Victoria: Miniature World

Work took me to Victoria for two busy days this past week. I didn't get a chance to visit Fort Rodd Hill or the naval museum. But I did get an hour to walk through Miniature World. Now in its 42nd year of operation, Miniature world is a collection of dioramas and doll houses on the main floor of the Empress Hotel.

There were a lot of dioramas. This one is of Caen, 1944 in 1/35. The level of detail is pretty amazing and hard to convey with just a few pictures. Note the partisans about to make trouble for the tanker (who really should be buttoned up).

Many of the displays have an interactive component. The 1918 British airbase has buttons that cause the props of the planes that are taxiing to spin. This is 1/72 and on the other side of the diorama (which you can see as you wind your away through the exhibits are three companies of Airfix troops moving up a road.

There are a number of oddball scales. This scene in a building interior in slightly bigger than 54mm. The full street scene is a celebration of the defeat of Napoleon (I think) but all of the insides of the buildings are also populated and lit.

There is a lovely 30YW attack with folks falling off the drawbridge. There are hundreds and hundreds of figures in this display. It looks 1/72 and there are a couple of figures that look like the Airfix Robin Hood kit. But others look metal.

There is a 100-foot 1885 railway exhibit which takes you across the country as it winds along. Below is (now) east Calgary. This display also have a day and night sequences with a starry sky.

You can also see Winnipeg as the troops disembark to repress the Riel Rebellion. This is a narrow section that relies a lot on a painted backdrop (alas, perhaps the weakest of the backdrops).

This is a z-scale representation of the valley of the castles, featuring about a dozen German castles. Note the operating gondola in the background.

There is an interesting Battle of Britian display looking out of the back of a Dornier or Henkel. This uses forced perspective to create much greater depth than display would normally allow.

A better use of forced perspective is this shot of coal mining. Up close we have 1/87-scale stuff and in the space of about four feet, it drops down to 2mm building. The picture does not do this justice--up close, it is quite convincing as the valley drops away from you.

The most impressive display is the multi-phase circus display. I snapped two shots of the largest of the displays. Below you can see the circus coming to two in 1/87-scale and doing a grand parade. there are lots of visual gags, like the guys washing the window of the display case. This set has three operating training and took 7000 hours of work.

As you move down the ling, you can see the big top and mid-way and then the industrial yard. This picture mostly shows you the scope of the display (in the background you can see the city from the picture above).

All told, a very nice way to spend an hour. I only took pictures of a fraction of what was there. There are also doll houses and all manner of other large-scale dioramas.

Up next: 1/72 Celts and maybe some gaming with Bruce in Tuesday.

1/72 Celts

Today 24 Strelet's Celts have rolled off the production line. These fellows are part of my miniaturizing Commands and Colors Ancients project.

Overall, nice figures but with a fair bit of flash to clean up. The figures are a bit two-dimensional. To off-set that, there are a couple of poses in this set (more come tomorrow) with separate weapons. These have more depth but tend to be very perpendicular (if that makes any sense).

That said, I like the beefy nature of these figures to the thinner poses of, say, HaT--they remind me of metals and go well with some MiniArt Germans I just primed. Nothing wrong with Hat--I have a couple boxes of those to paint up as well.

Up next: The rest of these Celts are being based. And I have some more 1/72 that is primed and ready to paint, including some US 7th Cavalry and some ancient Germans.

1/72 elephants

Work, the garden and soccer season have cut into my gaming but the hobby room has not been entirely collecting dust. I have some new stuff finishing up this week.

First up are these old metal elephants I previously panted but recently rebased for 1/72 Commands and Colors Ancients. Not entirely sure what kind of elephants these ares but paired with a light footman, they should do well enough for representing elephant units.

Up next: Some 1/72 Celts by Strelets (likely in two parts as the basing proicess was broken up by travel). Then on to some 1/72 US 7th Cavalry and then some 1/72 MiniArt Germans.

EWG Club Night May 21

We had eight guys out at the club last night, with four games running. There was some Warmachine, a 6mm game of something or other, a 15mm game of Maurice and some CCA.

Dave and I had two goes at Granicus from the first CCA expansion. In game 1, the Persians were very aggressive ad then ran out of card. Alexander eventually came forward and stomped to a 6-3 victory.

In game 2, the Persians were very patient, Alexander hung back while the main body of troops crossed the river, and repelled a Persian attack. Then Alexander swooped forward and bagged a Persian leader for the win (again 6-3). Overall, a tie.

The Maurice game looked good--it was a double-sized game and you can see Scott's troops atop the hill, pushing Bruce towards the right of the table. This was still going on while I left.

Up next: I am making slow progress on some 1/72 Germans as the nice weather keeps me away from the painting table.

Winter terrain commission

I took on a terrain commission a few months back to make some 15mm pieces for a Flames of War board. These included some summer wheat fields and well as hills and forests for a winter game.

The hills turned out okay. My approach to simulating snow worked well on small bases but not so great on larger terrain pieces. So the simplest piece (hills) took a long time and entailed a number of false starts. In then end, they will do. I wonder if foam hills painted white wouldn't have worked better than the more elaborate textured approach I took?

The five forest pieces, by contrast, went quite quickly. I bought some N-scale railway trees and frosted them with a bit of white spray paint. I then drilled out some magnets (sprayed white) and glued the trees into them. Each tree them sits on a washer I glued onto the base plate. This allows the owner to re-arrange the trees and also take them off for easier storage and to position troops in.

I decided to put a small number of trees on each base. Really, the bases simply denote the boundaries of the forest so all it needs to do is hint at rough ground and trees. Some rocks, trunks, grass and snow do the heavy lifting.

All of the pieces fit within an 8x10" box and I tried to make the pieces a natural shape.

I also did one that was thinner to represent more of a treed ridge line. Hopefully the owner likes them and they will stand up to play.

Up next: Some 1/72 ancient Germans have been patiently waiting for some attention. I also need to clean my hobby room as terrain making is bloody messy!

EWG club night May 7

We had 11 guys out at the club last night with four games running. This was an excellent turnout given that everyone played all day on Saturday at MayDay.

There were games of FUBAR and Warmachine that I did not get pictures of. Dave hosted a game of Big Battle DBA using a late-Roman army facing down some horde or other.

Scott and I played two games of 1812: The Invasion of Canada. The games split, with the first one seeing an American win in about 1813. Below you can see the hordes of Detroit have crossed over and entered the western flank.

Game two saw a British win, again in 1813. And interesting bit of play in the east, with a British army sitting in Albany blocking American reinforcements while an American army besieges and sacks Montreal to block British reinforcements. Montreal was eventually relieved and then operations along the thinly held frontier commenced.

Below you can see the Americans surging up towards the Niagara peninsula. Eventually there were landings, with Scott drawing every damned boat card there was in his deck. I eventually cottoned onto this gimmick myself but Scott clearly played the lakes better than I did.

Up next: I have four winter hills about ready to finish. Then onto some 15mm forest pieces. And then back to some 1/72 ancients.

MayDay 2013

The Edmonton Wargame Group hosted its 9th annual MayDay gaming convention yesterday. We have about 80 people through the doors participating. The main hall included two tourneys (40k and warmachine) plus open gaming. We also ran a large silent auction in the hallway to defray club costs over the year.

During the morning session, I put together the auction and then jumped between observing two games. Sean from Calgary ran a game of Gaslight. Below is the camel corp, which went on quite a tear.

Dave hosted a game of El Cid-themed War and Conquest. I thought the Christians were in for a rough time during the first few turns but then they managed to punch some knights through the Muslim line and execute a flanking attack on the blackguard. Marginal win for El Cid in the end. One more turn and it would have been a major win.

In the afternoon, Mike and Ward brought out a large game of X-wing. I have heard good things and was keen to try. Mike coached Wiley (below) and I through a Vader v Skywalker dogfight. Wow, what a slick system--a bit like Wings of War but with the clunkiness worked out.

After Wiley's efforts to Force-choke me failed, the dogfight commenced. Since neither of us had played we had a couple of minor traffic jams that (fortunately) tipped things my way. Some interesting tactical things to be aware of--using the Y-Wing's Ion cannon to tie up a ship for the X-wing can some in and waste it next turn, for example. All told, a great game.

The X-wing continued with a large battle featuring all manner of ships but I steppe dout to chat with some gaming buddies I hadn't seen in a awhile.

I bailed mid-way through the evening session but snapped a picture of Justin's Vietnam terrain, which was very nice.

Terry put on a game of Pirates which looked great.

Thanks to the organizers and tournament and game hosts--perhaps the most successful MayDay yet!

Up next: Working on 15mm winter terrain this evening after spending the afternoon working on some 2000mm summer terrain. And I have some more 1/72 stuff to get to eventually. And our regular club night runs on Tuesday.