Cards for Fantastic Battles

Here are some of the Fantastic Battle cards I have created for relics, spells and strategies, in order to help players avoid having to flip through the rule book to find them.  They have proved useful over the last two year or so.  You may have noted some of them in my AARs.  I also have made some company cards for various races but will post those another time.  Although you can see some of the cards (including some of these relic cards) in use in my earlier blog entitled "Fantastic Battles Dwarfs versus High Elves August 1, 2022."plus other later blogs.

Disclaimer: I found these images through an online searches and was unable to determine if they were copyrighted. No copyright infringement is intended and if I am informed that this is the case I will remove them from this blog.

Relic cards

Building a Canopy forest with removable top in 6mm scale

This is a summary of how I built a 6mm scale prototype forest with a removable canopy top in 6mm scale for second World War games, which might also work for 15mm scale infantry, possibly for War of 1812 games. The finished product is shown below.

Top half of photo shows Forest with removable canopy and base

I decided just to make one forest to start with, figuring I would likely learn by my mistakes, and best to do that with one forest before going into "mass production" of 10 or more.

New Lighting

 Here are some pictures of the new Deformable LED light I installed over my upstairs game table.  One lamp  provides more than enough light to illuminate my 58" x 72" games table.  It was only $14 from Lee Valley, is easy to install, removable / portable, uses very little electricity and relatively inconspicuous.  It also required a hanging socket with hooks and a long cord from Amazon.

The Lamp suspended to the season

 

Spears and Impalers

 I have had bout 17 of these OOP Wizkids Horror Clix Vlad the Impaler 32mm figures sitting around since I bought them some years ago at the local Comic Book Store in a bin sale.   I had been planning to convert them to Impalers for a Vampire based fantasy army by replacing the end of the spear with just a point rather than an impaled victim, as a regiment of 16 would just look too weird, one victim as a standard is sufficient.

 

Wizkids HorrorClix Vlad the Impaler

Accordingly I cut off the victim on all but 1 figure and planned to put spear tips on the end of the poles.  After the figures sat around for a few years I finally got around to it yesterday. This was partly inspired by the new Fantastic Battles 1.2 rules that has a Night Stalker army list that will work perfectly for my Vampire War figures and these Impalers. They will be an elite Regiment called Vlad's Carpathian Impalers with 3 companies with the traits: Feast, Pikes, Highlanders and Doughty.

 Below are some of the various spear options I experimented with:

Undead Catapult and Giant (updated 2022)

This is an old Undead catapult produced by Grenadier and re-released by Mirliton that I have been working on for some time and finally got the base ready in time for a game in Halloween 2019.   This catapult and the skeleton giant I was working on at the same time will be used in an upcoming SAGA Age of Magic game at my local club. These figures will work well for a variety of rule systems: 

Old Hammer (WFB 3rd or 6th Edition)
Fantastic Battles
SAGA Age of Magic
HOTT

Front - Side view

I have based it on an 80mm wide by 103mm deep base and I flocked it so it will work for a desert climate (to work with my Egyptian themed Undead army) and added  little more vegetation as compared to the pictures below. I have updated this report in June 2022, see notes at the end.

Sacred Ground for SAGA Age of Magic

 After my last game of SAGA Age of Magic in  December 2021 (AAR pending)  I realized I need proper Sacred Ground markers so I have been built one for my Wood Elf (Lords of the Wild) and have almost finished one for my Undead  (The Undead Legions) warband. 

On the left for the Wood Elf Sacred ground I used 2 standing sacred stones and a totem from the Wizkids 4D Jungle Shrine set on a base flocked with brown ballast and light green grass flock.  For the Undead I have used 4 skull pillars / death columns by RAFM plus a sarcophagus / crypt by Mega Miniatures (OOP) and I plan to flock it with brown ballast and dead yellowish static grass. The Scared Ground markers are the regulation  4" in diameter.  For now I am not gluing the miniatures to the bases for ease of transport and flexibility.

Happy New Year 2022 and Fantastic Battles Project

 Happy New Year 2022

A project I was working on to create Resolution tracker counters for Fantastic Battles (FB).   These are 20mm MDF bases spray painted green with self adhesive 5/8" Roman numerals designed for clocks.  Sadly not a lot else to do on New Years Eve thanks to Covid-19, so watched TV movies and made counters.

 New Roman number counters

Assembling and repainting the Jabberwock

I bought this poorly painted Jabberwock, with one of its two wings broken off, via  eBay that I plan to strip and repaint.

Jabberwodk as he looked when I started

 What will I use him for?   Possibly for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition as a Dark Elf Monster or in SAGA Age of Magic as a scourge monster for my Dark Elves.   But back to the assembly process.

Adding doors, glass shelves and lights to Pine Cabinet - March 1, 2020

Subtitled: the Never Ending Cabinet project.

February 1, 2020 

My game / work room looks like it is under construction!  I have had to take a break from hosting games for the last few weeks first due to a flu bug then an ever growing construction project to add two new glass shelves to my pine cabinet. The project began in late January 2020, although I had purchased the shelves and doors around January 2019.  It is amazing how much time it takes and mess it creates to add new shelves, especially when a router is involved to shape the wood to hold the shelves.  I of course had to empty the cabinet and you can hardly see my game table as it is covered with the contents of the three shelves.  I now have five shelves, including the two new glass ones but the supports need staining, and finding a matching stain for a 30+ year old knotty pine cabinet is a challenge!   Next I plan to add on some Ikea Morliden glass doors while I have everything off the shelves.

Cabinet contents on my game table, you can see
 the cabinet shelves that have been installed on
 the unfinished supports in the background

Despite all this I did manage to get a game of SAGA Crusades on Sunday February 2nd at my local club (OMG) and will post a short AAR when I get the time.

Roofing material

Walthers Roofing material

I tried out some of the Walthers Cornerstone Roof Texture material on two of the flat topped buildings I used for my Doctor Who Terror at Devils Bay game and was very pleased with the results.

Post game picture showing Walthers roofing ballast

Casablanca Lockheed Electra

LOCKHEED 10 ELECTRA

One of the latest miniatures / models added to my collection is the aircraft from the 1943 film Casablanca - the  Lockheed 10 Electra.  This is an old 1:53 scale Williams Brothers kit that works perfectly for heroic 28mm scale and will feature in one of my upcoming Pulp Alley games.

My new Lockheed 10 Electra kit, picture by John Clearwater

Read on to see are some more images of the aircraft including some with the characters from Casablanca and the story of the building of the kit.

TerraClips: Buildings of Malifaux Mansion

Building a Mansion

A little late posting this review. Over the Christmas Holiday I put together this TerraClips: Buildings of Malifaux  Mansion for use in a Pulp Alley game from the Tomb of the Serpent Campaign.

With two levels