We have spaces at #PoshLard this Sat due to folks having to drop out. We can offer What A Cowboy, What A Pirate, S&H and/or SP 2 (sadly, IABSM at Chef-du-Pont is fully booked). Yours for £5.
Booking available here!
WAB, WECW, Dux Britanniarum, IABSM3 and many other wargames rules, mostly in 28 and 15mm.
We have spaces at #PoshLard this Sat due to folks having to drop out. We can offer What A Cowboy, What A Pirate, S&H and/or SP 2 (sadly, IABSM at Chef-du-Pont is fully booked). Yours for £5.
Booking available here!
Right.
Ducks in a row. Cats herded. Venue booked. Website updated.
Announcing Posh Lard 2023 - Nov 25th at the George Allcock Centre, Peterborough.
https://www.peterborough-wargames-club.org.uk/2023/06/16/posh-lard-2023-saturday-november-25th-2023/ for more details!
So, I've been doing a bit of shopping of late, because... reasons, to follow in another post (or actually, probably podcast!). Various items, from seven different suppliers depending on availability, price and a few other criteria, from (literally) A to Z, though I'm not going to name names, although you should be able to work a few out. So. In alphabetical order...
A box-shifter, it would appear. Cheapest for a couple of items, but I foolishly failed to notice one item was on backorder. They will not split orders, even when it's glaringly obvious that one of the items is out of stock and in fact out of print everywhere. Support desk, and I quote verbatim, "Inline with our shipping policy page and backorder policy page sir we do not split orders". Just flat out unhelpful. Order now cancelled: had they been more helpful about it I would have re-ordered as two orders, but I'm a little concerned that they actually don't give a toss, and my backorder would have hung around for ever. Either way, it cost them over £100 in sales. Reordered with #7, watching for the credit card refund like a hawk.
Probably the world's biggest. Own delivery chain. Two deliveries, both turned up next day as promised, rang doorbell, parcel in my hot and sweaty hands. No problems.
Small 3D print seller on eBay - still waiting but they say 5-10 days so not stressed.
EBay seller doing custom decals (I'd do my own but I can't print white). Shipped the next day (in fact, today), should be here Tuesday via Royal Mail.
A doorbell. It even says RING on it. |
Odd site as their URL doesn't match their trading name. Second cheapest for most stuff (often cheapest if you cash in reward points or take advantage of their discounts), actually deliver when promised via Royal Mail. No complaints except that I spend more by looking for that 'one more item' to pass the discount price break :D
It's only taken most of lockdown (if you don't count the Virtual Hereward video post) but I'm on a podcast.
Not mine, I hasten to add, but the fabulous Henry Hyde's Battlechat episode 101, where you can find Henry and I discussing everything from my personal gaming (and non-gaming) history, through Southend, Fleetwood Mac, IABSM, Dux, the club to putting on mad crazy games at shows.
I had a fabulous time, even if I had arrange it round getting Dad to the opticians and thus bring up a holdall of podcasting kit to his living room. Thanks to Henry for a fabulous hour and a bit, and for generally reminding me how much I love this hobby and inspiring me to get off my arse and do stuff!
Available to Patreons of Henry now (and if you aren't, why not!) or for the general public in a couple of weeks.You can book in advance (see our booking page), and there are still plenty of tables available for games, for tabletop sales, but only a few trade stand slots left. And the painting competition is back for another year!
Huge thanks to Reuben who's been doing a lot of the work this year - we couldn't have done it without him, and it's shaping up to be a great show.
One of the more obvious things we noted from running the Dambusters' Challenge at shows is by 'eck, it's popular!
While this is most gratifying and a Good Thing™, it does present a wee bit of a headache when it comes to keeping track of whose turn it is next. Time to implement a queueing system (as a software developer, this normally means something quite different to where we ended up!).
The plan was set in motion sometime around the last time we put the game out (2018, IIRC) when I bought 4 1/600 scale Lancs from Tumbling Dice. The aim was to mount them on flight stands and use a model of the area of the Möhnesee as a place to queue them up. And five years less a few months later we finally got round to it.
Stage 1: paint and base the Lancs. Job kindly done by AndyM.
Stage 2: build the terrain.
Take a handy spare 2' square of MDF (cut by my builders for me when the workshop/studio/office was rebuilt 5 years ago). Grid up a reconnaissance photo (from NCAP) and transfer it using the time-honoured square by square technique onto the MDF with a marker pen.
Next, after a brief discussion with Ethan from the club, the latter generously brought along a bag of Sculptamold, and with some help from advice from him and some scrap blue foam cut to shape on the Proxxon, I built the basic terrain.If you've never used Sculptamold before, I can thoroughly recommend it as a tool for building up terrain. It's basically an unholy mix of papier maché and plaster, mixes 3:1 with water and dries to the point where you can work it, paint it and layer it in about 15 mins. Brilliant, if messy stuff.
Additionally, if you want, I gather you can colour it, which with hindsight we might have done but in the end didn't do.
Then it was out with various shades of greys, and picking out all the fields and roads and water edges as per the recce photo I had for reference.
The one last step was putting in the two long bridges and the dam - I don't claim these are accurate representations of what was there, but at this point it's just a sketch. While trying to figure out what to make them from, I happened to go fishing in the big workshop trash box where everyone dumps their left-over sprues from plastic and MDF kits, and found two bits from a TT Combat kit that either Rob or Dan had been working on that could both be turned into long arched spans (edge on 3mm MDF). Brilliant. Bedded them in at both ends with a bit of quick setting filler, did a quick retouch once that had dried and bingo... out with the yacht varnish to make the water glossy, and done.
By now, Andy had delivered the planes, so it only remained to place a small dot of coloured paint on each base, and print off cards of each colour.
"Now serving RED! Next player please!"
Just before we added the coloured dots... |
Oof.
Well, I'd love to regale you with tales of how much I bought at Salute, but due to us needing 4 folks to run the game, and having only 4 folks at the show, the sum total of my shopping was two Warlord Epic ACW command packs (usefully as they were 20y from our game), and picking up What a Cowboy from Too Fat Lardies' stand (right at the other end of the hall). I actually spent more on tea and coffee for the team.
The game, however, went down a storm, as far as I can tell. At least, I kept hearing various expressions of amazement and delight from just over my shoulder as I was running the sound effects and moving the Lanc.
We took some time last month to tart up the dam, as it was originally untextured hardboard painted grey, and, well, it looked a bit boring. So we broke out my stash of US foam board (the stuff that the paper facing actually peels off of - imported in my suitcase from the US in late 2021), bought a 3D printable brick/stone texture roller from Etsy (or was it Thingiverse? I forget) and set to work.
Rob and Myk's (I think) calculations and measurements for the lake side of the dam. |
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Ready to load up for Salute. |