Fairly Cheap, Fairly Generic - Meditteranian / Caribbean Buildings

I've recently re-connected with an old friend who re-introduced me to the Colonial Period of the late 1800s - early 1900s, especially as interpreted by films such as The Wind and the Lion, Shout at the Devil, 55 Days at Peking and Lawrence of Arabia.  This has triggered some prodigious (for me) painting, and led me to inventing a (possibly) new terrain building technique using the canvas laminated hard boards so often used in Jr. High and High School art classes.  These boards worked pretty well for me because one side is not only textured, it's primed with Gesso.

I got lucky, and found these 50% off at the first store I visited.

My miniatures are 25mm Old Glory Berbers for Colonials and 28mm Freebooter's Fate used for fantasy Pirates.  The boards I found on sale are 4"X6" (103mm X 154mm) and 8"X10" (206mm X 255mm), scaling roughly to 20'X'30 and 40'X50', plenty big enough for my project.  The cardboard is about 3mm thick, translating to roughly 4 - 6 inches, also very good for my scale.

I tried this as an "easier to obtain in the US" variant of the cork sub flooring material used so often by Matakishi in his amazing buildings.  The hardboard is about almost as stiff as MDF and much easier to cut with a razor or X-Acto knife.

Here's the tools I used, plus a hot glue gun as my adhesive of choice.

 Here's the steps I took through the first paints applied.

Two 4x6 boards yielded me these four walls and the roof pieces below.

The last piece got chopped up to make the "peaked roof" portions of the side walls.

A bit of hot melt secured the four walls.

A piece of 100lb card stock scored and folded serving as the "chassis" of the tile roof.

I work part-time teaching industrial technology, and one of the classes I wrote recently is on making corrugated board and boxes, which taught me that the corrugated center is "glued" to the outer sides with vegetable starch.  Running the board under warm tap water dissolves the starch, making the process of peeling the outsides off the corrugated piece a relatively easy way to obtain the "terra cotta roof tiles" so often seen in Spanish influenced architecture.

A box flap cut by scissors with some lines spaced 15mm apart.

After soaking the board sides with warm tap water, I let it sit about 10 minutes and it was pretty easy to peel the outsides off the corrugated center.

After the paper is mostly dry, any bits of the outsides can be easily removed by lifting it with the point of a pencil and then pulling with fingers.

After peeling off one side, I cut the board along the drawn lines with scissors, then I peeled off the remaining "outside" and left the pieces to completely dry.

The separated and dried pieces aren't perfectly flat, but that doesn't matter.

After I hot melt glued the strips to the roof card stock, I trimmed the edges to my desired size.

Here, I've glued on the "upper walls" to fit the main walls.  Two pieces of scrap cardstock keep the roof aligned and a third, folded piece keeps the roof edges straight.

Here's the fully "tiled" roof sitting on the building walls before painting.

I "washed" the walls with very thinned down craft paint about the color of dark sand.  I covered the "tiles" with a dark red craft paint and hastily brushed on some orange craft paint "highlights".  

As I plan on building about five more of these in various configurations, I'll leave details such as covering visible bits of the blue board backing or gluing down "loose" roof tiles until all or most of the buildings have at least the base paints on them.

Thanksgiving Turkey Pterodactyl Hunt

A few years back, Ed Texiera at Two Hour Wargames made a Turkey Hunt freebie download scenario, and I've played on many Thanksgiving days.  This year, I decided to up the ante with a Larger than Life - Lost World dino safari.  I may have gotten one or two fine points of the rules wrong, but the story played out in a way that really satisfied my sense of humor.

Looking through their stores for something suitable as a Thanksgiving meal, Mohl exclaimed, "Dammit!   The supply ship's late!"  Deters didn't even look up from the Competitive Violence League game he was watching on holo.  "What's unusual about that?  They're late 9 out of 10 cycles.  Fleet's just a bunch of REMFs."  Mohl and Deters had been stuck at the communications relay on Fenris, also known as "Jurassic World", for seven very tedious cycles now.  Mohl hadn't ever had the most patience; Deters had noted that it was definitely time for Mohl to rotate to Santraginus IV for some R&R.  Mohl sighed, "It's Thanksgiving - I want turkey!  A huge fucking turkey!"  Deters powered off the holovid, stood to face Mohl and grinned.  "We can get our own huge turkey.  They fly over this place all the time."  Mohl's face brightened with understanding, "I'll get the SAWs and ammo".

Like most other games from THW, the table is divided into nine sectors.  I put the communications station in sector 9, and rolled to randomly generate the other sectors' terrain.  In the interest of speed, each sector got pretty much one feature, a stand of trees or a bush, to represent it's terrain type.  I also randomly located three PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) to represent possible dinosaurs to be encountered during the hunt.  Mother Superior is a PEF in sector six, just "North" of the commo station; The Ringmaster is in sector three and Slappy the Clown is in sector one.  A good practice for THW games, I pre-loaded the PEFs as the Pterodactyls, a Stegosaurus and to spice things up, a pack of Velociraptors.

Turn 1: Dinosaurs activate first.  Mother Superior passed two dice on the movement table, sending her directly at the hunters.  Being troopers, our heroes took the most direct path; straight at Mother Superior, who resolved into a pack of three Velociraptors.  Here's where the Dice Gawdz display their sense of humor - both groups passed zero dice on the In Sight tests, meaning the troopers halted and the Raptors moved away.  I decided to interpret this as "nobody saw nuthin' ", and headed the raptors towards the center of the table.

 End of Turn 1 - Ringmaster and Slappy are moving towards the hunters and the Velociraptors are stalking the PEFs.  The hunters are just out of the photo to the left.

Turn 2 - Hunters activate first and head towards the table center.  Ringmaster doesn't move, the Raptors move to investigate Ringmaster (I believe that technically, Ringmaster should have been resolved by the Raptors' location, but chose not to) and Slappy heads straight at the hunters, and resolves as "just a case of nerves".

Turn 3 - Dinos activate, hunters don't.  Ringmaster comes into view and the Dice Gawdz smiled - the PEF resolved as the Pterodactyls.  Both hunters passed the In Sight test and fired, wounding one and killing another!  The Velociraptors are tracking the Pterodactyls, but don't come into visual range this turn.

End of Turn 3, the kill falls from flight while the flock flies away.

Turn 4 - Hunters activate first and move to collect their kill.  On the dramatic side, the raptors activate and move into view, triggering an In Sight test.  Both sides pass 2 dice, so the hunters fire and all three dinos are wounded plus one's enraged which is really bad news for the hunters. Raptors charge and the hunters, now the hunted, take the Being Charged test, passing 1 die so they Snap Fire.

End of Turn 4 - the Dice Gawdz have smiled upon our heroes, as their snap fire (they're using SAWs) caused four wounds onto three dinos with only one wound remaining each.

Four nervous activation rolls later, the troopers get their "Fucking Huge Thanksgiving Turkey" back to the commo station.

Trash Bash

This weekend's plans got kinda messed up, so I dug into a box of "bits" and managed this.

I bought Oingo Boingo's anthology as a download years ago, and these CDs served me well, but they've died of abuse.  I overlapped them, traced the "half moon" with a sharpie, and they Terrain Gawdz smiled, because I managed to cut the CD with a pair of 30 year old Fiskars without breaking anything (much).

I built up the "shore" with hot melt and grabbed some stones from near my house to somewhat hide the seam.  A small, irregularly cut piece of cardstock is glued over the center hole of the uncut CD.


After all the hot melt "shoreline" was cooled, I spray primered the discs, glued the rocks on and smeared some black craft paint in the "water" area.

I enjoy using the sponge painting "faux finish" technique used by interior decorators when I paint stone; this time I tried it with dark blue and turquoise paints.  Since most of my modeling stuff is currently in storage, I improvised a sponge by rolling up a piece of paper towel.

It worked well enough.

Here I've just sloppily slapped some green paint to tell me where to glue flock.

While slapping on the green paint, I impulsively decided the larger rocks needed to have a spring bubbling up from between them.  Maybe the Fountain of Youth, or more likely, a Xanth Love Spring.  Anyway, the rocks were making the piece too heavy for the CDs, so I broke a piece of bark off a tree in the yard, and what came off was big enough to break into two pieces.  I prefer using tree bark instead of real rocks.  Better texture and immeasurably lighter.

I bought those aquarium plants for 88 cents at Walmart a zillion years ago and decided to finally justify the purchase.

Once the bark was glued in place, I squirted a bunch of hot melt into the gap formed by the stones and bark, and teased it a little into ripples.

Oops.  I should've painted the stones first, but hot melt usually dries with a milky color and I planned on painting the "water" anyway.

The stones got a "wash" of black craft paint thinned a lot with water, then some quickie drybrushing with a pale gray.  The hot melt "waterfall" got a little bit of a dark blue wash - dark blue paint thinned more than ink.  I tried to lightly brush some white "foam" onto the water, but the blue wash wasn't yet dry and I got this "Bob Ross Happy Accident".  Another happy accident was that the bark I "harvested" had some tiny bits of lichen on it, so I picked them out with some bright green paint.

Here's where I managed to wait for the paint to dry before adding white highlights.

I cut the bottoms off the plants so they'd appear to be partially submerged, but were still too tall for my liking and I ended up cutting groups of "branches" off and gluing those as smaller plants.

Here's some of the plants glued in place with some green paint on the lower halves to hide the plastic shine, and a half-assed, still wet flocking job I'll finish tomorrow after the PVA dries.

New France Episode 2: The Journey Begins

Episode 1

Quebec City, 22 September 1638

"Steer to the beach near that rock.  Let's not try the docks in this little canoe."

Adele jabbed her oar into the water as mute agreement to Olivia's decision.  Thank goodness the trip was downstream; it had still taken nearly two weeks.

Being early in the morning, few people were out, but one voice called, "Who are you there?"

"I'm Capitaine Olivia Pierre of the Regiment de Carignan-Salière and my Serjeant Adele Miroir.  I have business at Chateau St Louis.  Who are you?"

"Pte Gabriel Fournier, mon Capitaine.  I'm the morning watch.  Mon Lieutenant-General should be at breakfast shortly, you may wish to stop for a meal at La Licorne Obscène, an inn near Le Chateau."

At that advice, Olivia and Adele exchanged a glance, thanked Gabriel and headed toward Le Chateau. 


Walking along the muddy street, the two young soldiers discovered that La Licorne Obscène was just next door to the regimental headquarters, and were about to enter when a group stepped out of the inn's door.  "Good morning soldiers... oho!  You two look unfamiliar!  Perhaps you'd like some hospitality?"

Before the two stood what appeared to be a Dutch merchant, attended by three French... ladies, rather under-dressed for the morning air.

"You don't look like an innkeeper", replied Adele to the short, stout foreigner.

"I'm no innkeeper!  I'm a provider of hospitality", came a disdainful retort.  "Perhaps you'd do better in my employ than wandering lost in the woods.  At least then you'd get a regular, proper bath."

Olivia snapped a cautioning arm to bar Adele from beating the dwarf to death, but the dwarf had ideas of his own, producing a small pistol and quickly firing.  He was no marksman and the shot was of no danger to anyone nearby.  Having had quite enough of this nonsense, Olivia drew her sabre and stepped toward the dwarf.  Seeing the dawn sun glinting on the blade's keen edge, the offending Dutchman and his entourage made an expeditious retreat.

Approaching footsteps as Olivia sheathed her sabre resolved into Gabriel Fournier, charging at the double.  Seeing only the young officers, he slowed and asked, "Who fired that shot?  Are you trying to bring the Governor's wrath down upon yourselves?"

Adele replied sharply, "Who let dwarves into Quebec, especially one who can't properly shoot?"

Gabriel laughed and offered to guide the two to the commander, since he needed to report the shot.

As the three soldiers entered the command offices of Le Chateau, a gruff voice called out, "Gabriel, please tell me I needn't report a death to the Governor first thing this morning ".

"Non, money Leiutenant-Generale, only that Totsten ought be hanged ", was  Private Fournier's reply as the three entered.

"Oho!  You've found wandering troops"

"Yes, mon General.  This is Capitaine Olivia Pierre and Serjeant Adele Dupree, just arrived from Fort Frontenac".

Leiutenant-Generale Berthier hesitated while accepting Olivia's orders, "Her Highness?  His Excellency?"

Olivia replied calmly, "They were unharmed and comfortable when I left them, mon Generale".

Berthier grunted softly while reading Olivia's papers and suddenly raised his head with a grin, "Oho!  You're a fortunate one to be sailing south while we wade through those cursed English goblins!"  Cocking an eyebrow, the Lieutenant-General glanced at Gabriel Fournier, "I suppose you've already volunteered your services, eh?"

"Volunteered, mon General?"

Olivia broke in, "I haven't told anyone yet, sir".

The General barked an order, "Fournier, fetch Etienne Rambault and be quick about it!".  After Gabriel had departed, Berthier addressed Olivia, "You're a young one to be on such a mission of exploration".

Adele spoke for the first time, "mon Generale, if I may be so bold..."

Berthier gestured that Adele should speak.

"mon Generale... Olivia -  mon Capitaine, won her commission by saving all of Fort Frontenac from a Salem Witch.  Shot her dead at sixty paces just before the witch could cast a spell upon the two of us".

"Oho!   You indeed have the reflexes and initiative of a fine officer!  How do you find Fournier, Capitaine?"

Without hesitation, Olivia replied, "A sensible young soldier with a level head", only a moment before Gabriel reentered the room followed shortly by another young private.  Gabriel could scarcely form the words, "Private Fournier..." when Berthier cut him off.  "Fournier, Rambault, pack your uniforms and equipment for sea travel, you've been transferred to the regiment's newest company...  La Compagnie du Bane de la Sorcière, as commanded by Capitaine Pierre".

Pirate Painting

I'm packing to move, so here's the last for a while.

Games are for fun

Tuesday, April 11th, I made a United Airlines airliner this during lunch and posted the photo.

That isn't what I wanted.  Nearly a year ago, I had inspiration for a mashup game.  Snakes on a Plane, but with a fantastical setting like Soul Plane, all wrapped up in the spirit of one of my all-time favorites, Airplane.

Tonight, I made it happen.

Now, to write the scenario.