paper warehouses, kit comparrison

   Things are progressing reasonably well, I haven't lost my temper once this week!...thus far!
Lots of honey-do's have been accomplished, I've made it to almost all Church and school functions-except the times I was at work-, and I've also made respectful progress on my painting.
I even have found the time to set up the tree, string the lights, and set up my nutcracker collection; although, I suppose those are requirements for the season! It seems that my paint table has a foot race between the 44th Regt of foot and the  Prison Outbreak zombies. One will be featured next week, If I survive the next five, twelve-hour work days and the non-winter drivers seeking home or shopping as I go to and from work!
I have slowly been taking advantage of technology with this hobby. First using the internet for research instead of the library, then forums with like minded hobby enthusiasts, paper models to replace the expensive kits and time consuming scratch builds, and of course blogger!

There is nothing wrong with scratch builds nor kits. They do take time from the minions and can take money from recruiting more minions. I have several really nice kits and scratch built terrain pieces, I consider it mandatory to have objective markers or army specific terrain bits to anchor a force in what is mostly a modular, generic battlefield. Papermodels are really great as they are cheap and often nice free ones can be found. Some can be reskined or include optional components which can lead a hobbyist to fill a table with structures from just one PDF file. Dave Graffam is one such designer who includes several skins and options in his builds including instructions to scale the structure into any size you need. His builds have been the easiest ones to build. Chris Roe makes splendid Scifi vehicles and structures which fit well into BladeRunner/5th Element/Battlestar Galactica/ Serenty type settings his builds are a bit more intermediate to expert but are exquisite in the function( removable roofs/walls, working ramps, etc). I have several different kits from many makers. I had thought to make my own to sell, but I'm still a ground pounder and free time is for my minions!

I have two warehouse models to show. One is the multistory warehouse from Finger and Toe models, the other is a derelict warehouse from Stoezels Structures. Both are really easy to build and could fit well in most any era from WW1 to future war.

I made the Finger and Toe model a four story structure. It could have several more levels or even one. Several optional doors and windows are included to further personalize it. I am very unhappy with the roof and have made several previous structures as static pieces because of the warping roofs. The Stoezel structure is laminated paper over foam core and it has a solid build that is rapidly endearing me to his kits. I may try laminating the finger and toe models which should remove the dreaded warp issue.

there is some warping here, but I found this a novel way of building a layer cake construction and keep the levels from shifting during use. Glen included the interior parts to help stabilize the floors

Glen also used the concrete decorations to hide the seams of each level making this a very functional model...except for that roof!

The Stoezel structure has two floors, because it is so solid I store my paper crates and barrels in it.

It is truly a warehouse for my minions! It came with a staircase and the support posts which hold each upper level in place. each post is precolored even on the end pieces. ..in case you should want to lay a few down for tripping hazards or further adding to the disrepair of the derelict.

Finger and toe has spots in the corner for the support posts, but they are only colored on a few sides and the top.

The blue line is marking the area for a floor in the stoezel structure. you can cut a rabbit in the foamcore and build this as a threesided, layer cake, or a removable floor as I have done. make sure you test fit first as Carl gives you enough print acreage on all the pieces to accommodate your building preference.

My Free French Scifi Marines have graciously wandered into the top floor of the Finger and Toe warehouse. They are trapped! Although Glen included stairs, they are taller than the floors and you will have to cut out openings for each level. While this makes a nice sandbox approach, I have discovered that some windows and sections would be covered by the stairs, so I left them out.

They are more ramps than stairs as well. They do have a good slope for mini bases and did go together quickly. Another big deterrent is only the side and rear of the stair are skinned, it has to be against a wall. I am going to save them for a future build.

Both kits are really nice. The finger and toe model cost me less than $5 and the Stoezel structure was free. With cost, ease of build, skin quality, game potential...the better kit is the stoezel structure, but I truly like the sand box Finger and toe. I'm going to rebuild it with foamcore and go for a couple of large up to 10 storey towers for snipers! You could even run a skirmish for ascending or descending the tower. But the derelict is free and really easy to build.

If you haven't built one yet, I recommend a wrinkle free scrapbook glue, 170# cardstock, and spray photo adheseive for sticking the card to the foamcore. I'd use black foamcore as it looks better than white when thin slivers show thru slightly off cuts. Follow the instructions and allow time for the glue to set. I have a slew of cheap markers to edge the cardstock with the similar color to the skins, this also removes the white slices peeking thru. Last of all, it is paper and it is easy if you take your time; however, both of these models took a weekend to build together. I spent perhaps 6 hours for each build not including dry time. I played with my kids, painted models and performed honey-do's.

It was a rainy Michigan summer weekend which may have influenced the warp factor of the finger and toe model too!

Thus concludes another week, It'll be redcoats or berserker zombies next week!

 

challenges and the holiday season begins!

Ever have one of those days that just doesn't go right? one of those weeks?...years?
I promise I haven't fallen into the pit of despair or even a fugue of apathy. In all I'm doing remarkably well for a 45 year old whose mid-life crisis involved putting back on a uniform and returning to the military. I couldn't do the cliché of chasing a twenty-something blonde and jetting around in a convertible. I had to put on camouflage to validate my manliness.
It was for several reasons I put the uniform back on. Yes, twenty years gives me a bit extra for retirement, medical gets better, and the ability to buy more for less at military commissaries. There is also the Patriotic portion. My family has served before The US decided not to be a colony of England. I grew up with accounts of ancestors present and those long gone( my son is named after a great-great grandfather who served in the ACW). 9-11 did provide a motivation as well, my children also( who doesn't want their kids to be safe and not have to serve- perhaps the not serve is a pipedream as /I am perpetuating a cycle long unbroken) The unit I joined to finish my 20 is the very same one my great-great grandfather was part of in the ACW. My own grandfather served from the same armory when they were tankers in the Korean War, My wife's father served with the same unit in Vietnam. I trained as a recon scout and deployed to Afghanistan. Being the old guy in the unit has it's own set of challenges being that I am not as fast or strong as the kids, I also do not have the rank as the few soldiers who are in my generation. I was kept in reserves till some of my buddies were hurt in an ambush, then I got brought over. I am the only soldier from my unit not to receive a CIB( combat infantry badge) not because I wasn't shot at, but it wasn't a firefight of the tempo that crippled some of the kids that brought me over to begin with. We all came home alive which if not the perfect ending it is a good one.
The economic downturn and budget cuts have impacted further as well. A soldier never quits, but the organization can quit on the soldier. I don't blame them as it must be hard to quantify a subordinate older than yourself, yet I am frustrated that I spent a considerable amount to repair torn hamstrings just to be benched at the start of deployment. I am a touch resentful that troops younger than I who gave guidance to have been promoted over myself, I am equally resentful that I am getting shoved out the door. I am resentful that each time I don the uniform, I take a pay cut from my civilian job, yet I still carry out every task put before me. Anger...
Anger, there is a lot of it seething beneath the surface. Not just the perceived anger in the above paragraphs, but also in the news and nation. When the British Soldier was stabbed to death in England not so long ago, I went tunnel vision, blurred angry. Seeing the time life images of the troops in Somalia being dragged through the streets naked put me in a red tinted rage. If you have never experienced it, It is a cold, numbing thing. your sight narrows around what you have an overpowering urge to destroy.   This urge is reached by the idiot in a Che t-shirt who told my daughter that I was going to kill Muslim women and children. The button has also been pressed by the loudmouth patron holding up a gas station queue as she complained about her too hot coffee or the motorist who cut me off on an icy highway sans turn signals.
A physical clue is my face turns white, my eyes darken to black, and my left hand shakes. I know this because my wonderful wife has noted it. I have yet to determine if age has prevented myself from snapping. It is a cold seething rage, and my thought process if somewhat narrow for solutions still exists. PTSD, dunno, I have joined the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Both have several vets who share the same fury. A Psychologist has called it irrational anger which seems very ironic as it feels very rational to me to be angry. I honestly have no intentions of climbing a water tower and venting with a rifle. That suggestion brings a tremor of the "irrational anger".
Family is a huge help, It's hard to hold on to hatred and vitrol when your kids are full of wonder and cheer at all they see and do. A beer with a few vets also vents a bit of steam. A wife rubbing your shoulders and saying "honey..." is a good verbal cue to let go.
Running helps, I'm not as fast as I was in my youth( my own 11yr old daughter runs a 18 min 3 mile, and she is faster than my 2 mile run for this year)still it does wonders for quieting your mind. Wargaming is another tool. You can't build and paint models when you are pissed off. If a dark spell is on me, often a few minuets with some plastic and lead will get me back to an even keel.
I did not make it through my list of Git-er-done. The Cygnar forces are completed except for basing, the Spacewolves and Crimson Fists are still where I left them as are the dwarven host. I still have to finish my chaos warships as well. Now I have the Napoleonic forces added to the queue!
I have a suspiscion that my wife is cognizant of this calming effect. Although I failed in completing the forces she tasked me to complete....gamer OCD or shinyitus had some limited involvement.
She has been looking at my scifi 15mm list for the Alien Legion project which was to be my reward for completing the armies( that I didn't). I really got to focus and get something completed before St Nick comes by!
So rant completed, here are some Crossover minis from a kickstarter this year. Modern, zombie, superhero, pulp, even scifi can use these minions. If you venture to the website for them, you will note they have minions for order( I'm not the only one who likes that word)
Once again the photos are rather bad! I will get some better ones as thses will be photographed again once I complete them.

so here are my boys in blue. regular patrol officers and a swat team

The police leader of the minions. he'll be my police sgt, Tyrell from Reaper minis is my police chief and is shown for a size comparison. I just need some reaper bases or similar so that they all look like they belong.

The Crossover minis come with separate heads. Here is the same police officer body but with different heads. My swat leader has a thug leader head( I liked the bald head with sunglasses), the swat officer next to him uses the helmet head. I painted on the balaclava. the last officer got the standard patrol cap.

here are the armed thugs. I used a variety of camouflage on them. They can be armed robbers, terrorists, paramilitary, current to near future.

I gave them a variety of footwear as well from boots to basket ball shoes

a clown mask, balaclava,and bald head 

with the masks, I had to make a joker crew! the middle three have green hair green pants and purple jackets to show whose goons they are.

I am really fond of the armed thugs. They are not elite like hydraesque troops, but are great for a quasi military flair and could easily blend into scifi blade runner type adventures.

the last two are Crash and Burn. I've only painted the brass and red on them and they still have a way to go!

I have entirely completed the red portions of the uniforms, I just have to finish with the other bits.

All these models were primed in a semi gloss black as my kids used up all of my flat black on some cardboard for art projects. A prelude I am certain for the status of the gas tanks once they are old enough to drive! 

They are going to be a husband and wife team of dubious morality. They will be neutral between the rivalry of my super villain and my kid's heroes.
There are several super and minion sets available from Crossover Miniatures. I will be shopping for more as with the separate heads, I can get some not-Shield and not-Hydra minions as well as ninjas!
What kinda villain would Dr Dread be without a team of Ninjas!?
The price isn't too bad as a group of 15 minions go for about$50 and the single heroes go for around$6. I just need some bases to even them up with reaper. Since their bases are molded on, it may be a bit problematic to use the third party scenic bases. But for generic heroes and villains they have some really nice generic sculpts.
Yes, I'm a little late in my posting as today is Saturday and not my imposed deadline of Friday.
I am sufficiently stuffed on turkey and other holiday culinary delights...we also have a plethora of leftovers which is another benefit of the holidays! Leftovers! meals will be easy the next few days, if you like turkey of course!

Summer break is over

So I have mostly survived the chaos of summer. Overtime at work, military drill, parties, weddings, holiday gatherings, more parties, gardening, ..... I also have been "enjoying" my nation's politics which is sarcasm for wanting to duck out into a hidey hole with my wife, kids and just focus on hobby in my leisure time! ...but, I digress. I have found a bit of time to indulge in my leisure activities which means a fair amount was accomplished during the warm months and I was able to photograph it all today! I regrettably only own two cameras. An Olympus 35mm with all the bells and whistles of a $1k camera system( In the 80's!) and my droid smart phone. The smart phone isn't very smart when confronted with a dreary Michigan sky( Rain for the second week) and cold( too cold and wet for the ever expanding honey-do list)- note- I did turn off the exterior water faucets and changed the furnace filters which allowed me to photo my minions today!

Most of the pictures have suffered from horrible overexposure and some didn't focus. They looked good when taking the pictures, but look atrocious on the computer. I did delete most of them, but I kept a few revelant ones. I will endeavor to retake a few later on. I am scheduled to go to days shortly because my wife has demanded it, and I do like to keep her happy. A benefit will be that I have been promised a breakfast date once a month! I will also be able to send my kids off to school on my off days and be readily available for the growing honey-do list( damn it never ends!). Although I will now awake at 2am every day instead of 2pm, My running and daddy time will exist from 2am-8am every day(except workdays). I will also only have to sacrifice Sundays for military duty which will allow me to actually use my benefit time for actual vacations and not weekend warrior duty.
Like now even though I had drill cancelled for the government shutdown( still have to make it up) Nov and Dec will be off no-pay from work because I already used up all my benefit time for the drill days earlier in the year! A lot of good things will be coming because of my changing over to dayshift, but I will miss the night times spent doing whatever I wished!

I now have several posts ready to submit throughout November, terrain, minis, and more!  I did artwork this summer! I also participated in Zombicide and Crossover Mini kickstarters. I haven't received the Zombicide one yet, but I did and do have planned a post for the Crossover minatures kickstarter awards I received. But first lets get on to the pics!

Several of the blogs I read have been running a Zomtober  painting challenge and I do like checking out their work. Here is what I finished this month.

A top down image of the shambling horde, unfortunately it is a touch blurry!

these are all Wargame Factory zombies .

A nurse and an office worker. The keen eyed may have spotted a few of these lurking on my paint tray. I have been working on them off and on since I got back from deployment a year ago.

this batch of zombies were finally completed and were involved in a mass basing evolution a few weeks ago. Flock, static grass, touch ups, debris, etc.

Although the flash washed them out, these two are my favorite male zombies. Unfortunately the color is about erased by the flash!

A few policemen have succumbed to the Z virus! A bicycle cop, and two patrolmen. It shouldn't be a surprise that the bicycle cop did not make it into the ranks of the survivors!

A couple of damaged Female zombies. The more upright one has lost her foot and I selected a head that had 1/2 of her skull exposed. The crawler has lost most of her legs and her hand. She is using her right stump to support herself!

I couldn't forget the troops! Here are three soldiers that did not have critical need to know information!

Although the flash is horrible for this one, I do like the shadows against the wall!

A group shot of the bunch! Surprisingly, this shot came out rather good!

This was supposed to be a nice comparison shot of the old and new zombies by Wargames Factory, but the flash has denied it!

I truly like both kits, but the Zombie Vixen box does have more detail. Both kits paint up very nice and have given me a lot of zombies. I do not mind the soft detail on the male zombies as these are not heroic troops but are a nasty scary horde to swarm my troops. I see no reason to spend $20 for a few "nice" zombies when the same amount will yield 30 zombies and provide spare parts for conversions and terrain.

My kid's bought both sets for me last year(I got a lot of kits for homecoming and Christmas!) We had a grand time assembling them over the Christmas holidays. I managed to get them primered just last spring. I have the last of the 60 being finished now and several of the last batch were painted by my kids as well. These are all done by myself and were used as a visual aid for the kids to approximate. Although  they had various levels of success, it gave them a target to aim for.

My kid's like Howard Whitehouse's Alien War rules and are now engaged in painting their own fire teams from the many boxes of UAMC troops I have from them. 

Well, that is all I have for this week, I should return with another post very soon!

My middle daughter has finished her crosscountry season and is now ripping up the basketball court. She pulled her hamstring in the last practice before her final run...she does a 3 mile run in 18 min and she is 10. Even with her bum leg newly/still recovering; she smoked me in a two mile run by 3 min.

She is obviously cheating.  ;) 

clearing the workbench

It's still been a busy time in the Sith lair,. Lot's to do and getting the kids off to their activities has left me often confused as to where I need to be next!  My daughter( the 10yr old) is still beating me in the run too! It is a respectful time I get for a two mile run, but she is still beating me by almost a full min. She completed the last one in nearly 16 minutes flat! I can outlast her on the longer runs, but I still think that I'm going to be quite tired after these 5k runs we have signed up for( she says 3k are for wussies).

My wife has me clearing out a few rooms for remodeling and I just found out that I am to plant the garden tomorrow...this explains the profusion of flora and seeds that are blocking my garage doors and the back porch. I had my suspicions when I got home from work this morning, but then I was also hoping it was a mild hallucination induced by my long work week and daily exercise regime. Regime as in Insanity is a workout derived from interrogation techniques of the Spanish Inquisition. If you participate in this gross miscarriage of human suffrage, you are a masochist or someone is forcing you to do so(my wife) She says I'll thank her later, but for now I am certain that there is something that I did or said that needs to be apologized for! Perhaps she is trying to cripple me to keep our firmly as front runner in our runs!....they are both girls after all!

I am still trying to get my Napoleonics on the workbench, this means some projects had to get cleared. these are all Reaper minis and most were Christmas gifts or homecoming gifts.

The ginger in the trench coat is my gang leader and behind him is his little sister with a sniper rifle, his ol' lady, and the start of his gang...I'll need to find some more mini's to fit in with them.

 

A back shot of the gang. I still haven't decided on the gang colors yet nor name. this is an excellent way to show the backsides of the ladies though!

 

Doc Dread, or not-Victor Doom. the brazen gun fighter in the front is his number one henchman...but he also has purpose in my Sci-Fi collection!

 

Dr Dread with  Goon#1 and Goon#2

 

Dread's allies the Purple Nurple(my kid's named him), Overload, and The Crusher

 

I truly want to game Sci-fi skirmish like blade runner, 5th element, etc.

I am always on the lookout for scifi civies/ COB's(Civilians on the Battlefield)

I still need more for objectives, victory points, and LOS blockers

these are a couple of robots with some painted resin crates

 

The anima hero reminds me of sucker punch, the scifi ganger fat clark will work well as hero ,thug, or even 40k gaming, lastly Dr Dreads gun slinging henchman will also fill some function in future games.

 

another shot of the work

 

some spec op boys for zombies/spies/ even my scifi skirmish

 

the not Ving was wishlisted for zombie games, so far he hasn't been used in that capacity. He has fought dr Dreads minions, and been in shootouts with cowboys and bikers.

He is joined by The Shadow and The Spirit.

I haven't used the last two at all yet. They may be superhero backup for my kid's heroes as they try to thwart Dr Dread. They may also end up as heroes in Howard Whitehouse's Mad Dogs with Guns prohibition gangster skirmish.

I haven't gotten those rules yet nor the many Wargames Foundry mobsters and Safari adventures and natives. Hopefully I may get those by Christmas as like any good wargamer I keep my list updated and in easy access for family....Especially since my wife has verboten any attempts to buy/acquire  or otherwise increase the mountain of neglect this year!

I have some ork ships to post, but I'll save them for next week in case I make no progress on my Napoleonics. If I can keep a post in reserve, perhaps I'll be further inspired to keep the hobbyside moving.

My kid's each have three heroes they painted( 12 goody-two-shoes) but they do not want me to share them. I am proud of them(kid's and minis) so I will try to sneak a few pictures of one of the games soon too!

 wargaminggirl.

if this works I have been successful in showing the few lurkers where to go to try for some neat free swag. I have lurked on Tamsin's site for a while and she is a great painter and fellow hobbyist.

I'm not as slick as most with the computers, so apologies for the unsophisticated link.

I'm much better dragging my knuckles, shooting, and sneaking through the woods....It used to be running to, but you know... 10 yr old girls are tough opponents!