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zippyfusenetParticipant
I can’t comment specifically on the Too Few To Fight rules. Actually, I have a copy on my bookshelf, but haven’t yet read through them.
But, 19th century European lancers could sling their lances in order to use a carbine, because they had a strap on the lance and a boot as part of their horse furniture to hold the lance butt. I’ve never heard of or seen an illustration of an Indian warrior slinging his lance.
I’ll watch out for more information.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantIn this respect it is interesting, someone would have to explain to me how an Mounted Indian wearing a spear or better a lance does how to use his bow or his long firearm if he has one?
I ran across something that bears on your question. This passage comes from the book Life Among The Apaches by John C. Cremony, published in 1868. Cremony was a former cavalry officer in the Mexican War who stayed out west, traveling much in New Mexico, Arizona, California and Mexico in the 1840s-1860s and serving again in the California Volunteers in the Civil War.
Cremony states several times that he wrote this book specifically to accurately describe and correct misinformation about the Indians he had met in his career in the southwest, not only several tribes of Apaches but others, including Pimas, Maricopas and Yumas. Cremony several times states that he skips and glosses over many events in order to focus on and describe the Indians more fully and accurately. So I take it that in this passage, Cremony intends to include all relevant detail.
In the summer of 1849, while traveling alone the desert Journada del Muerte from Socorro to Dona Ana in New Mexico, Cremony was chased by a mounted party of Mescalero Apaches. Fortunately for Cremony, he had the better horse, and got away from them. Describing his pursuers, Cremony wrote,
“There were some forty of them, and none with fire-arms, but mainly supplied with lances, only five or six of the number carrying bows and arrows. These last named projectiles commenced to whistle near me…”
Apparently these warriors carried lance or bow, but not both. I’m surprised, I would have expected every warrior to carry the full traditional panoply: lance + shield + bow + quiver + war club + knife. But perhaps you’re right, and a mounted man would not try to manage both a lance and a bow.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantshelldrake, you’ve had a couple of thoughtful answers to your OP, so I’m going to go haring off on a tangent. Fair warning, ignore me if you’re easily annoyed.
Part of the charm of REH’s Hyboria is the naive caricatures he created of various historical cultures, Egyptians and Romans and Zulus and Knights of different eras, all jumbled up together, beating on each other with blunt objects. All of them seem to be drawn from some colorful, illustrated, c.1920 Big Golden Boy’s Wonder Book of World History. Although REH wrote pulp text, his fiction translates very well into cartoon art. Many of us know Conan and his world as much from the derivative comic books (Franzetta!) as from REH’s original stories.
Many wargamers have done what REH did; pulled figures from their historical wargame collections, Greeks and Assyrians and Turks and American Indians, and jumbled them up into an Hyborian Campaign. I’ve played in a few of those, they were good fun.
But I have sometimes thought…that 1/72 plastic figures would best present the comic art aesthetic of REH’s pulpy Hyborian Age. Esci Zulus and Pathans, Italieri Woodland Indians, Nexus Egyptians, Airfix Robin Hood Yeomen, all jumbled up together in their awkward flat poses with paint flaking off them, jabbing each other with pointy sticks.
I’ll never start the project. I think just about it sometimes, and smile.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantRobert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was a man of his time and place, and his culture was reflexively racist in ways we can hardly imagine without a focused effort. Howard’s black tribesmen aren’t ‘baddies’, they’re just there, like his other caricatured ethnicities; his Stygians, his Shemites, or his Aesir and Vanir, for that matter. If you sanitize Howard, he’s not Howard, any more than a bowdlerized Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain. I say, take him as he is or leave him alone.
Some people are going to object to playing a game set in the Hyborian Age. If you want a socially progressive background for your heroic fantasy wargaming, I propose Sam Delaney’s Neveryona stories.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantWell, shuckins. I thought this thread was gonna be like Meg Ryan’s restaurant scene in Sleepless In Seattle. What a dissaperntment.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantIf you want to include German S-Boote and British MTBs in your game, I would go no smaller than 1/1200 scale. An S-Boot was 35 meters long, less than 1 inch in 1/1200, and MTBs were smaller.
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zippyfusenetParticipantSorry to read that, Pascal. I forwarded your email with the error message to [email protected]. I hope they can permanently clear the problem up.
In the mean time, you can PM me via my user-id zippyfusenet at bartertown.com
or PM me via my user-id zippyfusenet at http://www.lead-adventure.de/
or PM me as Irving Horowitz (the one in Cincinnati, Ohio) on Facebook.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantSounds interesting. Will this be a miniatures game, a boardgame, or a hybrid? What rules will you use? What models will you use, if any?
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantHi Glenn. My own Hebrew army is built for both early and late. It’s mainly Chariot miniatures. Nice figures, a little weak at the ankles, I often reinforce the ankles with a dab of epoxy before they break. Hupshu spear and hupshu bow make up the most of the tribal levy. Light and heavy chariots are from the Assyrian range.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantIf the objective is simply a fun game loosely based on air combat, I have no basis for criticism. This is (AFAIK) not the case, and Tom needs to justify his claim that it is a game that offers ‘historical accuracy’.
What if the designer’s objective is to provide a convincing illusion of verisimilitude so that players can willingly suspend their disbelief, enter into a dramatic theater-of-the-mind wargame experience, and have fun? Key words: ‘convincing illusion’. And what if some (many) people have a different level of disbelief than you do, and are convinced by things that don’t convince you?
Is that all right? Can we agree to disagree? Why must we continue to argue?
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantUm, contact you how?
With the name ‘Breton’, I guess that you’re in France. I’m in Ohio. Are you interested in paying trans-Atlantic postage? It’s very expensive to ship a small package outside of the US.
Out of curiosity, why are you looking for Frontier miniatures in particular? They’re long OOP, hard to find, were good in their day, but aren’t up to the latest sculpting standards. There are other 25mm Plains Indians and Apaches of similar height and heft currently in production, from Rafm and Minifigs, for example, that would fill out an old school 25mm collection.
My email is zippy-at-fuse-dot-net. I am going on a rod trip this evening to the Cold Wars game convention in Lancaster Pennsylvania. I don’t do email on my phone, so I may not respond until next week, when I’m home again.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantRetirement meansa lotsa more hobby. Also house and yard getsa more better maintenance. And I cooks lotsa. Loving retirement. Missing work not. Missing some face-to-face with co-workers…but then there’s you to bandy words with, so itsa good.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantYou’ve seen some of my work. Here it is again, in case you forgot:
I’m not that good, but very consistent. I block paint over white primer, very neatly, picking out all the detail I can see, and I try to create enough tone contrast that you can see the figure at three feet. No high-lighting, black-lining, nothing fancy. I like to paint irregulars, and use lots of earth tones and greys. I finish everything with a super-thin black wash, so thin you can’t see it, but it adds depth. These days I mostly paint 25mm figures, but my 20mm and 15mm are just the same. White eyes with brown pupils on the 25mm, just brown shadows on the smaller figs’ faces. I go over each figure several times, correcting every sloppy mistake. I’m a painfully slow painter.
A few years ago I learned how to dry-brush over black primer, and I paint some that style from time to time. The Indian on the right of the photo is an example. I’ve experimented with high-lighting on a few figures, not that guy. I’m trying to improve, even at my advanced age. Actually, I have more time to practice, now that I’ve retired.
My goal isn’t to create a masterpiece, but to finish another wargame unit to play with. Alas, OCD slows me down. I often buy painted figures at flea-markets and from marketplace ads…but then I have to ‘touch them up’, and I usually substantially repaint them. Sigh. At least I save time by using the original paint job as a base coat…
In spite of everything, it still feels great when I can get in the zone and crank them out!
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantExcellent work scratch-building that Minoan temple. It deserves its own storage/carrying case. Although, really, it should be on display when it’s not in use.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThe comparison was not between methods of showing altitude in air gaming (eg: dice v telescoping rods) but between using dice to represent altitude in air gaming and dice to represent depth in ground gaming (ie: playing on a 1′ x 6′ board with the minis only moving laterally along one’s edge and using dice (or other markers) to indicate how far into the battlefield the units are). The latter appears crazy, but is the equivalent to some extent. The impracticality of such a system is -as pointed out- only due to the unfamiliarity of players with it.
I think we’re approaching a meeting of the minds, here.
The difference I see between dice representing altitude and dice representing ground movement, and one reason I like to physically point models at one another, is that analog horizontal movement in two dimensions is easy to engineer, while vertical movement in three dimensions is much more difficult, maybe because you have to overcome gravity.
I can play a two-dimensional game on a flat surface, a table. It can be as big as my floor space and my arm’s reach allow, say 5 feet by 12 feet. I can model elaborate terrain on the surface, if I want to. It’s trivial to move my models across the flat surface. I can easily construct a visually convincing moving diorama, suspend disbelief and enter emotionally into the drama of playing with my toys. “Charge!”
To move my toys in three dimensions, I must construct a mechanically complex flight stand, with multiple parts that fit with some precision, to allow me to move my models up and down. The stands are bulky and top-heavy, they easily fall over, and knock down other stands when they fall. Two stands can’t physically occupy the same space, so one airplane model can’t physically be directly above another at different altitudes, which is fairly common in dog-fighting. Because my reach is only to about 3 feet above the table surface, I have less space to work in vertically than horizontally. Reduced working space tends to magnify scale compression issues, which are always a problem when playing table top wargames with scale models. This leads to the visually displeasing result of a group of large objects embedded in a forest of sticks. Some players feel than the forest of sticks is a convincing illusion, but many do not.
All of these problems can be overcome at some cost, but they’re non-trivial. I’m satisfied to symbolically represent altitude on a dice or a dial, while I physically move my models around on a flat table and point them at one another. The illusion convinces me, I can fluently *see* the altitude differences in my mind’s eye. I appreciate that it takes more effort, and more practice, to *see* the part of the illusion that isn’t physically there. Why go to that extra effort when physical representation is easy, in two dimensions?
I look forward to the development of holographic miniature wargaming. Then we will be able to project highly detailed miniature images and move them as we please, without any physical constraints. Our toy airplanes will be able to fly in three dimensions, in real time or scaled down, just as we like. It probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but I can dream about it.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThe indication of those differences can be done in many ways (dice on a stand – be it a Wellington bomber or a Wellington command) but there is no reason to presume that one method of location is any better than another simply because a different dimension is involved.
M’kay, so you don’t think analog representation of altitude by physically moving model airplanes up and down is necessarily superior to displaying altitude on a dice or dial. I have a funny story for you. You will laugh.
I played in a CY6! game last weekend where altitude was displayed by dice sitting on the flight stands. Scanning the game table, I could intuitively see in my mind’s eye the relative altitudes of the models by reading the dice displays. Some of the other players couldn’t seem to see it. I pointed out several times, “No, you have no shot because there’s too much altitude difference between these planes.” I could *see* intuitively, that those planes with 3 displayed on their dice were way low compared to most of the models, displaying 5, and a few up higher displaying 6. I suppose the reason is that I have a lot of experience playing airwar games where altitude is symbolically displayed, instead of being physically represented, and some of the other players had less experience.
Furthermore, those players initially weren’t maneuvering in the vertical dimension, maybe because they couldn’t see it. When I power-dived two altitude levels to get out of a tight spot, it caught them flat-footed. It always does. Then, when I Immelmanned back up at them, they were shocked again. Once I had demonstrated vertical maneuver, the other players started doing it too. Again, I often see this happen in CY6! games.
This syndrome plays into that hobby horse that you’ve seen me ride before, that wargaming is a theater of the mind exercise, that it requires a convincing illusion of verisimilitude, so that the players can willingly suspend disbelief and enter emotionally into the drama of the action.
Different theaters have used different methods to achieve the convincing illusion. Audiences become accustomed to the local methods, and feel that they’re natural, when they’re really very unnatural and stylized. The classical Greeks put masks on their actors, and had them speak their lines through megaphones. Their audiences were convinced. Shakespeare used stage costumes and make-up, and wrote the actors’ lines in verse. His audiences were convinced. Many pre-technical vernacular theaters used puppets instead of live actors. Today high-tech video is ubiquitous.
Through long usage, dice displaying altitude present a convincing illusion to me. I can *see* the display in my mind’s eye, and enter into the drama. Some of the other players in that game could not.
Hunh.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantMaybe I have a little more to post on this topic.
I played in a Pearl Harbor Attack game about a year ago, using 1/700 airplanes and 1/1200 ships. This was an ultra-simple set of home-brew rules where the Japanese planes showed up, maybe got intercepted, maybe the escorts defended them, they bombed and torpedoed, flew off, then another wave came in. No real on-board movement for the airplanes, they just appeared and flew off again. It worked fine.
My advice is: use whatever models are conveniently available. 1/1200 ship models are common, so are 1/700; 1/600 or 1/400 ship models work fine too. The bigger display models can be a little fragile unless you build them intentionally for wargaming, leave off some of the masts or replace plastic with wire.
Here’s an example of ‘use what you got’. I lightly converted and painted up a dollar store pencil sharpener as a river gunboat, to use as a target in a c.1937 Sino-Japanese scenario. No kidding, if you shove a pencil up her stern and grind clockwise, you’ll make wood shavings. His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Armed Scenic Cruising Vessel Kudzu. She’s about 3″ long, maybe nominally 1/400 scale:
Here she is in the game. We were playing Mustangs/Air Pirates, using 1/300 airplanes on fixed-height stands, on a mat with a 5″ hex grid. The way I play, any number of airplane models can fit into a hex, we don’t sweat collisions. Yes, that’s an old Battlemasters game mat. I am a cheap’n’nasty wargamer:
Lately, I’ve been thinking that the most practical plan is to use flat deck plan images as ship targets. That way you can put your flight stand right on top of the ship, which you usually can’t do with a 3-D ship model. These are available from a number of sources, you can scan your own from any book or magazine with ship plan views, blow up or shrink them to whatever size you want, color them in with pencils if you like. Let me know if you want some links:
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantI don’t do that a lot. I have played in a Blue Skies game pitting 1/300 airplanes against 1/1200 ships on about a 40mm hex grid. That worked well.
How many model airplanes do you want to attack a ship in the same turn? Are you playing on a hex grid? How many model airplanes are allowed to attack in one hex in one turn? Or how many model airplanes can fit into the length of the ship model? Once you know these factors, it’s just arithmetic to determine how big a ship model you need to use.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThe ‘pilot check’ for attacks seems to avoid the specific ‘point and shoot’ requirement of pretty much every other game. Why keep the protractor/tape-measure time-consuming step? Why make players move the little models to align with their targets? What purpose does it serve?
As to altitude represented by dice/markers: I agree that stands are a hurdle for the genre, but equate it to tablespace for ground games. What would be the reception of an ‘easy entry’ Napoleonic set of rules that had forces lined up on the edges of a 1’x6′ board that used dice/markers to indicate how far each unit had moved into the imaginary center of the table?
Uh, wait. I thought you were interested in a set of airwar rules, played with model airplanes, that doesn’t require positioning the models in their real-world spatial relationships (pointing at each other) in order to execute combat. Do I understand that you still want the models to physically move up and down on sticks? Seems…inconsistent. Am I missing some point?
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThanks for your post, I’ll pick up Zeal and Bayonet one of these days. And thanks for asking, I am a voracious reader.
Recently finished:
Kyle E. Zelner A Rabble in Arms, a study of the Massachusetts militia in King Phillip’s War. A bit dry, worth the trouble if you like 17th century North America. Establishes first that in KPW, most soldiers were pressed from civil life for active duty. Then examines in detail exactly who was pressed from several different towns, how they were selected, how they responded to the call-up, and what the outcome was for the soldiers, their families and their towns. Some surprises.
Simon Armitage The Death of King Arthur. I thought I was buying a new translation of Mallory’s Morte de Arthur, but no, this is a different poem, the so-called Alliterative Death of Arthur. This one is curious on a couple of counts. It was written after the Norman conquest, in the early 1100s, but in Middle English rather than in Norman French, and in the alliterative poetic form rather than in rhyme. Although this is a very Anglo-Saxon poem, the hero is Arthur, King of the Britons and, um, scourge of the Saxons, wasn’t he? Translation is needed, Middle English is a foreign language to me. This is a *very* Anglo-Saxon poem, it seems older than the high middle ages. There is no courtly love at all, women hardly appear. It has nothing to do with the ‘historical’ Arthur, whoever he was. This epic is all about the noble lords, feasting and boozing and boasting and defying, hacking and spearing and spilling each others entrails, about who has the best gold-chased armor, the fanciest twinkly jeweled sword. It’s repetitious and tedious in parts and the alliteration is often contrived, but it read faster than I expected. You’ll like this if you’re an Anglo-Saxon buff.
In progress:
Peter G Tsouras Warlords of Ancient Mexico. Finally! A thorough, well-written popular history of the civilizations of Anahuac (the Valley of Mexico), starting with Teotihuacan and running through the Aztecs, told not in the National Geographic ‘we dug this up’ genre, but as a narrative history of the great conquering kings, their campaigns and the empires they built, and how they fell. Copiously illustrated, lots of color, including a series of paintings commissioned for this book. A+++. I gotta get busy painting my Aztecs and Tlaxcallans.
James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson. I’m reading this one for penance. It’s taking a long time. Thank gawd this edition is abridged. It’s authentically 18th century, interminably 18th century. Recommended only for the hard core philosophe.
Mark F. Seeman Cultural Variability in Context, Woodland Settlements of the Mid-Ohio Valley. A collection of academic papers from 1992, surveying recent archaeological results from my region. *Very* dry, but the individual papers are mercifully short, only 3 to 6 pages. Probably hard to get a copy – I bought mine from the Sunwatch Village gift shop. Recommended only for those who have an abiding interest in prehistoric American Indians, especially in the Ohio valley. This book will help me set up authentic settlements for my Raid the Smurf Village wargames. “Oh no! It’s Gargamelle!”
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantAt least kilts would have allowed better ventilation than trousers. You should try one, Ochoin.
Someone told me once that if you wear underwear, it’s a skirt, and it’s only a kilt if you don’t. But she had been drinking, and she might have been flirting with me. I’m socially awkward, so I couldn’t be sure and I never found out.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantI’m hoping for pictures.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantC-ya there then.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantI never lurk for long. I’m here to be an opinionated bore, so I have to post. Sometimes I think it would be nice to become a Larger Than Life Personality, but that takes a lot of work, and I’m too lazy.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThanks for that Mark. I printed off the lot. I looked at Loose Files years ago with some interest, but my tricorne redcoats and their friends are all single-mounted 25mm, and I never adapted the rules to play with my figures. My 15mm 1812 are mounted like your 28s, it should be straight-forward to play your rules using my smaller figures, without even changing any measurements. I’ll see how they work.
By the way, the type on the first two pages you linked printed very, very small for me, so letters so tiny I could hardly read them. The third page, the Loose Files rules, printed a normal size. In my print window, I adjusted the first two images to 70% of size, instead of ‘shrink to fit’. That *should* have made them smaller, but instead it made them bigger. Hunh. The size adjustment crowded the rightmost pane, the one with all your links, off the printed page, which was fine by me. The result was somewhat larger type, still pretty small, but that was the biggest I could print it and still fit on an 8.5 X 11″ sheet of paper. Maybe it’s a browser issue, I’m using an oldish version of Firefox. Don’t know whether anyone else is having the same problem. You put a fair amount of work into your blog, the graphics are usually excellent, so I thought you’d like to know.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipant“By the way, come to think of it, shouldn’t PETA be more concerned that GW sells sable brushes? I’m sure there are extremely few people in this hobby who don’t own sable brushes.”
You fool! You’ve doomed us all!
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantI like your scenario.
Some annoying know-it-all may point out that dromedary camels seem not to have been widely used as mounts and beasts of burden until after about 1000 BC. I could email you a paper on the subject, if you like, and then you can know-it-all too.
New Kingdom/Mycenaean era Shasu, c.1200 BC, would still be walking, and packing their gear on donkeys. Or you could set the scenario a few hundred years later, when the Shasu have got camels, and make your raiders Dark Age Greeks. Or you could ignore me. It’s all good.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipant“And it’s maybe the only miniatures company they’ve heard of. 🙂”
BINGO!
Hey, did Jack Chick ever publish a comic demonizing Warhamster?
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipant“At times I’m absolutely tired of having to think of the colors to use for my dark age warbands — no standard uniform so each figure should be dressed differently. ”
Another Wargamer, of course much of the joy of irregulars is their challenge to our creativity. But, something that’s occurred to me lately is that in small-scale societies with simple tech and little commerce, many people will be similarly dressed, because there’s limited choice of materials. If people wear mainly deer hide, there’s a limited color range for tanned buckskin, with variation for how fresh or worn a piece might be. If the people of Split Beaver Village dye their leggings with black walnut hulls, it’s likely that most of the men wear fashionable washed-out-dark-grey leggings. If a fur trader regularly visits Tall Toad Village, the people there probably wear a lot of blanket cloth with selvage lines and in standard colors.
Following this principle, I’m able to reduce my design effort by developing predominant color schemes for groups of irregulars. This also has the advantage that I can more easily tell the groups apart on the game table.
Everything in moderation. I don’t want to put my warriors in uniform, like one of those Star Trek episodes where everyone on this planet wears a bi-colored leotard, or a metallic cloth robe. Ugh. So there’s still plenty of creativity required. I just don’t have to start from scratch with every figure.
On the other hand…a Dark Ages warband would include many high status individuals who had motive and opportunity to preen themselves in unique and colorful garments. But that peasant clubman and his two sons might all be wearing the same shade of dun wool, because that’s how Mawmaw dyes all her homespun broadcloth.
Not telling you how to paint your toy soldiers, of course. Just sharing some thoughts.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThanks for those thoughts Rhoderic, Another Wargamer. I’m a graphic arts ignoramus, always tended to favor the language arts. I’ve noticed the differing qualities of different shades of brown and grey, the concept of ‘hinting’ towards other colors makes sense…now how do I use that concept? And I’ll have to hit Home Depot for those color cards. I’ve always left that kind of thinking to my wife.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThat’s the ticket, Angel Barracks,
I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
I kissed my girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old townYou'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantBy nature I’m morose and snarkish. I’m most interested in history’s ironies and catastrophes, in the story of the common man and woman, in the hard-working people, the lowly of birth…So, rather than princes and parade uniforms, my miniature armies often comprise lots of guys with dust all over their faded, ragged uniforms; hungry, hairy, smelly men, flea-infested, with skin conditions and uneasy bowels, and with a fair sprinkling of shirkers, sharpers, camp followers and urchins among them. Bless them all. Hiya Grampa, Grammaw!
My paint box includes many shades of brown, beige, tan, taupe and certainly fifty shades of grey, to represent the dust of the earth and people who roll around in it. But it’s all a bit subtle for 28mm miniature figures, let alone the 15mm ones. My challenge is putting enough tone contrast on one of these drab little fellows so that you can see it from 3 feet away. My painted figures tend to blur into featureless blobs…disappointing.
These days I put a lot of thought into coordinating the shades on a figure, not so much the colors. Light coat, so dark belting and dark trousers, but in different shades. And keep the colors plausible for the subject, those people didn’t have black leather, and their walnut dye yielded a washed-out dark grey…Of course I paint *lots* of irregular troops, civilians and tribal warriors, so every figure is a unique composition. And I go for mass armies. I’ve been at this a long time.
My painting technique is primitive, but still improving. Recently I discovered a trick of painting a dark brown line down creases in anatomy on a nude figure, down the line of the spine, the crack of the butt, between and under the man-boobs. It really adds definition, you can see it from three feet. I’m enchanted.
Rafm IN-5 Iroquois by zippyfusenet[/url], on Flickr
Lincoln Log Built by zippyfusenet[/url], on Flickr
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantThanks for that thought Mike. There’s a GW store actually in my neighborhood. I’ll bop on over and checkitout.
The Siberia animals are very handsome. I’ll have a look through their site, but that’s a long way to post a package.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantIt’s peaceful here. I like it.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantHaving done this professionally, I agree with Tim. Database design and development is a lot of work, and data entry is way more than that. It’s a hobby in itself, if that’s how you like to spend your time.
I have no system of record at all. I organize my collection into boxes, grouped by subject, and label all the boxes. Built and unbuilt toys are kept under the same system. Boxes are stacked on shelves with their labels visible. As the inventory grows, I have to add boxes. Sometimes I reorganize and relabel. That’s some work, but it’s worth it.
I can pretty much find whatever I want with a little rummaging. Every so often I look around the storage room, feast my eyes, pop a few boxes and refresh my memory of what I have. Sort of like Smaug the dragon, lying on his treasure hoard…
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantI really enjoy your posts, Mark. You crank out well-painted figures at a ferocious pace, and your blog is an excellent showcase of your work. War of 1812 is one American flintlock war that I don’t cover in 28mm. You’re giving me the itch. I have some 15mm troops for that war, I need to find that box and put a game on the table.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantOh my gawrsh. Are those old Airfix Foreign Legion converted to ACW chausseurs? That takes me back.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantBeg pardon, but where are you? That largely determines for me whether or not we can afford the postage to trade. Also, how should I contact you, so we don’t clutter the board with the sordid details of minor transactions and vigorous haggling? (“You cannot leave my shop without buying this carpet!!! It is as beayutiful as Queen Victoria!!!”)
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantI’ve stepped up my gaming over the past year, but mostly at other peoples’ houses, game stores and conventions. I’m very lucky to have this network supporting my appetite for play. But my challenge is to put my own game room back in operation, blow the dust off my own carefully curated collection of models, and host some real lead-based miniatures games at my house. I *think* I *can*, I *think* I *can*, I *think* I *can*…
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
zippyfusenetParticipantMy copy of the Worthington Games/Plastic Soldier Company Hold The Line Reboot Kickstarter with all the add-ons came in the mail last week. Now it’s all put together and ready to go this weekend. A complete miniatures wargame in a box (well, two boxes and a couple of baggies), minimal assembly required. Schweet.
Of course it needs a couple of doo-dads added, I’m working on mounted leaders for the Indians and Rangers.
I found some good stuff at flea markets this year, but I paid full retail for this one, and it’s worth it.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
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