A variety of Recent Stuff

Well, I decided to get some of my lead mountain painted over the past few days. I decided to do some Pulp and Geezer figures because I'm going to want to use these guys soon. I also painted a bunch of zombies but I'll get some pics of them when I get more of them painted. I did a pretty rough job on them so that they would have that disheveled, walking dead look. I'm not very fond of nice neat zombies. While they look good they look nice to me they appear a bit too tidy for the recently risen.

Anyway here are some of the pulps that I've just finished. The chunky lady in red looks very much like my next door neighbor (same attitude too).

I really like these two. They are from Eureka Miniatures and even though they lack the detail of the others they have a great moronic look to them. I'm calling them the Piranha Brothers - Doug and Dinsdale.

And as I mentioned, I also painted up some Geezers. I still have some uniformed Old Bill on the painting table but so far I've done a Flying Squad and a bunch of Blaggers. Cheers.

Put yer trousers on. You're nicked!

A Shady Meeting in Pulp Alley

I've been looking for a good set of rules for wargaming in the Pulp era for quite a while now and I've been lucky enough to be invited to try out the Pulp Alley rules by the authors: David Phipps. These rules are still in the play-testing stage but I have to say: I'm really impressed.

Players create a league with a leader and an array of  lesser characters including sidekicks, allies and followers. The mechanic is goal based with a striking difference - The use of polyhedral dice! The leader is obviously the most powerful character in the league and uses d10's and d8's. They also have the best skills. The remaining members have skills and dice in accordance to their ranking with the poor followers get the worst of this deal.

When creating a league you don't have to rely on counting points. Instead the game uses a roster system which can be chopped and changed in between games if you are playing a campaign. The only constant is your leader.

There is, of course, much more to the rules including the use of a Fortune Deck which throws interesting and events at the characters and looks to add great random elements and situations for characters to overcome.

I've yet to play a game of Pulp Alley but I'm planning on some games to get some old friends back into gaming during the summer break (here in Australia) . I wish I had these rules when I was designing my King Kong game. I ended up having to cobble together a set of rules because I couldn't find anything suitable (and having said this I'm not about to change anything now. Because I've designed everything to suit the game). However, I'm pretty confident that Pulp Alley will take the place of '#1 Pulp Rule Set' in my library.

And... I have the reason I needed to start sculpting my own set of pulp figures and making that tramp steamer that I've been planning...

Cheers.

Kong Terrain Almost Finished

Well, I've almost finished the terrain for my Kong game. I just need to make a bit more foliage and one or two more trees. I'm also making a few rock outcrops because I need to fill in the front half of the boards and make that area look a bit more rugged.

Anyway, here are some pics taken in my garage.



 

Kong Arrived Today

After a searching through every toyshop I could find and after scouring the internet over a period of months I finally found my Kong.

Where? Amazon for $7.95.

This little beauty stands about 6.5" and is the perfect size next to a 28mm figure. Not too small - Not too massive. Just right... Except his face. However, a bit of GS and an hour with just me and him and here he is.

When the GS has cured I'll add a few scars on his chest area and I'll bulk out his jowls  and give him a sightly shaggier look.

His favorite snack: French dragoon (grenadier company - Slightly saltier than regular troopers and less fattening).

7TV - New Character Cards

I've been working on these since my first game a couple of weeks gone by (see the post below for details and some other images.

Le Vaisseau-mère (The Mother Ship)

Le Vaisseau-mère is the most recent addition to my French GASLIGHT force. It is a large steam powered beast with twin landing platforms for transporting a squadron of killer Clockwork Wasps (I still need to make another 2 wasps for the full squadron of 8). These nasty little mechanical creatures are fast, armoured and boast a lethal 12" sting in the rear and a sub-machine gun mounted in the nose.The vessel itself has a control turret armed with twin defensive flamethrowers.

The model is kit-bashed from several kits: Airfix Steam Engine, Airfix Pontoon bridge (two kits), a 1/48 scale (brand unknown) KVII and and Airfix MkI Male tank. I think most folks should be able to see where the various bits are joined together. There are also a few scrap odds and ends thrown into the mix too.

This thing took me about 3 months to make. It wasn't that it was difficult it just took a fair bit of working out how to configure the damned thing! The real challenge was painting it. Painting took about a week in itself and required much twisting and turning and getting into hundreds of little nooks and crannies (in case you wonder, I am one of these folks who build something completely and worry about the painting when it's finished).

As far as gaming is concerned, I expect it to be a major disappointment. I didn't build it to be a lethal killing machine. I built it for the the purpose of having big, bombastic monster to move around the table and look impressive.

Anyway, here are some more pics:

More Character Cards - SuperSystem

As well as my first game of 7TV on the weekend I also played a game using my (first time developed) super-villains. I originally had the characters printed on A4 sheets via Excel but they proved pretty crappy so I made some character cards. Like all the cards I'm making I tried to keep them in the same flavor of the game.

I made a nice little template on Photoshop that I can use over and over. I just change various cosmetic stuff like borders, colours, fonts etc... depending on how I want it to look - In this case: Like a comic book panel.

7TV Character Cards

After having my first game of 7TV (AAR below) I found that the A4 sheets that I used for the characters wasn't ideal so I did some work on the existing Pulp character sheets that I've done for my upcoming Kong game. I came up with some nice new designs. I did all of the Omega Squad cards including some other S.H.A.G. characters: Archimedes Nesbit (SHAG scientist), Sgt Dawkins (SHAG Trooper NCO) and a few other co-stars and extras. I've only done one of the BORIS cards so far - Colonel Zhukov).

Omega Squad - Pilot Episode

I had my first game of 7TV on the weekend. It involved the Omega Squad who thwarted the attempt of the evil BORIS in their attempts to move some unidentified contraband.

Location: Building site - Early Evening.

Here we see the Colonel Zharkov - The head of BORIS supervising the removal of said unidentified contraband cleverly hidden right in the open inside packing crates. Bogdan Bogdanovich and an unidentified comrade are doing the heavy lifting unaware that Dorian Alpha has infiltrated their operation and acting as a lookout.



Dorian's motor car the XX69 (with Blake at the wheel) comes speeding into shot narrowly missing the comrade on look out who had to dive out of the way (making for some outstanding stunt work).

Much of the original footage has been lost however, both Blake and Amelia Horne burst out of the  XX69. Blake took a successful shot at Bogdan whilst the deadly Miss Horne used her outstanding jujitsu skills to stun the look out. Meanwhile behind the scenes Dorian Alpha used his skills of seduction against the beautiful comrade helping Bogdan to disrupting the loading operation.

Bogdan move up to the XX69 and took a shot at Blake inflicting a minor flesh wound whilst the Colonel revealing the hidden dagger in his boot attacked the nimble Miss Horne but was unable to get past her formidable defences. At this stage Blake took another shot at Bogdan Bogdanovich and felled the big  Soviet. Miss Horne now turned her martial arts skills on the Colonel and gave him a few bruises to remember her by.

The lookout shook his head and waded back into the fray only to find Miss Horne's fashionable boot waiting for his solar plexus  and knocking wind out of him. The Colonel seeing that things were going wrong at this stage made a dash for the van thinking that he could make a getaway with (at least) some of his illegal freight. Slamming the door and, spinning the tyres he made his getaway... But he didn't count on the resourceful Miss Horne making a dive for the passenger seat and giving him a swift judo-chop which almost caused the van to crash into the corner of a building.

Thinking his best bet was to make his escape on foot the Colonel ditched the van and set off on foot heading down a back alley with Miss Horne in pursuit. Back at the building site, Blake jumped into the XX69 and doing a screeching u-turn, followed after the van. Dorian, meanwhile rounded up the two comrades - giving one of them a burst of stun gas from his fake lapel flower - and examined the cargo (finding it to be machine parts of unknown origin).

The show ended with Blake and Miss Horne capturing the Soviet Colonel but, although somewhat disheveled and with a loss of face he nevertheless vowed: "You cannot defeat BORIS. I Will Return!"

Agents of SHAG - Omega Squad

Well it didn't take long...

Greetings Folks, I posted yesterday that i was painting up my new spy team for 7TV and here they are all nicely and finished.

These are my new agents. I sculpted them with the aim of selling them but that plan failed as they didn't generate any interest. I didn't want to go through the expensive process of getting them cast myself so I just decided to paint up the greens. At least I now have a totally unique set of figures.

Anyway, here is my new program for 7TV - the Omega Squad - Nemesis of the evil B.O.R.I.S.

Dorian Alpha is the shaggy haired, trailblazing leader of Omega Squad; a small team of elite agents operating under the umbrella of the Surreptitious and Hazardous Assignments Group (SHAG) a Top Secret organisation of Her Majesties’ Government.  Omega Squad specialise in covert operations, rooting out the enemies of peace and free love and sabotaging their cunning schemes. Using his natural style, charisma and panache Dorian Alpha has infiltrated and foiled countless iniquitous opponents and brought their machiavellian plans to naught.

Alpha's co-stars are:
Blake - Alpha’s chauffeur and right hand man. A former guardsman, and expert rally driver, he has used his various skills to save the day on more than one occasion.

Amelia Horne: Miss Horne is Omega Squad’s resident head knocker. She is a martial artist of outstanding skill with a penchant of turning up at the right place at the right time whilst leaving her squad wondering just how she got there.

Spies - BORIS the Enemy!

I've been working on getting a bunch of figures together for 7TV. The Program I've been working on is titled: Omega Squad.

The Omega Squad is a section of the Surreptitious and Hazardous Assignments Group (SHAG) a Top Secret organisation of Her Majesties’ Government. I've been trying to find some suitable figures for the Omega Squad but I've had no luck in finding what I want. So I decided to sculpt my own characters. I did this a few weeks ago but I only started painting them yesterday.

In the mean time here is Omega Squad's arch nemesis: BORIS. The Bureau of Revolutionary Insurrectionist Strategies: BORIS is an officially sanctioned unofficial section of the KGB which is officially authorized to conduct unofficial operations whilst being officially denied by officials in the Kremlin.

BORIS is headed by Colonel Yuri Zharkov. He and his comrades are specialists in hatching cunning covert operations with the purpose of furthering revolutionary paradigms within the social structures of enemy states. To these ends they are likely to become involved with any number of nefarious plots. They are expert at identifying dissident groups whom they will use as they see fit in order to further the policies of their superiors back in The Kremlin!

From Left: Bogdan Bogdanovich, Colonel Zhukov and Katiya Nadzov

Comrade Putinin (left) and Comrade Boggerov

KGB Types

King Kong Pulp Game

I've been planning a King Kong based pulp game for a while now. When I say King Kong it involves an island, a film crew and a giant ape other than that it kind of veers off on its own course as it also involves Mudmen and Rocketeers (and a gangster for good measure).

The basic concept is this: A film crew led by the director, CC B DeVille has taken his crew and movie stars to a "mysterious island" to make a film. He is financed by The Mob (the Scallopini family of Chicago) who have sent along one of their fingermen to protect their investment. The crew of the ship Madagascar Queen have decided to try and capture the beast and Rocket Morton and his Rocket Rangers are the cavalry who will come in and try to save the day. Mudmen, dinosaurs and giant spiders will be there to get in the way and make life just that little bit more interesting / difficult.

The rules are very basic and based on a Goal System (except for combat which uses the #+ to hit and wound mechanic) and each character has their own character card and special abilities.

Well, well, well...

Welcome to the first post of This 28mm Life.

With this blog (which I'm hoping to keep updated regularly) I'm going to post a bunch of wargaming stuff that I'm working on, games that I play, sculpts that I'm working on and anything else that I feel like adding.

At this time I'm working on several games including Pulp Adventure gaming, 7TV, G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. and Supersystem3. I also play Napoleonics and English Civil War and I'm hoping sometime in 2013 to start building both sides of the American Civil War.

Cheers,

IanKH