What to Buy Next?

Gina and I have been on hobby no-buy for the month of December - I can't buy toy soldier stuff (not even based or flock) and she can't buy knitting supplies. Well, one of her favorite indie yarn dyers put out an update last week and Gina would have been unable to purchase any of the one-of-a-kind skeins if she'd been forced to wait until January 1st - they would have been completely sold out.

So we came to an agreement; I would turn a blind eye to her buying a few skeins of unique yarn, and she would turn a blind eye to me making a toy soldiers purchase AFTER Christmas - she's buying me some toy soldiers for Christmas so doesn't want me buying anything she might have picked out for me.

Now, I know what I showed her in terms of miniatures I was interested in, so I have a pretty good idea of things I won't find under the tree. So I'm considering what my "post-Christmas" present to myself would be. I've narrowed it down thusly:

photo courtesy Warlord Games

1.) Terrain for Frostgrave. I have two warbands and might be able to put together a third or more after Christmas, so I ought to get some terrain going for games. I'm eyeing a couple of Warlord Games' bombed out farmhouses from their Bolt Action line and maybe the snap-together gothic buildings that I think Pegasus Hobbies currently puts out. I'm curious to hear from readers who've built these structures about how the construction process went.

2.) Colonial/Victorian/Steampunk-appropriate figures from Wargames Foundry. I've been rereading Chris Palmer and Buck Surdu's Victorian Science Fiction skirmish game GASLIGHT lately, and I'm more impressed with them than ever. I haven't run GASLIGHT in years and don't have the figures from those long-ago days any more. I think I'd like to be able to run demo games of both GASLIGHT and Frostgrave at conventions by autumn 2016, and that means new armies need to be painted. Colonial-era games are tricky things in our current hyper-sensitive climate; it's too easy to get accused of ethnocentrism by putting on a game set in this era.

I'm thinking a couple packs of Foundry figs would take advantage of their end of year 20% off sale, and build a force of Belgians (who were dastardly in their dealings in the Congo, no doubt) and some stalwart Brits to oppose them. I've got a pretty nice mental image of a demo game in which rival European expeditions racing to the entrance of King Solomon's Mines - which happens to be located in a "Lost World" valley populated by dinosaurs who don't care about the national origin of their next meal.

photo courtesy Wargames Foundry

The thing is, I'm not sure if I'm spreading myself too thin by dividing my time and money between two games; would it be better, I wonder, to focus solely on Frostgrave for now, get my warbands painted, and start playing the game, learning it as best I can before I start building armies for another game? Or would being able to go back and forth between working on the two games make me less likely to experience burn-out because I'd be painting a greater variety of figures? This is the first time I've ever really had the income to where I could work on two games at once. I'd love to hear others' experience, ideas and advice.

Not Much Has Been Done, But Much Has Been Considered

Confession time: I've not done a lick of work on Cthulhu since Sunday evening.  I just haven't been able to really set aside the time and energy to give him the attention I want to be able to give him.  I have decided that I want to attach the wings and putty the gaps in them before painting, so I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get on that tomorrow so he's got all Sunday to cure.

In the mean time, boxes - boxes upon boxes - have been arriving at my apartment.  The three orders I'd placed with Wargames Factory during their Black Friday sale event all arrived this week - one on Monday, one on Tuesday, and one on Thursday that would have been Wednesday if it weren't for the damn snow storm.

So let me just do what my girlfriend does whenever she buys new yarn for her knitting habit - spread it out over the bed and take some pictures so she can carefully catalog her "stash" and remain knowledgeable of everything she's got in her collection - and given that she's got two huge tote-bins in the closet filled to capacity with carefully packed skeins of yarn, that's quite a bit!

Those are her little pink piddies in the background, by the way.
Not mine.

I actually see a lot of similarities between her knitting and my miniature painting.  In both cases we're engaging in a certain degree of crafting, from which we derive a great deal of pleasure, and then there's a practical aspect (in my case, the simple joy of pushing figures across a table to simulate conflict; in hers, having a warm neck during these bitter Western New York winters).  And while we both can spend a considerable amount, it's because we're buying quality; when it comes to yarn, she has Cadillac tastes - no $3-a-skein acrylic fiber yarn for her! And with me, sure, I could buy a bag of green plastic army men for $3 at the toy store, but I'd rather have the crisp detail of someone like Wargames Factory, or Bob Murch's Pulp Figures, or even Games Workshop.

And in both cases, the ratio of enjoyment-derived-per-dollar-spent is pretty high.  Sure, she might spend $30 on a nice skein of Malabrigo Worsted, but she's going to spend 5-8 hours, at least, using a pair of chopsticks to turn a ball of string into a hat (which, to me, is pure sorcery), plus the countless days she'll wear the hat.  That $30 ends up going a very long way.  Likewise, for example, during the sale I bought a box of Amazons that was marked down to $16-and-change.  Factor in the hours I'm going to spend carefully clipping the pieces from the sprues, sanding mold lines, assembling figures and then painting, and even before I put them on the table and play a game with them, that $16 investment has gone a pretty long way.

And that's not even taking into account that I'm planning to convert half of them using pieces from the Persian Infantry sprue bundles I bought to bring them a little more in line with what "actual" Sarmatian/Scythian warrior women would have probably looked like, and that stretches the enjoyment even further as I plan conversions, carefully cut pieces apart and glue them together into new configurations.  No longer will my Amazons have frigid nethers as they fight in tiny leather skirts on the arid steppes; nay, it's trousers for my ladies, I say!

I bought enough of these Infantry bundles to assemble into 120 figures...

And in both cases, my toy soldiers and her knitting, it's a hobby where realistically we're going to be doing a lot of work in our pajamas, sitting on the couch with the TV going in the background, some show we've heard rave reviews of playing on Netflix, and we'll poke our heads up and realize that half a season has gone by and we have no idea what any of the characters look like.

I've made a few mentions of pushing figures around on the table, and I may have mentioned previously that I'd been casting around for a good ruleset to use with these Greeks, Amazons and Persians.  And it dawned on me today that I already *have* a great ruleset handy.

I'm a big fan of John "Buck" Surdu's G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. (Glorious Adventures in Science Loosely Involving Generally Historical Times) skirmish ruleset.  The rules are fast and easy to learn, the number of figures required to play are very low, and it really puts a lot of emphasis on creativity and fun.  While ostensibly designed for Victorian Science Fiction, I see no reason why I couldn't quickly and easily adapt it to any setting or genre imaginable (well, I can imagine that a romantic comedy wargame might be a bit tricky).  Strip out the steam-tech and throw in something to give shields and armor some value and I think I'd be ready to go with a "Bronze Age by G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T." game.  Heck, there's even rules for strange beasts in the G.A.S.L.IG.H.T. manual - no conversion really necessary to start churning out mythological beasties for more Mythic games.  For that matter, leave in the steam-tech and call it Atlantean technology or the handiwork of Daedalus and we're good to go!

I've got plenty of figures for Amazon, Spartan and Persian factions for Bronze Age by G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., maybe I should get some Egyptians, Macedonians, Scythians...and of course the mythologicals; I'm going to want minotaurs, harpies, cyclopes...And since I bought those British Colonial troops I should buy some Zulus, maybe some Prussians and French Foreign Legion as well...

According to Gina, in the knitting community there's a term - SABLE.  It's an acronym, standing for "Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy," referring to knitters who accumulate more yarn then they can reasonably knit up before shuffling off this mortal coil.  Immediately upon hearing the term I had to laugh, because I know miniature painters do the exact same thing, but I don't know that we have as catchy a name for it as SABLE.  So I'd like that to maybe catch on and get used by wargamers in reference to their overflowing closets of projects and shelves groaning under the weight of unpainted lead.

Steam Tank Follies

The first of my packages have arrived - one, containing my shiny new self-healing cutting mat, my sculpting tools and my Green Stuff; the other, my 1/72 scaled Mk A Whippet tank.  Opening the second, I carefully took the sprues out of the box to inspect what I'd be working with.

Hilarity has already ensued.

I couldn't find specifics regarding how big the completed kit would be online, but knew that since it was a 1/72 scale kit, it'd be, well, 1/72nd the size of a real one.  Looking up the measurements of an actual Mk A Whippet, I did some rough calculations and came out with some numbers suggesting the assembled kit would be between 4 and 5 inches long.

I miscalculated.

The assembled kit will be closer to three inches long.

Here's some shots of the sprues (one of the big chassis pieces broke off the sprue in transit), including a shot with a nickel for scale.

So now I need to recalculate a little regarding converting this into a "Land Ironclad" for Steampunk/VSF wargaming.  It's still getting converted (into a one- or two-man Ironclad), don't get me wrong, but I need to do some rethinking about how I go about it.

I think I'm going to assemble the chassis, minus things like the Hotchkiss machine guns and the exhaust pipes, and use that as a frame-work to build a Land Ironclad over; a couple pieces of plasticard cut to the appropriate size and shape glued over the Mk A will create a bulkier vehicle, and then I can put a turret on top - Brigade Games has a couple nice ones, and if I fatten this bad boy up a little I can put the 1" turret on top of where the fixed turret of the Mk A is.  Speaking of, I think I want to turn the tank around; on the Mk A, the turret is above the back end of the tank, with the engines encased in the lower area in front.  If I turn it around it'll resemble a more "modern" tank in general outline and I can put a boiler and smoke stack on the "back" behind the turret.  Then I'll just glue the Mk A tank treads back on over the plasticard body.  Prime, paint, seal, get it on the table.

Now, this is not a priority project for me by any means; Cthulhu needs to be done first (I'll be doing some good work on him this weekend), and by the time that's done I should have all the figures I ordered from Wargames Factory in hand and can plan my next project.

Speaking of, I noticed that they've got a Persian Infantry sprue bundle deal, where you get just the figure sprues from the Persian Infantry boxed set minus some accessories, for $2.49 per set of six.  That's $2.49 for twelve figures, six each of archers and spearmen.  I ordered ten bundles, which brings the total number of Persian Infantry I've got coming in the mail to 144 infantrymen.

2015 might be the Year of the Achaemenids.