World War Risus is Available

My Risus-based wargaming rules are available in a more organized form finally.

You can download the PDF and review it to your heart's content.

No exploration of including standard Risus PCs in a battle have been included, but my inclination is that this would not be difficult, at least if you don't mind a Pulp-y feel.

Here are some first thoughts on it:

• Treat each character as a unit. 
• They don't take morale checks.
• They can use any cliche, appropriate or not, for initiative and combat, including using different cliches each turn. 
• All damage is recovered when the battle ends. 
• They attack enemy units at the lowest level possible (if you're smallest unit is the platoon, then when the PC attack's, they attack the whole platoon). So yes, Bob the Hairdresser can take out an entire platoon.
• They can use the team-up rules from Risus.

Cheap and Easy Ruins + Some Infantry

Continuing the project I began here, I coated two of the styrofoam-chunks-on-CD bases with black acrylic. 

Problem: The paint easily scrapes off of the CD surface.

Solution: Spread PVA (polyvinyl acetate. I used regular ol' Elmer's white glue) onto the CD, and let dry. THEN paint black on CD. Works like a charm.

Last night, I dry brushed with some light grey craft paint, and then an even dryer brush of the same paint but with white paint added (50/50).

Those cat hairs are not on your screen. Trust me.

I'm pretty happy with them, although they do not at all fit my usual style. It seemed silly to throw out the sytrofoam when my housemate had so much of it for free. I could probably cover a 3x3 table easily with the amount I have, maybe more.

I think, with the outer smooth level picked/scrapped/broken off, they could possibly make decent bocage as well. I have a definite "toy style" idea for that already, so I will likely stick to ruins.

Also pictured are the four Toy Soldiers of San Diego US infantry I have completed, so far, to go with my Britains. 

They were coated with PVA for primer, painted (mostly Vallejo, some craft), and then coated with PVA again for protection. I'll probably still hit them with Dulcoate - some pooled PVA in deep crevices got kind of shiny.

I dry brushed their bases to get them to match the Britains bases - not something I'd have done ordinarily, but they do blend in pretty well.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

A few weeks/month ago, I stumbled on a paper craft site that had a paper evergreen tree design, designed to be printed and cut on one of those automatic doo-dads (yes, doo-dad). The pieces were then assembled - the automatic cutting doo-dad presumably makes the pieces uniform so the edges match up.

The result is something like my Seussian trees, but with a much simpler assembly.

Then, a serendipitous acquisition of a discounted pack of shades of green cardstock at Michael's set the plans in motion: i would use my mechanical cutting doo-dad, i.e. scissors, and attempt to replicate the idea.

Behold:

Dawn patrol.

Just what I wanted!

What the above picture shows is 3 different trees, made by three different methods. And I have tried many more. I'm not uber-concerned with ratty, not perfectly aligned edges (from wargaming distance they aren't noticeable) but I am looking for a faster method to make each tree, so I can really crank them out.

As an aside, the great downfall of the craft foam Seussian trees is how long they take to assemble.

One method I hit upon, that seems to work well is illustrated below:

Here is a real-life example:

 At first my plan was to use it as a simple triangle, no "boughs."

If this was a mid-century modern wargaming setup, maybe that would be fine, but to me it looked like a paper airplane on end.

So, a few snips of the mechanical cutting doo-dad and voila!

They mix in well with my craft foam trees, so I haven't lost that effort. At minimum, I'm shooting for a dozen trees, but two dozen is probably ideal. 

At 1-2 sheets of cardstock, depending on the width, I can make something like 50-100 trees, at a cost of $0.03 usd  to $0.06 usd, per tree!

The Upside-Down Flintrubble Bubble Cake (Not Really)

I found myself with an abundance of packing Styrofoam (the bead-y kind, not peanuts or anything) and I knew that I would do something with it, I just didn't know what.

That was, until I saw this video from TheDungeonMasterG on making "no-trouble rubble."

He makes a pretty small disk to mount the rubble on, but he's working with 28mm minis, I'm working with 1/32 figures. So, CDs it is!

I'm clearly not done yet (painting black and grey/white dry brushing remain), but you can get the idea:

The wooden "beams" are fireplace matchstick pieces

I suppose if I was playing a Stalingrad scenario or something and snow was on the ground, these would work as is. 

In retrospect, I'm not a huge fan of the round basing for the rubble,but I have a ton of blank CDs I'll never use for anything.