Gaming Cloth: Chlorophyll Green

A while ago on one of the blogs/forum that I follow there was a fair amount of activity on the subject of gaming cloths, with I think the Two Fat Lardies saying that what they took to shows was an old army blanket.  

Shortly after Christmas I was in B&Q looking for something else and in the clearance section was a green fleecy throw for £3.  (NOTE - they are no longer in stock - I went today to three different B&Q shops and they have all gone - you might find one in the clearance bin but I doubt it).  I thought the green matched the green I use on bases (Miniatures Paints Grass Green) and would also be fairly close to the GW green movement trays.

It's not a bad base to be working from, and click on the picture to enlarge it and you can see it does the grass green quite well - I'd forgotten quite how "lurid green" the GW movement trays are.   

Ideally the green needs to be toned down - I've thought of soaking it with a bit of brown fabric dye to take the edge off the colour, or I may just "distress" it with some spray paint.   That's what I did with one of the baseclothes that I use for pirates.  

The original base of this was a creamy/sand colour.  This picture is on the washing line where I was sprayng over it with some cheap tines of spray paint  I had picked up.   

This is it in use.  I learned a little from this that "weave" patterns will show through on close ups - which is probably an advantage of fleecy blankets.  

Games Expo 2012

Saturday 26th May saw me get up at an unearthly hour - 5.45 I think to be on the road for 6.45 to try and get car parking at the venue in Birmingham.  In the end we didn't but were one of the first cars turfed out onto the side street and got parking within a hundred yards or so of the venue.  I got here for Saturday morning and had 9.30 til 2 pm at the show.   It encompasses everything - LARP - RPG - Miniatures - Boardgames.  To be fair the historical miniatures side of the show is varied and generally small - I think they had the UK Flames of War tournament one year.  This year it was a busy and well attended Warmachine tournament.  Mostly the miniatures side is the Horror/SF/Fantasy skirmish/collectable/display end of the market - the 28-32mm stuff.

I got to play a boardgame - Snowdonia - in what appeared to be a finished pre-production version.  Interesting resource management game but nothing military about it.  No pictures I'm afraid.  

There was a very nice Pirate game from Redditch Wargames Society which suffered somewhat from its location of being next door to the bring and buy and therefore lots of people nearby and somewhat crowded.

Lots of Buildings by Grand Manner (Spanish Convent and other peninsular stuff painted slightly different colours to be more grungy and piratey and less whitewashed Spain) and Cutlass rules from Black Scorpion.  There were some other miniatures games but generally of the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror genre which don't do much for me.  

Total purchases at the show were two dice - with a logo on one side - as presents for others, and a couple of very reduced price but still in shrinkwrap boardgames, again to give away as presents.  

I didn't go last year (and not sure about the year before) but am looking forward to the change of venue.  The timing though now appears to be fixed which means that there is always going to be the clash with Partizan.  

Website is here - Games Expo

Pirates

Firstly there is an arcane art in getting good photos of miniatures, and one at which I need to do some work.  The short answer comes down to getting out the tripod and setting a focal distance to give a good depth of field (and slower shutter speed, which means the tripod is necessary).  These are all handheld shots.  So apologies for quality but I wanted to post sooner rather than later.

Until a while ago I would never have bought pre-painted figures.  A combination of circumstances, time vs money, lack of skill and a need for quality models for demo purposes have altered that.  These were all painted by my chum John Csonka in Hungary - some were commissioned and some were presents.  The deal is normally modelling goods, figures, paints etc in return for painted figures as John can't just nip out and buy stuff in Hungary, or get much stuff at shows or mail order it easily.   As always I understand that Games Workshop is all pervasive.   John also has that skill of producing figures that "look good" when viewed - possibly its colour choice, possibly its painting technique.

The story behind these figures is that I wanted Pirate Captains (with a view to running Legend of the High Seas, although Cutlass has now also come onto the market) at the local club and I wanted different colours - so a yellow captain, red captain etc...

All the Pirate Captains

Top row in detail

Bottom row in detail

Here comes the Navy

Pirate Girls

Milady and some scurvy scum

Specialists