Time to hit the slopes!

I like being out-of-doors, but not so much in winter-time. While I generally just dislike the cold, I also don't have any winter hobbies that one would normally do outside. I don't ski or snowboard and I don't want to pay for the equipment. I can't skate. And with that, there's only one affordable conventional winter sport left that I can pull myself into the cold air for.

We went sledding last week near my parents' place. Dad has a small wooden sled and a crazy carpet. They worked great. The little kids each got to hit a little jump at the bottom in the little wooden sled. We also had our little foam sled that you need to push all the way down the hill. I needed to push the foamy one all the way down the hill.

None of these sleds had steering. I like steering on a sled. It got me thinking again about building sleds and stuff. So, the last few days I've been looking at sleds and other hill-descent contraptions and came across something that I had the necessary parts for.

Today, I had the itch to make something, so make I did! I have a scooter with no wheels that I picked up at the dump. I also picked up some old skis someone was throwing away. In fact, I think just about everything I used on this project was from the dump.

I made a ski-scoot! Or whatever it can be called. A scooter with skis instead of wheels.

It's my ski-scoot.

It was a rush to get it done before I lost daylight, but I did. Excited to try it out soon.

Heroclix Modification No. 2

I cracked open some paints again and went to work on one of my Heroclix figures. I should maybe start with saying that I de-based a few Heroclix figures: the ones that I thought generic-looking enough to be used in non-superhero themed games.

But on with the painting. One of the de-based heroes that needed painting. It was called Martinex. I had never heard of Martinex and had to look him up to know anything about him. Should have taken a before picture, but I didn't. The sculpt wasn't really going to lend itself to conversion to a regular-looking person very well, what with a number of not-very-natural-looking angular features all over his body like all-sticky-outy and square-shaped abs and pecs and rather pointy knees. I considered taking a knife to the sculpt to round out the angular parts, but I couldn't bring myself to do it like I did to thin down Mr. Hyde, So, having been eyeing some futuristic minis lately, I decided that I could make Martinex into a guy with some futuristic body armour on so that I wouldn't have to cut anything away. One attribute I took away from looking up the info about Martinex character was he was of African descent, so I painted him accordingly to keep that connection between his former life as Martinex and his new life as an as yet unnamed man sporting body armour.

It was a couple of hours painting, but I think it turned out rather well. The light green undercoat - supposed to be his beneath-the-armour suit - doesn't show up too well in the picture, but if one squints and holds their tongue the right way...but that's okay.

Anyone interested in the 'before' can Google "Martinex Heroclix" and you'll get a number of images.

(Almost) Quarter Mile Championship: Section 1

Lawrence and I started the grand tournament today. I listed off all the cars we could find for the big showdown. Of course, there are more that will have to be added as they are found or, if we finish racing the bulk of the racing, they can challenge the winner.

The first section consisted of Pixar cars, which do not fit on a Hot Wheels track, by the way. The winners in each race were quite apparent, so we only did one race per pairing.

The racing was very exciting for Lawrence. Of course he was cheering for Lightning McQueen. We have a number of Lightning cars, but could only find the one with the World Grand Prix kit from Cars 2. Also challenging were Francesco, Doc Hudson, Sheriff, Mater, Mack, Red, Sarge, Chick Hicks, the Leak Less car (52), one of Chick's pit crew, Guido, Tex, Ramone, and the Official Piston Cup Pace Car. Also racing were Chug, Mayday, and two of the smoke-jumpers from Planes 2. Since that only added up to 19, we added a road grader by ERTL to round out the group.

There were a couple of surprising upsets, the big one being Lightning losing his first race to the great green fuel truck, Chug! A minor upset was the Pace Car beating out Francesco, who Lawrence was rooting for after Lightning was eliminated.

And the results?

Third place went to Chick Hicks. Will he ever win anything? At least he went further than McQueen this time!

A solid effort by Leak Less (52) earned him second place.

The big winner? The Official Piston Cup Pace Car! I guess the race cars are all too used to always staying behind him!

The Pace car will now wait for the winners of the rest of the sections, when we will run a contest of section winners. The next line-up, chosen at random by Lawrence, consists of 26 Hot Wheels cars, 5 Matchbox cars, and 1 Motor Max car.

Second thoughts:
I think I might just keep reporting to this post as I've realized that unless one is showing video of these races, it just isn't that grand. Maybe, if we do actually find out, I'll post on the fastest car in the house. I'll even include a picture of it. Besides, in a couple or three weeks, I'll hopefully have something more exciting than Hot Wheels races to post about!

Quarter-mile quest

Hey hey! I found a post that didn't get finished and posted! So without any further delay, from some time in the past:

I've been planning and thinking about it ever since I took delivery of my BluTrack (recall: a dual-lane Hot Wheels track alternative) and now I've built it. A portable and relatively easy-to-store ramp with built-in starting gate.

BluTrack comes with a plastic plate at one end which has a hole in it for hooking onto things. There is also a big suction cup that fits into the hook-hole to suction it to a window or other smooth surface. There is also an adhesive on the plate in case one buys a second track and wants them connected permanently, but I don't think I'll be taking that route as I want to turn my attention back to games if I can, plus the 18' starter track is only a couple feet short of a quarter-mile at Hot Wheels scale (20.6') and that's fine by me.

The suction cup method is what we have been using 'til now. But there were a couple of issues that just bugged me. One issue was that the suction cup didn't stay stuck to some of the surfaces we were using - desktop, metal fire place - the cup would lose suction and after a few runs the track would slide forward and sag. When we used the suction cup on a window, it stayed stuck, but the second problem was still present; without a support underneath it, the flexible track would hang down as vertical as is could get and since the window we used was right over the couch, the track followed the contours of the couch on the way down. Because the track followed the contours of the couch, the cars would go flying off at the seat, rarely landing back on the track.

I needed a solution. Some kind of ramp that I could set up anywhere, that would hold the track up so it didn't slide forward or cause cars to leave the track nine times out of 10, would be high enough that most Hot Wheels/Matchbox type cars would actually run the entire length of the track, and easy to store in the house or shed.

As I was thinking on this problem and surveying my dump-run finds, I hit upon an idea. A section of old crib railing would be my medium! I used the top and bottom rails and four of the twelve or so vertical bars. I now have a completely portable starting ramp custom made for the BluTrack. And a plus, it's light-weight and folds up for easy storage! 

Simple, no?

But I couldn't stop there! I have a two-lane track. That means racing! That means I need a way to start cars evenly with each other. So a piece of plexiglass and a length of dowelling later I had a simple starting gate to ensure one car isn't slightly ahead of the other at the start. This is important if the kids are cheering on different cars.

1962 Corvette (Matchbox) and a 1955 Alfa Romeo BAT (Hot Wheels) waiting on the green light.

Now I'm ready to race all of our Hot Wheels/Matchbox/etc. to see which is the fastest in the house! That should give me something to blog about for a little while, eh! Of course, I could have finishes that are too close to call... hmm. How to build a finish line that will accurately indicate the winner...

Since the move, we now have space long enough to set up 18 feet of track without being in the way of much. Also, shortly after the move, we found a 4-lane Hot Wheels race ramp with a finish-line indicator! I'm very sure I can rig up some way to merge the two so that close-enough-to-quarter-mile races can be had and a clear winner chosen every time. I haven't found the fastest car in the house, but one of these days, the kids and I will hold a race day. I look forward to reporting on the excitement!

They're off!

Move Over!

We've moved! We sold our house bought a little bit bigger house a few blocks away. We are getting used to the larger space. Still unpacking, but the games are all squared away in the very large shelving area in the basement.

I'd like to have a dedicated game table, though I am not yet sure about placement. What I am sure about is that I want to build one (they cost so darn much to buy!). The features I'm considering are a vault with leaves to cover/protect a game-in-progress, attachable trays for extra player space for writing or personal boards. I've seen cup-holders on some tables, but I'm thinking I'll stay away from that.

Last week, when less stuff had been unpacked, I pulled down the game Siege (aka: Weapons and Warriors) to play with the kids. It was an immediate hit, if only for the little catapults, cannon, and ballista that shoot little marbles. Hey, it was the main reason I bought the game in the first place. Sorry, no pictures, haven't found the camera yet.

I was also talking with one of our residents at the RV park. He loves to play Backgammon and I asked if he'd play me so I could learn how. I've often thought it would be a good game to know how to play.

Until more unpacking happens, I don't think I'll be seeing much time for games, and even less for making anything.

In the meantime, I wanted to post some more about my Pirates of the Spanish Main and Wooden Ships & Iron Men mash-up. Here is an image of the conversions for the ships in the collection I have.

While I didn't employ them this time, I have also noted adjustments based on each ship's special ability in PotSM that can be applied to further add variety when using the WS&IM rules. Looks like I missed doing the Spanish ships, but that's okay since the specials may be something I never use.

Post-game report: Wooden Ships & Iron Men (modified for solo play)

Sailing ships in space! Set a course for Treasure Planet!

Jenni took the kids to Edmonton to see our newest niece. I couldn't go, so I tried to compensate with some games.

The Set-Up
On the night they left, I took the hex map out of my copy of Leviathan, the jar of bits I saved from Anti-Monopoly, the Pirates of the Spanish Main (PotSM) ships I got in April, and copy of the rules for Wooden Ships & Iron Men (WS&IM) I printed from the all-finding Internet. I chose the five British ships from the set and randomly selected five pirates of the same size. Then I prepped my packing tape-laminated log sheets with a dry-erase marker. That's as far as I got Friday, but I was ready for my solo trial of WS&IM.

Well, in case someone reading this actually knows WS&IM, I just want to clear up that this wasn't exactly WS&IM and here's why...

In my nerdiness, I used an Excel spreadsheet, which I can talk about in another post, to develop a way to generate the ship data required to fill out a WS&IM log sheet using the number of masts and the number of guns visible on each of the PotSM models. I figured this would make things a little more interesting as the ships of the same class don't all come out exactly the same, as it seems they would in a normal game of WS&IM (or so I gather from the rules and pictures of ship counters I've seen).  I also had to drop the secret movement planning rule as I knew my opponent would be constantly looking at my moves as I wrote them. Instead, I went with assigning each ship a coloured (British: red, Pirates: yellow) and numbered chip. Chips went in a cup and were drawn for play order. For firing, I used a white die to decide firing at hull or rigging (evens=hull, odds=rigging) and a red die for the firing result.

I was going to play on Saturday, and I did start the game, but I realized I wanted to take pictures as I played. Couldn't find a camera (except the one on my work phone that's a flip phone and I wanted better quality than that). So I looked up and watched the live-action Space Battleship Yamato 2199 in Japanese with sub-titles.

The Intermission

On Sunday, I invited myself over to a family that, on an earlier occasion, seemed interested my Klondike game. We played Survive: Escape from Atlantis, 2 games of Klondike, and finished off the visit with Risk. I won 0 out of 4 games and had a great time. When I got home, I may have taken another turn with the ships, but I still wanted to get a camera. Then I had a thought: I could borrow one from work.

So Monday I brought a smart-phone with no plan home from work to use the camera on it. Then, while the phone was on the charger, I mowed the lawn until I got rained out. Or maybe rained in? Made a late supper and took a couple or three turns before bed.

The family came home Tuesday, so I had to get this game played out, which I did. I at least got to bed before 1 am!

The Game
Preamble: A British force of five ships, tasked with ridding the seas of pirates sights a ship beating into the wind. When their signals go unanswered and no flag is visible, they pursue. Was it a trap? Or was it just dumb luck that this ship led them to a whole mess of pirates?

Roster [ship name (number of masts)]
British: Lord Algermon (5), Guy Fawkes (3), Birkenhead (3), Gallowglass Black (2), Gallowglass Red (2)
Pirates: Harbinger (5), Longshanks(3), Nancy Nox (3), Charles (2), Royal Fortune (2)
The pirates seemed disorganized and unprepared to meet the task force, but with the advantage of the wind with them, the pirates turned to the attack...

Fast forward a bunch of turns to where I finally had a camera available and through a couple of lucky shots by the Brits a couple of turns ago, the pirate Longshanks is already sinking.

I got smart and started placing the chips beside their corresponding ships so a person can at least sort out the pirates from the Brits. We see the big pirate ship, Harbinger, get into position to rake the Lord Algermon. On the west, the pirate ship Charles and the Gallowglass Black exchange shots. Nancy Nox takes her life into her hands as she slides along Lord Algermon at close range.

Harbinger's big gamble. Cutting down into the fray, she had raking shots on both the Lord Algermon and Gallowglass Black. It was devastating for the much smaller boat, but not enough to count her out, and merely pebble in the larger Brit's proverbial shoe. As Lord Algermon reloads the port cannons, Nancy Nox takes a licking from Guy Fawkes and is unable to return as much damage as she receives. To the southwest, Royal Fortune takes a raking shot into Guy Fawkes' nose as she sneaks around the edge of the battle.

A more dramatic shot of the previous action.

Nancy Nox survives the gauntlet and a parting broadside from Lord Algermon and starts a turn to catch up to Royal Fortune. Charles moves to join them, hoping to force the British ships they are heading off into a position to receive raking fire from her or her fellows to the east. Harbinger has to reload both sides, but is out of range to all but Gallowglass Black's guns, which do little to slow her down. Gallowglass Black, by now, was only one hull point away from sinking and would do her best from this point on to stay out of the line of fire.

Gallowglass Red had not fired a shot as yet, struggling to catch up, then to get into any position, but now fires a raking broadside into Harbinger. It is as an astounding hit for a ship so small at such a range and while it wasn't much for the bigger ship to absorb, it was only the beginning as all British ships started to concentrate their fire on Harbinger whenever possible.

The other pirates tried to offer support, but were too spread out and too off on their aim with only middling to low damage rolls.

Harbinger and Charles (bottom left) were the only ships able to fire this round, doing so with poor results.

Harbinger was finally brought down after taking broadsides from Gallowglass Red on her starboard and then Birkenhead on the forward port-side. Charles and Royal Treasure knew the gig was up and broke south to escape capture. The Nancy Nox also turned south, but with the condition she was in, probably would not get away fast enough if some of the British ships decided to give chase.

Run away! Those poor swabs 'r' gonna be slapped in chains and carted off to prison to await their fate.

Post-action thoughts

These are just some great little models! I really enjoy using them as they just brought this game to life. I guess, to add to the look of the game, I could have started removing masts for those ships that had lost a section of sail, but then I'd just have to put them back together in the end.

The tweaking I did to the rules in order to play the game solo took away some of the possibilities that would be present in a 2+ player game, like fouling, but I still had a good time with it. Despite the long rule-book, it really seemed quite easy to play as well. I would, of course, like to try the game with another person because I'd like to get a sense of the hidden movements and the havoc they could play. But that will probably have to wait until we are moved and settled into the new house (I might post about that...).

As for my picture-taking, I realize now for documenting a game like this that a better form of showing firing and such would be helpful. Something for a later installment.

Happy gaming!

The cheap and easy mini

As those familiar with my doings will know, I have been carving miniatures for use as game pieces. I have been focused on bi-planes for Wings of Glory and space ships for Full Thrust. I may have even mentioned, though not posted pictures for, the planes from Crimson Skies that I have been working on.

Another game I came across and have been wanting to try for a while is Pulp Alley.

I have been building an assortment of paper "minis". I do it with the promise to my eldest that we will one day play a game with them. I found this website* with all these different character sheets for anyone to use. So I took the ones I thought I might use, printed them and started mounting them (along with the Pulp Alley deck, free for download here) on unused Trivial Pursuit cards left over from thrifting multiple copies to build a board for Canvas Eagles**. I'll post something if I ever get it together enough to actually try the game.

My stuff and my wife's stuff battled it out for table space!

*This is the site: www.seven-wonders.co.uk, currently giving me an error "509: bandwidth limit exceeded". Hopefully it's back up later.
** My Canvas Eagles board was a flop. I applied Mod Podge to try and seal the pages which were glued to the boards with Elmer's spray adhesive. The Mod Podge stayed tacky so that every time I unfolded a board it would stick together and I was in danger of ripping the prints. Finally they were stuck bad enough that they did rip and I threw it away (pretty sure I did anyway). A few weeks later, I was in Fabric Land with Jenni and they had felt on sale, so I bought some green. Haven't used it yet, but maybe soon.

Pirates of the Spanish Main

So, back from our vacation to Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia. We had a good time with the kids at the petting zoo, watching the seals and an otter at the fisherman's wharf, strolling through the Royal B.C. Museum, touring Granville Island, and more.

Luckily, our ferry rides were a little less exciting than this!

Jenni and I also got some gaming in with cousins and friends. We brought three games with us: Concept, Colosseum, and Marrying Mr. Darcy. Concept was a mild success with those we introduced it to. Colosseum got one play, but being a heavier game, I wasn't surprised (I came in second).

Marrying Mr. Darcy was a smash hit with a cousin and some of her friends (including guys), so much so that we decided to leave our copy with her so that all of her friends could have the chance to play.

We got to try Star Wars: Epic Duels. It was a fun game! I was the Boba Fett/Greedo team and MVP for the Dark Side (who won the game), having taken out five of the seven Light Side characters. Now I'm kicking myself for not picking up this title when I saw it at a thrift store a few years ago.

Other games we tried out were Patchwork, Blue Prints, Jungle Speed, Exploding Kittens, and Tokaido.

Our hosts for the Vancouver portion of the trip were my aunt and uncle. My uncle is a miniatures gamer, mostly D&D and similar games. But while we were getting ready to leave, he thought of some miniatures he had that he didn't use any more and didn't foresee using again: a bunch of assembled ships from the WizKids collectible game Pirates of the Spanish Main. Man, am I excited about these! Three reasons to be excited:

1. It's a game with pirates! The romanticized version of pirates is a well-loved theme across all age groups.
2. Easy rules mean a young kid could learn and play. I'm thinking about my oldest two: 6 and 4 years old.
3. Miniatures that really look good for what they are and that could easily work for more advanced rule sets.

Now, I've read the complaints regarding the game rules being broken and can see what is meant. I'm thinking that what is needed is a different objective in the game. By the rules, the objective is to gather more gold than your opponent can from a central island location. The main complaint being that the gold-gathering objective discourages going after your opponent's ships in favour of grabbing as much gold as you can from the island and hoping the values of the gold you grabbed beat the values your opponent got. It would seem that the rules for movement, firing, and special abilities should be fine for games with a different objective or with multiple objectives.

Anyways, on to the booty!

After matching ships to cards, I counted 48 ships, 1 fort, and 1 sea monster (how cool is that?). There are other cards with special crew members and such, but I've not really looked at those. You've already seen the sea monster.

There were some British ships...

...some French ships (and fort)...

...a few more Spanish ships...

...a whole mess of pirates...

...and a lone American vessel.

Now to find/invent some scenarios to try out. Maybe the battle of the Antelope and the "great Yank".

P.S.: Again, to my uncle: thank you.

Of Simplification and Zombies

I'd been planning and thinking, humming and hawing, and scrapping and re-thinking ideas to make a play map for some miniatures skirmish game. There are many options: paper-craft buildings and scenery, popsicle stick and cardboard construction,  scrap cloth creations... I was even considering purchasing a pre-printed felt mat or a printable file to have a printer do a poster-size job.

Along-side all of that, I was considering what genre/theme I wanted to do. Again, so many choices: western, steampunk, '30s and '40s pulp, military... An important question for me as miniatures are expensive, which is why I am interested in making my own. Making my own is time consuming, even more so if I want to have people-figures, which I have never tried to produce and which would be easier to buy. You can see the vicious cycle of thinking one could get trapped in.

Then I came across a post on Facebook (I'm in the Full Thrust group) from a gamer asking about what set of rules they should play for a beginner game.  One respondent, a Jesse Casey, made a comment accompanied by a cute image:

"Start simple and grow into the game, in the long run you'll enjoy it much more than otherwise."

If that isn't some kind of inspiration for the little dilemma I had been creating for myself... To me the comment was saying, "Start with what you have and see what you can do with it. Add as little as possible to make it playable."

So I took stock of what I had and these were the things that could go together the easiest:
- 40 or 50 glow-in-the-dark zombies meant for the Zombies! game
- 40 Imperial Guardsmen for Warhammer 40,000 that I thrifted a while ago
- 24 6" x 6" tiles cut from the press board bottoms of some cheap drawers I found at the dump

With that, I decided that some tile set depicting modern roads and city-type scenery would be most usable with these resources. I found tiles on Wargame Vault that depicted modern roads and buildings. What I like about them is that the buildings are interior floor plans so a game taking place on the street could be continued inside buildings, but the roads are too wide for my taste. I was almost ready to buy the set anyway when I thought I should at least see if there was anything similar for free. 

Well, it's the Internet and you can always find something for free! I found a set here. The roads are a little narrower, more to my liking. The buildings are roof-tops, not interiors, but I'm okay with that. I could still buy the other set for interiors (or learn to make my own, right?). Another great thing about modern roads is that they can accommodate a number of themes in recent history, the present, or the future.

So the Easter weekend saw me cutting and gluing printed tiles to the press board squares. Then a couple of days later, I put together a game of counter-zombie actions by a couple of Imperial Guards with Lawrence (almost 4) who was super excited to take the role of the Guards. 

And now for pictures (the camera flash gave an added thematic feel to the board):

Jeanette just home from school, Lawrence rolling dice to move his Guards.

These zombies were no match. Only two of them got close enough to bite, but the dice said "Not today!"

Waiting just around the corner...

For the game I just made up some simple rules that Lawrence could mostly understand. I'll write them here:

For Imperial Guards:
- Roll 1 d6 for each guard, assign dice rolls so each guard gets one roll result
- Each guard can make one action x assigned roll result
    - Actions: move 1 space, fire weapon (d10, ranged attack with reducing chance of hit over increasing distance), melee attack (d10, if adjacent to zombie, 40% chance of hit).

For zombies:
- Roll d20
- Move any zombies any number of spaces up to the roll result
- Individual zombies may only move up to 4 spaces on one turn
- Zombies adjacent to non-zombies attack automatically (d10, 40% chance to hit)

For both:
- Movement may be to any of the 8 squares adjacent (if unoccupied) to the one occupied by the moving piece (i.e., diagonal moves are allowed).
- for this game, no entering buildings.

The Imperial Guard cleaned up easily. I'd like to see if adding more zombies and raising the chance of activating them would make it harder. Something to mimic the overwhelming numbers depicted in zombie movies. I also thought of some kind of encounter card system to bring in 'surprise' zombies that would appear very close to the heroes or hamper the heroes' progress somehow (gun jams, stumbles, etc.).

But, that's something for another time.

Easter 2016

Yes, Easter time approaches. That means egg colouring time again. I once again broke out my home-made kistka to make some eggy designs. Nothing fancy this year, a funny face and a moon with stars. I really like the moon with stars, especially the bubbling or whatever it was that happened while the egg sat in the blue dye.

Eggs above and kistka below.

The backside of moon and stars.

The speckling that happened while the egg was in the dye, probably a result of air bubbles building up on the shell, added to the starry effect I was going for. What is harder to see in the image is that some of the stars I had intentionally placed are yellow and others are white. Sometimes the simplest creation looks the best.

A DIY Knife

Well, I finally got a little project done. It only took a few hours, but the time I actually worked on it was stretched out over at least three months.

In the past couple of years I have modified a couple of old paring knives and a butter knife to use as whittling/carving knives. The former butter knife did not work out so well. A plastic-handled Ginsu knife made and okay claw-like blade, but I sharpened the wrong side; the contours on the handle feel funny when I use it.

To this point, my favourite to use is the first one I made - just a nondescript wood-handled paring knife. I carved most of my airplane parts and spaceships with it as well as carrying it around (with a wooden cap on the blade) to use as a general-purpose blade. While it is/was my favourite, it had some drawbacks: the handle is a little too small in my hand and there is a groove where the blade is inset that isn't so comfortable some of the time, especially when removing large bits of wood on the initial shaping of a piece.

My latest attempt at a custom blade goes beyond all my previous productions. I shaped a spent reciprocating saw blade to a knife blade with holes drilled in the tang (yes, I did just look that up). Then I roughed out a handle, which I split. I hollowed out space on the insides of the split pieces to accommodate the tang and drilled holes to match. Following that was a Gorilla Glue treatment to assemble it all with some largish nails set in the holes as my rivets (but not glued so I could remove them to more easily shape the handle).

After shaping the handles, I glued the rivets into place and filed them down to be flush with the handle. Then a stain treatment using a natural stain (I kind of wanted something darker, but natural was what I had and I wasn't going to buy a new tin). Sealed it with a couple coats of polyurethane and here's the result:

Attempted some contouring to fit my fingers. Did it work? I'll find out.

Maybe you can see, maybe you can't, dark spots that sanding just couldn't seem to remedy: rustic, yeah!

I haven't done anything more than cut up a credit card with it yet, but I'm hoping to remedy that soon.