Product Review: Pegasus Hobbies Palm Trees Series A

I recently bought a couple of boxes of these Palm Trees for use in some tropical Pulp gaming. Here are my thoughts.

First, I wish I thought to take pictures of the assembly and unboxing, but if you want that you can check out Tabletop Lenny’s video here. Second, these are Palm Trees Series A, which is a box of 5 trees. These differ from Series B which only has 3 trees per box. Series B trees are much larger and feature a different type of leaf.

PROS:

$8.50 a box retail. Pretty cheap!
Very easy to assemble once they’re prepared.
They look great right out of the box, no painting necessary.
They’re listed as 1/72 scale, which means they work well with 15mm-28mm miniatures.

CONS:

They’re kind of a pain in the ass to prepare. The leaves require a fair bit of trimming but once this is done, so is 90% of your work.

Once I assembled them, I based them on cork tiles and added some rocks. I painted the bases but didn’t bother with the trees themselves. Painting the leaves would be a nightmare, and anyway, they look great as is! The picture above shows some 28mm Pulp Figures Melanesian Island Warriors for scale.

SHOULD YOU BUY THEM?

Absolutely. They’re cheap, easy to assemble, and they look fantastic. Thumbs up!

Product Review: Plastcraft Western Buildings

Production of my south-of-the-border town of Mescalero has slowed while I try to figure out some problems with the church roof. With all the amazing new Western buildings available from companies like 4Ground, Game On and Knuckleduster, to name a few, I thought I might as well start putting together a more traditional Western town. The trouble is those laser-cut MDF buildings can get pricey pretty quick.

I first saw these PlastCraft Western Buildings on Miniature Market and I figured I’d give them a try. The kits are all basically the same, although the front of each building is different, and some have awnings while some do not. Each building kit comes with a resin door and window (varies by kit). You can’t beat the price: at less than $5 each I bought all six varieties.

I posed some 28mm Blue Moon cowboys with these buildings to give you an idea of the scale. As you can see, the buildings are pretty small for 28mm and might be better suited to 15mm. The roofs are not designed to be removable, but I guess you don’t have to permanently attach them if you don’t want to. Regardless, the interiors are so small that there’s really no point in not attaching them.

I have mixed feelings about these kits. I’ll give you my personal pros and cons, as well as discuss how I assembled them. I wish I had thought to take pictures of them before assembly, but I didn’t think I’d be writing a review of them. Sorry.

PROS:

The price. For less than $5 apiece, they make perfectly good small shops and won’t break your scenery budget.
Once assembled and painted, they look nice enough.
Once primed, the material takes paint well. Inexpensive craft paint was made for projects like this!
You get a lot of extra card left over for each building, which is great for use in other projects, or to dress up these buildings (see below).

CONS:

The kits are somewhat fiddly to assemble, especially the awnings. Expect to get glue on your fingers.
The resin doors and windows do not often fit snugly into the holes. There’s usually a gap, so you need to fill it with Green Stuff or something else.
There is absolutely no texture to these buildings. Either you need to paint it to look like wood boards, or you need to score the material first. I opted for the latter. It’s easy enough to score, and it looks much better when assembled.
The signs, like the building walls, are just blank card. Which means either stenciling, painting freehand, or doing what I did; which is printing out the name of the business in Playbill font and glueing it to the sign. The downside to this is it looks bright. I guess I could have used some other paper, but for the amount of use these buildings are going to get, it wasn’t worth it.
All of the above makes assembling these buildings a more time-consuming task than you might think.

OVERALL:

The low price makes it easy to overlook the annoyances. These kits would compliment some nicer buildings by the abovementioned companies, or may provide adequate scenery for a small outdoor skirmish on their own. You may notice I used some extra card bits to make signs on a couple of buildings like the one above. It won’t win any awards, but it adds a little something extra. You get plenty of leftover card to use in any way you see fit. For example, I considered making a plank bridge from one building roof to another, but scrapped the idea.

After I painted them, I realized my Western buildings look pretty bright and clean! I’m thinking of adding some weathering pigments to them to dirty them up a bit. You could paint them with less color to give them a more hastily-constructed or ramshackle look, if you prefer.

SHOULD YOU BUY THEM?

Yeah, if you’re looking to add a little extra to a town or if you’re on a tight budget (or both). As long as you have the patience to assemble them, these kits are fine for what they are, and a steal at the price.

Brother Jerrod

Recently, one of my gaming buddies stepped up and decided to run a GURPS Fantasy game. I decided to play a monk so that I could make use of the fantastic 4th Edition GURPS Martial Arts rules. I give you…Brother Jerrod!

The miniature is Reaper’s Friar Stone, Travelling Monk (03205), sculpted by Tre Manor. I bought and painted the miniature long before my friend decided to run this game, but once he did, I immediately wanted to use this miniature for my character. Brother Jerrod is a blast to play. He’s a jovial, garrulous fellow with a voice like Brian Blessed after drinking a quart of scotch. I created his unique martial arts style to compliment his constant state of drunkenness. In fact, more than once I was fully committed to my roleplaying and got more than a little drunk myself.

Good times.

Although I went into great detail creating his fighting style and giving amusing names to his maneuvers (Tip the Jug, Bear Stuns the Trout, etc.), I left the details of his religious order intentionally vague. It wasn’t going to be a big part of the game, and Brother Jerrod probably doesn’t remember much of his order’s precepts anyway. He’s too busy getting (and staying) drunk to care.

Some Old-School Miniatures

I went on a bit of a buying spree these past few months on some old Grenadier and Ral-Partha stuff. Mind you, I already have a ton of this stuff from my days of youth, but lately I’ve been feeling somewhat nostalgic. I present to you some of my recent painting efforts.

Up first are these two knights. Both are repaints of miniatures I first painted when I thought using Testors gloss enamel was a great idea. I’ve been trying to identify them from The Lost Minis Wiki, but I haven’t been able to. I could have sworn they were Grenadier or Ral Partha, as I’ve had them since the early 80’s at least. For some reason I want to say the guy on the right was labeled a cavalier, but I’m not 100% on this. Anyway, they both have morningstars (or maces-and-chain, depending on who you ask), and that wasn’t so common on miniatures in those days. Any assistance identifying these guys would be most appreciated.

UPDATE: Thanks to some fellow enthusiasts on The Miniatures Page, I found out that the one on the left is from Superior Miniatures (Knight with Mace-and-Chain). The one on the right is from TSR, part of their “AD&D Heroes boxed set. And sure enough, he’s a cavalier!

I love miniatures that tell a story and aren’t just “generic guy holding weapon”. This one is an old miniature I bought recently. It was part of Grenadier’s “Woodland Adventurers” boxed set. I don’t have the rest of the set, but I love this halfling sniper. This is not a repaint. In fact, I don’t believe this miniature was ever painted before I got him.

I’m under a pile of lead now, but I’m going to continue to take a break and paint (or repaint) some of these old miniatures every now and then.

Death Soldiers of the Jade Hood: Part 2

When we last left our intrepid adventurers Bridget Rourke and Mo Shrevnitz, they had managed to obtain evidence that the Jade Hood was behind the strange disappearances of ordinary citizens in New Commerce. Bridget was able to snap a photo of some of the Jade Hood’s goons loading some suspicious chemicals onto trucks in the Warehouse District. A shipping label from the Phillips Chemical Consortium was prominently displayed in the photo.

Bridgit went to alert the police and get the necessary warrants for a raid on the chemical plant, while Mo met up with New Commerce’s vigilante crimefighter, The Gargoyle, for a raid of their own. Meanwhile, the nefarious Jade Hood, aware that his schemes are threatened, sends a crew of goons to the chemical plant with orders to blow it sky-high…

Scenario 2: Raid on the Phillips Chemical Consortium

Actually, this is technically Scenario 3, as Scenario 2 is a scenario to be run in the event the heroes are captured. The scene is an industrial complex, with lots of machinery and crates to hide behind. This gave me a good chance to break out my Aftermath Modular Terrain. I’m glad I bought in on this Kickstarter, as it’s really some great stuff. I bought in for $100, and the stuff shown below isn’t even half of what I got. The machinery was made by a fellow TMPer, Russell95403, and it works well for this scenario.

Basically, the good guys, Mo and The Gargoyle, need to find two key pieces of evidence and get out of the warehouse before the bad guys blow it up. The bad guys need to plant two time bombs and detonate them. The heroes get extra Victory Points if they can disarm the bombs or prevent the bad guys from planting them at all.

This was the initial setup. Once again, my buddy Matt took the part of the heroes. Opposing them, played by me, were two Grade 2 Enforcers, Chopper Murphy and Frankie the Fish; and two Grade 1 Gat Men, Limey Joe and Pete the Dentist (you don’t want to know how he got that nickname).

The scenario relies heavily on encounter markers. There are 12 in all, 6 for the heroes and 6 for the villains. Heroes can’t activate villain encounters and vice-versa. The interesting part is the type of encounter (hero or villain) is only revealed when the encounter marker falls within line-of-sight of one of the models on the board. The model still has to come in contact with it to activate it. Among other things, the pieces of evidence and the bomb locations are encounters which must be resolved, which means that each side is trying to get to their encounter markers as quickly as possible, while dodging the bullets and fists of the opposing team!

On the first turn, both sides rushed in, trying to get to their encounter markers as quickly as possible. The villains activated one of theirs: a Tong Assassin! Not content to trust the safety of his schemes to his henchmen, the Jade Hood hired a Tong Assassin to ensure that the heroes don’t leave the warehouse alive. The assassin enters play through on of the side entrances.

Soon after, Chopper Murphy finds one of the ideal locations to plant a time bomb. He sets it for two turns and prepares to move out of the blast radius.

The Gargoyle knows he only has moments to act. He charges forward, guns blazing, and manages to wound Chopper Murphy. The crazed machine-gun maniac fires back, but the hasty expenditure of a Hero Point saves the Gargoyle from being riddled with bullets! Meanwhile, Mo runs at the other goons, but is intercepted by the Tong Assassin!

The Gargoyle rushes to the ticking bomb, and, heedless of his own safety, attempts to disarm it! He succeeds! Chopper Murphy, slack-jawed at the Gargoyle’s boldness, opens fire again; this time wounding the Gargoyle. But the crimefighter isn’t down yet!

With a flurry of hands the Tong Assassin leaps at Mo, delivering the 1000 needle strike! Mo barely feels it, and delivers two punishing body blows to the assassin. The Tong assassin drops like a wet bag of dirt and doesn’t move!

Pete the Dentist sneaks around a piece of machinery and plugs the Gargoyle in the back! The Gargoyle, still reeling from Chopper Murphy’s machine gun rain, goes down!

Mo takes this opportunity to charge Pete the Dentist, with predictable results. He levels Pete without breaking a sweat. I’m beginning to think no one has a chance against Mo, at lest not in hand-to-hand!

The other two thugs, Frankie the Fish and Limey Joe, activate another encounter marker and find the other prime location to plant a bomb. Frankie sets the timer for three turns.

Moe triggers an encounter, still hoping to find a piece of evidence. Instead, Bridget Rourke arrives with two Rookie cops! It’s not looking good for the bad guys!

It looks even worse on the next turn, when The Gargoyle makes his Will roll and revives. Taking aim from the ground, The Gargoyle puts a slug between Chopper Murphy’s eyes! Then he gets shakily to his feet, scanning the warehouse…

Limey Joe runs across the warehouse floor, taking a shot at Bridget Rourke on the way out. He misses. Frankie the Fish decides he’d better get out of the warehouse before it blows up, and runs off the board. But The Gargoyle spends another Hero point and sprints across the room towards the time bomb. He defuses it with seconds to spare!

Well, this turned out to be a pretty decisive victory for the good guys. The villains could only win if the bombs went off, and neither one did. The bad guys failed to kill or capture any of the heroes, even with the help of the Tong assassin. The heroes got extra Victory Points for defusing the bombs, but they could only win by finding the evidence, which they didn’t do. But since Frankie and Limey Joe fled the warehouse, the heroes had all the time in the world to search it. We decided the heroes found the evidence they needed after all.

And the Jade Hood? Well, let’s just say he wasn’t pleased. Frankie and Limey Joe won’t be returning for any further scenarios in the campaign…

54mm Batman

I bought this old Grenadier figure set on eBay, mostly for posterity, since I don’t game in 54mm. I remember when this came out. It was a set designed to go with the Batman RPG from Mayfair, which was really just a simplified DC Heroes RPG. Why they cast these miniatures in 54mm as opposed to the more popular 25mm is beyond me. Unless they were going for a collector’s market.

The set came with two miniatures, Batman and the Joker. Well, when I received my package in the mail, the Joker was missing. I contacted the seller and he immediately issued a refund. I would have gladly shipped Batman back to him, as his feedback was positive enough for me to think it was a fluke and not a deliberate attempt to screw me over, and I wasn’t trying to get anything for free. But he told me to just keep Batman. So I did.

Turns out I know a 13 year-old girl who is really into Batman. She’s the daughter of a friend, and I figured, since I have an incomplete set that’s not doing me any good, why not paint Batman up for her? So I did. And here’s what I used.

First off, apologies for the paper plate. It’s the only white thing I had in reach when I decided to take the photo. I put Batman on a 50mm square base and applied green stuff to smooth out the contours of the base. Then I applied my first coat. Most of the colors are GW paints. I started with Deadly Nightshade for the blue, Iyanden Darksun for the yellow, and Skavenblight Dinge for the gray.

The next layers were Regal Blue, a mixture of Skavenblight Dinge/Dawnstone in a ratio of 70/30 for the gray, and a wash of Badab Black over the yellow.

Once that was complete, I painted the base Shadow Grey and added the next layer of highlights: a mixture of Regal Blue/Mordian Blue in 50/50, straight Dawnstone for the gray, and Privateer Press’s Sulfuric Yellow for the belt and chest emblem.

About this time I decided I would need something more on the base. So I added a 30mm RAFM sewer lid base and built it up with more green stuff. Then I did the next layer of highlights: Mordian Blue, Administratum Grey, and Bad Moon Yellow. Then I repainted the base with black Vallejo surface primer.

Lastly, I finalized the highlights. I did a watered down layer of Festering Blue, followed by a highlight of Teclis Blue. I painted the eyes Skull White and the bat emblem with Chaos Black. I painted the manhole cover with Tin Bitz and washed it in Armour Wash. Then I applied a little MIG rust pigment to the manhole cover and put sand on the base.

A note about the sand…it’s actually volcanic sand from the beaches of Sao Miguel, Azores. Most folks probably don’t have that stuff laying around their house. But I do. 🙂

Hopefully the kid I painted this for will like it. He was pretty easy to paint, all things considered.

Someday I’ll get the complete set and paint it up just for fun.

Elves, Dwarves and Rust Monsters

Thought I’d showcase some miniatures I painted recently.

First up are some Reaper elves. (Apologies for the blurriness of the photos. I need to get a tripod.) Up high is Ardynn, Elven Hero (Reaper 14046) , while down below is Baeldrinahr, Rogue Figher(Reaper 02952). Ardynn looks more like a High Elf to me. I decided to base him on snow and I’m happy with the result, although you can’t really see it. I decided to paint Baeldrinahr like a Wood Elf, so I chose the palette and basing accordingly. Both these would have made an appearance in my AD&D campaign, if I was still running it.

It’s never hard to get me to paint Dwarfs. These are some older Reaper sculpts that actually look kind of small compared to their more recent dwarf products. On the top are two Dwarf Heroes from Sandra Garrity (Reaper 03351). On the lower left is Sturm Jagstone, another Garrity sculpt (Reaper 02236). I love these miniatures.

Oh, Crap…

Lastly, I decided to showcase one of the all-time classic and most hated AD&D monsters: the Rust Monster! These two armored lads are about to have a very bad day.

The warrior on the left with the ridiculous sword is Reaper’s Alustan Nightbreaker, Paladin (Reaper 03192). On the right is Kain Swiftblade, yet another Sandra Garrity sculpt (Reaper 02025), one of Reaper’s oldest miniatures, and one of my personal favorites.

The rust monsters are a mix of old and new. On the left is Reaper’s recent “Oxidation Beast” (why get sued, after all? Reaper 03585). This one is metal (the irony!!….Oh iron-y! How doubly ironic!!!) but they make a Bones version that’s five bucks cheaper at the moment. The one on the right is a classic Ral Partha rust monster. I really like the look of both models, and I’m pretty happy with the paint jobs.

“Let’s Roll, Kato.”

I was so excited when I saw Pulp Figures recent “Masked Avengers” set, that I had to rush out and buy them. Actually, I didn’t rush anywhere. I clicked and ordered them. The set comes with two more figures, but I was most interested in the “Masked Crime Fighter” shown above, along with his “Aide”. I picked up that 1/50 scale “Rolling Arsenal” in anticipation of their arrival. It’s a tad small, but not enough to matter to me, seeing how they all look SO DAMN COOL together!!! I can’t wait to use them all in a .45 Adventure game soon!

“And now, to protect the rights and lives of decent citizens, rides The Green Hornet!”

Making Mescalero: Part 2

Just a short update on my Old West, south-of-the-border town, Mescalero. Over the past month or so I completed work on a couple of two-story structures. The basic process is the same as in Part One, but here are the differences.

As you can see above, I constructed the frame of the buildings the usual way. I knew I would need stairs to reach the second level, and making them out of foamboard seemed to be pretty time consuming. Instead, I used a hot wire cutter to sculpt them out of insulation foam. Then I just glued them to the side of the building. Because they’re adobe buildings, I wasn’t all that concerned about uneven edges or the less-than perfect rise and run of the staircase. And neither should you be.

After applying the wood filler, the buildings looked like this. I constructed them so the roof could lift off of both stories, allowing access to both levels inside. You’ll note I also made a large one-story building and some ruined walls at the same time. Why not?

These are the finished buildings in this wave. I made the doors out of balsa wood and flocked the cork bases with sand and PVA, plus I added some dead static grass to them. I liked the look so much that I went back and added the static grass to all the Wave 1 buildings too.

I’m still working on the Church and Stables. When everything is done, I’ll post a photo of the whole town, including the ruins. More updates soon!

A Fistful of Kung Fu: First Wave

A couple of months back I picked up a copy of Osprey’s A Fistful of Kung-Fu in the hopes that I would one day play it. Lord knows I have enough miniatures to jump right in (they just needed to be painted first), and whatever I didn’t have would give me an excuse to order more of Hasslefree’s Martial Artists.

After perusing the rulebook, I have to say I’m left with a definite “meh” feeling about the rules. The fluff and concept is terrific, the official miniatures by Northstar rock, but mechanics-wise it seems to be a very chart-heavy game. In other words, it seems like you’ll be spending a lot of time looking shit up as opposed to playing. Note that I haven’t actually PLAYED the game yet. These are only my first impressions.

Anyway, I don’t own any of the Northstar miniatures, but I have more than a few others can can serve well for this game. Above are Shaolin Monks by Rattrap/Brigade Games. These guys are for use in their .45 Adventure game (and in fact will be used for that purpose on this very blog, coming soon!). The sculpts on these suffer from some obvious proportion issues, but who cares? Even though I’m happy with the results, I found them difficult to paint. Orange is one bitch of a color to shade well. At least for me. The figure in the foreground is Osato, from Hasslefree. The Asian-themed terrain was a cheap find at Petco: clearance terrarium pieces!

Up next are some of my old miniatures. I painted these about two years ago, and I notice some obvious flaws. In fact, I’m thinking of repainting them but I have too much to do. On the left is Hasslfree’s Tanshiro, facing off against Golgo Island’s White Tiger. You can get both from Hasslefree nowadays.

I’ve found that some of the best miniatures for AFOKF come from the Clix lines. Above on the left is a repainted IndyClix Boon Sai Hong, facing off against a Marvel Clix Shang-Chi. I should note that Clix and some of the Hasslefree martial artists have a wide stance, so basing them requires a 30mm base as opposed to 25mm. So if you play with rules lawyers, beware. As a lifelong Master of Kung-Fu fan, I really enjoyed repainting and repurposing Shang-Chi.

Reaper’s Chan Li (50190) from their Chronoscope Line, bears more than a passing resemblance to the late, great Bruce Lee. I painted him in homage to Enter the Dragon, complete with gashes.

HA-DO-KEN!!!!! I couldn’t resist picking up a starter pack of Street Fighter Heroclix just for Ryu, on the left. I’m not a huge fan of the clear plastic energy effects so common on Clix miniatures, but this is an exception. I repainted and rebased him and he’s currently my favorite miniature I have painted for AFOKF. Facing off against him is Hasslefree’s Tetsuhara. I painted him to look like everyone’s favorite sumo wrestler, E. Honda. You can see the difference in base size above (Tetsuhara’s got a pretty wide stance). Ryu is on a 25mm base, Honda (Tetsuhara) is on a 30mm base.

Another shot of Honda.

And one more of Ryu.

Last in this wave of miniatures is a familiar face: Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. To be more accurate, this is RAFM’s Burt Jackson, Trucker from their USX Modern Day Heroes line. Northstar made their own limited edition not-Jack Burton, and it was great, but it was only available if you ordered all the starters and doesn’t seem to be available anymore. I had RAFM’s version for a while, so I recently painted him up and posed him next to the cab of his Pork Chop Express. Hope you like him.

Maybe someday I’ll get around to actually playing A Fistful of Kung-Fu, and then I can more accurately give a review. In the meantime, it gives me an excuse to paint more martial artists!

Dead Dick's Tavern and Temporary Lodging

The Angry Piper's miniatures and gaming blog.