Home Counties 1897 - War of The worlds - No place like home 2

Almost at the conclusions of a project I started back in 2018.

At times I felt I'd taken on too much at others I added more aspects to it.

Having planned and started work on the buildings I then saw work by others, so I decided to make dioramas of the house rather than just paint them and place them on the cloth.

All the building bar a scratch built pigsty are from Leven. All of the Scenic barrels & crates, sacks, carts, horses, humans and dogs are from Perfect Six Miniatures as are most of the walls gates and fences with the exception of two types from Leven. The trees and large bushes are from K & M Trees. If you can see any long nettles/tallish plant they are from Boon Town Metals who do an excellent range of plants to enhance your 6mm-28mm projects. The vegetable plots are from Time Cast 'N' scale.

The fence posts are cocktail sticks, the horse posts to tie them up to are pins; and the hedges, flocked flat green scourers.

'The Manor' is the largest though not busiest of the the buildings I have done, which I plan to spread across the gaming table. These walls are from Leven too.

The Manor

Will the churches provide sanctuary?

Windy Miller's home

As ever with an eye to transportation I have planned ahead and made sure all the bases fitted inside the three trays from Commission Figurines which fit inside my Really useful box see this article for details;  My Storage Solution.  

Bottom Tray 50mm deep

Middle tray 50mm deep. 
The middle part of the windmill is in the third tray.

Top Tray 40mm,
Some of the models are 2-3 mm higher than the 40mm, but
there is a little squeeze room in the lid that I often use..

If you wish to see all of the models here is a link  to a file with all the building codes and details of suppliers.

Previous Articles

No place like home
Assembling the forces 1

The beginning

Scam email attempts on my apple account

This is totally unrelated to my gaming life, but worth a mention.

So on the 7th I got this from a scammer purporting to be from Apple.

As it was sent to an account without any connection to Apple it was a no brainer it was a scam, but as a responsible citizen of the WWW I still sent it to reportphishing@apple.com

Note if you hover over the sender email you can who sent it.

Not an apple account, but see how cleverly they copy in the genuine
no-reply@ mail.apple.com
in an attempt to make you click.

What you don't do is click on the verification link.

Unless you want to either:

a) get a trojan or virus on your PC
or
b) hand over your account details and maybe credit card/Bank details

On the 11th I get a follow up,
or so it seems.

Different 'sent from' address but again not Apple's.

This time it was copied to customer@live.com an (MS address).

Yet another attempt to get you to click on the verification link.

Who knows where this then takes you, phishing your apple account details or bank account details or drop in a Trojan. 

Don't know didn't click, why would I?

Again sent to
reportphishing@apple.com but as an image as it refused to allow me to forward the e-mail and link.

For the record I have been on my Apple account as I coincidentally got a statement from them on the correct email account on the same day. Even there I don't click on links, I open a new browser tab and login there.

As I have two factor identification they sent a txt with a PIN number to my linked phone that I have to put in on the web browser before I continue and finish my login.

Surprise surprise I'm not locked out. 

Do setup two factor identification.

Be careful out there.

As a P.S. 

They are persistent little blighters

I got this on the 15th November, same e-mail (which never had any connection to apple).

On a pc/laptop you can quite clearly see the real e-mail address.
It is also offering translation for Czech.

On my iPhone the email isn't displayed it just shows 'Apple ID', but when I click on that twice it takes me to the scammer's e-mail.

Industrial Scenery

Yet again old scenery damaged by time and mouse, plus a little too much moisture in the shed.

Larger pieces of MDF warp.

Originally built almost 20 years ago these tired pieces needed help, which I gave them about 8 years ago.

I'd used pringle boxes for the cylinder shapes, foam board for square building or folded cereal packet cardboard, heavy duty black power cable for the pipes, (bends and keeps shape), square chicken/pet mesh for the fencing, Camembert cheese containers for the large disc shaped containers, lumps of polystyrene, the polystyrene packaging from a new shower pump and finally some of you will see the polystyrene insert from a GW £5 models box, broken and leaking as two sump pools.
(£5 now that is an old GW price for 5 models!)

If it ain't fixed down in my house it ends up as scenery!

Time to rebuild, I decided to rebase in smaller elements but keeping to a multiple of x" so that I could pack them densely together if I chose.

First salvage what you can.

I did so want to salvage the boards too, but their warp was such that I felt I was creating work, so in the bin it went.

As we all know more is better so whilst refreshing the old I decided to build in some more, I was revisiting 40k 4th ed at the time and also had in mind club requirements for infinity player.

New bases all multiples of the small square at the front. It allows you to fit them all together should you wish.

All the salvaged materials re-based.





I use builders caulk all the time. It's a glue, a filler can be sanded and using a wet finger can be smoothed easily.

New ruins using thick corrugated cardboard, masking tape joins the corners, Caulk fills the corrugations in the cardboard.













PVC plumbing pipes for the chimneys.


I've cut polystyrene discs and surrounded with thin card to replace the old Camembert containers. Their thin wood surround was not salvageable and I didn't want to wait whilst I bought more cheese.

What to add for variety? Take a look at some industrial complex photos, especially chemical/petroleum.


Plastic balls from a ball pool stuck onto sections of towel roll tubes.




All painted up and in use.

The Infinity players in our club love the quantity of cover provided.

Mixed in with some of my alien trees

Re-basing my Warmaster Orcs for HC!- Fantasy

I know the phrase 're-basing' brings dread to many, further the idea that Warmaster models might be reused for another game might appal some, but none have been damaged.

However if you have an army that you are going to play in fundamentally a very different way regarding the removal of elements of a unit, then why not go for it. Some will prefer to use sabots, temporary bases to place them on, but foolhardy or not I've decided to go and redo the lot.

Further as I've been playing in 6 mm and 10 mm with bases that are larger than the quantity of models, each can become a little diorama and one thing that was obvious in Warmaster was the lack of space to fit that many models on three bases of 30 x 20 mm, a total footprint of 30 x 60 mm or 90 x 20 mm; ouch! We are basing our 10 mm models (inc WM) to a frontage of 100 mm with a varying depth of between 50 and 60 mm and I think they show off the models very well indeed.

When describing the new PV game in Post Velamentum - 2 I talked about rebasing the Orcs, with a delay of many months, I removed them in July 2018 , I re-based today.

The full army now looks like this:

And in Warmaster rules that's 3425 points.

When I was initially calculating PV/HC! points it seems 250 PV/HC! points equals 1000 WM points.
So that's about 800-900 points, that's a big game. I still have a few bases of Baccus gobos and some WM Boar riders to paint/& base as well as a rock lobber, Giant, Troll unit and 4 Ogres not MW legal however we will see where PV takes us.

Close up of the units.

The Boss and his support staff (SLT)

The Hard as nail Black Orcs (I use GW Orcs)

The core units of Orcs as stated before these are BoFA models

. Obligatory Goblins (Baccus)

Boar Boys and Chariots

Wolf Riders (more BoFA)

Rock lobbers, Giant and Ogres

Finally the Trolls

.......earlier

See also

Arabic Army for fantasy, HC or even P&S
Lizard Men For Hail Caesar - Lost Children of the Fallen Gods
Polish Army for P&S and a little fantasy  Kislev

Home Counties 1897 - War of The worlds - No place like home.

For me the biggest problem with a new army is painting the first units.
I just can't it must be like authors block or stage fright.

I will literally do anything else. Have been known to do chores, not often enough in the opinion of some, but it makes the point.

So while I research the uniforms and consider how to paint them, prep them and undercoat them, I'll find something else to do (hobby wise).

So whilst this should be about painting the Brits it is instead the buildings.

I have some 6 mm from Battle Scale and they are lovely but Normandy or Russian, the Greek Orthodox Churches will be a miss, but the hovels will do nicely, peasants need to live somewhere and the Victorian times weren't all that enlightened. If in doubt read some Dickens!

I had some more 6 mm buildings unpainted that would do and as I was at the Joy of 6 I went to see what was on offer.
I'd seen Leven Minatures, before but this time I was in 'buy mode' It's so much easier to find what you want when it's in packets in front of you and at only £3 ish a model you get good value for your money, however £50 can exchange hands quite quickly, some wasn't in stock but was receive post free quickly after the show and I've made a similar purchase since and will again.

6 mm isn't cheaper than 28 that is a canard. What you find is that rather than buying a couple of 28 mm farm buildings for £52, you sepnd the same and get 4 farm buildings plus a town, a vicarage etc. and they do have more impact.

I intend to base a few up together, farmsteads and streets, but for the moment they're painted up.

As everyone is hiding on has run away, there are no lights to be seen in the windows!


P.S. I mentioned I had more 6 mm buildings - these went in the bin, I've seen more work from the same store and TBH there are too many pits and lumps and after seeing Leven's work I'll focus my spending with him.

Home Counties 1897 - War of The worlds - No place like home 2

Previous article

Home Counties 1897 - War of The worlds - Assembling the forces 1

The Tripods



So we start with a picture from Pendraken's site .

How on Earth, or indeed Mars do you assemble a 50mm high Tripod?

Consider I don't want to base them as I want them to be able to walk over the scenery.





















Plan 'A' was lots of blu tac models upside down and a good amount of Gorilla epoxy, I don't want to be forever repairing. I did consider pinning, I may have to.

Yes it worked but for repairs it was easier to stack some MDF bases tapped with masking tape and blu tack them on that, additional blu tac as required to stabilise or hold in place.
















The six legged crawlers had to be done that way and because of that it did suggest how to repair the others.
















Assembled and curing. I guess I've repaired 4 so far superglue in one case as the gorilla glue had created the shape, the socket for the ball so to speak.








Had to show them off on a sample latex mat from Magister Militum.

(These small latex mats are all different and I love them I use them to define woodland or scrub areas. They go very well with my 'Grass' cloth from Tiny Wargames.)

Striding over Leven Minatures' 6mm Victorian terraces.












For scale I've placed some 6 mm Baccus troops.

I feel I have got what I was imagining.





Painted up, I hope the Varnish will brighten the Green glass windows/eyes

Packed safely away in their Commission Figurines' mdf tray.



Now do I face the idea of painting 6 mm Brits or duck it and go to those rather tasty Leven buildings?








No place like home!

Previous Post

Home Counties 1897 - War of The worlds

At Salute last year I saw a game called Tripods and Triplanes and it made me think about the book War of The Worlds by H.G. Wells (1897)

I decided I'd like to have a go at setting up a game based on the book, with the Victorian army facing off against the Tripods.

Whilst still dithering over which rules to use would it be, Black Powder, Future War Commander, my own (to be written) rules or a hodge podge of the first two. I decided to ignore such niceties and see what models were on the market, this could determine the ruleset, it would certainly determine the scale.

I have a predilection for doing big games in smaller scales and so began at 6mm.

If it were 6mm the the army choice was simple Baccus' but which army. The British army of that time was using a Spiked helmet at home and a Pith helmet in various parts of Africa and India

Home Service Helmet

Pith Helmet

The home Service counties helmet and Pith helmet aren't that different.
In battle the helemt was often covered

The origins of such a helmet and who might have used it first is presented here at Straight to the Point: The History of the Spiked Helmet  but Russian or Indian in origin they all seem to hail from early Mongolian headgear.

I  digress, at 6mm the two are the same and who needs a spike anyway? So I decided on British Colonial Zulu wars, with a few Germans from the Franco Prussian war for the limbers. 

The scale however still depended on the Martian Tripods, a few questions on various FB pages and GWs Spindel Drones are suggested to me.

They do look the part.

However not enough I want them stepping over buildings.

In the above image I've positioned them behind 6 mm Baccus archers and 10 mm Pendraken ones, 6 mm works better, but there's a little voice saying,  "These are not the drones you're looking for."

Then some genius says have you looked at the Tripods on Pendraken's site, well I thought I had, obviously not. I looked but as I wanted to be sure of their size I sent a question to Pendraken on a Sunday, Leon's immediate response was

Image from Pendraken's site

Thanks for the message, the height of the tripods is:

Small = 40mm high
Large = 60mm high

I'll check on the crab walker when I get to work on Monday, I think it's around 30mm or thereabouts.

And that on a Sunday, brilliant service, I bought, they arrived swiftly and they are big, even better they are exactly as I think thy should be, courtesy of  Jeff Wayne's album cover.

Next phase