Santa Clause Update

I have what I believe is the final list of folks who are participating this year. There are thirteen folks signed up so far. I may have some room for last minute entries if anyone is still interested.

Cub Scouting

Its that wonderful time of year when many stores have booths of cute little blue uniformed Cub Scouts selling Trails End popcorn. My son is now one of those. If you have any interest in some really good popcorn and helping my son out, please hop over to his page and take a look. Sorry for the interuption in normal service. I will try not to do this often.

Popcorn Sales Page

Train Station

I started work on the train station today. After putting a base coat of paint on, I realized my mistake. I had not filled in the gaps in my not so great gluing job. I am trying to think what else I need to do to finish out the building.

Any thoughts?

More Progress

I managed to finish gluing the walkway together without gluing my fingers to it. I also mounted the passenger platforms to some wood. Unfortunately, I don't have the height that I wanted on the platforms. I may go back later and cut these out and add a second layer. But I am too lazy to do that right now. I need to paint the walkway. Possibly add more writing on it as well. I am still debating on permanently mounting the walkway to the passenger platforms. Any opinions on that? I am thinking of leaving it separate for ease of storage. I need to make one more similar board and I have what I need for my scenario.

It's not much, but it was significant in that I managed it with the shaking in my hands. Hopefully, that will stop soon when I can tune back the UC meds. I have started work on the rail station/govt building. Hopefully, I will get some paint on it today.

Warehouse Completed

I finished off a warehouse building today. Managed to get it painted. It was an ebay purchase that was a little fiddly to put together but I really like it.

The paint job does not do justice to the building. It will make a great addition to my eventual Kharkov table.

Reinforcements and Ramblings

Recently, I have had a couple of friends who recently lost a parent. I was thinking of my own father as I checked the mail. As I fetched the mail I saw that my recent expedition of retail therapy had arrived. As I looked at the return address it reminded me of my Dad. He used to tell this old joke based on an old song.

"One day, Roy Rogers rode into town to pick up some new boots that Dale Evans had purchased for him. He picked up the new red boots and rode back to the ranch. On the way to the ranch, he was attacked by a wildcat that tore the new boots to shreds. Taking out his pistol, Roy killed the wildcat and put it on the back of his horse Trigger with the now ruined boots. At he reached the ranch, Dale Evans came out and immediately burst into song, 'Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?'"

Dad loved jokes like that. It's been long enough now that these memories are treasured and sweet rather than painful. This was all driven by the return address of my Rebel Minis was listed at Chattanooga. Thus this long ramble.

Anyway, I picked up a few packs of Rebel minis Roman Auxillia. They look great. They come with separate shields. Some are standing while others are attacking. There were Four total poses. In the first pack, there were 17 of the attacking pose and one each of the other poses. The second pack had better variety. Nine of the standing pose, two with sword raised but still heavily weighted to the attacking pose. This should provide me with plenty of miniatures to round out my Roman force for the time being. I also picked up a mounted officer to go with them.

The second package was three Game Craft card buildings.

Santa Clause 2016

The Santa Clause 2015

Since Ian has kicked off the Secret Santa already, it is time to get rolling with the Santa Clause. If you were with us last year, you know how this works. If not, here are our ground rules:

Rule number 1:
To enter you need to either have a blog or be a regular follower of this blog (or Ian's) already. This is to give confidence to all involved that everyone will follow through to the end. If you have a blog and don't follow this one it's OK to join in. (I would still appreciate it if you did follow)

Rule number 2:
The idea is that each person involved buys a figure or figures to the value of less than £5 and paints them up to fit in with what the target blogger wargames or collects. Best would be some kind of command for the bigger scales but maybe a unit or two of such as 6mm or a building or... you get the idea.

Rule number 3:
Please try to send out your items so that they will arrive by December 20th in plenty of time for the big day. I will send out who you have on September 30th.

Rule number 4:
Please post on your blog about your participation. The more we can get on board, the more fun for all of us.

Rule number 5:
This is not intended to be a cheap alternative to Ian's Secret SantaTM. Instead it is a great opportunity to send and receive something that will be special BECAUSE it's a one off from a fellow blogger. Not that you have to limit yourself to something useful, feel free to paint up something that will just sit aside the painting desk or study etc and just give pleasure.

Rule number 6:
When you mail your package to your target, lets add "SC" into their name so that they know they received their Santa Clause gift and not just something else that they happened to have ordered and promptly forgotten about. For example, the name should be listed as "Bob SC Hope". This will give us the opportunity to place it under the tree with the care that it deserves.

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So that's the idea, it is another great way to connect with your blogging friends and get something really exciting at Christmas. I hope that this year will be as great a success as last year. Ian's wife did a fantastic job with it and from what I can see, everyone had a great time. If you are interested, please leave a comment here with your blog address. We need to be able to look and see what you are interested in. Then shoot me an e-mail to chrisstoesen at gmail.com. I need to know where you are located as well so I will need a mailing address to send to your Santa Clause recipient. I will cut off the registrations on September 30th.

That's it folks, lets get this going! I hope to see all of last year's participants back involved. It was a great time.

Infinity Figure

I found myself in possession of a single Infinity figure still in its packaging. It is a "Senor Massacre" figure. If anyone is interested in this figure, please let me know. I will be happy to send it to you for the price of shipping.

Thanks

Roleplaying - RPOL

I had played around with attempting to use RPOL to play an online, play by post version of some table top games. Honestly, I never got it to work right. RPOL is a great tool but it is far more suited to traditional role playing games.

A while ago, I started a game out there to test out some ideas for a Roman version of Dux Brit. I ended up converting it to an AD&D 3.5 game. Its actually survived quite a while and I have a couple of dedicated players who are pushing on.

The story is set on the Roman Limes wall in Germania Superior. The players are Auxilia troops stationed at the fort at Saalburg. The players have been dispatched as an esploratori unit to investigate some strange happenings north of the wall. A barbarian migration had begun and is forcing the local tribes out of their homes and across the wall.

Since it is AD&D, it departs from history at this point but it has been fun. If you are interested, stop by and take a look. RPOL.net