All posts by Brian Burger

Started this site way, way back in November 1998, when the web was young. It's still here, and so am I.
Conventions, Pulp

Prepping For Trumpeter Salute 2011

1 Comment
aof_ts2011
Trumpeter Salute 2011 will feature the Saturday Matinée Special .45 Adventure 2nd Edition version of Amulet of Fire! Click for full-size image.

Alongside the Lead Painters League over on LAF, the other thing keeping me amused this week is getting ready for Trumpeter Salute 2011 over in Vancouver (well, Burnaby, really, but close enough…) this weekend! Trumpeter is the region’s “big” gaming convention, really, at least on the Canadian side of the border. This will be my third visit in four years, and it’s always a highlight of my gaming year!

I’ll be running Amulet of Fire again, going over with a friend who has space in his car for the mesa and other stuff needed for it.

I’ve (possibly foolishly…) promised to run Amulet in the barely-just-released 2nd Edition of .45 Adventures, so I’m busy tonight rebuilding all 30 or so characters for all six teams of Amulet. I’d say “converting”, but really 45A 2nd Ed has a different enough character & skill system that I’m rebuilding! Some interesting differences between the new and old versions; must do a full review here of 2nd Ed after Trumpeter!

There will be a bit of a Lead Adventure West Coast meet-up, partly over my Amulet game on Saturday. Always nice to see some of the Vancouver-area folks again, throw more money at Bob Murch & Imperial Hobbies, loose at games, and all the other traditional convention activities!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 2: Command On The Frontier

Leave a comment

More goodness from the Lead Painters League, this time my Week Two entry, titled Command On The Frontier. The frontier in this case being the interwar Northwest Frontier, nominally. British officers and sargents attempting to control the volatile, dangerous border between what was then British India & Afganistan.

lpl5 r2
Command on the Frontier, 192-. More Pulp Figures goodness. As always, click for full size.

Unlike my winning Round One entry, Command got soundly and deservedly thrashed by a spectacular field hospital entry from Hammers. Entertainingly, both cover the same ground — British interwar army — and even the same theatre (!) so the random match generation had a bit of a sense of humour about the whole thing.

Once again, the figures were all from Pulp Figures, a mix of PTB-1 British Army Tropical Command and a few from PHP-18 Rugged Sons of the Empire.

Anyway, onto Round Three, in which I have a much better set of photos, more colourful figures and (Dog willing…) perhaps a less overachieving opponent!

Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 1: Lord M’s Household Staff

Leave a comment

LPL5 Round 1 is over and Round 2 begun by the time you read this. The LPL format, for those of you not familiar, is ten week-long rounds, with entries paired up so with 70-odd participants there’s 30-some one-on-one entries per round. The league format means no elimination, and every round you’ll be paired up with a different contestant.

lpl5 r1
My Lead Painters League 5 entry for Round 1 of the comp.

The Round 1 bonus theme was “Civilians”; my entry was five Pulp Figures’ Surly Servants, with a RAFM Investigator’s Roadster‘s back corner on the left. All sculpted by Bob Murch, in fact!

As a bonus, I quite handily won my Round One matchup, against some quite nice modern bystanders. (I don’t enter LPL with any particular expectation of winning; there’s too many far better painters active on LAF for that!) On to Round Two and more!

Historicals, Misc, Pulp

A White Russian, And Other News

Leave a comment

A bit quieter around the Warbard right now; I’m having most of my gaming time sucked up by the Lead Painters League 5 and real life; Corey is however away for the weekend at the Dak-Kon convention up-Island and promises lots of photographs upon his return. He’ll probably be doing a run of Amulet of Fire at some point over the weekend, too.

white rus rifleman
A Brigade Games White Russian rifleman in fur hat, first of a unit. Click for full size.

I’ve been painting various things, most of which I’ll wait for the various rounds of LPL5 to reveal, but here’s one of my new projects – a small foray into the Russian Civil War with a unit of White Russian riflemen, figures from Brigade Games, paint scheme not completely historic but based on inspiration from the Osprey White Armies book and some of the great resources shared on LAF’s Back of Beyond forum. Expect to see five or six of his squadmates in a future LPL5 round!

Minor update, a few hours later: I posted this photo to LAF’s Back of Beyond forum and asked for feedback, and got some excellent advice from some of the local experts. I especially like the fact that Russian troops often had coloured cloth inner parts on their fur hats; this was news to me and it’s a chance to make them more colourful yet!

Fantasy, Galleries, Inspiration, Painting, Pulp

An LPL3 Archive

Gallery Leave a comment

As discussed in my last post on entering LAF‘s LPL5, here’s all ten of the images from my 2009 LPL3 entries. I finished somewhere in the bottom third of the pack, but certainly didn’t enter with any expectation of doing much better — I entered to give me incentive to work on my painting and photography, which worked out just fine!

LPL3’s bonus rounds were “Germans” for Round One, which I botched; the German WW1 stormtroopers I did for Round 7 were supposed to be my Round 1 bonus entry, but I ordered them too late. Round 5 was “Cavalry”, which I managed with my first 15mm fantasy unit painted in years. Round 10 was “Lost Worlds”, bonus points for an exploration team, a “native” team and “monster” or similar — pegged max bonus points there, and a photo I’m still proud of!

The entirety of LPL3 is still archived over on LAF.

  • LPL3 Round 1 – The Rancourt-James Safari, 1922
  • lpl3 2
    LPL3 Round 2 – Not Stopping For Lunch
  • lpl3 3
    LPL3 Round 3 – Merchant Sailors
  • LPL3 Round 4 – Dwarven Priests & Bodyguard
  • lpl3 5
    LPL3 round 5 – Cormyr Lances (15mm)
  • lpl3 6
    LPL3 Round 6 – Jim ‘Lucky’ Collins & His Crew
  • lpl3 7
    LPL3 Round 7 – Strosstruppen 1918
  • lpl3 8
    LPL3 Round 8 – Post-Apocalypse Family Robinson
  • lpl3 9
    LPL3 Round 9 – Mercenaries of Carpentras
  • LPL3 10
    LPL3 Round 10 – Pardon Me, Coming Through!
All ten of my LPL3 entries!
Pulp

Lead Painters League 5!

Leave a comment

lpl ad
[L]ess than a week left until Round One of the Lead Adventure Forum’s famous and awesome Lead Painters League opens; I entered in 2009 in LPL3, sat out 2010’s LPL4 for a variety of bad reasons, and decided to get my arse in gear and enter LPL5 this year when it was announced a while ago!

Three rounds of the LPL are themed rounds; you can enter anything at any time but get bonus points for following the theme. These theme rounds, especially the big blowout final round, Round 10, are among the most interesting of an already interesting league! LPL5’s special rounds are Round 1: Civilians; Round 5: Africa; Round 10: Scenes from the Movies. I got a good batch of civvies in for Round 1; I think I know what I’ll submit for Round 5 & Africa, but haven’t a damn clue what I’ll do for Round 10 this time around…

I think I’ll do a gallery post in a day or so of my LPL3 entries, just to inspire me to keep on the ball with LPL5 this year.

Entries have to be in by Saturday 12 March at 1200GMT, if you’re inspired to enter. I have no expectation of even getting into the top half of the standings, but it’s a great excuse to finish figures, take good photos, and kick my painting up a notch – entering LPL3 definitely made me a bolder, better painter!

Pulp, Terrain, Tutorials

Shoreline Part 2 (Sort of…)

Leave a comment

Found, buried in my harddrive, another couple of forgotten work-in-progress shots from the first round of shoreline/riverbank construction back in June 2009. The rest of the construction was written up last week.

shoreline wip1
Bare cardboard stage of construction of the first set of shoreline/riverbank pieces. Click for full size.
shoreline wip 2
Shoreline/riverbank beginning painting. Click for full size.
shoreline wip 3
Muddy brown paint on the banks, first coats of acrylic gloss varnish down on the water. Click for full size.
Pulp

The Caribbean’s Hidden Paradise!

Leave a comment
costa guano poster
Visit the Caribbean’s Hidden Paradise, Costa Guano! (View Larger on Flickr by clicking the image)

More pulp graphic lunacy via Inkscape and the peculiar inside of my skull. This time it’s a travel poster to that oft-forgotten tropical hellhole paradise, The Republic of Costa Guano, which with it’s various neighbours will, eventually, form the background for some pulp/Banana Wars games and pulp adventure lunacy.

“Costa Guano” is, I think, a name originally used in a Joseph Conrad novel I haven’t actually read, but it’s too good a joke to pass up. Pulp steamers and their adventuring crews on the swampy coasts; exiled gangsters and foreign agents skulking in the fetid, dangerous capital Montón De Guano; Lost Worlds in the unmapped jungle-shrouded interior; Banana Wars and uprisings… all these and more are possibly taking place right now in exciting Costa Guano. Book your zeppelin ticket from Miami (with stopover in Havana) today!

Pulp

45A 2nd Edition Demo out!

Leave a comment

[R]attrap Productions has just released the demo PDF of .45 Adventures 2nd Edition!

There’s a 22 page set of demo rules which include the full movement, combat, wound, vehicle, explosive and flying rules, as well as enough Archetypes to build some characters and teams to test the new shiny out.

There’s also a draft copy of the 2nd Edition Special Abilities PDF, with a good selection of the skills & special abilities that’ll be available in 2nd Ed.

More later perhaps when I’ve had a chance to look it over properly and build a character or two! Short version is that I like what I see, lots of streamlining and good tweaks to an already great system.

Full release of the rules is pencilled in for mid-March, apparently.