Nazi Terror Weapon

 Sorry for the poor phone picture
The Nazis employed weapons designed to terrorize their enemies during the war so what could possibly be more terrifying than a raging gigantic ape? This is the Quantum King Kondo figure from the collectible board game called Monsterpocalypse he's 65mm foot to eye and is mounted on a 40mm round base. Since we are using the NUTS! WAR WITHOUT END supplement as our rules he will be a walker sized robot in rules terms. That means I'll have to get a handler figure for him.

Nazis in the Work Bench

Here is the whole ungainly mess all my assorted Germans stuck down on Galeforce 9 magnetic 25mm round bases. This is 4 packs of Artizan Designs late war German infantry in great coats, 1 pack of Renegade German infantry in great coats and a Westwind SOTR Nazi vampire. Apart form Frankie and a giant ape (gotta have a giant ape) this is all I'm working on for my evil Nazi faction.

I'm loving these late war Germans by Artizan.

I've never seen a Renegade figure before and they ended up being very chunky. But they have a certain charm they'll paint up easy. I'll just use them as fat American's who joined the Nazi party or some such thing.

Obligatory SOTR miniature.

Fiends in Jackboots

 

Sorry in advance for the terrible phone pictures!
Fiends in Jackboots is the catchy name I came up with two years ago for an old Weird World War II game the Lunatic R I and began many years ago. Now I know many of my British audience belong to wargaming clubs I belong to essentially a wargames club of two Lunatic R and myself.  Lunatic R is one of those sci-fi/fantasy wargamers who is afraid of historical wargaming but he enjoys pulp so this is the perfect gaming period for him. So He just mentioned he wanted to do this WWW2 so I dug up the Artizan figures I got back in 2010 when we first talked of doing this. Lunatic R likes playing "The Joes" as he calls them so I'm building the insane Nazi death cultists.
I have a bunch of Artizan late war Germans in greatcoats two squads worth for my infantry they are 28mm from foot to eye.

I also bought this Reaper Miniatures Frankenstein from their Classic Monsters line as a failed super soldier experiment. But we've sharpened our www2 concept is to be Hellboy-ish in perpetual winter from an open gate to another dimension. So I don't know if I'll use it.

Scale Rambles Part 2

I posted my thoughts on an article in the Wargame Bloggers Quarterly which you can find here. I felt the need to speak more about scale in or more accurately lack of scale in wargaming. I spent years reading magazines like the one pictured above but I never got really bogged done on scale. That being said creating a 28mm figure collection can be a nightmare, 25mm, 28mm 30mm and 32mm what's a person to do? If mismatched sizes really bother you its very hard to collect figures from more than one company because far too many companies these days produce figures in wildly different heights & thicknesses. Now I'm bothered by this to a degree. Now I like to collect a base line of a particular size then add a few other sizes to that group to add variety.

My Victorian/Gothic Horror collection has true 28mm as the base line size being primarily made up of Westwind and warlord figures. I've added a few large Reaper and Horror Clix figures and some smaller Hasselfree figures.

My Modern Horror collection is now based on 32mm being made up of Zombicide, Hero/Horror Clix & Reaper along with some smaller old Ral Partha and Westwind figures.


I actually promised Millsy an article for WBQ on size diversity in skirmish games I am working (well thinking about it).  Once I finish painting and photographing them they will look fantastic but the rub (as everyone knows) is finding figures of different scales true, heroic, etc.. even from different manufactures that look good together.

Unique Opportunity Not to Be Missed!

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS

A loose consortium of members of the wonderful forum Lead Adventure Forum (LAF) have banded together to produce a small series of Victorian super heroes and super villains.  The Man Who Laughs is their supervillain figure and the superhero figure is called the Gentleman Vigilante. These are not for commercial production there will be only one limited casting run so that the originators of this project can get the Victoriansque figures based on well know DC comicbook characters they have always wanted. They are currently compiling a list of forum members who want the figures so they can see how large the casting run will be. I'm getting the figures if you have ever had an interest even in passing of getting a Victorian version of these well know characters you need to get in on this. This is quite literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.  There is no company behind these figures if you want one you will need to go their thread on LAF here. Simply indicate your interest and follow the updates in the thread.

Ready for casting

Scale Rambles

I just read Mr. Nigel Higgins' rant regarding the "scale" of 28mm in Wargames Bloggers Quarterly and that got me thinking about the size or more accurately the sizes of "28mm", heroic, super heroic et all. Mr. Higgins like many people is rather put out by these bedeviling issues and rightly pointed out that there is no such thing as a "28mm scale". Now this was an enjoyable read and he knows the proper way to scale up or down objects mathematically but I don't see the point if its inclusion to this issue scale modeling has nothing to do with wargaming. Before you protest get your favorite wargames building and a standing 28mm figure, the Facade (front) of the building looks proportionally correct. Now lay the model down along the side of the building most likely the building's side wall is 1 1/2 model lengths long. Now think about the house you live how many person lengths is the side of that house? Wait?! Yes dear readers all wargames building as severally foreshortened. If you used the scale modeling approach to construct a wargames building (and I have) it will not look right. The objects on the wargames table are not scale representations but artistic approximations. Scale modeling math has its uses in wargaming but wargaming is not scale modeling.

I use the foot to eye measuring system to tell how "large" a "28mm" figure really is as the Legatus correctly pointed out toy soldiers "wear hats" and this is the only reliable measurement possible for figures. This is an issue that has plagued us wargamers for some time now I've recently decided to add the foot to eye measurements of every figure I post on the blog from now on. See this post for details on how I list the measurements. I have lots to say about this issue but I've run out of time until see you Wed.

EOTD in Action

I and all of you now have a unique opportunity to see a 4 person Empire of the Dead campaign from the perspective of three of the four participants as three of the players have been blogging about their campaign. This campaign was started by Scott at his local club you can see his initial post here.
Here is Ste's take on the same game on his blog. And finally the third participant Paul providing an AAR of his game with Scott on his blog. These guys should provide a great window into how an EOTD campaign works.

Is Empire of the Dead back from the Dead? Updated

With Andy Cooper's January 19th announcement that the Requiem Compendium is near completion soon to be available for KS backers then after that for general release, has this statement breathed new life into the game? The announcement can be found in full here. I've noticed that three of my intrepid readers Kaspar, Scott and Ste have begun playing EOTD again is this a flash in a pan or the beginning of something? Many people have taken an interest in my article "Empire of the Dead thoughts on the rules" and I intend to write another on playing with the basic rulebook.

I've noticed that I've acquired two new followers A.W. Kitchen of the blog tin soldiering on and Blaxkleric a lover of zombies and author of  Fantorical Blog. Welcome gentlemen!

Plasties!

Yes Plasties I know I just made that up by they aren't shinny metal they are pre-painted plastic. I've been trying to hold down the lead mountain, I haven't purchased anything this year, but once I made that decision in the fall my plastic mountain took off! Yes looking back with hind sight that would be the obvious result of not buying more lead.

So back to the figures at hand these are three Horrorclix figures from the Freakshow line each figure cost me less than a dollar American. Based on earlier reader comments I'm going to included the foot to  eye measurements of every figure I include in the blog from now on I hope you find it helpful.

This zombie is 32mm foot to eye which makes him large for my collection of true 28mm figures but I'll be using him anyway I just can't help myself.

This figure, I'm calling him Sad Tom the Tinker, is 30mm foot to eye but he's bent over if he stood straight he would be 32mm.

This figure, I'll call him Fran the Fireman, is 30mm foot to eye and he is one of the best Victorian Zombie Survivor figures I've seen. As you can see he fits in pretty well with these Westwind true 28mm figures.