About Me

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London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
A mythical beast - a female wargamer! I got back into wargaming in the summer of 2011 after a very, very long break and haven't looked back since. I must admit that I seem to be more of a painter/collector than a gamer, but do hope to correct that at some point in the near future. My gaming interests span the ages, from the "Biblical" era all the way through to the far future. I enjoy games of all sizes, from a handful of figures up to major battles (see my megalomaniacally sized Choson Korean and Russian Seven Years War armies).

Sunday 17 May 2015

Sunday Swag

Looking at the pics I posted yesterday, I noticed that one of the Bulgars seems to have lost his spear/javelin. Well, that's annoying but not a disaster as I've got a number of hand axes left over from the accessorising pack. It should take no time at all to glue one into his hand and paint it.

Now, to turn to the theme of this post - It's Sunday and I have some swag, so it's Sunday Swag time *grin*.

With Car Wars being my current distraction, I've been doing a load of web surfing and found various sites of interest (all bookmarked for future reference). I discovered that Steve Jackson Games' shop has almost all of the original materials available as PDFs and bought a few of them - a couple of supplements (Truck Stop and Crash City/Sunday Drivers), the AADA Vehicle Guide, Arenas 1 (which turns out to be aimed at 5th edition) and Autoduel Quarterly Vols 1 and 2. I can see myself buying a few more every month.

From the shop, I also found the forum and someone there had come up with a pretty neat idea - original scale Car Wars (1:180) using a pizza box arena. What a nifty idea - take a large pizza box, line it with flex-o-metal (or steel paper), paint it up, make up some wall, bunkers etc and mount those and some 1:200 or 1:180 cars on magnetic bases. Very light and easy to transport. And no need to faff around with getting up-scaled turning keys made. Of course, it doesn't have the same visual appeal as going 2x or 3x using diecast cars, but still...

So, on Friday after work I headed down to 4D Modelshop as I knew they had some 1:200 plastic and metal architectural detail cars and trucks. At first I was going to buy a bunch of the metal ones, but at £15 for 10 metal cars against £14 for 40 plastic ones, I went with the latter. I also bought a small sheet of 0.75mm grey ABS plastic to glue them onto.



My plan is to cut out and score a 5" x 4" section of the ABS, stick it onto some magnetic sheet, glue the cars onto the scored plastic, cut strips of the same car types and paint them. Alternatively, I could paint the vehicles on the sprues then glue them onto the ABS plastic. That would allow me to texture the plastic a little to resemble tarmac or concrete.

Hmmm, I think I'll go with the latter option.

The next bit of swag arrived yesterday morning. The postman rang the doorbell at the undogly hour of 9.30am (hey - it was Saturday and I was having a lie-in) so I had to quickly dress and get down the stairs before he left a red card.

It was a package containing these:



Yes, the Old Glory 15s Koreans from Timecast to replace the Ming packs they'd accidentally put in my Salute pre-order. I'm very impressed by their customer service in sorting this out, although it would have been handy if they'd let me know they'd sent out the replacements.

Of course, this means that I'll have to set aside some time to paint them up for my Righteous Army units. And then paint the rest of the Koreans I have. Oh, and the Mongols who are prepped and primed.

It looks as though I'm going to be pretty busy.

11 comments:

  1. First I've heard of "Car Wars" - Those plastic cars and your plan of action sounds intriguing. Looking forward to seeing more of your Righteous Army too.

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  2. Good to see another update regarding "Car Wars" Tamsin. Really looking forward to seeing how this turns out as knowing of your skills with a paint brush its going to be awesome.

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  3. Cor, Car Wars....that takes me back a few years (decades even). I didn't even know that game was still going. Look forward to seeing this project as it develops.

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  4. I'm so looking forward to seeing you paint up those cars. This is like when you got into Pirates and we had such fun seeing you paint them up.

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  5. Car Wars is indeed a blast from the past! Sadly all my collection was lost in a house fire , but its good to know that the pdfs of Uncle Al and all the rest are available. I thought it was a very in depth game but somehow I seem to always like playing GW's Dark Future more.

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  6. For me half the fun of car wars was arming toy cars for the arena. Your pizza box setup seems very portable a little too portable. You causally carry it about town.

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  7. As with many I did used to love car wars, and with Fury road being released I can see it getting popular again. Yes I agree the small scale might lack visual appeal but I am sure you can make it work.

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  8. New project, got to love a new project ;-)

    Ian

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  9. @ Dean - it was a thing in the 80s/90s and is still a top game, but a bit more complex than a lot of others in the genre. In my eyes it is good that SJG are showing some love for it again :)
    As for the Righteous Army, given that most were peasants/townsmen it will be fairly plain.

    @ Blax - I'm still figuring out about doing the arena for the littl'uns, but the cars for both scales should be coming along fairly soon :)

    @ Lee - a few years; if it was a few decades that would make it impossible for me to be 21 *lol*
    It seems that there have been a few people actively keeping it going :)

    @ Anne - these cars are teeny-tiny jobs (1:200 scale) so they will just get a pretty basic paint job. If discovered since opening the packs that they don't have any side window details so that's going to be a touch awkward to paint on.

    @ Paul - I never played the GW game, but I would guess it was less complex than CW and made for quicker games. The PDFs are a goldmine of ideas and reminiscences :)

    @ Robert - I never did that back in the day, but plan to do so now. Car Wars was and still is great fun :)

    @ Clint - I just wonder how many people inspired by the film will actually be aware of it though?
    Thanks for your confidence about my ability to make the small scale work visually :)

    @ Ian - yup, gotta love new projects that distract from cracking on with old projects ;)

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  10. CAR WARS!!! Awesome!! I remember the game from the School wargames club...must have been 1983 since i last played it, but it was fantastic. I remember having a load of fun designing our own cars and driving them lethally around a grid paper city.

    After one game, in which I failed to make a 90 degree turn at 55 mph (exploding my cardboard counter car on an unlucky "1"), I felt very cheesed off. I remember in our own family car the next day, in the passenger seat with my Mum driving, asking my Mum if she thought she'd crash the car if she drove at 55mph and turned a hard left onto the dual carriageway near where we lived without breaking. My Mum's very polite, and hardly ever swears - but that day was an exception! Fun memories! Good luck with the project!

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    1. I refuse to give a precise date of when I was playing it. That might give away my age ;)

      Cheers - I will have fun with this project :)

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