And now for something Very Pirate!

Many of you will have seen this at Lead Adventure Forum.  For those who have not, more pirate goodness below.  Meantime, I will have photos of some 'finished' figures very soon - except for the bases (see earlier posts for why).  Enjoy and stay tuned, good things coming soon to whet your appetites.

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=34774.0

Absolutely Nothing To Do with Pirates. But WOW!

I found this link while browsing TMP, its toy soldiers, not miniatures, but anyone who likes gaming and painting and terrain will enjoy this.  Simply amazing - and astounding diversity of subjects.  Open when you have plenty of time to peruse - and be sure have a something to wipe away your drool!

http://www.playsetaddict.com/index1008.htm

Hey - how long have you been looking?  Don't you have other things to do?

The New Map - in a bit of hurry

Oh, the things I do for you unruly lot.  Here is the map.  Can you believe how low some pirates will stoop?  One of them stole the 'p' from Spring right off the map.  Scurrilous scum!

This was a quick bit of work to at least show the new map - I'm afraid it may be a bit hard to read and is slightly askew - will look to improve it when I have more time.  Mostly just wider, some islands bigger, and the new and better names (and thanks to those from TMP who suggested many more names than I could use here).

A few samplings and a Sense Of Scale (SOS ?)

So, the above photo shows some of the gathered materials.  The roll at the back is the Great Canvas still in its wrapper - 6' wide and 24 (or is it 25) yards long.  In front of that are four gallons of paint to color the canvas.  And then there are some sample cards for the various colors of paint selected for the project - the "Artist's" palette, if you will.  The orange bucket is filled with 50 pounds of sand.  And there is a small sample pot of paint and a bit of styrofoam used to test some techniques.  And between the brown and green color cards is a piece of wood used to test out the sand as texture.  And all of this sits on a sample bit of canvas painted with the Montana paints - abandoned as way too expensive as mentioned earlier.

This is a close up of the colors chosen to paint the great canvas, four different blues to represent deepest to shallowest and white to give some tops to the waves (and the leftover white to paint up the base for the wife's Xmas village).  I might, if I can find the right one, add a blue-green into the mix between the darkest and next tone of blue.

And here are the browns on top and the greens on bottom - with the sand texture test strip.  Almost certainly, many of you will not get a clear sense of color as a result of the way different computers translate color.  I can only assure you that the selection works for my 'eye' and should give some nice results.  Or, I can so hope.

And this photo is to just give you a sense of scale of the what size the final board will be.  From the front edge where you can see the shadow of the camera touch the canvas to those white cabinets in the background is 24' (the first cut of the canvas) and, of course, 6' wide.  The left background is a 2' x 4' and two inch thick piece of insulation foam that is the approximate size of the 5 largest islands.  And on the right is one of the ships for the game.

From closer in to see the 'far end' of things.  There is a spray of plastic plants to the left of the sytrofoam and to the right are four buidlings and a strip of figures and a barrel pile.  And the ship sitting off shore about 3' away.

And, finally, a reverse shot showing the canvas going out into the bright autumn sun.

Hope this helps you visualize what we are up to here in Scrubyward Isle-ville.  Speaking of, when done here on this computer, I'm off to the other one to work on the long promised revised map.  If I get it done in time, I will post it today.  Enjoy.

Have you registered yet (without the fee anymore!)?  Register early to ensure yourself a place in the game.  The momentum is building strong.

You do remember the overall size of the game, right?  What you just saw above is only one half of the game board to be!

Just for fun.

Here is a link to another game in France, not so fancy but in English and looks like it was good fun.

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=34623.0

Terrain is picking up speed, photos in a week or two.  Project faces the holiday slog but we'll keep making progress.

ConQuest Sacramento change...a good one!

The fine folks who run the ConQuest Sacramento convention have decided to waive the "small fee" for this game that they'd plan to have in place.  Still a very good idea to register in advance for those of you planning to attend to ensure yourself a spot in the game.  And for those of you too far away to attend, stay tuned.

Should be more exciting stuff up on the blog in the next few days - you know, the kind of stuff that has photographs with it.  And I haven't forgotten the updated map, I just haven't had time to work on it as I've been working on other elements of the game.  But it will get done and posted at some point.  Now off to "real life" for a bit and then back to the project later today.

A link to a Kapiti Fusilier's pirate setup

If you are not familiar with the Kapiti Fusiliers it's time you became so.  Surprising how much talent comes out of those two islands that make up the bulk of New Zealand.  This is from Roly and it looks like a lot of fun - what pirates, and games, should be all about:

http://arteis.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/a-pirates-life-for-me/

Enjoy it - and if you know of other blogs I should include, leave a comment and I'll take a look and see about posting it here.