Yesterday I had my first try at creating and using decals using laser printer decal paper, an example of which can be seen on the Springenpanzer. It worked better than I'd expected, having not had much joy with decals back in my childhood Airfix kit making days. Since there was no way I was going to be able to use a whole A4 page of decals, and didn't want to waste the expensive decal paper, I cut the sheet into quarters and fed them into the printer manually as a custom paper size, which worked fine. A few minutes on the web to source images for a Union Jack and a German cross, a few more to sort out some suitable fonts and a few more still to bring them all into Inkscape and print them, and I had a lovely little custom decal sheet.
The picture above is a close-up of the turret of one of the British Landships AKA the Atlantis "Spanner" tank, one of those I was having terrible trouble stripping paint off a few weeks back. To play up the "landship" idea and downplay the "tank" aspect, I've painted these to try to suggest pre-dreadnought Royal Navy colours, and the Jacks on the turret just finish the job nicely.
Yesterday's parcelpalooza brought a very small, light box and a very large, not quite so light one. The small box was a Golden Compass toy I bought on eBay.
This is the Magisterium carriage, which in the movie is self-propelled by means of the magic crystal in the front wheel. Although the accompanying figures are around 40mm scale, the carriage is a perfect fit for 28mm, as evidenced by the driver figure which happens to be from another Atlantis toy. It seems to be the pattern that the less successful movies seem to yield the best toys for GASLIGHT conversion (Wild Wild West anyone?), with the happy side effect that they usually turn up cheaply on clearance shelves or in pound stores. This coach is made by Corgi and there are numerous sellers on eBay pitching them as "rare collectibles", yet I was able to pick this one up for about five pounds.
The huge parcel was from Kaiser-Rushforth. I've been completely converted to KR for my figure storage and transport. I've upgraded my two Games Workshop hardshell cases with new KR foam inserts, nearly doubling their capacity, and have migrated all my 28mm sci-fi/street violence figures to a KR Multicase, and will be using one for my growing 28mm zombie collection as well. This order was specifically for the GASLIGHT collection of vehicles and took advantage of the recent launch of the Backpack series of Multicase bags. KR have a special promotion on for the launch - buy a Backpack in July and get an extra Multicase free. So I purchased a Backpack Two containing two Multicases and got a third one, all of which were filled with pick n pluck trays which I think will carry most if not all of my GASLIGHT vehicles. The backpack itself, which is almost a bonus, is very nice. As the name suggets it has two compartments each of which can hold a KR Multicase, or you can use the second for a change of clothes if travelling overnight for a game, or just zip the second compartment down to make the pack more compact. It's festooned with pockets, enough for all the gaming paraphernalia you could ever need.
I am, as you can probably tell, a big fan of KR. If you want to take advantage of their Backpack offer, there's three days left, or if you're in the US and going to GenCon, they have a similar offer of a free Multicase with every Aluminium case, Kaiser carry bag or Backpack sold there.
And if you're wondering how much protection your figures are going to get from a card case, take a look at KR's own demonstration, or the independent and equally impressive test by TotalWargamerShop. I wouldn't like to leave a Multicase unprotected outside in the rain, but in a bag like the Backpack or Kaiser, it's not going to suffer from reasonable exposure to the British weather.
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