RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

As you probably know, Sir Terry Pratchett died yesterday.  I wanted to publicly record the debt I owe him for the many laughs and hours of pleasure that reading his books have given me.

Rest in Peace, Sir Terry. I will miss the happiness I got from reading a new book by you.

apathy ... who cares about it?

Well, it's been a while hasn't it?  Just not had any desire to blog at all, and I really don't know why that should be ...

I have been doing hobby stuff though, and one of them has been getting involved with ArmiesArmy. To that end, I've written a background document for the SinoPact Penal Forces (15mm SF penal troopers) which can be downloaded here (if you could spare the time to download and read it, I'd appreciate feedback).

I also attended Cavalier last Sunday, allegedly "helping" on the combined ArmiesArmy / The Scene stand, where I met Clint from the Anything but a one blog. Nice guy,but he lost points as he didn't buy anything from us - at least not while I was there  ...  :)   I said allegedly helping, as I managed to arrive after they'd set up and left about 1.30, so I didn't do anything much really!!  It was a good laugh though, and I would like to do it again.

Also while there, I went to find Real Time Wargames (part of the Realistic Modelling Services stand).  I'd found their website last Friday and had been very, very intrigued by the descriptions of their rulesets. As a result, I took a chance and picked up their Marlborough and WW1 sets.

And they are what has inspired me to post now.  I read both sets cover to cover in about 3 hours on sunday evening. That shows that they were easy to read, and they both left me wanting to play them straight away.  

And I intend to get more sets (ACW, AWI, Sudan & maybe Boer) this weekend after I get paid.

Who knows, maybe I'll even get some kind of game report up here .... 

who am I kidding?  I'd settle for another post within 3 months ....

Still struggling on ...

Thought I'd better put a post up just to let peeps know I'm still here. No pictures though ... the main reason for this is I have a Windows mobile phone and to get pictures off it, I (seemingly) have to install 'Zune' on my PC - which I really don't want to do; if anyone knows of a way round this, I'd really appreciate it if they let me know!

On the hobby front, in this post back in August - new-rules - I mentioned that I was thinking of getting into 15mm sci-fi.  Well I definitely have now, and have a bunch of Armies Army figures, some Brigade Models vehicles and other stuff.

I've been looking at different rules and, of the ones that I have, Strike Legion: Platoon Leader will, I think, suit me best. (If you are interested, you can get a free 'primer' of the rules)

Anyway, tonight I have a game of 15mm SF against Keith (the megalomaniac behind Armies Army) and will get my painted stuff on the table for the first time! Pictures next time - if I remember my camera!

Dave Graffam Models 08 - Frontier Barn

This post is about my build of Dave Graffam Models' Frontier Barn, currently a 'silver best seller' on Wargames Vault and available for £2.42.  As with my more recent posts, I've again used Ironclad Miniatures' 28mm Tobias miniature  as a size indicator.

This first pic to the right shows the finished build. I've made a few changes to the supplied model in my build - specifically the first (2nd to the US) floor doorways and the grille in the centre of the roof. The model has parts for a small tower to go on the roof's centre and solid walls on the first floor. I decided to add the first floor doorways to give the building more versatility in a firefight.

The second pic on the left shows the door to the hayloft. As designed the building has only one of these (at this end of the building) which has a porch like structure, which I didn't build (couldn't be bothered with it tbh!).

This pic shows the other side of the barn. On this side I chose to have a double door - the model allows for a double door on any and/or all sides of the model, giving great versatility and many rebuilds. You can also see in this pic the small extension that is part of the model.

As usual (now) with my builds, I made the walls from 5mm foamcore and the removable roof with 2mm mounting board. Most DGM buildings don't come with interiors, but it's (relatively) easy to use exteriors as the interior as I've done here. I used the 'Gray-Green' layer of the pdf file for the exterior and the 'brown' layer for the interior, intending to give a contrast indicative of weathering. I'm quite pleased with how it's come out! As with the Finger and Toe Multi-Storey Warehouse I used 2mm mounting board to create partial floors allowing access to the entire building while mini's could be placed beside windows. I used wooden floor prints from DGM's Low Ruins Paper Models Set to cover the partial floors. For the earthen floor of the barn itself I used a plain earth print from DGM's Garden Ground Tiles

 This next pic shows the interior of the barn's extension and the edges of the foamcore used to make the walls. If I could be bothered, I'd stick some wood effect print on them, but I'm happy with colouring them in with permanent black marker.

Finally, here is a whole build shot with the roof removed. Unfortunately, Tobias seems to have escaped from this shot ...







In other news ... I placed my first non-solo wargame in at least 2 years on Monday evening. It was against Keith Armstrong - the megalomaniac behind the excellent Armies Army 15mm miniatures - at the Guildford Wargames Club. It went exceedingly well and is, I hope, the first of many such games.

Militia Miniatures Kickstarter

I promise I'll do another post on buildings soon!

However, for this post I thought I'd share a Kickstarter with you that I've backed - it's for Militia Miniatures - 28mm Modern Mercenaries!

I backed it as the figures seemed like they'd be useful for Zombie gaming and (as it is now) at £20 for 10 figures, it's pretty good value too! 

That £20 includes UK postage, it's £2 extra for non-UK shipping

Tommygun Towers & Sloped Roof Shanty

So to the next build. This actually consists of two different models, both of which are free to download from www.modelpaperworld.com and were designed by Tommygun; they are the 'Towers' and 'Sloped Roof Shanty' kits. I call them kits as both of the pdf files have bits to enable the creation of mulitple different buildings - marvellous value I thought! ;) Again Ironclad Miniatures' 28mm Tobias miniature is providing a size reference.

You can see to the left the finished products. Also in the picture are the contents of a set of ladders from Warbases which I was going to use to create a ladder up the side of the smaller tower. However, when writing this post I saw that Warbases now do a long ladder set, so instead of having to glue 2 of these shorter ladders together, I will probably get the longer set and use them.

Anyway, the towers themselves are very simply made - glue the prints from the file around a pringles tube, stick the top cover on and that's it - job's done! Just use elastic bands to keep them in place (as in suggested in the file). The shorter tower was made with a tube of supermarket's own brand version of pringles and adds a nice touch of variety IMO. I think of them as some kind of storage tank - some liquid (fuel maybe) or gas perhaps, so made the small building as a 'control room' of sorts. My intention is create a scenic base for the towers and building with a chainlink fence of some sort surrounding it.

To the right is closer view of the building's exterior and the Warbases' ladder. Also, you can see the excellent texture of the towers.

The building itself is a hackabout of one of the buildings in the shanty file and I'm very pleased with how it's come out

Finally to the left is the interior of the control building. There are no interior details for the buildings in the shanty file, so I used the exterior prints to line the interior walls and the floor is, yet again, provided by Dave Graffam Models' Low Ruins set.

I am very pleased with these buildings; now I just have to pull my finger out and build the base for them!

Finger and Toe 01 - Multi-Storey Warehouse

This post covers my build of Finger and Toe Models' Multi-Story [sic] Warehouse which is available to download from Wargames Vault at (time of typing) for £2.40.

To begin with, to the right, you can see my finished build of the model, with an Ironclad Miniatures' 28mm Tobias miniature in front to give an idea of the building's size. Also, the pavement (US: sidewalk) surrounding the building is not part of the building; it is from Grekwood Miniatures' 28mm Residential Roads pdf (IMO the best representation of UK pavements I've got).

The building was made with 5mm foamcore for the walls and base; the roof and interior 'floors' from 2mm mounting board.

As is my (now) usual practice, I've removed all the doors and windows from the building - it does come with them! The building itself is - as the title claims - multi-storEy; it has parts for a ground level, what it calls upper story [sic] and then a top story [sic]. This enables you to have as many 'upper' storeys as you might want and they are designed in the model to be removable, but for my build I've fixed them all together and only used the one upper storey.

To the left you can see the right and rear sides of the building as seen in the first pic - the corner pointing at the camera is the one that was on the back right in the first pic. I made a change to the designed model here - the wall with no windows that is now at the back of the ground level is actually one of the upper storey walls, but I reasoned that it would be more likely that the ground floor would have no windows so swapped the 4-window ground floor wall with this 0-window upper storey wall. Making this swap also enabled me to have 4-window walls front and back for the upper and top storeys.

To the right you can see the left and front of the building. This shows the single door entrance at the back of the left side.

As the building is designed to have its interior used, it does come with interior surfaces, has a staircase model included and even has 2 pages of alternate doors and windows! There are storey 'connectors' that will disguise the join if you made a disassembling version of the building, but as I haven't, I've not used them.

And finally the last pic shows the interior. As you can see, I've not made floors for the building, instead I've rabbeted mounting board into the walls where the floor would have been. The board has then been covered with the wooden floor supplied in the model (which is quite a good one actually) and the ground floor is the concrete floor from the model. You can make out the yellow and black stripes on the ground floor - above this on each floor there is a slightly smaller similar area that represents where a lift would allow access for heavy goods to each floor.

Given its modular nature, it would be relatively easy to make a taller and/or wider version of this building. At £2.40, the versatility of this model is, IMO, good value.

Note: I don't have the building with me or I would have given its dimensions; when I'm back with it, I'll try and remember to add them to this post