Strange Aeons Cultists

I've been working on some scratch-built cultists for the Strange Aeons Cthulhu mythos skirmish game.

Here's the whole gang.

3 melee cultists with 1 cultist with a rifle

1 melee cultist, the cult leader (opposite colored hood & robe with a pistol), 1 cultist rifle, & 1 with a Thompson SMG

These are made from GW Skaven Plague Monks with putty hoods & their tail cut off to use as the face tentacles. Now I feel like the Farmer's Wife. I also bought some of the Mantic Games Veer-Myn tails from an online bits shop, so some of the cultists could have more than 1 tentacle. This idea of using Skaven for cultists & cutting of their tails came from Kid Kyoto who posted it on The Miniatures Page a few years ago. My only disappointment in making them is that I used GW's new Earthshade wash for the 1st on them, & it turned out way too dark on in the folds & bottom of the robe. Next up will either be my zombie-cthulhu mash ups, or some very unique figures for use as swarms or vermin.

My Asthonian Journey

I have been an HP Lovecraft fan for a long time. & after a while of reading & hearing about his work, I also started hearing about a contemporary & close friend of his, Clark Ashton Smith. But it wasn't until the excellent Double Shadow podcast started that I got around to reading Smith's stories.

Clark's stories, while some of them share a similar subject matter, are very different from Lovecraft's, & I'd highly recommend checking them out. Some, if not all, of his short stores are available at the Eldritch Dark website. I recently found out that Smith spent most of his life in Auburn, California, about 30 miles from where I live. So I took a trip up there to find the various memorials that have been put up in his honor. & since it took quite a bit of internet research & contacting the Auburn City Council to track them all down, I figured I'd try to provide a guide to them too for anyone else interested in finding them.


My 1st stop was in a small park area, I believe referred to as Centennial Park, in Old Auburn just off the Maple St exit from I-80. It's in the block bounded by Lincoln Way, Sacramento St & Auburn Folsom Rd. There's a public parking lot off Lincoln that's next to the Placer County Law Library. At the far end of the lot, is the small park.

Here is the small park from the end of the parking lot. You can see the side of the boulder & plaque on the right of the picture.

Here is the memorial.

& here is a close up of the plaque. When urban development threatened Smith's burial site, some of friends & fans, & the City of Auburn moved the boulder & some of the dirt around it, to this spot.

If you continue down Lincoln Way to its intesection with High St, you can find another commemoration in Auburn's downtown central Square. The sidewalks around the area have diamond shaped engravings listing Auburn's famous citizens & their accomplishments. Smith's is on the Northwest side of the intersection in front of the Masonic hall.

(The strange perspective of the picture is due to me shooting it standing at the top of the diamond & then turning the picture upside down. Otherwise my shadow would have been in the if I took the picture normally.)


My next stops were to track down the 3 streets that I believe were named after him (at least 1 definately was). These were easily found via online maps.

When I contacted the Auburn City Council, they said there might be a plaque in the parking lot of their local In-N-Out Burger. They didn't say why, but I guessed it might have originally been the site of Smith's cabin. I didn't find a plaque for him there, but did find a plaque commemorating another local resident said he'd own the property. Maybe the other resident was one of the owners before Smith's parents built their cabin.

My final stop was at the Auburn Placer County Library. This plaque was added in 1985. The plaque is in a small courtyard to the right of the library's main entrance. Since it was already night by the time I got to this one, I had to get very close to the plaque for my flash to illuminate it enough to read it. That's why its split into 2 pictures.

The trip was an enjoyable diversion into the life of a very interesting author. All the sites I visited were pretty close together, so it would probably take about an hour to visit them all.

References for Smith's biographical information & memorial locations:
http://alangullette.com/lit/smith/sorcerer.htm
http://www.eldritchdark.com/
Eldritch Dark has better pictures of the plaques in their Gallery section: http://www.eldritchdark.com/galleries/of-cas/all/a/1

Of Wooden Soldiers and Felt Tip Pens

My good friend Tom Foss has been developing a new and innovative line of Wooden Toy Soldiers for eventual retail. To support this, he has been posting pictures of beautifully & lovingly painted examples of his soldiers on his blog, Skull and Crown. While I am in awe of his artistry, I was curious how someone with significantly less skill and artistic knowledge would do with one of them. So Tom was kind enough to send me one of his Officer sprues for me to have my way with.

Since I was kind of putting myself in the position of the Everyman with marginal artistic skill, I limited myself to these art supplies.

My daugther's drawer of felt tip pens.

Being half Swedish myself, I based my Officer’s uniform on those of Sweden’s army during the Napoleonic wars. This meant a predominately blue and yellow uniform.













In the past, I had used Sharpie pens to color other homemade wooden soldiers, but ran into a noticeable problem with the ink bleeding along the wood grain. So I wanted to make try a few tests first. Here are a number of different pen color tests that I made on the sprue frame & the underside of the Officer’s base.

I found that either because of the much tighter grain of the wood that the Officer was made out of, or because of differences in the non-Sharpie ink, I had no problem with the ink bleeding.

I found I needed to use a very golden color for the yellow, otherwise it wouldn’t look much different from the color of the wood. Here is the selection of pens I settled on. The one "cheat" I made was to use a metallic silver Sharpie which was not part of my daughter's pen collection.

After deciding on the pens, I wanted to color a test piece. I picked the Shako for my Officer to wear, so was left with the Bicorn to use as a test. I quickly learned to color in the direction of the lines of the etched wood. The edges and corners of the etching are very rigid, so they can quickly tear up the soft felt tips of the pens. Here is my first try at coloring inside the lines.

Being very pleased with how it came out, I went to town on the rest of the Officer. Here are the unassembled pieces before I started (I initially forgot to take a "before" picture). I realized I should color all the pieces first before gluing them together. If I didn’t, then it would be tough to get the fat-tipped pens into the creases where the 2 layers of wood joined together.

And here are the final colored pieces. As you can tell, I got a bit sloppy on the back of the coat. I picked a mostly dried out black pen to do the Shako & boots in order for it to be slightly grey so the etching could still be seen.

And here is the officer finally assembled. I intentionally glued the plume on backwards since the plumes on Sweden’s hats were solid white. The front of the plume has an etched line half way up it to allow for 2 colored plumes (you can see the dividing line on the photo of the back). I also put the plume off to the side of the Shako since they were usually on the side of the hats instead of in the front.


Overall, it took me about 20 minutes to color, not including the test pieces. That did include checking the Swedish uniform references & Tom’s blog a number of times for examples. And I was taking extra time when coloring the small details since I was using such fat-tipped pens.

So, even with a bunch of felt tipped pens, these soldiers can be colored quite nicely. And that’s the beauty of Tom’s idea, his artwork combined with the laser etching means you start with a very nice looking figure before you’ve done anything. And your coloring (or painting) of the solider not only makes it better, but it’s a lot of fun too. And best of all, if you pick the scented felt tip pens, your solidiers can even smell good too.

Empire of the Dead

Empire of the Dead, a new Victorian Steampunk Horror game, was released recently, & tonight was our 1st night of "league" games. It's similar in concept to Mordheim, or any other gang skirmish game. You create a gang, fight other gangs, & your gang gains skills & money to advance itself. The difference with this game is that it's set in 1880 England where both Werewolves & Vampires have come out of the shadows & are now part of society.

Based on figures I already had painted, I decided to run a British Women's Temperance Association gang. (An actual late 19th century English organization.) Here are the ladies preparing to do battle. Of course they were expecting to fight a different kind of evil spirits.

The 1st game was against a gang of hard drinking & hard swearing Americans. The ladies obviously needed to purge them of their evil spirits. Here are a few shots of the women exchanging gunfire with the Yanks. Unfortunately, being from the Wild West, the Americans were able to gun down the Temperance Association with ease.

One of the good things about the rules is the after-game campaign system. Even if you lose a game, you still get a small amount of money to help maintain your gang. & if your opponent is significantly more powerful than you, you also get more money based on the points differential. This hopefully will help reduce the chance of 1 gang continually winning & getting too powerful for everyone else.

In addition to earning money, getting more skills for your figures, and buying more equipment, after a game each wounded figure is also rolled for on an injury chart to see the severity of the wound. There's a 30% chance it was just a flesh wound & the figure will be fine. But a figure could lose an eye, get a leg wound (reduced movement), an arm would (reduced strength), or die. 2 of my wounded ladies got some of the more interesting results after the battle with the Americans.

One was captured by the American gang. The opposing player was nice enough to ransom her back to me if I allowed him to keep her equipment. The other lady was captured by the "Peelers" (police). The figure arrested by the police was the one with the book & giant banner, so the visual of her being hauled off to jail, fighting all the way, seemed to fit very well.

Since she was captured by the police, I had the option play a special scenario against a police gang where I tried to rescue her, which I of course attempted. Here is a picture of her with her jailors in front of the hanging tree. Unfortunately, since the British Women's Temperance Association is made up of women, they had no military experience, so their rescue plan failed spectacularly. The women attempting the rescue got away, but sustained further permanent injuries. Their incarcerated sister stood trial, was convicted, & sentenced to miss 2 games (based on die roll against a table in the book).

We're still learning the game mechanics, but the rules themselve seem reasonable. There was nothing that jumped out at me as glaringly wrong. & with only needing 5-7 figures to start with, it's a great game to get into.

If you want to read more about Empire of the Dead & see some beautiful terrain, here are some other game reports from one of the other players who ran a massive Empire of the Dead game at a recent convention.

Dress Rehersal for the game

Final convention game at Kublacon

Conquest Sacramento 2012

I attended the Conquest Sacramento convention last weekend & had a great time. I got there too late on Friday to play in the 15mm Command & Colors Napoleonic game that I’d wanted to, but I did get some great deals on cows & 6mm ECW (we like to call them WeeCW) at the Friday night flea market.

I was able to play in a medieval Jousting game by Two Hour Wargames. It was simple & quick & I could easily see how you could play a whole tournament with many different jousts in 1 game session since each joust of 3 passes only took about 15 minutes.
The GM did run the game again on Saturday as a full 16 player double-elimination tournament. The board looked beautiful with the 90mm knights, tents and royal spectators.
But in actuality, the game was all dice rolling & we never touched the figures.

Saturday I started off playing Peter Pig’s WW2 skirmish rules Poor Bloody Infantry. It was a light, fun & quick set. We used the Quick Start rules available for free online, but instead of 15mm figures being run on a square grid as the game was designed, we used 28mm figures on a hex grid.

The game was Japanese vs Australians trying to take & hold a bridge. We played this 4-5 times & the system was easy to pick up. Since the only distinction between the forces were the types of weapons they had (as opposed to any national or unit type characteristics), the last few games got very same-y. But I’m sure changing the terrain & forces would have made the subsequent games more interesting.


Next I played Giant Monster Rampage (GMR) by Radioactive Press. It’s a set of rules for fighting Godzilla-like kaiju games. The GM of this game use monsters from the classic Ultraman TV series. I’ve run a different kaiju game in the past, Monster Island by Firefly Games . GMR seemed to have a bit more detail than Monster Island, like the military vehicles protecting the city effecting the monsters, & a having the atomic points that fuel your monster’s powers be variable. But I also don’t have all the Monster Island expansion books, & I think Monster Island does cover military vehicles in one of those books.

Part of determining the winner of the game was based on how many buildings you could destroy. & the GM had the great idea of making the building out of Duplo-like blocks, so when you caused a point of building damage, you just took one of the blocks off the building & kept it until the end of the game to count up. This was a very fun game because the GM & players got into the spirit of the game, & definite didn’t take it seriously. I ran Antler, a giant mutant earwig. Here is my monster saying hello to Uoo, a giant smog monster.

My greatest con moment was when I was able to use my telekinesis to pick up Uoo & throw him into the another monster, causing damage to both of them & the building they were standing next to. & then I used my super-burrow skill to dig all the way under the city & come up in a spot that neither of them could attack me. So they just ended up attacking each other while I was left alone to rack up destroyed building points.


Finally, I played a few games of Formula De, a Formula One racing game. This was very nostalgic for me since I played this a lot in high school during lunches. Actually, my 2 opponents in the Ultraman game also played Formula De so it was a good time.

Throughout the day, my local club, Miniature Wargames of Sacramento, ran a massive 15mm Pirate game. 2 6'x24' tables, over 2000 figures & 20 ships, & 5 GMs. You can find a report on that at Pirates of the Carob Bean Sea. Here is one of the defensive works I built for the project.


Unfortunately, I had leave early on Saturday because my wife was getting sick, so I missed the All Things Zombie game that sounded like it was a wildly fun time.

Sunday I’d ran the skirmish games Song of Blades & Heroes (fantasy) & Song of Drums & Shakos (Napoleonic ) by Ganesha Games http://ganeshagames.net/. See my post here on how that went.

Overall, I was very impressed with the convention. In prior years, the convention seemed to be waning somewhat. Last year's attendance seemed to be down & they actually no longer had a vendors room. But this year, the number of gamers on Friday night seemed to be about the same number as Saturday’s numbers last year. & Saturday this year was packed. & they had an another overflow room because the Pirate game was so big. There were 4 vendors, one of which was demoing new generic skirmish wargame rules. & they had expanded hours on the convention food stand with somewhat reasonable prices & a few more healthy options. So I was glad to see the convnetion was doing well & will be looking forward to it next year.

Ganesha Games Convention Games

At our local gaming convention, Conquest Sacramento, I ran some of Ganesha Games’ skirmish rules, Song of Blades & Heroes (fantasy) & Song of Drums & Shakos (Napoleonic). These rules tend to work best when played 1-on-1. So since I wanted to be able to have up to 6 people play at a time, I set up 3 1-on-1 games to be run in parallel.

There were 4 players that tried the fantasy games out. 3 of them only stayed to play 1 game, but 1 player decided to stay to try all 3. Everything went well, with the players picking up the rules quickly.

Viking Board
The 1st fantasy board was Viking themed. A Rus bandit gang had somehow enlisted the aid of a Giant which allowed them to pillage the countryside almost unhindered. The local Viking Jarl gathered his Hirdmen and Godi (magic user) to kill the Giant & drive off the gang. There were about the same number of Rus as there were Hirdmen, but the Hirdmen were hardened fighters while the gang was just some ruffians with a Giant to back them up. This was played with 28mm figures & was based on the Kill the Monster scenario from the SBH Arthurian suppliment.

In the 1st game on this board, I played the Jarl & Hirdmen against one of my fellow local gaming club members.

My Hirdmen drive off a screen of his Rus.

His Rus fall back under the protection of the giant.

His giant lumbers forward as my Godi (in the wolf skin) tries to get a Transfix spell off on him.

Even the battle experience of the Hirdmen was no match for a giant. The giant finally killed half of my warband, forcing a morale check & the Hirdmen runs off to lick their wounds.

In the 2nd game, I played the Hirdmen again. & again against another local club member (the one that played all 3 games). But this time, the Rus player's luck failed him. My Godi was able to root the giant to the ground with his spell, while my Hirdmen swarm him. A quick death followed and the rest of the Rus gang scattered.


Beastman/Frogman Board
The 2nd fantasy board had Beastmen raiding a Frogman (Deep One) village. The Beastmen were trying to burn the Frogman huts.

The Beastmen had the skills Forester (ignore brush & woods/jungle movement penalties) & Running Blow (didn’t have to stop to make an attack, but could keep on running by the target if the attack was successful).

The Frogmen had the Amphibious skill (move through water without penalty). This was also played in 28mm & was a simplified version of the Bridge Over MurkyWaters scenario from Ganesha Games' free online magazine Free Hack. Here is a battle report from a solo game I ran of the scenario which was my 1st SBH game.

The 1st game on this board was played between the local gamer who ended up playing all 3 fantasy boards & an out-of-town gamer. Here, the frogmen race to reach their homes before the beastmen.


The frogmen defend their huts against the beastmen's torches.

The beastman leader was finally killed which caused the rest of the warband to run off, saving the frogman huts.

In the 2nd game on this board, a young boy played the Beastmen vs an adult. The game was going fine until the Beastmen were able to engage the Frogman Standard Bearer in combat. The Standard Bearer lost, which caused all the Frogmen to make a morale check.

Standard Bearer at the edge of the lake about to be attacked.

The leader failed so badly that he ran off the table. This caused a 2nd morale check for the remaining Frogmen, most of which also ran the table. The boy was ecstatic since this was the 1st convention he attended & he’d beaten his opponent so soundly. Both his father & grandfather came by to thank me for showing him such a good time & making his 1st convention memorable. In honor of the his 1st convention victory, I gave him one of the Beastman figures to keep.

The young beastman commander with his "goatee".


10mm Board
The final fantasy board had 2 medieval knight forces face off. It was played in 10mm using a single Games Workshop Warmaster stand to repalce a single 15mm figure.

I was curious to see how the 10mm Warmaster stands would work as 15mm substitutes. The only problem is when a unit lost in combat & it needed to “fall down”. We put the whole stand on its back, which did look a little funny. But overall, they worked fine & the game look good. I’ll definitely be using them again since I have such a large Warmaster collection.

Here I played the blue Imperial forces facing off against the purple Bretonnian forces.

My forces move forward and try a flanking manauver.

The Bretonnian Men-at-Arms provide doughty resistance against my knights.

The Bretonnian mounted squires wipe out my crossbowmen & follow up, contacting my Imperial halberdiers. Shortly after this, the Bretonnian Grail Knights thunder forward, destroying the halberdiers and then the Wizard, finally forcing the Imperials to run.



Napoleonic Games
After the fantasy games were done, I set up the 3 Napoleonic games. All of them were 28mm.

The 1st game was a simplified version of Blunt’s Pay Day, a scenario published in the Free Hack magazine, which itself was based Sgt Harper defending the pay chest against the French in the 1st Shapre’s Rifle book. But my version had Portuguese Cacadores (riflemen) defending the pay chests against French Line Infantry.

I ran the full Blunt's Pay Day at the local club a few months ago & here is a report on that game.

The other 2 games were from the War of 1812, so both had British vs American troops, & were on similar boards.

The 1st was set early in the war around Chesapeake Bay. The British were trying to scout out the American naval yards in preparation for an attack to burn the ships. The American were trying to intercept & prevent them from crossing the board to where the naval yards were.


The final game was set in the Niagara campaign. A British commander was travelling to meet with a local Native chief to coordinate their efforts against the Americans. The commander brought 2 Canadian Glengarry Light Infantry with him, and the native chief had sent warriors to escort the British to the meeting place. A detachment from the US Regiment of Rifles were sent to intercept them & prevent the meeting.

Here are the Glengarry Light Infantry and Native warriors I painted for the game.


There was only 1 player for the Napoleonic games, but it was not surprising since it was mid-afternoon on a Sunday, so the convention was winding down. We played the Chesapeake game. The player had already been interested in Ganesha Games & actually left another game early that he was playing in, in order to try out SDS. After we played the SDS game, he was planning on buying at least SDS & possibly Ganesha’s ACW Company level game, ‘61-‘65.

Here is my British seeing off his Americans after killing his Leader.

So overall, a very enjoyable afternoon teaching & playing some fun games. I had to laugh though when I was tearing down the games. One of our local club members was cursing my name when he saw that I had been running Song of Drums & Shako. He’d played in a game I’d run at the club a few months ago. & he was cursing me because I’d cost him too much money. He’d bought the SDS rules & then had to go out & buy figures for it. I guess that speaks well of the rules.