Buck's Blog

I ran a Captain America game using GASLIGHT at Origins 2012.  Chris, Dave, Greg, and I wanted to attend Origins, because none of us had been in many years.  We have a lot of awareness of our rules on the East Coast and the West Coast, but not in the middle of the country.  We wanted to hawk our wares at Origins.

I ran a Dr. Who game, which typically I forgot to photograph.  I ran two LSNC: Napoleonic Wars games.  Finally, Saturday night I ran my Captain America game.

The scenario involved Captain America at the head of the howling commandos leading a raid to blow up some experimental equipment and collect some secrets.

The commandos were trying to destroy an experimental flying saucer, three experimental tanks, and two flying wings.  The commandos cut through the fence line to get into compound.  They cut to ribbons the first Germans squad that tried to stand in their way.  The second German squad, however, took cover in some woods and blazed away at the Americans.  The Americans decided to close into hand-to-hand combat, which was a mistake, since the Americans had much better Shoot numbers.    While the melee was going on, a squad of commandos managed to blow up the flying saucer and both flying wings.  They finally broke through the German squad and dashed for a building which contained one of the secrets (the Americans didn’t know where the secrets were hidden).  At the other end of the table a team of commandos blew up one of the tanks.

When the game ended, the Americans had 17 points, had captured the Red Skull, and had knocked the Germans were  down to about 50% strength.  The Germans had killed 15 Americans, so the game was a minor American victory.  The Americans had lost many of the characters from the Captain America comic books in the multi-turn melee near the flying wings.

In the end, I think all the players had a good time.

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Origins was interesting and fun, but there were very few miniatures games and even fewer historical games.  Lots of cards, role playing, live action role playing, and general board games.  The theory of wandering girls in chain mail bikinis sounds good; in practice almost none of them could pull it off.  I only saw one all weekend who was in the least bit attractive — a cave girl with a spear.  Most weighed more than a horse, and many were using the convention as an excuse to wander about with their boobs largely exposed.  There were several male costumes, like “steampunk” Santa, a Han Solo,  and some Dr. Who lookalikes, that were interesting.  Next year, I think we’ll try to attend Nashcon.  Our plan is to hit the big three HMGS East conventions, Barrage, and one “other” convention each year.

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.

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.