A Fistful of Fed Up

I was supposed to be running a game of Fistful of Lead Reloaded at the club tonight but this has had to be postponed due to a domestic meltdown. The resident teenager decided to kick off, so I've been calming things down and smoothing things over at home instead. I'm fed up as I was really looking forward to the game, I really like the rules and I've been working hard to assemble some terrain.

I've promised to do a re-run of the game next week, so all is not lost and I will probably have some more terrain to deploy as well, including a rather nice ranch house from Blotz, which arrived in the post today. This will be perfect as a hideout for outlaws or as a bunkhouse for some cowboys, which is one posse that I still haven't got round to painting yet. The kit comes on several sheets of mdf and has lots of detail, so it should be fun to put together.

A Fistful of Lead [17]

 

 

I finally finished the Warbases barn / livery stables this evening, although my first attempt at painting the roof ended up a bit rubbish. I had planked the roof using brown paper strips from the craft section of my local Poundland, stuck down with liberal coats of PVA glue. As I was short of time and trying to mark a set of books and cook the tea simultaneously, I grabbed the first can of paint to hand and sprayed it light grey.

 

This looked terrible, even after a judicious dry brush with various washed out shades, so I re-sprayed the whole thing in the last of my Halfords ultra matt camouflage brown. This was then wet and dry brushed to provide a bit of definition and weathering. The end result is fine although it needs some signage and some more internal clutter to really look the part. It is a really simple kit but well worth a tenner plus a couple of quid for the lean to and the ladder.

A Fistful of Lead [16]

 

I didn't quite finish the livery stables today, although the planning and base texturing is now complete, but I did assemble and paint the last of the Battle Flag buildings ready for the game on Tuesday. This is sold as a bank but is going to be the office of the local newspaper, the Daily Herald, in my town, as I had a laser cut mdf sign that was a perfect fit for the fascia. I've also added glazing to all of the buildings with large windows but only for the street frontage to keep things simple.

 

This means that I now need a bank and I have my eye on the Sarrissa Precision brick built model which comes complete with an interior, albeit for a hefty price tag. In the meantime, the town marshall is in need of an office and jail, so I'm now going to start on the Products for Wargamers sheriff's office, which will need some careful assembly and preparation over the next few days.

Gaslands

I've signed up to playtest these post-apocalypse car combat rules which will be published by Osprey in 2017. The beta rules look very straightforward but I'm sure that there will be more layers added to the core mechanisms as they develop. I'm now off to the loft to dig out the dusty box of Hot Wheels muscle cars that I converted to use with Axles and Alloys way back when I last went for a spin. This looks like it will be a lot of fun and I can make use of my growing collection of wild west desert terrain to drive around in:

http://gaslands.com/

A Fistful of Lead [15]

 

I knocked together a couple more buildings for the Fistful of Lead Reloaded game on Tuesday, using two of the excellent Battle Flag kits that I bought in a bundle of four for the project. These have the advantage that all the architectural bits are already glued in place, so they only consist of six pieces including the front, three walls, a roof and the floor. The signs are from a seller on eBay and are functional but effective, especially as they save a lot of hassle either painting them by hand or using printed ones. I'm now going to focus on finishing the livery stables, as I may well need it as a scenario feature if I use the one that I'm thinking of for the game.

A Fistful of Lead [14]

 

It's been a very long and busy week but I have nearly finished the planking on the Warbases barn, ready for the roof to be tiled and the internal base textured. I have a busy weekend ahead too but I should get the whole thing finished by the end of Sunday, ready for a game at the club on Tuesday evening next week. I also hope to get at least one other building assembled, painted and finished before the game, as the street frontage is still looking a little sparse at the moment!

Galleys and Galleons Cards

 

Nic Wright, the author of Galleys and Galleons, has very kindly sent me a pack of character cards for the game, complete with a couple of very useful wind gauges. The cards are really well illustrated with the archetypes from the rule book including such colourful characters as the Bored Aristocrat, the Virago and the King's Man. I think the Creatures of the Deep one is my favourite. Anyway, I'll have to try them out in my next game of Galleys and Galleons, which I'm thinking of trying in 1/2400th scale using the Tumbling Dice range of Armada-era galleons or in 1/600th scale with my lead pile of Xyston ancient galleys, as a change from the usual pirates and buccaneers. Thanks Nic!

A Fistful of Lead [13]

A brief hiatus in mdf barn construction this evening, as I only got in about half an hour ago from work and haven't had tea yet. Nonetheless, it's good news on the furniture front as I have taken delivery of a really neat set of tables, chairs, bar and piano to deck out my saloon(s), from a company called Blotz, which I'd never heard of before but which has some really nice laser cut stuff: http://blotz.co.uk/
 

This is a really inexpensive and very effective set and I have enough tables to fill both of my saloons, although another bar would be handy. I've glued together the bar, a chair and a table to see what they look like and I am pretty pleased with the result. If only they did some other shop furniture like counters, cupboards and shelves, or some things for a sheriffs office and jail. I'll have to send them an email with a shopping list!

 

 

 

 

I have also added the signs to the buildings that I have already constructed, using a combination of the ones included in the existing building kits and some extra ones that I found on eBay. To supplement these I have commissioned a range of laser cut signs from Jim Moore at Products for Wargamers including a bank, livery stables, Wells Fargo office and laundry, along with some generic signs for goods and services. I'm hoping these will arrive soon. 

AK47 Close Run Thing Game

 

I set up a quick introductory game of AK47 at the club tonight for a new player. Although he's been a club member for ages he hadn't had a game of AK47 before, so I gave him the Superpower Backed ZAP army of Zubuto, while I commanded the MDF army of the Mbote dictatorship. Anyway, we had a really good game, even though we had to impose a cut off of twenty steps on the countdown track as we needed to finish by 10pm.

 

In the end, the game was a draw, thanks to a lucky last turn airstrike by the MDF which wiped out a ZAP unit sitting on one of the objectives. This made up for the destruction inflicted by a 'death from above' ZAP helicopter gunship, which sat in the middle of the table and toasted my second hand T34/85 tanks, pinned my MDF regular infantry and refused to bugger off despite numerous D6 fly away rolls over several turns.

 

As always, this was a lot of fun but I do need to scratch build some more terrain and get my third army up and running, in order to ring the changes a bit. The game itself was an indecisive draw, with Mbote occupying one twenty point objective and Zubuto the other two, although we both lost a unit in the process and suffered some pretty horrendous casualties. The final score was 57/54, with Mbote just squeezing in ahead of the opposition, this time at least.

A Fistful of Lead [12]

 

I've caught the cold that's been going round at work, so haven't been feeling great. I've cracked on with the livery stable model, nonetheless, and have been busy sticking coffee stirrers to the outer walls, the hay loft floor and the lean to extension, ready for an undercoat of Halfords ultra matt camouflage brown or red primer, although I haven't decided which yet. This is a laborious process but saves a lot of money, with the basic Warbases barn kit less than half the price of the nearest alternative. I still need to plank the end walls, texture the internal base and clad the roof in card, so there's at least an hour more of work to be done, assuming the Lemsip kicks in at some point.

A Fistful of Lead [11]

I didn't post anything yesterday as my internet connection went up the spout, so I'm making up for it today with an update on the old west mdf construction project, which has made some half dedent progress over the last couple of days. I've completed the Products for Wargamers two storey hotel including an internal floor for figures to shoot out of the upper windows, although I installed this a little too high despite careful measurement. It doesn't matter, as the figures aren't going to bang their heads on the ceiling and still look fine from the outside through the windows.

I've also glued together a couple of packs of Sarissa Precision fencing for use when a corral is needed in the scenario. This was a bit fiddly and I should have spray painted the fences before I glued them to the bases, which I had already textured and painted, but I had intended just to keep them in their natural mdf finish. In the end, this didn't look good, so I inverted them and sprayed them camouflage brown, then drybrushed them a bit to tone them down. I also used some self-adhesive glitter letters from Poundland to mask off the corral sign, them peeled them off and weathered it up.

Finally, I constructed a couple of Warbases privies to use as scenic clutter, complete with smaller circular bases than the ones supplied and card roofing in place of the overscale mdf panels provide in the kit. At only two quid each plus postage, these are super little kits and very easy to assemble. I may well get a couple more, as they really look the part and will be great as cover when the shooting kicks off downtown. A gallows from Sarissa Precision was quickly assembled to finish off the last of the knick knacks before I move onto more buildings. 

 I'm now about to start on the Warbases barn, which will require quite a bit of extra fiddling to turn it into a livery stables. This kit has no scribing or laser etched planking so will need some added on the external walls, the internal hay barn floor and on the roof. I pinched a load of very thin coffee stirrers from the rugby club bar this morning to plank the walls with and have some brown card strips from Poundland with which to clad the roof, so I'll be up to my neck in glue and fiddly bits for the rest of the afternoon!

Black Ops Tactical Espionage Wargaming

These modern / near future stealthy skirmish rules are out next month and I've been planning ahead for a small mini-project to cover the figures needed for a game. At Colours last weekend I tracked down two packs from the Copplestone Future Wars range that I had on my shopping list, one of gun toting corporate bodyguards in suits and the other of a hostage rescue SWAT team.

I also thought about getting a pack of the Foundry SWAT figures but decided not to as there was only one sniper figure that I really wanted. I will, however, add some more men in suits from the EM4 / Moonraker Miniatures range that was also sculpted by Mr Copplestone. It's only a small project but it should be fun, if the rules turn out to be any good that is!?

The plan is to use some modular bunker terrain boards that I built for a club participation game at Warfare back in 2008. They are stashed in the club storage cupboard gathering dust at the moment but would be ideal as a secret base or high security corporate installation of some sort, once I detail them up with some resin furniture and accessories from the Copplestone Kiss Kiss Bang Bang range.

http://www.winchester-wargamers.hampshire.org.uk/2008.html