Upcoming Events at my Friendly Local Hobby Shop (Michigan Toy Soldier)

I am a firm believer in supporting the brick-and-mortar side of our hobby, not that I don't use the internet to communicate and make purchases mind you. I just think that if I can get an item from my local hobby store I should do so, I will even order it and wait the few extra days more than Amazon or Ebay......it isn't as if I don't have thirty years worth of back-logged minis to paint, so a day or so wait will go unnoticed.


Michigan Toy Soldier has embraced wargamers and goes to some considerable lengths to try to provide for our hobby so I do try to return the favor.


They are currently hosting open gaming on Saturdays and Thursdays, they have a nice area for gaming and have some terrain to hand.


For more details call them at 248-586-1022 or go to their website; michtoy.com


Just a heads up as to upcoming events at the store;

Not an Excuse, but an Apology

I haven't been keeping up my posting schedule of late as this summer has proven to be quite busy. Of late I decided to build four new bookcases and to rearrange my library. This has proven to be a significant undertaking and has absorbed an inordinate amount of my time. Fear not! Both the Frontier Fort and Pirate Sloop build projects will continue as my schedule will become a more regular thing soon.

As proof of my labors I provide the attached photos of my New And Improved  library



 the southeast corner,

 history begins in the upper left corner and moves around the chronologically, 

ancients and middle ages on the left, Age of Reason and Napoleonic Era in the middle, US War of 1812 and Civil War on the right with some of the lower shelves given over to board games

Grandfather of Steampunk, Albert Robida

First, I must apologize for the lack of postings of late. I have been busy caring for two of my granddaughters and this has brought most work to a halt, what  little time I have had free was devoted to building four additional bookshelves for my endlessly expanding collection. BUT, while trolling aimlessly on the internet I found this fellow, Albert Robida, a Frenchman of rare artistry and talent. A contemporary of Jules Verne and H.G.Wells he possessed not only an imagination for seeing into the future but the artistic talent to give rise to stunning images such as you see below. Take a few minutes and do a Google Images search on his name, oceans of inspiration is to be had!

D&D and Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Bones

Hey everybody, Justice and Rule here with a few updates and possibilities for games in the coming weeks.

28mm Fantasy/Dark Ages Fort comes to Ruin!

Having finished the fort in its "as new" version I decided to expand the game-play options by making some of the sections as ruins/attacked areas. Mostly I have been dying to find a use for these really coo,l construction blocks that my kids got me for Christmas last year (hey, there is a twist....kids buying toys for DAD at Christmas time). Fortunately they fit in perfectly and I was off to the races with my hot glue gun in hand.

 the real culprits, the fort was just an excuse

from Ludington Michigan, a local product!

Fantasy/Dark Ages Frontier Fort, the floor tiling edition

I will readily admit that tiling the floor of Fort Matanzas was an exercise in vanity. As I was working on the Fantasy fort it occurred to me that as D&D is played on a squared surface and that it  would greatly ease play if the level surfaces were demarcated in squares. Looking at the model I realized that I should have marked out the squares before I started building things, ah, hindsight! The answer to this was to cut a zillion square tiles and stick them down on any surface that figures might be placed on. A somewhat tedious answer, but an effective one all the same. So I fired uo the Proxxon hot wire cutter and got to work. In a very short time I had mounds of tiles ready to go. My schedule kept me from tidyiong up the workspace and then Justice and Rule dropped by to set up his Star Wars game. In his usual efficient style he organized the stock items I had cut and added a whimsical touch of his own, see beow;

 

a tiny crew had shown up to assist me in my labors 

28mm Fantasy/Dark Ages Fort Part III

I had a couple of free hours this evening so I finished the structure of the fort. I have several swapable (is that even a word?) sub-structures that fit in the courtyard and I have managed to make most of the partition walls moveable. We will go through this layer by layer;

 

the base,

I am thinking of reworking this with modular subunits as well

28mm Frontier Fort, Part II

I had an hour or so free after I got home from work today and found that The Housemartin had dropped off the promised matte board. This allowed me to start on the interior units of the fort. I want the model to be used over and over again without it becoming stale. I intend to make most of the interior structures as independent  units so that they can be re-arranged at will.

 

the Proxxon hot wire cutter makes it easy to produce a lot of identical parts,

 these are walls to divide the bays of a stable

Dungeons & Dragons, Stars & Wars

Hey, your friendly Dungeon Master here, just wanting to give you a quick update on when the next D&D games will be, as well as the game for this Saturday.

Taking a Break from Boats (for a while)

I was still growling about the rigging/sails thing when my long-time buddy, The Housemartin, mentioned that he was getting his kids into the newly released edition of D&D..H e asked if I would be kind enough to build a multi-use fort for dungeon-crawling and adevturing. This seemed a pleasant change from fore-stays and braces so I agreed. He gave me some sketch plans of the fort and told me to allow my imagination a free rein.

What you see below is the start of things. I am planning on making things as modular as possible to allow many reconfigurations to enhance the model's playability.

 

the hill on which sits the fort, the basement is set up as a store-room,

ruler for scale

Dystopian Wars Perhaps?

It has been a while since we played (in other words it has been a while since I took a drubbing)  Is anybody interested in playing DW this weekend, it would certainly make terrain set-up easy! We also have to dragoon Kris into GMing.

Please respond in the comments section.


So we played and had a blast! Thanks again to Kris for running the game and Tom for letting us use his lovely model boats. The British slipped past the Russians for the Win;  mostly by dint of better dice rolling (and we were faced by Tom and Brad, two men who long-ago angered the Dice Gods and have never figured out how to make amends). It was quite interesting to use a fleet that I was not familiar with. The Brits have some awesome heavy units and dangerous torpedoes, the Russians have devastating firepower at close range and all sorts of neat tools to allow them to survive long enough top use them. Neither fleet is a "technique" fleet, but they both darned good bludgeons.

Not At all Quiet on the Martian Front!

The Housemartin dropped by with his extensive collection of AQotMF toys and ran a game for us the Saturday before the 4th of July. Yes, I am late in filing my AAR. The scenario is that U.S. and Canadian forces are meeting up to attack a Martian base that is nearby and seems poorly defended. The Martians have figured out the simple Marconi radio-telegraphs used by the humans and know the attack is coming and have laid an ambush for the unsuspecting humans.



Canadian recon blips advance