Back of Beyond: One-Arm Sutton and the Sutton Skunk

 Major General Francis Arthur "One-Arm" Sutton (1884-1944) was an English adventurer and arms dealer, a larger-than-life personality that roamed China and Siberia in the 1920s. He held the license to produce Stokes mortars in China, and supplied arms and expertise to warlord Zhang Zuolin of the Fengtian clique. He lost his right hand at Gallipoli while throwing German grenades back at their original owners. 

He had developed an improved fuse system for the Stokes mortar, which garnered him a small fortune, and tried his hand at gold-mining in Siberia before his operation was overrun by the Bolsheviks, earning them his enmity for years to come. 

In 1932, he designed the "Sutton Skunk," an armored tractor/mortar carrier (so named because "the heavy guns are in the rear"); while he had some plans to try and sell it to the Chinese warlords, by this point Zhang Zuolin had been assassinated and Sutton considered all of the other warlords to be poor imitators of Zhang. He also saw increasing German influence among the remaining Chinese warlords, which he found distasteful following his experiences in the Great War. 

Ultimately, Sutton's story ends in a Japanese internment camp in Hong Kong during the Second World War in 1944, age 60. 

Copplestone Castings offers a figure of Sutton in its "European Advisors" pack in the Back of Beyond range, along with a couple of other unique personages from the era. And Company B Miniatures and Models offers a resin and metal kit of the Skunk in 1/56th scale. I painted up both tonight:

The kit's a simple one, consisting of a resin hull, a pair of resin tracks and a metal hatch, along with two pairs of metal Stokes mortars - two folded flat for transport and two set up and ready to fire. I painted it pretty simply - over black primer, I drybrushed Army Painter "Venom Wyrm" pretty heavily, and once dried I washed the full kit with "Strong Tone" shade from Army Painter. Once that dried, I gave it a follow-up dry brush of Venom Wyrm to bring the detail back out. Tomorrow I'll go back in with some black and clean up the tracks. 

While the Skunk was never put into production (and only a single photograph attests to the existence of even a prototype, built over the skeleton of a borrowed Holt tractor), it represents too good a story not to include in games set in the Back of Beyond. To that end, I've got some Chinese Warlord decals arriving tomorrow, which I'll apply to mark the Skunk as being in the service of the Fengtian clique. The Copplestone Chinese warlord figure, which I have primed and awaiting my attention at some point over the coming months, does appear to be based on photos of Zhang Zuolin; it only takes a *little* massaging of the timeline to have Sutton put a Skunk into Zhang Zuolin's possession. 

Unfortunately the kit doesn't come with the forward-facing machine guns...and holy shit, was the intent to fire mortars from inside the cab? Goodbye driver's eardrums!

All in all, a charming little kit of an oddball tankette, and one I'm excited to be able to put on my table at some point. Sutton himself is an interesting man, and I did manage to get my hands on a battered old copy of General of Fortune, a biography of him written by Charles Drage; the biographical information above is taken from Wikipedia and a few other websites, but I'm looking forward to reading his full biography. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 199

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Homemade Jungle Terrain Completed

 I've deleted the previous post; it doesn't make much sense to have the process of making these jungle terrain pieces spread across two posts when I can just have one that covers the whole thing. Truth be told, I was expecting these to take much longer than they ended up being!

Just trimming the pegs on the tree trunks and hitting everything with some matte varnish left.

These are based on irregular Terrain Bases from Things From The Basement; I bought one of each set, and had one base left over from a previous set I'd bought; now I have one left over in a different shape! These were primed black, then the tree trunks glued into place. Once that was done, I painted over the MDF and the base of the plastic trees with a medium brown craft paint. 

Once that had tried, I painted some thinned down PVA glue over the painted areas, and gave everything a good coating of Woodland Scenics blended "Earth" ground cover. Once that had dried, I thinned down some more PVA glue even further, splodged it on in irregular patterns, and added my own mix of coarse "Light Green" turf and fine "Green Grass" turf. 

Once that was all well and dry, I hit everything with a very heavy coat of varnish to seal the flock down. 

The next step then was to get to work on the foliage! I'd bought two assortments of plastic "diorama" plants aimed at children's school projects off Amazon, yielding a total of 200 pieces. Some of them weren't really usable, but I had probably 150-odd pieces that were. I also bought a roughly-foot square rubber mat at my local craft shop, studded with little ferny bits. That right there was probably the biggest expenditure of the whole project, but I only ended up using about a third of it. 

I started by trimming the stems down on the Amazon plastic plants, mixing them all together in a bin.

After that, it was just a matter of warming up the ol' hot glue gun and grabbing bits of foliage at random out of the bin and gluing them down in a pleasing pattern around each tree trunk. As needed to fill space, I popped a ferny bit off the rubber mat, trimmed the socket down, and glued it down between other plants. The process went very quickly, aided by the relaxing tones of Ken over at the Yarkshire Reet Big Wargame Podcast; trimming the plants and gluing them down took roughly the duration of the latest episode. 

I had to move to a secondary desk in my basement; my main work bench doesn't have anywhere to plug a hot glue gun into!

Once the glue was all fully dried, I popped the canopies back on to the palm trees and sat back to admire my work, as seen at the top of the post. I'll still need to trim the pegs that the canopies fit on to, and hit everything with a coat of matte varnish once we get a dry day (maybe the end of this week). 

I'm out of palm trees, but I still have probably 30-40 bits of foliage left as well as 2-3rds of the ferny mat; it might not be immediately but I probably will do another bunch of these since they went together so easily and turned out so well. Maybe do a few with some elevation added with tiers of cork? 

I'd guess I spent about $62 on supplies for this project; given the amount I have left over for future projects, we can probably treat this as $45 worth of supplies, or about $4.50 per piece of terrain. Given the last time I bought pre-made jungle terrain, I got three bases for about $40, or about $13 apiece. Making my own has resulted in big savings! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 199

Figures Painted in 2025: 162

More Modern Terrain

 Casting about yesterday for something I had primed and ready to take to my usual Monday night paint and chats, I settled on some scatter terrain I'd primed months ago but never gotten around to - some 3D-printed wrecked cars that I'd glued to MDF terrain bases with some Mantic "Terrain Crate" bits, and a set of six barricades from the same Terrain Crate box. 

While I'd gotten a lot done on them last night, I was able to polish them off this afternoon (I'd scheduled myself for a half-day at work to avoid the quarterly in-person meeting, and with it, a two hour commute and three hours of mandatory "fun"). I think they turned out really well:

I used some acrylic paint pens I'd picked up on my last trip to Harlequin Hobbies to ink some angry slogans on a few of the barricades, which I think turned out really well although the blue ended up weirdly metallic. 

The rusty silver car and the car on the bottom of the stack are done with Army Painter speed paints "Broadsword Silver" and something-"Copper," respectively, over black primer. The upper two cars in the stack are done with a couple of coats of TurboDork colored metallics. My friend Dave offered me a bottle of "Dirty Down Rust" effect to play with, but I either failed to shake the bottle sufficiently or failed to splodge the contents on heavily enough, because it looked more like a grease stain on the silver car than rust when it was dry; I sponged on some "Chestnut Brown" and "Carrot Top Orange" over it. 

Overall, I'm happy with how everything turned out, and happy to have these no longer hanging over my head waiting to be painted. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 199

Figures Painted in 2025: 162

African Warlord Army

 I've finished the 12 African Militia figures I'd started at the beginning of the week, bringing me up to a total of 17 finished figures for this project. These figures, from The Assault Group, were an absolute delight to paint - nice chunky sculpts, detailed without being bogged down in it, they paint up quick and look good without putting an exhausting amount of work into them. 

Group shot of all 17.

General Mutende oversees his troops.

First Squad

Second Squad

Character figures

Naturally, as soon as I took these pictures, I realized I'd missed a detail - three of them have two magazines taped together affixed to their guns, and I'd forgotten to paint the tape. This has been corrected. 

These figures give me about half of an army for Wars of Insurgency; I placed an order with Badger Games here in the USA for a few more packs of TAG Africans to round things out. I also ordered a few packs of TAG modern British, who will be painted as UN Peacekeepers; not a full force, but the beginnings of one, and as much as my hobby budget would allow for this paycheck. 

Also on my workbench currently...

I've begun work on a set of jungle pieces that I've been accumulating stuff for; irregular MDF terrain bases from Things From The Basement, cheap plastic palm trees and smaller plants off Amazon, etc. Looking at these, I probably should have ordered more palm trees. 

Next step for these is going to be painting and flocking the ground, and once that's done and sealed, I can start hot-gluing smaller plants into place. And in the background, you can see one of the more whimsical pieces of scatter terrain in my collection. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Inflatable Discount Monkey:

In the '80s and '90s, it was fairly common, at least in the US, to see giant inflatable gorillas used in advertising - especially on top of car dealerships, for some reason. In the 2000s, they were slowly replaced by the Wacky Waving Arm Inflatable Tube Men:

These over-cheerful schmucks.

I found an STL for an inflatable gorilla holding an "All Stock Must Go!" sale sign on MyMiniFactory, bought it, and brought it to my 3D printing guy, since it was very in keeping with the economically depressed "Rust Belt" environment that's inspired my modern urban tables. He's going to be an eye-catching addition to my tables, and served to use some of the neon red spray paint I accidentally bought thinking I was getting fire engine red. I'm just waiting for a dry day to prime his base (a 4" MDF disc) and he'll be ready to go. I feel like I should count him towards my figure count for the year, but how should I count him? As one figure? Counts as multiple?

Time to update the tracker:

Figures Acquired in 2025: 199

Figures Painted in 2025: 162

WIP: African Rebel Army

I needed something that was already primed and ready to go earlier this week to take to Monday night's paint and chat, and casting about I found the rest of the Modern African Militia from The Assault Group - I'd painted the first five a few weeks ago, and had another 12 primed and waiting their turn. In two hours' time on Monday, I finished all of their clothing and had painted the metal of their guns. Another two hours today and I got skin, hair, leather, wood and belt buckles finished as well. I also repainted the stocks on the first five's guns to be less yellow-looking. 

I'd bet that by the time I go to bed on Saturday I'll have these 12 finished, including flocked bases. 

What then? 

I admit I don't have much of a plan in mind. There'd been some thought when I purchased them as using them as local insurgents supported by Cobra in my GI Joe games, but not much beyond that. These have been a relaxing joy to paint and the Assault Group figures are very affordable; it's sorely tempting to get more and make a bigger project out of this. 

To that end, I bought a copy of Wars of Insurgency, written by Mike over at Lead Legionaries. It looks like a solid ruleset from a first read-through, and I think it should prove inspiring. Of course, I'll need one or two more forces...oh no...

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 150

.45 Adventure Part 2 -This Time With An Opponent!

 Over the weekend I got a visit from Dave, a buddy of mine from Rochester (not to be confused with Dave, my 3D printing guy, here in Buffalo), who I've been running roleplaying games for for probably the better part of a decade. He's been incredibly generous with gifting me books over the years, and he expressed interest in trying out a skirmish wargame for the first time. He's got a taste for the old pulps, and actually played the Green Hornet in a Pulp Cthulhu game I put on some years back. So it was a no-brainer to get out my painted Green Hornet and Kato and use them for his first pulp wargaming experience. 

We played the same scenario I previously played solo, and played it twice, since the game went quick (though still a learning experience for both of us). The first game ended in a draw, with the Hornet and the DiMarco gang each taking one ledger off the board - and Kato being beaten to a pulp by gangster brick shithouse Fat Paulie! 

The Hornet goes through the pockets of knocked-out Perfect Tommy.

The second game went better, with the Hornet scoring a solid victory, claiming both Ledgers and having much, much, MUCH better rolls when firing his knockout gas gun at the gangsters. 

Dave had a great time with it, and even better, he felt inspired by it - he's struggled for years with both inspiration and fear of failure at the thought of running his own RPG games, but this gave him an immediate sense of "I can do this." He was kind enough to gift me a PDF copy of the second edition .45 Adventure rules, and even offered to have them printed and spiral bound for me. He also requested if it would be possible to play the Shadow in a future game, so this is not the end of our pulp gaming. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 150

.45 Adventure - "Shootout in the Park!"

 It's been delayed a few days due to just having busy evenings, but I finally got the table cleared off tonight and set up to test drive Rattrap Productions' ".45 Adventure (1st edition) using one of the sample adventures in the book - "Shootout in the Park!"

In this thrilling installment, the Green Hornet and Kato are in hot pursuit of "Little" Bobby DiMarco and his henchmen, Perfect Tommy and Fat Paulie. Little Bobby was fleeing the Hornet with an armful of ledgers detailing bribes made to various public officials. As they crossed the park, the ledgers were fumbled - and now both the Hornet and DiMarco are trying to find them. 

It's a gritty '80s reboot of the Green Hornet, with Uzis instead of Tommy Guns.

The Hornet won initiative on the first round, and everyone began spreading out to investigate the six clue markers spread across the table (laid out after I took a picture of the setup!). Pretty soon, clue markers were flying off the table - two revealed police snipers that took ineffectual pot shots, two were duds, and Fat Paulie stumbled across one of the ledgers without realizing what it was.

Confronting Little Bobby, the Hornet fired a soporific shot from his gas gun, which the mobster backpedaled away from. 

Meanwhile, Perfect Tommy and Kato converged on the clue marker hiding the second ledger.

The Hornet dodged away from DiMarco's bullets, right into the ham-sized fists of Fat Paulie. With the Hornet distracted, DiMarco dashed after the ledger that Fat Paulie had overlooked. 

While the Hornet eventually managed to duck out of the way long enough to give Fat Paulie a faceful of knockout gas, and Kato pummeled Perfect Tommy into giving up and fleeing the battlefield, leaving the ledger behind. Unfortunately, it was enough time for DiMarco to flee with his half of the ledgers.

With only half the information needed to bring to DA Scanlon, the Hornet was forced to concede that this adventure had been...a draw!

***

I'm calling that a really successful test play. There were a few things I found myself having to adjudicate because they either just weren't covered in the rules or the text was unclear. All in all, I think the game only took about 45 minutes; I'm excited to put this on on Saturday for my friend Dave, who's a Green Hornet fan. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 150