…and time to stop listening to the Sealion book and sort out the to-do list for hobby stuff 😀

Looks like I actually get a Wednesday evening free tomorrow (since I’m resigned to being unable to get enough cats herded to reschedule a committee meeting in time), so I aim to make a large dent in the Compendium. Have already had useful feedback from Derek Hodge on the rules clarifications section, so applied the minimal updates he suggested tonight. Also added another printable record sheet to the available ones at the back of the Compendium, since it was in my mind and I had the file open. (Cue much grumbling about Pages’ table tool, which is… let’s just say not the best.)

Trouble T’Mill

In my week of musing on unit types in Tilly’s Very Bad Day, I thought I’d outline what light horse represent and contrast them to (heavy) horse in the Thirty Years War. I also consider some ways to modify the rules to make light horse more valuable/useful/effective.

30YW-797 – Catholic – Croat

These are the posts in the mini-series on making certain unit types more effective:

(Commanded) Shot Light horse Dragoons What light horse simulates in Tilly’s Very Bad Day

Tilly’s Very Bad Day defines the unit type:

Light horse focus on skirmishing with pistol while

Continue reading »

Steve Balagan

Just received Phantom Leader, the Vietnam Air War Solitaire Strategy game. I had my eye on it for a few years now and I spotted a copy on Marktplaats 6-8 month ago… but that seller insisted on at least 50 euros for some reason. I saved the search, this week another one popped up and my bid of 15 euros was accepted.

Gone over the contents, it is practically mint, complete, just need to look in the second hand stores for a suitable small box to hold all of the counters and something to keep the cards in one place as well.

Well chuffed.

Gunbird

For my Mythos Wars project, a few Elder Things were of course essential. Failing to find miniatures I was pleased with, I rashly decided to sculpt them myself. Starting with a description from “At the mountains of Madness”: 

Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering to one foot at each end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths – combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. . . which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in [the]

and some illustrations: 

I decided to make the bodies from FIMO clay, as this can be baked and would be hard enough to attach the rest of the parts to.

The next part was the undercarriage, made up of greenstuff and shaped into 5 tentacles ending in a triangular footpad. 28mm figure for size.

Then the bodies were glued to the tentacle bases and I sculpted the 5-point star-shaped heads from green stuff, adding these to the body. 

The arms were a challenge, being described as tentacles ending in thin tendrils. I made them from unbraided electrical wire and greenstuff.

 I kinda cheated with the wings, using some parts clipped from old MageKnight miniatures. Not quite satisfied with them, but the greenstuff needed to harden before I could continue. So I quit for the day.

Pijlie’s Blog