It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
~~ Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC
For our Mars game, I wanted some dramatic, painted desert-like rock formations. I wanted ones that could also be used in cowboy games. I enlisted the help of my daughter, who enjoys helping with terrain but doesn’t care much for painting figures.
We cut 3/4″ insulation foam into irregular shapes. After gluing these together, we painted the “rock formations” with brown latex paint from the hardware store. We then dry-brushed the layers in different colors to give them that stratified look of the American west. I think the final result is pretty good.
While making the painted-desert hills, we also made felt-covered hills to match the copper canyon ground cloth we’ll use for the Mars game. You can sort of see these in the background of the previous two photos. I don’t like sculpted, flocked hills, because they don’t match the ground cloth. I don’t like sculpted hills under the ground cloth because it is hard to tell where the contours begin in rules in which there is a penalty for each elevation level. Figures also tend to topple over when placed on those hills, particularly if the figures are individually mounted. My technique is to make hills that have a slight slope on the edges, but too steep to tempt players to place figures on them. The result is “wedding cake” hills that match the terrain.
Chris and I continue to paint figures for our 20-layer GASLIGHT Mars game for Historicon. Early this morning I finished my second unit of Red Martians. In this picture they are fighting off a white ape. All figures are Bronze Age.
This picture shows a slightly different view of the figures. I painted the skin a light orange and then applied Windsor Newton nut brown ink.
The white ape will act as a “wandering monster” in the Mars game.
Ironclad miniatures makes these Jawa-looking figures for science fiction games. I like them as Martian desert raiders.
Ironclad makes a couple of different types of cannons to go with these figures.
The ground cloth for our game is a color, called copper canyon. We used a variety of spray paints to give it a mottled look.
Last night Sam and I started working on these eagles. The Battle of Five Armies box comes with three sprues. I bought my two sets second hand and somehow ended up with 9 sprues, minus one figure. I combined these with a bag of Eureka 10mm Elves riding eagles. For LSNC: Fantasy, Ancients, and Mediaeval, this gives me five bases of eagles, one base of eagles and riders, and one eagle “brigade commander.”
These painted extremely quickly.
Now I’ve begun working on more 10mm Dwarves and about 20 figures to complete my needs for the Historicon Mars GASLIGHT extravaganza.
For the two people who follow this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been pushing hard to finish my Prussian corps. I’m committed to running two Napoleonic games at Origins and a few more at Historicon. The last bunch of figures I needed to finish to complete the I Corps from 1813-1815 was five units of Landwehr cavalry and the generals. As it turns out, since we’ve decided that the Prussians need regimental commanders in the game, I am short a few Prussian generals. I can substitute Russians or Austrians for my upcoming games, but I need to paint one more bag of Prussian generals before I am all done.
I’m going to concentrate on writing the rules now and beginning development of LSNC: Fantasy, Ancients, and Mediaeval before considering British and Spanish units or adding to my French, Austrian, or Russian armies.
A couple of weeks ago, while I was recovering from surgery for two hernias, we took a short trip to the Smithsonian American History Museum. We hadn’t been there since it was closed a few years ago for a whole year for renovation. I have to say that I was underwhelmed, and think the American History museum has become ho-hum.
Why do I say this?
First it seemed that fully a quarter of the exhibits were closed. I found this interesting in a museum that just opened two years ago after having been closed for a full year. Secondly, the exhibits seemed really “dumbed down” to me.
On the top floor, where there are exhibits on American wars from the American Revolution to the present, I found many of the displays lacking in substance. There was an exhibit the size of a broom closet on WWI. The Vietnam display was 50% unrest, civil rights, and protests, and very little on the conduct of the war, phases of the war, campaigns, how a very professional Army went into the war, but how the long war eroded that professionalism, or how the majors and lieutenant colonels who came out of that war built back up the Army that amazed the world in Desert Storm. There was no display about the Cold War.
The display about our current wars in the Middle East consisted on one small room. For history class, my son is writing a paper about Iraq. I was struck by how little our young people know about our longest wars. If the job of museums is both to inspire and educate, I’d think that the Smithsonian should have significant, extensive, apolitical displays about these three wars. I don’t think I would have understood anything about Desert Shield/Storm, OEF, or OIF from these displays.
The new display of the flag that flew over Fort McHenry is very nice.
Finally, I was a bit put out that they pushed American citizens out of the way to entertain a bunch of visiting foreign dignitaries.
So, if you want to see Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Kermit the Frog, Fonzie’s jacket, of First Ladies’ dresses, this is the place for you. If you actually want to learn anything about our history or anything that really matters, seek other opportunities.
After finish a bunch of Prussian 10mm cavalry, I was looking for a short project as a change of pace. As we are beginning development of LSNC: Fantasy, Ancients, and Mediaeval, I’m slowly building my army for play testing. Taking figures from one of the Battle of Five Armies boxed sets, above is a picture of three units of dwarves, and below is a picture of three units of human spearmen.
Chris asked the other day why I painted my human in different colors. I want the option of either giving a player a “brigade” of human bowmen, or creating mixed “legions” with spearmen, bowmen, swordsmen, etc. In this way, I can have a maroon legion, green legion, and blue legion of humans.
These 10mm fantasy figures on strips paint very, very quickly. Up close, they certainly don’t look as nice as 28mm figures, but deployed on the table at arms length, they really look like units in battle formation.
Sam helped me finish a second ERLT farm house. I had a previous post about the first one we completed, but Sam wanted me to take a picture of this second one to post. She picked out the figures in front of the house from my “unarmed civilian” box.
