Buck's Blog

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, while I await the arrival of a big box of Old Glory 10mm Napoleonic figures, I’ve been picking away at odds and ends sitting in the project box.  I finished this batch over two weekends.  Above are five figures from Pulp Figures’ Dangerous Dames 2.

These are some Pulp seamen/sailors along with some deck guns that I also think are from Pulp Figures.

Some sailors to wander around town looking for trouble or stand around on the deck of a gunboat looking pretty.

I’ve had these sitting in the project box for a couple of years.  I think they are all from Old Glory.  I must have picked them up in a flea market.  That’s the only reason I could think I had a handful of them rather than a whole bag.

I’m not even sure why I picked up these figures except to use as “objectives” in a pirate barroom brawl game.  I’m sure they were in one of the boxes full of figures that you buy by weight from Iron Wind at the HMGS East conventions.

These are neat figures.  Again, I have no idea of the manufacturer.  They are both carrying swords so I’m sure they are meant for fantasy role playing.

I’ve put in a large order of Old Glory 10mm Napoleonic figures, but while I’m waiting for them to arrive, I’ve been attacking some odds and ends sitting in my project box.  Usually right after a convention, I file, bases, and prime the figures I picked up at that convention.  They then sit in my project box and are ready to paint when the mood strikes me.

The above figure is some sort of Games Workshop somethingorother that I picked up at NASHCON.  I thought the mounted Gatling gunner would make a cool addition to a GASLIGHT game.  The figure was painted when I got it in the flea market, but I repainted it.

From previous posts, you can see that I have spent several years building up a nice-sized town for my pulp games.  Each building, however, either has no sidewalk or has its own sidewalk section that goes all the way around it.  The result is that the town doesn’t quite look so much like a main street as a series of disjointed buildings.  I decided to cut some large sections from 1/4-inch plywood, paint sidewalks, and flock the centers.  The flocking in the center is meant to be alleyway or vacant lot.

In this picture you can see how two buildings look sitting on the boards.  The buildings aren’t of uniform size, so some will have a flocking “back yard.”  I need another coat of flocking on the boards, but I think the overall effect is about right.

This was another flea market find that will go nicely in one of my cowboy games.

I bought these at Historicon to go with my other Pulp Figures colonial Germans.

These are from the re-issued pack of rugged heroes.

So are these.  Today the kids have homework, so I’ll probably work on a few more sets of Pulp Figures that are sitting in the project box.  I’m hoping they finish their homework in time that I can put them through a quick WWII game with the rules I’ve been developing.

Last night at the HAWKs meeting there were two games.  One was a Union So Tested American Civil War fight.  From what I could tell it was quite a good scenario.  The second game was another (only the second) play test of the WWII skirmish rules I’ve been developing.  Noah, Duncan, Chris, and Don were my guinea pigs.

The scenario was a simple meeting engagement in which both sides were fighting for control of the road intersection in the center of the table.  It perhaps wasn’t an interesting, but I wanted to get the players engaging each other quickly.

The game confirmed that the firing mechanics worked well.  (See previous posts about the card-based combat resolution mechanisms I’ve been developing.)  I may double the weapons ranges.  Right now an M-1 rifle shoots about 36 inches.  In Beer and Pretzels Skirmish I used shooting ranges that were closer to figure scale, but players didn’t seem to like the idea they could shoot across the whole board. Food for thought.

I knew something wasn’t working for activation.  I’ve been using a mechanic similar to the Look, Sarge series, except with many more cards, because I wanted elite and regular units to, in general, activate more frequently than green units.  The down sides were that turns are significantly longer, players don’t get the sense of passage of time, it’s almost impossible to recover from being pinned, and other drawbacks.  For the next test, I’m going to go closer to Look, Sarge, with cards numbered 1 to 6 in red and also in black.  I’ll add an “elite” card.  When that card is drawn, elite units with the same number as the last number called will activate.  So SOME elite units will get two activations in a row.  This is both simpler and addresses some of the issues noted.

Movement worked fine.

I had recently revamped the morale rules, but it didn’t seem that players every failed morale.  In fact most players didn’t even fear the morale checks.  I think what I forgot to take into account is number of figures lost more heavily.  When a figure is wounded or killed, the unit picks up a morale pip.  To pass you subtract the number of morale pips from your “Guts number.”  This difference has to be greater than the target number on the card.  I think I want to make the following change.  In stead of accruing one morale pip for each wound or incapacitate result, you will accrue one per wound and three for each incapacitate.  This should result in more morale failures, which will enable me to test the morale failure mechanics better.

Finally, I’m not sure that I’m happy with the unit record sheets.  On them you track wounds on your figures, but it’s hard to remember to look at the card when shooting, because wounded figures have a negative columns shift.  I won’t make any changes to that just yet, but it’s on my list to revisit later.

Don tried to test rifle grenades, but he “rolled” poorly each time and scattered in a bad direction, so we never got to see how the new mechanics worked.

In general, I’m happy with the way the rules are shaping up.

We had a nice relaxing Sunday, which gave me time to complete a few figures I purchased at Historicon.  Except for the 10mm Napoleonic project, I don’t have a major painting project right now, so I’m picking away at my mountain of unpainted lead that built up over the Summer.

The advantage of these small projects is that I can finish them in a weekend; whereas, several battalions of 10mm Napoleonic troops take a whole weekend.

I have also been talking about writing a jousting / tournament game.  One of the HAWKs, Greg, found these toys.  I repainted them this weekend as well.  I think they came out well.

As Reaper posted their second Bones Kickstarter project this week, I was reminded that I hadn’t painted any of the first batch.  I really only wanted about half of what was in the Kickstarter deal, but half was enough to make the deal worthwhile.  I traded some figures with others in the HAWKs and sold another batch at Historicon, retaining the ones I really wanted.  I took advantage of being furloughed to take care of some needed “honey do’s” around the house and also work on some of the Reaper figures.

Some weeks back I posted that I was working on a Victorian version of the Marvel Avengers.  The only Avenger I was missing was Thor.  Someone online suggested a blacksmith.  I converted one of the Reaper blacksmith figures to be Thor.  He’s the one on the left in the picture below.

I considered making the apron red, like Thor’s cape, but that looked goofy, so I made his pants red instead.

Here is a view of the complete Avengers group in action against a giant crab.  The front row, from left to right:  Black Widow, Thor, Captain America, and Hawkeye.  The back row, from left to right:  the Hulk and Iron Man.

I’m not sure how this figure became part of the handful I pulled from the box, but since she was on the table, she got painted.

I tried to be a bit artistic with these.  I wanted them to look as if they were being lit by the lanterns.  The effect was not nearly as good as I had hoped.

I really like the two figures on the right.  They depict the typical dungeon delver, heavily laden with weapons and treasure.

Why so many duplicates?  You can never have too many townspeople, so one of my Kickstarter add-ons was a second set of civilians.

At this point, I have no planned use for these figures, but when I saw them at Historicon they called to me.  I really like the look of these and can see them showing up in some games in the not-too-distant future.

At Historicon, these figures called to me.  They are Eskimo cavalry riding polar bears and some sort of yak-like animal produced by Sergeant Major’s Miniatures.  I just had to have them to add to my Northland Adventures collection.

The mounts were cast in two pieces.  The rider’s right hands were separate and had to be glued onto the arms.  I am looking forward to seeing them in a game.

I recently finished eight more battalions of Russian infantry.  To finish the VII and VIII corps, I just need to complete several regiments of cavalry and many leaders.  It takes 30 figures to make an infantry battalion but only 10 for a cavalry regiment, so I suspect it won’t take long to complete the order of battle.  I’ve figured out what I need to order from Old Glory and will probably place the order soon.

I have been storing my 10mm figures in cardboard, computer keyboard boxes.  With 10mm WWII there are only 10 infantry figures on a base.  The density of figures for Napoleonic bases is much higher, and the cardboard boxes are beginning to crush.  I mentioned that I was looking for something better, and my buddy Mark turned me on to Really Useful Boxes.  After perusing their Web page, I determined that the 4-liter box would be the right size.  With the lipped tray, you get two roughly equal height storage levels that are perfect size for 10mm infantry, artillery, cavalry, or leaders.

Here is what the box looks like when it’s closed.  One of these boxes is shorter, but slightly taller than the thin keyboard boxes I’ve been using.  They also store a few more figures than the keyboard boxes.  For 10mm WWII, I put two battalions in a cardboard box.   It will be excellent to put two battalions in one of these, one on each level.  Then I can just hand a player either a box without the tray or a tray without the box, and he will have his total command.  Two players won’t have to fight for access to their keyboard box with another player, particularly when they enter the game on different table sides.

One of these 4-liter boxes will be just about right for most of my 28mm figures with the trays inside, but any figures that have their arms or anything else above their heads will only fit if you don’t use the second-story tray.  They also make two more boxes that are slightly taller but have the same footprint at the 4-liter boxes.  I was thinking that one of these with the tray would enable me to store the taller figures on the bottom level and the shorter figures on the top level.

On their Web page, these boxes are $15 each, but at Staples I can get the boxes for $8 each.  The trays are an additional $4, but you must order them on line, as neither Staples, Office Depot, nor Office Max carry any of the inserts for the boxes.  The boxes are much more sturdy than the cardboard ones, and after I fully convert — in several years — my shelves will have a pleasing, uniform appearance.