More Little boats: Poleacre and America's

A polacca through it's first stages before basing, priming, and painting.

A little houy.

I finished assembling and rigging a few more ships including a little houy, a whaling brig, a polacca, as well as a a couple brigs and a frigate from Warlords Black Seas game.

Up close, these models are obviously not detailed, but rigged and painted and put on a pretty base, I think they look rather nice on the table -- they're quaint and simple. Not as super detailed as a manufactured model such as those from the Black Seas collection, but I can pop a full ship out of a scrap of wood and into a nice set of rigging within an hour or two. If anything, they are just a joy to put together.

For these last few ships, instead of just running a few threads up and down each side of the masts a few times to represent the ratlines, I used some old scraps of fine-mesh window screen. I think it looks all right -- not super -- just all right. I think I prefer the lines of thread, but the screen material looks ok at a distance. 

Raising the gaff sail on my
brigantine whaler.

I have plenty of ships now to race or battle with, at least at the 1:600 scale level; In the mean time, I had a few of these weird oval bases from Proxie Models, and decided it would be fun to make just a few more boats, but this time something dedicated to sail racing games, and something larger. I think these translate to roughly 1:300 scale(?) I think the bases are 40x75mm, and the boats stand around 3 inches tall. No matter the scale, all the racing boats will at least be in scale with each other.

I wanted the boats small enough to be able to game on a table, but large enough to fill those bases and look striking on the table or a shelf. I chose designs representative of early America's Cup racing (1851 to 1900.) I've made a few racing cutters and a couple schooners -- I don't need a lot, I just wanted enough to play with my main group of gaming friend. 

Steam launches to watch over the races. 

As a bonus, I made a bovo fishing boat (Mediterranean vessel with lateen sails seen at the far right of the last photo) for my wife to put on a shelf in her office, but it's to scale with the others in case we want to add some color to the races.

I also departed from the sailing vessels for a few days and threw together a pair of steam launches. Their only purpose is to be committee boats and to delineate the start/finish line for our races. But they look nice, add some variety, and will be fun to paint up.

A tiny regatta

My wife and I picked up the then-unknown-to-us 3M game "Regatta" (1968) a few years ago at an antique shop. And after playing it, we instantly fell in love with it; movement is based on wind direction, the components are top-notch (metal boats and buoys, and great island terrain), it's a tiny easy-to-teach ruleset, and fun to play with larger groups (we bought a second copy and have had up to 10 people racing with no slow-down.)

I had some scrap wood in a waste bin, and a few extra pieces of brass rod. One bored afternoon, I used my Xacto knife and scraped out a little hull from that wood scrap. Plopped in a piece of brass rod, and immediately knew that I needed to make a bunch of these tiny little craft. The original plan was to use the boats to do some small-vessel naval actions from the War of 1812 using the Heart of Oak rules, but I also quickly realized these would be great for a larger version of Regatta (and will get the most use). So this month, I built a few more; I think seven will be plenty for now -- though, I do have a couple Black Seas brig hulls I picked up to try out some more square-rigged scratch-building, but that pair is layed up in ordinary right now. (Ha, ship-talk!)
Each of these ships has a 1" to 2" long hull to give you and idea of size. The two little fishing boats are mounted on 40mm bases.

I still need to do up a few buoys, and I have some simple foam-core sandbars in progress, but I otherwise have everything needed to play some big Regatta. 
Note: Ok, so the ship bases are almost 3" long which means I need to make a larger grid, but I think I will be transferring the sailing rules to those used in Heart of Oak, which aren't all that complicated (as long as you're not using rules about dismasting, being in irons, backsailing, heaving to, etc. et al.) Not sure when we'll play, but I'm interested to see how it all goes.

Here are a few progress shots of the ships going together. The bases are 25x75mm pill bases by Proxie Models.

Naked wood, brass rod, paper sails and thread rigging. The little American sloop in the center was
my first finished, followed by the sloop at right. Schooners and others were done this month.

    Beginning to add paint. The two small boats are a small lugger and a Sicilian "bovo" boat.

     I also added a Xebec to the mix for fun and color.

All the boats are finished! I painted some reefing/stitch lines on the sails -- which makes them look
a little cartoonish, but these were meant to be fun; if I wanted historically accurate, I would have
bought a few Langton 1200s 

Senjutsu: Battle for Japan

 

I haven't actually played it yet, but I've seen the videos, read the rules, and it looks fun. Not only that, but I already have a sizeable collection of painted samurai to use!

The only problem is that Senjutsu is in 30mm and I have 40mm. No worries, I'll build my own terrain!

The battle board was mapped out using isometric graph paper to set the grid, then it was cut out of a piece of 1/2" (paper backed) foam board. Carefully flocked, the edges painted to clean up a little, and little felt pads added to "float" the board a little (and level it out and protect whatever surface it's sitting on.)

The rocks were carved from blue insulation foam and painted in a couple layers of wood glue to add durability. The shrine was simply built from scraps of wood and card. And the bamboo sticks came from a bamboo kitchen place mat.

I'll touch on the urban terrain in another post; it was created long ago for my collection, but it will certainly find some use with Senjutsu.

Yaji and Kita

I finished painting a few more civilian figures for my 40mm Japanese collection. These are, from left, a well-to-do traveller, and famous adventurers Yaji and Kita.

Who are Yaji and Kita? They are the main characters if the story of Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige, a comic serial/novel written by Jippensha Ikku from 1802 to 1822. The stories of the duo take place during their pilgrimage from Edo to Kyoto, and also serves as an informal guide to the Tokaido road.

If you want to read it in English, you can find it under the title "Shank's Mare." The stories rely on a lot of Japanese puns and wordplay, so much of the humor might be lost on Western readers, but the book was still entertaining even if only on a simple level.

I commissioned Steve Barber Models to sculpt the figures based on a statue (with a few minor changes) of the literary characters, which is located near the Sanjo Ohashi bridge in Kyoto.

The other figure is a simple traveller using the Yaji model as a base, but using the head from another Steve Barber figure (I can't remember which one right off.) 

The bases are by Proxie Models, and the static grasses and shrubs and flowers are from Army Painter.

Samurai house

Test of Honour requires at least 2 or 3 buildings for many of the missions (and the core game does come with some flats to represent buildings and terrain,) but I game in 40mm, and there are not a lot of 40mm building options. So I build my own. Here are a couple new structures I've added.

They were straightforward to build -- I used matt board with a pebbled texture (it was sold that way), measured it, cut it (and the windows and doors), and wrapped it around a wooded base (for strength and stability.) I added several pieces of basswood strips for the exterior beams and frames. Add paint and almost done.

The roofs were simply pre-molded plastic styrene sheets meant for model railroading. I used Spanish Tile sheets. A few companies make them -- Plastruct, JTT Miniatures, and Precision Products (dollhouse company.) I used JTT. I primed and painted the sheets, built basic roof frames to fit each building, and then simply used a hot glue gun to affix the sheets to the frame.

I used my old building as reference for measurements specifically because I wanted the walls and doorways to all match so that the structures could be combined to make one or two larger buildings. Several of those configurations are shown. I want to add one more structure -- a small square hallway section -- for even more combinations.

A few shots from more Test of Honour Battles

 

We played a few more battles this weekend. Nothing to report, but here are a few images from that game.
The miniatures, by the way, are from Steve Barber Models. Most of mine have been heavily converted, but even the out-of-the-box sculpts are great and easy to paint. They also make for a great-looking game.

Mechanics-wise, we decided not to change the measurements (since the game is scaled for 28mm figures), and everything still works out.

Surprisingly, we didn't get any photos of the new buildings I built for the occasion, so I'll show those later in a separate post.  (Also, surprisingly, despite the buildings having fully open and easily reachable areas, we have yet to send any of our forces indoors for a fight; we might just have to set up an indoors battle.)

Test of Honour: Group bases

 

One of the things we lacked for our first Test of Honour game were proper group bases. In the game, you can take figures for your force as either individuals or in groups to help increase strength and durability. The game is meant to be played at 28mm, and there are pre-cut group bases available. But my games are at 40mm scale, so I needed to make my own.

They were quite easy to make and only took me about an hour to complete these seven. I simply marked off where the figures would stand, and used differing types of flock to delineate those areas: short flock for where the figures stand, and static grass for the gaps. For variety, floral accents and stones were added to some of the bases. I also tried out some tall grass on a couple of the bases (ninjas need hiding spots!)

We don't have any Test of Honour games planned anytime soon, but these bases will still help for a nicer display of the figures in the display case where I have them stored. The bases also serve as nice little vignettes (as seen below with the woodsmen having a conversation.)

Test of Honour 2nd Edition: I finally played!!!

 A few years ago, I got the cool job of illustrating the tabletop wargame "Test of Honour" (2nd edition.) I found the first edition in a search of rules to use with my 40mm samurai collection from Steve Barber Models, which led me to the illustration job. Last weekend, I finally played the game and had loads of fun! My friend Adam and I were only planning on doing one -- maybe two -- battles, but we were having so much fun, we ended up playing three that day (sorry, wife!)

The rules were easy; the mechanisms were solid (we had to refer to the book only a few times, being our first/learning game, but the answers were all there;) and the play was fun with plenty of action, tension, and momentum shifts.

We didn't record a proper session report, but we did take plenty of photos. Here is a selection:

Hunters and scoundrels

Last Christmas, I couldn't resist getting some Star Wars Legion minis -- My wife and I don't play SW Legion, but we do play Zombicide Invader. So we've got these two teams (plus one more yet unpainted) to use as alternative survivors for the game (I still need to make custom cards!)

My wife had fun painting all the Mandalorians (except Boba Fett who I got to paint), and I enjoyed painting the classic characters.

Nothing special to mention about the painting or assembly of these figures. They assemble very easily, and there's no conversion work. I'm still hoping Legion comes out with one more bounty hunter or rogue who will fit in with Jabba's pre-New Hope gang here so I can make it a full 6-survivor team.

Dreadball: New teams (to us anyway)

My wife and I painted up a couple new Dreadball teams to play!

She did a great job with a full team of mechanites -- The Loose Cogs.
I assembled them for her, and expected to help out painting a few, but she took over and did a great job. She did it all: She "built" each team member on paper; organized her strikers, jacks and guards; and chose colors to reflect that organization (mostly green are guards, tan/beige/gold are the strikers, and blue are the jacks.) 

And then she painted all of them, and despite the different colors for different roles, she used a nice limited palette to keep the team unified. I'm proud of my sweety -- and also scared of her team; I'm pretty sure my hobgoblins are going to take a beating.

Speaking of which, I painted myself the "Hobgob Scachens." Not much to say about them except they were fun to paint! Also, I painted up the team captain, Graggot. He's one of my first all-resin figures, so I'm a little daunted, but I haven't chipped any pieces off yet! But he painted up just fine.

Space Hulk!

 Like many people, I entered the hobby with Warhammer (for me, it was 40K first edition in the summer of 1987 -- the old Rogue Trader edition -- damn, I loved that book and don't know where it went.) Eventually, I sold my 40K Imperial Guard and Space Marines and switched over to Warhammer fantasy (using the old orange book.) 

I still have much of my Warhammer Empire army boxed up, still needing some paint, but there's just too much there to bring out, catalogue, paint, organize, and play with. When SPace Hulk 4th edition came out, I took the opportunity to not only get back into 40K, but to get an iteration of the 40K universe that was much more convenient to paint and play. 

Much of it is already painted, and you can see my "Orphans" (the name of my Chapter) elsewhere in this blog. Still, it was nice the past couple weeks to take a break from my mandatory projects (Conan, Okko, Zombicides  -- yes plural -- Rise of Moloch and yet-to-arrive Everrain.) Since I have all the Orphan terminators I need to play with painted, I decided to paint up one more squad as if they were "elites" within the chapter. Really, they just have a slightly different paint job (a little more red up top to honour they Blood Angels from which the Orphans were seeded.) I also gussied up my Chaplain a little bit (I added a cape!) He will serve as a proxy sergeant for this new squad. I already have three figures painted for the squad. I'm waiting for better weather to prime the remaining pair.

Catching up: Conan Pt 2

 Here are most of the minions from the Conan game. These also represent the first collaborative/assembly line-painted minis between my wife and me (with a couple exceptions, such as with the Aesir and frost giant ((by my wife)) and the Stygian assassins ((by me)).