Junk shop treasure.

I found these three Lledo di cast models at a local junk shop yesterday. From left to right 1936 Packard, 1934 Chevy Van, and some kind of Model T I think. Picked up the whole lot for $14.00 which is probably much better than I could have done on ebay.

I'm planning on stripping these guys and re-painting. The main problem is that unlike the ERTL trucks I have done in the past these trucks don't have screws holding them together. Instead they have peined over post. I'm pretty sure I can drill those out and them glue the models back together when I'm done.

I've found some great stuff at local junk shops over the years. Mid Missouri is full of them. They are often called Antique Malls or Flee Markets but they are just junk shops. If you have such establishments in your area check them out. You never know what you might be able to dig up. Just make sure you give yourself pleanty of browsing time.

No Battle Reports?

Well there has been a distinct lack of battle reports on my blog of late. In fact the last actual battle report I wrote was way back in March. This is mostly due to the fact that I've not been playing a lot of miniature games. I've been playing quite a few role playing games and using miniatures for them but I haven't been playing many miniature games. It's harder to write rpg reports than miniature game reports because there is usually much more information and not as much miniature use. I tend to use miniatures for combat in RPGs but I don't always have combat in my game sessions and also we sometimes use battle maps or dry erase maps instead of terrain and while that's ok for gameing it hardly seems worth taking pictures and posting them.

Hopefully that will change soon. I'm going to start running some Pulp miniature adventure games using the Savage Worlds rules and nice terrain. I'm pretty well adjusted to my new home and I have most of my miniature and terrain stuff unpacked and sorted out so hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of making terrain for nice battle reports.

With any luck I'll have some kind of game report up in the next week.

Gamer ADD

Howdy folks. Sorry about the lack of quality updates. I have been working on things. Too many things. In fact it's starting to look like a case of Gamer Attention Deficit Disorder. I have just way too many ideas and not enough time to work them all out. No amount of organization or planning seems to be helping me. As soon as I get stuck in on one project I get another "great idea" that diverts my attention and resources away from projects I should be working on. I hate it when this happens as it usually just causes me to have a lot of unfinished stuff laying around.

Games I'm currently involved in:

Shadowrun: Fortunately as a player and we aren't real miniatures heavy on the Shadowrun game. The GM has a bunch of the old Ral Partha Shadowrun minis in various stages of somewhat painted. I'm glad at least he's doing miniatures in some form because SR combat can get "interesting".

Serenity: I'm running this game and doing a ton of miniature projects for it but I'm starting to waver. I've only finished minis for about half the party and one of the PCs doesn't have a mini at all finished or not. I've still got a half painted fed squad and a pack of reavers that are still in their blisters. I have finished several NPC types but I'd say I still have 50-100 minis to finish for this project. The game is currently on hold until September due to schedule conflicts among the players.

BMAP: This is my family pulp adventure game and it's stalled due to the fact that I'm not ready to continue to the next scenario due to not having all the minis or terrain done yet. Moving house really hurt this campaign and our one non family member player now lives like 90 miles away. Hopefully I'll get back on this "soon"

Games I'm suppose to be working on:

Blackfeather: Another pulp adventure game set in the U.S. Only played one session of this game so far.

Star Wars Star Destroyer Liberty: I was suppose to start this Clone Wars era campaign over a month ago but I just can't get it together.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles: I'm suppose to be helping get a Warhammer league going at one of the local game shops but I'm not up on the current rules yet and my armies are still half packed up from the move.

Warhammer 40k: Never tell anyone you have enough minis to make an army for this game. They will immediately start pressuring you to join their 40k game group.

Games I really, really, really, want to play:

Sky Pirates: Still working slowly on a campaign that I plan to run spanning both "Weird Wars". I have planes and some minis but can't get a group interested yet. Probably a good thing due to other projects. This one will have to simmer on the back burner for a while I'm afraid. I'll certainly work on it but only a little at a time.

Santa Carlito Zombie Republic: A recent idea for a Zombie outbreak game I plan to set on the fictitious Caribbean island of Santa Carlito. I may even do this as a multi group campaign where each "team" can affect the story line.

Other game project ideas:

The Adventures of Jack Harrison: A pulp adventure featuring the Jack Harrison model by Reaper Miniatures. I plan to use only Reaper miniatures for this game and their RAGE engine for the rules. I plan to make it a convention game and hope to run it at Recruits Convention in Lee's Summit Missouri some time in the future.

Starfarers of Sol: A sci-fi setting based entirely on our own solar system without aliens.

Deadlands: I'd really like to play a Deadlands campaign.

Pirates: Yeah pirates.

Arthurian: I've had a number of abortative attempts at doing a rpg set in Arthurian England.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying: I keep buying the books but can't get people interested.

Mordheim/Necromunda: Yeah the two GW games I actually want to play but everyone else wants to play the money pit games.

Too much free time not enough focus.

Well I haven't had a blog entry in over a week here partially because I'm moving to another town. The good thing about that is that the town I'm moving two has two pretty active game stores and a lot of gamers and the town I currently live in really has neither.

Packing up all my miniatures and game stuff has been both a blessing and a curse. I've found a lot of projects I had lost track of but I also became even more aware of the many projects I have that are in various stages of completion or lack there of. I can't believe how many unfinished projects I've built up and how close some of them are to being done and have been that way for years. I also became aware of how many gaps I have in my collection and how unfocused my miniature painting has been. I've got a few minis painted for lots and lots of different game settings but most of them are not well covered. For instance I have a good collection of Star Wars minis for RPGs and I'm getting a good collection of Pulp era figures but I was shocked to find that I have fewer than a dozen character minis for D&D because I've sold several over the years and have not been replacing them. I've got a few modern minis and a lot small faction lots from various war games and not one of them large enough to field a good "army" at this time. Sure they look impressive all together but they really don't amount to much. I'd say ebay has been a factor in this situation because I've sold off a lot of my old stuff but I've also been pretty bad about picking up minis for too many systems and not getting enough painted for any one army. I still own thousands of minis though and I would imagine I have no more than a few hundred painted.

Another thing I've noticed lately is just how many unfinished web pages I have made over the years. I've had five different pages dedicated to miniature games all of which seem incomplete.

The Moto Bushi School is probably my oldest and it's dedicated to Clan War. Naturally the demise of that game didn't help.

Valhalla Painting Studio is something I set up back when I was selling painted minis on ebay. I started out just selling off minis I didn't want but then I started selling off minis from my collection just to keep auctions up on a regular basis. This burned me out pretty bad and left me with pretty big gaps in my collection. I've sold minis on e-bay since then but never on a regular basis.

Star Wars Adventures in Miniature is an old page from about 2001 or 2002. I was doing a lot of sculpting and converting back then although I still didn't have a good camera so I was laying most of my minis on a flat bed scanner.

Nathan Miller's Art of Miniature Gaming was an early attempt to get all my spread out material under the same roof or at least be a hub for my previous attempts.

My Cool Mini or Not Gallery by 2003 I finally had a good enough camera to post some pics in this cutthroat community. Unfortunately I don't paint for contest so I never got very good scores. I still post randomly on CMON but oddly most of my best minis I don't bother posting there.

The Border Princes was my old Warhammer club. We hung together for about a year or two but then everyone started moving away. Most of us stay in contact but the club is mostly dead. I may start it back up again after my move because there isn't a lot of support for Warhammer Fantasy where I'm moving and I think it's a far better system than 40k which of course had a big following.

My Displaced Miniatures Gallery lately I've been posting a few figs on Displaced Miniatures. For some reason however the feedback features seem to be disabled so all you can really do is put minis up and look at the pretty pictures.

Then there is this blog which I hope actually surpasses all my other attempts. So far I've been much better at updating it than most of my previous web pages. I guess I'll just have to start staying focused. :)

A Case For Rayguns!

A Case for Rayguns

Ray guns, lasers, blasters, disruptors, phasers, whatever you call them you can't get much more sci-fi than heroes armed with energy based weapons. Why then is it so hard to find 28mm sci-fi miniatures armed with this iconic gun style? It seems most of the major manufactures of science fiction miniature lines prefer to arm their figures with ballistic weapons. The bigger the better and almost always with a banana clip. Now there are some retro sci-fi lines out with classic ray guns but these lines are small and produced by companies that are sometimes hard to find and they don't cover contemporary sci-fi styling. If your model is more Han Solo than Flash Gordon your out of luck. I'm also not taking into account the pre-painted Star Wars minis by Wizards of the Coast. Not only are these setting specific but they just aren't as nice as their pewter counterparts. Hey I own several myself but I almost always choose converted metal minis over the bendy plastics. Here and there you can find an individual armed with some kind of laser but these are few and far between. Let's look at some of the bigger Sci-fi lines out at the moment:

Ah Warhammer 40,000. Where would the miniature game world be without it? Probably smaller but perhaps a bit more interesting. But wait you say. Warhammer 40k has entire armies based on energy weapons. That's true the Eldar carry laser guns and so do the Imperial Guard but if you look real close even these guns have power packs that look an awful lot like clips. They are also the company responsible for starting the bigger is better mentality for their gun designs. What most people however think when they think of 40k are space marines who are armed with big ballistic bolters. Yes their troops in their most advanced armor carry throw back weaponry. I guess that some people find it comforting that 40,000 years in the future trooper will still be loading their guns with big banana clips but I don't.

Infinity is a relatively new line of figures but sadly they fall into the same old trap. Despite a much cleaner and more futuristic look than Warhammer 40k figures most of their troopers are armed with overly large assault rifles with big banana clips. These trooper's guns even have an extra banana clip just in case the first one runs out.

AT-43 is Rackham's pre-painted plastic line is somewhat nicer looking than most other pre-paints out there. I like the look of their troops and the war walkers are very cool but again despite the high tech gadgetry the guns look carried by most of the troopers are assault rifles that look almost as large as light machine guns.

Urban War by Urban Mammoth use to be called Void by Ikore. I've always liked the clean futuristic look of the miniatures in this line and have even converted a few of them for Star Wars and other futuristic settings. However many of the guns in this line are large, clunky ballistic weapons equipped with banana clips.

The Rezolution line by Aberrant Games is another nice looking sci-fi line and there are a few really nice looking energy weapons in the line usually in the form of laser pistols in the hands of characters. However like a lot of lines the bigger the armor the bigger the guns and those guns are often big ballistic weapons with banana clips. One of these days I would like to see some power armored troopers with laser guns. Is that too much to ask?

We all know where the original BFG comes from right? The Alien series. The massive pulse rifles carried by colonial marines. Despite it's energy weapon sounding name this bad boy is clearly a ballistic weapon. Enough firepower to take out a gibbering alien creature with an extra compartment for my lunch and a thermos of coffee. If I see another sci-fi trooper with a knock off pulse rifle I think I'm gonna puke.

So do ballistic weapons belong in Sci-fi at all? Yes I think they do. I've got nothing against settings with both space ships and ballistic weapons. Certainly there have been a number of movies and TV series that have taken that route with their weaponry. I can't imagine Malcolm, Jayne, of Zoe in a shootout against Alliance feds armed with phasers but at the same time imagine if energy weapons had never been dreamed up......

Captain Kirk sure got into a lot of scraps and despite being on a “peaceful” mission he was awfully well armed. He had; phasers, phaser rifles, even those little pocket phasers that look innocently like a communicator. But what if the producers of Star Trek had decided to arm Kirk with an AK instead of a phaser? Can you imagine kirk fighting off a bunch of Klingons on some god forsaken planet turning to Spock and saying “Spock...... I've..... exhausted my........ ammo...... supply. Toss me another clip”?

The setting is Mos Eisley cantina. Han Solo has just taken on some passengers for what seems like a milk run. He'll finally be able to pay off Jabba the Hutt with the creds from this job. He's so taken aback by his good fortune that he doesn't notice the armed rodian Greedo until he sits down across from him at the table. Greedo plans to turn Han in to Jabba and collect oa sizable bounty before Han can pay Jabba off. Han however has other plans. He slips his DL-44 from it's holster while distracting Greedo with small talk. Han kills the bounty hunter with one shot to his midsection. The heavy blaster pistol leaves a cauterized wound but Han still flips the bartender a small credit coin to take care of the “mess”. Now imagine if you will that our boy Han had been armed with a Mac 10 instead of his trusty blaster. He would have had to take out another expensive loan from another ruthless gangster to cover the cleanup on that mess.


Officer Aeryn Sun carries weapons that look a bit like they might be ballistic weapons but as her traveling companion John Crichton pointed out her weapons do indeed fire “little bolts of light”. I'm sure our favorite Peacekeeper would look pretty hot with a Desert Eagle but I don't think the effect would be the same. Lasers are sexier than bullets.

What if Starbuck were armed with a ...... Oops

Ok what if this Starbuck were armed with a SMG instead of his blaster? We've seen how ineffective regular ballistic weapons are against tosters but those old sidearms of the Colonial fleet worked rather well.

I guess it turns out you can save the galaxy with just plane old guns but some heroes just look cooler with ray guns. Energy weapons remain the stuff of science fiction whereas ballistic weapons are more realistic but this is SCIENCE FICTION we are talking about. Where else but science fiction can we realistically use energy based weapons?



Look I'm an American. I like explosions, and fast cars, hot chicks in bikinis, sleek looking assault rifles with grenade launchers. I like all those things and I don't even mind them in my science fiction but there is room for variety here and I don't see a lot of the current manufactures taking advantage of it. I want my: phasers, blasters, distruptors, and laser pistols. I want ray guns god damn it. And flying cars. We were suppose to have flying cars....... but that's for another rant.

Introduction and using miniatures in roleplaying games

Hello friends and welcome to my miniature gaming blog. My purpose for their blog is to share my miniature gaming experience, both in role playing games and table top war games with miniature enthusiast around the world. I've been painting miniatures, building terrain, and playing miniature games for over 20 years and I've learned a few things about the hobby along the way.

I've decided to start my blog with some tips on using miniatures in role playing games. I've found the use of miniatures invaluable during combat situations for tracking movement and certain special effects like spell effects or grenade blast. Not only that they add a visual element to the narrative. I wrote this some time ago when I poster was asking for tips for using miniatures in his Serenity RPG session which is why many of the examples use terms from the Firefly setting.

Just some tips if your just getting into miniatures for roleplaying.

1. Avoid the "Playhouse" style play: The biggest mistake a lot of people make when setting up miniatures for a game is that they try and find a miniature for every encounter combat or not. Then they set a mini down for everyone the players run into or move them around a map or set every time they go somewhere. This isn't necessary. Minis work best when they are being used for combat or some other situation when it's very important to know the position of the player characters or NPCs. It's not such a big deal to have them out if they are just meeting a contact in a bar or something unless there is a real chance that violence will happen. Your playing a RPG with miniatures to support the action not playing with dolls or action figures. There's no reason to push them around on the table unless you have to know the exact position of the PCs in a given encounter.

2. Plastic Mooks are you friend: Mooks are unimportant NPCs that don't get a name or any dialog to speak of. Badger's bodyguards are mooks so are Niska's guards and thugs a posse but not the sheriff. Basically mooks are disposable cannon fodder. It's not necessary to have really nice minis to represent mooks. If you have a game store near you find out if they sell Starwars, Herocliks, or Horoclicks minis as singles. Sometimes you can pick up a bag of cheap canon fodder for a few dollars. If you don't like clicky bases you can carefully take a sharp exacto knife and remove the minis from the click bases. Then all you need are some cheap game bases or even fender washers to re-base them on smaller bases.

3. Don't forget the stunt doubles: Sometimes you need a mini and you just don't have one that's quite right. Perhaps someone you thought would never going to be in combat suddenly is. This can be a problem especially if you have "Shoot first ask questions later" players. It happens. The best thing you can do is call in a stunt double. Just grab a mini that's at least the right sex for the NPC in question and tell your players that the mini your using is going to stunt double for the NPC in question. For instance "Han Solo here is going to stunt double for Mr. Tam". It's more of a mental reminder than anything and it's easier if the mini in question has a regular name either because it's a character from popular culture or because you normally use it for another NPC.

4. Pre game prep is good. Try and have minis you know your going to use set aside so you can find them easily. You might not want to make it obvious to your players as that can foreshadow who they might run into ahead of time. "Oh I see you have Badger out. I guess we're headed to Persephone". If you don't do that then at least keep your minis organized. Keep your feds in one group, reavers in another, mooks in another, and regular NPCs in another. This way you can cut down on your search time which can be annoying if your in the middle of what is suppose to be frantic action.

5. Anything can be terrain. This is similar to the tip on stunt doubles. Don't have any cargo containers to fill a hold. Grab some bottle caps or old film canisters or pill bottles. What about those big storage tanks at the fueling station. In a pinch a few soda cans will do. Oddly enough a hand full of small rocks make a darn nice rocky outcropping. You can also set up a quick cavern or cave with a bunch of regular rocks set to represent the walls of the cave. I've even laid out dungeons or corridors with dominoes in a pinch. The item in question may not be perfect but it may help to set the scene. Playing with minis is about more than just setting up pretty scenes. The most important thing about using miniatures is tracking movement in difficult situations so what's ideal may have to take a back seat to what's practical.



6. Terrain doesn't have to be hard or expensive. So your sitting there the night before the game and your looking over your notes. You know your players are going to have a fight in a fuel depo but you have nothing in your terrain section to represent it. No problem. Grab those empty soda cans, clean them out. hit them with a base cote of dark gray spray paint dust them with a lighter gray or sponge a lighter gray on. Grab some peal off number decals and make your new fuel tanks number 1, 2, and 3. Now you have an instant fuel depo.

7. Less is more. Don't go overboard setting up elaborate sets for every fight. Sure it's nice to have that big throw down with everything set up just so when the players go to assault Niska's compound but it takes time to set that up. That may be a big scene but a quick shootout with a couple random thugs in the hills of Whitefall isn't that big a deal. You don't need to set up and entire scene for just a short bit of action. Put down only what you need for random encounters. Trying to set up an elaborate table for every fight will just bog your game down. Make use of Star Wars and Hero click maps for random encounters.

Hope these help.