Of Books & Thistles

If I can beg the indulgence of the wargame blogging world for a few moments, I'm pleased to announce Olivia's Escape, the first of a series of YA novels co-authored by my Better Half and I is now available at Amazon.

Cool steampunk cover by the excellent Gwen Pfifer.

Olivia's Escape.

Seventeen-year-old Olivia Brown is abducted on her way home from a night out and wakes up to find herself imprisoned by a vampiric race in a dark city bathed in eternal night. Hernando, a handsome half-human slave, reveals what is intended for her – they want her blood for the upcoming festival. Together they escape, and find friends and allies in unexpected places.

Joining a resistance cell, they help plot a revolution and fall in love. Their group plans to take control of the Portal, a teleportation device that links Earth with the world of BloodDark. Getting into the City of Night is a challenge. A narrow window of opportunity opens - but what awaits them in the caverns located deep beneath the city?

Will Olivia and Hernando survive the battle? If she returns to Earth, will Olivia ever see him again?

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On to gaming...

Some time ago I planted thistles in our back garden. They have a triple advantage. The florets attract pollenating insects, the dried and chopped-up canes serve as refuges for useful insects to hibernate in over winter - and the teasels form the basis for N-scale trees. Good for a gamer on a budget.

I made a number of these in the past two years after harvesting the teasels, all in full summer leaf versions. Now this years' harvest is in and dried, I plan to make a new batch of trees in Autumn colours.

Dry teasels - some forty-odd, enough for a good size wood.

The seeds have to be shaken out. This can take some time as each teasel hold zillions of the buggers. Once emptied, I'll trim them down and put them on bases.

The general effect. A 10mm Parliamentarian cavalry troop shows the scale of the thing.

The photo above shows the kind of thing I'm aiming for, but picture it in the glorious colours of Fall. More photos as I make progress...

CoC eyed.

So, the mini-campaign based on the Too Fat Lardies' Chain of Command and At the Sharp End rules is at an end.

On the whole they gave a good series of games, with logical steps and post-battle effects in cascading order. Campaign wise, I found that once a force suffers two defeats in succession it's hard for it to retain effective fighting capability. It's realistic, given forces locked in a prolonged fight will suffer degrading combat effectiveness to the point where one side or the other goes beyond the ability of the senior command to restore its strength. The BUF found this after the defeats at Honington and the following clash over the Crown Jewels.

The friction of war is the major feature of the CoC rules, and it certainly appears on the tabletop battlefield. I did find it frustrating when a unit vital to the success of the engagement refused to move or got bogged down somehow. Overall, I have no complains and much to praise in these rules.

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Sometime this week I hope to play the next game of Colonials, with the Men of Barsetshire making an appearance. I have the terrain made up for it now, so I can go ahead when I find time.

Meanwhile VSF stuff is catching my eye, including this beauty...

It's Neverwas Haul, out of the Obtanium Works stable. A mobile three-storey Victorian steam-powered university-cum-observatory, it frequently appears at the famous Burning Man steampunk festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

I believe I'll attempt to make something in 25-28mm along these lines. It'll be just the ticket for an eccentric expedition into strange lands. To see it in action amidst a dust storm, check out the video.

Marcon 2016

My wife and I are back from spending the weekend at Marcon, one of the Midwest's premier SF/Fantasy/Fandom conventions. We enjoyed it, in spite of my persistent cough which rendered my voice hoarse, a real problem when trying to speak at panels! Guests included Sandra Garrity, who some of you will know as a first-rate figure sculptor. She demonstrated techniques in sculpting and painting which will be highly useful to me.

The Masquerade took place on Saturday evening, when we came across these stalwart defenders of Queen and Empire...

Portraying Her Majesty's Colonial Marines, the Fiberdyne cosplay group put on a fine display of martial might. Those dashed alien chappies quake in their boots - or equivalent - when the Marines hove into view! For those of you with Facebook, their page may be found here.

It gives rather a good sense of what these fellows would look like in Victorian SF/Steampunk model form. Another project to contemplate, perhaps.

VSF walker - got those happy feet

The VSF walker's legs are more or less done. Here they are in a dry-run fitting. The beastie does look like a chicken at the moment, but once the weaponry and fittings are in place it should look a lot more militant.

The legs are more or less complete. I'm undecided whether to fit any more bits and pieces to them, like hoses and cables and such. There's a risk it'll look too cluttered. I have a section of plastic dental-floss casing which will go on the underside of the hull to form a casemate. The next step will be to decide on weaponry. I'm inclined to try something with thin magnetic sheet fixed to the hull front which should allow me to swap-out weaponry as required. Rare earth magnets will be better, but cost more. After that I'll fit the smokestack to the rear and give the hull a good riveting.

Resin d'être

On with the Aerial Flyer project and the reason for the resin pun-foolery.

Significant progress to report! The deck house is more or less complete and the mast's ready for stepping. Two Riveresco portholes can be seen in the after part of the deck house. I'll put some kind of glazing in them before gluing the roof in place. I've first got to paint the inside area where it can be seen through the doorways. I'll also glue some thin card over most of the fore part of the deck house structure to represent light armor plating. It gives a better surface for the '3D' paint to grip to when it comes to riveting.

I used the Hirst Arts Small Pipe mold #321 and the Inn Accessories mold #59 to cast some component pieces from resin. These are aerial torpedo tubes, boiler caps, bomb racks, drive shaft and ventilators. The photos show the rough layout of what will go where. The model is sitting on a plastic bag to protect the underside.

I embedded short lengths of aluminum tubing in the middle of the long pipes while the resin set so they would be firmly fixed. These go into the tubes drilled in the deck earlier. These are an optional fitting; the sponsons can also be used for Gatling or Nordenfelt guns when I get around to making them.

The bomb racks are the bottle racks from the Inn Accessories mold. When I first saw the component I did think it looked rather like something off a World War One airplane. I'll site these on the edge of the deck either side of the boiler as shown, probably with some kind of control mechanism. This will allow the Flyer to drop lumps of explosive nastiness in its wake without interfering with the propeller, or the racks suffering any back-blast damage from the torpedo launchers.

The ventilators are the elbow bends from the pipe mold. I was going to use the Riveresco type but I think these look more appropriate to Victorian SF. A small pipe cap atop the deck house serves to ventilate the commander's cabin. The little shield on the glacis plate is from the inn mold. I'm going to take a leaf from the modern Royal Navy's book and paint a ship's crest on it. The inn mold also has a nice little two-sided piece that can be either a chest of drawers or a cupboard. I'm thinking of taking a resin cast of it for use as a signal flag or arms locker for inside the deck house.

From previous experience I find it's best to leave cast resin for a while before attempting to paint it as it allows volatile elements to evaporate from the surface. Otherwise the paint tends not to stick. Once I've glued the boiler casing to the caps with epoxy glue, I'll give all the resin pieces a good going over with spray undercoat.

Onward and upward!

Abe Lincoln is back -

- and he's not taking no for an answer!

With the Gettysburg Address clasped in one hand (written on the back of an envelope) and a steam-powered drum-fed Gatling gun in the other, the Steampunked 16th President is armed and looking for trouble! 

When you hear the tootin' of the whistle, it's Abe at the throttle of the Union Express...

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Just a minor diversion from gaming, as I complete this little peg doll for the upcoming Archon art show. Next up - Steampunk Jefferson Davis...

Poll closed - results now in

Hmm! An interesting result from the poll. From fifteen responses it appears there's a definite appreciation for Victorian sci-fi elements in Colonial gaming. This certainly seems to fit with the activity shown on the Lead Adventurers' Forum VSF section. All kinds of weird and wonderful creations appear there, often inspired scratch-built models from the unlikeliest sources, or modified versions of commercial products. Check it out - there's a lively community there, and they're very helpful folks. 

So, where do I stand in all this? I do like the VSF genre, and have an interest in Steampunk. (Take a look at Aurora, an excellent free to watch 30-minute indi movie from Australia for inspiration). It also suits my situation, as I find it far easier to scratch-build VSF creations than to splash out the cash on gaming figures and models. Expect to see a few such appearing in future reports on this blog.     

Someone's rockin' my steamboat - 1

On now to a model of a quintessential feature of most Colonial-era gaming - the steamboat. I've long had plans in mind for a vessel based on the Roi des Belges, a Congo River steamer of the 1880's-early 1900's. Typical of her type, she was a stern-wheeler and had a main deck, upper deck and a pilot house. In the early 1890's she was commanded by Joseph Conrad, who used his experiences aboard to write the novel Heart of Darkness, a book which later served as the basis for the movie Apocalypse Now.

I began by making a template from cereal box card, which served to get consistent shapes for the hull and main deck. The hull is 7" long by 3" wide, and cut from .5" foamcore, giving the model a good freeboard. The deck is cut from 1/16th inch basswood which gives a durable playing surface for figures to stand upon. Planning ahead always helps. In this case the overall length of the basswood deck is 9", but I cut out a 2" rectangle from the stern portion as shown, leaving a .5" wide strip on either side. This is where the paddlewheel will sit.


I wanted a smooth finish to the sides of the hull, as well as a slight lip above deck level. For this I used more cereal box card, since it's thin and flexible, gluing it to the bows and sides and wrapping it around the stern. Ordinary pins served to keep it in place while the glue dried.

In the next stage I added two narrow strips of card along the sides, since the Roi des Belges featured something very similar. Holes were then drilled through the card, basswood and foamcore, giving a good solid foundation for mini-dowels which will support the upper deck. Five each side is quite enough for this job, and allows room to stand five or so 25-28mm figures on 2 pence piece bases.

Once all was dry I painted the deck a basic tan color and built two small deckhouses from foamcore. Thin card cut to shape and painted form the doors and windows. I cut louvers in the windows since these were a feature of steamboats of this time. The deckhouses will be glued onto the areas of bare basswood.

Although the Roi des Belges seems to be painted quite a dark color (indeterminate in black and white photos of course), I chose a spinach and cream color scheme, as it was one fairly typical of Victorian times.

Next up, constructing the paddlewheel and on to the upper deck.

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