A Right Bloody Mess on the water

As always my gaming focus swings wildly.

With the release of Matthew Clarkson's magnificent tome A Right Bloody Mess in 2017 and more recently Mana Press's Maximilian 1934 rules and the wonderful supporting ranges from Eureka Miniatures (OK plugs over now!) my mind has turned to 'what if?' conflicts in the parched plains of this great, big brown land of ours.

I have been experimenting with Eureka Miniatures 'The Cars that ate Murrumbeena' range and there will be posts to follow on that. Today is just a little taster of the riverine consequences of this civil disturbance in Australia in the 1930s. Currently a work in progress.

My mind has been turning to monolithic dredges from the gold mining era being hauled across dry landscapes by traction engines to fight battles in the ephemeral, mineral leaden lakes of the interior - my take on American Civil War Cotttonclads - but I need to start a little smaller than that!

USS Morning Light - an American Civil War Cottonclad

Today I give you a peek of my first addition to the riverine fleet for ARBM - the converted wool barge Willandra.

The Murray Barge Dart

The Willandra is based on a real barge of the late 1800s (but no accurate dimensions could be found - so I faked it). She was built in 1879 and plied the Murray-Darling rivers as a barge for the Paddle Steamer Alert. These barges and the whole riverine transport system slowly declined with the spread of the road and rail network and many boats fell into disrepair. Now, I diverge from history.

With the outbreak of hostilities in the 1930s (see Matthew's ARBM) the road and rail network was again compromised by the warring factions. The massive (although ephemeral and unreliable) Riverine transport network of the Murray-Darling Basin flourished again. Old barges (once towed by Paddle Steamers) were retrofitted with diesel engines and pressed into service - valued for their shallow draft in these rivers full of sandbanks and snags.

Here we see the owner of sheep station at Minindee along the Darling River in NSW on a run down to the market in Mildura to sell some of her high grade Merino wool - in great demand again for uniforms as the various militia kit up across the region!

But, soon enough, as resources become scarce due to the break down of trade across this huge continent, the trip to market becomes fraught with danger from attacks by land-based militia and even the occasional attack from small watercraft. Only last month an aged paddle steamer was sunk in the Murray River by spar torpedo boats from a timber-cutter gang turned feral in Barmah! The militia need uniforms so the wool must get through to the markets. Thus, the first 'woolclad' gunboat on the darling River is born - the Willandra! More to follow...

The Hotchkiss Gun, Nordenfelt and Wool Bales are all from Eureka Miniatures, The Willandra is scratch-built of cork, MDF and plastic card. The other figures at from Bob Murch - Pulp Figures

Update:

The 'woolclad' Willandra is complete and ready to start plying her trade up and down the Darling shipping wool to the market in Mildura. Mimosa Herridge, the matriarch of Menindee Station is accompanying her shipment of the finest Merino wool down river.

Stopping to pick up a shipment from the neighboring property, Herridge is surprised to find a newsreel crew waiting for their arrival. The NSW Government's recently formed Ministry of Information wants to calm the jittery investors in Sydney by reinforcing that the State's rurl industries were still thriving despite the recent conflict.

 The arrival of Herridge is a godsend for Ken G Hall the Movietone crew Director, Ken G Hall, but the Ministry's 'advisor' Major GPW Meredith (yes, the infamous commander of the failed Emu War!) quickly advises the crew to crop the armaments on the Willandra out of the shot as it doesn't send the right message!

Mayan Temple for Pulp adventures - complete!

It's amazing the motivation posting work in progress pictures on forums give me when completing projects. A few days after deciding to make a Mayan-style temple for Pulp Alley adventures to come, I have managed to completed it (although some final painting will be completed/details will be added in time).

I'm quite pleased with the result and am grateful for the useful advice I've received on TMP and Pulp Alley Forums.
The painting was largely inspired by this thread on painting stonework on TMP.
Details to come include:

• crafting a sacrificial alter to sit on the summit of the temple
• some more shading on the stairs
• a little dry brushing to knock back the colours used to highlight different tones among the stones
• possibly one final wash to help define the shadows a little more
• adding some moss/lichen to increase the 'lost ruin in the jungle' look

The next project is some trees for the jungle setting.

Mayan temple pt 2

After some great advice on  TMP and Pulp Alley forum about possible approaches to texturing the
surface of the Mayan-style temple, I have settled on building up a clockwork texture using thin card 'stone slabs' glued on and then covered with tissue paper brushed in diluted PVA glue.

I think some of my efforts to lay the tissue paper over the 'slabs' of cardboard are a little sub standard, but in general I'm liking the texture. Of course, the immediate benefits of this approach is that it is cheap and I can get moving on it strait away.

The question will be whether to undercoat and dry-brush, or to use some sort of texture over the tissue paper. The advantage of another layer is it will make the surface more durable, but I may end up losing some of the effect I've created.

Another pice of advice I received was to seal/reinforce the edges of the corrugated cardboard with thin strips of card glued on. It's a little too late for the edges of the bottom two levels, but I will try this on the steps and possibly the upper level.

Some other products mentioned by fellow wargamers that I will be looking at for future projects such as this will be:

• Mod Podge
• Durham's Water Putty
• Miniwax Wood Hardner
• Fleck stone

Scratch built Mayan temple - of sorts!

My pulp adventures need more locations - I fancy a steamy jungle ruin.

The aim here is to produce a cheap, useful bit of terrain without it spending months on the craft table like all my other projects do.

I am loosely basing this (very loosely) on the Tikal Temple II in Northern Guatemala.

Ok, I confess I was originally planning on the standard Mayan temple with the staircase on each face but I could see the job bogging down if I had to make four staircases! So a quick web search found the temple at Tikal, and Bob's your uncle!

So, the basic structure (sans stairs) has been constructed our of heavy corrugated cardboard. I'm pondering how to manage the summit shrine - partly because I've not allowed enough space - but in the mean time am wanting to get the main exterior finish sorted.

Here's how it looks at the moment:

28mm miniature to give a sense of scale.

I've contemplated covering it with tissue paper soaked in PVA glue to give it a uniform, rough finish, then dry brush and add a bit of vegetation. However, it would be good to get a bit of a stonework feel to the surface. The question is how?

The role of this bit of terrain is just to be a serviceable bit of pulp terrain - so it does not need a refined finish. The other criteria, is to continue with the 'no cost' strategy!

I'll post more pictures as it progresses.

Pulp Alley character cards

'We are nostalgic for the old and the analog'

Despite the many and various joys of the digital age for this aged researcher, one cannot help but feel nostalgic for the intensely tactile experience of searching the card file catalogue in a library. The feel, the smell, the frustration of the missing card!

As my first Pulp Alley leagues are nearly off the painting table, my mind has turned to charter cards and league rosters! While searching for images that could be used for the card, I happened across this groovy Catalogue Card Generator created by John Blyberg.

With very little effort, some 'atmospheric' charter cards can be pieced together (the photo is added later by me). These are two of the League Leaders for my upcoming Pulp Alley adventure – 'On to Port Said!'

The polar night approaches at Gruhuken

Not content with on Pulp project on the go, I've started work on the buildings for a Arctic adventure based loosely on the book Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. As the clouds of war are gathering over Europe, a small British expedition leaves for a small island in the Arctic Circle to establish a weather station to map sub-polar weather systems. Ahead, their first experience of overwintering and the months of darkness of the Polar night. Paver writes a jolly good ghost story, the pulp adventure to come will explore in other directions… the harsh polar environment, polar bears, rogue trappers and U-boats, perhaps?

The building is a balsa construction with a corrugated card roof and polystyrene 'skin' to provide the texture of the timber planking. The minis are Bob Murch's excellent Courageous Mountaineers!

Middle Eastern village in cork

In the words of 6mmPhil at LAF:

I swear this is some form of hypnotic control developed by Matakishi, however to what ends I couldn't say, but there's many gamers who've disappeared under piles of cork buildings never to be seen again. It starts with just a couple of small buildings, works it's way up to a town scape and then before you know it you've bought enough cork tiles to cover a football pitch and your home is packed with buildings of every type and there's not enough room to move.  

The only cure, partial as it is, means encouraging other folk to start modelling with cork too, so welcome to the sinister cult club.

Oh yes, I can attest to the  appeal of creating cork buildings - I've spent every 'spare' moment (for me, they are rare) thinking or doing something related to my current cork building project and have more than once, started planning for other projects to follow!

The current project is a Middle Eastern village which will see use in my Pulp Alley adventures to come. During the project, I have realised the range of uses (other than the multitude of Pulp opportunities) that they may have: colonial; modern skirmishes – giving me a great excuse to purchase some Eureka Miniatures 'modern range including the excellent Afghans and Somalis; and, possible Sci-Fi uses.

The basic shells of the buildings appeared quite quickly. The great challenges have been learning how to add sufficient detail to make them interesting and to paint them appropriately. I went down the path of using paint only rather than using a textured finish under the paint. 

Learning on the job has lead to too many coats of paint going on. :( They started a red earth colour, then morphed to a rich, sandy yellow, then to antique white (was looking better by now but lacking depth), then a raw umber wash (to pick up the texture again) and finally with a dry brush of antique white with a hint of Vallejo dark sand.

In future, I'll just paint with antique white, wash with raw umber then highlight with the antique white tinted with some dark sand. It seems to work OK.

I experimented with a bit of faded colour on the two story building (in the style used by Matakishi) and a small domed building (trying to capture a faded orange-red paint job). I think with some follow-up to mute the colour a little more the two story building it will be OK. I'm not happy with the orange-red dry brush on the central building - it's likely to go back to the standard white at some stage.

Anyway, some pictures (not the best, sorry, only had my phone on hand):

The village has a main administration building in the foreground, its Mosque in the rear right, and the market in the centre and top left. Of course, the whole thing is modular so can take many shapes.

The compound for the main administration building. I will eventually create a wall section with double gates to close it off completely giving it the opportunity of being used as a stylised Afghan compound as detailed by Matakishi

I'm planning on using the red washed building as your typical Den of Iniquity where all sorts of favours and troubles can be found! As I mention above, I'm thinking of going back to the white wash look.

The main market area will soon have many canopies on the buildings and some central under cover stalls as well.

I've recently stumbled across this British Pathé film of life in an Egyptian village (1940-49) which will be used for further inspiration. The first stand out feature is the amount of palms and plans in the village - have a look! 

Another challenge I have to overcome is whether I base the buildings (which would assist with fixing the canopies to the market buildings), or whether to leave them as they are and devise a way to make the canopies self supporting (eg. diagonal struts to the side of the building). One problem with moving to bases is it makes the use of the modular wall sections a little more difficult as they will need to sit up on the base and this will leave a gap underneath between building bases.

I'll post again when I've make the next step.

Any comments and ideas most welcome!

Wilhelm, the unknown Krupp.

I hope you enjoy my first hesitant steps into the world of VSF and Pulp!

The Great Panic of 1873 saw Alfred Krupp spread his financial interests beyond the family's steelworks into Spanish mines and Dutch Shipping. While on business in Rotterdam, Krupp's little-known half brother, Wilhelm Krupp, saw an opportunity to combine the family's passion for armaments with the growing interest in clockwork automation among the Clockmaker's Guild in Rotterdam.

Wilhelm had spent time in the Far East and had seen first hand the devastating effect of Richard Gatling's monstrous machine during the Boshin War in Japan. He returned to Europe in time to serve as a staff officer in the war of 1870, and through his connections in the Prussian high command had heard talk of the potential of weapons such as the French Mitrailleuse volley gun (used rather ineffectually in 1870) on dense infantry formations. Krupp spent many a long night pondering the potential of a mobile, rapid fire weapon on the serried ranks for the Poilu when the opportunity came for a return to hostilities.

For years, Wilhelm slaved in his secret workshop in a rat infested corner of Rotterdam perfecting an armoured suit that could deliver the devastating fire of the Gatling where and when it was needed on the battlefield. The need for secrecy was paramount. British spies were everywhere in the Netherlands, so Wilhelm rarely ventured out. His Oriental mistress and his two Bavarian clockmakers, Ernst and Heinrich, were his only companions. Nevertheless, his plans crystallised and slowly, a new machine of war was born.

It was on a grey July morning in 1882, in a secluded polder, that Wilhelm unveiled his ultimate prototype of his Kreighosen to a distinguished visitor – none other than Prince Leopold of Bavaria! The Prince had served alongside Wilhelm in 1870 and had heard of his top secret work. Wilhelm had acquiesced to the Prince's insistence, that he be the one to give the suit it's first field trial. So, after several false starts – the Dutch mud playing hell with the exposed mechanism – the Prince navigated the sodden fields with ease and, despite Wilhelm's protests, insisted in firing a burst of the terrible Gatling Gun.

Sorry, ghastly photo!

After a gruelling trip back to the workshop under the cover of darkness, Wilhelm and the Prince toasted their success and made plans for more extensive tests of the Kreighosen, hopefully under battle conditions. The news of the following day, that the British Imperialists had bombarded Alexandria, provided the ideal opportunity. The Prince had a connection in the Suez Canal Company in Port Said who arranged a bogus invitation for the party to inspect the canal. While the Prince called in favours in diplomatic circles, Wilhelm busied himself with packing his monstrosity in grease and arranging for its transport on a Krupp family ship. "On to Port Said", he mused, as he departed on the Krupp family steamer a week later.

Little did Wilhelm know, that as they steamed out of Rotterdam a mysterious crate was being hoisted from the hold of a British steamer in Alexandria. Wilhelm would soon discover that the British spy network in the Netherlands were not as incompetent as he had believed.

Eureka Skeletal pirates

Much as these undead denizens of Davy Jones' Locker are the result of powerful enchantments, so have I been taken under the spell of a new (non-historical) genera!

In a project that began years ago with my daughter (then 6, now 9 and dead keen on gaming, bless her!) wanting to paint some Eureka Teddy Bear Pirates, I have, at last, found some renewed passion for miniatures and gaming (sorely lacking in the past 6 months).

I came away from an all-too-long overdue visit with the kiddies to Eureka Miniatures on the weekend, with some new projects - the first to hit the painting table are Eureka's Skeletal Pirates in 28mm. I've not tried anything like this before and while I feel like my 28mm painting skills have a long way to go (having been focussing on 6mm lately), I'm really happy with the results. 

A model brig is on the workbench in the shed and will soon take to the seas to host the first encounter between skeletons and teddy bears! Despite their appearance, I'm not underestimating the courage of these furry bed companions when it comes to a good bit of biffo using Eureka's Fifteen Men rules.

Alas, these photos are only with the old iPhone, so not very clear, but give you an impression. More to follow.