Learning Warlord Games Black Powder Rules

Hi,

Just a quick post as I've not been painting the last two days. I've been reading and did a quick play test of the Black Powder rules. The book is amazing, it's full of clearly explained rules, witty humor, and pictures of impossibly well painted miniatures. They seem like they'll be fun and easy to learn.

To better understand some of the game mechanics, one of my dogs and I lined up a few army men and rolled for initiative. There was no terrain and they were lined up way to close (16ish inches apart). Not worth posting, except that one side was completely destroyed and the other left completely unmolested.

Here was my opposing general.

Army one (infantry) consisted of three standard size units of regular infantry with smoothbore muskets and two smooth bore foot artillery pieces. Army two (Hussars) consisted of four 12 model Hussar units.

You can see the armies foolishly aligned on a plain of paint flecked plastic.

When initiative was rolled the infantry grasped the...initiative. It turned instantly bad for the Hussars of Army Two. Each of the infantry units shot at the Hussar units directly in front of them. The Hussars all took quite a few casualties and became disordered or shaken. The unit that took four casualties from the cannons immediately broke, fled, and was removed from play.

The Hussars turn one: being disordered and shaken the remaining three units were forced to just stand their ground.

Infantry turn two: Once more shot the living "S" out of the Hussars, who turned tail and ran away.

It was a particularly stupid game and I won't try anymore play testing until I take the time to set up terrain on a large table. I would suggest setting the game up as instructed and not in a space small enough for a DBA checkers game. I also won't face battle against such a clever dog until I better understand the rules. I'm also going to read a Brigadier Gerard novel tonight for pointers on the proper use of Hussars.

Love Baconfat

British Rockets and Beginnings of Crawling Zombies

Precious Reader,

I've completed some 28mm Old Glory British Rockets. Ok, maybe they're assembled incorrectly, but they did not come with directions. I found a blog, where someone else had assembled theirs and I copied them. I have since seen an Osprey book and either Osprey or I mounted their rockets a wrong.

I sprayed them with a gray primer. The painted wood is Model Color Azure. The rockets are Model Color Black Gray. The metal bits are Model Color Gunmetal Grey. The bare wood is Model Color New Wood.

After that I squirted white glue all over the base, dipped them in sand, and let sit overnight. The next day I painted them with a black Minwax wood stain. While drying I painted the sand brown, tan, then light tan using cheap craft store paint (Apple Barrel Brown, Crafts Smart Golden Brown, and Apple Barrel Sandstone). I applied a little flock and fake grass. When that was all dry I touched up the paint job a little bit.

I would suggest to anyone else, that they paint before assembling. The underneath parts where a chore.

I love Zombies, but I can't stand assembling Wargames Factory zombies. It's funner I just found if you chop some of them up. Chopped up zombies will assist with the variation, as I don't want any duplicate zombies. I added glue gun glue for guts on one. They're unpainted, except for the blood I quickly doused on simply for fun.

Love Baconfat

Prussian Artillery Crew Done...Not Well, but Done!

Dear Cherished Visitor,

I've completed an eight man crew for one of my two Prussian cannons. The models are Old Glory metals. The first unit of my Warlord Blackpowder Army is finally done. Blackpowder armies are quite large with at least 15ish units each. The units themselves can be quite large as well. Standard infantry units range from 24-30 models; Cavalry range from 12-16; Artillery units are a single gun; I think I may have lots of artillery.

Here's a new shelf I recently acquired free from a great friend. The holes where one sticks the studs to hold the shelves are not the same on either side, except where I have the individual shelves currently. Normally I match the wood and add more shelves as tiny men don't take up much room. So I won't be able to maximize storage on this shelf unless I drill more holes. It's not an emergency, as almost everyone on it's not painted anyway. I think it take two more shelf sets (a grand total of six) to give every army man room to stand around and collect dust. So if you accidently stumbled upon this page and have some extra shelves you're willing to give away and you live in Western Washington, please leave a comment saying as much.

I've taken another picture of my filthy painting desk. The stuff in the back row space men things never seem to get taken care of. New additions include: some Rus which will probably end up in the lonely back row quickly (as I have no intention of making a Rus army), some more zombies, British rockets (put together incorrectly by me), a couple manlets (for siege fun), an ancient French Carabiner model of unknown manufacture, and a few fantasy pistol toting horsemen. I had spilt some paint and didn't want to waste it and the pistoliers were the first primed models I could get my hands on that needed that same color of paint. Normally, I cry over spilt paint.

Love Baconfat

Zombies, Rocket Crew, Cannon, Abandoned Buildings, and Terrain.

Hello dear beloved viewer,

I've slapped paint on few more zombies. I'm up to 38 complete with another 30 something in the works.

First up, is a zombie child. It's a USX miniature which I believe is actually RAFM. The line is actually quite large, maybe 32mm scale and full grown USX/RAFM zombies probably won't be added to the pack. They dwarf some of the prepainted Horrorclix stuff. Regardless the undead child is in, because child zombies are very rare.

Second is a Heroclix Invisible Woman that's been chopped up and painted undeadish. I find myself forced into killing superheros to get a more fair ratio of female to male zombies. I shaved off her Fantastic 4, painted her a white tank top, touched up her pants and boots, stabbed her a bit, chopped off half an arm, and liberally applied blood. Heroclix actually are quite easy to zombiefy because of their soft plastic and prepaint equals priming to me.

Thirdly are two terrible prepainted sculpts. I believe they are for Dungeons and Dragons, but zombies are zombies and prepaints save time. All I did was dip them in wood stain to hide the sweat shop labor paint job and paint their bases gray. Zombies don't need to be pretty.

Here are two Mantic brand ghoul models. I saw a advert on theminiaturespage.com come that Wayland Games was offering free Mantic ghoul samples. Free is good. These ghouls had extrabits and are sculpted quite well. The downside is they had weird horns growing out of them (about three each) and what appeared to be railroad spikes randomly stuck in them. They were easily removed. I also removed some of their clothing, because they were both wearing skirts. Skirts would be fine if I was creating a Scottish zombie horde. They'll be a fine addition to the pack.

Due to the fact I'm painting these zombies for the Zombies board game, I painted uptwo of the official Zombies miniatures. They are very small compared to the rest of the pack members, but it seemed right to include a couple. People come in different sizes.

Here is an Old Glory British rocket crew. There done wether they really are or not. The little yellow straps all over their jackets was infuriating. I also have no idea what color the furry trim of the officer's jacket should be. I couldn't find any Osprey books or online pics to help. Yellow and white looked silly; so the trim ended up gray. I'll paint some rockets for them to shoot soon.

Below are some artillery pieces I've been working on. I painted the Victrix British cannon ages ago, but only recently based it. The other two are Prussian guns. The crew will be done soon and posted.

Here are two abandoned buildings that are nearing completion. I am going to make sidewalks out of thin foam board and throw in a little rubbish. You may notice there's a severe lack of rubble. I don't think I like painting rubble. I'm going to try and make some red brick buildings next and I'll make some rubble for that.

Lastly, I thought I'd show my one subscriber how I store my flat terrain. It's hanging on the walls wherever there's not shelves of little tiny toy army men in the way; but one picture of one wall will suffice. I simply carve little chunks out of the foam bottoms. They sit quite well on a nail in the wall.

Love Baconfat

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving fellow residents of the United States. I apologize for forgetting you, Canada you had yours over a month ago.

Terrain, Trees, and Zombies Part 2

Hi again,

I wanted to show off this aquarium building I found at the local used store. It was deal as instant terrain and only $3. I bought it to be environmentally friendly. I always say "reuse, recycle, and re....something."

I also found this little thing that might be a cave.

Next up is a hill with an incredibly big skull or rock shaped like a skull. A few older blogs back one could see the work in progress. The pieces were insulation foam and a paperboard skull from a craft store.

Here are some of the trees I recently based. I can't remember what brand trees they are but they were incredibly easy to base. Each day I completed one 5-20 minute step.

1. super glue the tree bases to a 25mm washer

2. squirt pva glue all over the washer, then dip them in a fine sand

3. paint the hardened glue sand mixture dark brown

4. highlight the dark brown a lighter brown. Advanced hobbyists would repeat this process numerous times with continually lighter browns, but I am far too lazy for that.

5. spot glue grass and assorted ground cover or rocks

Here are some unfinished Prussian artillery crew, I read somewhere they had eight men per gun. That's nice of them. To the right are some British rocket crew. They're even more unfinished, but I'm having so much fun painting them I wanted to take their picture. All the models are Old Glory metals. The cannon is one of those Victrix plastic pieces. I haven't painted the Old Glory metal gun yet.

The last new item is some sort of landing pad for science fiction models. The vertically challenged space man and WWI tank are for scale viewing pleasure. It's made out of a piece of neato styrofoam and four wedding cake columns. Not from my wedding cake. I hand painted it with cheap craft paint, then spray painted it gray, then spread black wood stain all over it, and about 30 seconds of highlighting. I'll probably stick a few led lights on it, some Archer rub on decals, and maybe a way for the little soldier to get up and down.

Here is a picture of my painting area, I took as evidence. It appears someone drank a bunch of beer, poorly painted a bunch of miniatures, and left the table trashed.

Thanks for looking or reading. I've had nearly 100 views, most likely by disgruntled internet enthusiasts looking up the Canadian rock band which stole my Baconfat name.

Love,

Baconfat

Trees, Terrain, and Zombies

Hi Accidental Blog Viewer,

I took some pictures of some of my latest toy army man projects.

First, I've adding to the zombie horde. I don't want any identical zombies, but I won two eBay auctions each with three identical "Horrorclix" zombies. With a little repainting, head/limb swapping, I've managed to get enough deviation to avoid duplicate zombies.

The second set are patients. The one on the right, has static grass painted brown for hair. I ran out of matching scale arms.

Here's a picture of all my newer zombie horde additions. We've these additions, I think I have 34 painted zombies. My favorite is the zombie ventriloquist also from "Horrorclix". I plan to use the horde to spice up the Zombies board game, so I've included two of the official Zombies miniatures. You will see no close up pictures for those as they didn't paint up well.

The unpainted buildings are $2 craft things I picked up at a Michael's Craft Store. I think they'll make quick and easy terrain.

I have to go to the store, I'll post the other pictures when I get back.

thanks