Bones from the past
Painted the four skeletons from the ’89 HeroQuest box using the Midwinter Minis tutorial on youtube. I’m pleased with the result and take it as a re-entry into painting.
The next parts will hopefully follow soon.
Goodbye Classic Battletech
Two days ago I finished the last of the classic BattleTech novels. The series ends with volume 61, Endgame, or Finale, in its german translation.
Finishing a good read is sometimes like waving goodbye to a good friend. This series had its ups and downs but in general I enjoyed reading it. The FedCom civil war was not a highlight to end the series but Operation Snake and Bulldog, fighting the Clans in their own territory, was pure suspense.
The first twelve novels were a re-read for me from around 30 years ago and I stopped with the Blood of Kerensky triology then. Some of the best! I always thought Classic BatteTech died with Hanse Davion but that was not true. It just became different. I grew older with the other characters, Ardan Sortek, Andrew Redburn, Morgan Kell and my somehow favourite Theodore Kurita. Heir to the Dragon is, for me, still one of the best novels in the series. And why did the Gray Death Legion have to perish in such a way?
I was pleasantly suprised by the MechWarrior books. I really liked the stories that show a more backside way of life of the BT universe. These books put me in the mood to play a Mechwarior RPG… maybe one day when there is time.
Now the last twenty books or so will be packed in a box with some other goodies for a very good friend who lent all the books to me.
One of the goodies, 3D printed:
Old adventures end but new adventures await. For the time coming in form of The best gamer ever… as some call it.
Dirty ol‘ boxes
On my last visit to my dad’s place I brought some very old boxes with childhood stuff. One is this cardboard box with the pitiful remains of scale models from childhood and teens.
The AH-64 Apache is the old Revell 1/48 model. I built it in my late teens and was very proud of it. I never built such a big model before and it was a centrepiece of my room on a closet. While buidling it late at night, I cut a finger very badly with a carpet cutter I was using as a modell tool. Blood was dripping from my hand. While my parents were asleep in the neighbour room I ran to the bathroom and tried to stop the bleeding without making too much fuss. It was really a bad cut, I can still see the scar.
Now it’s a bit broken and the canopy never came together very well. It reminds of the days when I dreamed of being a helicopter pilot.
This old Junkers Ju-87 must be a Revell but I’m not absolutely sure. This is from my mid-teens. The paint job is not too bad with the sky blue on the underside. However, the decals tell it’s a DAK machine so it shouldn’t be green. No idea where I took the painting scheme from. Maybe from a catalogue and I just liked the colors and the rhino. Now also a little bit broken.
The old SEPECAT Jaguar from Airfix. Most likely I will built it again when Airfix releases it in its vintage range. This was probably the first time in my life I ever tried a camo scheme with stripes. And as in the old days, I never painted the cockpit and canopy. The green is strangely glossy. One of the old Airfix/ Humbrol enamel paints I used.
Another kit I was so proud of was this Revell Jet Ranger. I was so excited about helicopters as a child. As all the decals bring the colours, I didn’t have to paint it. And it was mostly the painting that ruined the models for me.
What is the name of this ugliness? Airfix page help…! So, it’s the OLD Airfix Vickers Wellington. This was a gift from my godmother and her partner. For me this is the ugliest airplane of WWII. The reason I kept it for so long is the paint job. I was really satisfied with how it turned out at that time. I remember that I worked very closely with the instructions to achieve an authentic result.
This is an old Revell Phantom. Not so much left of it now. Probabaly the first and only time I painted the pilots and cockpit. I remember buying the orange colour only for the pilots. Again, not so bad a paint job considering the time I built it.
As I said, these are only the rests of what I once owned. There was one old Revell Tarawa I threw away and lots of 1/72 tanks from Airfix and Matchbox. The tanks were either thrown away if in bad shape but most I sold on ebay during my twenties.
I did some modelling when I restarted my wargaming years but I never saw Games Workshop kits as „real“ modelling. It took me many years until I touched another scale modelling kit which was a gift from a friend, a Revell AH-1. When I built that one, I realized how much fun it is for me and since then I built kits sporadically. And as with the wargaming stuff, kits grow on piles!
This story is mostly to remind myself for later years because I will throw away the old pieces now. No need to shed a tear! It would be easy to buy again and built in much better shape. Anyway, I have to say, modern kits are a much nicer built. I made this experience with the Airfix F-80 Shooting Star from the vintage range I finished some weeks ago.
When Airfix announced the vintage range, I was really excited about it. But, frankly, now I understand why many models never turned out nice or weren’t even finished when I was a kid. They are just not easy to built and takes a lot of effort to do it well. On the one hand there is skill (Which I surely did not have then and still working on!), on the other hand there are modern modelling techniques. CAD and 3D-scanning makes the sprues literally fall together. In the past they surely did not. But also „Hurrah!“ to nostalgia!
Err…, well, what is this?
That’s why I love flea markets! I was very surprised to find this game on a flea market in Rheine in summer 2021. A german cosim? Obviously quiet old. The name of the author is written on the box, what I consider a rather modern development. Who knows any boardgame designers from the times before Klaus Teuber? In addition, topic and partially the mechanic of the game is explained on the front cover. What makes this cover rather look like the backside of the box (Which is completely white!) as if the producers wanted to explain what the spectator is looking at. I had to have it!
For 2 Euros I couldn’t go wrong, I thought, without having any big expectation. And what a bummer! Now that I had the leisure to have a closer look (Nearly a year later!), I found out that it is incomplete. Some dice, markings and, most importantly, some of the ships are missing. It’s really not a nice affair to sell old games without any infomation that it could not be complete. Well, that’s how it is now but, in a way, it paid off.
So I found out that Seeschlacht, maybe Naval Battle or Battle at Sea in English, really has an entry on Board Game Geek. I never expected that for old forgotten games published very long before the internet era. But you can all find them there. All the games from my earliest childhood days! You remember Gran? What a bother! Ever heard of Captain Future? The boardgame, I mean? How much I wanted to have that one! But our toys store (Late Vorgerd.) was unable to order it. Unimaginable nowadays when everything is just a few clicks away. Anyway, according to BBG it’s quite boring and has nothing to do with the animated series, besides of the name. Thank you, BBG, for solving that trauma! 😉
Back to Seeschlacht, published in 1975, BBG describes it as an „abstract naval combat and merchant game“. Well, „abstract“ is not what is usually on my wishlist and at the moment I really do not know what to do with this one. I guess I can substitute the missing parts somehow and might game with it a few times. But that’s for a later date…
Dirty old box
It doesn’t know it yet. But it has to go!
But before that, what’s lurking inside?
Strangely coloured apparatus! Not so bad a paintjob for some teenagers in the early ’90s. Before mini painting became a science and youtubers revealing to us the newest and hottest techniques of how to paint your minis on a daily basis.
Let see what I can make of these. Maybe I will give it a try to strip off the paint. In any case, useful for destroyed Titans, scenery items and objectives. Also, I could practice some rearrangement of the torso on them. (Frankentitan?) The bases are really well done and in good condition. Maybe spare ones for bases in less good condition.
Until that time all that stuff goes into another box, old but not so dirty. That is the place where they once came from.
Vive le Printemps!
During the Easter holidays we spent some days at family in southern France. We had wonderful 20 degree celsius most of the time and there is a lot of gaming related stuff going on there. We lived near Béziers and visited the medieval town several times. A wonderful place for a fantasy setting!
Béziers was also the hometown of Jean Moulin, an important leader of the Résistance during the second World War. He is said to have united the several factions of resistance in France. Moulin died in custody of the Nazis before the end of the war but in Béziers he is still present.
Close by, Narbonne is another beautiful town which kept its medieval flair. On our visit there we stumbled across an exhibition with medieval costumes at the cathedral. They were made by a group of reenacters based on contemporary sources, old pictures and scripts. Great inspiration for our next visits to medieval markets!
On Easter Monday we were on our way back home but had to wait for our flight in Montpellier. So we walked around the city and came to the magical toy shop of the old-fashioned sort. Of course it was closed this day. Only window shopping this time but we had been there before.
That saved me some money and, for sure, the next trip to wonderful Occitanie is not far away.
The best game ever!!!(?)
Well, some people call Heroquest like that. Surely in one or the other way it is the role model for all modern dungeon crawler boardgames and the nostalgia around it can not be denied. A gamer’s expertise would somehow be incomplete if you had never played it at least once. Nevertheless, I think, you don’t have to like it! But it’s cult!
This 1ed. box was another gift from a fellow gamer. Intended as a Christmas present, it went on its own quest. Delivery services were so busy in December that the service person put a wrong name on the delivery card (We weren’t home that moment.) and that simple mistake made it impossible to retrieve the parcel from the post office. So it went back to sender, was resend and, finally, weeks after Christmas arrived safely at my place. That taught me a lesson about Heroquest: You may not love it but you don’t want to lose it!
Dating back from 1989 it is in great condition. Nearly nothing is broken and what is, can easily be repaired. Even the furniture is complete with all the small parts, mice and skulls, that are much sought after on Ebay, I was told. With it came the add-on Karak Varn with some of the figures still on sprue. This box was long forgotten in a barn full of many good games, the story goes on, only to be found by a true believer in the best game ever!
Now, what to do with this rediscoverd treasure? Certainly it is going to be painted one day though that might be in the far or very far future. The other plan is to play it via internet as my benefactor and me are far away from each other and meet only rarely nowadays. The machinations of the game make it easy to play it via camera and microphone. Time will come!
Dude, where’s my mini?
As of today, I’m an active contributor to the Lost Minis Wiki. For a reason I do not remember I stumbled across this site a few day ago and immediately fell in love with it. At the beginning it was great fun to look at old minis I wanted to have as a youth but could never afford in the early days. Nevertheless, at certain points, I realized I own some stuff that is not pictured or even listed on LMW. So I wrote to the admin this week that I wanted to contribute and got my login details within a day. Originally I had only planned to upload some pictures but then I spent this whole afternoon and early evening on creating a complete new page. And this is the result:
I was quiet surprised not to find this 33-years old legendary box there on LMW although there are thousands of minis from over a 1000 manufacturers listed. But, I guess, metal minis last much longer and most of the plastics went down the garbage chute in the past decades. So, probably, nobody really posseses a representable example to show on a wiki anymore.
I never did a wiki page before and I had to spend some hours before (almost!) everything was fine. Luckily, the admins left some useful tutorials for editing pictures and the the code could easily be adopted (copied and edited!) from other contributors. Nevertheless, it took me some time to figure it out how it all works.
These old Space Orks weren’t always mine. Again, a certain old gaming mate gave them to me about a year ago after resting for more than 20 years in his place. And it is complete! No piece is missing or broken. These unharmed sprues are likely to become an Ork warband for a scifi skirmish game. I had planned to write a blog entry about this box before but only today was the day and here are the pics:
36 minis in a box! And we did not even pay (what is now!) 15€ for these boxes, may it be Orks, Imps or Squats. While writing these lines, a box of 11 Ork boyz is 35€! Ok, agreed, a lot has changed since then. Nevertheless, let see what we can make of them!
One post a week
Only one post! Shouldn’t be too much as there is much going on on the hobby front. Today I got these two wonderful boxes from an old gaming mate full of gaming memories. This is stuff from our earliest tabeltopping days with some surprises I didn’t know about.
The Titans are the ones I missed earlier in the Adeptus Titanicus unboxing. The metals came as a real surprise to me, including the Ratling sniper. I always wanted to have one! The first-edition Imps are the first tabletop army I battled against with my old Squats who still rest in boxes upstairs. Maybe there is some new battle ahead in the future.
Adeptus Unboxicus
Earlier this year an old gaming buddy gave me his first-edition Adeptus Titanicus from 1988. This box rested longer with him than I know him. We never played it together but, as far as I know, it saw a lot of action.
Today was the day that I opened the box for deeper inspection. However, I was already warned that there wasn’t much left in the box, namely the rulebook and the Titan models.
Strangely, when looking at the Titan models in the scenery on the back, you can see they are different from the usual old plastic Warlord models. Recognizable especially when looking at the legs‘ armor plates where you can find much more detail on the models in action. This difference is also true for the unpainted model in the circle which shows the standard model. Even in the old Citadel catalogues I couldn’t find a model that is exactly the same as in the scenery. An „unseen“ Titan?
The big prize was the seven polystyrene buildings which are still in good condition. They will go nicely with the new AT buildings. I can’t see any difference in size despite the smaller scale of the old edition.
Only one Titan model was still in the box and I’m not really sure what to make of it. The bases can be restorated and there are a lot of heads and weapon options. No idea where all the Titans went but I have about ten of the old plastic Warlord models in my collection, in addition to some metal Reavers and Warhounds. Enough for epic battles!
Next step is to finish some of my Titans already under painting and play some solo games to learn the rules.
Cheers from here to an old gaming buddy who let me have his old stuff! The AT box was not the only thing. So more to come.