Buck's Blog

At an HMGS convention some time back Wargames Factory was distributing some of their Zulu War British as samples.  The guys in my club gave me their figures.  I’ve had them assembled, primed, and based for some time.  As I don’t game the Zulu War, I wasn’t sure what to do with them.  In preparation for our Historicon GASLIGHT Mars extravaganza, I’ve been painting figures.  See previous posts.  This weekend I finished my Brits painted for service on Mars.

The uniform is similar to the Zulu War uniform.  While the British Army on Earth has converted to khaki, it was determined that the red coats were actually camouflage on Mars.  The red coats were retained, but worn over khaki trousers, rather than blue.  The khaki takes on an orange tinge after service in the red soil of Mars.

Here is a picture of those newly-painted British troops receiving a charge from green Martians.

A few days ago I posted that I had gotten the RAFM Space 1889 Elephant Team for Christmas.  Early this morning while everyone was sleeping, I finished it.  It doesn’t come with any crewmen, but I have some other “dismounted” Gatling guns and crewmen I can use when the gun goes into action.  I plan to use this in Northwest Frontier and VSF games.  I think it would also look good on Mars.

As I began work on the RAFM kit, I remembered that somewhere in a box, I had an old Hinchcliffe elephant gun team.  It was missing the two riders and the two crewmen sitting on the limber.  It was also missing the barrel of the cannon.  I decided to finally assemble this kit as well.  See above.

I made the barrel for the cannon by starting with the plastic tube that had once protected a paint brush.  The breach was made from the cap for a tire valve.  I added a couple of extra bits from the bit box.  I think the outcome was pretty good.

I am looking forward to seeing these two guns in action on the table soon!

No pictures today.  A little at a time I’ve been working on the elephant gun team I got for Christmas.  As I was priming the pieces, I remembered that I had an old Hinchcliffe elephant gun from years ago in a box somewhere.  I dug it out and am working on both at the same time.

The RAFM elephant team is like one seen in the movie Gunga Din.  There are two elephants.  One carries the gun carriage, and the other carries the Gatling gun barrels.  As I assemble the team, I want to make sure I can take the carriage and gun off the elephants and put it into action on the gaming table.

The Hinchcliffe elephant team is different.  The two elephants are linked together (front to back) by a chain which then runs to a limber behind them.  According to the box there were riders on the elephant’s neck and two riders sitting on the limber, but those are missing.  Also missing is the barrel of the cannon being pulled behind the limber.  That’s not a big deal, as I’m sure I can come up with something suitably pulp or VSF looking.

While working on this, I’m also picking away at 24 battalions of 10mm Prussians.  I’m thinking I made a mistake trying to do that many battalions at once.  I primed them and dry brushed the blue coats.  Now I need to go through the daunting pile and paint the gray trousers.  Grrrr.

Chris and I are getting ready to run a large (20+ player) Mars game with GASLIGHT at Historicon this Summer.  In preparation, I’ve been painting green Martians (see previous post, Bronze Age Miniatures) and now red Martians (also Bronze Age Miniatures).  I also picked up the hover sled from Recreational Conflict at Fall In in November.  I have been working on them a little at a time over the past couple of weeks.  This weekend I finished them.

The Bronze Age red Martians come in packs of five.  I didn’t realize until I got home that one of the “citizen” backs was missing a couple of swords.  I wrote an Email to the company, but they never responded.  I reached into my bit box and found some extra Moro swords from Pass of the North.  You can see one in the picture above.

The sled also had a nice interior, as can be seen above.  I chose to go with an orange color scheme, thinking it would blend with Martian terrain.

I have some Wargames Factory plastic Zulu War British that I am painting in orange uniforms for Martian service.  Stay tuned for pictures of them in the near future.

In what has become a time-honored tradition, I hosted a New Years Eve game at Casa Surdu.  I’ve never really understood the fascination with New Years Eve, so rather than go out where a bunch of folks are getting sloppy drunk for little reason, I’ve been hosting a gaming night on New Years where will attempt to kill each other for little reason.

Chris ran a reprise of his GASLIGHT goblin attack on the North pole inspired by Tolkien’s Father Christmas letters.  Although Santa died again this year, I think the balance  was better than last year, and the game was more fun.  The goblins were trying to capture presents and take them off the table.  Our initial plan was to unhook the cargo cars from the train and have the troll pull the train away.  Santa was carrying the Elf Bomb when he was killed.  Yukon Cornelius climbed on the train to stop the goblins.  When he tried to throw the Elf bomb, he rolled a 20, exploding inside the train full of presents.  This scattered the presents all over the table.

The ineffectual charge of my goblin infantry against Sam Fuson’s toy soldier guard was our last chance of victory.  We quit the field, leaving the troll in hand-to-hand combat with two clockwork Santas.  See a more detailed writeup of the scenario on Chris’ blog (

onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com).

The second New Years Eve game was the third scenario in the series I am writing for the GASLIGHT Web page.  In this scenario, Venusians and their hired thugs arrived in Granville to steal Professor Serafini Nannini’s anti-gravity ray.  While I think the basic scenario was balanced enough, as the game played out, it became pretty one-sided.  I’m anxious to give it another go at a club meeting.

The “bad guys” had more figures than the good guys, but the good guys had Duke Morrison, the star of the serial.  As a hero, he got two cards in the deck.  Dr. Zillion was important to the bad guys, because he is the one person who can identify what is the most important thing to take from the lab.  The lab was positioned to make it easy for the bad guys to find — which they did after just three or four turns.  For some reasons (cards, strategy, placement, luck?) the good guys seems able to concentrate around the laboratory faster than the bad guys.  Dr. Zillion spent a fair amount of time fleeing from Duke Morrison, which was made difficult  because of Morrison’s extra activation.

At the point pictured above, Dr. Zillion disengaged and ran behind the yellow building rather than running past the Venusians to use them as a screen against Morrison, the Granville police, and others.  Eventually Dr. Zillion was knocked out by one of “Boats” Morgan’s sailors.  Even if Zillion had zigged instead of zagged, the Venusians, Torpedo Brooks’ minions, and the other band of thugs had been chopped up by Boats Morgan and the Dead End Kids.  The Dead End Kids had even hot wired a car and crashed it into the side of a car occupied by some Venusians.  The Dead End Kid died in the process, but he took three Venusians with him.  There really was nowhere safe for Zillion, and the important part of the anti-gravity ray was never really at risk.

I plan to run this at an upcoming HAWKs night.  I want to try it again with only two small changes and see if it plays any better.  The only change I will make is to put the second group of soldiers (under “Wrench” Webb) on the opposite side of the main street from the lab (where Boats was deployed) and to give Dr. Zillion a minion or two.  Initially, I thought we were going to have more players for this scenario, so that Dr. Zillion would be a separate player.  In the story arc for the series of episodes, Dr. Zillion is a “mole” providing information to the Venusians but not known to be a bad guy.  When I consolidated units for a smaller number of players, I was forced to give the Dr. Zillion player another “bad guy” unit, so it was clear that Zillion was a bad guy from the start.

After the gangster/Venusian game, many of the players headed for home.  I didn’t think the game was THAT bad.  (Just kidding.)  At 2130 we were left with just a few players, so we abandoned the idea of playing Aerodrome and instead pulled out Red Dragon Inn by Slugfest Games.  My 13-year-old daughter (in the Santa hat) beat us all at drinking and gambling.  I guess that’s what I get for the money I’m spending on an expensive Catholic education.

About 20 minutes to midnight we turned on the TV to watch the ball drop in Times Square and drink some sparkling grape juice.  We stayed up an talked a little after midnight — mostly about how Dick Clark looked like he was made of plastic and how we didn’t recognize any of the “stars” of the New Years Eve show.  By 0100, we old foggies were ready to bed.

I received a few gaming-related gifts for Christmas.  These included a starter fleet for Uncharted Seas, in this case the Iron Dwarves.  In addition, I received a Captain America figures painted to match the recent movie.

I have been wanting some of the old Call of Cthulu RAFM sets.  I received a couple for Christmas.  I haven’t painted them yet, but here are some pictures from the RAFM Web site.

Some weeks ago, I acquired some British toy Centaurans from Dr. Who.  I finally finished painting them.

The figures are a bit crude, but they’ll work for a Dr. Who game.

At the Fall In convention I picked up a few figures from the flea market.  I finally got around to painting them up for some Pulp games.

I also finally had time to finish these Pulp Figures versions of the Bowery Boys.

I have a couple more days of vacation before heading back to work.  I’m in the process of priming 24 battalions of 10mm Prussians and hope to make a good dent in them before vacation ends.

On and off for a week, I’ve been picking away at some unpainted lead sitting on my painting table.  Between the recent move and the high tuition rates I’m paying for my kids’ schooling, the lead budget is tight.  I usually keep my unpainted lead under about 300 figures.  I also usually try to paint figures I bought at one convention before buying more figures at the next convention.  In the past year, however, I let that grow to 500 or so figures — even counting strips of Old Glory 10mm Napoleonics as a single figure.  Anyway, below are pictures of a couple of recent transfers from “unpainted” to “painted.”

Eureka Miniatures released some pterodactyls with German pilots.   To go along with their Jurrasic Reich figures, they released this set at Historicon.  I finally got around to assembling and painting it.  I keep suggesting to Nic Robson (the owner) that they need to add Americans riding eagles, British riding owls, and Russians riding giant vultures.

In their War Rocket line, Hyrda has begun releasing a fifth fleet: pirates.  I like the rules, but I REALLY like the ships.  According to their Web page, they have released the Type II pirate ships, but all I found at Fall In (from Recreational Conflict) were the Type I ships (pictures above).

After the HAWKs met to paint a bunch of 15mm Seven Years War figures we play another test of Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars.  Since the last play test I had modified the cavalry and artillery roll-to-stand dice.  I was also paying attention to the movement speeds of artillery.  I was also paying particular attention to the skirmish fight.  All seemed to go well.

The French had one or two extra regiments of infantry; the Austrians had an extra regiment of cavalry; and the two sides were even in artillery.  The scenario involved both sides trying to capture two small villages.  The game had a lot of good back and forth action; charges, counter charges, routing, and rallying.  In the end both towns were partially occupied by both sides, and we decided that neither side had the capability to break the deadlock.

I think the basic core of the rules is working fine.  The next couple of tests need to work the “fringes.”  I need to run a game with some French guard.  I also need to test landwehr and militia.  Finally, I need to see how the Brits work with extra skirmishers, since I plan to represent rifle companies as extra skirmishers for the skirmish fight.

Speaking of the the skirmish fight, I think that aspect of the rules is working quite well.

I just finished ten Valkeeri from Hydra Miniatures (http://hydraminiatures.com/).  These are part of their Retro Raygun line.  I painted them to use as Venusians in a pulp sci fi game.

These were nice, clean castings.  The Retro Raygun figures are really 32mm, so they look a little tall next to my Pulp Figures castings.  I guess the Venusians are more healthy than Earthlings.  They certainly LOOK healthy — even with light blue skin.

I bought the blue blog from Recreational Conflict at Fall In 2011.  They sold it in this translucent blue and also opaque yellow resin.  I liked the translucent one the best.