Missing Links? Yeti? Sasquatch? Some other sort of yet-undiscovered ape-man? The result of Mad Science? Any or all of the above?
Hairy Apemen from Pulp Figures & Uncle Mike
The two big guys are from Pulp Figures, PLT-7 Hairy Hominids, the two smaller figures are from Uncle Mike’s Strange Aeons line, the Missing Links. They’re all on bases I constructed of pennies and milliput, as usual.
Left to right, we have Momma (holding a skull), Pops, Junior (in the background, mugging for the camera) and finally Uncle Fred. I might yet do one last round of highlighting on their hair, and the bases do need a bit more work, but they’re playable as is. Not sure when they’ll get their first outing to terrify explorers or hapless cavemen, but hopefully soon!
Just a pair of painting tutorials today, linked to mostly so I can find them again when I need to refer to them!
Coll Mini Or Not (CMON) has a huge list of tutorials, contributed by users so they’re of variable quality and usefulness. One of the best is this well-illustrated look at ethnic skintones. Painting skin is something I’ve never found easy to do well, and even those I don’t use the Vallejo paints referred to in this article I still found it valuable. The index to their Articles section is here, a whole mix of stuff well worth checking out.
Games Workshop have a great horse painting tutorial, with a good primer on horse anatomy and colours as well as painting tips. I’m no fan of GW’s business practices, nor of most of their sculpts, but their technique has always been top-notch and they write a good tutorial, so credit where due. They also completely rebuild their own website every year or so, so this link might not be as stable as it ought to be…
There’s 43 Bolsheviks off my painting table and ready for action, finally! One Maxim MG crew, some officers and NCOs and a whole lot of ragged, barely uniformed riflemen. Almost entirely Copplestone figures, and I mixed freely from the regular rifles, greatcoated rifles and the partisan packs to get a suitable ragged look. I had just started painting (and thinking about organization) when this marvelous Lead Adventure thread opened, with all sorts of great contemporary photographs of both Red and White uniforms.
A Russian Civil War Bolshevik infantry force, finally marching off the painting table
24 more Bolshies to finish basing and then paint, at which point it’s on to the 60-some White Russians that are in the mail to me as I write this. All that painting will give me the core of two good-sized RCW infantry forces, nominally configured as platoon-sized forces for Through the Mud and the Blood but obviously configurable for other games as needed.
The Russian Civil War has well and truly taken over my painting schedule, and starting in November I should even be able to get some games in again, as a screwy work schedule settles somewhat and once again frees up my Sundays for gaming, which is of course the best possible use of that day. I’ll probably try to push hard to get enough Whites finished for a first Mud & Blood RCW outing by the last Sunday in November… we shall see!
(More photos of the Reds in the next few days, as daylight and weather allows…)
A miscelania of links, just so I get back into the habit of posting here!
Adventures of the 19XX is a pulptastic webcomic, full of zeppelins, giant airplanes, mystical oddness and villainy. Good fun, great art, and quite likely to inspire pulp gaming scenarios! (Warning: autoplaying music when the site loads…)
If you’re looking for inspiration for Great War/WW1 terrain, check this amazing Lead Adventure Forum thread out – thejammedgatling’s First World War Terrain Boards – it’s a long thread of a project that’s been a year+ in the running so far, but well worth it.
I’ve finally got my painting bench set up again after moving at the end of September, so more original content should be landing on the Warbard shortly!
These are my unofficial draft versions of character sheets for Rattrap’s .45 Adventure 2nd Edition; they use a vaguely period typewriter font for a somewhat pulpish look, and while the layout is still a work in progress they take up less space than the 1st Edition sheets. Part of the Grade One character sheet.
The PDF is 3 pages; there’s two Grade 3 & 2 characters per page and six Grade 1 spots. Download the PDF right here (73Kb).
Feedback, suggestions or comments below in the comments area, as always!
(Legal Garble: .45 Adventures is copyright Rattrap Productions. These sheets are copyright Brian Burger/Wirelizard Design, permission granted to copy for personal use only.)
Back in October 2009, near the beginning of this pulp craze of ours, I ran a game I called “Jurassic Pulp”, inspired by that T Rex vs SUV chase scene in the original Jurassic Park movie. We used Model Ts instead of SUVs, though, and they’re just a bit more fragile than a modern SUV. T Rex hasn’t changed, though!
A fairly complete report on that first game can be found over on Lead Adventure, including some post-game ideas from both Corey and I.
Assuming this works, I can now post to here from my shiny new Android smartphone, in other words from pretty much anywhere, anytime… Be afraid, be very afraid…
Proper wargaming content soon, I promise. Been painting a new batch of Copplestone RCW Bolsheviks, quite pleased with how they’re coming along. Photos soon!
Here, have a werewolf. This big hairy brute is from the Strange Aeons miniatures of Uncle Mike. He’s a monster in several senses, about 44mm from base to top of his hairy head; the base is just under 40mm across.
“Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult.” — Carl von Clausewitz, On War
Richard Clarke of TooFatLardies has written a fascinating post over on his Lard Island blog about friction in games and in reality. Short version: real war is full of things going pear shaped; most gaming systems aren’t. Go read the full article, I’m doing it a terrible disservice with my one-line smartass summary!
Should you want to read old von Clausewitz yourself, Project Gutenburg has an English translation of On War, Vol. One free to download. The short chapter Richard refers to in his post is Chapter VII. Friction In War — even for those of us with short attention spans, well worth a read!
This counts as another prod to get more figures painted for Through the Mud and the Blood, too!
Assuming the TGN feed works the way I think it does, this will be the first post out over the TGN feed. So what’s on The Warbard? Mostly pulp and pulp-flavoured historical gaming, some science fiction, some fantasy, a lot of terrain, and some painting, among other things.
Who is “we”? I started this website in 1998 (!) as “Brian’s Wargame Pages”, then when I relaunched it in January 2011 as The Warbard I invited my brother to help out.
Have a look around, make yourself comforatable, comment on anything that takes your fancy! Glad to have a chance to reach a wider audience!
