Salute 2011 Here I come!

Never before have I really planned four months ahead for a war games show. But now I have:0) I booked my table at Salute2011 in August, and wrote a speculative blurb about a 40mm French & Indian War game. Today it took shape.

I managed to get a game played today, an achievement in its own right these days. Ant one of my re-enacting wargaming buddies arrived at my house with some painted F&IW British figures and I broke out the Indians and Courier de Bois figures I have painted so far and within a short time we were skirmishing in the forests of up state New York.

We played a simple raid type scenario using the Legends system. I keep threatening to write my own skirmish system for this type of game but there really is little point Warhammer Historical’s Legends/GW’s LOTR system is pretty much the ultimate skirmish system in my opinion, apart from tweaking for stats for different troops and making sure the weapon rules suit the kind of game you want there just doesn’t seem any point messing with anything else.

The figures we us are mostly Sash & Saber 40mm figures with a few Honourable Lead Boiler Suit Company figures as well. I was delighted to find that most of my existing terrain collection worked very well and with only a few additions in the future we will have everything we need for playing F&IW games.

Anyway the upshot of the game was that, I LOST:0( my French & Indians were beaten by a bunch of rangers and local militiamen. However it was great fun game, which led into a discussion about exactly what we are going to do for Salute. By the end of the session not only did we decide what the game would consist of, we had come up with a painting schedule (Yeah, I know!) and a modelling plan, and rough dates for when we will TEST? each part of the game.

Who knows it might even go to plan. I will be chuffed if it does as it will be a game produced in a year. We bought the figures at Salute 2010 and hopefully will have everything finished for Salute 2011. We will also aim to supply Old Glory UK ? Sash and Saber with some photos for their websites. Now I wonder if OGUK would like to sponsor us, we need some British Infantry and a Wagon afterall.

Make sure you come back and see how the plan progress.

Sorry about the quality of the photos they were taken in a rather ad hoc manner in dying light. I will try and take some better ones next time.

Warhammer Ahoy! Progress

Just a quick entry today.
Finally, after being down for nearly a year, the WARHAMMER AHOY! website is back up and running.

It is not complete as yet, I am using its state of uncompleteness as a carrot to get it finished. However I am really enjoying putting it together and working with various photos has reminded me what a cool game it is. I might be forced to put an undead ship and some high elf ships on my to do list.

So if you get time have a look

http://www.spiritofthegame.org.uk/warhammerahoy/index.htm

Me distracted... Hell yeah.

Ok It's December and there is more snow on the ground than I have seen in this part of the world for decades. Recently I have made some progress with my EOE article for Wargames Illustrated, but otherwise wargaming has been on the work bench as I have been working on more NERF guns. the one I most pleased with is my Steampunked Maverick. Many Steampunked NERF guns on the net just have suitable paint job, usually brass and bronze. Like my NIte Finder I wanted to do something a little more. So diving in to my bitzbox that had previously had been reserved for Warhammer Ahoy! dwarf ships I set to work.


Steampunking this gun was great fun, I only had one thing in mind which was to use the funny twisty handle Burger King toy, but how I had no idea. this is how it turned out...

A friend of mine gave me a Dremel recently and my word is it a good tool, various bits got cut up with it and a quick swap of tool heads allowed me to grind off all the NERF logos. The picture above shows the various components glued on waiting for paint.


The sprayed gun. I LOVE CHAOS BLACK SPRAY! When I make models whether it is a piece of gaming scenery or a modded NERF gun, it is the addition of the undercoat that I love as it is this point where the whole thing comes together and starts to look like all one item that is meant to be.


The finished weapon. I love this view, the skull on the front is from a cheap Halloween toy. I have another one of these which will definitely feature on another gun in the future. You can also see small cross detail on the piping on the top of the gun. I used several Warhammer Empire shield bosses for some nice little details. In many ways the small details like this are more fun than the big features like the skull and the crank handle.

The finished item. I am dead pleased with this gun. It works quite well. This is the one that I experimented with various mods to imporve performance, some of which definitely didn't work. However I can't see me using this gun too much. It certainly wont take the kind of bashing that other guns will, so its performance is not quite as important.

And then not being satisfied with producing this gun I fancied using a wooden box that I had sitting around. Some Foamcore and green wool off cuts later and we have a display case. the outside pf the box needs some attention and a nice latch. I also have a box for my Steampunk Nitefinder.

Now all I need is some more guns. I fancy steampunking a NERF Longstrike with a wooden stock and telescopic site and then howz about a 40K Bolt Pistol, hmmm.