Mods and Painting

My first die-cast car mod 

Months before May, I was at my parents' place, looking through the old die-cast cars that served my siblings and I growing up. Picking up one of the first Hot Wheels cars that my younger brother received and noted all the scratches and the bent axles. I had been watching those videos on YouTube of people modifying their Hot Wheels cars. So naturally, I slipped the car in my pocket and took it home to do at least a repaint and present it to my brother, who's birthday is in May.

I took apart the car and stripped/scraped the paint off, sanding it with a very fine grit sand paper. Removed the axles. Took the axles and wheels from a Francesco car (from Cars 2) to do a wheel swap. The axles are too wide for a Hot Wheels, so I snipped them and stuck them into place with super glue and green stuff. Then I did it all over again, but using lengths of that plastic coating you sometimes find on paper clips to hold the clipped axels together and make them less prone to be de-glued and pushed through the green stuff lump. Painted the car with treated craft acrylics through my airbrush. had to repaint 4 times to get it looking half decent. Used a chrome pen on the parts I thought would be chromed in real life. Put it all together again and...

Not the greatest pic, but the only one I took before giving it to my brother.

The ongoing saga of me painting Blacklist Fantasy 1 minis

I painted the skeletons. I modified them a bunch as well, giving one a spear and a bow to another, clipping off some shoulder pad spikes, and shaving off a couple hoods. Made a pretty nice variety. Took a long time to get around to painting them.

The guys who kept their swords.

The guys who got other weapons.

And a Mage Knight mini

This guy was painted all black with a couple of grey and gold highlights, but it hid all the detail on the sculpt. He was also missing his left foot and clicky base when I got him. Stripped the paint. Molded a green stuff foot. Repaint and rebase (on the bottom half of a clicky base no less)...

One side...

...and the other.

Battle of Sadras... sort of

 We had a family over for dinner a week and a bit ago and the husband/father was interested in taking a look at my collection of miniatures. He'd never been to our place before, but we've talked about our projects and have exchanged pictures of things we've worked on. During this show-off session, I decided that the Pirates of the Spanish Main ships had been left too long in the drawer and some of them needed to come out and play. Then, looking through the rules for Wooden Ships and Iron Men, I came across the scenarios and the campaign highlighting the British (Hughs) and French (Suffren) actions in the Indian ocean during the 1770's.

First, I gathered enough ships to outfit both sides (making little flags out of bread tags to replace the pirate flags most of them have). Then I got a map of the battle to figure out starting positions.

Found on website threedecks.org, they cite The Royal Navy: A history from the earliest times to the present Vol 3

After setting up the fleets in position A, I realized the scale of miniatures and size of my table were not going to let the described maneuvers take place, so at this point, the resemblances to the scenario cease and my game, using Full Sail, commences.

Turn 1:

On both sides there was jockeying and speed changes as ships tried to set themselves up to make lines. Three of the mid-sized French ships opened up long-range fire on an English heavy, dealing some damage. The English ship responds, dealing enough damage to one of the Frenchies to trigger a threshold check, resulting in the loss of two starboard cannon.

I went to bed and during the night, a hurricane struck, upsetting and scattering all of the French ships and capsizing two English ships. Dang cat! Now to figure out how I can cat-proof my table.

Update: March 2024

As one might guess, the past few months have had me pretty busy and blogging is pretty low on my priority list. I think I'm realizing that I can't remember having played a miniatures wargame since October. While nothing happened game-wise, there was some other hobby progress made.

New Hobby Space

Until now, I've been building/painting at the kitchen table or on the couch with a 14"x14" wooden tray. This tray was getting quite filled up as I would have two or three little things going on it at a given time. After finishing the spaceships featured in the last post, I still had some half-painted fantasy minis, a die-cast car I had started a surgery on, and the beginnings of an idea for making Aeronef ships out of bread tags. Of course, the three projects going at the same time meant the board was also cluttered with cutting tools, paints, brushes, glue, and random bits of wood, metal, and plastic.

When getting the board down (ever so carefully so as not to spill anything) to work on something, I might stare at the three projects and fiddle with each for a couple of minutes, then sit and stare at it all. On top of that, because I had no real dedicated space for my stuff (except the paint, I had a place for the paint), it started getting dispersed throughout the house and I was losing track of things so that it was more difficult to actually do whatever it was in my mind to do. In other word, the negative inertia acting on me was mounting. I was also feeling a growing itch to try using my airbrush again, which had even more negative inertia attached to it than my board.

So it all went on hold as I devoted time to looking at peoples' hobby desks. About a week of that and I decided on a general plan, found useful stuff in my modest salvaged wood pile, and cut the main pieces. Then, on a night in late November, the wife and kids gone somewhere, I built a little hobby desk.

And here it is, all cluttered like every other one I saw:

Definitely needs something on the wall to help with organization, I think. The airbrush is now so much more accessible, I've used it more in the past couple months than all the years previous that I've owned it.

Painting of Blacklist: Fantasy Series 1

I got a bunch of these minis primed in the fall so that they'd be ready for painting at any time, but it took a long time to feel like I had the time to paint again. Only a few models got done, though some were done with the help of one of my daughters.

A dwarf warrior. Will probably put a wash on him still.

My daughter helped me paint these kobalds.

Giant spiders, too!

Aeronef Shipyard

We keep plastic bread tags for some reason or another and I've always had the thought I should do something with them, so I made an airship and plan to make more. I also made some using the handles of plastic forks.

Aeronef airships.

So that's been what I've been working on when given the chance, plus one other thing that will be posted about when it's done.

Guns into spaceships

As quite a few of my posts seem to begin, some time ago I bought a bag of random stuff at a thrift store. It contained little army men, sandbag piles, and a few large action figure-sized guns. Don't think I'd never use them in as they were. Well, I pulled a couple out to ponder what I could do with them and got the idea that if they were cut in strategic places, some of the resulting pieces - if painted up - would work quite well as spaceships. So here's some before and after:

Before. Though I did start sawing apart that big green one before thinking of a picture.

Pieces selected for transformation.

Three painted to match, perhaps to serve in the same faction or group.

Two more chosen to join one of my already existing painting themes.

And finally, the ones that I didn't really try to make fit anything.

Not too bad for simply cutting and painting, eh! Someday I'll play a game with these. Someday.

Aeronef: Attack over the Falkland Islands

Rules Doctoring

Maybe I'll get this out of the way first: I only have the core rules for Aeronef. Realizing I said I'd play the rules as written, I just couldn't get past some items that I felt needed tweaking, so tweak I did. There is another book out there with additional rules and it may cover some of the things I added, but I don't have that book and am currently in a "don't spend money if you don't have to" mode of thinking and haven't looked into buying it.

So my tweaking included two things:

1) Air torpedoes - I built some of my models with the memory of having read about them in the rules. They are not actually there. So I made up my own that I will, perhaps, post later.

2) I was a little more specific about how many gun dice could be used when firing, taking into account the number of guns I placed on each model and where it looked like they could be pointed. For example, Ansaldo is a round platform with guns positioned so they could all fire forward, but only two turrets could fire out either side or the rear, so full gun dice used for forward fire, and half for the other three arcs.

Reinforcements were rolled for at the end of each turn - 1d6 vs. 1d8. If the d6 beat the d8, reinforcements arrive. For each try after the first, +1 was added to the d6.

On to the scenario...

September 19, 1889

The Falkland Islands have been under British rule for over 60 years. A small force of British air ships is stationed at the archipelago to reinforce British claims over the islands, which are disputed by Argentina.

One of the richest countries on the South American continent, Argentina is still far less wealthy than England. Yet, the Argentine government has bided its time and saved up a reserve which they have started to dip into. They have acquired two airships, which now make their way towards the contested islands. First, the Almirante, a Class 2 airship commissioned of a German builder is accompanied by a small contingent of craft. Second, the Ansaldo, a Class 1 vessel purchased in secret from Russia for a very affordable sum, likely because the Russians didn't tell them about the propulsion problems they were having with it...

The British Admiralty, having known about the Almirante for some time, have sent a second Class 3 airship and torpedo dirigible to beef up their presence in the area. They thought this would be enough to keep Argentina at bay. They didn't know about a second deal with Russia, and the Ansaldo has rounded the Andes and is on course to rendezvous with the other Argentine airships at Islas Malvinas (the Argentine name for the islands), intending to send the English packing.

Set Up

Layed out four islands on the play area (mine was 3' x 3').

British set up their ships (minus one Class 3 and the torpedo dirigible) in any configuration around the isles. All but one start at speed 0. The ships not set up are en route from England (or Canada, perhaps) and come in as reinforcements from the N, NE, or E table edge.

Argentina sets up all of their ships, except Ansaldo, in their choice of NW, W, or SW edge of the table. Ships start at top speed of the slowest airship, probably Almirante. The Ansaldo has experienced propulsion issues en route and arrives late as reinforcements.

Victory conditions

Major Victory, England - Accomplish minor victory conditions and bring down Ansaldo

Minor Victory, England - Inflict 1/2 of total hull points damage to the Argentine force or bring down Almirante

Minor Victory, Argentina - Inflict 1/2 of total hull points damage to British force

Major Victory, Argentina - Down both British Class 3 airships

Battle continues until one of these conditions is met.

The Play (in pictures)

Three British ships sit "at anchor" next to one of the islands. To the north, a fourth, meanders through.

Argentine fleet incoming! Ansaldo waiting to arrive (on table edge).

Turn 2 sees the two groups coming into range and each side fires a torpedo. The white peg torpedo will hit the larger dirigible with minimum damage.

More torpedoes flying in turn 4. The nearer one (friendly fire) misses Almirante and will continue on with no further targets along its path. So far as guns are concerned, small amounts of damage done to either side. In the distance, reinforcements arrive for the Brits.

Ansaldo finally arrives in turn 6 and immediately starts hammering a British Class 3.

Then the larger Argentine dig runs into a torpedo and the damage is too much. Blast that friendly fire!

Ansaldo finishes off that Class 3 in turn 7...

... and gets hit by British air torpedoes! It's only minor damage for a Class 1 ship, but it's enough to trigger the condition for a minor British victory.

So Argentina retreats, saving a badly damaged Almirante from a doom that was too close for comfort. Surely, the Brits will take the Argentine threat quite a bit more seriously and try to send a more beefy support for the islands before another attempt on them is made. But there are rumblings that friction between England and Germany could lead to war, which might limit a response from England. However, other South American countries have been participating in this localized arms race and may see this as their time to make a move. Time will only tell.

Aeronef?

Another set of rules I've had downloaded for some time because I really like the theme is Aeronef, the game of Victorian sci-fi airship battles. The other inspiring thing about the book version I downloaded is that a number of the miniatures pictured on its pages seem to be scratch built. I first came across mention of this game while perusing the pages of the blog The Stronghold Rebuilt. The concept just struck me as so neat (link to posts tagged "aeronef"). All of Stronghold's Aeronef posts were put up in 2012 where he builds a couple of fleets from scratch.

There are a number of airship models that can be purchased. I've spent some time admiring the ones on the Brigade Models website, produced for their airship game called Imperial Skies. So, with this idea ruminating all these years and aptly inspired by Brigade Models, I finally set myself to building some airships over the summer. Aeronef construction, in my shipyard at least, is mainly accomplished using popsicle sticks, doweling, bread tags, large gauge copper wire, and paper clips.

I currently have two factions created, which I shall be using soon (hopefully) to actually play the game. One side represents, I think, a well-ordered and standardized faction: comprising of two airships from each of three classes. This, I would offer, might be one of the well-established, wealthy nations like England, France, or Germany. In my mind, the second task force is reminiscent of some nation that is less able to produce their own vessels, opting instead to buy what they can. Thus, it is a collection of one-offs, some of which look unconventional, like prototypes of designs considered unfit by the more wealthy nations. I think of the South American countries who tried to get in on the arms race of the historical pre-dreadnaught period, like Brazil or Argentina. It's why I ended up painting it the colours of the Argentine flag. I'm considering the first battle I play be related to some kind of Falkland Islands dispute.

And now... the pictures!

In going with my scenario idea, this will be the British force. In back are two cruisers, on the right are two destroyers, and in front are some dirigibles with air torpedoes mounted on them.

The Argentine ships. At back could be a battleship or battle cruiser (it has torpedo tubes), the big round one could be a battleship purchased from Russia, then a destroyer with torpedoes, then two dirigibles in the foreground (one a little bigger and better armed than the other).

Also of note, I have mounted these all on Heroclix bases for flying supers; removing the dial stickers and filing off the paint. I have ideas about using the dials to keep track of airspeed.

Granted, in reading up on other people's writings about playing this game, they find it rather lackluster. Perhaps I will too, but I intend to play according to the written rules first then start implementing ideas I've already been having about what to change. Wish me luck.

Where did the summer go?

This summer has been quite busy: multiple camping trips, Jenni working on a graduate degree, kids in musical theater and volleyball camps, and outings to the local reservoir to swim meant not much time was spent on gaming-related stuff. And any gaming I did do, I took no notes as writing it up here wasn't even close to the priority list.

What I have done, in summary:

1) One of the unplayed rulesets lurking in my collection is Aeronef. I like the steampunk/alt. history setting and have often thought of playing. I could play using my 1/3000 battleships, but I want to push fantastical soaring cruisers and destroyers around the table. So I've started making some.

2) Have I written about making American Civil War stands using figures printed from Junior General? Well, I put together some cavalry to go with them. Also made 3 buildings and a bunch of zigzag fences. But looking at army lists for historic battles, now I feel like I need more infantry to play anything larger than Blackburn's Ford.

3) Painted some more figures from my Blacklist Games Fantasy order: spiders, rats, boars, and wolves.

4) Made two simple hills for terrain.

5) Introduced a couple of my son's friends to wargaming.

I've also been thinking about what I post to this blog. Kind of feeling like I should do fewer "after-action reports". Maybe. Or do I want to change format and start a new blog. Or maybe I just needed the break. Even now, I'm fighting sleep at 11:46 pm, having started 40 minutes ago to just write this little bit.

How about for now, I'm not posting anything unless I include some images.