Citizens of Calamity, New Additions

There is nothing like making a plan and then having it run afoul of impulse almost immediately. After deciding that I was going to work on my WWI Marines I had to make a quick decision on some minis to bring with me and work on this week. The Marines are not primed yet so they aren't ready for painting but there are about 40 western minis that are ready. I picked out 8 minis to bring with me along with my halfling blood bowl team which is getting closed to finished. Over the last three days I have managed to paint all 8 of the western minis, and if that's indication I don't have enough miniatures to take me through the week. I really had a good time with the western minis, I forget how simple they really are. I painted them up to a reasonable game standard and they will, one day, grace the streets of Calamity. Since I don't have my basing materials with me I'm just going to show off a group shot. I'm not to pleased with the single shots right now so I'll wait till I have them based and re-take their photos. I'm thinking that at some point all the denizens of Calamity will have their own little background card which will include their picture.

Here are a couple of quick pictures

From left to right: Reaper Female Huckster, Wargames Foundry Soiled Dove, Reaper Texas Ranger, and Reaper Mrs Scarlet

From left to right, Black Scorpion (Tombstone 2,metal), Reaper Gunslinger, Brigade Games (Western Characters I) Bartender and Black Scorpion (Tombstone 3, metal)

Aetherworks 2 Story Western Building

I finally got my hands on an Aetherworks 2 story building kit. It went together quite easily with nicely written instructions. Its your typical lasercut MDF kit so you should warn the household that you are about to open the package or they may think there is a fire in the house. The only drawback to this building is that its just a shell, so you are getting something similar to a Gamecraft Miniatures kit, a 2 story building with no interior second floor. I do understand that Aetherworks is currently in the design stages for a kit just for this purpose. This is a quality kit, the only drawback being that Aetherworks is in Australia so shipping can be a real eye opener.

Here are pictures of my build:

Solid instructions, I would prefer more and larger pictures though. But really there is nothing particularly difficult in this kit.

Here is the sequence to building the false front cap. The way the pieces are designed you really can't make a mistake here. Just be sure to build up both the left and right sides before you do the top section.

Putting the walls together. In the basic kit there are no window or door framing pieces. You can buy an add on kit and select from a couple of different styles for your doors and windows.

Prepare to glue on the front porch.

And it ends with the porch in place.
This is also the first picture for building the porch supports, you can see the two upper supports already in place.

Parts for the porch

And finished

A couple of Calamity's citizens enjoying the new saloon.

And some shots of the finished building. 

WWI Belleau Wood Board Research

Although I have a number of books about the battle of Belleau Wood none of them really had the kind of maps I wanted. Something that would show the contour lines. This morning I finally found a French map site that could be shifted to a topographical view of the area. While I have no intention of trying to recreate Belleau Wood inch for inch this type of map will certainly help in determining how steep the slopes could be within the wood. It doesn't go down to the level of detail that I would really love to see, but that would probably require a visit to the area anyway, which is a bit impractical right now. Although its certainly an interesting idea.

I think a couple of concepts I'm working on for Calamity will work for Belleau Wood as well. The problem I'm trying to solve is the degradation of the foam itself as its constantly be slotted in an out. I'm considering layering on a very thin piece of styrene plastic around both the inside of the board cavity as well as around the outside of the insert. If I can make that sturdy enough I should be able to keep the foam from disintegrating with constant use. I was thinking last night that the inserts will allow me to show Belleau Wood in an immaculate form and as the battle progresses trees would go from full leaved to splinter masses. There are a lot of possibilities. The same would hold true for Calamity. I can allow it to grow or even reduce in size by having duplicate inserts that would show a given lot as vacant, with a building, or even with the ruins of a building after a fire has swept through town or something along those lines. It would allow me to continue to build models without having to rebuild or expand the board.

WWI Marines Time to re-start

What I have found out over the last year or so is that I'm incapable of starting a project and carrying it through to completion before beginning the next one. At the moment I have one major project that has occupied my time over most of the last year, that would be my wild west town of Calamity. I have a bunch of buildings done for that and I have a good idea of how the board is going to take shape, but painting the miniatures has ground to a halt. Almost two years ago now, when I started this blog, the main project was my WWI US Marines. I finished 15 of them back then and I haven't picked up another one since. Last week I was catching up on some TV and I picked up the box of unpainted pewter and started to prep the rest of the marines for painting, and there are a lot of them. I sorted and bagged them in 15 man platoons each with 2 rifle grenade launchers and 2 chauchats (sho-sho) gunners. The impetus behind getting these back out is that my friend Scott just showed off his finished German force, so he could use an opponent.

I'm just going to concentrate on the rifle companies right now, a total of eight which means I have seven left to paint or 105 minis. I have also found that while I love competition painting I also need something to slide in between the competition pieces to relax a bit so I'm going to try and alternate one platoon of marines with one competition piece.

Now the town of Calamity has priority on getting finished right now, I have a lot invested in it and I'm pretty stoked to get to working on the board itself (time allowing of course). But after that is finished I do want to do something similar for the Marines, so I want to do a WWI board for the Marines, but more modular than Calamity will be. While I do want to do a trench board, I also want to recreate in some small way the terrain for Belleau Wood. This area is not only wooded its really a ridge and featured all kinds of interesting features. I plan on using a variation of something I found on the Roundwood's World blog:
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/03/winter-sports-terrain-abode-of-madness.html
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-mans-land-terrain-and-few-loose-ends.html
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/05/glasgow-copse.html
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/06/glasgow-copse-artillery-emplacement.html

I think I will have to go with larger base modules but I think Sydney's approach is very sound and will really help create the atmosphere I'm looking for. I may not be able to make my inserts as generic and still recreate the rugged terrain of Belleau Wood though but if I plan carefully I should be able to pull it off. The only other thing that I would like to do is make the inserts a bit less obvious. I'll have to figure out a way to help disguise the outlines a bit, just for aesthetic purposes.

A lot of this has also been driven by the book I hope to receive in late December or early January from one of the kickstarters that I backed: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deanputney/experience-world-war-i-through-a-german-officers-p

This picture of a quiet German trench system (obviously not a fire trench, there is no fire step) helped to get things moving again.

Painting the Ultimate Halfling Team for Blood Bowl - Session 2

This really isn't a session 2 the way I had a session 1. This is the culmination of 3 or 4 days worth of painting, snatching an hour or two here and there. I have managed to finish off the red, add the purple as an accent color and get most of the leather done (I missed a few spots and one entire miniature during the leather process). They are coming along pretty good right now. I love some of the expressions on these guys, they have a lot of attitude. Here's a few pictures of the progress, they are closing in on being done, getting to the fiddly bits now. I haven't even started the three treemen players. I'm kind of at a loss on how to paint them.

I spent some time on another little project as well, but I have to get permission before I can post pictures (and I may not be allowed to).

I love this guy, but I see some paint splatter.