Buck's Blog

I will be running two games at Fall In featuring the about-to-be-released Combat Patrol: World War II rules.  As of yesterday, there were still slots open for these games.  Be the first in your club to try out this new game.

I started last weekend and finished this weekend.  I completed the Plasticville Hobo Village set.  The hobo village will be on the outskirts of Granville in my next pulp game.  This is a nice place for gangsters to hole up waiting their chance to kidnap Professor Serafini Nannini and his daughter Gianna Nannini.

I also completed the roadside produce stand.  A two lane highway runs past Granville, and this will be a nice place to sell all that fresh produce from the local farms.

The fence in the background will eventually go around my drive in theater.  I made the fences high to keep out all the young boys hoping for a glimpse of Betty Grable’s legs.

I guess the guy with his “dukes” up is unhappy with the price of corn.

Chris found some Viking looking boats in the dollar store.  At Barrage we talked about having some painted as “good” and others as “evil.”  So I painted mine as “good.”

I made the sails in PowerPoint and printed them.  I’m pretty happy with the outcome.

I have a number of partially completed items on the painting table, but nothing new to show.  I did have a thought yesterday that I felt I would share with both readers of this blog.  🙂

I got a recent Pulp update from Beasts of War (http://www.beastsofwar.com).  Actually the update was Pulp, Punk, Horror, and Weird — dominated by the latter three and light on the first.  As I was perusing the Email update, I wondered, “When did it all get so dark?”  New releases of rules and figures seem to be focusing on the dark side of Pulp — daemons, vampires, daemons, zombies, more daemons, etc.  The stuff hitting the market these days makes Lovecraft look like Charles Schultz.

I guess I like my pulp lighter than the current tastes:  Duke Morrison and his buddies, “Wrench” Web,” “Boats” Morgan, Professor Nannini, Sergeant Preston, and others working to foil the insensate evil of the nameless “Eastern Menace,” Nazi Zeppelin troopers, etc.  I like bigger than life, barrel-chested, steely eyed killers of men and small fur-bearing animals locked in struggles to rescue beautiful ingenues, recapture stolen scientific marvels, or mystical devices.  I don’t much care for daemons, devils, and zombies cluttering up my pulp action; although, I do play the occasional zombie game.  My pulp is the Maltese Falcon, the Saturday morning serials, Flash Gordon, The Thin Man, Lives of the Bengal Lancers, the Real Glory, the Drums, The Four Feathers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alan Quartermaine, just about anything John Wayne ever did, etc.  These are lighthearted adventures with clear heroes and villains.

Similarly, Victorian science fiction seems to be getting hijacked by the darker steam punk cum post apocalyptic craze.  Who wants VSF troopers in gas masks?  Apparently many.  I prefer bold, perhaps xenophobic, arrogant, and proselytizing, adventurers venturing into unknown worlds where they battle native tribes, prehistoric creatures, alien beings, and other European powers battle for control of resources in The Great Game.  I know none of that is politically correct these days, but as much as we want to pretend the colonial period never happened, it did.  And in most cases colonization of Africa was done by honorable men — by the standards of their day — attempting noble deeds as they saw them.

So clearly gaming can be what anyone wants it to be:  dark or light, ultra high resolution or highly abstract, fast or slow.  For me, though, I like my games to be a little lighter than the current trend in the hobby seems to be — at least judging by newly released games, rules, and figures.  Clearly I remain out of step with the rest of the hobby.

How do you like your pulp?

Yesterday, the HAWKs hosted our Barrage gaming day in Northern Maryland.  We had a record turnout, a Flames of War Tournament, a L’Art De La Guerre tournament, and lots of fun.  Below are some pictures from the day’s gaming.

One of the highlights of Barrage was seeing an old buddy Ma’k Morin.  He brought his wife and daughter to Barrage.  It was the first time I had seen him in almost 20 years, even though we have kept in contact via Email and phone calls.  It was great to game with him again, and I think his family enjoyed it too.

The first proofs of the Combat Patrol cards arrived from DriveThru Cards this week.  They look terrific!

I just need to do a final proof of the rule book, and then I will ready to go public.

At Historicon I picked up all the new stuff from Pulp Figures that I didn’t already have.  Two sets were French Foreign Legion figures.  It appears that this well be the beginning of a new line of figures for Bob Murch.  All I know about the stereotypical Foreign Legion is Beau Geste and the Laurel and Hardy spoof, but I figured I could work these figures into a GASLIGHT game as a contingent.

As with all the Pulp Figures the animation and sculpting is superb.

I also finished this shark man from Bones II (I think).  This figure will find his way into a future undersea adventure game.