Avast Behind! or The Saucy Sue Sets Sail

Dave Graffam produces a nice range of card buildings for printing out and building. They use layers in the pdf so you can customise them and produce quite a variety of models from just the one download. At no more than $5 per pdf that makes them very good value, although you do need to factor in ink and card costs.

Anyway, I was browsing his stuff at Wargame Vault last night looking for some cheap retail therapy when I spotted his Patrol Boat model, which looked interesting. Then I spotted his Abandoned Wagon model. Well, that was it. Three quid for two models with many uses. I was sold.

Better yet, I could combine the two models. Steve has been talking about playing a Lacepunk game set on a lost continent in the mid-eighteenth century for some time now. I admit that I too have talked this one up. It sounds like fun to me. One of the ideas with this world is that it has a vast flat plain at its centre and the denizens thereof use landships to get around. Naturally, my group in the game will need their own wheels, so here is the Saucy Sue. She is a small cutter-like vessel, being swift and manoeuvrable but with not much room for crew. The next question that we need to answer is whether to raise the jolly roger or not.

Tarting up the Troops

I mentioned tarting up my troops in the last post. Here is a before and after shot of Austrian (left) and Russian (right) stands from Irregular miniatures. In the background is the Russian general's new car, which I found in the bits box. All figures are Irregular miniatures and show how the WW1 infantry come based (three figures to a stand). I rather wish they did their WW2 infantry this way too. For some reason the modern infantry that I have is based similarly to the WW1 infantry but not WW2 stuff. Odd.

Orange Blossom Special?

Train, trees, track and village by Irregular Miniatures
Hexes by GHQ and all flocked up by me

I started a Red Actions play by email campaign recently. I am umpiring it and my players (one in Australia and one at the opposite end of England) are busily plotting and counterplotting against each other. Steve and I are refighting the battles for them. You can read how the campaign is progressing on my Red Actions blog, but more importantly, this campaign has inspired me to revisit my WW1 6mm figures.

I have Russians, Austrians, Germans, Italians and British forces available to use but have not played anything with them in ages. These chaps are now proxies for the Estonian and Freikorps forces in our campaign. Railways are important in the campaign and I realised how bad our table looked without proper railways on it, so I ordered an armoured train pack from Irregular Miniatures and some track for making railway tiles. I ordered on the Thursday afternoon and the figures arrived on the Saturday morning. By Sunday they were all painted and I could start fixing railway track to hex tiles. I did the final basic work on the hex tiles this morning.

I chose to keep the train's paint job generic because I have not decided if I am going to choose one particular force to field and I currently want to be able to use it with all the forces available to me. The village and trees are from Irregular Miniatures too. I have had them for years and it shows. I really should get around to repainting them all. The hex tiles are GHQ. It is frustrating that they are not precisely cut but I still like the overall effect and flexibility. As my eyesight deteriorates with age I should become better able to ignore the gaps between the hexes! I also need to return to the hexes I made first and do more work on them because I am not happy with the colour of the scatter material. It is too dark.

Here is the result. An armoured train steaming through the countryside. Let's hope the village and woods do not contain partisans bent on blowing the train up!
(Click the pics for larger images)