Well, it has been a long (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend. We had 2 turkey dinners and so will have leftovers for some time!
There’s a wide range of small updates that I’ll throw here rather than making many small posts (meli-melo means mismash in Canada’s other official language). Here comes the shotgun approach to posting:
- I’ve been assembling terrain in preparation for Arnhem. I’m prepping buildings for painting and decided to use some woodfiller over the MDF plugs/lugs. I’m interested to see if it works as it was fairly quick to cover the joins.
- As part of getting ready for the Arnhem I’m making fencing. The scenarios call for wire fencing – linear obstacles that provide no cover. I do have about 8′ of 15mm fences that would work in a pinch, but inspired by John Bond’s work I figured I would make some wire fencing. I happen to have a fair bit of balsa kicking around as well as several hundred craft matchsticks. So, my plan was to push the matchsticks into the balsa, secure with white glue and then tie some thin picture wire I got from the dollar store. Alas, it was not to be. The wire was too strong (the balsa was too weak – MDF would be much better) and broke the matchstick posts off the balsa. Okay. So try to wire the posts together and then mount them! Nope. The wire was a little too strong and kept wanting to pull in one direction or another. I almost gave up but came up with another plan. There was no way I was going to be creating terrain as nice as John Bond, my goal was to look good at 2 or 3 feet. So, cheat! I tied wire around the sticks and then cut the excess off. Then, mount the matchsticks and superglue straight sections of wire in place, kind of like rigging a small model. And it works! So, I have a bunch of fences I’ll be assembling this week. My plan is to rig the fences, paint an undercoat, then flock and put rust on the wire. We’ll see how they look in the end.
- Next up will be assembling and painting 2 sprues of FJs I just bought. More FJs? Yes. I’m intending to emulate Tiny Hordes (more here) and make some entrenchments using blue foam, cardboard, and clay. Once the fences are done I’ll be doing a post on how that works.
- I recently purchased some roads and walls from Fat Frank on ebay. They look great. The walls are based on cork, the roads on rubber. The roads are scaled for 20-28mm and intended for small paths. They look great for a small country road for 28mm, fitting a Tiger’s tracks with a little room to spare.
The roads also work for 15mm well enough as you can see.
The service was very prompt and quite reasonably priced. I know that making roads and walls isn’t impossible, but I needed to balance the time and energy required to do so versus the cost of the pieces. I’m quite happy with this purchase and may add to my collection in the near future.
- And now – pretty!
Lucius not only did a blog post om his North Novas last week, he also painted up one of my Warlord Uhlans. He’s pretty much done his WW2 stuff and is enjoying the Napoleonic uniforms. Lucius was a modeller before becoming a wargamer and as you can see, his pedigree shines through. I am still doing paint by number and hoping to improve. We are slowly getting forces to play some small Sharp Practice with a campaign centred around a certain Richard something. This will be sometime in the future but the forces are slowly coming together.
- Another bit of news is this:
I received the new 2nd Edition Black Powder along with the heroic “Lucky” naval officer! I must say, the sculpt is incredible. I shall see if I can convince Lucius to paint him up! We have a lot of 15mm Napoleonics and are intending to use Black Powder and General D’Armeé for them. I have my Franco-Prussians that are spoiling for a fight so we can trot them out for fun. I’m hoping to try the rules in the next few weeks.
- In other news, G+ is ending, which is too bad as I was just starting to get comfortable with it and beginning to draw some readers through it as well. This site is doing well though, with more readers every month. I’m still enjoying updating it so SPQVI will not be going anywhere.
- This week I’ll be putting up another play report from my last OSR game. I’m also hoping to playtest my modified What A Tanker ideas. I think I shall bring out my Soviets to play against Lucius’ Germans…
- Last but not least is the announcement of “The Cruel Sea”, (Beasts of War news here) a new naval warfare game that pits the light coastal forces against E-Boats! It is due to be released by Warlord Games around Christmas time. I am very excited about it – I have read a fair bit about MTB and MGB operations and the idea of fighting duels out on the tabletop is wonderful. The only thing I’m concerned about is the scale, but I shall try it out with the starter package and then, if necessary, buy other models. Won’t my wife be thrilled…
BT.
