A Tribekka for 'Maximillian 1934'

 

Vrooom! Vroom! Dakka... Dakka... Dakka.... 

Happy Holidays everyone! 

It's another Painting Challenge, so in Curt's world that means that another new project (or two) has to be undertaken. 

This time, it's 'Maximillian 1934', a car racing game set in a post apocalyptic 1930s, and I thought a perfect candidate for the 'High Adventure Studio' location. 

I have to admit that 'Car Wars' and 'Gaslands' have not always scratched that itch, but I do love the vehicle designs of 1930s period, with their swooping, long-nosed cowlings, narrow spoked wheels and the whacky bauhaus aesthetic, so Maximillian 1934 really appealed to my lizard brain.

I have four cars and a few motorcycles from the range that I'm wanting to get done the Challenge. I figure they should be enough for a spirited race, with several varied vehicle designs for players to choose from. 

So, for my first effort, I present to you this sporty three-wheeled Tribekka. 

I gave it a forward facing water-cooled machine gun and a brace of linked Lewis guns on a rear-facing pintle mount. You know, 'cause these are obviously things you need on a vehicle. 

I built out a mahoosive engine for it and gave it big single, side-mounted exhaust pipe. As the game uses a template to move, and is a bit fiddly with arcs, I decided to base-up this guy and the others that will follow.

As I want the cars to be quite visible on the track, I sprayed it a bright yellow, reminding me of the 'Fun in the Sun' yellow we had on our sporty Ford Focus in our salad years.  

I hope to have a roadster up in a week or two. Wish me luck and thanks for dropping in for a look!

- Curt

Film Crew from the Golden Age of Cinema

Years ago I came up with a simple set of rules to (ahem) set the stage for madcap stunts and the off-the-cuff storytelling found behind the scenes of a movie set during the Golden Age of Cinema.

The rules challenge players to attain ‘Top Billing’ status by either having the most Fame Points by the end of shooting, or by simply being the last character to still be left standing on the movie set. The actors with the top Fame scores at the end of the shoot will have Top Billing on the movie playbill, and be able to bask in cinematic glory - perhaps having a shot at an Academy Award for their unscrupulous efforts.

A 'scene' from our Sword & Sandals game (note the 1.0 version of the film crew)

Previous victims, er, players of a 'Top Billing' game

...and their hard-earned Academy Awards!

The rub is that the actors are often forced to spend their Fame to gain the Director's attention, and so foil the plans of competing actors. With this, the actors have to strike a balance between protecting their accrued Fame while also spending it wisely it to seize the moment in order to burnish their reputations. 

For example, any player/actor can interrupt the action of another by demanding a 'screen re-write'. These re-writes can range from (but are not limited to) choreographing a complex stunt, constructing a scene where another actor looks the fool, or perhaps seizing the camera crew to get a closeup as they give a pithy line of dialogue. 

These 're-writes' are entirely up to the imaginations of the players and always create a huge amount of good-natured fun. In addition each screen re-write can be challenged by another star sparking 'Ego Trips' where the contesting stars bid-up their Fame points to try to convince the Director (GM) why their approach to the scene should be favoured. It's all good, silly fun.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. This film crew is offered by the talented folks over at Eureka Miniatures.  They are a wonderful set of minis, and a real joy to work with. Now I just need to get Byron to make me an acrylic 'field of view' template to fit the round base and I'll be set... 

Happy holidays everybody and thanks for dropping in for a peek!

- Curt 

The Thirteenth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

 

Hi All!

It is November 20th, and with the coming of winter it is also time to plan for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge!   

For this season, our 13th, we'll be making our way through the film lot of 'AHPC Studios, GmbH', a loose cluster of stages, workshops, offices and film sets. It is here that we will offer participants to partake various Silver Screen themes. More on the Challenge here. 

2mm Romans and Barbarians for 'Strength & Honour' and 'To the Stongest'

Hi All!

Earlier this spring I picked up Mark Blackhouse's 'Strength & Honour' which has been recently released through the Too Fat Lardies' Reisswitz Press imprint. A few years ago I participated in a very early playtest session with Mark and really enjoyed many of the concepts he had developed for his rules. Well, I can say that the finished product is absolutely terrific, and a real credit to all his hard work.  

'Strength & Honour' is similar is scale to Simon Miller's excellent 'To the Strongest', but has a completely different approach to combat resolution and army morale - not necessarily better or worse, just different and innovative. While the rules are simple to learn, they provide a lot of depth, giving players a lot of nail-biting decisions and easily resolved combats. I think it's a great game, and a wonderful addition to the Ancients stable of rules. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to play those large iconic battles of the period within a manageable space and a reasonable amount of time.

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Being a fan of the smaller scales, I was keen to try my hand at creating some 2mm units for use both Strength and Honour and To the Strongest, so with no further ado here are some of my recent efforts.

Barbarian Warbands

The basis for all these units is built around 3d models from the talented fella over at Project Wargaming. I played around with the designs in the slicer to create more irregular mobs/formations - it worked okay for the most part, especially when they are viewed at an arms length away.

Two Roman Legions in triple and double acies formation.

The majority of the units are based on 130mm x 60mm MDF provided by my good pal Byron over at Northern Lights Terrain. Due to the figures' tiny size, I kept the groundwork fairly minimalistic to help mitigate the figures being lost in the muddle. 

A couple units of formed cavalry.

Light Cavalry

I pretty much exclusively used Citadel Contrast Paints for this project as I find they provide an interesting tonal depth to the colours, which I kind of like. The other benefit was that they allowed me to bang-out most of these units (essentially two armies of 12 bases each) in around a month. 

Skirmishers

A base of British light chariots.

A Barbarian Camp

A Roman Camp

For the labels, I cut thin strips of magnetic paper along the back of the bases. This allows me to swap-in whatever I need for the scenario at hand. After a few years of hosting games, I find that if one can provide as much information on the units themselves then it saves both time and confusion for players when the game is underway.

Anyway, there you go, a neat little project that helped me while away my spring. Thanks for visiting and I hope you have a terrific day.

- Curt

Dryads and a Tree Spirit

Hello!

For the past few months I've been running a Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing campaign for our local group. This week one of the character's story arcs came to its conclusion, which involved a group of feral dryads and a vengeful tree spirit. Knowing the encounter was coming up soon, I took a look on MyMiniFactory for some suitable figures to use, and found these excellent models designed by 'The Dragon Trappers Lodge'. 

These are all finely detailed figures and quite delicate, but I reasoned that they only had to survive one play so gave it a go. :)  The Tree Spirit turned out to be a bit of a contentious print, with the head and arms refusing to resolve properly (probably more my fault than the figure's design). 

With time ticking down to our game session, I decided to try my hand with some light sculpting using green stuff and wire armatures. Due to the gnarled design of the model, and some bits I could repurpose, the sins of my 'sculpting' managed to bodge it all into something that I could work with.

With a few midnight oil painting sessions they were made ready for the game. Tabletop mayhem ensued, fun was had, so all-in-all a very happy outcome. Win!

Thanks for dropping in for a look!

- Curt