Octopus Overlords

Blackhawk wrote:Those are great. I could tell they were a kit, but they look fantastic, and the kit process has to be simpler than scratch building. I can't afford all the buildings (and have no room to keep them), but I may put some crates on my wish list.

/edit - and ooh,they have wagons! How is their shipping to Americaland?

Pretty steep. I usually end up bulk ordering stuff and wait until I get $100 in stuff to order and get free shipping.

If you want, the next building they release let me know and I can throw a wagon or two in my shopping cart for you and then send it to you from here. Be a hell of a lot cheaper that way.

I was afraid of that. Thanks for the offer - it will all depend on when it happens, as I may have a little free money one month, then nothing the next.

I don't have enough room to store a terrain collection, but 'generic' small pieces, like fences, wagons, and crates come up in so many games and take so little space that they're worth grabbing.

I'll just reach out the next time I place an order. If it happens, it happens.

There are also some US based online retailers that carry 4Ground. Age of Glory. Brigade Games. Noble Knight, to name a few.

Now open in Zenda....Corbett's General Store!

There was great rejoicing in the town of Zenda today, as construction started on the long-awaited saloon (to be named later.)



(First floor was about 90% finished in about 2 hours. Still needs doors and windows.)

In the zillion Kickstarter emails I get somehow this notice stood out and I immediately thought of you. Do you need any Orc Cowboy miniatures?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/21 ... nav_search

Saw those. I'm going more strictly "Hollywood" historical, so I'll pass on them. Might make a good complement for Flintloque though.

I'm going to run some DMH at Gamehole Con in Madision in early November. I need a catchy name for the game. It's going to be the generic 6 man shootout that I ran at OctoCon last year. So just using "Prisoner of Zenda" is out because, well, no prisoner. Need this pretty quickly, I need to get my registration in this weekend. Any thoughts?

If you mean last weekend, well, sorry.

Last stand (at|in) Zenda
Shootout (at|in) Zenda
The Mayor Of Zenda
Zenda is a No-Horse Town
<Antagonists> Come To Zenda

You're the enthusiast!

So what name did you go with, hentzau? Don't make us wait until Octocon.

Treasure of the Sierra Zenda
4:10 to Zenda
A Fistful of Zenda
Blazing Zenda

A shot of Zenda completely laid out.



(Edit: Had to bigimg it, tapatalk was cutting of a chunk. Click on it to see the whole layout.)

You're gonna need some saloon girls http://www.dixon-minis.com/shop/old-west-25mm/

So, I'm really bummed. I've been waiting for 4Ground to release a train depot for their western line. Been waiting for over a year now, actually. Ever since they started this project, I've been wanting a train station.

Well, they finally released it. And I don't like it.







I'm sorry, but it just doesn't LOOK like my image of a wild west town train station! It's too big, I don't like the flat roof, it looks more like a town hall than a train station.

Guess Zenda will just have to have their train station under perpetual construction.

Two new buildings for Zenda...

Nice.

I hope you'll someday give us a grand illustrated AAR of games played in the town!

When I play another game, I certainly will.

It is looking great. This is the kind of project I'd be all over if I had a spare warehouse to keep it all in!

Packed up it's fairly compact. I have one large tub with the buildings in it, a copy paper box with miscellaneous terrain stuff, a couple of minis cases, another smallish box for the trains, and the mat.

My building tub is currently completely filed up though. Those two new buildings will not fit. So I guess it's time to expand.

Got some furniture and miscellaney finished last night.

I just realized I haven't really talked about my train. About spring of last year, I was actively on the prowl for a good train for Zenda. It's hard to find a good train model for 28mm scaled minis. HO is too small, O is just too big. But there's a not-too-common scale of train called On30, which is basically O scale trains scaled down to run on HO (or narrow gauge) track. The big drawback is that it is a) only produced by one manufacturer, b) to my knowledge, they aren't even producing it any longer, and c) it's hella expensive. So I have several different searches that I run on Ebay to help me look for On30 trains that I might want to bid on. Finally back in July I got in on one that I got for a pretty decent price:



Looks pretty nice, right? About the right size for the table without being huge or tiny, and it was like $45. It's a little too modern, though...it's about 60 years too late for the time period...but on the table it makes a nice piece. Through the summer I picked up a couple of passenger cars, and a box car and a caboose. I was pretty happy.



But then, this past weekend, a Bachmann Spectrum Baldwin 4-4-0 showed up. Oh my...



The Baldwin 4-4-0 started service in the mid 1800's and served well into the early 1900's. Exactly what I needed.

Well, need is a strong word. Want. Exactly what I wanted. And the heart wants what the heart wants. So I placed a bid and let fate decide. And it did, I got it at my maximum bid.

I think I have a problem.

(Anyone need a slightly used On30 2-6-0 engine? I'll make you a good deal on it.)

Heard tonight on Downton Abbey - Tom (Allen Leech) to Mary (Michelle Dockery):

"You are not a princess in the Prisoner of Zenda!"

baelthazar wrote:Heard tonight on Downton Abbey - Tom (Allen Leech) to Mary (Michelle Dockery):

"You are not a princess in the Prisoner of Zenda!"

My wife texted me at rehearsal all excited that they referenced Zenda on the show.

It's now going to make a comeback! Mark my words!

Water tower finished. It was a really fiddly kit. And I'm not thrilled with the tower part...I may scratch build one.

A few pictures of Zenda laid out...

Hentzau- I love your pictures and updates of Zenda. I really enjoy reading about it and seeing the pictures.

Thanks, Chrisoc13! Despite the horrible dice rolling, it was a lot of fun. It was the first time I had the giant saloon out (she's about 90% finished, I have to get the windows in her and some trim pieces), and I think it looks pretty good on the table, I was a little concerned that it would be too overpowering since it is so much bigger then the other buildings. But that building saw a heck of a lot of use in the game. Folks seem to gravitate towards it.

It's looking great! The roads and train track really take things to another level.

I can't wait to see Zenda set up at Octocon.

Zarathud wrote:It's looking great! The roads and train track really take things to another level.

I can't wait to see Zenda set up at Octocon.

Thanks! Tommy did the rail bed...he found some threshold trim that comes in 3' lengths that was perfect to lay the track on, he just sprayed some grey texture paint on it and then dirtied up the track a bit.

The roads are just cork shelf liner. Came across it on a store and thought it would work well for roads. It curls up a bit at the ends, but it does look pretty nice.

The mat is from Deep Cut Studios. It was pricey, but it looks great and they got it to me within a week of ordering.

This thread makes me think of watching Mr. Rodgers way back when. I used to love the kingdom buildings, puppets, and the trolley. Even more props since in brings one of my favorite novel into the mix, and how could I have missed that line on Downton Abbey? You really need a character that uses a saloon table as a shield. Maybe you can place an abducted yankee president in the water tower? hehe

I've been starting up a new Deadlands campaign (the other one got called on cancer), and have been rereading this thread. I still love your whole setup. One question - where did you get your horses? I've been looking for some, but don't really want to pay full miniature prices for them.

I'm guessing, by the way, that the answer will either be "a company that went out of business in 1954" or "special ordered from a company in rural England that makes them out of reconstituted unicorns."

Blackhawk wrote:I've been starting up a new Deadlands campaign (the other one got called on cancer), and have been rereading this thread. I still love your whole setup. One question - where did you get your horses? I've been looking for some, but don't really want to pay full miniature prices for them.

I'm guessing, by the way, that the answer will either be "a company that went out of business in 1954" or "special ordered from a company in rural England that makes them out of reconstituted unicorns."

Well, the company is still in business. It's Ertl. For a while they made this farm toy set called "Farm Country" and they had a subset called "Cow Town". It was a plastic playset with these 1/64 scale buildings and figures. So all of my horses and cattle come from several sets of it that I bought about 20 years ago. If you go out onto Ebay and search for Ertl Farm Country Horses you'll see quite a few people selling them.

Thanks!

I do have a few. I have a couple of Imex sets, one of Union and Confederate soldiers, plus one of Sioux Warriors, which includes a few horses. They're 1/72, which makes them noticeably small, but the alternative is using assorted orcs and elves in-game.

Eventually I'll replace them, but the upside is that I got ~30 Native American miniatures for ~$10, and I can have the whole set painted in an afternoon. Same thing with the soldiers, and the Union soldiers will make good stand-ins for 1870s era US Army troops.

I've been speed painting civilians for Zenda over the past few days. Trying to make
Zenda look less like a ghost town before OctoCon. Here's a couple, I have 3 more ready for washing tonight. I'm trying to do at least 2 a night up to next Thursday.

Have you read up on speed painting techniques? I've only done a little, but conventional wisdom is that it is fastest to do them 'assembly line' style. Do a dozen or so. Paint all the flesh, then paint all the brown, then all the tan, and so on. Consolidate colors - take a tan, use it for pants on two, the jacket on one, the shirt on three, and the boots on two, then go to the next color. Once you get to the last pass, do something to make them unique, then finish all 12 at once.

It isn't much fun, but it is fast, since it takes out much of the downtime you spend with your brush not in paint.

Yeah, it's still monotonous, but it absolutely speeds things up. I've used this method quite a few times. Would recommend.

Very familiar with that method, I've found it works great when painting up armies but for a bunch of individual figures I have to kind of stare at the figure and figure out colors for it. But stuff like flesh, absolutely I'm going to do that. I have about a dozen figures based cleaned and primed and tonight I'm going to have only about an hour, hour and a half to paint, so I'm going to do all of the flesh on them.

That's where the color consolidation comes in. Instead of looking at a figure and thinking, "What color would his shirt be?", you look at the puddle of Tan Earth and think, "What on him could be Tan Earth?", then move on to the next figure, choosing a different part. Sometimes you'll realize that nothing on one should be Tan Earth and just skip that figure for that color. If you do three or four brown tones, a gray, a blue, and a cream (or whatever combination of colors), you'll find that they all end up looking completely different. Then you get to the final 'uniqueness' pass, where you find something on each to set them apart - a bright red bandana, a yellow shirt, something that no other figure has.

It's tough for me to do, as I like to pick out each detail to create just the right personality for each figure, and doing them this way creates a kind of cognitive dissonance in me, but it really does help when you've got a bunch of minor figures you need finished.

So I worked last night with the "OK, I have blue on my pallet, who needs blue" technique. It's going fairly well so far, but because I'm shying away from the "outside-in" painting technique, I can tell I'm going to need a lot of touchup.

The problem with painting western figs is the fairly limited pallet of colors that you use. Lots of browns, tans, blues and blacks. It's hard to keep everyone from looking the same. I wish I was a good enough painter to attempt a plaid or something.

The trick is to have enough distinctly different shades to work with, and to mix up where things land. Boots, hats, pants, shirts, vests. Five parts. Three browns, two tans, a blue, a gray, black, and a white, for instance, will let you do nine figures' pants without repeating once.

Mix it up. If figure A gets brown 1 for the pants, and figure B gets tan 2, then do figure A's shirt in tan 2 and don't use brown 1 on figure B (or just use it for his boots.)

Tans, browns, and grays (wool) were most common, but clothing, especially for the middle class and up, was still often colorful. Red, blue, green, and white were popular (white for the well-to-do, unbleached muslin for the working class - more of a cream.) Red, green, and blue calico (the cloth, not the pattern) wasn't uncommon in the lower classes, either. It was usually a duller tone than the wealthy's - perhaps a bit of brown or gray into the base color to dull it. Blue denim for pants was extremely popular among workmen in the late 19th, so feel free to use blue jeans. You don't want a rainbow, but don't be afraid to skip some jackets, vests, or shirts to add some color in the late 'uniqueness' pass where you paint each one with something special to make them stand out.

Make sure that similar looking sculpts get painted differently - if you have to repeat one of the tans, do it on two dissimilar looking figures, not on two that look the same (for instance the two guys in tophats holding bottles in your photo are very similar.)

As an aside, I've never heard of the 'outside-in' technique. Most people do the opposite - they start with the skin, then 'get dressed' from the inner layers out.