Kickstarter Rewards Received - Tiny Epic Quest - Gamelyn Games

I received another game in the "tiny" series from a Gamelyn Games Kickstarter. These are probably the easiest least worry filled Kickstarters out there. I think I would buy just about anything in the "tiny" series just to support them. I think this one was $24 dollars and maybe $5 for shipping. The quality is phenomenal and the game play is usually pretty good. And talk about packing in the components! When you open up the box and look at everything you almost wonder how you are going to get everything back in. While it might be a while before I can actually play this one I thought folks might like to see what's in the box:

Box Top

Box Bottom

Interior Box Top

Interior Box bottom

All this in a box that measures about 5" (slightly less) by 7"!

Rulebook, always good to have 

Player card

All the player cards

The Map Cards

Tokens for the player cards and racks for the plastic weapons

More tokens for use on the player cards

The all important dice!

Meeples and the various "weapons" they can hold

The Epic Quest deck

How you are traveling

And some more cards, I have no idea what these are for yet.

World War II Project - More Jeeps! - Rubicon Kits - The Build I

I opted to start with the US Jeep, I have some variations I want to build with the Airborne jeeps so I'm waiting for some research material to arrive before I start those builds. I wanted a more or less generic recon option and this one fit the bill with a choice between the .50 caliber HMG or the .30 caliber MMG. I have, or course, opted for the HMG in this instance.

This is a very straight forward build. This is a well designed and thought out kit and I really didn't encounter any difficulties putting it together. I haven't assembled the crew for it yet but I wanted to finish the vehicle first, the crew can come later.

This finishes into a very nice jeep, with a lot of options. I could have used the canvas covered windshield but that would have kept it in the down position the whole time so I opted for the standard windshield which I can move into an up or down position, ie. no glue! There are a lot of parts left on the sprue, so its a really good start to a very useful parts box. In this case all the British Bren guns, the US .30 caliber MMG as well as a whole host of other parts to outfit the British versions.

Quite frankly at $24 its slightly more expensive than some of the other resin kits out there but I highly recommend this one. Its a great value for your money. It probably only took 15 - 20 minutes to build it up so not much longer than I would have spent prepping and building a resin one.

A quick look at how this one went together.

The parts for step 1. I had already managed to glue the dashboard to the front fenders though. The wheels are flat on one edge but you don't have to worry about getting them right. They are thoughtfully keyed so that they will have the flat edge in contact with ground.

The end of step 1

Step 2 starts with the upper body and the seats, including that frightfully tiny clutch. I recommend getting that into place first

My new favorite clippers. I only use these for delicate parts but they are razor sharp and very maneuverable. All the small delicate parts survived intact, including the .50 caliber HMG.

The parts for Step 3. Upper and lower body will be glued together and its time to get the fun stuff on there.

The parts for Step 4. A few detail parts are all that are left to attach.

And here is the finished Jeep (A CJ2A for you purists)

World War II Project - More Jeeps! - Rubicon Kits

The new Rubicon jeep kits arrived exactly as I predicted, last Monday. I just haven't had time to really do much more than open the boxes. I didn't even take pictures of that till yesterday and it was quick. I ordered three kits, one US for more a more or less generic recon jeep and two British for my British Airborne.

The first comment is that the jeep sprues are absolutely identical. Beyond how you assemble them the sprues contain all the parts for all the variants. What is different, and what I didn't take a picture of, are the vehicle crews. The US version comes with a crew of four and the British version comes with a crew of two paras and a crew of two LRDGs. Even the decal sheet is common between the two kits. I was figuring that this would actually be the case and there would be plenty of extra weapons to flesh out the Warlord Games British jeep that I assembled the week before.

The kit looks pretty straight forward and typical of Rubicon comes with an excellent set of instructions. I'm hoping to find time to build at least one jeep this week just to get a feel for it. I need to get some AWI painting done as well! There is always something going on.

The upper body and the canvas top (not pictured) are separate from the sprue and come in their own bags.

A close up of the body underside. A nice bit of detail here that you are not likely to see. Definitely a possibility for some extra detail work though.

AWI Project - Fife and Drum have arrived

When I originally decided to get into the AWI I had decided that Perry Miniatures and Fife and Drum were going to make up the bulk of the miniatures in my AWI armies. I will be focusing on the Americans first and the Perry plastics have been at least started (Progress is slow, there is always so much to do around here). In the meantime I figured I may as well add to the lead mountain and put in my initial order to Fife and Drum. Following some advice from TMP I'm opting to start the army with four continental regiments and one militia regiment. With that in mind I ordered enough miniatures from Fife and Drum to build two 28 figure continental regiments and one 28 figure militia regiment. Of course since I only have one regiment ready to go from the Perry's I need to find another plastic box of them somewhere, I'll probably try the Warstore first.

So 84 miniatures from Fife and Drum arrived yesterday. I had a chance to go through this morning Jim at Fife and Drum did a marvelous job at filling my order. Although I do wish he would work up some regimental packs, it was a bit tedious getting my order into his system. They are fabulous miniatures and I really can't recommend them enough. They are well cast and mold lines are quite light. They were well backed and I only saw a few bent bayonets in the packs. Jim was also kind enough to include a few freebie extras in the package including a mounted American office (fortunate since I was going to order one and I forgot in the excitement of ordering more lead).

I need to clean up a couple of these and paint up a couple of samples just to see what I can do with them. I'm currently painting 4 of the Perry's right now. Four happens to be the number that fits on the popsicle/craft sticks I use when painting up army units. So you can at least look forward to a couple of samples in the next couple of weeks.

The first set of bags of minis all came with a nice header card attached.

I think by the end he was tired of attaching header cards! Looking forward to breaking out the brushes and working on these!

World War II Project - Jeeps! - British Airborne

With the anticipation of the new Rubicon jeeps arriving this week (perhaps even today), I decided to pull out the resin Warlord Games British Airborne jeep and get it built.

Now this is a fairly old kit but I was immediately disappointed with the quality of the casting. The resin casting was definitely from a mold that was on the tail end of its life. The metal castings were not good either. In fact the metal was brittle that several pieces actually broke at crucial spots. At this point I'm counting on having enough parts left over from the Rubicon kits to finish this one.

I suspect that this one will paint up just fine, but the build was just a little wacky, not difficult, just minor problems that irritate you. It makes me really look forward to getting those Rubicon kits though!

The raw, out of focus, jeep body casting. After the war, in the civilian world, this would become known as a CJ-2

All gussied up with what parts stay together. The driver's side front wheel does not sit well in the socket.

I'll hold off on priming and painting till I get the Rubicon jeeps.