Quick and Easy 10mm/15mm Cemetery

I needed to make a quick cemetery for the Cemetery Hill portion of my upcoming First Day of Gettysburg game at Origins. I got the idea to use the rounded ends of some craft picks I had as the tombstones, and glued them to some leftover Warmaster sized metal bases from which I had removed the troops.  The whole project took about 20 minutes from start to finish and produced a nice set of tiny tombstones.

The ends of the craft sticks were easy to snip off with a pair of clippers.

I glued them on the bases with white tacky glue

Shown with a base of 10mm troops for scale.

A close up of the tombstones.  They would work equally well for 15mm I think.

First Red Martian Unit Finished

This week I finished my first unit of ten Red Martians and an overall commander for the big 20 player GASLIGHT game Buck Surdu and I are running at Historicon.  The figures are from Bronze Age and measure 32mm tall.  I really like Bronze Age's stuff.  The figures were relatively flash free and have a lot of detail that really makes simple paint jobs look good.

Bronze Age Martian Beast with Howdah Conversion

Over the weekend I worked on a conversion of one of Bronze Age's Wasteland Mutant (Thark) mounts (Thoat) into a mobile gun platform by adding a howdah and a radium cannon.  I hope to use this in our big 20 player GASLIGHT Mars extravaganza at Historicon.

I began by sawing off the top portion of the saddle and blanketroll that comes molded to the beast.

Next I began to construct a howdah out of cardboard.

I used toothpicks to make a railing around the howdah, and some wire-work from a dollar store wire dollhouse table to make some decorative ornamentation around the outside of the platform.

Next, I constructed the radium cannon out of some left over Eldar weapon bits, a flight stand peg, and half a slotted base.

Here is the finished product with a Bronze Age Martian for a sense of size.  I embedded two magnets in the beast's back, and glued a metal base to the underside of the platform, so it is removable for storage and transport. And, if I ever wish to make a different load for the beast to carry it will be easy to switch them out.

Here it is with a coat of black primer all ready for painting.

And here it is with its paint job.  the radium cannon is crewed by an Ironclad Minaitures Sandwar Cannon Crew.

GASLIGHT at Origins 10 Years Ago

At the end of this month a group of us will be heading to Origins to host several "G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.", and "Look, Sarge, No Charts" games. As it turns out, it was ten years ago that I first brought GASLIGHT to Origins, and I decided to go back into the archives to look at the pictures of that first trip. The rules were relatively new, having just been published in 2000, and going to Origins gave us an opportunity to share them with folks outside our usual East Coast HMGS convention schedule. GASLIGHT was very well received by the Origins gamers.
    I ran several ACW by GASLIGHT games at the con, and my scratchbuilt and toy conversion vehicles were a big hit, as there was very little in the way of VSF vehicles available then. How far VSF has come in the last 10 years.

Jenn helps me set up one of the games.

Two players discuss their strategy

Union forces advance.

A much younger me calls the next activation cards.

The action heat up in one of the games.

Jenn fills in as a player in one of the games.