Black Powder Game Pics

I played in an enjoyable game of Warlord's Black Powder hosted by one of the best painters in the local area.  (his blog http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/).  The scenario was designed around one in the book, Fighting Retreat from El Perez.  

The initial setup had the British/Spanish on the table.  The British mission was to get half of their forces across the bridge in the upper right corner, before a superior French force comes on to the table and defeats them.  

The British decide to split their force and send half immediately across the bridge and leave the other half  behind to sacrifice themselves and give time for the crossers to cross.

The French had a unit of Voltigeurs near the bridge to slow the crossing. 

About a quarter of the French make it on the table and most just stand around ignoring orders.  A unit of Hussars charge some Highlanders to only be defeated, run away, and leave the table.  The French are doing so bad obeying orders, the British begin to advance in order to acquire the gigantic beer that magically appears on the battlefield.

Meanwhile the British jam up at the bridge and pour lots of ineffective fire into the church where the Voltigeurs are now hiding.

The French can't seem to get their horde on the table.  Those on the field, continue to stand around and slowly lose the battle.  Rockets and lucky rifle fire ruin their morale, while the two units of Highlanders start stomping all over the few French obeying orders.

The French finally decide to do something as almost all their forces fail taking orders and run off the table.  The Heavy cavalry just sit there and take casualties.  

Everyone agrees the British won easily, but technically I believe the French did.  The British generals miscounted and ordered one to few units to cross the bridge.

It's the first game of Black Powder I've played and I hope there are many more.  It was very fun, even for the French generals who need to throw their dice away.

Tales of a Jerky Junktown Vendor

Hi,

I enjoy collecting junk.  Today I'd like to show you the junk I've recently collected for my hordes of toy army men.

First, I had to battle my way through two bored looking union protesters and hundreds of zombies buying inexpensive groceries to find this set of construction equipment, at Winco.  The only cost me 5 bottlecaps.  With a little bit of paint, rust, and wear, they'll make good modern or post apocalypse terrain.

Second up, a yard sale find.  It's a giant hand, the back says, "Marvel Entertainment, 2001, made in China".  It's either a Ironman hand or maybe a sentinel from the X-men comics.  It's designed to be hung on the wall, but it makes great sci-fi terrain.

Here's some cheap flocking from Michaels craft store.  They had multiple colors, none are realistic, maybe they could be used for grass on an alien world.  The long stuff on the left is fake hair leftover from a Halloween costume.  I'm going to cut and experiment with different lengths and try to create various forms of vegetation.

Woodsies, the wife bought these for me at Michaels, as well.  Mini-wooden dowels could be used for all sorts of terrain projects.  No more cutting the ends off toothpicks for me.  You can see some regular toothpicks in the foreground to show you the difference.

Here's some craptacular sandbag walls from a bag of dollar store army men.  If your friends don't mind sh!t terrain they could be used in any modern or sci-fi game.  I think the German model is a Wargames Foundry, if you know what it really is, please tell me.  The Brit is a Old Glory.  Maybe the bags would look better painted.

Speaking of craptacular, here's a piece of styrofoam I picked out of the trash at work, when no one was looking.  I started making a sci-fi tower, but it just didn't look right so I quit.

More garbage, I got this embossed tag off a pair of pants my wife bought.  She likes buying things.  It'll make a great sign for a burnt out store I'm making for my zombies.

Big giant rocks for an aquarium, from the local used store.  Maybe usable in in a sci-fi or fantasy game.  The spider web is tarantula.   They spent some time in our pet tarantula's cage, before she upgraded her terrain to a little wooden cave.  Dr Who Icemen love big rocks.

Giant plastic mech things.  They're really not a recent find, unless you count stumbling upon a box of crap you forgot about in your attic.  I bought them many years ago for like a dollar a piece at a toy store clearing stock.  As a horder, I bought every model they had.  There was at least seven different versions with different weapons and scales.  I think they are Battletech.  With a proper paint job, they might be the right size for low budget 40K titans and dreadnaughts or maybe Battletech models in a 15mm scale game.

Lastly, if you dig through wild owl poop, you'll find the neatest things.  These are mouse teeth.  I really don't know what I'll use them for.   But if you've gone through the effort of finding owl poop and digging through to find stuff, you ought to use it for something.

Thanks for visiting.

love,
Baconfat

Prussian Artillery Crew, Rocket Men, and a Cyberman!

First I've finished 3 more Prussian artillery crew and 3 more guns.  Tabletop quality without much highlighting.  Note Halloween is coming, that's why the pics look like they've been taken by candle light.

 This brings the Prussian artillery park to six 6 pdrs (3 are Victrix British guns) and 24 crew.  A start to a Black Powder army.  The crew are a mix of Old Glory and a few Perry models.

Next, I finished (good enough anyway) three more Old Glory British Congreve rocket crew men.  The fourth disappeared somewhere before painting.

That bring the total number of rocket crew to 11 and too many launchers for them to support.

Lastly, I rummaging through the junk mini pile and found a Herroclix Marvel Comics villain named Ultron.  To Ultron's left (our right) is a RAFM/GW Cyberman.  Ultron looks very much like a Dr Who Cyberman leader of some sort, all I need to do is jam a square wire frame in his little soft plastic head.

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I have a few WW1 Brits,  a few Fallout (video game) minis, and a couple zombies to paint then I'll start some Warlord Prussian Landwehr.   Prussian Landwehr are rather dull compared to the exciting new Russians they're putting out.

I've broken down mediocre Prussian infantry into 38 painting and preparation steps.  The first three are done:  assembly, flash removal, and gluing to a base.  Some paint before basing, by gluing to popsicle sticks or what not.  To save time painting extra steps must be cut.  The Landwehr have most been double based as their paint scheme is not that detailed that I'll need a lot of room.  If you look closely, some of the troops are nicked on their hats and elbows.  The child slave labor (I own them so it's not illegal) I employ for sprue removal is not very accurate.

love,
Baconfat

Zardozombie

"The brains are good. The no brains is evil. The living shoot seeds, and make new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the zombie brings death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth ... and eat brains!"

Zed's adventures continue as he becomes one of the undead.  Now you know why the Exterminators wore those silly helmet things, to protect their brains.

The zed Zed was made from two Heroclix models.  Aquaman's head and Hawkman's body.  Sure his braid has come undone, his boots don't go up past his knees, and the gauntlets aren't Zardoz cannon; but he looks enough like a dead Zed.  I scribbled hair on his stomach and chest with a fine point Sharpie marker.

Speaking of zombies, I had extra plastic Perry dismounted Dragoon, so he joined the horde.   I drilled a hole in his chest with a larger exit hole in the back.  He's missing a hand because I couldn't find my baggy of zombie bits;  I'll drill some holes and add bone stumps if I don't find it soon.  I have enough zombies that the Dragoon and Zed should fit into the crowd without being to obvious.

Here's an ancient zombie miniature from out of business Grenadier Models.  He came in the Dungeon Monsters box set (5002) available in the early 1980s.  He's smaller than most of my zombies, but bulkier than the Wargames Fiddly plastic zombies.  I don't give much thought to size parity in my shambling horde.  People and potato chips come in different sizes, so should zombies.

Lastly is what I believe to be an old Mageknight model (no idea what it was called) but he appears to look like a "Charger" from the Left For Dead 2 video game.  He had armor on that needed to be cut and scraped off, but I left some of his clothing because it was very Zardozesque.

The quote was from the movie Zardoz edited to be more zombielike.

On an unrelated note, I played a very enjoyable WW1 game of "The Great War".  Sadly I forgot my camera and have no pictures for you.  A terrific group of NHMGS guys showed up and their presence made the game incredibly fun.   For pictures go to a quality blog at http://wabcorner.blogspot.com

love,

Baconfat

Late War British and Prussian Artillery Crews

Intel reports have mentioned the Germans are bringing heavy machine guns to tomorrow's "The Great War" battle.  Worried that the good guys might not have enough bodies to soak up all the German bullets, I quickly finished block painting two British infantry units including Lewis guns, as well as two Lewis guns to add to infantry units without them already.

The Old Glory models still need to be dipped, touched up, maybe highlighted, and have their bases painted in 19 hours.

I based them on washers, half with sand and half with wood putty.  I'm curious which will look better.  Wood putty may lose out regardless, due to how time consuming it is compared to white glue and sand.

Second is a group of Old Glory Prussian Artillery crews for my slowly growing Prussian army.  They've been blocked painted and still need alot of work.  Once them and their guns are done, I'll start working on a box of Warlord Prussian Landwehr.

I hope to have some zombies done by the next post.

Baconfat

Fix Bayonets 2011!

I made it the afternoon session of Fix Bayonets II, I was almost late for that and almost missed out on being in a game.  I know I missed out sleeping in, but I love sleep.

Bill V. was putting on a classic game of Imperial, which I managed to get in on.  I haven't ever played the system, but Bill V. (true professional)  made it run smooth as silk.  I think it was the battle of Islandwala.  Please forgive me if I'm wrong Bill, bad short term memory and my Zulu-Anglo War knowledge is weak at best.

The British made the error of separating their forces, as they were supposed to.  The first wave of Zulus, arrives on the field.

The wave crashes into the first red line.  I being a Zulu general tried to keep away from the big guns.  I failed somewhat, but so did the British gunners.

The first British force is being completely over run.  I would have ran back and formed with the others as quickly as possible.  But the British are apparently too brave.

Guns over run.

Sorry for the crap AAR, whole turns are missing, I took a bunch of fuzzy pics and almost none of my allied Zulu Chief Adrian's left wing.   I also missed all the cavalry action.

Bottom line, Adrian made it to the second line fairly unscathed and between the two us we annihilated two large infantry squares of British, before we all decided it was immoral to continue.

Bill's minis were also mostly classic Ral Partha minis, sculpted by Tom Mier (spelling) I believe and were terrific.  I simply love the look of those minis.  Smaller by today's standard, but incredible sculpts with nice proportions.  I'm extremely jealous.

If you're out there, Bill V. thank you much for an awesome fun game!  It was great.  If you put it on again, I'd love to try the other side.

You can see more pictures of the great game and event at the Puyallupwargamers yahoo group or on a couple great blogs: wabcorner.blogspot.com  or   http://rassilonsmatrix.blogspot.com

Trench Warfare

Met friends at the Game Matrix in Tacoma, WA for an impromptu "The Great War Game".  The trench terrain I've been working on slowly was done enough to be used for a game.

The field was 8' x 4' and an assaulting British, French, and French Foreign Legion force assaulted trenches occupied by an outnumbered company of Germans (accompanied by a tank).  Rough terrain really slowly the assault, but more importantly kept the tank at bay long enough for allied troops to reach the Germans.

Fun game, no points, just people showing up with random troops.  We were refamiliarized with the rules which we hadn't used in awhile.  A host from the SoCal Warhammer podcast showed up to see the game and has plans to host an exciting "Over the Top" game later this year.

The models didn't enjoy the game as much; casualty rates for our enjoyment were shockingly enormous.

More pics and a better synopsis can be found at a great blog http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/

Step by Step: How to Make Mediocre Sandbags Slowly

Hi, I needed sandbags to line the walls of the trench table I've been working on.  I wandered around the Youtube and found several videos showing the use of Sculpey polymer clay.  I thought I'd try it and tell anyone listening how it went.

1. Roll balls of the Sculpey into thin long rolls.  The beer can pull tab is for scale.

2.  Squish the Sculpey down with a flat surface, above and below.  You can see I didn't squish it much.   If your rolls where too thick you'll have unmanageable large sandbags.  Most sandbags I see available for purchase or in sci-fi dioramas are way too big.  Sandbags are actually not very big; soldiers need to be able to fill and move them all day; large and extremely heavy bags would wear the troops out quickly.  I wanted my bags to be about as wide or just wider than a model's foot is long.  I picked a large GW model as the foot model, so the bags wouldn't look silly.

3.  Press cloth gently into Sculpy to give the sandbags texture.  I pretty much ignored the sides and and only pressed on the top.  I figured out quickly to match this step with the squishy one.  I used an old worn out t-shirt (that I was wearing).  Made nice thread marks, too big to be realistic, but looked nice, if they were really that small you wouldn't be able to see the texture.

4.  Chop the sandbags into sandbag size chunks.  Longer than wide.  Use a rounded edge cutting tool.  Flat cutting tools don't round the bag edges.  I used the handy beer can tab.

5.  Repeat steps 1-4 numerous boring times.

6.  Ignore the fact that the bags don't have the little openings where sand is poured in and tied shut.

7. Bake in the oven as directed on the wrapper.

8.  Panic, because you were distracted playing Fallout and didn't remember to check on them on time.  They're ok though.  Drink a victory beer after burning your self pulling them out of the oven and picking them up to look at them too early.

9. Spray paint the bags burlap for up until recent time sandbags.  Today bags aren't usually burlap; they're woven plastic.  Colors I've personally seen are desert tan, olive drab, dark green, and ACU pattern camo.  I picked a dark tan, thinking I'd stain it to burlap color.

10.  Curse, because you didn't use primer and the crap paint you used isn't sticking to the sculpy well.  It's also to glossy and now you'll have to dullcoat or dust the bags.

11.  Try spray painting the bags again with the same crap paint.

12.  Curse some more.  Because only some of them are covered.  The paint isn't sticking and now it looks too thick.

13.  Go inside and drink beer.  The paint isn't drying fast.  Drink alot of beer, the cure time is forever.

14.  Check on the bags.  Curse, they are still tacky and one of the cats has found them and some are contaminated with hair, a bunch are sticking together, and some are completely missing.  Guzzle the rest of your beer and chuckle to yourself that the cat has little tiny sanbags stuck to it.

15.  Throw the smelly sticky batch in your toy army man room and work on something else.

16.  Two days later check on the little pieces of poop and curse.  THEY ARE STILL TACKING.

17.  Say screw it and dip them anyway.  The stain or dip will settle in the the fabric marks and give it a nice textured look.

18.  Curse, you brown stain has turned black since you last used it.  Someone has broken into your house and turned your brown dip black.

19.  Make a brown wash with some cheap craft paint.  You've invested too much time and money into this project and should have bought some on the internet.

20.  Come back a day or two later and realize they really aren't that tacky anymore.

21.  Glue them to your terrain.

22.  Curse, because they don't really mold to the terrain you're attaching them too and they're so small and fidgety you're getting covered in glue.

23.  Victory beer!  Sure you only attached half of the ones you wanted to but it looks good enough.

...or just do what a modeling vet told me to use later.  Use self drying modeling clay.  Screw Sculpey.

Tools you'll need:
Several packages of Sculpey (makes hundreds of sandbags)
primer
flat (NO SATIN) spray paint or just hand paint with acrylics
stain or dip or wash
brush
fabric
case of beer

Here's a couple preview pics of the trench table.  First is some homemade barbed wire and second liquid in craters.  The lighting in my lair is poor.

- love, Baconfat

Warlord Le Deal

First post in 9 months.  I was out of the country and unable to play with my toys, but now that I'm back I intend to play and post far more often.


I'd been saving my play money up for about six months and ordered the "Le Deal - French" from Warlord, and wanted to post a pic and ramble on about what a great deal it is.  For $173 (free shipping) I got four boxes of Perry French Line, 2 boxes Perry French Heavy Cavalry, 1 box Perry French Hussars, 1 box Perry French Dragoons, 1 box Victrix Old Guard Grenadiers, and a Victrix blister containing two mounted French officers and a Pioneer.

That totals up to 235 foot, 57 mounted, and twelve casualty miniatures for $173.  I can't think of a better deal anywhere.

Due to the fact I saved so much money I had extra cash to spend on some Prussians:  Two boxes of Perry Prussian Line and a box of Warlord Prussian Landwehr.

The Warlord minis have the most extensive packaging.  Sprues are wrapped in plastic and separated by card board.  Perry and Victrix just toss the mini sprues in the box.


In the Landwehr box, you get thirty models:  three metal and 27 plastic.  The plastics consist of nine sprues with only three poses.  There are two swords for every three men, the third has a little ax on his belt.  I didn't know the Landwehr actually had blades.

Here's the three metal minis that come in the box:

I also made an order from the Perry Brother, due to the fact that Warlord doesn't carry Perry metals.  The French needed cannon, so I picked up three line artillery six pounder sets.  This was the first crew painted.

I saw that the Perry's sell a Fusilier conversion kit for the Musketeer boxes and picked one of those up.  It includes four command figures and different backpacks.  The only real differences I saw was that they had straight blades instead of curved.  Two Prussian boxes and the conversion kit allow you to actually create four Black Powder size units.  96 models total:  one small unit of twelve Jagers and three regular units 28 musketeers.


I also picked up one Perry Prussian six pounder piece to see how they compared to my Old Glory Prussian Artillery.  The Perry models are definitely better sculpts and a little bit taller; the OG model is on the far right; you can't tell the Perry models are taller in this picture, but I swear they are.

The Dragoons come with thirteen mounted models and eight dismounted models.  You can't dismount the whole unit.  So I picked up three of the two miniature dismounted sprues so I could dismount the whole unit.  13 minis will make a small unit of skirmishers in Black Powder.  Luckily the mounted sprues come with extra chests for the leadership.  I'll simply cut some of the models in half and put the leadership chests on lowly enlisted legs.  Here's the six I've painted already.

Delivery wise the Perry Package made it all the way to Washington State in less than two weeks.  The Warlord delivery took 32 days, but they were kind enough to email me we the order had been processed and mailed.  The Perry Brothers robot doesn't even email you a receipt for your purchase.


Baconfat