Of the van door, a trashed leotard, and an exciting delivery

This week seemed to be full of DIY projects for me. It's Thursday and I've completed two projects. I guess it only seems like I did more because I have kids to take care of and we all know where the priority usually goes...

So the first thing on my mental list was the second thing I did. The electric lock on the van stuck in the locked position so we couldn't open the door. As luck would have it, it's the door next to Margo's chair (she's one), so we were needing to kneel inside the vehicle while hefting Margo into the seat. Not the worst thing ever, but tough on the knees and/or back. I guess we would have had the same scenario had the other door frozen instead, seeing as how Margo's chair would obstruct the entry of the other kids into the van.

Anyway, I did a short online search to get my bearings and I was off! I proceeded to take the inside panel off the stricken door. I was surprised to find a rubberish plastic shield behind that. Surprised because usually the shield is a heavy paper that one usually must rip through to do anything in the door. With the rubbery stuff peeled away I found the lock motor casing. Had to drill a hole to get at the one screw holding it in place. Did that, took out the screw and promptly dropped it down into the far recesses of the inside of the door. I'd just have to deal with that later.

I didn't have a Torx driver small enough to take the casing apart, but a pair of needlenose were enough to loosen the screws. With the casing open, I removed a worm gear assembly and the lock motor. I took a look in my loose bolts tin and found a bolt to replace the one I dropped (but it's a Philips head, which will make for easy removal if we decide to put a new motor in). With the rest put all back together the door is now openable and lockable, albeit in the old-timey manual fashion.

The project that shouldered its way to the top of the list was the sudden appearance of an error code on our washing machine (F51, for those interested) which means the rotor position sensor was off. Assuming the worst (needing part replacement) I took the washer apart, found the sensor and everything looked okay. No leaks from the tub or the bearing, the sensor circuit board did not look damaged. Looking around some more I found only one anomaly: a pink piece of clothing jammed between the tub and the drum. Long story short, I put the washer back together and got the piece of clothing out. A small ballet leotard is now on its way to a landfill. No! Wait! I can use that to filter the old acrylic paints my sister gave me!

<Queue the Eagles: "[It's] aaaal-ready gone...">

Dang, sometimes my brain is so slow.

In other news, I received a package from amazon.ca yesterday. One that has me kind of excited. It's a race track! More specifically, a BluTrack. But, this one is green...

Anyway, it was cheaper ($/ft) than buying Hot Wheels track and I wanted something more convenient to store than a 10-ft long cardboard channel (as seen here). There will probably be more written about it later. Maybe even a picture or two.

A stitch in time...

One project that has been on my to-do list for quite some time was to patch one of my pairs of jeans. It had developed a hole in the crotch, but the rest of the garment was intact, almost new-looking even! Well, today I finally did it. I had Jenni set up her sewing machine correctly for denim and I got to work. And work it was! Not because I don't know how to sew, I'm actually decent on a Janome. No. The work came from having three other pairs of similarly afflicted denim that I had accumulated under my dresser with the first pair.

And two more under the bed.

But, before you get too wildly impressed with my feat, I didn't actually patch all the pairs of pants. Three pairs were left off. Jenni thought that pair no. 1 was too short in the leg. Pair no. 2 had a hole too close to the zipper, thought it would be too hard to try and fix. Pair no. 3... I can't remember why I left off pair no. 3.

One of those pairs was chosen to be the donor and the back-side of one pant leg was cut off. From this I had enough patch material to repair the other jeans I pulled out plus the pair I was wearing (hole in the knee and one starting in the crotch). I also switched a rivet button on one pair with the one from the donor pair.

It feels great - like I just went on a pants shopping spree but spent no money and tripled the size of my wearable denim.

Now to knock off one of the other items from my list...

Return

With October nearly done. I'll get a little something written. The job change has been good. The new work enjoyable. The only downside is a reduction in the amount of time available after work and family obligations for personal hobbies and pursuits...until the off-season, which has now started.

I've made myself a bit of a list of things I want to finish, continue, or start. Many of these things are viable future entries in these pages. But there is a catch: pretty much every one of the things I've got on my list requires use of our garage at some stage, thus my highest priority is to get the garage cleaned up.

I started last night by tackling the pile of wood in the corner between the big door and the side door. The pile consists of long, skinny bits pulled off of dump finds or left over from table saw rippings. There are also some metal items: conduit, a pipe, and some piece off of our mower deck that I realize I am never going to put back on. So I pulled it all out and started making a dump pile and a keep pile. In the midst of this sorting, well right about the beginning of the sorting, I decided I needed something in that corner to help with organization. So I built a 2' x 2' x 42" frame that I can leave open and continue to store long pieces in that corner, but using the frame to contain the pile such that pieces do not randomly slide out to trip me as I walk in. Or I could make it a stand of shelving. Tonight I decided to go half and half, putting on shelving for half the depth, leaving the back open to stand long-handled tools in. I think it will work out pretty good. I may go so far as to put shelving above it as well.

Also during the start of my clean out, I threw out a long box. Actually, some back story is needed.

About a month ago, I noticed that the paint was flaking off of one of my Matchbox cars from my childhood. I decided to repaint it. But I want to do a good job of it and decided I want to try air-brushing. Again, I want to do a good job on my Porsche 928,

My Easter present of 1988, or how it used to look. (Image from Matchbox wiki).

so I selected a couple of cars from my son's collection that could also use some paint to practice with. I have yet to get beyond the primer coat on the practice cars.

However, as I researched what I can use to repaint, I am seeing all these pictures of die-cast cars people are modifying. Man, now I want to do more than just a paint job!

I need to keep reminding myself to take it one step at a time. Learn the painting. then continue on to more involved stuff. Besides, I need to clean out the garage if I'm going to use it for airbrushing!

Anyways, to continue the story, a couple of weeks ago I showed my family a couple of fun videos of Hot Wheels tracks - a 9' loop and this homemade track. Ever since then, my 3-yr old asks to watch Hot Wheels "movies" whenever I'm on a computer. The times I've played a YouTube video for him have brought up some races done on 4- and 6-lane strips. Now I also want to make up a similar thing that could be used as a fun contest for fairs and such. I even found a website devoted to helping people with Redline Derbies, as they seem to be dubbed.

Again, I need to clean out the garage.

Getting back to the box I'm throwing out. It's long and skinny and I thought, "Hey, I could get a good ramp from this with not much work." I opened it up and found some long u-shaped pieces inside, "Ha! Even better." Taped 'em together and Lawrence was kept busy the rest of the day...

Now I need to go to bed and dream about cleaning out the garage.

Introducing myself to HeroClix

In light of my likely not posting much for the next few months, I thought I'd post this from my practically defunct other blog. It's about my introduction to HeroClix. I should write another post about them later.

**First published May 13, 2014**

An little aside here before launching into this post. I can in no way say that I have ever been a super hero/comic book fan. I could probably count the number of comics I read in my lifetime on my fingers, I might have to borrow a toe or two. Not that I don't like them. I just never 'got into' them.

I did have a Dr. Doom action figure I got as a birthday present from my grade 1 teacher. It was totally by chance because she had a number of potential presents in a big bag and so my pick was quite random. Dr. Doom survived in our household for years and his career would include battles against G.I. Joe and Army Ants. I think he was finally sold at a yard sale in my late teens, his cape and weapons long since lost.

Fast forward to now and the relatively recent conversion of comics to cinema. Each movie has made me a little more interested in the genre. Except for some issues of Hellboy, I still haven't been particularly driven to 'get into' comics. But the interest is started and I'll admit that I have gone to the Marvel wiki to get current on some of the characters' back stories.

Then I found the Stronghold Rebuilt blog while I was looking at pictures of scratch-built airplane miniatures, or maybe for game rules, not sure which any more. The blogger there, calling himself Kaptain Kobald, put together rules for a superheroes fighting game he calls Clobberin' Time. His descriptions and photos from game sessions interested me more and I wanted to try it out, but it would take a third influence to push me to where I would actually do it.

That third influence was my daughter, who, through playmates and mass commercialization, has been exposed to some of the characters featured in the cinema franchises. She has an interest enough to be pleased in herself when she can name the characters appearing on the Avengers DVD case as well as to want to know the names of characters she doesn't recognize. Her current favourites are Spider-Man and Captain America.

My wife and I like to play board games and as parents we want our kids to at least have some experience with them, even if they decide later on that they don't care for them. The Stronghold game seemed simple enough that my daughter, 4, could grasp the concepts of how to play very soon if not right now.

So I bought a lot of 20 Heroclix (HC) figures on ebay for under $20 (including shipping). The lot was a random selection of used pieces, so I got to experience some of the joy that is inherent in the mystery of purchasing them new like the thousands of HC fans out there. Reading well enough about the game, especially complaints, I half-expected maybe getting a couple of heroes, a couple of villains, and the balance made up of various lackeys, red shirts, and other non-descript characters. With my limited comics background, I also expected not to recognize more than two of the characters I would end up with.

In between ordering and receipt of package, I did jump the gun and buy two sets that I spotted in Dollarama. For total of $5, why not? I debated it in my head, but one of the sets had Dr. Doom (the figures were visible in the package), and that triggered the nostalgia part of my reasoning (you know, the part that car manufacturers play on to sell Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers, and Beetles). So I came away with the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, and the Mole Man. The other reasoning decided that this way I would at least have a few characters that I knew who they were. But I mostly did it for Dr. Doom.

The lot arrived almost two weeks ago now. I was wrong in both of my expectations (though in the one, just barely). There were only three characters that I would put in the lackeys category. While I didn't recognize the majority of the others, I did recognize Daredevil and Johann Shmidt (only from having watched Captain America). But I am also counting Hercules, and Mr. Hyde in that while I didn't know their Marvel universe stories, I knew their traditional stories and figure the Marvel stories can't be too far removed.

So yesterday, for those who are interested, I finally played a little skirmish with some of the figures (by myself, which I see a lot of these games being in the future). I played a mix of HC rules and CT rules. I used the official figure values printed on the bases to create a couple of teams (as recommended in the HC rules). The teams were:

Team USSR: Crimson Dynamo and URSA Major (246 points combined) vs.
Team Hydra: Johan Shmidt, Scientist Supreme, a Hydra technician, and Jackal bringing up the points to a comparable sum (244 points combined).

I used the Clobberin' Time rules for movement and the clicky bases to keep track of stats, but I didn't use any kind of buffers or enhancements from powers indicated by the coloured portions of the click dials (might have turned out different if I had). As it was, Team USSR won handily, mainly due their high attack and defence stats and to low attack rolls by Team Hydra. I even forgot Crimson Dynamo's flight ability, allowing anyone to attack him.


Sorry, no pictures.

**End of old content**

I have since played another scenario combining Clobberin' Time movement rules with HeroClix combat rules. This pitted the Fantastic Four against Mister Hyde, Klaw, Mole Man, Cobra, and A.I. Marine Hulk. I played solo (of course) using half my in-laws' pool table (they all think I'm crazy to play by myself). I also decided on a playing card activation system to make the solo experience a little less biased.

The objective was for either side to find Blind Al and bring her back to their respective starting area. Only problem was that she could have been at one of three marked areas on the board, decided by a die roll of 6; die roll took place of a character's action and character must be on the marker token. It's been too long for me to remember a play-by-play of the action, but the bad guys found her first. There was fighting at all three sites. The Thing battled and defeated Mister Hyde, who had Blind Al. Marine Hulk arrived shortly thereafter to pick on the Thing who was now escorting Al. The Thing just barely avoided a K.O. when Invisible Woman showed up to help after leaving her fray with Mole Man undecided. Mr. Fantastic was K.O.ed as was Human Torch. I think only Mister Hyde and Klaw war K.O.ed on by members of the Four before the Thing successfully escorted Al to the Fantastic starting area. So, in all, a very close game and I remember it being quite intense, wondering if the Thing could take the punishment being delivered by two heavy hitters.

I really need to try the full Clobberin' Time rules sometime. I think they would make things very interesting.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

For the last 8 years I have been driving one hour and a bit to get to work every day. Barring the first 2.5 years when I was working on my thesis, my position has been a "soft money" position. Meaning that I could work so long as the company, then center, continued to win projects and receive funding to keep up the staff. This resulted in a number of times not knowing if I would be employed in two months. Then one month. Then at the end of the week.

Thus far, things have always worked out, but it has always been in my mind to get a more stable position, and hopefully one closer to home. That day has come. And with it, a different schedule that will see me with less time for home projects and gaming during the summer. And, with that, less time to write and less material to write about.

However, winter will hopefully see increases in those areas. So this might be my last post for a while (most likely).

I convinced my wife to let us play Conspiracy for our most recent game night with our Hill Spring friend, Andrew. I think I liked the game more than they did. Three spies had their covers blown (can't help but think of it as assassinations). Andrew won the game with some clever pay-offs and patiently biding his time to make his move. He basically waited for me and Jenni to finish killing off enough spies that we used up all our pay-offs and couldn't challenge his moves.

We also played Master Labyrinth, a game I really like. I don't remember who won, I just remember it wasn't me. Not by a long shot. Jenni and Andrew both doubled my final score.


I feel like this entry looks sad, being so short and all. But, the winter could see more detailed reporting, which I think I am looking forward to almost as much as the potential gaming.

Man, I want to win a game some time! Later, all y'all!

One-Pager

I bought a bag of soldier minis while browsing Value Village a couple of weeks ago. All I knew was they were soldiers and that it was a good price for minis. As a bonus (maybe) they were all painted. Got them home and found out that they are from the Warhammer 40K line; Cadian Imperial Guards apparently. WH40K seems to be the common abbreviation, so I'll just continue on that.

I looked into finding out more about the WH40K universe 'cause, you know, I now own a piece of it. I'd heard of it, of course, and knew that it involved space marines, but that was about all. I found the wiki pages for the game and I read a little about the game/story. The back story is interesting, but for a few reasons, some of which I can't even identify yet, I just kind of got turned off. Maybe it's too similar to Starship Troopers, a movie I only saw the first part of and didn't care if I ever finished. Maybe it's all the skulls. Maybe it's the premise of the human civilization/war machine being modeled as a grotesque derivative of the Roman Catholic Church (maybe it's some kind of subtle satire about making war into a religion). Probably some combination including all three and a few other things.

I do like the Spaceships designed to look like the fusion of a Gothic cathedral and a Roman trireme. And there was one of those in the bag too. So it got transferred to live with my scratch-built space fleet.

Of course, another reason not to get involved in the WH40K scene is the cost. Having read the rumours and being curious, I took a look at ebay prices and found that if I were interested, I could get a good WH40K army for about the same amount I spent on my last car purchase. After seeing this, I am now considering trying to sell the minis and use the money to get some that fit a theme that I am more interested in. But, even if I don't unload them, they are at least generic enough to use as any kind of modern/futuristic army.

In the meantime, I figured I should at least try out some game or other with these soldier dudes. So in searching around for some simple rules, I got directed to One Page Rules, a site listing a few rule sets that take up only one page. Other game aides like faction tables and unit strength tables are included in additional pages, but their use in a given game is obviously conditional or optional. Coincidentally, a couple of the games are written with WH40K in mind. I downloaded three rule sets: One Page Fantasy, One Page Skirmish, and One Page Warstuff.

The other two being fantasy-based entries, I printed off Warstuff as the rule set to try out. Sorry, no pictures. It was getting late and I wanted to play.

This was a solo play-through. A few of the dudes were painted grey and the rest were green, so I chose three from each colour to face off in my arena. I assigned each model a number (1-6; kept track with a die beside each model) and used cards numbered 1-6 to decide movement order. Each team consisted of two riflemen and one sergeant. In this rule set, riflemen shoot long range and sergeants shoot short range and have a leadership ability which gives the chance to give up to three near-by friendlies a free turn. There are a number of special abilities listed and they take up roughly half the page of rules, so you know this is a simple game to play.

Here is my "arena":

The Grey side lost, mainly due to a leadership bonus for Green on the second turn that took out the Grey sergeant. I don't remember much of the rest of the plays, but it was fun. I'll have to try it again. And maybe I'll see if Jeanette wants to play.

A Little Bit of Minecraft

We had a daughter's friend over for a day. He's really into Minecraft so I thought it would be fun to make him a little Minecrafty thing. I downloaded a papercraft print-out to put together. But knowing him, I wanted to make something he wouldn't squash or break right away. I got the idea to just cut a bunch of blocks and wrap them with the papercraft bits. Then I drilled some holes and cut some doweling for a better hold when gluing the joints. So here is the one they call Steve (next to Lego Batwoman for scale).

Joints don't move, though I initially wanted to, but the wood I used was a little soft and the hole not big enough for the doweling and I was afraid of splitting it, so I just glued it all.

Painting Mister Hyde Pt. 2

I decided I wasn't happy with my repaint of a Mister Hyde HeroClix miniature (see pt. 1). There were really only two reasons:
1. too much brown
2. really don't like that cape-type thing on his shoulders

So, it was out with my knife and off with the cape, shaving it down a millimetre or two in the appropriate areas to look like it wasn't there any more. I shaved off  some more areas of the overcoat, mainly to get the paint off, though a less bulky look was welcome. Then I tried to carve in new rumples where shaving had smoothed out the relief. I had already painted his hair yellow and it just seemed fitting to paint the coat grey. After that, I got an idea and looked up some American Civil War era Confederate States uniforms. Using the general look of the uniforms, I added some buttons and a (hard-to-see) chevron on each sleeve. I left the tie-strings (presumably what held the cape on) but shaped and painted them to look like a Southern-style tie. I may end up removing it eventually, as it's the only thing I'm still not sure I like.

I like this modification much better than before. And the paint went on to the bare plastic much better than many of the mod forums said it would. Now I just need to look into re-basing HeroClix sculpts; in a DIY sort of way of course.

Now, I know I haven't kept up a weekly post, but I didn't expect to. Since it's my blog about playing games or making things and I haven't done either one for a while, what could I do? I have been thinking about making things. More specifically, I have been thinking about building a playhouse kind of thing for the kids, but that's a story for another day.

How did I get into miniatures?

That's the question that popped into my head the other day. I thought I'd take some time to think about what has influenced me enough that I would develop a such a draw toward miniatures.

Like most North American kids, I had Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars. But I don't think they really count. Sure they happen to be miniature models, but playing with them doesn't seem to increase the likelihood that a child is going to get into minis. In addition, there isn't really a sense of structure in most kid's experiences of "playing cars".

I think my earliest experience playing a structured game with minis was an overnight stay at a cousin's house when I was somewhere around 10 years old.

This particular cousin had a modest collection of medieval fantasy miniatures. The impression has stuck with me that he was into Dungeons & Dragons at the time, though he may have just liked painting minis, I don't know. I remember that he put together a simple skirmish - styled game and we played three or four teams: he, me, and one (or both) of our brothers. Don't remember much else except we rolled a kind of die I had never seen before (a d20) and that my favourite piece was a soldier in chain-mail and a white tunic (crusader-style).

That game definitely had an impact on me. However, I don't think it was the game itself, which was very simple, that was most striking to me, but the fact that we used little figures to play it. Thereafter, my siblings and I would set up similar games using Lego or plastic soldiers on a checker board. What's kind of funny is that it never even crossed my mind to find out where/how to get myself some little pewter men.

Fast-forward a few years to the advent of Micro Machines. Man were those cool! They started cranking out models of Star Wars and Trek ships as well as an original line-up of space-battle- or futuristic-battle-themed models. We thought they were some of the greatest things ever, but we didn't end up getting very many - $8-$9 for three very small toys always seemed like too much. I still balk at the prices I see for miniatures.

But we would set up Imperials and Rebels on opposite sides of our big rug in the living room and flick marbles at each others ships. This was merely an extension of something we were already doing with plastic army guys and dominoes. Sometimes we would play Galaga-style: one ship vs. all the dominoes and the ship gets three hits. We did the same with WWII airplanes.

Then we moved while I was in high school. A lot of things changed at that time. Actually a bit before that. We got a Super Nintendo for Christmas and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat for the computer. A large portion of our play/gaming shifted into those machines.

Fast forward again to about five years ago. I've snapped out of my "I'm in college and too busy for gaming" mindset, I'm losing much of my interest in video games and my wife and I are starting into board games and I'm wanting to get back to carving like I did when I was younger. I just need a subject. An expansion comes out for Ticket to Ride featuring a rather large lizard and an alien in a spaceship. I wanted to try that expansion, but I didn't want to spend $25 to do so. Voila! I had a carving subject! And that's where my home-made miniature-making started. That's right, I have not been making miniatures for long.

It has now been four years, I think, since those TtR minis. My previous posts cover the period between then and now, so I can bring this post to an end.

Getting a game in edgewise...

Sunday the family was invited to a games night at a friend's house. Just before we headed out to the party, I had gathered a couple of our own games in case anyone wanted to play. At the last moment, I just decided to take a kids' game as well, just in case. I dropped Snail's Pace Race into the bag.

They had invited a few couples to get together. There was lots of food and chatting and general good times being had. But after almost two hours, no sign of games.

It's fine, really. I know I was was least social person in that party and I get tired of talking pretty quickly. However, everyone else seemed to be having a good time and I didn't want to spoil it, so I found a deck of cards and set up Beleaguered Castle* for myself. At about the point that I realized I had no further moves, our host's 4 year-old son came over to see what I was doing. He proceeded to grab up piles of cards to show me something he could do, which I'm pretty sure from what he was saying that he was talking about doing a bridge shuffle. He didn't actually perform one, but he could sure tell me all about it.


 By the time we had finished picking up the cards, my 5 year-old, Jeanette, was standing by me as well. I asked if they wanted to play a game. Yes! I would get a play in that night, didn't matter what! So I pulled out Snail's Pace Race, told our host's son how to play and the three of us were off to the races!

It was a hit! As we finished our first game, he asked if we could play again. Same after the second play. Unfortunately for him, it was time for us to go home (it was after 9:00 and Jeanette had school the next day). In our two games, the red snail was the snail to put your money on. The way the game is supposed to be played (though I haven't introduced this rule to the kids) is that the players "wager" on a snail. You win if you bet on the snail that comes in first, which was green snail the first game and orange snail the second game. You also win if the snail you bet on comes in last; the red snail was the slowest of the slow in both of our races!

So there's my story of inspiration. I am very glad I listened to that inner voice and grabbed a game for kids.

* I have recently learned that I play a variation of Beleaguered Castle which has added rules to make it easier to win. I do still do not find it easy to win, I maybe complete 1 in 20 games.

Game: Greater Space Battles - My first impression

I told the author of this game I would post the review I wrote last year. I should do it now before I forget.

**First published September 23, 2014**

Here is my review, of sorts, for the game I downloaded and tried out last week, Greater Space Battles, by Tom Wiggins.

The game was created to be solo-friendly, which I explained last time as the biggest reason for wanting to try it out. The designer states that he isn't totally happy with the rules, but that they worked for him well enough that he had fun with it.

I had fun with the game and thought most of the rules worked quite well. I put all of my battle-ready (what I had that was mountable and painted) spaceships into two teams of three ships each. One team I will call the Bolars, as the fleet consisted of two Bolar cruisers from the Yamato/Star Blazers series (plans found on the-blueprints.com) and a smaller ship of my own design which I classed as a destroyer. The other team was made entirely ships of my own design. I will call team two the Sharks, as the designs remind me of sharks. The Sharks had a heavy cruiser, a cruiser, and a frigate.

My scenario went thusly: the Sharks are cruising along at low speed (speed 1) and the Bolars come in to the attack at speed 3. A battle ensues.

I did not get to finish the game, though I played for at least 1.5 hours. Much of the first part was constantly looking at rules for what to do in each phase of a turn (initiative, power allocation, etc.). But things played out more smoothly as the game progressed.

In brief, energy allocation and critical hits are the items affected by ship-to-ship fire. For energy allocation, each ship has five power-up configurations to choose from. As they take on hits (rolls of 1-5 on hit dice), options are removed. These can be repaired in a damage control phase at the end of each turn. Rolls of 6 inflict critical hits. Amass enough crits to equal the size rating of the ship, and it's out of the game. Critical hits may also be repaired.

The results?
Turn 1: The Sharks and Bolars both speed up to close the distance between each other as quickly as possible. No shots fired.
Turn 2: Shooting starts from both sides at extreme ranges with no hits, as might be expected. The fleets continue to close, though at this point the two smaller ships veer off to stay out of range of the opposing big ships.
Turn 3: Bolar cruiser Blue fires on the Shark heavy cruiser, causing some damage. The Shark heavy cruiser sends a powerful shot at Blue Bolar and completely cripples it and deals a critical hit, leaving it drifting. The other ships fire, inflicting minor damage to each other. At the end of turn, Blue Bolar recovers two power options.
Turn 4: Blue Bolar is unlucky in energy allocation rolls and does not get any power for manoeuvres. It is basically useless for the turn. Purple Bolar is unable to fire. Bolar destroyer scores a 3-option hit on Shark cruiser. Blue Bolar fixes another power option and the critical hit.
Turn 5: Blue Bolar starts turning to rejoin the battle, the other ships, having shot past each other by this time, also use manoeuvres to prep for the next pass. The Bolar destroyer takes a critical hit from the Shark cruiser. The smaller ships have closed on each other (side by side actually) and fire. The Bolar destroyer fails to penetrate the Shark frigate's shields, but the Shark frigate rolls very well: a second crit. The Bolars are down one ship.
Turn 6: More manoeuvring and long range fire with little effect on the remaining ships.
Turn 7: More close-up fire, a critical hit dealt to the Shark cruiser. I ended the game as it was getting late.

Final score: Sharks maintain all ships, take 1 crit on cruiser. Bolars lose one ship (equal to 2 crits) and take a crit on the Blue cruiser.

Post-battle thoughts.

I forgot to mention that I played using one of the hex mats from my copy of Renegade Legion: Leviathan instead of measuring out distance as explained in the rules. I found this made movement and manoeuvring very easy.

All I had for energy allocation tokens were poker chips. These were too big and I need something smaller when I play again. I really liked the power allocation scheme. Having to roll and then choose an option that best suited the ship's situation with the power available from the roll was interesting. I think the reduction of options as a result of damage gives a real feeling that systems are damaged, despite not using the more common damage tracking method of marking check boxes.

I did not like the ability to repair critical hits. Since these are the only way to defeat a ship, I thought that fixing the damage would make the game go too long, so I started disregarding those repairs when rolled during the last third of the game. It was only by ignoring this rule that any ships were lost at all.

All in all, it was an enjoyable game to play solo. It would probably work rather well for two players, but all the rolling might take too long, I think that for two players I would rather try to play Full Thrust, if I were to convince someone else (probably one of my brothers) to play with me.

Thanks for reading. If you are even remotely interested in trying a space capital ship battle game, and have no-one else to play against, I recommend you try this game.

***

My Bi-Plane Boast

As I mentioned in my intro to this blog. I started making my own minis with WWI airplanes. This isn't the full truth. There were a couple of things I had carved previous to the planes, but I'll talk about those elsewhere. But it was in carving the planes that I started to devote time to carving and miniatures. After a bit of background, I will introduce you to some of my planes.

As I was browsing BGG, I came across an interesting-looking game. It was a WW1 flight combat game with high ratings from users. It was also entirely a DIY project as one is only supplied the rules, the rest of the game is up to the one who wants to play. It was called Canvas Eagles.

My first play was with one of my brothers using paper plane cut-outs from Junior General and a star field hex map from my copy of Renegade Legion: Leviathan. It was a one-on-one game which we played to a draw - we ran out of gas. Still liking the concept after playing, I dove into carving models and getting ideas for a board.

To make a long story short (maybe I can tell the long story some other time), I ended up halting progress on Canvas Eagles to focus on Wings of War(/Glory) instead, since it has been a lot easier to get to the table and I can still use the planes I have carved.

On to images. I would have uploaded more, but I'd have to sift through folders trying to remember where they are. One might notice a lack of propellers. I just haven't got around to it and I'm not too worried if I don't.

I started with a pair of Albatross D.IIIs. Only the fuselage was carved from wood for each model, the rest was cereal-box cardboard. While they turned out okay, I have since begun upgrades to wooden wings and I am contemplating forming metal landing gear somehow. One I painted red because every WW1 set needs a Red Baron and he mainly flew the Albatrosses! Besides, I think they are pretty planes too. However, there seems to be a number of variation in the colour schemes M. von Richtofen used on his planes, so I decided not to follow any of them and do a simple red fuselage with tan wings. This way it could be Richtofen or not.

Albatross D.III: The Red Baron? Cardboard wings are ok, for a while.

I served part of my LDS mission in Brussels, Belgium, so I wanted to give a nod to the Belgians. After a bit of research, a pair of Hanriot HD1s came next. A blue one for Willy Coppens (pictured) and one green with tan wings for a generic pilot. This image is taken post-upgrade to wooden wings and landing gear, but I still glued cardboard wheels on, which have now come off.

Hanriot HD1: a little darker blue than Coppens' plane.

Two Phalz D.IIIs followed. Chosen merely because I liked the paint jobs on some images found on the Internet one day.

Two Phalz D.IIIs; the black insignia were an experiment with using Sharpie instead of paint.

 
Next came four Neiuport 17s. No real influence beyond having watched Flyboys a little bit before. I researched pilots who flew the 17s and decided on painting one up for Billy Bishop (pictured) and a second for Charles Nungesser. The other two I made generic French planes.

Neiuport 17s painted as Charles Nungesser (top) and Billy Bishop (bottom).

Continuing on the Flyboys influence, three Fokker Dr.Is. One black one (pictured), similar to the antagonist of the movie, and one painted up like Lothar von Richtofen's plane (would have been better for a picture). The third is unpainted save for an orange tail section, having been damaged and needing repair.

Fokker Dr.I

I don't remember where in the chronology of this list the DH-9 goes, I just know it was completed before the following two entries and a Gotha bomber. But the DH-9 is one of my favourites from my second generation of plane carvings.

Airco DH-9

Generations? Yes. The Albatrosses and Hanriots had cardboard wings to start. Cardboard didn't seem to like staying glued to the wood, especially after painting. I needed to make a change to how I was doing things. My second generation planes are those with which I avoided using cardboard. The Gotha bomber (of which I currently can't seem to find the pictures I took) will be the last of the second generation as I made another sweeping change, which may be somewhat visible in the next two images; I started rounding the wings so they look more like airplane wings than lengths of 2x10s. And what a difference that made!

Both of these planes I painted at the same time. So without further ado:

A SPAD XIII with markings inspired by one of the many pictures that came up in a Google image search.

SPAD XIII: Could be one of the Lafayette Escadrille!

Then a Halberstadt CLII. With the specs made up for it by a Wings of War/Glory fan, this is a virtually unbeatable plane so far in the games I've played with or against it. That aspect pretty much lines up with the information I've been able to find on it: a two-seater designed to perform like a fighter plane.

Halberstadt CL.II

In early 2014 things got busy and I wandered into other interests, like space ships, and I haven't carved any planes since. Though I do know that the next one I do will be a Sopwith Camel. Why? Because it's the only one I have need in order to cover all the maneuvre decks available in the Wings of War game I have.

Getting my feet wet: my first homemade minis

Although my brothers and I made up and built our own games in our youth, I don't remember ever making our own minis for them. If they involved minis at all, we used what we already had: Lego figures, plastic soldiers, Micro Machines. I believe my first set of scratch-built game miniatures were more recently produced than some time in my teens.

Carving boats was something I did do in my teens, along with a number of other things that are usually categorized as crafts, so it isn't a big leap for me to produce my own game pieces. Maybe the only wonder is why I didn't start earlier. I guess I just needed a push from somewhere and it never came in my youth because what I had then for gaming was always good enough. That and I started spending a lot of time on video games.

So what was the push? It was the debut of the Ticket to Ride expansion, Alvin and Dexter. The expansion adds a Godzilla-like character (Dexter) and an alien character (Alvin) to the usual Ticket to Ride play. Basically, the game starts with each of the monsters on a randomly selected city. No routes may be claimed while a city is occupied by a monster, but players may pay matching cards to move a monster to a different city. I didn't know if I would like it and I didn't want to spend $25+ to find out (sorry DoW). Good thing too because we've only played the expansion once since I carved the pieces and I think that they have recently been commandeered by my children.

So here are my first homemade minis! Both are roughly 2" high, carved from a bit of waste lumber and painted using Testor's enamel paints that I picked up for free through a Kijiji add.

Alien spaceship. I carved this one first, I didn't feel like my skill
 set  extended to carving life forms at the time.

Because it had been a while, I thought the UFO would provide a good re-starting point. I think it turned out pretty good. There isn't much to do with a saucer to make it more dramatic, but I tried to shape the base it's on and paint it to look like the light of some kind of "abduction ray". The fact that the wood grain shows through the yellow gives it the look of having a kind of spiralled energy flow.

Mini-giant-dino-monster looking for something
 to destroy. So far the only creature I've carved.

Next, my beginner's try on a mini-giant-lizard. Appearing more like a dinosaur than a fearsome Godzilla, I still like the way it turned out. Again, not as dramatic as a professional might produce, but who needs that. I adapted a template I found for a simple bear carving. What she lacks in pizazz, she makes up for in stability on a game board.

It was while I was carving the lizard-beast that I got a set of Dremel bits for wood carving, which was good to use for the areas that were too hard to leave a smooth surface using my knives.

So far, my "Faux Dexter" is my only attempt at carving any kind of animal-type thing. I've been thinking about doing people, but I haven't taken that plunge yet.

My First Time with "Clobberin' Time"

**First published March 31, 2014**

In other news, I tried out a game with my daughter. It's called Clobberin' Time and is being developed by Kaptain Kobold of the blog Stronghold Rebuilt. It's a fairly simple game of super hero/villain combat. To paraphrase the introduction: Forget the back stories and personal internal struggles of the characters, this game is all about the battles they have with each other!

My daughter is four. More than anything, this was probably a test of attention span. I greatly simplified the game while playing, having chosen special abilities for the characters, but ignoring them most of the time.

We built a city. In this city was the Strawberry Shortcake Smoothie Blender of Happiness and Good-will (SSSmoBloHaGoo), which in her words "helped people to be happy and nice to everyone." Somehow, the villain, Spud (some kind of pointy-toothed tuber with a hat and tie) was able to get to the machine and change it around so that it made people mean. He had two helpers, whose names I now forget but who were realized in the forms of a bi-pedal dinosaur and the Pokemon, Ivysaur.

She chose two heroes, a ninja named Inja Turtle (even though he is not a turtle; for some reason she leaves that first 'N' off when she says 'ninja', +1 cuteness) and a green army dude with a Sten machine gun and a grenade named Army Guy. The heroes were tasked with getting to the SSSmoBloHaGoo and restoring it to its original purpose (switch the polarity?). The action was quick. I let her choose most of the moves and roll the dice.

Turn 1
Inja came up the right side of the city. Spud wanted to deal with Inja alone and headed out to meet him. The dinosaur spotted Army Guy and moved toward him. Army Guy advanced, firing his Sten, but missing. Ivysaur moved to guard the SSSmoBloHaGoo.

Turn 2
Inja and Spud meet and exchange blows neither one gaining the upper hand. Army advances to shoot from a closer position, gaining on hit on the dinosaur. Dinosaur tries to bite Army, but is blocked. Ivysaur reaches the SSSmoBloHaGoo.

Turn 3
Inja gets away from Spud and runs for the SSSmoBloHaGoo. Spud decides to help dinosaur and heads off to try and trap Army between them. Army runs from dinosaur and turns back to fire, but dinosaur must have picked up a man hole cover to block the shots with. Ivysaur gets ready to take Inja.

Turn 4
Inja sneaks around Ivysaur to get to the SSSmoBloHaGoo and attempts to switch the polarity (roll double 5s), but fails. He is attacked by Ivysaur, but blocks the blows. Spud decides that leaving Ivysaur to deal with Inja was a bad idea and runs toward the SSSmoBloHaGoo. Army runs at spud, firing and missing. Dinosaur tries again to eat Army, but his teeth glance off Army's helmet.

Turn 5
Spud and Ivysaur both try to land a blow on Inja, but Inja is able to defend himself, then evade to run to the other side of the SSSmoBloHaGoo. While Army is still trying to put down dinosaur, Inja succeeds in restoring the SSSmoBloHaGoo to its original settings, immediately diffusing the anger and frustration levels of the villains to the point of their apologizing for the inconvenience they caused and agreeing to undergo anger management therapy.

Painting Mister Hyde

About a year ago, I came across a set of skirmish rules written for super-hero battles (Clobberin' Time). As the rules were written with HeroClix minis in mind, I decided at the time to purchase a bunch of HeroClix from ebay. I've only played these rules twice: the second time played solo and the first time very watered down for my daughter, 4 at the time, meaning it was pretty well a solo game too.

This year, I am interested in trying the Pulp Alley rule set. So I downloaded the starter rules and cards to try it out. Having printed out a bunch of pulp-style paper figures (there's a joke in there somewhere), I have most of what I would need to play sans sculpted minis. Assembling those paper stand-ups reminded me of a BGG user's collection of modified Clix. He modified sculpts make superheroes not in the HeroClix line-up or characters from other genres: pulp, sci-fi, and others.

"Start simple" is the advice I see over and over from the advanced Heroclix modders out there. However, most of the sculpts I had received in that initial ebay purchase are not easily converted to other things. So I bought some Heroclix I saw at the dollar store, taking packs with figures I felt would not require much modification to fit in with a pulpy theme.

Then I tried paint washes and dry brushing of a few of the sculpts I won't be changing. After the success of washes and dry-brushing, I took a Mister Hyde figure (I ended up with two) and started painting. Like all my painting so far, I'm using the el cheapo-brand craft acrylics.

I figure it'll be a relatively easy mod to go with a western theme for Hyde; make him a burly tough. The colours can be seen in the image below. I mixed some red into my brown for the coat and I think it turned out well, except that it is now the same colour as his hair, so I plan on adding yellow to it. I could even chop off the top of his head and glue a hat there. I'd like to put something in one of his hands, but I haven't decided yet. I thought about a couple of six-guns, but don't like that idea due to the lack of holsters on the sculpt and the hand positions (which I could change once I've done enough "simple" stuff). Might work to add a rifle held in one hand or a lasso held in both hands. Whips? Knives? That would work. We'll see how ambitious I get when I get time to work on this some more.

 Original Mister Hyde following black wash on the right. My painting (so far) on the left.

Looking at this image kinda makes me want to repaint that one lazy eye. It's all eye can see now.

Marrying Mr. Darcy

I am and will be exposed to Pride and Prejudice often in my lifetime, and that's okay. To date I have watched (always with Jenni) the BBC P&P five-and-a-half-hour miniseries, the Knightly P&P movie, and the P&P: Pink Bible Edition movie as well as film adaptations of P&P spin-offs like Lost in Austen (a favourite), Death Comes to Pemberly, and Austenland. I have not personally read the book, nor any of the fan spin-offs in book form, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (is there a film adaptation of that one?), nor do I plan to. But I'm alright to watch the movies.

So what better homage to Valentine's Day than a game of Marrying Mr. Darcy.

Jenni and I introduced some of her family to the card game this past weekend . Having already played 1.5 games with members of my family, this brings my total play-count to 2.5 games.

My wife and I enjoy strategy-rich games. Marrying Mr. Darcy is not a strategy-rich game. It is a story driven by a mix of random events and occasional player choices. While I knew the theme would be a hit with my wife, I read numerous reviews to see how well others enjoyed it before deciding to get this game as a gift for Jenni. And now I add a small one of my own.

In Marrying Mr. Darcy players take the roles of the female characters from the Pride and Prejudice story. Players build up their characters RPG-style by playing cards to improve their stats in six categories: friendliness, wit, beauty, reputation, cunning, and wealth (or dowry). Values of the first four stats translate into victory points at the end of the game (most points wins).

The main interest in the game, of course, is to get your character married off. But not just any guy will do. There are six available suitors and each player's character card lists them from most to least desirable for that character; additional victory points are awarded for the suitor your character manages to wed (Example: Elizabeth gets mega points for marrying Darcy but almost nothing if wed to Collins). The suitors too are a picky bunch, each one requiring a different combination of traits to be interested in your character; this is the reason you are trying to build up your stats. Even if your stats satisfy a suitor's requirements, you only have a chance for a proposal, decided by a dice roll that can be modified by certain conditions. Thus one, or indeed all of the ladies could end up old maids, again with varying degrees of happiness (victory points) decided by dice roll.

This game is heavily luck-based, but any disappointment that might have caused me is negated by the fact that (a) I know the story enough to get into the theme of the game and enjoy the alternate story being played out, (b) there is some player choice involved, and (c) I enjoy seeing the reactions of my wife (and others) to the alternate story being played out. Most enjoyable are exclamations about how the play that just happened actually happens in the story or, even better, how the event that just happened could have never happened for such-and-such a character because (insert reasons). Of course, there's always "the busty Scandal" card, which is especially funny if a guy draws it.

There is an expansion featuring the undead. It sounds fun and many of the reviewers I read recommended using it. Maybe I will, but we're fine for now.

So, there you have it. Probably the least manly game I've ever played and I enjoy it well enough. Real men wear pink? Maybe. Real men can admit to liking non-manly games!

Right?...

DIY Valentine's Day

In our current mode of trying to save money where we can, my wife, Jenni, told me she didn't think I should buy her any flowers for Valentine's Day. This isn't a big stretch as we don't normally place a lot of stock on the day. Usually I just but her some flowers and that's the extent of our spending. So, since she doesn't want me buying flowers, I'll make some instead.

It's very last minute, so I haven't much for materials (without buying some) or time. I made three Origami flowers. To guide my building, I used the flowers section of Origami-Instructions.com. I folded the Bell Flower, the Lily, and the easy 8-petal. I had downloaded and printed a bunch of Valentine "cards" on offer by the authors of one of the two web-comics I like well enough to follow, Girl Genius. I only wanted one card, but the printout is four. So my idea was to use the one card for its intended purpose and cut the other three into squares to fold into flowers (then thy have a little colour to them).


The results (8-petal on top, bell on the left, lily on the right):

The lily and the bell were quite fun to do. I think a cheap pad of origami paper could make a really nice bouquet. So, with that, I'll pair the flowers with chocolate and I'll be on my way!

My First Spaceships

Believe it or not, I'm a sucker for spaceships. Thus, it was only a matter of time before I carved some. So here are some pictures. First I made up some of my own designs. There was no drawings, just shaping as I carved. Despite such a disorderly, even haphazard construction method, I think my first group turned out pretty good.

The middle one came first. I thought it looked shark-like, so I continued on, adding the 'tail' to complete the look. This would be a cruiser to heavy cruiser in the Full Thrust scale. The one on the left would be a cruiser, trying to get a similar shaping, but not the same. The one on the right started as a blob that I didn't like and carved down to make a destroyer, or maybe it's corvette-sized.
 

Then I decided I wanted to see if there were some simple designs already out there that I could try. Turned over to that trusty the-blueprints.com site to check out the Science Fiction section. I discovered some good designs for a beginner like myself to tackle in a series I had never heard of before: Space Battleship Yamato!

The title spaceship was a little much for me to start with, so I went with the Bolar cruisers and heavy cruiser (yellow ones below). Moved on to the EDF destroyers (small grey and red) and started on the Yamato (which is still not finished as I would like). The latest addition in this series is a lone Gamilon destroyer (that faded green one).

 Of course, my models are not exact replicas. I'm going for playable, not show-room, and I haven't watched anything past the 5th episode so detailing on my versions of these ships may differ greatly from the cartoons.

With a bunch of odd-sized bits of wood left over from carving these ships and some WWI fighter planes (which I'll try to get to later), I started gluing and carving to come up with a couple more ships of my own design. The larger of the two is maybe not quite battleship size, I'm thinking battle cruiser or small carrier (if I get into the game enough to warrant putting together fighter groups). The smaller I might rate a cruiser or light cruiser


When I got to painting the these ones, Jenni had bought me some minis brushes for Christmas, so I tried them out, starting with some swirling designs. After that I moved on to adding some detail touches to these and the other ships you've already seen - those touches being small black and white dots (windows? gun-ports?) and some striping, even numbers on one of the EDF destroyers (the other I had already attempted a number with the not very mini brushes).

Then I averted a couple hours of boredom one night when I went to the-blueprints and started going crazy! I downloaded drawings of more SBY designs and a bunch of Star Trek designs, re-sized them all to roughly match Full Thrust scaling. Now I've started a Miranda-Class ship from Trek, also carved all the pieces for an Enterprise (Motion Picture version), but I have lost some of them. That's OK though, the gluing wasn't going well for it, so I am trying a different tack.

The Bolar ships and the Sharky ships have both already seen battle, with each other, trying out some solo-friendly space-battle rules. But that's a post for another day: I think I recorded my thoughts on that in my private blog and they will likely find their way over to this one, eventually.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Here's a couple more.

 

As ugly as it is, I do like that brown one!

Humble Beginnings

Hello and welcome.

This is my introduction and explanation piece. In this post, I will systematically explain a few aspects about this blog.

1. History

"Wait a minute! This is the first post of this blog! How is there any kind of history?", you may be asking. Well, I tell you there is a history. It started with a challenge to myself.

I wanted to write a blog, and I wanted to focus on a specific topic. There were so many topics popping up in my head, I couldn't decide where to go. I figured the best way for me to narrow down the topics I wanted to write about was to spend time writing about them all and see how things turned out. Thus, I challenged myself to post to a blog at least once a week for one year. I left the blog public for the entire year, but I told no-one about it. Not even my wife knew. Thus, I was free to write about anything I wanted, but still had the constraint of feeling like I had an audience.

To make a longer story short, I went through book reviews, game sessions, car repairs, pet peeves, rants about facebook, etc. I learned that writing about some things made me happy. Other things made me frustrated. I decided I wanted to feel good after writing; keep a positive tone and direction. So no ranting on this blog (I'll keep it to the other one). So on with what I will be focusing on.

2. Topic(s)

There were three recurring topics during that year that made it past my "feel-good" requirement: games, projects I was working on, and books I had read. I think that three topics is too diverse, so I'm cutting books.

I do love to read and I get almost two books read per month. However, I am signed up on Goodreads to keep a record of my reading and if I want to write about the books I read, I will use that venue. Besides, Jenni's cousin already blogs on books and writing and I'm following that.

But I've always loved games. Some of the most fun I've had has been playing games with my family. Card games, board games, outdoor games, purchased games, and games we made up. Games have helped me make connections with people I would otherwise not have connected with.

I also really like making things. Lately, I have been bringing things home from the dump (mostly wood) to use to make things for myself and others. Sometimes I like fixing our vehicles. I also like to brag tell other people about what I've done. Shelving for the garage, a gift for a family member, or replacing the exhaust manifold on my car, the end result is great feeling of having done something and of having something I've done.


3. Name

"The Homemade Mini? Sounds like you're building a car."

Well, one must get a little creative to get a name that isn't already taken. With that in mind, please allow me to explain my choice of name.

The names I made up with "game" in them were already taken, so I went more specific. Many games in and out of production use miniature models as player's pieces, often referred to as miniatures or minis by the average gaming hobbyist, or as toys by anyone else. I have a soft spot for minis, always have. I can remember substituting my Monopoly* or Ratrace* pawn with a Micro Machine or a Lego figure. Maybe that makes me a little shallow, but I think games are a little more enjoyable with a little flash to them, and adding flash is what minis do best.

I recently started following some of the gamer blogs out there and they have made me even more interested in miniature gaming. But miniatures can be an expensive hobby to get into and I'm cheap. Even the cheapish stuff I find online, costs so much with shipping I can't bring myself to buy it. So I started making my own miniatures, using the money I saved by not buying them to buy paint and brushes, magnets, and other tools and supplies to help make more.

It began with carving World War I fighter planes in 1/144 scale for Canvas Eagles* and then Wings of War* and has gone on to carving space ships for Full Thrust* (which I have yet to actually play) and building cards, characters, and scenery for Pulp Alley* (which I also have yet to play).

In conclusion:

I like making things and I like games and miniatures. Hence, after trying a number of word combinations to find one that wasn't used, I again welcome you to The Homemade Mini: A blog about playing games and making things and about making things for playing games.

* I am a member of the Board Game Geek (BGG) community. With the possible exception of my email providers, it's the site I visit more than any other on-line. For those interested types, my handle there is 'rolfy12'. When I mention a game, I will probably link to a BGG page about it, as you may have just noticed.