End of day one...can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

 

Thankfully nothing has been broken, yet, but it certainly looks like a tornado went through the place. Technically it is a simple straightforward  swap of furniture, but it has become like one of those puzzle squares where you have to slide the pieces around to form up what ever the image is, or the correct number sequence etc etc. To move the main storage shelf I had to move chairs and a desk to make a path. Before I can  place the storage unit where I want to I have to move the paints, but that means I have to set up the painting table but some bookcases are in the way. You get the point.

Here is the largest of the storage units to be moved. 

OOP Ikea large Billy cabinet 16" deep

An especially large fully loaded cabinet with 20 shelves in in, bloody heavy!  So out came everything, however 2o shelves of miniatures is not an easy thing to disperse around a crowded room. I had already taken other items off other shelves so the pile on the gaming table really started getting out of hand.

Stud finding with magnets!

Now, normally I am kind of lazy and will try to move a cabinet even with stuff in it, but this cabinet presented a challenge. As you can see, an air duct blocked me from doing a simple dragging of the cabinet. This challenge meant that I was forced to remove the 20 shelves in addition to the miniatures. Once done it was a 'simple' job  of tilting the whole thing onto me then pushing wobbling it over a floor joint hump, and under the air duct then back up with out crushing me or pushing it over the other way. All this with out ant help even from a traveling gamer (not pointing any fingers) Anyways as I am writing this after the fact you may surmise that I survived the experience and also the second large cabinet that was quite heavier, oddly shaped and just as awkward to shift as the first cabinet.

However despite the chaos and confusion I do see a glimmer of hope. Below is the newly cleared area where my painting table had been. Once done this area should be about a foot wider affording more room for the players and even room for a chair or two.

So could not work on it as much as I would have like to on Sunday, some rearranging and culling of books, the big push will come Monday and Tuesday. As a side benefit it was good to take another look at my Sci-Fi and fantasy book collection to see what I wanted to keep and what I could give away. Thanks to kindle a fair amount of my collection has migrated from paperback to digital. While I still love the feel and smell of books, the ability to easily flip back and forth to find certain passages, the lovely covers, my eyesight is much worse and the ability to adjust font size must win out over nostalgia and tradition.

A change is coming...

This may not be a bad idea, but it certainly will be painful and disruptive as I have decided to rearrange my gaming room. After two years of no gaming and with the first potential gaming day just a month away, I have decided that now is the time to rearrange my gaming room. 

When I started to think about this reorganization I figured that there was no way that it could work, there just wouldn't be room for everything to be shifted where I wanted. Then I started taking measurements and plotting what I might be able to do. Well, sadly it should (at least in theory) fit perfectly, damn. 

So the plan is to 'simply' have this painting area...

 

 ...trade places with these shelves and wall unit. As it so happens both are 280cm in length (there is 60cm of CD racks just out of the shot).

 

Also plan to do something with this corner unit and replace it with a more conventional shelving unit. This part of the plan has not yet been figured out. Originally I simply planned to replace it and chuck it out (actually Kijiji it). Now however I may have figured out a use for it we shall see. It also looks like I will replace at least one low shelving Ikea Billy unit with a high unit. My rule storage are has become a little crowded of late.

 

Also in the mix, I plan to remove my bits boxes to the garage freeing up shelf space below the gaming table. This space will allow me to store some scenery under the gaming table either in photo copier boxes or simply free standing.

 

 The new high book shelf unit may also free up some of these shelves for scenery as well.

Finally, this reorg will open up some of the zones in my room. Once moved, the painting tables new location will mean  that I can push back away from it without colliding with the gaming table. The area where the painting table was, will gain one foot of space making moving around the gaming table that much easier.  In addition there were things that got in the way of the miniature cabinets, specifically a low wheeled table was for ever getting in the way, soon it no longer will. 

All this will also require some additional lighting, I will need to replace one light fixture with an outlet that will then have some overhead lighting plugged into it to provide illumination to the new painting area. 

IKEA here I come!

Wandering around some stores the other day...

 

 I found a roll of ratty teddy bear fur! (oh joy)

The roll is 3 meters long and 5cm wide. I figure it might just come in  handy to create some soft cover, be it tall grass or crops. It should be easy to cut into smaller segments, then after it has been groomed with glue and paint I hope to make some strips of grass/crops that can be grouped together fo a full field effect, but that I can take out segments as troops move through the fields. 

Time will tell how this will work out. 

Fantastic Battles a rambling review part 1

 

So, I recently joined the Facebook page for the game Fantastic Battles. You may have noticed that I had posted a brief synopsis of the game, really just my first impressions of it back in February 2021. I liked what I read, but I confess at the time I had some reservations. Well I have recently decided that I would like to start gaming again and that some of that gaming will involve fantasy armies fighting it out. So I pulled out a number of different fantasy games and this one made it to the top of the pile.

Now it may be the lack of gaming in my life, I may not be completely myself, or it may just be that they are not that bad a set of rules but I am interested in them! Your troops are assigned traits, traits that define what they can and cannot do. What traits you select are entirely up to you. There are no preset lists of troops, not preset army lists build what you want to do emulate the type of troops you want to field. There are 50 different traits to use, some are mutually exclusive (for good reason after all you cannot be both fast and slow) but most can just be blended together as you see fit. You can select up to four traits for any given troop, one being used as a racial trait (mindless for undead for example) while the other three slots further define your troops. The racial trait is a nice touch to add some thematic cohesion to your forces. If selected at least 50% of your forces must have that trait/be of that race..

This of course can be both bad and good. Sometimes when confronted with too many choices you can wind up in analysis paralysis. With only being able to choose three there is a certain amount of trade off required you need to select the best traits to represent your vision. But the fact that you are not constrained by someone else's interpretation of how best to define something is a good thing.

To help  you out the author has included sample historical and fantasy army lists as suggestions. Nothing is codified so they really are just suggestions, his idea of how one might build certain units. Technically there is no right or wrong way. So that being said I submit these sketches of what dwarf warriors might look like, some taken from the authors list. I whipped these cards up very quickly more of proof of concept. As such the points may be off but I do think they look nice.

I hope nobody bet against me...

 So, just a quick update, the Spanish fleet is now mine too.

So this time last week I had a total of two, (2) Black Seas ships (they came with a WI issue). Now I have 55 ships spread out among three fleets (and two merchants) In a blink of an eye I suddenly confront:

• 3 named 1st rates
• 3 generic 1st rates
• 9 named 3rd rates
• 9 named Frigates
• 20 generic brigs
• 3 gunboat squadrons
• 6 Schooners
  
• 2 merchant ships

No rules yet, but they have been posted as of today.Also some scenery.

Madness, madness 

Oh, and that means the US fleet is still there for someone to pick up, less expensive than the other fleets...hint hint.

Flight stands and bases

So while walking through my local Dollarama I found two items of interest. Well actually I found any number of interesting items, but we shall focus on two for today.

First up something to be used as a flight stand.

It is, of course, an extendable device for picking up dropped metal items, as you can tell by the grip that is still attached. I have glued it onto some MDF and used washers to try and add some weight to the base. I will, ultimately, remove the surplus rubber grip to produce a smoother look.  

Its minimum height is around 7".

It can extend up to 31"

It has a built in magnet, but that can be removed and a more powerful magnet could be installed. It also has a built in light at the end for atmospheric shots. Maybe add some cotton to the end, turn on the light so as to create an image of ypur craft going down in flames. Now I do not have any gimbals to allow for attitude adjustment, but I am thinking of using these for my VSF stuff and any tilting would see troops plummeting to the Martian surface. At any rate, at $3.00 each I figure they are a good deal.

Next up are some square wood sheets. They appear to be made out of the same hardboard that is used for clipboards. I have been using cheap clipboards for a lot of scenery needs, both legal and letersize. 

These come 6 to a pack for $4.00 and are 25cm by 25cm. I have been toying around with the idea of making some interchangeable scenery and scenery boards. The idea would be to create a terrain board either 2' by 2' or 2' by 4' that had low relief terrain modeled on it. I would however leave square areas that could have higher elevation items inserted. This would provide me with plenty of options as the add-ons could be aligned in multiple ways, mixed with any number of other add-ons etc etc.

The thing was, I needed to cut some fairly uniform square tiles and that might be a challenge. These should do the trick. They are not 100%  25cm by 25cm, but they are pretty darn close. Any that are too far off will just be used a scenery bases. I could also create area where two such squares touch each other to allow for larger terrain to be added into the scene. 

So far I am in the testing stage of this project, I have them unwrapped and I am waiting to see if they will warp. I think they will not.

This would be too many for a 2' by 2' board but you get the idea

Aprils project seems to be taking shape naval gazing!

With the water board in place, I guess I will be doing naval action. It was not my original thoughts, I really want to finish off the left overs from the AHPC, but what could go wrong if I put that off a bit. (APHC XIII?)

 So I already have a number of naval games

• Water battles makes up a large part of Dystopian Wars
• Blood and Plunder is a pirate game
• I have Sally4th steamer to build for Pulp Alley
• Some Sarissa speed boats also for Pulp Alley
• A riverboat steamer that will show up in All Quiet on the Martian Front

 

Heck even Godzilla came out of the ocean!

So that should be enough stuff right, I mean that 4 different games, 3 different scales, yeah I think that should do it...or is it?