Buck's Blog

For the sixth year in a row, the HAWKs rang out the new year at Casa Surdu with an evening of gaming.  Though many of the regulars were unable to attend, we still had a large crowd — 12 gamers plus a couple of kibitzers.  The plan was to play three games.  The first was the traditional Santa Claus game using GASLIGHT.  The second was a large X-Wing game with almost everything I have.  And the final game for 2014 was Red Dragon Inn.

The first game was set in my pulp town of Granville, Illinois.  We used To Be Continued… by GASLIGHT as the rules.  In this scenario Santa has been shot down by Venusians and crashed near the Sinclair gas station.  (You don’t see the sleigh in this shot, because I took it before Chris arrived with the sleigh.)  The objective of the good guys was to gather up as many packages as possible and get them to Duke Morrison’s waiting airplane, the Anything but a Twenty, for subsequent distribution to deserving boys and girls.  The various groups of gangsters who inhabit the town were trying to gather the presents for themselves.  In addition, the Venusians (see the gold space ships in the park not far from Duke’s plane), were trying to capture the sleigh and/or reindeer so that they could study the technology.  There was also a small group of Nazi Fifth Columnists in the town who were interested in capturing Santa’s giant mechanical nutcracker and clockwork Santas.

The packages were scattered around town, and the gangsters were likewise distributed in buildings.  Duke Morrison, “Boats” Morgan, “Wrench” Web and their soldiers and sailors started near the Anything But a Twenty.  The Venusians began near their ships.  Santa and a few of his units landed near the Sinclair station.  Nearby were professor Serafini Nannini and his lab assistants, who moved to investigate the crash, as well a group of friendly snowmen and snowball fighting kids who had a vested interest in helping Santa.

Many of Santa’s other allies, like teddy bear infantry, toy soldiers, additional kids with snowballs, Moonraiser’s Marauders, and additional snowmen arrived in the first few turns, their arrival location being randomized.

The HAWKs tradition is for my son to be Santa.  The other unfortunate tradition is that Santa always has gotten killed.  When my son was younger, that was disheartening for him.  This year he didn’t want to play Santa, but we made him anyway.  Spoiler alert: Santa lived.

The game began with Santa righting his crashed sled and calling four remaining reindeer to his assistance.  Four reindeer weren’t enough to lift the heavily-laden sleigh, but they were enough to pull it slowly.  In addition the clockwork Santas and giant nutcracker were enlisted to push the sleigh as well.

Hermie and Rudloph jumped into a nearby roadster and, after a slight mishap which involved getting their car stuck in a hedge — it turns out that Hermie is a poor driver, they began collecting packages.  The nearby friendly snowmen collected packages and brought them to Santa while a group of kids with snowballs repulsed a group of gangsters and pursued a second one.

At the other end of the town, another group of snowball wielding kids and a group of penguins battled with angry snowmen and gangsters to secure an egress route for Santa.

Angry snowmen and gangsters tried to set up a roadblock to stop Santa’s sleigh while other gangsters (on the street to the left of the one in this picture) set up a bucket brigade to haul packages from a building to a “borrowed” bus.

Moonraiser’s Marauders (from the Island of Misfit Toys) attacked Bonnie’s gangsters, but took the worst end of the subsequent melee.  This gave Bonnie, Harry the Horse, and the Limey’s gangs an opportunity to try to cut off Santa’s movement toward Duke’s plane.

Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble, hitched their red and yellow panel van to Santa’s sleigh and began towing it up the road.  This freed up the reindeer to fly to the rooftops of Granville business to retrieve presents that fell during Santa’s crash landing.  At the same time, Duke Morrison was battling Venusians and other bad guys.  Tanks as having a bad dice night, rolling many 20’s.  It was probably inevitable that Duke would be incapacitated before the end of the game.

Many of the gangsters began trying to ram into either the panel van or the sleigh itself to stop it.  At the same time, the Nazi “she wolves” boarded the sleigh and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Santa.  At this point, I was worried that Santa was going to die again this year, but he passed all his Save rolls and cleared the sleigh of enemy boarders.  The Venusians came alongside in a “borrowed” vehicle and began shooting at Santa.  Still Santa Saved, while toy soldiers and teddy bears defended the sleigh.  After four hours of play, we determined that there was nothing the bad buys had left in their bag of tricks to stop Santa from linking up with Duke Morrison’s men.

The final count on presents was 24 to the good guys and 14 to the bad guys.  Santa lived.  It was a convincing good guy victory.

I tore down Granville (a significant task) while everyone partook on breaded chicken over pasta with garlic bread.  The chicken recipe came from my aunt and was prepared much earlier in the day.  My wife heated it up while we finished the GASLIGHT game.   This gave me time to put away all the buildings and figures.

The second game we played was X-Wing.  I wanted to put all — or nearly all — of my X-Wing ships on the table.  Each player had three fighters or perhaps a smaller number of larger ships.  Bill brought the Deep Space Nine station from the Star Trek version of the rules to use as a communications satellite.  This became the objective.  The rebels swooped in to knock it out, but were surprised to find that it was fully operational and guarded by several squadrons of Tie Fighters.  Does that sound like the plot of Empire Strikes Back?

Some of the rag tag group of rebel ships were piloted by experts.  Some of the ships were older relics piloted by novices.  The Empire had a couple of aces, but also a couple of academy rookies.  The rebels also had the Mellinium Falcon piloted by Han Solo and a small cruiser.

I don’t know if Princess Leah was on board, but this ship was impressive on the table — even though it was armed with just a single weapon.

The Tie Fighters ganged up on the Falcon, eventually turn it into an impressive fireball.  While the Falcon was keeping many of the imperial fighters busy the other rebel battle group ground their way toward the communications station.  Despite heavy losses, they reached the station and were surprised by the heavy armament.  Several rebel fighters exploded as they approached.

The communications satellite was an easy target.  Despite the many shields, the rebels eventually punched through and began inflicting damage.  Then the cruiser came into range and began to fire.  A turn or two later, the communications satellite too exploded.  A good night for the rebels!

X-Wing ended about 1130.  While my wife passed around champaign in anticipation of the ball dropping in Times Square, we set up what we thought was going to be a quick game of Red Dragon Inn.  The game ended close to 2:00 AM with Bruce finally besting my daughter.

I’ve never understood the fascination with New Year’s Eve, but these marathon gaming sessions, while somewhat exhausting to host, are a nice way to finish out the year and start the new year.  What’s not to like about good food and fun games with buddies?!  I played my 42nd and 43rd miniatures games for the year — falling short of my 50-game goal.

One of many HAWKs traditions is the Christmastime game at Duncan’s house sometime during the holidays.  Often the game is set in the War of 1812 and often in the winter.  This year Duncan hosted an American raid on a British encampment in Canada in the winter.  The American objective was to capture supplies, loot, and plunder.  The British objective was to hang onto their gear.

In the past, Duncan has used a variety of different rule sets, including GASLIGHT, for these games.  This year Duncan wanted to try using my G.A.M.E.R. rules that are under development.  In general, though there are questions about a set of rules that are still under development, the system worked well enough.

Each player had two six-man groups and a leader to control.  Dave’s troops had high morale (“guts”) but terrible accuracy (“shooting skill”).  He rushed forward toward the enemy and then missed with nearly all his shots and Don laughed at him and taunted him.

There was a furious melee in the woods just behind the plantation house, where Noah is seen in the photo moving his troops.  After the melee, which lasted a few turns, Eric was victorious, and Noah was out of the game.  Don taunted Noah too.

On my side of the table, Bruce occupied the brown building in the picture and then proceeded to decimate Jim’s and my forces.  We thought Bruce’s forces were snipers armed with Gatling guns.  On the first or second turn, Rob incapacitated my officer.  The officer had moved to the edge of the woods in the center right of the picture to locate the enemy.  He found them, but didn’t live long enough to let the troops know.  By the end of the game Rob and I had ground each other to a pulp, but he managed to capture two cows.  Don taunted me as well.

The game was a lot of fun.  Lots of folks brought cookies and snacks, so the holiday season pig out continued unabated as we battled.

Thanks to Duncan for hosting!

I recently ordered some 10mm giant ants from Magister Militium for my fantasy armies.  I went back and forth on whether to make them black ants or red ants.  I decided on red.

I like the looks of these figures.  The giant ants are in sort of a centaur pose.

I thought the praying mantises looked too crowded with all six on a base and too open with just three, so I placed a couple of additional ants on the base as sort of a combined arms team.

Last night was HAWKs night.  There were two simultaneous games.  The first was Kurt Schlegel’s 1973 Arab-Israeli War game based on the battle of Quatre Bras.  Since many of the HAWKs supported the 114th Signal Battalion’s SLPD (see http://bucksurdu.com/blog/?p=3350) the various game masters have taken turns running their version of the scenario at club nights.  This week was Kurt’s turn.

The second game was a play test of Kevin Fischer’s game based on a Japanese anime series.  It involved large stompy robots (actually these are more like battle mechs that have human (or human-like operators) battling each other.  We also had tanks and infantry running around.

Apparently the Egyptians had a slight advantage over the Israelis when the game ended.

The robot game went pretty well for a first play test.  I don’t know the genre, so I don’t know if the game reflects the cartoon well.  It had a few rough edges and can use a little streamlining, but it was fun.

The game only took a couple of hours, so we had a little time for a game of Red Dragon Inn.

Greg Priebe, one of the guys in our gaming group, sent me a note about a toy available at Target stores from the Disney movie, Planes.  It is a good size for 28mm figures and looks like a C-119 cargo plane.  I’ve always liked the look of the C-119.  Before I could take action on his suggestion, I saw this blog posting:  http://www.inlgames.com/c119.htm.

My pulp games involve Duke Morrison and his buddies, “Wrench” Web and “Boats” Morgan along with his love interest, Gianna Nannini, daughter of the great scientist Serafini Nannini.  Duke Morrison NEEDED a plane.  So within a few days, I had ordered one for me and one for Greg from Target.com.

My son took up the challenge of removing all the red stickers while we watched television one evening.  After a lot of elbow grease and a fair amount of Goo Gone, the plane was ready to paint.

I first sprayed the plane black and then with a silver paint.  This silver color was brighter than I wanted, so I gave it a third coat of paint, this time an aluminum color.  I then mixed silver and brown paint to make a metallic rust color, which I applied liberally with a wide brush.

In the picture (above), you can see the difference between the un-weathered engine cowlings compared to the rusty finish on the rest of the plane.

I decided to keep the centers of the propellors silver, but painted the tips of the propellers white.  I like that look.

Then came the challenge of coming up with a name for the plane and appropriate nose art.  After I had considered several names, including Duke’s Duchess and the Granville Gal, Chris suggested Anything But a Twenty.   Granville is the town in which most of my pulp games take place.  “Anything but a twenty” is a reference to the fact that in G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., rolls of twenty often cause bad — and usually dramatic — things to occur.

Below are candidate nose art I built from some Varga pin-up pictures I found on line, some image editing capabilities on my Mac, and a few other elements.

Below is a closeup of the nose of the airplane with our heroes posing in front of it.  I printed the nose art on clear, matte address labels.  The artwork didn’t have the vibrance of glossy paper.  At first I was a bit disappointed, but in retrospect, I like the washed-out look.  It seems closer to photos I’ve seen after the plane has had a lot of hard miles.  The faded look seems to fit better with the rusty appearance of the plane.

I chose a tail number of NC-61326.  Since “Granville Gal” lost out, I chose to use the zip code of the real Granville, IL, which is the town on which I loosely based my town for pulp games.

And here is one last look at the plane from a slightly more distant viewpoint than the previous close up.  The border around the nose art didn’t quite disappear, but it’s not too obvious either.

This was a fun project.  I rarely build or paint airplane models, as I don’t have much luck with them.  In this case, I think the end result was quite good.

The Look, Sarge, No Charts family of rules uses special dice to take the place of chart cards.  During development of the first set of rules, Look, Sarge, No Charts: World War II, I used wooden cubes from a craft store for play testing.  Those cubes are a little smaller than the blank dice that you can buy.  I have been using the store-bought blank dice, but I haven’t updated the size of the labels.

At Fall In a couple of weeks back, the guy who works at the “Dice Lady” booth mentioned that there are die-cut labels that fit the dice.  I found them from On Line Labels.  The company tries to sell you a proprietary software package to make labels that requires periodic updating (and fees).  They also have a template that works with Microsoft Word.  It took several hours (and a call to the On Line Labels help desk) to reformat the labels for Bear Yourselves Valiantly and Fate of Battle.  Previously I have been printing the slightly smaller ones on full sheets of sticky labor paper and then cutting them out, one at a time.  With the newer pre cut labels, once they are printed, they can be easily peeled and stuck onto the blank dice.

From the picture above, you can see that the new labels are slightly larger.  This has allowed me to increase the point size of the fonts by one or two points, making the labels much easier to read.

While these are much easier to use than the .pdf files that I have posted to several Web page, I am very hesitant to post these new labels.  The Internet has create a worldwide culture of people who expect others’ intellectual property to be given away for free and will complain and kvetch in public forum when free stuff isn’t perfect.  With these new labels, you have to move them every so slightly left or right on the page to account for slight variations in printers.  That amount of effort will surely illicit complaints on TMP and inquiries into the nature of my parentage.  I’ll make labels available to my co-authors, but I probably won’t make them available to the general public.

Some years ago, at one of the HMGS East conventions, the giveaway for all attendees was a small sprue of four or five 25mm plastic British colonial figures.  Most of the HAWKs handed me their sprues, because they didn’t do any colonial gaming in this scale and thought I could use them in a GASLIGHT game.  I painted several GASLIGHT units in red jackets to use for service on Mars.

As noted in earlier posts, I’ve been picking away at my unpainted lead (or in this case plastic) collection.  So, to finish off these free plastic figures, I decided to paint them for service in the Northwest Frontier.  The sprues only came with rank and file, so the officers, standard bearer (currently missing a flag), and other special figures are Empress Miniatures, ordered from Age of Glory.

I was in Orlando last week for a conference for work.  I had an opportunity one evening to spend an hour or two at the Downtown Disney marketplace looking for stocking stuffers for my kids and wife.  In the art store I saw this picture and had to take a photo of it.