Entry #4 to AHPCX: Cartel Gangers and their Hideout

Happy New Year Everybody! 

This is a book-end entry to my SAS post from last week. Here we have a nasty band of cartel members, in the midst of a shoot-out next to their seedy caravan hideout.

Similar to my previous post, these figures are all from Spectre Miniatures. I find them to be  very characterful sculpts and a lot of fun to paint. 

As with most of my skirmishy collection, I sawed off the original metal bases on all the figures and replaced them with acrylic bases supplied by my good friend Byron over at Northern Lights Terrain (as we all know, Byron's both a participant and a long-time Challenge sponsor, bless him). It's a bit of a pain to do, but I like the effect of being able to see the table surface though the bases.

The caravan/housetrailer is from Sarissa Precision. I really like their kits as they are seemingly specifically designed for muppets like me. I managed to put this thing together in under 30 minutes AND without completely screwing it up. Bonus.

I wanted to this to be a really dodgy place, definitely not an AirBnB Superhost location, so I went pretty hard on the weathering. For the siding I wanted an effect of faded, peeling paint which I attempted to convey with various shades of simple craft paints. It's pretty rough, but I think it works at arms length.

I kept the interior fairly basic. As opposed to the exterior these guys must be minimalist neat freaks...

I wanted the skylights to be just as nasty as the exterior so I smeared superglue on the surface and misted it with water to get a frosted, scaled effect. I then drybrushed them both light khaki to convey they being filthy and cracked.

Now for a little tabletop scatter. These trash piles, cardboard boxes and stacks of concrete bricks are also from Spectre. 

I find the piled trash bags to be especially neat additions to the terrain collection. 

The largest pile of bags is cast flat along the rear so it can be placed flush along a building. I think they all help give the tabletop that lived-in, urban-decay look.

The Ford F-150 Raptor was a very late addition and has a little story behind it. It was Sarah's birthday this past Monday and a few days prior I was at a ladies gift shop picking something out for her. After I made my purchase I spied in the children's section a group of diecast vehicles. This truck caught my eye and I plunked down for it thinking that, with a little weathering, it will serve nicely as a ride for my cartel boss. 

Thanks for checking in. Now, I put on my pith helmet and head back to Challenge Island. 

Worst Case Scenario #18: 'Time Machines, Cultists and Samurai - Oh My!'

Its been a while since we revisited our rollicking Strange Aeons campaign of manly, two-fisted adventure and cliff-hanging derring-do, so I dug up the character sheets and dusted off the pulp figures so we could play another chapter in our story.

To recap: It is 1937, and our team of stalwart adventurers, following a tenuous lead, are  in the midst of investigating a secret cave complex along the Basque coast of war-torn Spain. They have just vanquished a combined group of The Cult of the Yellow Hand and the Nazi Special Action Unit: ‘Dark Ocean’. At the end of that pitched melee, the heroes captured a Dark Ocean senior officer whom they questioned (using a touch of harsh language, it must be admitted). 

The Dark Ocean Officer, plotting his evil plan. (figure painted by Nick)

From that miserable cretin they gained intelligence that the tunnel complex continues much deeper, ultimately leading to a super-secret laboratory of vile, eldritch design.  With this knowledge they set off to find this strange lab.

Upon entering the final cavern, the heroes discover a large foreboding device with a group of Yellow Hand cultists and a Dark Ocean officer arrayed on its platform. The evil commander points towards the interlopers and barks out an order. Before the adventurers can respond, the alien engine glows bright and their enemies disappear in a flash of yellow-green light.

The cultists give the heroes the finger before whisking away.

So , something BIG is being planned by the forces of EVIL and our heroes will need to act with cleft-chin determination if they wish to foil the nefarious plans of The Yellow Hand and Dark Ocean!
How will this end? What unspeakable things are the villains planning? Well, let's find out.

The investigators examine the machine and after some poking around deduce that it is some sort of ethereal transporter! 

On the upper command platform they find the command instrumentation is set as follows:

Ein: 32/3/50.2303 x 131/2/55.5714 + 1447
Zwei: 27/34/25.3416 x 34/30/1.9686 - 1992
Drei: 35/54/7.041 x 14/31/4.821 + 1565
Vier: 19/52/1.8624 x -99/3/35.676 +1262
Fünf: 42/43/39.2046 x -81/2/34.3608 +1602

After puzzling it out, the heroes deduced that the machine has been calibrated to five locations around the world, vis-a-vis longitude and latitude coordinates. The four numbers at the end of each sequence eluded them (but it eventually became clear as we discover below).

Knowing that there was no time to waste, our adventurers, plus two faithful henchmen, calibrated the machine to the first set of coordinates, positioned themselves on the platform, and...

....off they went.

This is the point where I had a bit of fun messing with the players.

The guys thought they would simply be travelling to another setting, playing as their normal, regular 1930s era characters. But instead what happened when I revealed the second play surface was that not only were they in another hemisphere and different time (15th century Japan), but they were also of a different race and the opposite sex! 

Here are the heroes when they left through the Ethereal Transporter

...and how they arrived on the other end(!). Yup, trippy.

So, what happened is that the Dark Ocean ethereal transporter zapped the player characters' bodies to The Dreamlands (one of the Outer Planes described in HP Lovecraft's mythos), while their souls continued onwards to their final destination, possessing bodies in that realm. Sheesh, simple really. 

And here are the Villains which were waiting for them on the other side.

The new body of the Dark Ocean officer. (figure painted by Sidney)

The villains were guarding a Japanese temple, with their leader chanting and chiming the gong. Yep, bad news. 

Undeterred, the heroes advance to make every effort to stop the ritual. Jeremy's character went up the left flank, Sylvain and the parties retainers on the right, and the rest drove up the center towards the temple.

Jeremy's female samurai quickly got stuck in with a mob of enemy ashigaru. While the first few rounds went well, with her killing several with her bow at close range, things turned for the ill and she was overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Meanwhile on the opposing right flank, Sylvain cut a swath through the enemy minions with his character's naganata. The rest of the players also got caught up fighting the evil minions and time was slipping away...

At the temple the Villain had completed his dark ritual and turned to deal with the approaching heroes. A smile crossed his face as he knew what he had summoned. 

The Villain's body hideously contorted, inexplicably expanded, and finally exploded in a sheet of viscera (love that word, 'viscera' - a wonderful synonym for 'icky') to reveal that a nasty Japanese demon, a Jorõgumo, had used his body as a gateway to emerge into this world. Ewww!

The heroes were initially horrified, but quickly recovered and put their heads down to attack the foul creature. In the pitched melee, the Jorõgumo tried to cast webs to ensnare the characters but they deftly dodged them (i.e. succeeded in a series of saving throws that defied belief). In the end it was getting a little tense as all the players were severely wounded by the demon. Nonetheless, Peter's female archer notched an enchanted arrow and managed to find a gap in the demon's defences to take down the foul beast. 

It was a fun night out, with the Daisho rules giving a great game. 

As to the characters and their unfolding adventure? It looks like their next destination will be ancient Egypt. 

Have a great week and stay tuned for the next chapter!

The Seven (Female) Samurai' - Onna-Bugeisha

A few months ago I saw these female samurai (Onna-Bugeisha) from Warlord Games and immediately knew I had to pick up a set. Funny enough, there's a bit of synchronicity involved as well as I've had a Samurai-themed game rattling around in my head for a quite some time and these figures fit the bill perfectly. 

I think these are some of the nicest castings that Warlord has produced. They are beautifully crafted, have realistic proportions and are elegantly posed - you almost think they are from a larger-scaled range. Just exquisite.

I have to admit I was a little intimidated when I first set off to paint these figures as I wanted to avoid just knocking them all out in solid colours, instead I wished to try a few patterns that would (very) loosely convey some of the amazing textiles these women would have worn. But, as many of you know, patterns can be tricky, and after a few tests runs on a piece of card, I found that the simple triumphed over the complex (thankfully for me, this is a mantra followed by Lady Sarah in her choice of men). To my eye at least, these fairly straight-forward patterns seem to do the trick in not overpowering or 'muddying' the figures' inherent great lines.

The central figure, about to draw her bow, is my favourite of the set.

The flowers on the bases are perhaps a little excessive, but they were such pretty figures that I thought they deserved the extra bit of ornamentation.

I also managed to get some buildings done for this period as well. These are all from Sarissa Precision. Nice kits and very easy to assemble and paint. Here we have a temple shrine, a modest village house and two rice storage sheds.

I have a few more items for this project to get done but we'll see where the brushes take me.

Thanks for dropping in folks 

...AND a Very Happy New Year to you all!!

Curt

A New Project: The Second American Civil War (2020-?)

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This project is a pure flight of fancy, a bit of shameless, cathartic self-indulgence. I've always had a dark fascination for contemporary conflicts - the brutal, kinetic and extreme violence that seems to pick away at the edges of our fragile veneer of modernity. I know that for many in the hobby, ultra-modern warfare is simply 'a stetting too far', or indeed too close, perhaps a little too near to home. I completely understand, but I find this setting allows me to indulge my somewhat jaundiced view of the world, letting me to playfully skirt the margins of convention (and perhaps good taste).

Several years ago I wrote a piece on my blog where I reflected on wargaming, history and morality. In retrospect I think it was a little too heavy for a toy soldier blog, but whatever, I enjoyed writing it and I recently revisited the post along with all the well-considered responses from those who took the time to comment on it. At the time when I wrote it, I wasn't sure if I wanted to wargame ultra-modern settings, but now I think it may serve nicely as a cathartic outlet. 

While wanting to do something ultra-modern, I'm not especially interested in gaming the stereotypical white special forces guys operating in third world countries, killing brown and black people. Instead I want to explore the divisions in our own western society by taking our contemporary environment to an extreme conclusion, a narrative where North America has fundamentally broken down. It's meant as a poke in the eye to our civilized sensibilities, something provocative to fly in the face of our Western sense of superiority - blowing up the idea that, 'it could never happen here'. 

So I present to you my vision of 'The Second American Civil War (2020-?)'. 

I won't go too much into the hypothetical background other than to say that it's built upon the premise that the POTUS, fearing the comeuppance of impending destiny, has manufactured a crisis from which he has declared martial law. This serves to interrupt any constitutional challenge to his power and helps to divert attention away from his various entanglements. 

Peaceful demonstrations criticizing the Executive Office are suppressed by elements of the government's enforcement agencies and nationalist militias. So, demonstrations turn to riots, and riots to open revolt. From this, the great 'American Experiment' begins to unravel.

Like many of these kinds of projects, this one will probably never see 'completion', but that's not what this is all about. I'm just wanting it to serve as a silly vehicle for my sardonic, very personal narrative of what I see occurring in the world today.

Anyway, enough blather, let's get on to the miniatures!

The figures and terrain seen here are from several sources.

First, we have a team of MAGA Militia in their distinctive red baseball caps. These guys are from Spectre Miniatures. Great sculpts, though the weapons are 'true scale' which means rather fragile.

Then we have a team of generic, very well-equiped urban operators. Perhaps members of a SWAT team. These chaps are from Hasslefree miniatures. A bit larger than your average 28mm figures, but beautiful models to work on.

Then four members of a Mexican Sicario hit team. As a certain silly Orange Man described them, these are all 'Bad Hombres'. The figures are from Spectre Miniatures.

Finally a group of local survivors just trying to stay alive. I imagine these as ex-military service personnel armed and clothed in an ad-hoc mixture of gear and equipment. These are also from Spectre.

I'm imagining several more factions, militias, thrill-kill cults still to come, which should be fun and perhaps raise an eyebrow or two. :)

The terrain shown here is a mix of stuff as well. 

The gas station is from Sarissa Precision. This was a incredibly fun kit to work on. Due to the setting I had in mind, I really went over the top on weathering it. Sarah says I need an old Coke machine out front and a bunch of windblown newspapers around the pumps - as usual, she's absolutely right.

The billboard is from my good friend Byron over at Northern Lights Terrain and Gaming Supplies. A great little kit that was easy to assemble and a doodle to weather up.

The two wrecked cars are from 'The Walking Dead' terrain boxed set. I think it has 4  plastic vehicles, half a dozen barricades and a bunch of other scatter for around 30 bucks - Really, an incredible value for what you get. I picked this up at 'Crisis' this past autumn and DaveD was kind enough to send it on home so I wouldn't have to pack it around Europe for the rest of our vacation. Thanks Dave! 

The green wrecked car is a resin model from Armorcast. 

The Jersey concrete barriers and oil drums are 3D prints from Thingiverse. 

So there you have it, my little post-apocalyptic diversion for the summer. I invite you to come back to see more stuff roll out over the coming months. It's going to be YUUGE! 

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