Robots for £1

No point having a blog if I don't post the bargains I've found on it...

Today's bargains from Poundland were some Robots..  I'm not a Warhammer 40K gamer, but do hanker after SF and Cyberpunk RPG, and have got a couple of Science Fiction Miniatures skirmish sets.   Faction Wars from Fire and Forget games, which desperately needs some rules for vehicles, the free Chain Reaction 3 from two hour wargames, Void (aka Urban War) from Urban Mammoth and had been thinking of Tomorrow’s War from Osprey.   I'm much more a Total Recall, Bladerunner, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly movie fan than Space Marines and Starship Troopers.  

A large box from the Walle movie of some years ago, and then some "Androidyz" which might be American aimed at the Italianmarket which arrive to Poundland via Russia... The Walle box was hard to see what you actually got aside from a picture and a description, whilst the Androydz were fairly easy.  

Close up of an Androidyz in packaging.  Per the flyer that comes with them then there were 24 different models.  Mixture of ones with weapons, to buzz saws etc.   I got "Night Shield" which has a stick, shield and gun - so can be some sort of security robot, and "Scuba Miner" which has a drill and claw for use as an industrial robot.   

Out of the box with some Games Workshop figures for scale comparison.   The Walle stuff as one might expect from a disney licensed product is the most sturdy and is part of a playset - the blue robot has a winching crane hook activated by turning the arms.  The Androydz have a metal wheeled chassis, plastic uppers and arms that move  at the shoulders.   All likely to benefit from a respray and repaint.   The mining robot is probably my favourite at the moment - might see about getting another one or two of the "engineering' style so that I can stencil numbers on them for a consistent workforce theme after the respray.  

The Dutch in 1940

Every so often I will come across a topic about which I know very little and use the power of the internet to research the answers.

Some of January disappeared in one such item – namely the Dutch in 1940.  My Dutch chum Jan had talked of the Black devils and paratroops and Holland wasn’t the walkover its lack of mention or time would suggest.  My knowledge on this was very poor – at least with Belgium I knew about the landings on Eben-Emael and the deployment of Brandenburgers (and how wearing an enemy uniform over your own but removing it before firing was within ‘acceptable” rules of war, dating back to Napoleonic periods and ships flying various nations flags…) but Holland ?  Nada, except that the Dutch resistance HQ in London was at De Hems which is one of my favourite drinking holes in the capital. 

The internet of course is your friend here..

http://www.waroverholland.nl/

Black devils is a reference to Dutch Marines at Rotterdam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Marine_Corps

http://www.dutchmarines.com/History.html  

Re-enactor pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/battle14/with/4609568630/

And was Holland the straw that broke the camel’s back ? 

http://www.waroverholland.nl/index.php?page=had-it-been-worth-the-sacrifices

Which then set me thinking about making Dutch Tram for use here, as well as in VBCW which has been on the back burner for a while.  

One ebay purchase later and we have some inspiration. 

I think if I take the roof off, remove the stairs, and give it a new roof and a repaint then it will do as a stand in for a single decker tram in 28mm scale.  

SAGA - dice

One set of rules that I have recently taken a shine to is SAGA from Gripping Beast which is miniatures plus dice on a battleboard.   Starter armies (4pts) are perhaps 30-35 figures, whilst the full 6 pts will put it up to 50-60 figures probably, so not an impossible task to paint.  Plus I can reuse my existing armies as well.
The game as sold uses special dice (although ordinary d6 can be substituted) with symbols on each face.    At £12 a set though its a fairly expensive option but the nice boys at Gripping Beast have made the symbols available so you can print your own and stick them onto blank dice.   So, a favour from a chum and I've got them onto laser label (self adhesive) sheets to give that a try.  Results as below.

This is the labels as they came out.  The square design soon proved difficult to fit on the dice that I had because of rounded corners and I resorted after the first dice to trimming the corners on the labels.  

This is a set of my dice - bottom white (Anglo Danish) contrasted with official dice from Gripping Beast (Vikings at top, Normans in the middle).  So far the idea seems good.  

The white dice worked OK, but the Green and Blue dice were going to be too dark for the black design.   Trimming off all the corners was starting to get to me as well - better to ask for another sheet from my chum with say octagon borders rather than squares and slight smaller, and in say a brighter colour - yellow or pink.   A web search came up with another supplier of blank dice without the same style of rounded corner and in brighter colours.  So, Purple (will still need yellow but seems appropriate for say Byzantines), Pink, Yellow and Lime Green.  

Original Beast dice contrasted in size with the new ones in detail.  

Fitting them onto a battle board.  The bigger dice do take up more space but not so much as to totally hide all the text.