Nerd Fest: I'm on a Road to Nowhere

Nerd Fest is coming up this weekend and I am so far behind! Ah-h-h-h!!!!

I've sort of checked out mentally from work and spent my afternoon making roads in my office:

They are about 50mm wide. I probably need another set of these. I hope that they are not too thin. I used a lot more caulk than I thought. It's the fast dry stuff that I've been using for my 6mm projects but at this size, it is difficult to spead. I do have some larger, cheaper tubes of caulk, but I couldn't find my caulk gun and I didn't feel like buying a new one at Walmart. I sprinkled some sand on them. Tomorrow morning, I'll paint them and put a brown wash on them.

I have not been able to find a scenario that I like, so I just decided this will be a big bash between armies.

Battle Valor Games Miniatures

Battle Valor Games is a new company in the world of 15mm fantasy. They have a number of lines that have yet to be produced. I was not overly impressed by the photos of them, but they are the only company I know of that makes peasants in 15mm. I thought, why not, lets gets some and maybe use them for my upcoming Fantasy Rampant game at my school's Nerd Fest. To justify postage, I also ordered a Frigian Character pack.

This isn't meant to be a review (OK, maybe it is), but this is some quick impressions. I just got them, so all these pictures were taken right out of the box in my office. Also, being a little pressed for time, I didn't photograph all of them. First, I have to say that they are much better looking than the photos I've seen! They are on par with Splintered Light Miniatures.

Human Peasants

Some Frigian Characters

More Frigian Characters

Frigian Character Rider

Many groups ("Dwarves," "Elves," etc.; the names of their various races and peoples are altered so fit their fantasy universe) have a background story to them; the Frigians do not. Based on the pictures on the website, they look sort of Dark Age-ish (Anglo-Danes/Viking). The figures in the character packs would work well in any dungeon crawl game. Included are two mounted characters with corresponding foot figures. One is on a horse; the other rides a pegasus (not photographed).   Both riders come with round shields.

The peasants also look very nice. There does not appear to be any duplicates. There are both men and women who are going about their business. Many of the men hold farm implements.

There will be a rules system that is supposed to go with them, it seems to be a work in progress.

Will I buy more? Maybe. I have so much unpainted lead in the fantasy category, I don't know if I'll ever whittle the pile down. I like their "Dwarves" but I've got so many painted units already, plus I am sure there a bunch still waiting to be painted that is silly to buy more. I think I will wait until more of the lines become available and then decide.

Nerd Fest: Unit Cards for Dragon Rampant

Here is a rough draft of some unit cards for Dragon Rampant.

Not sure if those will be the final pictures. I reorganized some of the unit stats in an attempt to make them clear. I plan to print them on cardstock where I can get four cards per sheet of cardstock, and then laminate them after cutting them.

Nerd Fest: Rules Choice

I spent the last two nights pouring over rules. These included Armies of Arcana, Dragon Rampant, One-Hour Wargames, Warmaster, and Rally Around the King, as well as some really oldies like Chainmail, and Royal Armies of the Hyborian Age. The winner: Dragon Rampant! There is a little bit of tweaking to be done, but for the most part, I think it will work. I think the students will be able to learn the mechanics pretty quickly, and not be bored by it. Maybe I am over-generalizing, instant gratification is a big concern of mine with regards to the students.

Next step is to come up with a scenario, and start making up stat cards for the various units. I want to make this as easy for the players as possible.

On a side note, as I was going through my bookshelf looking for appropriate rules books, I thought, my goodness, I've accumulated a heck of a lot of rules over the years! There were some that I didn't remember even buying.

Nerd Fest is a Go!

I found out yesterday that I have been officially slated to run a game at Nerdfest, my school's micro-convention. I also got the green light from the boss that we have nothing scheduled for that weekend. Now, all microarmor activities have come to a screaming halt (so-o-o-o close to being done!). I have about two weeks to:

1) Figure out a scenario. I'll probably use something from Thomas Neil's One Hour Wargames.

2) Opponents and their size. It will probably be Medieval Humans and Dwarves vs Orcs and Barbarian Humans. Unlike the game that I had five years ago, this one will probably be much smaller in numbers.

3) Rules. This is a tricky one. It more than likely end up being my old standby, Armies of Arcana, BUT I am seriously considering Dragon Rampant. I've read them over and I like what I read. The rules that will make the game move along faster will the determining factor as to which one I pick. I will make up my own magic rules to go along with whatever rules I end up using.

4) Terrain. It will have to reflect the scenario, but being that this is sort of showcase game, I want to make it look as visually appealing as possible. I have most of what I need, but I am thinking of building a few extra pieces to spruce up things.

Bottom line, I am competing against a videogame culture where you have fast-paced action games that have high visual graphics. Two weeks to get it all together along with work and family activities. I can't see any problems...

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In other news, I found scribbled notes from a long ago campaign pitting early WWII Soviets against early WWII British, fighting over Iran...Crusaders versus BT-7s. Recently, PeterFritz, over at his Shapeways shop, has been putting out British interwar tanks in 1/285 scale. I remember many of these from Ian V. Hogg's Tanks (1987). Unfortunately, I no longer have that book, but those odd interwar tanks are still stuck in my mind. Several other shops, of which I cannot recall, sells interwar aircraft in 1/300 scale.

I was thinking of re-igniting the campaign, only now to include some of those interwar tanks. That is definitely on the back burner, but it has the advantage of not necessarily starting from scratch. The Five Core rules would definitely fit the bill for this campaign, or even pull out my old copy of Jagdpanzer rules.

NerdFest: show 'em how its done Old School

Every year in April, my college puts on a micro-convention, if you can call it that, called NerdFest. Last year was the first time I went. It was a somewhat disorganized affair, but they did have have a costume contest and ongoing video games. They had room set up for board games, but it was poorly attended. The games consisted of Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit (which I won), Monopoly, and a few other general audience games. I vowed that this year, I will run a table top game. I need to show the younglings (as my department chair calls them) how gaming is done old school.

It needs to be multi-player, so initially I thought of a zombie skirmish game. I dumped that idea as I would have a lot of work to complete my 25/28mm figures (lots of figures in various stages of completion to kill the zombies, but no actual zombies to kill), not to mention building some sort of urban terrain for them. Now, I am leaning toward 15mm fantasy mass battle with me being the ref. That would be far less work for me. I have not committed fully to it as it may conflict my daughter's weekend tennis matches. But if I do, I've got my work cut out for me.

I will probably make up my own rules to make life as simple as possible for the players. They will be a mash up of several rules with the core being something along the lines of Armies of Arcana. Models will not be a problem, but I will need to make up stat cards for the various units.

I have played in but have never ran a convention game, so this should be an interesting experience.

Armored Ogre Shield

I am trying to figure out what I need to make next for my first battle of my Gambusian campaign. I seem to be close to being done, but I am not sure. In the meanwhile, I continue on my eternal quest to clean my work table. I ran across a bunch of 15mm fantasy figures that I primed. They included some armored ogres from Splintered Light Miniatures.  They come with large blank shields. Part of the reason why I haven't painted them up was because I couldn't think of what to paint onto their shields. 

As fate would have it, I found the answer in one of my son's story books. My wife is reading to him a kid's version of The Journey to the West. Its a Chinese tale that seems sort of long and convoluted and features the Monkey King. If you remember the 1986 Eddie Murphy movie, "The Golden Child," it has the Monkey King in it. The Journey West is filled with a lot of magic and a whole lot of fighting. Fortunately for me, the book is heavily illustrated, otherwise, I would have no clue as to what is going on. In one story, he and his companions take on some sort of orc-like warriors that are heavily armored and carry big shields that have faces on them, at least that is what the picture shows. Bingo, I found my answer to the ogre shields.

So this is a test sculpt. I did it out of polymer clay. Somewhere, I do have some green stuff that I could use if I was more ambitious. I sculpted it directly on the shield and then baked it. 

Seem to be looking for a contact lens.

The face doesn't look all that fierce, but I didn't have my son's book in front of me when I sculpted it. The nice thing about polymer clay is that I can easily crack it off and make a new one.