King George commands and we obey...

Today's work has left me feeling over the hill.  Or at least, over these hills.

These are the last of a batch of home-made hills that I started for the Big Birthday Bash last year. They were cut and undercoated just too late to be finished for the game, and so have languished in the Cupboard Under t'Stairs since then.  Painting and flocking them was an easy win for DO-WOP Day 3.  These are so easy and cheap to make, there's absolutely no reason to ever buy commercially made hill pieces again.  I think combined with the hills I'd previously completed these will be enough regular grassy hills, the next batch I do will either be hills with an impassable rocky cliff on one or more sides, or possibly some desert coloured terrain.

Last night I went round to visit Mi Hermarno Antiguo Jonesy.  For the last year or so he's been running a games evening with a bunch of friends which I've dubbed the Old Farts Gaming Night (I can get away with calling it that, as the one time I visited I was delighted to discover I was the youngest person in the room.)  I don't normally go there, simply because the games they've been playing haven't been the sort to float my boat.  But the last two weeks Jonesy and the Old Farts have been playing the excellent fantasy skirmish game Song of Blades And Heroes, using 40mm figures, part of his new year project resolution that I've alluded to in previous posts.

SBH is a nice, simple set of rules that hide a surprising amount of depth.  There are five or six direct supplements, plus versions for Napoleonics (Son of Drums and Shakos), Horror (Fear and Faith) and modern gunplay (Flying Lead).  The activation system is quite innovative.  When a player's turn comes around they may choose to activate one of their figures with either one, two or three dice.  These are rolled, and the number of successes gained becomes the number of actions the figure can take in its turn.  Obviously more actions is better, but there's a downside.  Whenever a figure rolls two or more failed activation rolls, that players turn ends and initiative passes to the other player.  So a player with poor quality troops might play safe and limit them to one activation dice per turn, so that they can at least guarantee to do something.  A player with better troops might decide it's worth taking the chance of getting more actions by rolling three activation dice for them.  This decision meking process is the heart of the game and is the primary source of friction as you suddenly find yourself unable to complete your plan due to a critically failed activation.

Last week saw a group of Roman legionnaires battling against a group of Egyptian undead.  This week I didn't play but watched focussing on picking up the rules.  We ran a treasure hunt scenario, and although Andy's small warband of Minotaurs found the treasure first, they were slaughtered by Jonesy's disciplined and organised Romans, who didn't take a single casualty.  Despite that the game works really well and I'm looking forward to playing it again, as well as giving Flying Lead a try for both Victoriana and Street Violence skirmishes.

There was one other distinguishing feature of this game.  As I mentioned we were using 40mm tall figures.  These were plastic, and from a manufacturer you may have heard of......

Lego.

Yes we have started experimenting with using Lego minifigs for light hearted gaming.  They offer several major advantages over conventional wargames figures - they don't require painting but come ready to play, they are durable and don't require padded carrying cases, they have a selection of swappable weapons and equipment.  While you may struggle to find suitable figures for some historical eras, fantasy and modern periods are well catered for, both by Lego and also a Polish company called Cobi who produce 100% Lego-compatible figures, including modern soldiers.

For a warband-scale skirmish game like Song of Blades And Heroes, the Lego minifigs work exceptionally well, and act as a helpful reminder not to take the game too seriously.  I'm not about to bin all my regular miniatures in favour of smiley plastic men, but as a light-hearted diversion from regular gaming, I'm sold on the idea.

Not convinced?  Will try to get pics of the next game to show you how it looks in practice.

Tea for two..

It's day 2 of DO-WOP and I can proudly reveal...

..two painted figures, complete but for the basing textures.  This was taken moments after the Quickshade was applied and after seeing this picture I was able to catch the excessive pooling on the left hand guy's chest.

OK not massive progress I have to confess, though I did a bit more work on the Scotties and assorted bits and pieces on about half a dozen other civilians.

I also received a set of stagecoach horses from Dixon Miniatures, for use in converting those cheap plastic wedding coaches to something useful.  The horses that come with the carriages are stylised semi-flats, so my first thought was to try Irregular Miniatures, my usual go-to guys for odds and sods.  Unfortunately their horses are a bit underscale for 28mm, and looked tiny next to the wedding carriage.  Dixon was my next port of call, and while still a little on the small side, they don't look too bad.

I have six Dixon horses, so the plan is to convert three of these carriages into "Growlers" or four-wheeled horse drawn taxis (as compared to the better known two-wheeled Hansom cabs)   I have Westwind Miniatures' Hansom Cab model, along with several assorted horse drawn carts from Irregular, plus some horse drawn vehicles from Lledo's "Days Gone" range.  Between al these I hope will make up a passable set of traffic for the Victorian Cityscape project.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing...

So here we are at the startof what I'm going to call DO-WOP...  DrVesuvius's Original Week Of Progress.  An entirely original concept, in no way borrowed from, inspired by or blatantly stolen wholesale from any other blogger.

If you remember, the idea is to do something gaming related every day, have something concrete completed by the end of each day, and to blog about it.

So Day One....

...

...

(tumbleweed rolls by)

...

Look it's not my fault, OK.  I actually made pretty good progress on the unit of Rapier Minis Scotties.  If I'd been able to spend the whole day on them I think I might even have brought them to a state of semi-completion.  But even then some jobs are just two-or-three-day jobs.  In this case when I do finish them I'll want to step away from the figures for a day and come back fresh the following day to check them for mistakes and do any neatening up before the Quickshade is applied.  When I realised this, I switched over to painting a handful of armed civilians, but sadly it was too late in the day to even get these finished.

So no concrete finished article yet, but at least I got the ball rolling.  I should be able to finish the Scotties easily tomorrow, with a view to Quickshading them Wednesday.  The civilians I ought to get completely done and dusted tomorrow, as they're a lot easier to correct.  I've also got some polystyrene hills that just need flocking to bring to completion, another easy win.

It seems to me that something like DO-WOP or WOMP might be better for clearing up started and half-completed projects than seeing anything through from start to finish.

I wonder if myincubliss is doing any better?

Got my mojo workin'

I reckon we've all struggled at one time or another to maintain motivation for a hobby or project, which combined with the classic gamer ADD can see us flitting from one thing to another, but never actually finishing anything.  This is where our "lead mountains" come from, and can also lead to disillusionment and burnout.

Over on the Lead Adventure Forum, myincubliss has announced his personal solution to this problem.  With a week off work coming up, he's declared it to be the "Week Of Mega Power" and has pledged to do something gaming related, and then blog about it, every single day of the week.  I think it's a fantastic idea, just to set yourself a target like this, especially if you wrap it up with a slightly silly name like he has.  No seriously, think about it.  If you pick a name that makes you grin stupidly when you think about it, your brain starts to associate those "feel good" endorphins with the project, which makes you subconsciously want to think about it more.  I'm thinking back to summer of last year when I was doing all that preparation work for the Big Birthday Bash and can't help wonder if the slightly silly name played a part in getting so many figures and vehicles painted and ready.  I've certainly not been able to match that level of productivity since. 

I'm certainly going to be following incubliss's progress on his blog this week, and see if I can't have my own little "week of mega power" next week.  As a slight tweak to what myincubliss is doing, I'm going to make a slightly different pledge.  Rather than potter around doing a bit here and a bit there and not actually achieving much, I want to finish each day with something concrete that has been completed. I want to be able to blog every evening and in that post say "See this, here? I did this today and now it's ready to use."  Whether it's a steam tank, a building or just a couple of figures, I want to have achieved something every day.

Today I re-setup my miniature painting station at my father's house.  As I've mentioned previously in this blog, my day job nowadays is more or less acting as his full-time carer, though fortunately he's in such good health at the moment that I do get a lot of free time between tasks during the day.  So having a painting station set up here is a good way to fill that free time (in theory, if I can resist the temptations of the internet!).  It's a good job I'm using cheaper craft acrylics as my main paint source these days, as it meant I've been able to afford to completely duplicate my paints set, one for my flat and one for my father's house.

The table's at a bay window that gets the best light throughout the day, but the desk lamp (as suggested by Scott) supplants the meagre winter daylight we have here at the moment.  One extra expense, and one that I'd highly recommend, was to replace the bulbs in both the desk lamp and the main room light with 25w daylight bulbs.  These are a lot more expensive than the usual energy-saver bulbs, but they're a lot brighter and more importantly the light they produce is a closer match for natural sunlight than any other sort of interior lighting (old fashioned tungsten bulbs tended to be too yellow, flourescents tended to be too blue).  The daylight bulbs produce a clear, white light that is excellent for any sort of hobby work.

While I was re-arranging the room for the paint station, I also dug out my old 4'x4' wargame board.  Dating back to when I was mainly doing 15mm colonial gaming around 2000, this was simply a piece of 10mm MDF painted green on one side and covered with cork floor tiles on the other, that could be placed on top of a dining table to give a decent playing area.  Nothing spectacular, just a very convenient compromise for someone with no room for a full-size permanent gaming table.  Eight years of being consigned to the garage and it's developed a very slight warp but nothing too serious, and the green side has acquired a few marks that I believe to be snail tracks (possibly left by the little fellow who had to be pried off before the  board was brought back into the house!).  The cork side still seems in pristine condition, so a lick of paint on the green side is all it needs to return to its former glory, but it's still perfectly usable as is and gives me another possible gaming venue for small-medium scale games.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me...

If I should die before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
Nor, when I'm gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must
Parting is hell.
But life goes on.
So sing as well.
- Joyce Grenfell 1910-1979

Thanks to everyone for your messages of support in the comments.  Yesterday was my mother's funeral, and it was pretty much everything you'd expect such an occasion to be.  When she was alive she used to love collecting little poems and witticisms and in a folder of such that she'd left behind for us, the above poem was right at the top of the pile.  Which strikes me as a pretty clear cut set of last wishes, don't you think?

So in that spirit, after thoroughly toasting Mum's memory and all the family and friends and neighbours had all left my father's house and after a quick tidy up, mi hermano derecho Jonesy and his daughter were escorting a somewhat tipsy Dr Vesuvius back to his flat, when their principal made the following slightly sozzled declaration...

"Let's go to Toys-R-Us."

Now if you've only ever wargamed the historical horse & musket period, you might fail to appreciate what a treasure trove your neighbourhood toy store can be for vehicles, props and terrain, especially for the modern/science fiction gamer.  I have some excellent 28mm palm and jungle trees that came from dinosaur and safari playsets - (If you don't plan on including dinosaurs and/or African wildlife in your games you can do what I did and strip the useful terrain bits out of the buckets before sending the rest on to the nearest charity shop.)  And thus it was that on Friday afternoon, the remnants of a funeral party arrived at "Britains greatest toy store" and started poking through the Lego.

Sadly there were no legendary bargains to be found, like old Wild-Wild-West toys or foot tall mecha from the Battletech cartoon series, both of which I've found at knock down prices in the past.  There was however a huge Emergency Services playset containing several vehicles (police car, ambulance, fire engine, recovery vehicle, rescue crane and helicopter) and a selection of street signs, barricades and other knick-knacks, all of which broadly compatible with 28mm figures, knocked down to £15.  I picked up two sets, which will be more than enough for zombie/street violence gaming.

Jonesy also spotted one of my favourite cars in the Matchbox selection... a '68 Ford Shelby Cobra GT500KR, which he presented to me as a surprise after we left the shop.  Sadly it's a convertible, which means I'm going to have to look through my box of Stan Johanson Miniatures bits to see if I've got a suitable driver figure.

(I also picked up a Nerf N-Strike Barrel Break IX-2 for Steampunk costuming purposes - off topic for this blog I know, but I will just say I believe it is the best nerf gun there is for an off-hand backup weapon, giving you two one-handed shots before you need to use your second hand to reload, plus it has an ambidextrous barrel-break catch release.  It even looks pretty steampunk out of the box as well.)

With life returning to a semblance of normality, I can start getting back to gaming projects.  The Victorian cityscape is still top of the list, along with a selection of non-period specific zombies (a mix of old GW and new Mantic plastics) for use in a Steampunks vs Zombies game.  I've also received the last of the figures I splashed out on over Xmas for modern/near future Street Violence/Zombie gaming.  These are the legendary "Thugz" figures sculpted by Bobby Jackson, which I've always admired.  So that's another foothill for the lead mountain.

However I may have to make a slight diversion through 28mm sci-fi and/or fantasy.  An old non-wargaming friend of mine (and occasional commenter on this blog) told me his eldest son (12) had received some miniatures for Xmas and was asking about painting and gaming with them.  I spent an enjoyable hour or so this afternoon talking with the lad over Skype about how I paint figures (badly) and how wargaming work.  But there's only so much you can do remotely even with a two-way video connection, so I suspect I may have to dig out my own unfinished pack of em-4 Space Ranger figures (the same as he's been given) and arrange a visit to work on them in person and maybe give him a demo game.

But if it can bring another potential gamer into the fold it'll be well worth it.

Forty thousand men and women every day

I arrived at my father's house today at about a quarter to one, to have him tell me that a nurse from the hospital ward where my mother was staying had been trying to get in cotact with me.  Cursing I realised I'd left my mobile phone back at the flat, so I raced back to get it to see if she'd left a message.  As I came through the front door I could hear my mobile phone ringtone, and managed to dive to the phone in time to pick up the call.

To be told that my mother had just died.

It was, by every account, a very quick and painless passing, which is as good as we could have hoped for given her illness.  It was not entirely unexpected, the day before I'd been told she had "weeks and months rather than years" left, and to be brutally honest, Mum had deteriorated so dramatically in the last few months she was the merest shadow of her former self.

There'll be another brief hiatus on this blog, while all that needs to be done is done.  Then we can start 2012 for real.

It's gonna be the future soon

So much for 2011, what are the goals for 2012?

Well on New Year's Eve mi hermano prognostico Jonesy came round to my flat to see the new year in, and rather than just do our usual video-watching evening thing, we chatted and amongst other things discussed future gaming plans for 2012.  We each came away with an immediate gaming project (which we'll both co-operate on) and some slightly fuzzier longer term plans.  We both generally agreed on "do more gaming" as a good resolution to start with.  Jonesy's project for 2012... well really he ought to start his own bloody blog to discuss it.  For now let's just say it takes the idea of playing with toy soldiers to the next level.

Now I'd already been thinking about plans for next year.  As I mentioned in the last post I'd been thinking about Tomorrow's War and my old 15mm SF stuff.  On the plus side I have a metric tonne of infantry, and would only want to buy some vehicles to make up a couple of modest fighting forces for it.  On the big down side, it would be another period and scale where I was completely going it alone.  I have a couple of friends (Marvin the ARVN and "t'other Chris" )who gave TW a try using Games Workshop Warhammer 40K armies, while Jonesy and the Other-Other-Chris are planning on going back to their legendary Stargrunt games in 25mm, but using the Tomorrow's War vehicle rules.  As it is, by raiding my lead mountain I can get in on both those actions - I have a fair selection of Alternative Armies Ion Age figures in Heroic 28mm, which fit well with GW figures. Including a half-decent number of Shia Khan figures which are already painted.  In 25mm I have a 3/4 completed UNSC Powersuit platoon, an airmobile unit in VTOLs with gunship support. Plus delving deeper into the lead mountain, I have tons of 25mm Denizen figures (Federation, Ventauran and even K'hiff) and a selection of resin vehicles that could serve either scale.  So if I'm going to be doing any science fiction gaming this year, it makes sense to be planning for 25-28mm

But for the new year project, I took a different approach.  Instead of  asking what period/scale I fancied doing, I looked at what resources I had already got in various states of completion, and what bringing any of them up to a state of full readiness would enable.  In the end I decided that the city terrain project, if brought to completion, could be used not only for the originally planned Victorian steampunk games, but with a couple of updated buildings here and there could also work for pulp, modern or near future games, including  zombie games.

So the short term plan is to push for completion of the Victorian City terrain.  While that's ongoing I'm going to try to paint a decent number of non-period specific zombies, mainly my old Games Workshop plastics and a box of Mantic zeds which I ordered over Xmas.  Once completed, the City would then be ready for both full-on GASLIGHT street battles and steampunk vs Zombies games.  Phase 2 would be a selection of more modern looking buildings that could be swapped in, to adapt the city to use in modern day/near future games.

I've always been fond of non-military skirmish gaming, which is why I've already got a modest collection of Foundry Street Violence/ Copplestone Kill Zone (from EM4) and Future Wars (from Copplestone Castings) figures.  For my Xmas present for this year, I've treated myself to a smorgasbord of new 28mm figures from a variety of source, all suitable for modern day/near future gang wars.  I have yet to see if my current daub n dip technique that works so well with Victorian/Steampunk figures will also be suitable for more modern looking figures.

Thus far the main objective - complete the city terrain ASAP, with a view to using it for both Victorian and Modern games, which may or may not include Zombies.

Other sideprojects I'd like to spend some time on next year...

• Not so much a sideproject but more a tweak to an existing game.  I'd really like to do some GASLIGHT/VSF games with more of a big battle feel. Although I'm fairly confident that in practice we could manage larger games in GASLIG|HT with experience players, I'm getting some fierce resistance to the idea from the people I play with.  To that end I'd like to do some experiments with multi-figure movement trays for units in close formation and possibly look at some alternative rulesets, maybe even a return to the venerable Soldier's Companion from Space 1889, or Larry Brom's "The Sword And The Flame".
• I''m still intrigued by the possibilities of The Portable Wargame in conjunction with Heroscape hexed terrain. It's my intention to delve into the old 15mm colonial/VSF figure collection and put together a couple of late 19th century armies for it, with a view to producing a genuinely portable wargame set, as per Bob's original vision.
• I had a lot of fun dusting off my old 25mm fantasy/medieval figures for Rally Round The King last November.  It might be fun to get them properly rebased into elements and maybe pick up a few character figures as heroes and magic users - I noticed that Mega Minis produce the old Julie Guthrie Grenadier Fantasy figures, which are as beautiful as they ever were, and Denizen are still producing their fantasy range, both of which are excellent sources of 25mm fantasy characters and very cheap by modern 28mm standards.

You'll notice that apart from possibly buying a few bits and pieces, all three of the above sideprojects mainly involve doing something new with stuff I already have, rather than buying too much new stuff.  In some ways I'm going to try to make that a major theme of this year - to make better use of the stuff that I've got rather than adding to the lead and resin mountain for the sake of retail therapy.

Finally, with metal and resin prices still rising, I want to be on the lookout for cheap toys that can be pressed into service for any of the above games.  I'd especially like to find some cheap tanks and military vehicles for 28mm, seeing how a 28mm MBT/APC can set you back £20 a piece in resin.  So I'm going to try to hit the Pound shops a little more often this year, and maybe look for some other sources of bargains (like car boot sales)

 

So in summary, the plan for 2012...

1. Complete the City terrain (PRIORITY)
2. Keep painting Steampunk/VSF figures
3. Paint Zombies
4. Paint Gangs & Police for Chain Reaction/Flying Lead "street violence" games.
5. For Tomorow's War - complete UN Space Command (for 25mm) and/or Ion Age (for 28mm)
6. Try tweaks to GASLIGHT or other VSF rules for bigger battle feel.
7. Build 19th century Portable Wargame setup in15mm from existing figures
8. Rebase and flesh out 25mm fantasy/medievals for Rally round The King/HOTT
9. Don't buy any new stuff unless it's to complete a particular subproject.
10. Look for cheap toys that can be repurposed for gaming
11. Play more games

Heres to 2012 everyone.  May your best in the year just passed, be your worst in the year to come!

That Was The Year That Was....

So let's look at how Dr Vesuvius has done this year in his quest to get back into the wargaming hobby.

Total number of wargames played - 11

• 3 GASLIGHT games with other players, 
• 1 GASLIGHT solo tutorial game, 
• 2 solo games of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame, 
• 2 games of Force on Force
• 3 solo games of Rally Round The King for Solo Wargaming Month.)

The bulk of my efforts have been towards the 28mm Steampunk/Victorian Science Fiction collection, where I went from having a single unit of British and a single unit of Germans and about a dozen civilian adventurers painted, to 6-8 units of infantry a side, plus a unit of cavalry plus assorted steam tanks, walkers etc and about 75 civilian/Adventurers all painted and table ready, with an even bigger backlog of figures and vehicles in various states of completion.  My personal interest in this genre/period was greatly boosted by the experience of attending The Asylum Steampunk Convivial, my personal highlight of the year.

As part of the overall 28mm Victorian Science Fiction project and in addition to the ongoing recruiting of character figures and steamtanks, I've launched four sub-projects, of which only one has seen any significant progress but which I think will be key for gaming in 2012.

1. The expansion of the Evil Genius army - I have five units of regular uniformed troops and five unique vehicles  lined up for this.  The vehicles are primed and two are on the painting table, but the troops remain untouched bare metal.
2. The Russian VSF force.  I have the infantry all based and primed, and a couple of vehicles from my old collection already earmarked for Russian service.  Frankly I'm panicking about how I'm going to paint the distinctive stripey shirts on my Russian sailors, so for now this is well and truly backburnered and all Invasion of England games will have to be restricted to the Southern (German) front.
3. My long cherished Fenian Brotherhood VSF force - four units of regulars and four vehicles.  Although I had two units of The Boys sitting on my painting table throughout November and December, I've made no headway into them at all, apart from a single officer and standard bearer. Sadly returned to the figure cases and consigned to the back burner for now.
4. The Victorian Cityscape Project, as chronicled in earlier blog posts, saw me first scratchbuilding some terraced hovels, ably assisted by Jonesy, then in a binge of pre-Xmas shopping I purchased a ton of buildings from Sarissa, Ziterdes, Warbases, Amera, PMC and Oshiro.  Only a fraction of the buildings are anywhere near table ready, and the work already done on the baseboards looks set to be scrapped in favour of a superior cobblestone surface, but this looks like it's going to turn into the key project for 2012 (see below)

Returning to GASLIGHT after so many years was like reuniting with an old flame. And yet, though GASLIGHT still gives a very enjoyable game, I'm still sorely tempted to try a few new rulesystems to get games with a slightly different feel or larger scope, or maybe write my own "perfect" ruleset (which would essentially be a rewrite of GASLIGHT, since it's already delivering 80% of what I want.)

Work on the 15mm modern Imagi-Nations that gave this blog its name has pretty much stalled completely, and the planned 15mm zombie collection has been supplanted by 28mm, mainly down to the inspiration of other zombie gaming bloggers like Vampifan and LTLDad.  In fact I've found myself drifting away from 15mm, a scale I've always favoured.  Ironically, we're in the middle of a boom period for 15mm sci-fi gaming, and even for 15mm Victorian Science Fiction, with several manufacturers starting to bring out suitable figures and steam vehicles.  However alea iacta est, and having given away all of my 15mm VSF gear that couldn't be retasked for 28mm, I've zero inclination to start collecting it again from scratch.  I'm left with the figures that were originally purchased for pseudo-historical Colonial adventures, more on which later.

The brief dalliance with 20mm modern gaming using Force on Force ended unsatisfactorily, although I'm promising myself a second fresh look at the rules along with the sci-fi version Tomorrow's War (which mi hermano santaclaus Jonesy very kindly bought me for Xmas).

Things that have tickled my fancy in 2011

• Kaiser-Rushforth Multicases - I'm now a complete convert, with all my VSF stuff being stored in KR cases or GW cases with KR foam refits. It's my default storage solution for any individually based 25-28mm figures.
• Old-school horse & musket gaming as exemplified by the wonderful 18th century imagi-nations at the Emperor vs Elector blog (tips hat to Tradgardmastare and Fitz-Badger who I know are visitors from that corner of the web)  I find myself absolutely entranced by the spectacular battle reports, often featuring huge units of beautifully painted figures.  The background narratives, the toy-soldier aesthetics, the nostalgia for old-school gaming, all are things I aspire to in my own wargaming, especially the VSF games. I've even picked up my own copies of "Charge" and "The War Game" to try to soak up the nostalgia for the period.  Sadly, I have to accept that this is a period and style of gaming that I am probably never going to be able to get into.  The reasons are numerous - I can just about cope with painting a unit of ten 28mm figures using my "daub n dip" technique.  A unit of 30+ figures, from an era when military uniforms were possibly at their most complex and detailed, just doesn't bear thinking about.  More significantly, I'm just not sure I have a decent enough grasp of the period to produce a suitable imagi-nation, or build an appropriate army.  I just don't feel I could do it justice.  So for the forseeable future, I remain the unwashed street urching gazing in through the "Emperor v Elector" toy shop window with longing admiration, and if I want a tricorne-era horse and musket game, there's always Empire: Total War to fall back on.
• 1938 - A Very British Civil War.What's not to like?  Dad's Army meets P G Wodehouse, with colourful units, delightful inter-war vehicles as well as a degree of Heath-Robinson-esque improvisation.  And of course, afternoon tea.  I've bought all the VBCW sourcebooks to date and greatly enjoyed reading them, and avidly follow the fine gentlemen of the Edward VIIth Cocktail Lounge at the Gentlemen's Wargames Parlour. Although the creators of the setting have now brought out their own set of rules for the conflict, I'm delighted to see that they still keep the sourcebooks entirely rules-neutral and encourage everyone to play with their own favourite (or self-written) rules, something which is a refreshing change from the standard commercial wargame practice of tightly bundling wargames rules and settings and sometimes even figure ranges, to the exclusion of outside influences.  I approve of Solway's approach wholeheartedly. Everything about VBCW is so close in tone to my existing VSF gaming, it feels very familiar and comfortable.  However  there also lies the reason why I'm unlikely to ever invest time and money in VBCW armies.  I've already got a significant investment on forces to play light hearted "Jolly Tea and Cricket" games set in 1889, it seems an entirely wasted effort to duplicate all that simply to play a functionally identical game, except set fifty years later and in khaki instead of red.  VBCW has however directly inspired a line of thinking that led to a potential new background for VSF gaming - how about a Very Victorian Civil War (OR if you prefer "Winter of 1879")
• The fine works of Mr Robert ("Bob") Cordery and his use of gridded terrain in what I think of as "operational" level wargames.  Brother Cordery has sold me on the virtues of Heroscape terrain in wargaming and his 1st edition Portable Wargames rules hit a sweet sport for me in the way that it felt comparable in a lot of ways to DBA and its family of games, without merely being another tired retread.  I've yet to play the 2nd edition or his more recent "Memoir of Modern Battle" rules, though I find the latter particularly intriguing as a possible way to resurrect the Axis of Naughtiness imagi-nations quickly and cheaply.
• Finally, a nod specifically to Vampifan's World of the Undead.  While Vampifan's blog is a treasure trove of zombie wargaming material in its own right, it also acts as the hub of a larger circle of gamers covering the genre in a wide variety of formats and scales.  I often find myself visiting there purely as a jumping off point to explore the blogs he links to.  Which sounds like it does Vampifan a great disservice, but it shouldn't.  I've spend hours going through his earlier posts, following his All Things Zombies campaign, admiring his simply spectacular cardmodel buildings (all with fully detailed interiors)  The irony of this all is that prior to this, in real life, I wasn't particularly a fan of the zombie apocalypse genre or splatterfest gory horror in general.  But Vampifan and his fellow zombie bloggers have opened my eyes to the gaming possibilities of the genre.  It offers personalised, skirmish level gaming with a natural campaign structure.  It's almost perfect for the solo gamer, with a foe that is literally mindless and whose actions can be very easily programmed via simple game mechanics.  And that also makes it perfect for an entirely co-operative wargame, where multiple human players are all on the same side (athough judging by some of LTLDad's games with his family, some more than others) against the programmed zombie horde.

This is turning into a much longer post than I'd originally planned, so I think I'm going to split it here and do "Plans for 2012" tomorrow.

So in summary, how was 2011, the year I returned to wargaming?  Well I actually managed to roll dice and push toy soldiers around a table a few times, just a lot less than I'd hoped to.  I've discovered that I can actually start to enjoy painting figures, now that I've discovered my "daub and dip" technique and settled down with my "toy soldier" style.  I've also rediscovered the joy of building wargames terrain, which is second only the satisfaction you get from seeing all those separate terrain projects laid out on the table suddenly come together to look like a real place in miniature.

The biggest problem was Real Life(tm) getting in the way.  I've had to cancel at least four scheduled GASLIGHT games this year due to emergency Family Duty.  But I have found ways to continue working on and enjoying my hobby, like setting up a painting station at my parents' house for use while I've been there.  And I still maintain that it's at times like these that we most need our hobbies to distract us and help us unwind. 

So here's to 2012 and a Happy New Year to one and all.

We take two steps forward, and two steps back

Things were just starting to settle down on the "Family Duty" front.  I'd even booked a day off between Xmas and New Year to try and organise a game of some sort.  Then two days ago my mother had another fall, this time in the bathroom where she hit her head on the way down.  Given the hard floor surface and her existing spinal damage this could have been very serious.

I'm not going to give you the blow-by-blow battle report of that day.  But credit to all the NHS staff who took great care of Mum that day, from the paramedic and ambulance crew who worked for an hour to get her safely out of the awkward position in which she'd fallen, to the A&E nurses who helped a frail and at times uncooperative patient get through five hours of tests and waiting.  Special credit has to go to the Macmillan community nurse who by a stroke of fate arrived unexpectedly for an routine visit to check up on how my parents were doing.  She jumped straight into the unexpected situation and took great care of Mum till the paramedic arrived, then split her time between helping there and keeping my distressed father distracted and calm.  She truly did a spectacular job, fully upholding the Macmillan nurses' well deserved reputation.

So now my mother is in hospital for Christmas, having been judged too frail to discharge.  I've spent the last two days campaigning heavily for her to receive full-time hospice care, speaking to anyone and everyone with a potential stake in the issue.  Needless to say, I've had no time for wargaming or any associated crafting, and all upcoming leave has necessarily been cancelled while I deal with the matter of Mum's ongoing care.

Which is not to say that I'm pushing Wargaming completely off the radar.  I've made the point on various other people's blogs that it's at times like these when we most need our hobbies in order to distract us from our troubles and help us to unwind a little.  I'm still sweeping through the usual round of wargaming blogs each day.  I'm looking at the newly stocked storage room and all the accumulated Stuff(tm) and working out how best to get some some of the unpainted lead mountain into use.  The painting table is still sitting here ready for when the urge to paint strikes again.  And since it's a still, relatively dry day, after finishing this blog entry I think I might go outside and spray some Sarissa Precision window pieces for the Victorian city project.  

If you're going through troubled times, don't feel that you have to "put away childish things"  in order to face your troubles with suitably dour and grown-up expression.  Truthfully that's absolutely the worst thing you can do.  Instead, pick up that paintbrush.  Pick up those dice.  Give yourself an hour or so to switch off from mundane matters and focus on the important question of whether to paint that unit's facings in blue or green.  Delve into that cupboard... you know the one where you shove all the odd Stuff(tm) and open up some boxes to see what you have.  Allow yourself to imagine the games you could have with those figures when you get around to painting them.  Trust me.  It'll help.

I'm going to try to post one final review of 2011, but apart from that I don't expect to have anything worth blogging about until the current family situation settles down.  Don't go away though.  The Axis of Naughtiness will rise again in 2012 with more battle reports, thoughts on ways to keep the hobby alive against all the odds and of course, most importantly of all, hats.

If it be your custom, then have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

If your faith leans otherwise, or if the very thought of a Big Beard in the Sky sends you into spasms of atheistic nerdrage, then accept my best wishes for you and yours to be safe and well over this winter solstice season.

Dr Vesuvius

24/12/11

The best things in life are free

Work continues on the ongoing process of sorting through the Huge Piles of Stuff that used to be loosely referred to as my wargaming collection and finding new homes on the shelves for the Good Stuff.  I've now reached the inescapable conclusion that I've got Too Much Stuff.

So, would you like some Stuff(tm)?  Free, gratis and fer nowt?

I've got four small bundles of Stuff, all bought for mini projects that either never took off the ground or are naturally played out.

1) Several packs of Heroics & Ros 1/300 English Civil War miniatures, horse, foot and guns.  Unpainted, though many figures have been fixed to temporary card bases.  Enough for two sides of a decent sized battle.

2) Several MicroMachines Star Trek capital ships, mostly Next-Gen era.

3) Several Star Wars MicroMachines - 3 each of X-Wing, B-Wing, TIE Fighter, Millenium Falcon, Star Destroyer & desert skiff (last two not to scale)

4) Two Heroclix maps (3x3 double sided) and seven assorted Marvel figures.

Cost to you will be nothing,. though I would ask you to make a small donation, at least equal to the postage cost, to CALL, a local charity that supports people with life-limiting illnesses and their carers. CALL have been a massive help to my parents throughout their illnesses.

Since none of these packages will be particularly big, I don't mind shipping internationally, though obviously the postage/donation may be higher.  Given how close we are to Christmas, I won't be doing any posting until the new year.

If you're interested in any of these, or know someone who you think would like them, add a comment below.  First come, first served.  Then email me your postal address to drvesuvius70 AT yahoo.  co.  uk (remember to replace AT with @ and remove any spaces)

The history book on the shelf, is always repeating itself

I've managed little or no direct gaming activity in the last couple of days.  By day I've been working on turning a box room at my parents' house into a proper storage room, which mainly involved hours of assembling Ikea heavy duty shelving.  I've annexed this room as recompense for having cleared out my old room a couple of months ago and it'll mainly be used for war-gaming material.

One possible prize from this endeavour - the box room contained a 6'x'3' piece of 10mm MDF that had previously been used  to reinforce a bed.  If I can work out a good place to stow it in my flat, it may provide a larger playing area when placed atop my current 4'x2.75' coffee table.

Plans last night to clear off said coffee table and play an actual wargame (gasp!) had to be put on hold when my home media server developed a glitch that took all evening to sort out.  Next opportunity to do something is Saturday night.

Here we are, here we are, here we are again.

With real life finally starting to settle down properly, I've been able to sit down and assess the currently active gaming projects and actually make some small progress on some of them.

For the City terrain, I've now undercoated all of the Sarissa Precision buildings.  I haven't yet decided whether I'm just going to drybrush them and pick out some details, or apply some of the stone texture paint to them (or a mix).

I've also started painting the Amera Plastic Mouldings church, which will be a series of grey and brown drybrush layers to build up the stonework, followed by a quicker drybrushing on the roof tiles.  The windows will then be painted black and the doorway filled up with a door made from balsa and plasticard.  The ground immediately around the church will be painted and drybrushed a sandy colour to look like gravel, with a little grass flock around the edges.  I've also picked up some Army Painter Poison Ivy which I'll try to use on this model.  Incidentally I've also picked up the larger Ministry building, which is absolutely huge and will make a stunning centerpiece for the cityscape when completed.

Another order from PMC brought me the Factory and the Town Gasworks, which mix and match nicely together to form a generic set of industrial buildings.  And to complete the cityscape I've also bought the two Tenement buildings from Warbases.  These were a little disappointing, as the brick patterning is 2-3 times bigger than the terraced homes, leaving me wondering whether I should paint these brick coloured or stone grey.  They are however quite huge, dwarfing most of the other buildings.

On the vehicle front, I've made some good progress.  The Prussian Armoured Pullman from Scheltrum is completed, although I'm not terribly happy with the paint job, it's good enough for play.  I've also completed the build of the Black Pyramid Heavy Landship, using their own add-on parts to add wing sponsons and a smokestack.  It's now primed and ready for painting.  I'm not sure how I'm going to paint this - it's going to join the German landship squadron, which were done with a simple grey primer followed by AP Quickshade.  But the landships were my first experiment with Quickshade and the results were very messy, so I'm not sure whether to try to emulate that look or try to go for something a little cleaner looking.

The two Leman Russ tanks I bought at Britcon are now nearing the completion of their conversion to VSF landships.  I've fitted the new Ramshackle turrets, re-assembled the wing and forward sponsons and added a boiler and smokestack from Black Pyramid to each.  All that remains is to scratchbuild the gatling guns for the three sponsons and paint.  I think I'm going to put these into British service, which will make the paintjob nice and simple (I'm painting them in sea-going ironclad colours, so black hulls, white turrets and upper works)

 Finally I've actually started painting the modified Brass Coffin from Ramshackle, and the Iron Drake from Grendel.  Both of these have been on and off the painting table for months, but I'm finally making some progress with them.  They'll be joining the Thunderhammer tank in the service of the Evil Genius forces, so they'll be sporting the same natty Gold & Burgundy colour scheme.

Having previously shifted my figure painting setup to my parents house for use during quiet periods of family duty, I've now setup a second painting station back at my flat, so that I can paint wherever I happen to be.  This has proven to be a very productive idea, as after only a couple of days I've managed to paint 13 character figures.  I've started painting some of the more steampunky figures I've been picking up , from Lead Adventure Miniatures, Ironclad and the old Eureka Pax Limpopo range.  In keeping with their more fanciful nature, I've been using a more varied colour palette than the usual Victorian greys, browns and black.

But I've found myself making virtually no progress on the Fenian army for GASLIGHT.  The boys in green have been primed and half of them have been sitting on my painting table for weeks, but for some reason the emerald muse has abandoned me.  I'm probably going to shelve them for now and focus on painting characters and finishing off the remaining three units of British (one regular, one in glengarries, one Guards)

Right now though, I've really got the urge to put the painting aside for one night and actually play a wargame of some sort, whether it's the next battle in the Novembre Civil War or a small VSF skirmish.