Miscellaneous weekend gaming activities

Submitted my third magic item to the OSR Superstars contest. It was fun to work it up from an old sketched out idea. Will be posting a couple of my "almost submitted" ones here.

If you follow the Saturday Paint Table postings Sophie organized on G+ you can see my daughter and I building Japanese buildings for use initially with Osprey's Ronin.  The bigger kit from 4ground is now done except for a bit of touch up paint it will need, perfectly usable. The smaller one from Plastcraft is assembled, gap filled, has a coat of primer spray, and is ready to paint. It's her first assembled building and with all the artistic skills she's developed recently, she did a fine job. I look forward to doing some more together and try her on some figures. Pics of the complete buildings coming soon. Posting in Sophie's Paint Table Saturdays has helped me get painting again. I may not do much each week, but at least I do something, which helps fight painter's block. This weekend it was quite a bit.

This shows the buildings today, the Plastcraft one still needs painting, and a few of the figures I am preparing for painting.
















Saturday afternoon into evening was another Roll20 run at the Barrowmaze run by  +Billy Compton and a good time was had by all. Was very glad I let Jose glom first onto the bejewelled cutlass that was lying around when it promptly proved to be cursed in the next fight.

Digging around I found my unpainted or partially painted old Samurai figures from Grenadier, Ral Partha, Citadel, Dixon,  and Clan Wars. Found most of the painted ones, some RPs and badly painted Heritage. The few good ones are probably scattered among D&D character boxes so will need a bit more hunting. Should be plenty for Ronin if can resist buying any of the shiny new lines from the likes of the Perry and Kensai. Started working up a batch of the bare metal ones, getting in the scraping and basing onto fender washers. Some of the RPs are getting a 3/4" washer on top of the 7/8" washer to give them a bit of a lift for more height compatibility with their later, taller brethren.

Laserburn rules turned up too, might give those another go.

Got in a first learning game of Longstreet with Aaron Gorfein, who's organizing a 6mm campaign for later this spring at Endgame. It is a fun set of rules, at just about the right level of detail to feel reasonably realistic without being too fiddly. The cards help keep it interesting. I've opted in for the campaign.

Aaron prolongs his Confederate artillery.















Then managed to dig out my 5mm ACW guys, who led me a merry chase before the game,  having been shifted from the Chessex box I remembered to a Plano box at some point, scrounging the Chessex box for use with 25mm-28mm guys no doubt. Fortunately Aaron could provide both sides for the learning game. Now I just need to rebase them from 3 to half an SPI counter to about 8 infantry to a 20 x 15mm base, 20 x 20 for fewer cavalry or one artillery gun, and maybe get and paint up a few flag bearers.

Reread a Fritz Leiber Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story which was a lot of fun, Thieves' House.

Sketched a small outdoor encounter map at a coffee shop.

In between I followed a +matt jackson link to the Dungeon Crafter's purple worm construction video and from there I went through many of his videos and those of UK gamer who goes by DMG. Both do a lot of cardboard dungeon scenery in what they call 2.5D, or a flat template with a raised curb where the walls would be and only vertical pieces for special bits of walls and doors, sometimes for dungeons, sometimes as bases for lift-off 3D buildings. They get a lot of mileage out of cardboard, white glue, cheap paint, paper towels, toilet paper, and especially hot glue. I'd probably go one level more finished if I emulated them, which would mainly be to cover more of the corrugated edges that bug me, but that would be at the expense of more time. They knock very usable stuff out very rapidly with their techniques. I'll definitely have to break out the hot glue gun and try some of this.

Three day weekends, yay!