Finish what ya started

Just look at my painting table. Look at it! The two units of cavalry and the three of infantry in the background have just had their bases flocked, and in the foreground there's ten British regulars, three British regulars (with the red jackets blocked in) and three civilians (plus one finished Brit for colour reference and a random cowboy that's nothing to do with the GASLIGHT game) And that's it, those are the last of the figures I need to paint for this Sunday's game. Soooooo close!

In the vehicle park, there's about four vehicles that still need some work on them, including an Atlantis toy-based Mole Machine for the Evil Genius army. Late into the small hours last night, in the grip of some caffeine-induced insomnia, I realised that if I wanted to allow underground movement for the drilling machine, I was going to need markers to show where it had entered and emerged from the underground. So I quickly grabbed a couple of old CDRs, some thin card, masking tape and quickly mocked up some craters, which I then liberally coated in ready-mixed filler. This morning with the filler mostly dried I coated it with PVA and sand, and once that's dry I'll give it another coat of watered down PVA mixed with paint to darken the sand and toughen it up a little more, then look at adding some more kitty-litter debris and flocking around the outside.

The idea is that when the Mole Machine goes underground it's replaced by a crater to show where it entered the earth. From that point on the player has to record its movement orders as simple left/right, forward X inches instructions and must do so without measuring on the tabletop but must judge the distances by eye. This represents the difficulty of travelling blind underground by dead reckoning with no points of reference to serve as a guide. When the player wishes the machine to surface, the Umpire works through the orders and will determine the exact point of emergence. This way, the player might be able to use the Mole Machine to deliver a unit to a vital position on the battlefield, but if they travel too far may misjudge where they arrive.

I'm now looking at the finishing touches for the terrain - hedges, the last couple of buildings and the roads. While I've got the mosaic effect lino tile which will be OK for the mean streets of Nether Fondle, I'm not sure what to use for the country lanes around the village. It might be just as well to use nothing and define them as empty space between other terrain items. But it's getting to that really nice stage of a project when all the individual bits you've been working on start to come together and you can see what this unit of troops look like next to that terrain piece.

This afternoon I'm going to start taking some photos for the unit record cards and statting up the various vehicles for GASLIGHT. Watch this space.