Thursday, 10 October 2013
Project Spotlight: Modern Combat
It’s been a while since I’ve posted
an update and I know it’s long overdue. The demands of family, real life, and a return
to my hobby workbench to work on some lead miniatures, have taken me away from
my plastic pursuits. However, I’ve
decided to break from the mountain of lead, buck down and re-dedicate some time
to Lego wargaming for a spell.
This time around, I’m posting the
first of several “project spotlights” focusing on some of the Lego periods I’m
gaming in, and the toys for each. The first spotlight focuses on modern combat.
There’s tons of great stuff out there for modern minifigs and the selection
keeps getting better and better all the time. The images below are show some of
the figures I’m using for my “theatre” of operation. All minfigs pictured are
customs done by yours truly.
A recent discovery of “Lego
Compatible” companies like Sluban, Cobi, Oxford
Blocks, etc have opened up vehicle opportunities as well since I don’t
possess the “skills” necessary to custom build any vehicles using actual Lego.
These knock-off brick companies solve that issue for me, putting everything I
need including instructions in one big box. The prices aren’t that bad either,
compared to Lego box sets. I’ll feature vehicles in a future Project Spotlight.
Well that's it for this update. I'm hoping to have some more stuff to share soon enough. In the meantime, feel free to follow my blog, leave a comment or drop me a line if you have something to share.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Rules Writing, Tabletop Scenery and Other Such Musings
Well it’s been a busy
week or so around my place. A move to a new house and some unpacking under my
belt, I figured it was high time to get another update done. Shortly before the
move I was able to get my simple, quick-play Lego skirmish rules Little Plastic Heroes finished, and
started work on a more elaborate set. Writing homebrew rules is very rewarding
and I’ve been doing it since I first got into gaming eons ago.
Another thing I’ve
been working on as of late is scenery for Lego wargames. I really love the
minifigure for gaming purposes, but not too keen on having my tabletop littered
with standard Lego bricks. That said, I started looking into an alternative
last year for scenery, but wanted something that still had that “plasticky”
sort of look to it. I immediately thought of Playmobil. Their trees and rock
formations are virtually scale-free and perfect for Lego wargaming scenery. I
was lucky enough to get quite a haul of Playmobil rocks off eBay and painted
them to match my tabletop. With a few dozen Lego tan prickly bushes and a few
Playmobil dead trees, I was able to put together a pretty good looking table. The
plan for this scenery is for modern desert and wild west games. Thanks to the
release of the new Lone Ranger sets
and minifigs, this period has climbed to the top of my gaming queue. Pardon the bad lighting but below you get the idea of how my desert themed tabletop looks.
I’ve started doing
some work on some jungle terrain and will feature some of that in a further
update. Jungle will be used for Lego pirates and maybe even some pulp
adventure. Who knows? I’m not the biggest fan of the colors the Playmobil palm
trees come in, but I have a good buddy who’s agreed to do some airbrush work
and “fix” that issue for me. Stay tuned to see how that works out. I don’t
intend to paint all my plastic scenery but rather paint the odd batch of stuff
here and there to make it more visually appealing.
S ome other forms of
terrain/scenery I’ve been considering are urban (for post-apoc and zombie
adventures) and some sci-fi. The urban tabletop will double as a desolate
planet littered with Playmobil scraggly rock formations and GW/Pegasus blast
craters for sci-fi. Of course, that’s a while off and something I’m still
rolling around in my noggin’.
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Give 'Em a Leg to Stand On
One of the things I came across in my
research involving minifigures for gaming use, was ABS plastic stands to help
your minfig stand-up (and stay up) on
the tabletop much like the bases used by lead miniatures. Though these bases
require absolutely NO work to prepare and you can change colors on a whim. This
is perfect if you have different tabletop colors (desert, grass green and
asphalt).
The first ones I purchaed were round bases
from Minfigworld. They have the two pegs for your minifig to stand on, and come
in a pretty wide variety of colors.
Shortly after I’d received my first few
batches of round bases, I was turned onto Catspaw Customs who do hex bases. I’m
a bit of a sucker for hex bases, and the Catspaw ones not only have the two
pegs for your minifigs feet, but they have 2 1x1 size connection points on them
to use to designate wounds (like our group does) or items carried, etc. The
folks at Catspaw also have an interesting article about why Minifigs are better
for gaming than miniatures are. Their
own need for hex stands for their tabletop RPG games is where Catspaw’s
business endeavor started. Like Minifigworld, Catspaw has a descent amount of
colors to choose from, and they are also available without the 2 1x1 connection points.
At the time of this update, the
Catspaw Customs online store doesn’t seem to be working and hasn’t been for over a
week. This is further complicated by Catspaw’s lack of contact details like an
email address or phone number to make them aware of the situation. Hopefully
that rights itself soon.
EDIT: I've been told Castpaw Customs is no longer trading and the sale of these bases will soon be handled by BrickArms. That's good news because these bases are far too nice to disappear from the marketplace.
EDIT: I've been told Castpaw Customs is no longer trading and the sale of these bases will soon be handled by BrickArms. That's good news because these bases are far too nice to disappear from the marketplace.
Labels:
Catspaw Customs,
Minifig World,
minifigure stands
Friday, 17 May 2013
The Plastic Arms Bazaar
I’ve heard from some
folks that they’d like to see pictures in some of my updates, so I’ve included
some with this update. Now I’m not any great photographer by any stretch, but I
have decent digital SLR and I’ll only get better the more pictures I take so
bear with me.
A lot of the companies
out there not only offer weapons, and in many periods, but also helmets, body
armor, equipment, etc. I’ll cover some of the accessories in a future update,
but I wanted to focus this time on weapons. More specifically... modern
weapons. There are four main sellers I get my stuff from and each one not only
carries a wide variety and selection, but the level of customer service and
satisfaction is excellent. As a consumer, that’s important!
The four shops I normally get my modern weapons from are: BrickArms, Si-Dan (aka Minifig Cat), Brick Warriors, and BrickForge. Though I can’t say with 100% certainty, I’m pretty sure BrickArms is among the first minifig weapon makers out there. Brick Warriors is the newest of the companies, but certainly carries its weight as far as what they’ve been churning out product wise and in terms of quality.
BrickArms
has a very good selection of modern era weapons as well, though I’ve found that
they’re hit and miss for size sometimes. I’ve had a couple I ordered that I
thought were going to be bigger but looked decidedly small in my minfig’s hand.
That aside, they have a GREAT variety of pulp era weapons to choose from.
Lugars, Broomhandle Mausers, BARs, Revolvers, etc. Perfect for anyone wanting
to do gaming in the pulp period.
Initially what drew me
to the possibilities minifigs offered for gaming was the sheer selection of
weapons out there being offered by aftermarket manufacturers. I was especially
drawn to the modern weapons. The selection seems to be growing every few months
just since I started collecting. There’s no end to weapons being offered up for
your minifig to wield, and that’s very cool for big kids like me. I think this
is also a good time to mention that modern warfare is my jump off point for
wargaming with minifigues. Certainly not the only period I’ve been collecting for, but my main focus.
The four shops I normally get my modern weapons from are: BrickArms, Si-Dan (aka Minifig Cat), Brick Warriors, and BrickForge. Though I can’t say with 100% certainty, I’m pretty sure BrickArms is among the first minifig weapon makers out there. Brick Warriors is the newest of the companies, but certainly carries its weight as far as what they’ve been churning out product wise and in terms of quality.
Si-Dan, also known as
Minifig Cat, probably produces the widest array of modern weapons. They’re the
only ones who do a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) and a .50 Cal HMG with tripod.
They’re constantly cranking out product every couple of months, and have the
best selection of sub-machine guns, assault rifles, pistols etc. Among Si-Dan’s
modern products are a lot of Vietnam era weapons, which is good for me as the
Vietnam War is a wargaming interest of mine and has been for years. As a side note, Si-Dan also carry the biggest
selection of samurai era weapons, armor and headgear out there.
Brick Warriors and BrickForge have a few modern-ish weapons to choose from,
but these companies seem to mainly cater to the sci-fi and post apocalyptic
crowd. Still, they have lots of relevant goodies aside from weapons for your
minifigs. I particularly like Brick Forge’s Anti-Material Sniper Rifle. It’s a
big sucker, and though it has a more sci-fi feel to it, looks menacing in the
hands of a Special Forces sniper minifig.
Labels:
Brick Warriors,
BrickArms,
BrickForge,
Lego weapons,
Minifig Cat,
minifigures,
Si-Dan,
wargaming
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
It's on like Donkey Kong!
Welcome to my blog, Fantastic Bits of Plastic. The intention
of this blog is to chronicle my journey using Lego Minifigures for tabletop wargaming.
I’ve been gaming in some capacity or another since the early 1980’s. I’ve run
the gamut from RPGs, bookshelf games, board games and in more recent years,
miniatures wargaming. I loved the more 3
dimensional and visual appeal that miniatures added to our games. Soon I found
myself immersed in the “hobby within a hobby” of collecting and painting
figures, building scenery and relevant model kits without doing alot
of...um...”gaming” itself. My interest many periods and in many scales became
somewhat of a runaway train and I found storage of all the completed pieces and
the hit my pocketbook was taking, a bit excessive. Not to mention the growing
mountain of lead that I was amassing (best laid plans and all that). A year or
so ago I’d been elbows deep into a new period and suddenly I just decided to take a break from it
all. All the painting, all the collecting...all of it. I put down the
paintbrush and took a step back. It was around this time I’d come across some
really neat pictures during a Google image search of some wargames being played
using Lego minifigures after a mention of it in an old post on The Miniatures Page.
" Thinking of getting some kind of ready-made, no paint required, re-customizable toy army. I love the idea of arming each figure with an array of weapons, changing them, or making whatever the heck I want (and well lead figs just aren't so accommodating to my never ending whims. Nor are plastic ones, but they are slightly better). The Playmobil figures are bigger, which I like however the minifigs have a greater variety of things to wield as well as helmets and faces, etc." - ETeneibrisLux, The Miniatures Page, 2008
I became really interested in the
possibilities these could lend to my own gaming projects. Perhaps it was the
allure of the toy nature that appealed to my inner child. Or perhaps the
attractive nature of what I call “pick-click-and-play” that Lego minifigures
allow. So I started collecting. And boy did I collect! Slowly of course,
ordering bits here and bits there, but surely. Like lead miniatures, I was
excited to get my parts and pieces in the mail, but unlike lead miniatures, these are ready to go. Much excitement in
the past had been dashed knowing all the work that lay ahead of me basing,
priming, painting, just to get a figure or two on the table. Don’t get me
wrong... I’m still a bit fan of lead figures and wargaming, but not as much
into it as I once was. Now I’m smitten with these little ABS plastic wonders
and how versatile they are. Just
learning what’s out there as far as custom parts, weapons etc has been exciting
and I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve learned all about AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego) and MOCs (My Own
Creation) and we’ve even added an acronym of our own to the lexicon: GULPs (Gamers Using Lego Products)! So
this is just the beginning of my journey and I’m anxious to see what lies
ahead.
Labels:
Lego,
minifigures,
wargaming
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)