Saturday, March 26, 2011

Hinterland 's new figures

Earlier this week I received an order from Hinterland http://hinterlandminiatures.weebly.com/ Princess Viktoria's troops.  I have decided to use these figures in my imaginary nations19th/20th C world, I'll probably also use Brigade Games female Zouaves as regular infantry.
I am thinking of making these figures a six company (10-12 man companies) battalion/regiment with a MG section (2 guns).  I'll be using the trench raiders as the Grenadiers and the skirmishers as light or voltigers or whatever.  A horse holder or two would make these mounted infantry.  I may change and make them 6 man companies with two batttalions to a regiment and two regiments to the brigade.
I have a great book on a section of a west central German area with maps and photos, population info, history, etc etc. and I think that Princess Viktoria and her sisters will be commanding a brigade sized army in the near future. 
Last night I ordered enough more troops to fill out the first battalion/regiment.
I wonder if I should also have male troops, well no country has just a female population, an equal sized unit of men couldn't hurt even if they are commanded by women.

Friday, March 25, 2011

New Stuff

There were several problems with ordering Geezers and a few other items that Ben has found and Fixed.

Hopefully, we will be attending The Evansville Old Time Train Show and Flea Market as a dealer in September.  Where we will display our Vallejo paints and terrain mixtures, S Guage vehicles, and people.  Maybe a few other things from Tiger like wagons and carts.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Tiger Restock

A large heavy package arrived from Pete at Tiger in the UK filled with loads of miniatures.  Of particular note are two new sets for the Balkan Wars BWT02 Turks fighting and BWG014 Mounted Evzones.
Well, I was wrong about the interior measurements of the diner, in this photo you can see our Zombies on 30mm bases where they will fit.

In this photo are two figures the Am. sailor ACW is on a 1 inch base and will fit pretty much anywhere behind the counter.  The Trent Highlander is on a 2 pence piece and will only fit between the stool and some behind the counter.  Without the stools the measurements work fine and 30mm bases will go anywhere in front of the counter.
This final photo shows our Zombies after a fine meal of local citizens in the local diner.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Comment on the comment.

Thank you Lord Siwoc.  The floor plan was designed around our base size (1 inch).  There is 1+ inches behind and 1.5 in front of the counter so there is plenty of room.  Stay tuned here for a photo with zombies filling the diner, hopefully tomorrow.

Stupid comment section Rant

OK, this is not a post against anyone but the stupid way you have to put in a comment. I can't believe the stupid system, that does stuff you don't want it to, does not recognize me after signing in to comment on a comment.

Monday, March 21, 2011

The Plasticville Diner

I thought awhile back I mentioned building this model and soon putting up a photo.  The Plasticville Diner itself consists of four walls and a roof.  I added counters, interior door, stools, wall dressing, and people.  The counters are from the Plasticville Frosty Bar with the wall sections cut off.  The cooking area is also from the Frosty, with stove like printed card stock , cabinets and backsplash from The Virtual Arm Chair General's PI's apartment interior (I think).  The door from the Frosty was in good condition and has a round window which I thought looked just right for the door between the kitchen area and the front.


In the photo above you can see some of the back wall with the printed card stock.  The front of the diner was silver and looked rusty so I left it that way only adding some red to the name and the lights next to the door.  The window blinds were yellow plastic and I painted them white. (That's a seven inch ruler).


In this photo above you can see the left side with customer sitting at the counter.   The stools are made from plastic pipe painted silver and a drop of white glue as the cushion painted red.

This last photo shows the entire interior, two or four more figures will be added to the scene to make it more realistic through the windows.  A little touch up painting and the roof will soon go on and will look patched and be weathered.

Plasticville buildings by Bachman are either HO (1:87) or O (1:48) guage are generally available in most trainshops and on ebay for similar prices.  We use O guage since the buildings were originally made to use with both S and O, so that our figures, 28mm (or there abouts), fit right in.

Over the last year I was lucky enough to find five or six bunches of misc.O guage buildings, anywhere from two to 20 buildings in the bunch some with missing parts but generally in good condition, a little dirty but they wash up easy.  For the missing parts I just found a solution at the Evansville, In. train meet and flea market.  I met Jim Jaehnen and he had a pile of Plasticville buildings in O guage for sale.  Ben bought 5 or six buildings and I found out about his parts and pieces.  So I made a list of missing walls and cupolas to send him.  If you want his address please ask, he does not have a web site.

While putting together a list of missing parts I had to temporarily put together my buildings and they number 25 plasticville buildings and that is not the entire line of Plasticville buildings.  Ben has five or six more and with Old Glory's Chicagoland buildings we have over 40 modernish buildings for pulp and whatever gaming.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

On the way back from Cold Wars

After breaking down the booth and packing up the truck we made it Ohio, just, before stopping from Sorrus butticus.  Well, it wasn't our best Cold Wars but better than our first in '07.
We have several packages waiting: one from Micro-mark - tools for sculpting, filing and making models.  Best from Historifigs with our latest production of a Martian style (?) skiff for 15 or 20mm figures.  It is scaled for 15s but I think 20s will also work well.  I was going to put a picture here, but this will not take the 3D program it is in.  So it will have to wait until Ben can photograph it.
The Cold Wars dealer area was great, well obviously, there were more dealers here than Historicon and probably as many gamers.  Although the Host parking lot did have three empty parking spots Saturday night--amazing!  We both spent money like we had it; I finished buying Old Glory's Chicagoland buildings and some roof top bits.  I also bought from Age of Glory some Moroccans regulares (20 figs) for my Spanish Foreign Legion to operate with, a small artillery piece and mortar with close enough uniformed troops to be Legionnaires.  This gives me two 20 man units of SFL, one Regulares, and some heavy weapons.  It should be sufficient to fight the Rifs in a campaign planned for next year.  I also picked up from On Military Matters a Spanish illustrated history on the Legion 1920 to 1931.  I already have several others in Spanish and one in English which I will list soon all very good.
We should get home by mid-afternoon on Monday, then unload the truck and return it to Enterprise.  I'll have to place an order with Tiger to replace all the figures we sold out of over the weekend.  I am slightly surprised that we sold quite a bit of Trent Miniatures stock with no notice or advertizing.  Very nice stuff and Duncan Macfarland (Trent's owner) lent us his display figures and I am sure that the excellent paint job and great figures help to sell them.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Cold Wars

Another day and we're off to Cold Wars to see friends and hopefully sell a bunch of stuff.  We'll probably use our Old Glory Army card to get the accessories for their Chicago buildings we got at Fall In.  I'm looking for 20mm WWII pacific figures, mostly Japanese.  I'm pretty close to having all I need for a small project I have been working on, less than 200 figures mostly plastic.  But thinking about getting some 28mm figures for the Pacific as the range is greater and I'm going to get a Gruman Goose through the hobby shop in Owensboro. 
We just got in today a large order from Hydra with their new rockets, I forgot to order more War Rocket rules so hopefully they'll get them to us in time but I'm not holding my breath.  We have so much new stuff we'll be hard pressed to display it this time.  But we ordered some display units that should allow us to display everything we carry that can hang.  We will also get some shelves to display painted figures from specific ranges hanging on that panel.  That should do away with the most of the tables we now have to get at shows.

Our Zombies in review.  Bryan S. in England has bought a number of our figures, Zombies and Civilians and has reviewed the Zombies at http://vampifansworldoftheundead.blogspot.com/  I was impressed with this web site,even before he reviewed our stuff.  Bryan is a very good painter and his painting gave me some ideas for my Zombies (when I pull them out of the bins).  Bryan has reviewed loads of Zombies (he wrote that his number some 1200+) that's a lot of Zombies.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

New Figures

Trent Miniatures has sent us the first four cases (317 packs of 80+ numbers) of their miniatures.  They include, DeeZee Miniatures (ice age and earlier mammals), Newark characters (Napoleon, Prince Rupert, Bromhead, Godiva, King John, Marion and Friar Tuck), French (foot, cavalry and artillery) and Russian (foot) French Revolutionary War, Caribbean (Haitian) Revolution, Irish '98 troubles, and some equipment.  The foot figures measure 28mm and the cavalryman 28mm on the Barrett scale, the horses measure 25mm to the shoulder.  
At first look, that's all the time I have had to look, they are quite well sculpted and nicely animated.  We'll be taking them to Cold Wars and Little Wars soon.  Hopefully, they will be on the website in the next month or two.  Email us for a list.