Start on a third Pulp Alley table

The next feature I have for the airstrip is a Novus Design Studio fuel tank. The tank itself is cast from resin and for the most part was perfect; just a couple of small air bubbles that I chose to ignore as they weren't conspicuous. I sprayed grey primer then a white over coat. The ends and cap were painted with Scale 75 Irati Green (just because I wanted to try it). Weathering was done with a combination of Golden High Flow Acylic Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna, Neutral Grey and Americana Charcoal and Umber thinned with Golden Glaze Medium and water. I went a bit nuts collecting grass tufts and as I have quite a bit of Gamers Grass Beige and Burnt tufts I used a bunch of them instead of static grass.

Here is a photo of the basic layout so far. The plan is to have a fairly open table; perhaps one other building and lots of scrub brush. I will also add some discarded fuel cans and a few empty boxes or crates

Trumpeter's Salute 2018

The event that drove this project has come and gone: Trumpeter's Salute. This was my fist Wargames Convention. I had attended a couple of Games Workshop events with my son and his friends back in the oughties as well as 4 Astro-nomicon tournaments that I really enjoyed. It was great to see such a variety of events and Pulp Alley was well  represented with David running two games on our tables and LAF's Wirelizard running three (I think...) on his table. Here are a few pictures from the Saturday games as well as a link to an Imgur album at the bottom with many more.

First off the 4 pictures from our games. Pulp Alley proved to be popular; we had 7 players around a 3x3 table for our first game and 5 for our second. Wirelizard's table was also crowded with similar numbers. Here David takes control of the game:

After the claustrophobic urban table we reduced the terrain for The Perilous Island.

David was awesome- entertaining, keeping the game rolling and energetic for all 8 hours of play(!!!)

Wirelizard's game shows how versatile the rule set is. His game was set in 17thC England and had Parlimentarians and Royalists sniffing around the tiny town of Dwmchurch-on-fen (never heard of it? I think it sank...).  The game looked really good; awesome terrain and fish people crawling all over the place. I should have got a couple of pics of the minis but I was trying not to be intrusive as people played.

As seems obligatory, here is a picture of the "loot" I collected. This is all stuff that I would normally have to buy online and cover shipping; furthermore there was a show discount that virtually wiped out the tax. The LoTR stuff on the right I bought at the Bring and Buy and the whole lot cost $70CDN- quite a bargoon.

There is about 40 more pictures in this Imgur album. If I could do it all again I would have concentrated on a few tables and taken lots of pictures, and kept track of the action so I could offer a bit more info than what I was able to collect.

Sarissa Precision Nissen Hut

Since the water table is giving me head aches I have decided to flip it over and make a remote, ill-maintained airstrip on the other. Nothing too fancy: a couple of buildings and a derelict runway. First up is a Sarissa Precision Quonset/Nissen hut.

Although a smidge on the small side, as you can see in the Sarissa photo above, it is a simple but effective kit and comes at a reasonable price. The horizontal lines allow the card roof to bend but most Quonset huts have corrugated roofing with the ribs running vertically. Judging  by photos I have found this roofing was layered so that in effect you do have horizontally running lines.

If I wasn't so anxious to get painting this unit, I could have glued Evergreen or Plastruct corrugated roofing in strips following the horizontal lines and it would have been much more realistic. In the end though I really wanted to try out some new brushes and high flow acrylics, so... here it is:

In other news... Trumpeter's Salute! The jungle and urban tables are all ready to get loaded into the pickup; I head out the door in about an hour and 15.

Street Scatter

Last week my parcel from Fenris Games arrived- not too late either as Trumpeter's Salute is next weekend. In it were some MDF pallets and resin manhole covers, trash cans and fire hydrants. Although in general I am happy with the prodcuts, they are not without faults. The hydrants in particular suffer from some casting issues. On each hydrant there are 7 hex bolts and nearly half of them are either misshapen or concave. Two of the hydrants have significant air pockets,  both defects on the bottom of the side cap, as well as significant flash in hard to clean recessed areas.. The trash cans have several very small air pockets that are only really visible in the picture. The manhole covers turned out perfectly and the pallets, while fragile, are also very nice. Even with the casting issues I am happy enough with the products.

 A while ago I received some metal barrels from Warlord Games. I painted three of them up as a plot point: a hidden stash of chemicals:

I also have a selection of O gauge road signs so I put a 'Narrow Bridge' sign on a base:

It didn't seem unreasonable to take a couple of shots with the added details:

In other news I have given up on the water table... for now. After much trial an error with a variety of materials I am just not satisfied. Our hope was that I would have it to a standard that we could use if an opportunity for some extra game time came up. Not this trip however...