Almost and Finally

As in almost to the convention.  Haven't gotten many of the figures I'd hoped finished but I have gotten all but a small handful of 120 deciduous trees foliated - or added foliage if you prefer.  And I've gotten a river and a bit of a lake (or ocean) matched to the terrain similar to the figure basing.  Still a few figures to work on and some bases to texture - and those last trees to finish.

So, I'm hoping I'll have a visually appealing game to a higher level than before, with everything matching up to a pretty nice degree: ground cloth, tree bases, water features, and figure bases.  I did take some photos with my new phone - but still learning how to use it - of a practice setup to make sure things will work.

Modified the rules, Rank and File, a bit to adjust based on previous FIW games.  Nothing earth shaking  for the most part.  Though I did get my charge token system up and running and will see how that goes - more on that later.  Have the scenario and troop types and quantities all sorted out.  Just that little bit more to get done, most of it should be finished tonight or tomorrow (and I have the next four days off so I have almost two full days to finish things before playing a Friday game and a Saturday morning game before my Sunday afternoon/evening game, and then play another on Sunday, or so is the plan).

Yesterday I received an order from Peter Pig so I can 'finally' return to my railroad project for the Old West - worked out a special order to get three tenders only so now I can put three flat cars back into use as freight cars instead of converting to tenders - probably one each gondola, tank car, and keeping the last as another flat car.  Unless I come up with some other car type I want to do.  I think that will bring me to 57 pieces of locomotive and rolling stock items to put on the rails.  That is a lot!

Awaiting balance of an order from Stone Mountain and a new order from Blue Moon/Old Glory and then one more to place with Irregular Miniatures - and then I will blog about an important milestone.

Of course, now that it is spring time, a lot of the hobby stuff will be shunted aside while getting the yard in shape but progress will be made.  Next post after the convention - with photos.

Progress on figures

Okay, so it is only texturing bases - so far.  But I should finish tonight on the texturing of all my fully painted French and Indian War figures in preparation for a convention game in about six weeks from now.  I do have some additional figures to finish painting and then those will need to be based and textured to match.  And the cool part is that the basing - along with a little dry brushing is a good match for the terrain canvas, not perfect but still looks like they were designed to work together.  That has me jazzed.  So, back to work to make more forward progress.

Photos in good time - still need to seal and dull cote before reaching that step.  And I might wait and get photos from the actual game rather than staged photos - or possibly a little bit of both.

"Training" Day

The last of the 'raw' cars arrived today and now I can start working on building my motive power and rolling stock.  Eight more flat cars arrived and most of them will be transformed into other types of cars than flat cars.  Now it is just a matter of having the time.

The Season

Okay, now that we are full into the holiday season there is the distraction of my wife's quite large Lemax (and more) village that needs to be set up and operated until after the new year.  This is something of a distraction from my own hobby work but it keeps her happy and it is also fun since it is miniatures of a sort.  And I've hatched a plot to get some military figures into the mix by buying some 1/35th scale figures to 'sneak' in somewhere.  Now, I have to decide if I want to go Victorian and fit in better with what she has going or get some 18th century figures to 'push back time'.

I await the last back order rolling stock items prior to launching the steam train project.  And I've still two orders to place for the wagons to further that project which I've gotten started on.

I will try and take progress photos along the way to publish.

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If all went well, I've added back in the ability to gain followers for this blog.  Had closed it off because of some untoward and unwanted joiners a while back.

Wagons, Carts, Stagecoaches, Limbers, and Carriages - How many?

I first decided to 'standardize' my wagon trains with Peter Pig wagons and to also add another Peter Pig army supply wagon.  This freed up five wagons from the trains, four of which will become freight line wagons and one will become another army supply wagon.  And since I want some casual figures to lounge about the fort, I will order the camp back from Stone Mountain which means one more wagon that will also be an army supply wagon.  All well and good and not too excessive.

And then?

And then I discovered Blue Moon's generic wagons under the Napoleonic range!  Okay, a whole bunch I just to have there, the grain wagon, the engineer wagon, the 'supply' wagon with its cool load, and the barrel wagon.  And under the French equipment there is that rather mundane cart but it comes with a whole bunch of figures that will be a nice little addition (as if my insanely large collection needs more!) to my Old West set up.  And then I decided I need to add an element that just needs to exist - some manure wagons for the larger town of Anachronism and those carts, I'll order two, for the smaller towns of Alkali Wells and Cedar Creek.  And that means I need a couple of water wagons - will mean a bit of kitbashing.

And along with the 'standardizing', I've decided to use all Peter Pig oxen for the ox drawn wagon train. That means I can put the now extra oxen from other sources in front of a variety of other wagons.  And I will then end up with some extra draft horses in harness to populate various corrals.  Oh, and I also bought the Blue Moon pack of dead horses and it includes at least eight dead draft horses so I've added that element.

What does this add up to?  A whopping total of 78 vehicles and quite a variety at that.  Crazy as this seems it just tickles me because the ultimate goal is to have my three old west towns at least moderately crowded with wagons.  It's just how it was.  Plus there is all that space between towns in need of wheels rolling and the army needs to be well supplied.  I think this will do it.

So, my winter project is a combination of getting my old west steam trains and rolling stock together and painted and all of my wagons assembled and painted along with their teams and some of the people - like drivers and such but a bit more than that, too.  And just for fun, I'm going to try and get the remount herd for the army and the pony herd for the indians painted as well - and finish the six more buffalo I bought to make that herd a nice round 120 animals.  And maybe even the herd of pronghorn antelope.  I am cogitating on adding more long horns but I'm trying to resist.

Seems a worthy goal.  Just hope I can get close to achieving it.  I do still need to keep working on my French and Indian War figures and that might add a bit of a challenge.  But maybe doing a different period for a bit will rekindle some enthusiasm for that collection - though the real challenge is time more than enthusiasm.

Hope you are kind enough to wish me luck.

The Return, Or Getting on Track

While many important distractions remain, I am slowly returning to working on hobby projects.

My next project, if all goes well, is going to be my old west trains.  Once some items on back order get shipped I will have the following to work on: 3 Peter Pig locomotives, 6 varied Glencoe Models plastic locomotives (three of which I'll need to build tenders for), 8 passenger coaches (two of which will be converted to combines), six box cars, 4 cabeese (plural of caboose, you know), and 10 flat cars (8 of which will be converted into 4 cattle cars, 2 tank cars, and 2 gondolas with 2 staying as flat cars).  As the norm, that means cleaning and prepping and painting.  And all of that will make for a very nice and varied collection of items to include in games - and probably overkill in many ways but still a fun project and does lead to some rather specific scenarios I have in mind, the most well known being the ambush of the Earp family by the cowboy faction at the rail yard that didn't quite go as planned.

These being trains, the other part of the project is assembling track for the trains to run on and not just a section of track but switches to allow that aforesaid rail yard, some passing sidings, and at least a couple of spurs branching off to industries - the stock yards near town and a spur down to the rail ferry in use until a bridge can be built across the river, not too far from where the floating gambling paddle wheeler ties up.

And, hopefully, mixed in with getting that above project done, I'll also be getting some figures painted. Even, when it gets to the point I can do so, photographs of the project along the way can be hoped for.

Oh, the mountain building project still awaits but may be undergoing some significant revision.  Stay tuned for more on that.  I like getting distracted with terrain projects.

Enough for now.

Film Making Interlude

Been away in the film making world the past few months, just making a couple of short movies.  First of two previews tonight on a local IMAX screen with the more ambitious project making its premier on October 4th.  Made a visit to southern California last weekend to include a trip to Disneyland and a brief visit to Brookhurst Hobbies to make a few small purchases.  Besides the film making activities, been very busy on the house front, getting a variety of exterior items attended to and once that is done moving to some interior work.  So, miniatures - while not abandoned - have been on a very small and barely lukewarm back burner for the past many months.  And will continue that way for a while as I also focus on a feature screenplay project and getting a model rail road project to its next step.  About the only thing miniatures wise to get much of my attention - maybe - will be a local approaching convention that I hope to attend.  But I will be back with more at some point.  This is but a checking in post.

And, nice to report, the unwanted visits seem to have dwindled away and now seems to be just the genuinely interested stopping by.