A busy weekend - of High's & Low's & a homage to Kevin

Well its been a weekend for the books. Things started off well with Saturday spent at the Gibbons Town-wide Garage Sale. Though I didn't find much in the way of gaming related items, I did get a slew of movies & several books from series that I've had sitting on my shelves waiting for...the complete series... before I start to read them.

However there were 2 vehicles I found for Post Apocolyptic/Zombie Apocolypse type games. An electrical truck & a Mini Cooper!

 

Then upon arriving home & having just getting online after supper discovered that a good gaming friend has passed. This has sent quite a shock through our gaming community & he will be greatly missed by all of us. 

Jonathan, Matthew & I getting ready to play on one of Kevin's fantastic gaming tables. (2010)

 

Kevin teaching us to play Spartacus

Kevin introduces the club to Fanticide

 

Kevin & I playing Frostgrave!

A throwback to Kevin running Warhammer Silver Tower at the club. His work on this game was outstanding & it was a pleasure getting to play with Elliot & him. 

 Needless to say there was a hurried gathering which I attended to toast our fallen gaming buddy & tell stories of our times with him.

 

Image taken at our gathering to toast & honour Kevin. Thanks Elliot for providing it.

Then today I was off to the Model Train Show. My wife & I attend this yearly & enjoy the displays & layouts. We also get an opportunity to vote for our favority layout & good luck to all of them, as so much dedicated work goes into making them.

 

There were definately less displays that in years before the pandemic, so I hope to see it get back to those better times. Those who did attend were still well worth viewing.

One of my favorite displays is this guys scratchbuilt diorama's. I often need to wipe the drool from my shoe after oggling his work.

 

However the train show was much more successful as the very first vendor booth proffered me quite a selection of vehicles for my 28mm gaming. No, I didn't buy all of them & these are all used, so didn't pay more than $10 on any single vehicle.

There was a nice range of everything from early 1900's (Victorian Pulp anyone?)

 

Onto 1920's/30's Gangsters & of course Pulp. I even found a 2nd French bus identical too one I purchased several years ago!

 

Finally a few for modern games.

 

The one  that topped the day for my gaming vehicles was a 1/43 scale Bus!

 

So with the weekend coming to a close, I am taking some time to reflect once again on my lost friend....Kevin. You were certainly one in a million! As long as we remember him, he will always be with us.

EWG - Sept 6th Club Night

We had a pretty good turn out this eve, with 9 people coming out, several of which were new folks joining us & 4 games running.

Gaston hosted another fellow in a Combat Commander game

 

Taylor hosted Chen in a 15mm WW2 early Poland Campaign action.

 

Evan had 2 new players try their hand at Lord of the Rings, where Rohan was squaring off against Gothmog & friends.

 

Lastly Bruce & I played some Chain Reaction Vietnam. The scenario was an ambush. 

 

I played the Americans while Bruce took the role of the Viet Cong.

 

There were 3 victory conditions which I managed to eke out a win, by having forced the Viet Cong leaders to flee & holding more objectives. The odd thing was, the only death was my Lt getting popped in the head

 

So it was great to see so many out, but there is certainly room for more! See everyone again in 2 weeks!

 

Swamp/Jungle Foliage

As we steam ahead & I continue to prep for our 2nd Stargrave game, I was looking at the scenario which invloves a star freighter crashing into a swamp after getting decimated by Pirates.

Well as luck would have it, I didn't have any Swamp related foliage available. However I did buy a bunch of stuff to make Jungle terrain some time ago. 

Thus this week's post is about my quickly made foliage tiles for the Swamp.

 

I discovered that some of the folaige bunches came on these long 'handles?'

 

Which when I looked at them, would make great stumps of old trees, so I clipped the longer bits off, & left a small stub in the center to stick into the foam

You can see the results on the 2 stands shown above. So as you may have noticed, these are on more of the foam tiles I bought years ago. I think they were for Command Decision. I like using them, as they can be butted together to form larger areas of vegetation.

 

I will treat these as areas that hinder movement to the extent that your just better off going around. Besides, who knows what else lurks in there! I also have a bunch of other types of foliage ranging from tall grasses to stubby ones.

 

After making 16 of them, they will also go well with a bunch of single plants mounted on washers that I had picked up in a swap meet at some point

 

So with the vegetation for the swamp complete, its onto the bigger project....the crashed Freighter!

I am currently printing the one I picked up from Digital Taxidermy

 

 So with that....

 

Stargrave - Smoke!

Well with the Walls of Force still getting painted on my table, it was time to tackle another issue. Smoke Grenades! Yes I did buy the template set which comes with 2 templates for use as Smoke, but those are...well, not to the standard of a game table I like. Yes they will work well for the placement of the smoke template, but...

...so it was off to the dollar store on Saturday, with tape measure in hand. I needed to find a 4"x3" clear plastic cup. Having done so (it's close to 4" diameter) it was a matter of getting some of my card stock & having traced the cup circumference, was ready to begin

I think you can see where this is going. We now have a topper that will be the smoke so when tracing line of sight to different elevations through smoke we will now know for sure.

So as there will still be the base templates used, I painted them all up using grey & sponging on white to represent billowing smoke.

I now have the stacked between old CD's with a weight on them so they won't warp on me while drying completely. How does it look?

And while the glue dries on the actual poly filler 'smoke' you can see what the end result will be.

I know the purists will immediately say "Hey thats not 4"x3"! & they would be correct. But then when does smoke conform to anything when released. I will be making 12 total of them for use in our campaign & as the other players will be using them, I don't expect any issues. However I will trim some of the smoke once the piece has dried & may need to add some other pieces depending on how well it holds.

So thats my hobby time for this week. Thanks for visiting

Stargrave - The Botched Deal

 The campaign has begun with "The Botched Deal". Normally I would have taken lots of photos & generated a comic book AAR of the scenario, but the fact remained, this was all of our first try at the game, so we were looking up various rules to ensure we were on the right track.

The scenario involved a central building containing a Physical Loot token. It is surrounded by other buildings.

 

Another view of the village. These are some of the most versatile buildings I picked up on an Ebay sale. They have been used in Old West, Desert Pulp & now Sci-Fi.

 

We had 5 Crews descend onto the table & scrambling to recover the various Data & Physical Loot tokens scattered about. Early on, some of the Ruffian/Townsfolks were dealt with, where others just wouldn't go down & caused grief for some crews, tying them up.

 

It's a good thing I made 8 Walls of Force!

 

We also discovered how painful it can be trying to unlock a Loot token without the special equipment.

 

We had quite a range of figures on the table, including some of Scott's Bombshell Miniatures

 

And SW Legion ones, which is likely one of the reasons this ruleset is so popular!

 

We called the game after turn 8 & had just 2 Ruffians arrive from the Unwanted Guests table. I think there were 3 locked loot counters which were lost as the crews returned to their ships. Apart from a few badly wounded soldiers, everyone survived to return for the next mission.

 

So some after game thoughts. I will need to search for some tokens to use for Stunned & Jammed weapons.

The Crew Experience tracker I got from the Facebook files worked well. I had reduced them down to where they fit into a Dragon Shield Card sleeve. 

I will also need to make some more interesting 'Smoke' counters.

 

Thanks as always for visiting!

Stargrave - Wall of Force

The table is set, the crews created & preparing for their first mission.....Sunday!

 As I work on last minute preparations for tomorrows game, I realized I needed some walls of Force, should any of the crews take that as a power.

 

Wracking my brains as to how to make a transluscent/clear wall for the game table, I finally opted to use some old Sprues for a frame & document protector for the clear wall.

 

After digging through my sprue boxes, I found some that were the correct width of 6" & then cut them to just under 3" in height. I needed to then cut another piece of sprue with some extended bits to support the frame. This happened the be the central piece of the same sprue clipped out. Then it was a matter of clipping/removing the nubs & sanding it

 

After the  frame was glued together & the clear document protector pieces added using white glue, it was left to dry.

 

Now it was time to add some paint. First up I painted the frame in Royal Blue, ensuring that I painted onto the clear plastic as well to represent a base colour for energy spikes.

 

I then used Indian Turquoise to represent the energy the actual energy.

 

This was then followed up by white hi-lights for the energy & then a touch-up of Prussian Blue in the areas of the frame that were not representing the energy spikes.

 

As its getting late, I was only able to complete the first of 8 walls of force, but will get the rest painted after the game tomorrow. 

For an expense of mainly some time, these were cost effective using stuff I had lying around & I think they turned out well. Thoughts?

 

Thanks for visiting. 

EWG - Another Glorious Day in the Corps (take 2)

We had Dan offer to bring out Aliens: Another Day in the Corps for another play. This time we had a full slate of  8 players & were using a modified system of 1 Motion Tracker card per 2 players. Thus we were drawing 4 per turn.

 

We opted to replay the scenario where we needed to find Newt & escape through the exit.

 

Once again, I played Cpl Hicks, opting for the Pulse Rifle / Grenade combo to start.

 

Starting off, we have the numbers! The Bugs are in for a fight!

 

Well that didn't take long. Some small groups of Xeno's rush us, but are readily dealt with.

 

Ripley comes face to face with a couple of Xeno's rushing through the door.

 

Gorman finds himself left behind as he was barricading a door

 

After a bit of computer work, Newt is found & Ripley is able to make it to her...to calm her down & have her follow us to the exit.

 

More Xeno's are spawning, right into the muzzle of the flamethrower!

 

Just my luck, "They Are in the Ceilings!" Xeno's fall into my lap

 

The mad run to the exit begins, some well placed grenades cleared a lot of these Alien swarms out. Multiples are chits stacked beneath an Alien Model to denote groups.

 

Everyone made it out alive! Our card stack was quite depleted by this point.

 

Thanks again to Dan for bringing out this fun game! Also thanks to all the folks who came out to the club, it was nice to see people making it out.