I Was Bad This Weekend

I spent a lot of money on gaming supplies this weekend, taking advantage of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales where I could, but I still spent a lot of money, and fairly selfishly at that.  Yes, I did half my Christmas shopping this weekend as well, but still...

I bought:

A tube of Green Stuff epoxy putty and some sculpting tools so I can finish assembling and filling seams on Cthulhu.  I also bought a self-healing cutting mat to use to trim pieces on as opposed to lining the dining room table with newspaper.

I bought a 1/72 plastic model kit of a Medium Mk A "Whippet" tank, as fielded by the British during the First World War, which I will be converting into a "Land Ironclad" for Victorian Science Fiction/"Steampunk" wargaming.  I refute the difference in scale (1/72 scale is equivalent to 20 or 22mm scale, not 28mm) by stating that early tanks were small and cramped, and a fictitious predecessor 20-30 years earlier would probably be even more so.

(As an aside, "Steampunk" is the only thing on earth I'm a snooty hipster about.  I grew up reading Wells and Verne, and was really into VSF/Steampunk as an aesthetic starting around 1999, 2000.  So when people started throwing brass gears onto top hats I was originally very excited, but eventually discovered that a lot of the steampunk enthusiasts I was encountering had no understanding of the literary origins of the subgenre or the historical narrative of the Victorian Age and merely thought it "looked cool," and I subsequently kind of cooled towards Steampunk - but I still confess myself an ardent enjoyer of Victorian Science Fiction)

photo courtesy Wargames Factory.  Used without
permission.

And then I went kinda nuts with Wargames Factory's Black Friday Weekend sale.  All their kits were at least 25% off, some as much as 50% off.  So I basically stocked up for 2015.

First off, I picked up a box of British infantrymen from the Anglo-Zulu war; paired with the Land Ironclad I'll be building off the Mk A, that gives me a pretty solid core of a British army for G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., my favorite set of skirmish rules and, truth be told, the only wargame I've ever played.  I highly recommend it.  Somewhere down the line I'll find some 28mm Prussians or Martians or the like and have a pair of warbands so I can demonstrate the game at conventions.

From their Legacy of the Greeks line, I picked up one box each of 28mm plastic Hoplites, Persian Infantry, and Amazons.  I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with them - I'm tempted to base them for De Bellis Antiquitatis, though I think most people playing DBA play at the 15mm scale.  I also kind of half-want to simply do the Hoplites up as a diorama piece showing off the famous phalanx.  I know I want to do the Amazons as archers, and the Persian Infantry will be assembled for their famous sparabara formation, with a wall of shield and spear-armed warriors protecting a second rank of archers.

photo courtesy Wargames Factory.  Used without
permission.

I picked up a box of Orc warriors because they're some of the most gorgeous I've seen - way better then the cartoonish sculpts put out by Games Workshop and their imitators.  These guys I'm thinking will be diorama fodder; I've got no real interest in fantasy wargaming as such and don't see myself buying boxes and boxes of these for something like informal Warhammer tourneys, though maybe they'll get based as an army for Hordes of the Things, the fantasy version of DBA.

So that's...139 figures and a tank, if my math is right.  That should keep me busy for most, if not all, of 2015.  And I'm forcing myself to finish Cthulhu before I begin work on anything else.

photo courtesy Wargames Factory.  Used without
permission.

All photographs (save for the box art on the Mk A up there) belong to Wargames Factory, and if they want them taken down, I'll gladly comply.