The Big Terrain Push Begins!

 The weather has finally settled into decent temperatures and some dry days so I've begun the big push to start painting the terrain I still need to finish for my game at Wargames Among the Warplanes next month - less than a month away! 

First up, I've sprayed the "Pizza Man" pizza parlor with Montana Gold "Terra" spray paint, which is a lot more orange and a lot less terracotta than I was anticipating, but nothing I can't work with. Once I'd gotten an even all-over coat and let it dry, I began blocking in the cement trim around the building and over the front facade. I'll probably give that one more coat for full coverage.

Next steps then are going to be picking out individual bricks in a variety of browns, rusts and tans, washing everything with a brown wash, drybrushing the cement with a lighter warm gray and then drybrushing everything with a light tan to tie everything together. Then of course windows, sign, detailing, etc. 

The Video Store has been given a spray coat of bright blue, a little lighter than Blockbuster Video would have been in real life but I'll give it a darker blue wash and see how things look. The "TeeVee Shak" and "PayMore Shoes" are going in the spray box tomorrow - they're both going to be a cement gray color for their brickwork. 

In the meantime, I've also been experimenting with a smaller, 3x3 layout for my game at Wargames Among the Warplanes; I don't have enough buildings to fill a 4x4 table the way I'd want to, and not enough time to print and paint enough to get it filled either. A 3x3 layout also puts the different gangs into direct conflict faster, speeding up play and meaning I can maybe get two playthroughs in at WATW. Or, I can wrap up faster, pack it in, and play other people's games. 

Here's what the layout is looking like; I might tweak a few things but I think this is pretty close to final.

The Jamaicans will begin play in the Bingo Hall, the cops at either end of that street, and the three mafia gangs spread evenly across the opposite table edge. There's enough street scatter that they won't all immediately have line of fire to each other. Secondary missions assigned randomly will necessitate figures moving across the board - "collect the laundered money from the pawn shop and return it to your starting board edge" "make a call from the pay phone in front of the ramen restaurant" things like that. So hopefully we won't get too bogged down with figures just sniping each other from cover all game, there will be movement and interaction. 

So that's it for now, I'll check in in a few days with some progress. 

Last Two Gangs Finished

 I'm very pleased to announce I've finished the last two gangs I needed for my game at Wargames Among The Warplanes next month. The other four gangs can be seen here and here. Once again, these are a mix of Wargames Foundry "Street Violence" figures and Copplestone Castings "Bad Guys With Guns" from their Future Wars line. 

Fat Paulie and his followers.

"Little" Bobby D. leads a more eccentric crew.

From here on out I can focus on painting buildings and scatter terrain for the next month. Lacking a 4'x4' table, I unrolled a Frontline Games' "Asphalt" neoprene mat on my basement floor and laid out road pieces and my collection of modern buildings to see what kind of layout I could come up with and how many more buildings I would need to "fill" it. 

I'm thinking about resizing my plans to a 3'x3' table so I don't have to worry about adding an extra 5-6 buildings to my workload - and subsequently to the list of things I need to carry from my car to the venue. A 3'x3' fight would also have the six gangs in each other's faces that much faster...

Figures Purchased in 2025: 58

Figures Painted in 2025: 85

MORE Terrain!

 A buddy of mine who enjoys 3D printing offered to print off any buildings or other terrain I might need for my game at Wargames Among the Warplanes in June, and last night I received the fruits of his printer:

The wheels for all of these are in a baggie.

I'm about halfway done with the last ten figures I need to paint for the June game, so I'm anticipating spending a big chunk of May on these beauties. Hopefully this will give me a nice, full-looking urban table. 

I should probably lay out the neoprene mat, the road pieces and the buildings to double check that, to be honest. 

New Acquisitions

 A couple more odds and ends have arrived at Casa de Adcock over the past few days.

Miniature Building Authority had a spring sale going, so I ordered some more scatter bits, including a pair of end-pieces for oil-drum-and-tire barricade walls, of which I've got a few painted up already. I'm waiting for their wall pieces to come back in stock so I can buy more - I'd like to ultimately be able to enclose a building or two in barricade "fences" if I can.

I also placed an order with Things From The Basement - I needed a couple large, irregular terrain bases, as well as some large MDF rounds that will be turned into markers for smoke grenades. These A) aren't very exciting to look at, and B) aren't enough to justify the shipping costs, so a set of brick stacks and a shipping container-turned-office slipped into my cart. 

I think the shipping container office I want to eventually incorporate into a larger build - I'm envisioning a fenced-in junkyard or mechanic's yard, maybe with a garage, with the shipping container as the yard's "business office." Something a bit shady and sketchy, like they're dealing in stolen cars or something like that. I think that would be a fun project to add to my terrain collection. Things From The Basement has a garage kit in their "Industrial" line that might be perfect - something to think about for my next purchase. 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 58

Figures Painted in 2025: 75

Joey's Boys

 I've finished up the first of three gangs of Mafiosos for my Fistful of Lead game at Wargames Among the Warplanes in June. Meet Joey "The Viper" Marciano and some of his associates:

Joey is from Wargames Foundry's "The Mob" pack in their Street Violence line, while the rest of his gang are from Copplestone Castings; the skinny guy in a gray suit is from the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" line of Cold War spies, and the rest are from the "Future Wars" line. 

Joey's a very fun sculpt, with thick jowls and a fat roll at the back of his neck, rings on a couple fingers and a fat cigar ready to be jabbed into someone's face. 

Also finished tonight, Miss Angela Dellamorte, the daughter of the head of the Dellamorte Crime Family. She's the mcguffin that the whole scenario hinges around - the game begins with her in the hideout of the Jamaican Kings, and three gangs of Dellamorte gunmen are crossing the table to try and retrieve her - and double-crossing each other along the way. 

Finally, I knocked out a couple pieces of junk pile scatter terrain from Miniature Building Authority:

So that leaves me with just 10 figures to finish before June 7th, and however many pieces of scenery I manage. My buddy Dave is 3D printing a few buildings for me, and also gifted me a couple he'd printed and painted years ago that he wasn't using:

I might do some touch up on these, but overall they're not in bad shape. Anything I do to repaint or improve them will be after Wargames Among The Warplanes, however. 

That's five new figures painted, so let's update the tracker:

Figures Purchased in 2025: 58

Figures Painted in 2025: 75

Fistful of Lead: "Death From Above!"

Tonight I went out to my local game store and met up with a guy for a game of Fistful of Lead, using the Galactic Heroes sci-fi variant. This was my first time playing a full-sized game against an opponent (not counting the demos I ran last month) since before the pandemic! I brought out my Space Orks, and he had what I think were classic 90s Necromunda gangers of some flavor.

We used a scenario I bought off the Wiley Games website, "Death From Above," for our game tonight; our crews were fighting over possession of the controls for an ancient orbital railgun, which happened to be in the heart of a monster's lair! The monster would appear when a Joker was played, and attack the closest figure (regardless of crew) until it was either slain or another Joker was played.

I brought the monster on the board fairly early, and it ravaged his side for a bit before being dispelled by another Joker, and then a fresh, uninjured one came back on the board later that same turn, at which point it killed my heavy weapons specialist. 

My Ork Warboss arrived at the controls for the orbital weapon fairly quickly, and spent three turns trying to figure out how to activate it. He spent the rest of the game hunched over the controls, firing over and over again and never hitting anything because the template representing the blast radius of each shot kept drifting. 

Honestly, I thought I had the game in the bag towards the end - I had three figures left on the table, he had one, and two of my guys were in close combat with him. Stunningly, he turned it around - he swiftly took care of the two guys on him, reloaded his man-portable heavy laser cannon, closed the distance and sniped my Ork Warboss through a gap in the ruins, killing him instantly with a headshot! 

That's one of the things I love best about Fistful of Lead - you never can tell quite how things are going to turn out, and I was just as happy to be surprised and lose like that as I would have been in victory. 

We'll be meeting up again soon for another game, and we had a few curious onlookers we spoke to who might be interested in joining in the future. Fingers crossed on that front, it would be great to get a few more people playing. 

Fat Dragon Self-Service Ramen

 Last night, after I finished posting about yesterday's game, I put the finishing touches on another building kit from Atomic Lasercut Designs. This was a blank storefront that I bought a month ago with an eye towards turning it into an automat-style self service restaurant. 

The sign out front (and interior art) is all just stuff I grabbed off Google Image Search and mocked up in MSPaint, printed out on the laser printer at my local copy shop. The graffiti decals are from an EBay seller, and the furnishings on the interior are mostly from Oshiro Models, with the booths and arcade cabinet from Miniature Building Authority. 

And here's a better look at the drinks cabinet - I used UV resin to give it a "glass" front.

What's next? Well, a buddy of mine is setting me up with some 3D printed modern buildings and street scatter, I have the three gangs of Mafiosos to paint up, and I picked up a set of Mantic street scatter at my local hobby shop yesterday:

I also found out that Harlequin is hosting their next Demo Day event on June 14th...one week after my game at Wargames Among the Warplanes! So it sounds like I should maybe not bother unpacking my car after I get back from WATW...

Figures Purchased in 2025: 58

Figures Painted in 2025: 70