Projects in the Works

Here are some things I am currently working on:

1. Cleaning up my workbench. I am not known as a neat-freak! I am in the process of doing a major cleaning.

2. My first scratch-built model. For a long time, I've wanted to make my own stuff (long time as in since the 70s). Not just modifying things, or building a house or tree, but my own from-scratch gaming pieces. I am in the process of building an Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano tuboprop trainer in 1/300.

3. Painting a 28mm warrior-fairy for my daughter. I haven't done work like this in awhile. The eyes and the hands just ain't what they used to be.

A Room with a View

For my Gambusian campaign, I needed some buildings to represent larger urban areas. I still have not completely decided on what sort of architectural styles abound on the continent. I built this small building as a generic urban dwelling:



I built it out of Sculpy polymer clay and hence, it has a rather warped look. The windows are out of cardstock. Not the greatest building, but from a distance, it doesn’t look too horrible. The problem is that its sort of pain to cut the slabs of sculpy to make the walls of the buildings. Oh sure, they look nice initially, but when you even start to move them, the corners warp. It was also a lot of work to bevel the corners evenly to glue the corners together. So, I think this will be last of my 6mm sculpy buildings.

Recently, I ran across Matakishi's Tea House (http://www.matakishi.com). It is an excellent site where the author has a lot of how-to stuff. He is very good at going step-by-step in how things are done, which really helps a lot. One of his projects is a how-to on building generic Middle Eastern buildings. He even provides the plans. Here is my take on them:



These buildings are modified from his plans. His are for 28mm scale. Also, they are built so that you can stick your troops inside. So, there was a lot of reduction in size. I am never too good at getting my proportions right. I think my buildings suffer from scale creep. My trees seem to come out that way, too, but that is for another entry.

Here is the first one I made:



I used Adobe Illustrator to reduce the size, and to adjust for the fact that I won’t be putting figures inside the building. The windows and doors are made out of sculpy. There is some warping on some of the windows, but it’s minimal. Besides, we’re talking “developing nation” here. To get a sort of adobe effect on walls of this building and the following, I took craft paint and mixed it with some baking powder. It gave the rough texture. You need to paint fast because the baking powder dries the paint quickly.

This first apartment looks cool with the balcony wrapped around the two sides of the building, but it was very tricky to pull off. So, I got lazy and put the balcony only on side of the second building. Besides, the tenants pay lower rent at this apartment:



Again, same methods. I got a little fancier with the doors and even tried my hand at building a dormer for the top floor apartment.

The third building is more of a shop or restaurant:



The awning outside the shop is just a piece of paper held up by segments of wire. I didn’t intend for the building to be this dark a brown. It seemed to darken a little when I mixed it with the baking soda. The building’s walls look rougher than the others because I let the paint-baking soda mixture dry a little more before application, and I think I added more baking soda than on the other two. One nice thing is that the mixture also works as filler and can cover up some gaps between cardstock and can smooth out edges a little bit.

Defending the Northern Skies

Ever since the "line of death" incident occurred in the summer of 2007 in which a Northern Chalupistan MiG-21 (flown by the now commander-in-chief General L. Alliruhc) shot down a Southern Northrop F5E, the North has been on a constant state of high alert. The North has deployed various AA defenses.


A SA-6 Gainful AA missiles (C in C R-86) with its Straight Flush control radar vehicle (C in C R-87)


Northern militia man a ZU-23-2 23mm AA guns (Heroics & Ros SM-48) mounted on a slightly modified Scotia RM81 Zil-131 heavy truck (at least I think it is).

A Blast from the Past

Here is an example of my earlier painting skills:


It is a Ral Partha magic-user figure. I made a quick look through the web to see if I could find the catalog number, but no such luck. Ral Partha was probably my favorite miniatures company. I still have some of their early ones from the 70s. I was really bummed out when they went out of business.

Where is Gambusia?

A lot of people...ok, only one person, a friend who is a geographer, asked me where Gambusia is. You'd think he would know being a geographer and all, but that is part of the mystery that is Gambusia. The mini-continent of Gambusia is located in the Indian Ocean:



It is the little green splat west of Australia and south of Sumatra and Bali. In spite of its location, few people know that it is there. You'd think it would be of great strategic value...but its not. And you'd think it has played an important part in shaping global events...but no, it never did. I will gladly get deeper into its history in a later post, but for now, I just wish to provide a short introduction.

If we examine the region closeup, we see that there is the main, mini-continent and several smaller islands.



Being marginally trained as a geologist, I will gladly go into the geologic processes that formed Gambusia, but its tax season and I have more pressing things to do. I am going to introduce the three nations that exist on Gambusia. They are:


The Sultanate of Northern Chalupistan

Also known as Northern Chalupistan, this nation occupies the northern two-thirds of the continent proper, plus the three islands to the east. It was originally settled by pirates in the 1500s, but became a unified sultanate by the early 17th century. It has the highest per capita income of the three countries thanks to tourism, ship building, and growing high-tech industrial sector. Politically, it is a constitutional monarchy. Islam is the dominant religion, but it has been always known to be extremely tolerant of other religions. Citizens have always been proud of their pirate past much the way Australians are proud of their past as a place to send convicts. Two years ago, as part of a tourism PR campaign, the country altered the spelling of its name from "Chalupastan" to "Chalupistan." There was also a move by the Ministry of Tourism to replace the crossed swords (representing their pirate heritage) with crossed palm trees, but this was voted down in a national referendum.


The Viceroy of Chalupastan

Also known as Southern Chalupastan, this nation occupies the southern part of the main continent. Southern Chalupastan was "discovered" by one of Magellan's ships that sailed off course on the way back to Spain. Although it was granted independence from Spain in 1924, it continued to have a viceroy as its head of state. Like its neighbor to the north, it has a constitutional monarchy as a form of government. Economically, it ranks second. The economy is largely agricultural. The main crop is the Bu-Bu berry, which is used in several manufacturing processes as well as eaten. Additionally, Southern Chalupastan produces some of the largest carrots in the world. Carrot lengths of over 3 meters have been recorded. Several international firms have recently established technology parks in some of the larger cities. Southern Chalupastani are a mixture of Spanish, Gambusian, and Chalupan heritage. Sadly, social status and wealth is based largely on ethnicity. Those of more pure Spanish ancestry tend to be higher up in society, and more economically well off.

The Federal Republic of Gambusia (FRG)

This is the smallest and youngest of the three countries. It occupies the western side of the continent. Prior to the coming of the pirates and the Europeans, the mini-continent was inhabited by the Gambusians and the mysterious Chalupans. Whereas the pirates and Spanish invaded the eastern lands, the western region was carved up first by the Dutch, then later the British and French. It remained three separate colonies until the three gained independence separately in the early 1960s and then united into single republic in 1965. Britain and France still have some influence, and maintains a military presence. They are the poorest of the three nations, with their economy based solely on agriculture and fishing. In the past few years, the FRG has been trying to cultivate an eco-tourism industry, but rebel activities in the eastern part of the country have hampered their efforts. Despite being less well-off compared to the other two countries, the people of the FRG are proud of their indigenous identity.

Fantasy Giant

Besides microarmor, I am a big fantasy wargamer. About 10 years ago, I found that even though 25/28mm figures have a lot more detail, they dented my wallet too much to really build the armies that I wanted. Plus, I felt like I was doing more painting and far less gaming. So, I switched to 15mm. Not as many companies, so you have to improvise and not be so picky as to what your orcs and elves look like. Here is are some that I painted last year.



The giant, which I bought at Walmart, is from a series of Yu-Gi-Oh plastic miniatures. He was supposed to be a cyclops, but I re-painted him with two eyes. His opponent is from the now-defunct Demonworld line of 15mm fantasy figures. Very nicely sculpted, but rather pricey.

A Small Gambusian Village

Recently (about 2 years, give or take a few months), I got interested in modern wargaming. I never really thought I would, but the more I read, the more I got interested. I also got burnt out on my 15mm fantasy figures. Being poor, I decided to stick to 6mm. Besides, I figured I could use a lot of my WWII microarmor. Anyway, I decided to have a campaign on the fictional micro-continent of Gambusia, which is somewhere in the Indo-Pacific. Why a fictional country and not real nations?

1) Maybe due to my interest in fantasy wargames and having played D&D many years ago, I just
seem to like fictional settings.

2) The various nations can have a hodgepodge of weapons. I can pit any AFV against any AFV.

3) It seems like a lot of smaller nations seem to jury rig weapons together...an endless source for
model conversions.

3) Because of (2) & (3), I can create all kinds of TO&E's for the various nations.

The campaign is slowly progressing via PBEM.

OK, enough background for now. Gambusia is a semi-tropical continent, hence, palm trees. Also, the poor folk live in mud huts:

A typical Gambusian village

The hut were made of Sculpy and painted with craft paints. The roofs are acorn caps. I left the caps their natural color. To make the palm trees:
First I looped 28 gauge copper wire.
I then twisted the bottom 2/3rds of the wire together.
Cutting the untwisted part gave me eight stands that I bent to make a radial pattern.
I then cut thin strips of paper, ran some PVA glue on them, then folded them over the wire.
After they paper dried, I cut out the frond shapes.
I then smeared epoxy putty over the twisted part to make the trunk. As it dried I made grooves around the trunk with a scissors.
Let it dry, then paint.

Frankly, buying plastic palm trees would be a lot easier and faster than making them, but I have never been one to do things the easy way.

Gambuisan rebels armed with a recoilless rifle wait to ambush a passing troop convoy.