Tanks for the memories

Yes I did perpetrate that pun.  So sue me.

As promised, here's a look at the WIPs on my VSF vehicle painting queue. I generally prefer to use the word "landships" rather than "steam tanks" to try to emphasise the VSF nature of the game.  As you probably know, back in World War One, the British research team working on the first armoured fighting vehicles did in fact call themselves "The Landship Committee", and the name "tank" comes from an attempt to foil enemy spies by pretending the factories working on them were producing water tanks.  Harry Turtledoves "Southern Victory" alternate history series has a fun alternative to this, in his world the new armoured fighting vehicles are put together in a barrel factory, resulting in armoured fighting vehicles becoming known as "barrels".  Which lends an extra meaning to the words of the old wartime song, "Roll Out The Barrel".

First up, I received a long awaited order from Ironclad Miniatures at the start of the week.  So naturally instead of doing the terrain work for the Victorian City that I was supposed to be doing, I started assembling them instead.  This is Steam 1, described as a Small Scout Tank.  It's little more than a box on tracks armed with a single machine gun.  It reminds me a lot of the real-world Carden-Lloyd tankettes from between the World Wars, and I'm pretty sure I've seen this used on at least one VBCW battlefield as an improvised steam machinegun carrier.  I got this because I'm planning to do some lower-intensity games between the British and the Fenians, where conventional cannon armed landships would be considered overkill, but a self-propelled machine gun like this would be an effective support without totally overwhelming the infantry.

Its big brother is Steam 3, billed as a Medium Tank, pictured here with just basecoat and black detailing.  It's about the same size as the "Spanner Tanks" I'm currently using as the mainstay of my British landship fleet, so fits well with them.  It's a lovely model, but I must admit I'm a little conlicted about VSF tanks that look to much like... well tanks.  Apart from the steam boiler at the back, this is another vehicle that wouldn't look too out of place on an inter-war battlefield (and again, I'm pretty sure I've seen it used as such). 

 The last of the Ironclad vehicles is this little rascal, Steam 4 Armoured Steam Carriage.  I've drafted this one into Fenian service along with several other wheeled vehicles, as I wanted the Fenian armour to look somewhat improvised.  This is probably the most technically advanced looking of all the Fenian vehicles.  I chose to arm this with a Nordenfelt machine gun instead of the usual Gatling, again because the Nordenfelt with its side-by -side barrels is an obsolete design that really helps give the thing a VSF feel to me.  Like all the other Fenian vehicles, it's daubed with graffiti'd Republican slogans, and unfortunately this one is a little rude, hence the pixellation. (hint: think Father Jack!)

The next two vehicles are from Scheltrum, and are also desribed as Armoured Stagecoaches/Wagons.  To be honest I'm pretty much undewhelmed with these models and can't honestly recommend them, but they're part of the batch of items I bought pre-2003 so I may as well get some use out of them now.  In the photos they are basecoated with decals and black detailiing - they need drybrushing and possibly a wash to be completed.

I ran into some problems with the decals I was planning on using on these green Fenian vehicles.  One weakness of print-your-own decal paper is that it can't produce white, meaning that your only option is to paint white under where the decal will go, which shows through clear parts of the decal.  You can see in these pictures where I've had to try to tidy up around the white backing of the Hibernian Brotherhood emblem(the flags on the side front).  In normal lighting conditions this is no-where near as noticeable as the flash photography makes it look, but I still need to do a little more blending work to be happy.

But I hadn't realised how much the lighter colours depended on a white background to give them their luminosity.  I had several graffiti slogans created as decals in yellow text.  But the decal yellow was only semi-opaque, and on a green background merely looked like a lighter green.  They didn't look good on either a green background or a white background, where they blended more than I'd like.

Finally the pride of the Fenian Brotherhood's armoured forces, Liath Macha (pron Lee-ah Mocker), named after one of the Irish legendary hero Cu Chullhain's chariot horses.

You might be forgiven for thinking this is another GW conversion, based this time on the Rhino APC, but in fact it's the Iron Grumbler from Ramshackle Games, with extra wing gun sponsons from their Tridlins range.  There's something about sponson-mounted weapons that again says "VSF" to me.  In real life they're less effective than turret or centrally mounted weapons, but they just look so funky.

In Ramshackle's original "Nuclear Renaissance" post apocalyptic setting, the Iron Grumbler is an improvised junkyard construction thrown together.  The model looks like it, and requires quite a bit of sanding  and tidying up to make the pieces fit together.  What you don't get from this picture is a sense of how much resign you're getting for your money with this vehicle.  It's easily as big as any two of the vehicles in this post put together, while costing under a tenner (plus a couple of quid for the sponsons).  If Ironclad Miniatures' vehicles are like a carefully orchestrated string quartet, Ramshackles seem to be a punk-rock guitar band - loud, brash and full of character, if somewhat lacking in technical precision.  The Ironclad models are clearly better sculpts, but I find myself liking the cruder Ramshackle vehicles more and more.

This isn't the entirity of my vehicle painting queue.  I've still got several ex-dwarven steamtanks from Grendel to complete, along with the armoured traction engine and Medium Landship from Black Pyramid.  But I'm hoping that after this weekend's game is done and dusted, having the Fenian vehicles completed and ready to play will be enough encouragement for me to finally knuckle down and paint the infantry and cavalry to go with them.

I like smoke and lightnin'...

And finally the last product of this snowed-in weekend.  The modified Brass Coffin from Ramshackle Games.

Credit for the design of this build has to go to PapaMidnight of the Lead Adventure Forums, who first came up with this alternate build, which I've shamelessly copied with a couple of variations.

The default design of the Brass Coffin is unarmed and comes with two large wheels and two small wheels.  It costs £9 and is a hefty piece of resin in its own right.  It's one of the more detailed sculpts from Ramshackle, full of intricate steampunky detail.  It manages to convey the impression that this is an intricate yet slightly bodged together invention that may start shedding transmission parts at any time, rather than a more industrially produced vehicle.

I've added an extra set of large wheels (£1), the chimney from the Huntsman Spider Tank (£1) and a turret from a Liger tank (£3.50) bringing the component cost of this model up to £14.50.  Still good value, I think, as it towers over most other steam tank models.

All those detailed greeblies and rivited plates just cried out for the burgundy and gold livery of the Evil Genius faction.   The Brass Coffin will debut at the March Madness Melee, where the Evil Genius forces under Dr Rebecca Henchman (who was promoted after the death in battle of the man everyone believed to be Doctor Vesuvius) will be allied with the German invaders to counter-balance some of the new British units.

Also over the course of this weekend I managed to finish off the second unit of lowland Scottish troops that have been haunting my painting table for a while.  I also decalled and finalised the Heavy Landship from Black Pyramid and the Prussian Armoured Pullman from Scheltrum, both of which now sport clear German (or Prussian) insignia.

My current paint queue looks something like this

Infantry
1 unit (10 figs) of Guardsmen from Ironclad Miniatures
1 unit of British Home Service Infantry (also Ironclad)
2 units of German Zepptruppen (Early German Infantry from Over the Wire Games "England Invaded" range)

Vehicles
Medium Landship (from Black Pyramid - headed for German service)
Mobile Gun (a small Armorcast vehicle mounting an unfeasibly large cannon - Evil Genius)
3 Scotia Grendel dwarven steam tanks (one heavily converted Iron Drake, plus the Rapier and Ironclad - Evil Genius)

Terrain
Seal edges of baseboards and paint
Airbrush/Drybrush Sarissa Cityblock buildings (not decided on technique yet)
Finish scratchbuild slum terraces
Paint windows and doors of  Warbase buildings (terraces and tenements) and tile & paint roofs.

I'm hoping to get all the infantry, as many of the buildings as possible and at least the Medium Landship, completed for the March Madness Melee in a month's time.  It's unlikely we'll get to use all of it, but I'd like to have plenty of troop and terrain options available on the day, as well as plenty of eye candy to try to get people enthused about VSF gaming.

Heavy Metal Thunder

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away.... you may remember me talking about picking up a couple of GW Leman Russ tank models at Britcon in Manchester which would have been...what back in August of last year. The intention was to return those retro-sci-fi tanks back to their roots and convert them into steam tanks/landhips

The boys are back in town!

Now, nearly six months later, it is my great pleasure to unveil the first two units of the King Henry-class landships, HMLS King Henry and HMLS Lionheart.

These were both picked up at the Britcon bring & buy for the grand sum of £5 each.  King Henry (with the mudguards) was painted in a dazzle arctic camoflage and absolutely smothered in stowage, machine guns and 1/48 crew figures.  The other sported a more modest grey paintjo

Both vehicles were placed in a bath of Dettol to strip the paint awy and the main turrets removed and discarded.  The side and front weapon sponsons were also removed and disassembled, with the original weapons discarded.  One of the side guns was so firmly glued in that I wound up damaging the top armour by removiung it, and despite taking extra care I managed to lose one of the sponson pieces and had to carve a replacement out of plasticard.

Front Towards Enemy

 After a few months kicking around my project table, re-assembly begun.  I scratchbuilt some simple Gatling-type machine guns for all the sponsons and re-fitted them.  Holes caused by removal damage and the replacement piece were patched and filled with green stuff.  I replaced the angular Leman Russ turret with the Scrap Tank turret from Ramshackle Games' "Tridlins" range, which was just larger than the existing turret ring hole.  A 25mm round slottabase was glued to the underside of the turret, which fit inside the turret ring hole and helps hold the turret in position while allowing it to freely rotate.

Baby got back!

You can't have a steam tank without steam, so to help break up the familiar lines of the Leman Russ I added a boiler and smokestack to the rear of the tank, from the Heavy Landship Boiler add-on from Black Pyramid Gaming.  Their range also includes some Aether weapons which would have been another option for the sponson guns.

Both the turret and the boiler cost £3.50 each, so at this point we have a heavy landship model with a material price-tag of £12.  Not bad when it's double the size of a similarly priced model from Ironclad Miniatures!
The models were spray-primed black using Krylon Fusion Camoflage paint, which is apparently designed to adhere to plastics.  I then gave both tanks a white basecoat using my new airbrush - its first test (as mentioned a few posts back) The result was an imperfect, slightly blotchy coating which was just the effect I wanted.  The tracks were painted black and drybrushed silver, and after picking out a few other details in colours, it was onto the decals.

I picked up some laser printer decal paper last year and had used it with some success on the vehicles for the Big Birthday Bash game, but after watching a video by the guy from Gruntz 15mm I had a new trick to
try.  Micro-Set and Micro-Sol are two components of a single system designed to improve the appearance of decals.  Before the decal is placed, the surface is painted with Micro-Set, then after it has been placed and dried at least partly, the decal is then overpainted with Micro-Sol.  Both products are designed to soften and thin the decal material, allowing it to conform better to any irregularities on the surface and giving the decal more of a painted-on look rather than stuck-on.

Well I don't know how the products work or what-does-what, but the overall result is good.  After several coats of Micro-Sol, the edges of the decal start to disappear and blend seamlessly with the surface of the model, and the only tell-tale is that the decal surface is glossier than the matt paint below, something easily fixed with a quick spray of matt varnish/Army Painter "Anti-Shine".  The extra effort was well worth it as it just kicks the decals appearance up another notch.

Once the decals were finished and thinned, I gave the tanks a thin black wash to pick out some of the detailing on the models, and also dirty them up a little bit.  I finished with a very light silver dry-brush over all the painted bodywork, just enough to pick out the raised details a little.  I was originally going to do a bit more weathering with the airbrush, but since I'm still not used to using that, and I'm happy with how the Landships look without it, I'm ready to call these boys done.

I've heard some people argue that GW vehicles are so distinctive that it's difficult to convert them for use as something else.  A 40K fan might still recognise where the main hull has come from, but since its original design borrowed so heavily from those early WWI/interwar tanks, personally I think the added resin parts and scratbuilt guns change the lines of the Leman Russ enough that it doesn't look out place on a Victorian/Edwardian battlefield.

The King Henry-class landships will be among the new vehicles making their debuts at what I'm calling the "March Madness Melee", which is the game we'll be doing at Manchester Area Wargames Society on Sunday 4th March.

Just kicking down the cobblestones

And a Happy International Roadies Day to one and all.  "Soundcheck two...two...one-two..." Geddit?

Oh OK I'll get me coat and on with the wargaming stuff now.

I'm pleased to say I've had a couple of madly productive days.  Today I started work on the base boards for the Victorian City, starting with picking up three sheets of 2'x4' 3mm MDF from Wickes.  If I was doing this as a completely standalone terrain board I'd probably go for 6mm or even 12mm for strength, but the idea is to allow the city board to be placed on top of the traditional green felt sheet table to give a mixed terrain table, so the base needed to be as thin as possible.

I set to work with the "perfect" cobblestone wallpaper..

...gluing it down with 3M Craft Mount spray adhesive.  You have to watch out for that stuff, because the spray produces a fine mist which spreads anywhere within a couple of feet of where you're actually spraying, leaving a slightly tacky residue.  It's also a little heady, so unless you want the fumes to send you a bit woozy, work outside or in a well ventilated room.

The boards of course are wider than the paper, so each required a thin strip cutting to finish it off, but after a couple of hours work...

...I had the full 6'x4' play area covered. Actually I had a little more, as I also covered a 2' square piece left over from the first attempt at these boards (using a not-quite-perfect cobblestone-ish wallpaper), which will let us have an irregular shaped city, or a cutout for a park, for example.  The next step will be to go around the edges of each board with a brush and some PVA and seal down the edges.

This close-up gives you a good look at the dotted "cobblestone" texture, along with the "Prussian Armoured Pullman" from Scheltrum.  I can't remember if I've posted a pic of the completed Pullman before, but it's another model that I bought back in the early Noughties that's been sitting unused in a drawer since then.  I can't remember what I paid for it, but Scheltrum are currently asking for nearly £20 for this.  It's an OK model, fairly crudely constructed but different enough to be interesting, but honestly it's not worth the asking price - anyone could very easily scratchbuild something very similar without too much effort.

"The Elephant is a bonny bird, it flits from bough to bough." goes the old poem and so imitating that aspect of the elephant, on to project 2.  Following some discussion on the GASLIGHT Yahoo group, about avoiding unsightly game status counters cluttering up the wargames table, I came up with the idea for "stealth counters", flocked to match your gaming surface, possibly with some aesthetically pleasing terrain clutter on the upper surface.  The idea is that it doesn't look too jarring on the tabletop, but if you need to see the status indicated, you just flip the counter over.  Now GASLIGHT is fairly light on counter-indicated statuses, in fact the only one you're likely to need is to show whether a vehicle is operational or has failed its "Sustain" roll, meaning it's either broken down, run out of steam or suffered some other temporary calamity.  Someone suggested using watch parts on the counter to show bits of the vehicle's transmission fallen off.

Have credit card, have ebay, have low impulse control...

The bag of 250 brightly coloured plastic counters came to £3.99, while the 50g bag of random watch parts set me back £10.  As soon as I'd finished the cobblestone boards I dug these out, and picking out the brightest coloured counters (pink) I washed them, slapped some paint and flock on them and stuck down a selection of random parts.

Now I really should have restrained myself and done these properly, as you can see some of the pink showing through where the flock has rubbed off.  And you can see how the coat of spray matt varnish I put on has darkened the flock compared to the terrain piece below (it is the same flock, honest).  But as a proof of concept I think these show the idea works.  I've got a few more of these on which I'd created oil spills using PVA mixed with black paint.  Those hadn't dried in time so I'll show you how they came out tomorrow.

The next batch I do will be washed, primed with a plastic-friendly primer (like Krylon Camouflage), flocked with PVA glue, spray. That should totally prevent the colours from showing through.  Without any particular game in mind, I'm going to do blank-topped counters with red, yellow and green undersides - in Savage Worlds I'd use yellow for Shaken and reds for Wounds, similarly in 2hr Wargames "Rally Round the King" red markers could indicate unit hits.  I'm also going to try doing a set of markers topped with the cobblestone paper texture for the Victorian city game.

Let's see... next onto something that I started during DO-WOP, two road junction sections based on vinyl tiles.  From my experience of driving on UK country lanes, a lot of road junctions don't meet at right angles but at an angle, with the left and right lane sometimes noticeably forking.  So following the same technique as I used for the road sections last November...

  ... which if I didn't mention it was inverted vinyl tile, coat sticky side with PVA and sand, painted brown, drybrushed sandstone, flock the verges... These don't take too long in terms of actual work, but you have to wait for the sand and PVA to dry, then wait another night as the brown paint dries before you can drybrush and flock.

Finally, at least for today, I painted a commander figure for one of the converted Leman Russ tanks. I'm a little nonplussed at the result.

Constructing him was fun.  I used a figure from the Wargames Factory Plastic Zulu War British box, cutting him in half, trimming away the rifle from the right hand and cutting off and repositioning the left hand.  Fiddly, but I've found the secret to building multi-part plastic figures... use polystyrene cement with a precision applicator... DON'T USE SUPERGLUE!!!!  Knowing is half the battle!

He looked fantastic in bare plastic, but after spraying with the usual coat of Army Painter colour primer it was as if all the detail had been scoured off him.  I don't know if there was something wrong with the spray can I used or if I've unwittingly given him too thick a coat of primer or if the detail on the figure is so thin it's too easily obscured.  I'm considering fashioning some steampunk goggles for him out of plastic tubing to disguise his lack of eye sockets.

I'm much happier with the actual Leman Russ tanks themselves, as teased in the above photo.  They're now basecoated, using another new toy.  Having dabbled with an old aerosol-powered airbrush I dug out of the junk room last year, with very little success, I picked up a cheap-as-chips compressor (known as the "baby elephant" because that's exactly what it's shaped like) and a cheap £15 top loading airbrush.

I will say it now - the baby elephant is NOT a good compressor for airbrushing, it has no fine controls, will overheat with sustained use and is NOT as silent as advertised.  Because it has no flow regulation, when you first pull the trigger you get an extra-powerful burst from the built up pressure, followed by a lower, sustained flow of air.  But at the end of the day, this is my first dalliance with using an airbrush, I'm not going to be using it much or trying anything too complicated, so as a startup package for under £50 it'll do for now.  I'm still at the absolute baby-steps stage with it, but once I'd worked out the right mix of paint to medium, I was quite happy with the way the basecoat went on the tanks.  With some white paint left over in the bowl, I had a go at doing some very subtle highlighting on one of the first cobblestone board attempts, which seemed to work really well.  This is going to be another handy tool for terrain items if not vehicles and figures.

There really aren't enough hours in the day.  I'm hoping to get the base boards sealed down tomorrow and possibly even painted.  But then I'd also really like to have a bash at finishing off the scratchbuilt slums, finish the Leman Russ tanks, finish the second unit of Scotties, (plus the guards and the regulars behind them in the paint queue) AND finish the paint job on the Brass Coffin.

And then, after reading a discussion thread about converting toys to 28mm ships on the Lead Adventure forums, I suddenly find myself the winner of an eBay auction for a used Playmobil pirate ship...

Did I mention the poor impulse control?

Shiny Happy People holding hands

Just got back from an evening at mi hermano del albañil Jonesy's where we had another couple of games of Song of Blades and Heroes using Lego minifigs.

 There's no disputing it.  Playing with Lego really does seem to boost the fun factor.  It's not for everyone, and to be honest I wouldn't like to completely give up my conventional figures entirely for these.  But if you are looking for a light-hearted, fun game, these little plastic people are sure to bring a smile to your face, as they try to hack each other to pieces.

We actually managed to get two games in tonight, with Jonesy's Romano-British going against Andy's furious Picts, with me kibbitzing, making keen observations about the rules and of course providing sound effects.

The All-Caledonia Swimming Team

The first battle saw the two sides fighting for a treacherous ford, or in our case a broken down bridge.  Figures attempting a double-move across the bridge had to make Quality checks to cross successfully, or else fall in the water.  Naturally with the dense mass of Roman troops blockading the far side, Andy's Scots felt compelled to charge across full speed.  Two failed to make it, falling into the river below.  Of the two that did one fell to a Roman spear, while the other managed to knock down the Roman cavalryman.  Somehow though he was able to get a foothold on the other side, and by bringing down the Roman centurion (Leader) triggered a morale check and greatly reduced the Roman's troop effectiveness.  Once the swimmers had made it back onto the bridge and across, they were able to mop up the remaining Romans with ease.

"Why is it always me on the end of the line?
Why can't I be in the middle like Lucius?"

The second battle was an Ambush scenario, in which the Romans basically started out hidden, represented by twice as many counters as they had figures.  Whenever an enemy got within long range, or attacked, or whenever Jonesy chose to activate a counter, he could then decide whether it was a real figure or a dummy.

This battle was notable because both sides' soldiers/warriors had the "Shieldwall" ability, and for the first time we saw a Pictish shieldwall match up against a Roman one.  unfortunately when the mounted Pictish King knocked down the Roman cavalryman, Jonesy pivoted his legionnaires to attack the King and in the process turning flank-on to the Pictish wall.  

Andy's ranger went up against the Roman druid and skirmishers and managed to take out the druid with a Gruesome Kill, with the following morale roll effectively neutralising the skirmishers.  Then after some very messy fighting between the shieldwalls, the Picts finished off the fallen cavalryman and scored another Gruesome Kill on one of the legionnaires, which effectively broke the Romans' spirits.

So battle honours went to the hairy men from the north and Jonesy went away to rethink his Roman warband.  Everyone enjoyed the games, all of us grinning like loons and howling with laughter as the game progressed.  Would the game have been fundamentally any different if played with conventional wargaming figures?  Mechanically not in the slightest.  But somehow I think it wouldn't have been as much fun.

After the games we sat around and discussed the pros and cons of gaming with Lego.  Top of the pros was the fact that you could be playing with figures on the same day you bought them, something that you can't say for lead or plastic figures (as our unpainted and unused lead mountains will testify)  We also discussed some of the amazing third party accessories available for Minifigs - I've seen some realistic looking firearms including a shotgun complete with tiny scale shotgun shells. And unlike conventional gaming pieces, anything you buy for Lego can be repurposed for a range of things by swapping and changing.  For example, Andy has a growing collection of the much sought after redcoat soldiers.  With tricorne hats, they're government troops ready to battle pirates in the Caribbean. Swap the tricornes for shakos, and you have Napoleonic era troops.  Swap them for sun helmets, and they'll do for battling Fuzzy-Wuzzy in one of Queen Victoria's little wars.  So if some of the third party accessories might seem expensive, once you start to think of them as part of a toolkit to greatly expand the use of your existing figures, they suddenly start to look a lot more reasonable.

I'm sad to say that I won't be joining Jonesy and Andy in their collection, at least for the forseeable future.  It's fun to collect and I'm enjoying the games, but to really invest in Lego gaming requires time, money and a hunter-gatherer attitude when it comes to tracking down the particular minifigs you need at affordable prices.   I'm committed to getting the most I can out of my existing toys, rather than starting anything new like this.  Maybe someday...

In the meantime I've been burning the candle at both ends and finally managed to complete the conversion of the two GW Leman Russ tanks I bought at Britcon last year.  I'm really pleased with the results, and they are now primed and awaiting painting.  After having them kicking around the flat in a semi-complete state for so long, it feels great to finally get them done and dusted and so nearly ready for use.  The only fly in the ointment is that Jonesy bought me two more for Xmas, which are going to require even more work to convert.  Maybe they'll be ready by next Xmas!

My Tank! Has Armour Plate. To save me from hate.

With epic room clearing task finished and the Elder Vesuvius packed off to his weekly hospital visit, I was able to sit down today and finally take a proper look at the Black Pyramid resin landships that you may recall were previewed at Britcon a couple of months back. Well as soon as they became available about two weeks ago I ordered all three models. The add-on kits that were also demoed at Britcon aren't available yet, but hopefully will be soon. What I didn't realise when I placed my order was that Black Pyramid have a special offer on at t he moment - for every landship ordered between now and December 31 will receive a free pack of Tea Wars miniatures. BP kindly pointed this out and asked which figures I'd be wanting, so I asked for a couple of packs of Aether gunners and the Command pack. More on them later.

The first thing you notice is that for your £17.50 you get a big chunk of resin. All three models are roughly the same size, despite two being dubbed "medium" and a "heavy" landships. But cunningly the hulls of these two landships are hollow shells, so the vehicle is a lot lighter than you'd expect given the size. The moulding is very crisp, and of the three vehicles only the Heavy Landship required significant sanding to level off the bottom of the vehicle

Without the extra add-ons that were shown on the Britcon preview vehicles, these three come out quite plain looking, leaving me wanting to dive into the Ramshackle tridlins box to "finish them off". The two landships are boxy and slab-sided, and the heavy version really does need a pain of wing sponsons on either side to make it really rock out. The amoured traction engine is, in its default configuration unarmed, making its use on the battlefield limited. I've armed mine with a couple of spare mortars from Ramshackle's Scrap Tank turret pack, mounted sideways like sponsons.

The one piece missing from all three models is a small but vital one. None of them come with any sort of smokestack. Anyone who's ever kitbashed a steamtank from another vehicle knows that the smokestack is what says "Hey, this is a steam powered contraption" and is the first thing you consider adding. Missing out the smokestacks from the basic models and including them in the add-ons is like selling a car (steering wheel not included)

But apart from that these are three good, solid, plausible steam conveyances. With their slab sides and lots of flat surfaces, they make a good starting point for further customisation. It takes some lovin' from the bitz box, or BP's own add-on packs to really make them sing. Worth £17.50? Weill they're a similar size to the Scheltrum Armoured Pullman, which is the same price. Ironclad's models work out a few quid cheaper for a vehicle with similar overall dimensions, but don't quite match the chunkiness of these models. Overall I'd say these are well worth it, provided you consider the need for customisation to be an opportunity rather than a flaw.

As mentioned earlier, Black Pyramid's special offer meant that I received three free packs of figures with these steamtanks. The regular infantry are multi-part figures - head, torso, legs and weapon being separate, and come with plenty of spare heads and weapons. The command pack comes with one complete figure (wrapped in some sort of weird science electrical gear, so I'm guessing he's some sort of communications operator), and a standard bearer and officer with separate heads. Since the default Black Pyramid "Tea Wars" infantry comes with a tropical-service pith helmet, they're of limited use to me and my strictly home-service collection, so I'm going with the idea I mentioned previously and using BPs spiked helmets with gasmasks to turn these Aether weapon gunners into a small elite Special Aether Service unit.

Finally it's with mixed feelings that I read that Black Pyramid have now acquired the Steam & Steel range of figures from Design28. While I'm sure BP will be a good home for the range, it's sad to think that the range isn't going to be expanded, as the sculptor for Design28 had some really nice, quirky ideas. Since I'm currently on a quest to boost the number of steampunky adventurer figures I have (rather than historical soldiers or civilians) I'm looking forward to when they'll be available again.

My Tank, My Tank is Fight!

As a brief interlude before I start playing the tutorial game, today I've been mostly attending Britcon, with Jonesy (Mi Hermano del Conductor), Marvin and Tony (another gaming friend). Despite being based in my home city, I've never attended it before, for the simple reason that it's primarily a competitive wargaming tournament with a small trade-show element tacked on. I don't get competitive wargaming, it just goes against everything I find fun in the hobby and has so much potential to lead to unpleasantness.

Nevertheless, Marvin was back in town again and mentioned wanting to go. Jonesy was initially against, but when he mentioned how most of the attendees would be wrapped up in their competitions, so that even the Bring and Buy would be mostly deserted, I leapt at the chance.

The bring and buy didn't disappoint, as for the first time in many years of attending wargames conventions I found myself able to reach the table without fighting through a scrum of unwashed wargamers. I was easily able to find my bargain of the day - two GW Leman Russ tanks ripe for steampunk conversion, for only £5 each. One has been extensively modified with extra "bitz" and a hideous arctic camo scheme, but I'm afraid both are going to be hacked mercilessly and Victorianised for GASLIGHT. I also picked up a copy of Buck's and Chris's "Look Sarge, No Charts - WW2" as a gift for Jonesy (who is coming down off a major Flames Of War addiction) as thank-you for driving.

Apart from the tournament games, the trade section was indeed very small, less than half the number of traders than, say Phalanx from earlier in the year (and positively tiny compared to US cons). I picked up a few Wargames Foundry blisters from their new Victoriana range. But best of all I did get a chance to chat with the chaps from Black Pyramid games, who produce a small but growing range of VSF figures under the "Tea Wars" brand. They had pre-production samples of their upcoming steam-tank range.

Phil from Black Pyramid explained to me the range is going to be rather modular, so you can buy a basic vehicle and then buy expansions and modifications for it. The samples they had were basically upgraded with every add-on part they had to showcase the full extent of the possibilities. This wheeled tractor, for example, has been designed with a reversible main hull. You can turn it upside down, fit tracks or wheels to the long flat bottom edge and you've got a vehicle with a completely different look.

These are large beasties, I'd say about half again or maybe even double the size of the Ironclad steam tanks. Another of the Black Pyramiders (whose name I've forgotten but I think may have been Dave) told me this was a deliberate design choice, in order to make them distinctive. They didn't have confirmed prices yet, but were looking at around the £18-20 mark, which seems entirely reasonable for the weight of resin you're getting - comparable to the Scheltrum landships for example.

We talked a bit more about how useful the expansion packs are going to be to scratchbuilders - I know I'm already mentally ordering a half dozen of those gun sponsons. They're hoping the first of the tanks and expansions will be available sometime in September in time for the Stoke Challenge wargaming show which they're co-sponsoring.

They also produce a range of VSF British in colonial pith-helmets, and a very useful selection of loose weapons and heads. While picking up a few packs of Martini-Henrys I asked again about the obvious gap in their heads offering - while they do pith helmets with or without goggles and Home Service helmets with gasmasks, they don't yet do Home Service helmets with normal heads (without gasmasks). This, they told me, was definitely near the top of their to-do list.

All in all, Black Pyramid were a fine bunch of chaps (and one fetching chapette) who seemed genuinely interested in what potential customers were looking for, and were very kind in allowing me to disrupt their display in order to get these photos. I'm really looking forward to when these steam tanks become available, and if they get the Home Service Helmets sculpted I could definitely see myself picking up a few to convert various figures for the defence of fair Albion.

(Although as I typed this an idea popped into my head. Tea Wars automatic riflemen + Home Service Gasmask heads = Victorian-era Special Airship Service shock-troops.)

Achtung! Hammerzeit!

Or more accurately, Donnerhammerzeit! This is the slightly modified Thunder Hammer fantasy steamtank from Scotia Grendel. I got up early yesterday to sand the turret rings on some Armorcast quad walkers which didn't take long, so thinking it wouldn't take a few minutes I grabbed the Thunder Hammer and set to work. Flash trimming and sanding didn't take long, but I wasn't happy with the smokestacks which on the original model looked like they had melted. While trimming them off using a mixture of hacksaw, stanley knife and brute force, I managed to crack the main body of the tank in two, but luckily it was a clean break and the superglued repair looks seamless. The replacement smokestacks are simply plastic tube cut to length and superglued in place.

After that I put the Thunder Hammer to one side and thought no more of it. Until later in the morning I found I had another vehicle I planned to use for the Big Birthday Game that needed undercoating. So I did the Thunder Hammer at the same time.

And then in the afternoon, mi hermano spectacular Jonesy came around for another painting session and after detailing the British Landship squadron, picked up the Thunder Hammer and asked "What do you want doing with this one?" The result, is pretty good and a far better paint job than I could ever manage. The beautiful dragon decoration makes it look better suited to a chinese based army rather than a German, so I'm probably going to use it as part of the Evil Genius army if I can dig up a suitable crew figure.

(And in related news, Robert from Scotia Grendel got back to me first thing this morning, promising to ship the missing parts for the Iron Drake ASAP. Can't complain and would definitely recommend these Leviathan dwarven steam tanks to any GASLIGHT or VSF gamers.)

So yesterday's vehicle painting session broke the back of the vehicle park. In addition to the five steam tanks Jonesy finished, he put a couple more coats of paint on two gun trucks I've been working on, while I finished three Armorcast Quad walkers, four biped walkers and got the Tiger MkII pogowagen to about 80% complete. I can just need to get that, the gun trucks and a drilling machine completed for Sunday, plus of course the last unit of British infantry and a half dozen individuals. Should be easily doable.

Finally for today, here's a little something I found wrapped around some very old fish and chips...

Egad! Whatever next!