Holiday Warfare

On Boxing Day my daughter and I wargamed with some of our Christmas presents.  We used our home brewed rules and carnage ensued

Hulk and the

Crusader go up against Malificent

Gamma power trumps fairy magic

Forces gather around the princess under glass

Spidey is about to be on the receiving end of "Hulk SMASH!"

Mother Gothel stands victorious 

Ever gracious in victory, that's my kiddo 

8 Heads In A Duffle Bag

Well actually there are eight Sculpey squinky heads in a sandwich bag. 

8 Heads In A Sandwich Bag.

  But I’m not one to let reality get in the way of a good blog post title that references a Joe Pesci black comedy clunker. 

I actually liked the movie!

So as I mentioned in my last post, I was given a bunch of Star Wars Fighter Pod toys for Christmas. They’re sort of squished figurines, like the Galactic Heroes line, only smaller.  Hasbro has other toys like them called Squinkies (seriously, who thinks toy names up nowadays?), superheroes, My Little Ponies, Cars, Disney etc.  They’re just shy of 1” tall and if they were proportioned correctly at that height they’d be near 1:72 scale. They aren’t correctly proportioned, each having an (insert Mike Meyers voice) “enormous cranium”.  That got me to thinking; perhaps I could sculpt something like that, making my own riff on some other popular gaming figs. 

Having a fond remembrance of a certain companies beaky helmet and jet pack wearing troops, I though I’d tackle those first.  I made two heads out of Sculpey, which I think came out pretty good.  So I made 8 more.  That would make 10 heads.  But then the cat jumped on the table and batted the heap of heads and I could only find 8.  Which makes a way better blog post title anyhow.

Prototype heads

  Like my wooden figs, the intent is to give the idea of the troop type without being a true miniature repro.  I moved on to making feet.  My daughter had a heart shaped mold that I thought would fit the bill and it seemed to be the right size. 

Feet, tushy appearance notwithstanding 

But the body has proved to be problematical.  The size becomes way too fiddly in Sculpey for my meager sculpting skills.  I am leaning towards using wooden craft spools for bodies like the “crafties” on the Wargaming on a Budget Yahoo group.  Since I seem to be able to make the heads, I’ll keep doing those from Sculpey or maybe Fimo, which I like better.  I still have to work out the jet packs and weapons. Once that’s done, it’s terrain for the beaky vs. stormtrooper throwdown. 

Not Really Winged Victory

Sometimes things just don’t come together.   

As I wrote in http://littlepeoplegotowar.blogspot.com/2012/12/painted-roman-legionaries-and-armoured.html I picked up some actual “Little People” pegs from the craft store.  I figured it would be simpler to use them rather than cutting down the doll clothespins like I have been doing. 

I assembled one for comparison; then decided to assemble all three.  Looking at them, they are just a skosh bigger than the cut down figures. 

  But as soon as I added arms and weapons they loomed even larger.  This left me with a dilemma.  What could I make that was just a bit bigger than a normal man?  Inspiration struck.  Men of Minas Tirith in its glory days, before the blood of Numenor became diluted with that of lesser men.  Then I had another idea, I could make men of the Tower Guard.  I needed to make winged helmets.  In my mind’s eye, I saw this:

What I got was this:

Refrains of  Elmer Fudd singing“I have my speah and maaaagicccc helmet” went through my mind.  Luckily, wings could be plucked easily, allowing me to go back the drawing board pretty painlessly.  

Time to get painting the figures that I have already assembled.

The family that games together....

Today I took the day off from job seeking to game with my daughter. She was too sick to go with my wife and mother-i-law when they braved the mall. While we were painting she asked me if we could play Schleich with Rules, her shorthand for wargaming. While I cleaned up the paints, she broke out her collection of fairies, historicals and animals.

We used the Monkey’s Rules http://littlepeoplegotowar.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-monkeys-rules.html

They are rules we came up with when the Monkey was old enough to want to play with rules.  As she gets comfortable with new gaming concepts, we add new rules to cover them.  

The dreaded Snot Monkey sets up her forces

Dastardly Daddy already has a casualty

Fighting over the magical poofy flowers, because nobody really likes to share. My pony got there first.

Rolling the scatter dice.

The pony got it. 

Behold the carnage wrought by one fairy child on a pony.  So far I am not doing too well.  The dice gods did not favour me.

Louis XIV comes to my rescue, whomping on the fairy child, but not in time to save the Burgundian Court Lady.  

The Monkey's scatter dice rolls were dead on, reducing my reserve forces to one tiger kitten. Even my catapult was taken out.

Marie Antoinette gets ready to pimp slap Prince Charming.

Finally, the Last Airbender manages to stave off assaults from Marie Antoinette, the Flower Fairy and Jeanne d'Arc, leaving only the Princess with the Fan, who conceded gracefully. As did the monkey.

I have to admit that I was really tickled that my daughter asked me to play and I was really pleased with how she kept track of the rules, even correcting me when I messed up.  It all came down to some lucky dice rolls. 

Painted Roman Legionaries and Armoured Celtic Chieftains

I painted up two of my Romans, one with an Attic helmet and one with the more classic helm style. I’m happy with how the helms turned out.  I am more on the fence about the armour.  The armour is silver brushed over black, with lines painted for the segmenta lames.  My gut says to go the opposite, paint the silver lines over the black.  I’m going to try this for the next pair I paint. 

I painted the colours directly on the wood this time, forgoing the primer coat because I didn’t like how the paints behaved over the primer.  I think it went better, it certainly was more enjoyable. The paints don’t like the card I’ve been using for the shields; it’s the card that my paint pens’ blister pack was glued to.  It must have some sort of coating that inhibits absorption.  I may change to balsa instead, although I do like the ease of cutting card.

The second figs I painted are the chieftains for my Celtic war band.  They are senior warriors, with enough prestige and wealth to afford body armour and helmets. 

  I really like the helmets!  They are based loosely off helms “jockey cap” helms found in France’s Marne valley and Northern England. http://www.sheshen-eceni.co.uk/icenian_gallery.html   The neck guard is foam and the ball is a 4mm bead spacer for jewelry.  The horse tail is white thread glued into the ball.    They are wearing chain mail armour.  Once again the armour proved problematical.  I understand now why medieval manuscript artists used a sort of visual short hand for chain mail.  I just have to figure out what mine is going to be. I tried two different styles, one with black and white dots and one with just black dots.  I don't really care for either.  I'm trying for something more like this 13th century drawing of St Mary kicking butt:

 The beauty of painted on detail is I can paint over it when I get better! 

When I was over at the local Michaels, looking for paintbrushes, I saw that they had some wooden peg people in their tiny little wood craft section (seriously, what is it about craft and hobby stores lately, nothing but clay, scrapbooking and jewelry making supplies), so I picked up a package of the “boy” and “man” pegs to see how they compared to the cutoff clothespins I have been using. 

The man peg is about 2 ¼ inches and will make a good giant or troll, since the clothespins are about 1 ½ inches, give or take.  The boy peg is 1 11/16, just a little bigger, as you can see here. 

  The head is really round though; I’ll have to make up some figs using the ones I bought and see how I feel about the look before I jump in and buy a whole bunch from an online retailer.  It just feels really wasteful to buy the clothespins, only to cut off 2/3s of them.  Though now I have a bunch of kindling for the woodstove!