TinMan - VSF/Steampunk, Empire of the Dead?

I have been hunting high and low, for this figure for ages. Ever since the whole VSF, GASLIGHT, Empire of the Dead thing took off, I knew he'd be perfect, but in two broken parts, which always seemed to be in different places to each other, I was never able to find both at the same time to effect a repair, until Sunday...

In a fit of tidying, I discovered both parts, at the same time...

The repair was easy and a bit of themed re-basing and, Voila!

TinMan - now Infernium powered!

The figure is a very old Citadel figure from way back in the late 80's, if I recall correctly... he came with a little dwarf engineer with a blow torch ... and were part of a cartoon strip story from the then Citadel Journal, the story involving a Chaos Ogre in full Black Plate armour, called Skragg, again if I remember it right...

The paint job is old, but serviceable, though I may need to touch up the slightly chipped paint on the end of the hammer...

Here he is paired with Professor Erazmus, from WestWinds Empire of the Dead game...

TinMan and the mad professor, his creator?

I'll just have to come up with some stats for him in the game... anyone any ideas, comments welcome below!

"Gaslamp Alley" Sarissa Precision MDF buildings

Just spotted this on the The Illustrated London News Blog.

New Victorian themed buildings from Sarissa Precision, as I hinted at in an earlier blog post.

They look superb and just what us Empire of the Dead players have been hanging out for!

These will be added to the shopping list once available, no doubt!

Well done Sarissa, I look forward to more!

Now I really can't wait for my EotD Requiem Kickstarter figures to arrive!

One for the Colonel! VSF Prussians - a start is made! WIP.

Well after much spouting and pontificating, waving of arms, stamping of feet, and conducting polls, I have finally put paint to model and made a start on my VSF Prussians!

The poll results, along with comments received, supports the portrayal of the Prussians in their traditional uniform of the period circa 1880.

And so I have set to with this scheme in mind. I have got 20 Trooper figures, 3 Officers and 2 Characters on the go at once.

 Humble beginnings so far, with black undercoat, dark grey trousers and a mid blue tunic painted up to now, though one officer has been taken a little further.. The skin tone looks very yellowy in the pictures but that's just the nature of the lighting...

The figures are very nice sculpts, from Paroom station via BrigadeGames in the US. I also like the pose of the troopers, in an 'advance' stance, which suits the skirmish nature of the game. The officers and characters have nicely animated poses too , which befits their nature.

Whilst the Prussian Uniform has come out on top, I still like Rolys idea of the Bavarian light blue uniform and plan to use this for my proposed 'Aeronef-waffe' troops.

I have also been doodling about with ideas for Steam vehicles to add to my infantry, so I'll see what bits and pieces I can source to start making some creations. Watch this space...

PS... anyone got a spare pair of arms! I've got that many projects on the go at once I'm running out of space to have them all part done in their WIP status! ;-)

A return to VSF!

Many moons ago, four gentleman gamers, (Myself, Roly - Dressing the Lines blog, Joe - Colonel o'Truths Miniatures Issues blog, and 'Notorious Greg' - no blog that I am aware of) got together with the notion of exploring the world of VSF, using the GASLIGHT rules.

More here for a recap...
http://scottswargaming.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/foray-into-vsf.html

However, being the eclectic group that we are, much distraction appears to have ensued, as I disappeared off into the 15mm world of WWII gaming with Flames of War, and Roly has been on his Maori Wars odyssey using Sharps Practice. I'm not sure what Notorious Greg has been up to!

Of our quartet, only Joe stayed on target, and over the past 6 months or so has put together an amazing array of VSF scratch built goodness! More can be seen on his blog here:

http://colonelotruth.blogspot.co.nz/

So, I believe with a view to giving the rest of us a virtual 'thick ear', an impromptu meeting was called at Bowman Towers, where Joe brought all his recent creations for us to drool over, and become suitably inspired once again to get back on target...

Here's a pic of Joe's amazing collection, as Roly looks in amazement, and my son decided to buzz them with his planes. The enigmatic mysterious Notorious Greg can also be seen lurking nearby, minus a head, who is this 'masked man' I hear you ask...?

Roly had actually shown up to grab some dense foam from me to use as a base for his Maori Pa (that means 'fortified village' and not 'father'), the same stuff that Joe has recently used for his river board sections, though Joe had sourced his own.

 So we all ogled Joe's handiwork, and probably all inwardly thought; "Christ, how the hell am I going to top that lot!"...

 Above, Thomas the Tank engine meets Star Wars in a bizarre and suitable VSF twist, whilst below we can see a possible early prototype of the Dreadnaughts of a futuristic period set 40,000 years from now ;-)

 And Gargantua herself, aptly named, this thing is massive! So suitably 'enthused' (read - brow beaten, chastised and sent to the naughty corner!), I promised to make some progress on the VSF world...

 All those months ago I did place an order for the Paroom Station Prussians from BrigadeGames, but they arrived and languished in the 'to do' pile, as mountains of 15mm WWII goodies bypassed them to front of the painting queue...

My current batch of Late War WWII projects are nearing completion, and unless I suddenly feel the need to make an early start on MidWar Desert or Eastern Front stuff, I can take a WWII  break, and have a crack on with these guys below (Don't worry Paul, I will get your Typhoon finished!)

So above is the first start on prep'ing those Paroom station Prussians. I must admit, when they first arrived their rifles were badly bent in the packs, and I was a little concerned they may just snap off as I tried to bend them back into position, but thankfully the quality of this pewter is rather good and they bent back no problem.

The first 12 figures trimmed, filed and glued to 20mm washers.

Now I have another slight dilemma...

I have used the word 'Prussian' a lot and also loosely thrown around the word 'Bavarian' too in connection with my proposed VSF 'dastardly huns'. I had not thought more about it, until several weeks ago, Roly pinged me an email with a specific uniform depiction for the Bavarian army. I had not realised they had a separate army! Of course, 'Germany' of the period was broken into many separate States...

The Prussian uniform would be a mid blue jacket with dark grey pants, whilst the Bavarian uniform, would be a light blue jacket and pants.

I'm undecided which way to go. I still like the idea of the Prussians, but the Bavarians would be a novel twist, and a lot easier to paint up with the airbrush!

I thought I might run a little poll, whilst I trim the remaining figures, to see what opinions are out there on the subject in the blog-o-verse...

 Poll in side bar shortly. Thanks for voting!

Another discussion arose between us all about whats the difference between VSF and Steampunk, and some intersting thoughts and opinions were aired. I asked as I was thinking about making an Aeronef for for my VSF 'huns', but wondered if it would be appropriate for our setting...

I'd welcome your opinions on VSF vs Steampunk, and indeed is there actually any difference or is it just nomenclature???

Steam Transformers via GASLIGHT

Easter brought the expected excesses of round chocolate goodness entering the Bowman household... along with other gifts including a Transformers game for No.1 son, on his Nintendo...

Well after having his fill of electronic fun, he asked if we could play Transformers, with his toy robots and the GASLIGHT rules.

I had told him many months ago when I was ordering this rules set just what sort of things we might be able to do with it, and I figured giant robots should work just fine...

The only thing with GASLIGHT (if you don't already know) is that whilst it can handle a lot of 'periods' and items, for the most part you have to make up all the stats for vehicles, weapons, personnel etc yourself before the game. Whilst a little lengthy it is fairly easy to do from the charts provided.
So we set to, rolling away...

I was the bad guys, predictably, so picked 6 small robots of varying origin. These were rated as Veterans for Shoot & Scuffle rolls.
After this they got rolls for speed , save , spin and weapons from the various charts. The only thing I couldn't find were 'vehicle melee weapons'. So I just made them 0 range and rolled for SRM (save roll modifier).

Chris rolled up three good guys, one each of Leader, Adventurer and Hero (based on the robots size), for their Shoot and Scuffle values, and then again rolled up various weapons and vehicle stats.

Here's a pic from mid point of game where we stopped for a break... as you can see we are clearly playing in a barren landscape devoid of cover... AKA the lounge floor ;-)

Battle for the lounge floor - the White Raptor charges Bumblebee!

The game proved rather fun I have to say, with Start up rolls, sustain rolls and frequent rolls to hit and their resulting save rolls and damage chart references.

The only issue we had was that vehicles in this game are clearly meant to have a crew, as most of the 'killing effects' upon the vehicles from the chart, were actually an effect of crews being killed. Since our robots were sentient and didn't have 'crews', after some thought we instead gave them 'virtual crews' in the form of 'life points' or 'hit points'... once they were gone, you were dead.

We enjoyed our little game, though Chris got a little tired of the requirement for Start up and Sustain (though I rather liked it). Obviously he was thinking dynamic futuristic robot aliens and I was thinking Steam engines... ;-)

Next time he wants to bring a certain "Optimus", with increased firepower and an 'always on button'...

Some other things that cropped up we weren't sure about:

If a robot failed its sustain roll, and was then charged by an attacker in the scuffle phase the attacker would get one automatic hit. This seemed logical to us?

Also once engaged in melee, neither combatant could be targeted in shooting, for fear of hitting your own guy! (possible exemption from this for the bad guys).

Having played about with the rules this way I'm keen to give them a go with 'proper' troops and steam vehicles...

A foray into VSF

Inspiration - it's a dangerous thing!

Within the last year, I have become properly aquainted with a certain Mr Joe Harrison Esq., aka 'The Colonel O'Truth', here on the Kapiti Coast.

It was some months ago that I was invited to partake in a cowboy skirmish game, and having been presented with Joe's 'Leadwood' - I have to say it inspired me to do likewise, although with a differing genre that I had a previous interest in: Pirates! So that was the source of inspiration for all my recent piratical goings on.

Joe also has an infectious enthusiasm for all things of a VSF nature, or to give it it's full title, Victorian Science Fiction. For those of the uninitated, this is a period which draws heavily on the ideas and works of Jules Verne and HG Wells to name a couple.

It is a period that the GASLIGHT rules have been designed for use with, and these rules appear to nicely cover all the troops, heroes, machines and beasties admirably well.

GASLIGHT

Well I have to say, it's happened to me again - inspiration!

And so, after a bit of chatting things through, 3 locals have decided to give the whole VSF thing a bash; Joe, myself and Roly Hermans.

Now being a Brit myself, I would have been the first to jump at the chance of fielding some colonial British in their iconic pith helms and red jackets. I first saw these troops as a kid, watching that classic movie; Zulu. Stirring stuff, and what red blooded British male wouldn't find this movie inspiring and invigorating!?

However I have obviously already been pipped to the post by Joe, with his previously commenced project; HMSW Gargantua - his incarnation of a British steam powered quadruped walker, crewed by such stalwarts as Seargent Boddington et al.

HMSW Gargantua

And so with the British already in the field, a suitable colonial adversary would be required, and what better than the dastardly Hun!? Thinking on Germanic imigery of the proposed period (1880-90s-ish), I remembered another somewhat iconic image, that of Karl Gerhart Fröbe, better known as Gert Fröbe, from the movie; 'Those Magnificent men in the flying machines', wearing that characteristic pickelhaube helmet.

Gert Fröbe

With this image in mind I set about searching the web. I found that the Germans of the period had been involved in the Franco-Prussian war, and a quick look at more images confirmed the sort of figures I was after.

More web browsing found a range of models I was happy with, available from Brigadegames, from their Paroom range.

Some great figures available there. I am sure an order will be placed forthwith!

Now one thing that characterizes the VSF period are its machines. So my troops were going to need some kind of 'tank' for the battlefield, especially after viewing at long range the looming form of HMSW Gargantua!

Obviously tanks didn't come into service until late WWI, some years after our proposed period of time. Plus these early machines would have been powered by the internal combustion engine and not steam power, which is one of the hallmarks of VSF fun!

I did find the wonderful looking german A7V tank. The temptation was to build one of these and stick a large chimney / funnel on the back, but that seemed too easy, and 'cheating', and not especially tailored to our period.

A7V

One of the things I have found with researching this project is that lots of folks have come up with a great many ideas for vehicles, but a great many are 'seriously fictional', if I can put it that way? What I want from a vehicle is the idea it could actually work. So I did a fair bit of web search reading up on steam power, hydraulic power, steam tractors or tractor engines, and caterpillar tracks, and importantly their inception dates and rough abilities.

Consequently, what I am thinking, and propose here, is to make a fighting vehicle based on the steam tractor engine. However, rather than the large heavy wheels, which by all accounts made the vehicle unuseable over difficult boggy ground, due to its weight, I would swap these out for caterpiller tracks.

To armour the vehicle, I decided to build an enclosed cab at rear of machine and, using a later german idea; adding schurzen plates to the sides and also to the front, but in a large 'cow-catcher' shape.

Stugs, with schurzen side armour plates

"Cow Catcher"

I also need to arm this vehicle and propose mounting a gatling-gun team or cannon artillery team, in an armoured enclosure upon the tractors roof.

The only thing to do would then be to route the funnel, down and backwards, so as not to interfere with the Gun teams line of sight.

Another touch I need to think about is a fuel supply. Now I have seen these machines trundling around the place back in Britain at summer farm festivals and the like, but what I am unsure about is how long could one run for, before it needed more coal to refuel it? So I am therefore considering having the machine drag a similar looking coal tender behind it, either wheeled or tracked and with side schurzen plates again.

So thats where all my thinking with this has got me so far!

Roly, our third player in the group, currently seems to be pondering between a French themed army perhaps using French Foreign Legion figures, or perhaps Austro-Hungarians of the period... we shall wait and see what he comes up with.