Fix Bayonets!!!

Yeah, I finally got bit by the 18th Century gaming bug. It was really unavoidable.

It started with my deep seated love of the American War of Independence, being a Yank & all. Then it flanked me with my love of all things Holy Roman Empire/Austria-Hungary. Then it finally busted a .75 calibre round into my ass with the age of Marlborough & Eugene of Savoy putting the pain to the French. And don't forget that one of my Hall of Fame movies is the Last of the Mohicans....

So, with my continued, but slow, writing of Strike Force Commander, I was finally tempted to start formally reading about the period. The War of the Spanish Succession is cool. Way cool. And I'm a sucker for Tricorne hats!

So, I don't know when I'll get some figs & paint them, but I'm feverishly writing SFC so I can get a playtest group together and maybe get a published game out next year.

Fix Bayonets!

Faust

Attack of the WebOgre!

Well, I was over joyed when my brother Chas crawled over the Sierra Nevada Mountain range to spend the weekend with me and my Babydoll.

It's been some months since we got to hang, and we had a blast. He was gonna go to a Flames of War tourney that was advertised as being on Saturday in Sacramento, but the game store that was hosting didn't have it down until Sunday.

Needless to say, we canvassed the Bay Area & the Central Valley for cool hobby shops/game/comic stores. Turns out the places that had what we wanted were right in my back yard of Sacramento. Viking Hobby is awesome. Jessica & Mark do a great job with the place and are always great to talk to. We highly recommend them. And, many issues of Wargames Soldier & Strategy later, me & the Ogre drove back to Lodi to playtest Strike Force Commander.

We had a great time, determined the game, thus far, is really balanced, and discussed ways to improve on the rules. Now I have more typing to do. But having a sweet ruleset to play any time period is highly motivating.

Then, sadly, this morning the WebOgre hustled back over the hill.

I had a great weekend. Thanks, Bro!

Busier than a Whore on Dollar Night!

Yes, strange things are happening in my world. I'm really focused on other things of greater import than my hobbies.

So, I'll know more in the next week or two and will let you all know. In the mean time, keep at it and so forth.

Faust

How real is real?

Well, I've been sitting around painting my Fallschirmjager & missing my BabyDoll. She's in Vegas at a trade show, and I'm here with Memphis our Golden Retriever. We're both bummed. She's tearing to shit any stuffed animal she can find, and I'm feverishly painting 13 FJ in tropical camo. I've also rewatched the entire Band of Brothers series, The Eagle has Landed, Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, and a drum instructional dvd by master player Steve Smith. Yes, we miss our BabyDoll...

I'm finished with the 7 or 8 stages of layering, highlighting, inking, & relayering, when I reach that final point last night where a decision had to be made.

I finished watching Black Hawk Down and went to bed. I've got work to do at the office at 1pm, so here I sit, writing this for lack of anything better to do.

Anyway, enough whinging.

Every well painted Splinter B pattern German FJ camo job I've seen does something that doesn't make any sense to me except that its done for effect. That is, the green lines or hash marks that cover most of the smock are painted to be visible on a 28mm mini's smock, but I think this is incorrect.

The effect of taking a man wearing pattern B and shrinking him down to 28mm would mean that we would lose a lot of details that we could see at full size. That being said, the small, thin green hash marks would go to. We wouldn't be able to see them at that size. Moreover, the overall effect would be to slightly 'haze' the beige smock color.

Since my aforementioned BabyDoll has the camera with her in Vegas, I can't very well show you what effect I'm talking about, but I've managed to capture it on my figs.

"Well you're just saying that cuz you can't paint 'em that small" says the Mushroom Man in the back of the room. Listen, I can paint the warts on a Gnat's ass. I can certainly paint tiny green lines on beige color. I just happen to think that it isn't realistic looking when considered in that size.

So, with nods of support for every guy and gal out there who have painted visible lines in 28mm, I must contend that it doesn't represent what IMO, Splinter B would look like up close at that scale.

With this in mind, I also noticed that there is a much larger area of beige on the figs that have the lines, than on mine, which looks proportionally closer to the actual camouflage smock in real life.

Of course, this could just all be in my head. Anyway, work progresses on the baker's dozen I'm painting. I'll likely be finished with them by the end of the week, when my BabyDoll returns and brings with her the camera.

So, I'll post a new poll about lines or no lines.

Multi-tasking!

Well, as it would happen I have two concurrent projects running through my head, as though I didn't already have enough to do with work, writing Strike Force Commander, and spending time with my hot honey.

So, I ordered the 1644 ruleset from Foundry. I gave the old copy to WebOgre and this new updated version is simply tits. So, me and the boys are gonna give it a whirl and use our copious amounts of unpainted Testudo minis that are lying about. We dig the shizzle out of Thirty Years War. So we're testing different Figure to Base ratios to come up with something that looks awesome and still uses a format close to the basing standards set forth in the book.

What you see above is the ratio we'll be using. On each infantry base 20mmx20mm, we'll have two foot figs; or 4 for a 20x40mm base. On each 20mm wide x 40mm deep base will be one cavalry fig. Works for us.

Above that photo is my other obsession: Fallschirmjager in 28mm for Strike Force Commander games set in the Mediterranean theatre. I dig the scheissen out of Operation Husky and will be building some Sicily/Italy terrain in the near future.

What you see are some horrid photos I took as they got the first part of their splinter camo added today. I'm working on all 13 at the same time. A bit daunting, but at least the paint isn't wasted and the look is consistent.

Well, that's about it for today. I have worked out some wriggling details for SFC and am ready to start writing the Close Combat section. More to do, more to do....

Fallschirmjager

Well, tonight I base painted my 13 Fallschirmjager figs. 12 are by Artizan, & the Flamethrower is by Foundry.

No pics, but I'll be sure to show them off once they're finished. It was nice to get back to my meditative painting. It's nice to still my mind with my longest running hobby.

Also put up some Empire Cavalry units for sale on ebay today. You can find the links on the sidebar to your right.

G'night.

Finally!

I picked up the paint brush for the first time in over a year. I had some touch up work to do on my Empire Knights before I put them on Ebay, so out came the paints and brush this afternoon. Wow, I'm out of practice.

I finished my touch ups for the new photos, which I have below, and quickly shifted over to an exacto knife. I have noticed I'm not as nimble with that either. I must be getting old.

However, I managed to scrape, buff, and prep 13 Artizan Fallschirmjager minis in 28mm for my Strike Force Commander game playtesting. I reckon I should have some stuff painted up for next time so the boys can't break my balls anymore.

I also broke out the can of matte clear coat and sprayed two minis that were giving me the shiny trouble. Then I re-shot photos of them, so they appear below as well.

Now back to typing my game. Gonna be tasty. That's all I can say.

Faust

Strike Force Commander

Well, here I sit at the office, waiting for an appointment to get under way. I decided that I could dash off a few notes to update the world at large of my progress on my skirmish game Strike Force Commander.

When I say "skirmish" I do not mean Company Level game where my units move in Skirmish Formation. I actually mean, Small unit game of individual minis moving about the board fighting a small skirmish against other small enemy units.

See, most modern Company level games I see describe themselves as "skirmish" games, when in fact they are whole battle games that simulate full engagements between sizeable forces, not smaller skirmishes between a few combatants.

That being said, I noticed a need for a playable set of historical skirmish rules. Most WW2 skirmish rules I've seen are down right unplayable, unless you are an accountant. Since I'm the kind of guy who wants to have a good, tense, game in under 45 minutes, I decided to fill that niche with my own design. And so, SFC was born.

My current plan is to have the rules finished this year for release next year. I will have the main rule book that will also have competitive strike force lists for tournament play (yes, I said tournament), and then later there will be campaign books for the three different eras/periods that I'm covering. The eras are Ancient/Medieval, Early Modern, & Modern Warfare.

I have yet to see a set of skirmish rules focused on tournament play. Most are campaign based. SFC will let you build a force that is badass and can be played right out of the gate, instead of having to start small & build up like a campaign. I like both, but wanted to be clear that both are great options.

I recently noticed that Warhammer Historicals will be releasing Legends of the High Seas. Undoubtedly a Legends of the Old West variant for Pirates & Swashbucklers. This has motivated me to get my ass in high gear and get SFC published before WH makes a skirmish game for all of the cool periods.

Since I don't get paid to sit around and write games, I'll be getting back to work...

Valhalla

My sweetheart and I spent the weekend with our Landsknecht re-enactment guild at Valhalla Renaissance Faire. See my sidebar links for St. Maximilian's guild website.

We had a great time and I spent most of it banging on Donner, the guild drum. I play regular drums and was invited to play for the guild and learn our march beat this weekend. By the third procession I had it down and was quite at home in my puff & slash pounding away as the soldats behind me shouted "Noch Weiter!" in unison. Thanks to Tom for helping me learn the march.

Cool shit.

We'll be up there again this weekend. If you are dropping by please say hi. Ask for 'Anton' which is my character's name.

Oh yeah, nothing painted as usual. Tune in next time. Maybe I'll paint up some Landsknecht in 28mm....

Faust

Works in progress; or, why I have nothing new to show you.

So, its been awhile since I've painted anything. In fact, its been over a year. I have an excuse: one hot girlfriend. Well, and that we moved states and started new careers. So, I'm a bit tapped.

However, my free time has really been filled with writing my Historical Skirmish game Strike Force Commander. I want to publish it in 2008, preferably prior to Historicon.

So, between writing that and reading stuff pertinent to it, I've been out of the painting loop. However, with my new found interest in putting brush to pewter, I'll be starting up again. Only this time it will be for my own game, rather than to play someone else's. That's deeply satisfying.

I'll likely only contribute commentary to this site infrequently. I'd rather let pictures of my minis do the talking.

Faust

So it begins

Well, I'll admit, I'm not too hip with the blogging thing. My brother, WebOgre, suggested it though, since it seems the other gits who paint minis are doing it too. Since I've yet to get any decent market share of the Internet for this sort of thing, he thought it might be a good idea.

Since WebOgre is full of good ideas, I figured it was time. I also finally figured out how to create some not-half-bad photos of my figures.

So, enjoy. And don't bitch too much.

Faust