Everything is better with lasers...

... right? I was admiring the laser-cut buildings from the likes of Sarissa when I had a thought (it happens occasionally) - we have a laser-plotter in the technology department at my school. So, a little playing with 2d Designer later, and I had a virtual copy of an earlier building I'd made (very slowly!) from foam-core and balsa splints.

Then I wandered over to the technology dept. and, ten minutes later (okay, thirty - I screwed up the measurements for the joints on the first trial) I had this in my excited little paws:

It went together pretty well:

The best bit about the whole thing was my Cunning Plan (TM) 8) I run the science/tech club so I'm going to get the kids to build lots more (for their own good, you understand) so that they build a whole town. This will allow me to indulge in a bit of geek-design, and a little bit of subtle evangelising about gaming.

And if they don't want to keep their creations, I'll look after them. It would be rude not to, eh?

Blood on the streets of Thorncreek

Alright, alright, one last time for the latecomers and then I'm a-headin' for mah bed. Summa this Ah had to git from the Sheriff, 'cuz it happened after Ah got plugged in the shoulder here, but this is how it went when those darn cowpokes turned nasty....

The streets of Thorncreek were deserted after word had spread that some of the ranch-hands taken on by the Claytons were heading into town with mischief on their mind.


It wasn't long, however, before the Civic Patrol were out in force and ready to defend their town.


Sheriff Nathaniel Crawcrook and the Harris boys (Joshua and Daniel) headed North up Main Street, while Johan 'Jonah' Meier edged off round through the trees, and Deputy Jeremiah Ainsworthy led Patrick Flannegan and Charles Vickers over the fences and round to the West of the row of shops.

Up at the other end of Main Street, the cowboys were starting to throw their weight around, whoopin' and hollerin' and shootin' into the air.


Heading straight at them, and cursin' at them to mend their ways and clear out of town, the Sheriff and the Harris boys showed no fear.


Gunfire broke out along the side streets now, as it became clear that the trailboss and his nastier cronies were trying to outflank the Patrol. Yellin' and cursin', and then quiet told Sheriff Crawcrook that at least some men were down - he hoped they weren't his. "Joshua, Daniel; you boys go and see if Jonah's gone and got hisself killed. I'll be fine here with Ainsworthy over there" With that he calmly gunned down a cowboy with a fine piece of rifle-shootin'. He spat. "Lawbreakers. They sure do vex me somethin' dreadful."


Through the heat-haze of midday, and the lingering gunsmoke, the Sheriff could see his Deputy charge into two of the uninvited visitors and start layin' into them with his fists and the butt of his rifle. Crawcrook grunted in approval and then, cold as a mountian stream in spring, put a second cowboy out of the fight with a bullet in the gut that would prove fatal.

Round in the East, the Harris' had found Johan hurt but alive, and closed in on the culprit, gunning her down in a hail of lead.


They then headed over to Main Street, just as the rest of the cowboys did the same after dealing with Patrick and Charles. The Deputy was down in a crumpled heap and Sheriff Crawcrook was sluggin' it out with two ne'er-do-wells. As they rushed in to help him, the trailboss stepped out from behind the scrap and shot Joshua right between the eyes. Screaming in fury and loss, Daniel ran at him, but the man in the long pale coat calmly clubbed him to the floor and turned on the Sheriff.


Nathaniel did not have his reputation for nothin', however, and soon it was just him and Joshua's killer left standing. Toe-to-toe, and blow for blow they fought.


Neither giving way, battered and bruised, it was many minutes before the Sheriff finally toppled his foe with a blow that would have poleaxed a steer. Save fer burryin' the dead, it was over.


Post-game chatter
Phew! It came really close at the end with each of us (Me and Chris) gritting our teeth on every Head for the Hills check, but our posse's leaders were just too stubborn. In the end it came down to the Sheriff having a second attack that swung it, and it seemed fitting that it was the two bosses who faced off at the finale.

That was our first game of LotOW, despite it having been ages since I started on this project, but we'd both played GW's Lord of the Rings game in the past, and Chris has done a fair bit of Necromunda gaming, so the rules were familiar. I did nearly blow it early on by forgetting the Heroic Actions that could be called, and did lose two of the posse as a result on the left of the board.

We thoroughly enjoyed it, though, and I think the bad blood between the posse's after Daniel's death will add a certain frisson. Joshua was raised to Hero status for taking out two cowboys, and this seemed fitting. The Sheriff picked up two new skills (Trick Shooter and Pistolier), but we didn't get enough loot to replace the dead vigilante. Chris has his boss out for two games, and couldn't afford to retain his Gunslinger or replace his dead chap, so I reckon the Civic Patrol came out on top. Don't mess with Thorncreek!


PS
I'm not going to mention the game of Elfball we had after lunch, except to say I was outplayed by Chris and destroyed by the dice. Yikes!

Land Office open for business

Whoopee! I got my first building for Thorncreek finished today.

I'd been dithering (how unlike me!) over how to paint the wood, and had done two rather labour intensive (multiple layers and washes) test pieces which I was fairly pleased with, but knew would be mind-numbing for a whole building or town:


So when I was out yesterday picking up some Master's Brush Cleaner (very highly recommended for bringing even nasty old splayed brushes back to life, btw) from the art shop in town, I also picked up two pots of craft paint (Chocolate and Coffee - I guess I was getting peckish!):


Some heavy drybrushing (more like wetbrushing, really) later, and taadaa! A finished building:

The Thorncreek Patrol, ever vigilant...

Quick and dirty pictures, as usual, but it keeps the impetus of blogging going and boosts my feeling of accomplishment if I post straight away I finish something. All the usual excuses about flash washing out layers, funny business from Photoshop when auto-levelling the contrast, but I'm pretty chuffed with how this turned out. The best bit is, the most time-consuming part of painting it was the couple of layers of blue on the windows!

Hope you like it,
Rab

Can't see the wood for the trees

Almost no painting undertaken this week, except to finish off another outlaw for my bad guy posse:


Mostly, I've been doing a little rooting through a box of trees I inherited, picking out the ones that are still serviceable and mounting them on washers:


A couple of pieces of street furniture to shelter behind:


And finally, the three-shops-in-one is nearly done. I'm just waiting on some model railway sheet tiling for the third roof and it'll be all ready to base up:


The purple-looking roof is some corrugated modeling card I found in a cheapo shop; far quicker than preparing the cat-food-box as I described in an earlier post - life is too short! The right-hand roof is overlapped strips of masking tape that I hope will paint up like tar-paper. We shall see.

Happy geeking,
Rab

State of play (ing with toy soldiers)

Before I get stuck in, I thought I'd give you a quick tour of the workbench as it is now, and please forgive the hurried snaps.

First up, the boss of my Outlaws for Legends of the Old West (just finished, I thought, but I've obviously missed putting a wash on that bit on his right sleeve):


Next, the rest of the boys, in various states of preparation:


There's also another shop, or rather three which I'm doing in one go to speed me along:


On a completely unrelated note, the gang are getting back into another fantasy football game, Elfball from the rather fabulous Impact miniatures. This is my ancient Eqyptian themed team in progress:


And finally, I couldn't resist putting together the first of the 135 (!) mostly plastic Napoleonic figures that Ma and Pa got me for Christmas. I shall paint them with the nice new brushes that sister number one got me. They've finally given in and decided that geeking stuff is a valid present :)

How cats helped win the West

I hope you'll be pleased to know that I haven't been just been sitting sulking about GW for the last few days, I've also been beavering away on the first building for Thorncreek, which I think is in the southern part of Colorado. This should allow mountains, plains, and (at a stretch) the occasional gang of Mehican bandidos that are on the run from down south. Well, quite a big stretch...

In case any of you would like to see how I did it, I've laid out the in progress pictures below. The method is very heavily based on this set of articles over on Geektactica, and using Gungnir's sterling work as inspiration as well.

First off, I measured out some templates (sorry, can't find the picture, but it's not that exciting anyway) for the walls, cut them out of 5mm foamcore and glued them square. I then started cladding the walls with the splints/spills/little-bits-of-balsa-like-wood-for-lightning-bunsen-burners-with. This took quite a while!




The elastic band was to hold the end piece in place while the glue dried. Use lots of glue!


More cladding in place...


I realised I had to add a pointy roof bit on the back of the false front to support the roof - lesson learned for next time, when I'll just make two of the back end pieces and stick one on the back of the false front.


This is where the cats come in! The corrugated iron roofing is made from the box my cat's food pouches come in. I just peeled off the outer layer and was left with the beautifully even corrugations you can see :) It took a little while to find the best way of removing the little bits of 'outer' that stuck to the bits I wanted, but I found that a sculpting tool scraped down each corrugation allowed me to clear the stubborn bits off in about ten minutes. Free and reused - bonus!

The finished building! I trimmed the scrappy bits of foam core around the windows so that they were smooth and stuck bits of splint to form door/window frames. I stuck the whole lot onto some thick card, put a ridge-cap over the tin roof, backed the door/window holes with thin card and used some more of the base card to make a front door. I cut two pieces of thin card rectangle to make the sign, removing the central section from one and sticking it over the other to make a frame. The boardwalk was made by gluing a few modelling matchsticks (from a massive bag I picked up for a song) at right angles to the direction I laid the planks which were more splints. I'm pretty chuffed with it for a first attempt, and now that I've done it once I reckon I'll be much quicker next time.





What will I use it for? As I hope my future buildings will be less crude, this should really be the oldest Thorncreek building. The Land Office, perhaps? Suggestions on a postcard...

TTFN

Out and about with the Civic Patrol

A quick burst of painting tonight after a day filled with guests and their lovely, but very active, children and... I've finished painting my starting lawmen posse for Legends of the Old West. The new additions (from left to right) are: Charles Vickers, Sheriff Nathaniel Crawcrook and Deputy Jeremiah Ainsworthy.



And without the sepia to hide my hurried brushstrokes on the last three members:



So, now I've got:

- Sheriff (repeating rifle, sixgun)
- Deputy (shotgun, sixgun)
- Vigilante (sixgun) x 3
- Vigilante (sixgun, shotgun) x 2

Now, I've chosen their armaments entirely on what the models are sculpted with, so I may make some adjustments with a few games experience!

Yee-ha!

Johan Meier

Johan (nicknamed 'Jonah' because of his dreadful bad luck) is the veteran of countless failed business (and romantic) ventures. His popularity is based evenly on his predilection for long, hilarious, self-mocking anecdotes about his latest misadventure, and his open-hand and open-wallet to those in need. For all his apparent foolishness, he is no imbecile and will not get taken advantage of. He's also pretty handy with that shotgun and is an active member of the Civic Patrol.



I'm actually a bit disappointed with this figure; there's something just not quite right about the way he's come out, although the funny shadow near his eye isn't there in real life. Ho-hum, he'll do - I'm not so unimpressed that I'll strip him and start again, and I want to keep up the momentum I've currently got. Here are the Thorncreek Civic Patrol so far:



Now, while the temptation is quite high to give them somewhere to patrol (i.e. Thorncreek itself), I'm determined to get the starting lawmen posse (sheriff, deputy, five vigilantes) complete first.

The Harris boys

"See over there, yup - there on the table by the stairs? That there's Joshua and Daniel Harris. They and their Ma and Pa farm out East a little way. They're on the Patrol, but I still would be careful not to cross 'em! Polite and gentleman-like, a credit to their Ma, but talk down their family, or try and cheat them at cards and they'll knock you down. Do it again and they'll like as not shoot you where you stand! Good lads to have on your side when the lead starts a-flyin'. Patrol's lucky to have 'em"

The founding of Thorncreek

"Pull up a chair, Pardner, and I'll tell y'a tale. Fifteen year ago, I bought me a patch o'dirt out here. Me an' a few other fellas, families, couple o' ranchers; you know, the usual. We were doin' well, building' up, bein' respectable folks. Then a couple o' years back the trouble started. A disagreement over a fence or two 'tween the Harris boys and the Claytons turned pretty nasty, been rumblin' on ever since. So me an' the town gents got ourselves together, formed the Thorncreek Civic Patrol. You gonna play nice in town? I hope so cuz we finally got ourselves a Sheriff on the way and I hear he's awful fond o' the noose."

Patrick Flannegan, Civic Patrol member, town founder and hotel owner

Finally got some painting done - whoop! I've also got a whole bunch more primed and ready to go. Cowboys and Space Hulk have got me pumped again, so I'm going to stick with them, and then go back to Impetus when the feeling grabs me. Surely I'll get more done that way.

Below are a couple of workbench snaps to prove I really have been priming away :)