I’ll be running a zombie game using GASLIGHT set in a shopping mall.  Last night was the play test.

Many of the HAWKs built one or more stores to be assembled into a shopping mall.  From the pictures you can see the different styles and types of stores, from my gaming store to Don’s Pier 7 Imports, Eric’s ice cream store, and Greg’s Asian food restaurant.

Each player controlled a faction, such as The A Team, the Scooby Gang, Cub Scouts, Congressmen, and Sisters of Mercy.  Their goal was “cooperatition,” meaning that the the factions were competing to get the most “treasures” out of the mall, but would often work together to ensure they were not overwhelmed by the zombies.

The game became a chaotic zoo after a while, which is what I wanted.  I think everyone had a good time.  Thanks to all the HAWKs who built stores, and thanks to Bill, Don, and Mike for pushing zombies all evening.