A big thank you

To Crowag and J&R for showing up and moving mountains (OK, it was scale-model terrain) on Saturday. We completed two boxes full of Rugged hills and two more boxes of steep hills, both enough to cover a 6x8foot table. Painted flocked etc.

These heroes get to pick the next half-dozen games..........

Photos to follow

New Beginnings......

I have decided to renew/refurbish all of my terrain, I am going to use one color for the base coat on all of my temperate climste terrain and a different color for my desert/arid terrain. All of my area terraain, hills etc will have a single theme. It remains to be seen if painting my ground-cloths will work in a satisfactory manner but I will take steps to fix that as well.

The other important factor is that all of the terrain will fit into a standard-sized storage box. Too many pieces have been damaged over the years from rough storage and random stacking in the terrain bin. From now on they will be neatly packed into the Universal Wargames Standard Storage Unit; more commonly known as a paper-box.

the Universal Wargames Standard Storage Unit

my "paperless" office generates about a dozen of these a month

"Form a Work Detail!"

Saturday 26MAR16 everybody needs to wear their fatigue uniform, My much-talked-about terrain building session is officially slated for  next weekend. Trees will be re-based, hills cut and painted, the entire terrain system will be rationalized to fit into standardized storage boxes. This time I mean business! So dig out your paint spattered old blue jeans and t-shirts, things are about to get messy!

Martians Invade Warren!!!!!

The Housemartian has offered to bring his extensive collection of cephlapod invaders to my place for a game this Saturday at 7p.m.

Show up and help save Humanity (or not )

Frontier Fort finally finished and painted

     It has been an embarrassingly long time since I updated this building project. But it also has been an embarrassingly long time in building. However it is finished at last. One of my oldest and dearest friends, The Housemartin, is playing D&D with his children and asked that I build him a model of one of his long-cherished ideas; the Frontier Forts of Kelnore. He provided a much-used copy of the original booklet which provided floor-plans. and I got to work (albeit slowly).  At long last I have finished the project.

     I will compile the postings and add them top the Adventures in Blueboard and Foamcore page. Comments, criticism and suggestions are all welcome.

 

the finished model

WAY too long at sea!!

I finally got my second tramp steamer done and decided to weather it. I got started and then just kept going. Now the ship looks an awful mess, too many years at sea without a proper refit are really leaving their mark! The only thing kept in a decent state of repair is the lifeboat (doubtless because the crew figures it will be needed sooner rather than later!) This model is smaller than my last one and takes up a fair bit less table. All the usual techniques were used building it (check here for the builds of the other ship models I have made) so I won't spend a lot of time on the blow-by-blow of the assembly.

 

the gaming mat under the model is one-inch squares 

Too Long At Sea

     I have been away from the blog for FAR too long. I have all the usual excuses; too many projects, too little time, too many thing demanding my attention in the "real world". I have got a few things accomplished however, as usual more by accident than deliberate planning.

     Below you see a by-product of my gnat-like attention span. I was working out some angles and techniques for making very small fortress models from blue board and I felt the need to work on something bigger. I had been in a discussion about a tramp freighter that was even trampier (?) than my last project so my thoughts turned to a short, stubby and shabby looking boat. A few minutes on the internet looking at "tramp freighters" through Google Images and this happened;

 

just a few quick cuts and a few passes over the 60 Grit, 

trying out ideas; 15" long, 5" on the beam

Astounding New Resource

It is good to see tax dollars put to good use, even if it by accident.

The U.K. government has been conducting LIDAR scans of the country. LIDAR is a powerful laser scanning tools that can see past vegetation and thin or soft soils revealing the ancient landscape beneath. Aside from its legitimate purposes of flood control and coastal erosion observation this has revealed a lot of ancient works that have laid hidden for centuries such as Roman roads and forts. Some enterprising souls have gone through the massive amount of data and discovered all sorts of cool stuff like forgotten Roman forts.

A fun way to waste some time, and get a very detailed idea of what real terrain looks like.

Blue board madness

         There are times when I don't seem sane (even to myself). One particular form of madness that afflicts me from time to time is a desire to build a model of my favorite fortification in the world: the Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine Florida.

        So, there I was, sitting in my basement looking at a big pile of Blue Board and giving my trusty Proxxon hot wire cutter the side-eye. I had some time to burn and no particular plans. So I decided to try a little free-hand cutting.

      Then this happened.

 

not too bad for free hand work

Games at Spartacon 2016

I didn't take my usual round of photos but I did manage to snap some shots of a couple of games. One that was so pretty I was sad that the sign-up was full, another that wasn't scheduled but I was lucky enough to get into by happenstance and was every bit as good looking, but in a different way

Click on the pictures to get the full effect of how well done these figures and models are, don't waste time fiddling with your phone, get to a real computer with a big Hi Def monitor, it is worth it!

I managed to lose the bit of paper that I had written all the game-master info down on so please forgive me for not telling you who is responsible for this feast for the eyes

FoW The Great War at Michigan Toy Soldier

I am running a demo game of Flames of War, The Great War at Michigan Toy Soldier at 1pm on 23JAN16. If you want to give it a try, watch a game or just chat about things regarding the First World War drop on by, you will be more than welcome.

28mm VSF Pre-Dreadnoughts at SpartaCon

The good people that host Spartacon each year were kind enough to allow me to run a game using my 28mm Victorian Science Fiction Pre-Dreadnoughts. The Lansing Center where SpartaCon is hosted has a very generous-sized room. This allowed me to run my 28mm Pre-Dreadnought game at the convention in a much larger space than even the dance studio had permitted. The scenario for this action was an all-out fleet engagement, a fight to the finish if you would.

I ran this game differently than most other naval games, the effect of fire was known only to the ship Captain of the vessel that was fired upon. The opposing captain was only told that his shells missed or that strikes were seen on the target vessel. Other players had to surmise what was going on by the appearance of splash markers on the playing surface.Players had to write movement orders in advance and the gamemasters moved the models (many thanks to J&R for his assistance in this matter). This kept an air of suspense as no player was certain of the results of his fire.

The French fleet: the Dupuy de Lome, the Charles Martel and the Nemesis (left to right).

The numerically larger, but rather more old-fashioned, German Fleet: 
the Panther and the Thor (the colonial squadron) in the foreground, 
the Seydlitz, the Blitz, the Gneisenau and the Donner in the distance, once again left to right.