Plastic Conversions, Wooden Buildings, and Modern Skirmishes
Can you tell what it is yet?
Work continues at a mad pace on our Salute demo. We’ve been given a good position according to the Salute plan, adjacent to the Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy stand. We’re at GB 25, at the end of isle ‘B’, effectively on the far left of Salute as you enter from the main precinct at Excel.
On my last blog update, I posted some pictures of the Perry Plastic Sudanese Ansar I’d converted into Japanese armed peasants. I’d been inspired to do so by an article by Simon of LBMS (which will appear in WSS 66) where he takes various plastics and converts them very effectively into unarmoured hoplites and peltasts. For my miniatures, I started with the Perry bodies and spare bare heads from the Wargames Factory range. I’ve drilled and pinned the heads adding some liquid green stuff to fill in any gaps. The weapons for the hands were mostly spares from the Wargames Factory boxes with Perry hands drilled out to take the weapons. I personally enjoy the challenges of this sort of conversion as each peasant in my ever growing collection will be a unique figure to join our army for Salute.
I’ve been working on some more scenery, including a watchtower and an objective. What started off as a simple piece of balsa wood, has been fashioned into the rough shape of a Japanese Palanquin or Norimono. This will be another target to add to our list for the daring assassins in the game. I started by looking at movies and on the internet for the rough shape of a Norimono, the one in the film ‘Kagemusha’ stood out in my mind particularly. The body is simply cut pieces of wood carefully glued into place. The bow shaped top was made from a barbeque skewer with a second piece of wood glued along the top and then shaped to give it the right appearance. The final model will probably be sanded to give it a slightly rounded appearance. I’m not very happy with the roof at present so that will probably change in the final model.
We took a break this last Friday from playtesting ninjas and the Salute game instead to giving ‘Sangin Skirmish’ a spin. This is a modern skirmish game which has something in common with tabletop roleplaying games. It is supposed to be played from the bottom up with each player controlling a squad (or more) of troops. I’d asked a friend, Paul Burkin, to review the game. He plays a great deal of Moderns, so he was the best choice for an objective look at it. Paul asked if he could playtest it – as you can’t really judge a game until you’ve played it. We did and it was soon obvious that the game deserved a little bit more than your average review. So I’m going to see if I can find room for a two page ‘Let’s Play’ for the next issue.
Well that’s it for now…
Jā mata ne!
(See you later!)
