So, I walked into a hobby store not expecting to find anything and instead I found a treasure trove of Plasticville buildings! Now I view thus as a bit of a mixed blessing, you see I already have plenty of buildings for my Pulp Alley games, but I also believe one should buy things like this when you see them as you are not likely to see them again.
Now these are very nice models, well built, very clean and in good shape. They also are building that I have not seen before, how could I say no?
So found some stuff from various vendors at Cangames. Apparently I am going to be working on a centaur themed Fantastic Battles army. I found these at Crossed Swords. Seventeen centaurs and 1 big monster/Minotaur/centaur thing. While I did not go looking for them, they were a fair price and I figure I do something with them. Apparently they are Bob Murch sculpts from the early 2000s. I already had some very old chaos centaurs painted a few years back. Combined this will be a force of 27 centaurs, roughly 12-13 companies and a couple of leaders. The big guy will be built as a dragon. The winded figure in the picture will be used for another project.
So, another Hotlead has come and gone and I have survived another mad crush at the bring and buy! So far I have had a great deal of success at the event, this year was no exception, except that I did not find as many great items as I have in the past.
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| The haul! |
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| The Fluyt |
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| The Dhow |
So, the other night we got together for another board game night. This time around we decided to try a new game (to us) Horrified as well as yet another game of Sentinels of the Multiverse. The game features many of the classic Paramount monsters from the 30's, 40's and 50's.
So lots of fun stuff at Hotlead this year! Beyond some really excellent looking games the big thing for me, as always, is the bring and buy. It is often an expensive weekend as I often find plenty of must have items and this year was no exception.
Just the thing for a winter Pulp Alley game! This is a Matchbox Models of Yesterday. It is a 1922 Scandinavian postal truck but I feel it should be right at home in more arctic conditions.
In all my journeys in many many flea markets I have never seen this vehicle, so it was kind of a given that I would have to buy it. So far I have not attempted to paint or weather it, but I will soon.
So, I found these fine Buzz Lightyear space craft at the local Dollarama. I think they are a good size for 15mm figures and should repaint up nicely. I figure I can use them as troop carriers or shuttle craft ar just have them sit there as big damn space craft.
This is a beat of a game, not quite the geek crushing weight of a Twilight Imperium, but heavy nonetheless. It is part of the Undaunted series which includes Normandy and North Africa and possibly The battle of Britain. (so far not found it for sale) It is a deck building/counter game involving small skirmish units. Stalingrad is a massive game that has a complete coherent campaign. While I have yet to set it up it looks like it has more parts than the other two games, combined.
I do look forward to getting this game into the board game rotation!
Thanks to Liz Truss, there was recently something of a sale on items from the UK, so I quickly cobbled together a few orders from a number of different companies to try and take advantage of the weak pound. I have a fairly big wish list for items from Raventhorpe and the first of the boxes has arrived today containing 21 items.
In this wave we have 7 German cars, 2 Churchill tanks, 2 Shermans, 2 Universal carriers (mortars), 2 M8 HMC, a Humber IV, a Hetzer and a Daimler AC. In the back you can see 2 skoda 152mm guns and out of the picture is a Somua Multiple Mortar vehicle (some assembly required) A good haul to start with, it fills in some gaps. I have at least one more box of stuff that should be arriving soon.
I also have an order in with Grubby tanks, but there seems to be a delay in gathering up the ordered items to ship to me.
I had also placed an order with Sgts' Mess for a large assortment of bits and bobs, tarps, weapons, limbers and miscellaneous items. Sadly that order went unfulfilled. Shortly after placing the order I realized there was more stuff that I wanted, so, I reached out to them to add more items. No response! Three more emails to them yielded the same lack of reply. In the end I was forced to escalate the problem to Paypal. They too seemed to get no response. In the end I had to get a refund instead of all the cool toys that I wanted, very disappointing. Hopefully the same thing will not happen with Grubby tanks, at least he responds to emails.
My latest acquisition, again from Matakishi (Paul) are these fine Britannia US cavalry! All very well painted and based (although I will be rebasing) The collections consists of 40 mounted troopers ans 40+ dismounted figures, including 5 dead horses. These were apparently surplus to needs, I should have such surpluses! Well I guess in this case I do...
When I bought them I had no immediate plans for them, but at the price he was selling them for, being painted already, well, I just had to have them. Now that they are here I have decided to pack them off to Mars to defend American interests. Not having any Native American figures kind of made this decision a no brainer.
I also picked up these three beasties, which I had first seen on Paul's blog and had wanted them then. So they too were quickly snapped up by me. The poor unfortunate Ahmed is one of mine just there for scale.
That should be it for painted figures bought by me for a while. As I said it is just not something I tend to do despite my love hate relationship with painting figures. By the end of painting figures I really do feel good about it and tend to ignore or forget some of my complaining.
More pictures.
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I do not usually buy prepainted figures, but I decided to make an exception in this case. I got these figures through Lead Adventurers Forum bazaar from Matakishi. The price per figure made it worth while, assuming I can find a use for 40 ninjas. I can certainly make use of the Daleks and Davros, and many of the ninjas will become gangs in Pulp Alley. I am open to other ideas for them...
They are all very well painted and based, however I will be taking them off their bases at some point. Part of the reason I never buy painted figures (apart from the cost) is the fact that I am unlikely to paint any additional figures to the same quality. Well I certainly do not need to paint any more ninjas, but I will wok on some more Daleks using these as inspiration.
It is kind of neat how Perry sends out their miniatures, it feels so old school!
These figures are destined for some Silver Bayonet games. I went for a lot of figures from their Russian retreat section as they have a lot of unique poses, irregular clothing and a lot of charm. I also picked up a few figures for Napoleonic skirmish games be they Fist Full of Lead, Sharp Practice or some other set. So I have some more Spanish troops and some dismounted British dragoons.
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:
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.
A while ago (3-4 months) I walked into a local fabric shop and found a nice blue faux leather on sale. It was what I was looking for but I really was not expecting to find it so easily. Kind of disappointing I so enjoy the hunt. I requested a 9' long amount (it was 54" wide) and I figured that should do well enough even if it was going to leave a border on both long edges. I figured, a place for unit cards etc.
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| A 3" border, not too bad I guess |
It was only after I got home that I started thinking about what I bought and what I should have done. My wargame table (really a ping pong table) is 5' by 9'. I belatedly realized/thought through what I was doing and realized I really needed a sheet that was 10' long or even two sheets 5' long each. It would allow me to completely cover the gaming table. However I was not prepared to buy another sheet as this was supposed to be a quick cheap fix! So all I could do was hope that a little extra had been left on, that maybe the sheet would be close to 10' . However my gaming table was a little crowded (see other posts) and I could not stretch out the material to properly measure it.
Now the AHPC is over, and I have had a chance to clean up my gaming table.
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| A rare sight, the table with nothing on it! |
So today I was finally able to spread out the sheet, and lo and behold they gave me a sheet that is 126" long. By my math that means I can cut it in half and have two sheets that are 54" by 63" giving me a small overlap along the long edge of the table. It also means I can use one on my secondary gaming table (1/2 a ping pong table) Oh joy oh bliss oh lucky horse shoe buried up my....
So here is the sheet with some models on it. I do kind of like the light blue colour, not to bright not to dark. I had thought about staining it to give variable patches of blue, but I may just leave it for now. Any thoughts?
This just arrived today. A little bit of extravagance on my part but for some reason I have always wanted this ever since I did not buy it when it first came out ?!? It is kind of idiotic to shell out money for something that I could (and indeed planned out how to) build myself. Nevertheless it is an item that I have casually been looking for on and off, for a few years now. A couple of years back at Hotlead I saw one behind the bring and buy table, but I believe it had been scooped up by one of the volunteers, so close but so far. This one came from a store in the Netherlands, not eBay, not an auction and was at a reasonable price all things considered. It has arrived in good nick, and should paint up nicely.
It will go along well with my collection of crypts and tombs and also adds to my collection of Games Workshop foam scenic bits.
Nostalgia is a terrible thing, makes one long for too many things that one does not really need.
My order from Italy just arrived!! These are the old Grenadier miniatures now made by Mirliton. Back in the day I was unable to pick up enough figures to make large (20 man) units, all I could firld were 12 man units. Now in my old age I have said what the F**k it's only money, I better get them before I am too far gone to paint them!
So this will bring a couple of Dwarf units up to 20 figures, and 2 existing, and 1 new Orc units up to 20 strength. Just for the heck of it I also picked up 2 packs of bats, kind of like the style of them. Now I know I carefully plotted out what I needed to order, but I confess I see 4 packs of 5 Dwarfs, so 20 figures, not certain I needed that many for what I planned. I will have to look into that, but cannot risk getting distracted away from all the Dystopian Wars stuff that I have been painting.
Picked these game up this week, gotta say they look pretty good. Really the same game but in two different theaters, and with some slight modifications of scale. It is a small unit skirmish game, using cards to activate your forces. You have a hand of four cards in any given turn, 1 card must be played to bid on initiative,leaving you 3 cards to activate your forces. A deck building system allows you to modify your draw deck, to remove or add cards as required. Fog of war cards can enter into your draw deck and these cards are a hindrance when drawn into your hand as they cannot be played in your turn, they only operate to restrict useful cards from entering your hand. Fog of war cards can be discarded, but only by certain cards and it will cost you an action. Nice mechanic that.
Overall it looks like it will be fun to play, looking forward to it...
So, my dental surgery (such as it was) impacted my output this past week. Apparently the post treatment drugs left me somewhat tired. Also I spent far more time watching the Olympics than I normally would, the result is a low production week.
However while not much rolled off the assembly line, I did tackle the massive pile of junk that has occupied my various gaming tables! So my smaller table was cleared off, and the various buildings that I have been working on, plus a few others, have been set up. It clears some space near my painting table and gives me a chance to get an overall look at what needs to be done.
Received my Kickstarter package a week or so ago, thought it was time for a post. The Lurkers from the Deep for 7TV by Crooked Dice is based on the type of New England villages as described by H P Lovecraft. Along with the building they released a number of new figures to complement these models. They also included a funky VHS tape container, that holds the scenario rules, markers and additional cards to be used in a game of 7TV. I opted for the buildings only, as I already have plenty of Deep ones, and Hybrids. The lighthouse was the item that attracted me the most, but the overall look of all the buildings also had some appeal.
The buildings are by Sarissa, and promise to be relatively straightforward to assemble. The details on the 2 that I have opened looks good, and they should be fun to build and to use. The lighthouse is segmented, so each section can be separated from the other, thus giving full access during play, and will make it easier to store.
Built these just the other day. No instructions but still easier to build than I was led to believe they would be...
