Fly the Imperial Skies

Robin Fitton of Gruntz 15mm fame, has a new Kickstarter going for a set airship combat rules going. Imperial Skies is a fully fleshed out set of rules built around the existing range of Brigade Models' great airships. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rottenlead/imperial-skies-wargame

 

Space: 1889 Resurrected!

   As the resident VSF-fanatic, I have some very exciting news to share, and a new(ish) blog by the game's creator, Frank Chadwick. The blog, appropriately called Frank Chadwicks Space: 1889.

   The newest information is that a new line of 15mm (YES!) Space: 1889 minis will be produced by Highlander Studios, headed up by Rodrick Campbell, who has done work for Rebel Minis and Khurasan Miniatures among others. Also, some 1:1200 scale vessels will be produced as well.

   If you're not stoked by this, well, you don't love VSF.

Old Aeronef Project Relocated

Back when this blog began, I had just discovered Aeronef and had grand dreams of custom building my own aerofleet. Unfortunately, the project never took off (like many) and disappeared into the junk boxes. The other day I found a couple of the airships that had managed to get to the painting stage.

These designs are something I'd like to revisit some day. I've learned a lot since then and would likely approach the project from an entirely different direction, but the basic designs of the airships is appealing and has potential.

Have fun and play hard!

-Eli

Message On The Aethergraph Sir!

Mr. Womack of Victoria's Boys in Red and The Scattergun Gamer fame has anounced the release of issue #2 of his own personal labor of love - Aethergraph. If you do not know about it yet, Aethergraph is a Victorian Science Fiction fanzine being released as a series of free PDFs by J. It includes miniatures and other product reviews, homebrew troops and such for various VSF rules.

Issue #2 is bigger than #1 going up from 12 to 18 pages and includes some rules I cooked up modifying the basic sample rules for Aerofauna from the Aeronef rules from Wessex Games. It also include pictures of my beasties as seen on this very blog a couple years back. The issue is themed for aerial adventures and includes a bunch of fun.

J is always accepting submissions and suggestions so if you feel you have somethign to contribute - rules, scenarios, art, miniatures, etc - feel free to drop them into Aethergraph's very own email box at - aethergraph@gmail.com.

Check it out and enjoy!

Latest Martian Settlement WIP

So, after seeing my WIP pics of the earlier Martian settlements, Rob over at ArmChairGeneral asked me if I would do one (or more) for him. As I was wanting to keep building, I figured why not.

Up until then, all my pieces had been built on pretty linear flat rocks, so I decided to make this one a little more three-dimensional. I also wanted to build somethign bigger than I had so far. Taking a large tear-off of cork tile I then layered up several more pieces near the center of the piece. This came me a central hill jutting up from the city below.

The picture to the right depicts the city in the early layout. It shows the cluster of larger, metropolitan buildings at the top of the city, including what has become a characteristic of my Martians settlements - the tower spire. Below the hill, in the foreground is a rather haphazard cluster of buildings that will make up the lower class section of the city.

The picture below shows the city about 90% through the construction process. You can see the walls and towers in place, showing that this city may have once been fortified all around, but having since let the defenses give way to more living space. To the far left of the pic you will see a large temple structure with a massive dome that marks this city as one of particular importance to Martian religion. It sit atop a raised rocky outcropping of its own and the structure crowds to make use of every inch of space atop that rock. You can see the more haphazard commoner street to the right. Some of the roof tops of the larger buildings have penthouses or patio structures on them.

I still have to figure out how to paint this one. Once again I got carried away with construction and created some terribly tight spaces to try to get a brush into. I really need to paint the buildings then glue them in.

Enjoy,

-Eli

More Martian Settlements

this could be arranged along canals as narrow, canal-side settlements. The picture to the left gives you a look at the simple but effectivestreet orien

The Martian settlements project has been highly experimental but incredibly fun. I have been trying to find more and interesting ways to do them. This is one of those.

What you see is a table edge section of city with a fortifiefied city gate, towers and wall. This would be perfect to set up at the of the table so there is a bit of local color without having it be center stage. This is also the first piece that I tried using accent colors on, giving several of the buildings a crimson stripe as well as the towers and gate.

Future plans for this and other pieces like it include additional table edge sections or possibly modulare city interior pieces that will allow me to create cities of various sizes. Another thought is that pieces like this could be used along canals. The picture to the left show the orientation including a curious back alley.

Hope you like!

-Eli

Martian Settlements For Land Ironclads/Aeronef

Sooooo,

It seems that I have been away from miniatures for a bit. Not true.

Since losing my digital camera, as lame as it was, I have been a bit gunshy about trying to post on miniatures projects because I coul;dn't seem to get any good pics. I have since had some luck taking decent WIP pics with my camera phone, so I thought I'd start to post some stuff that I've been working on.

The first thing I'd like to share is a WIP of some town/city terrain I have been doing for use with Wessex Games' Land Ironclads and Aeronef games. The general scale of these games is 1/1200 or thereabouts though the infantry figures used are generally 2mm which is more like 1/900 but any smaller an they may as well be cardboard counters. So, I took some scrap balsa, some cork tile and got to work.

These are actually quite simple to make. Tear off an area of tile to form the roacky outcropping upon which the Martians have built thei settlements. The cut various sized bits of balsa and get to work laying out your settlement plan. I decided to keep them relatively simple and work mainly with simple rectangles for the most part. The three that are pictured above were the first three I did and show a modest township as well as a two smaller locales that might work well for some sorts of monasteries, villas, etc.

After they are aseembled, they are sprayed black and then painted with a combination of rusty red earth tones for the ground, an off-white color for the buildings and simple black for the doors and windows. I thought about painting the doorways another color but really it just blurred the details and at this scale, I just needed the hint of door and windows. In some places, where hte balsa didn't cut right and left some rough edges, I painted the pieces like ruined buildings showing a mix of the white-wash and natural red Martian mud.

In a future post, I'll show off some additional work I've been doing with this project, but I hope you like the results so far.

Thanks,

-Eli

Aerofauna of Terra Secundus - Part One

The Aerial lifeforms of Terra Secundus are nearly as diverse as those that occur in more terrestrial habitats. Aerofauna are, by definition, creatures who spend most of or their entire life cycle at altitude. What makes aerofauna different from the likes of birds or similar creatures is that they do not simply take to the air as a part of their terrestrial existence but instead make a life for themselves devoid of terrestrial contact. Many of them live at altitudes that exceed the range of birds and in some cases that of man-made flying contraptions. The purpose of this series of articles is to explore the many varied forms of life in the skies of our home of Terra Secundus.

Let us begin with Haler's Kraken. This creature is known for its large bulbous body which tapers into a neck-like extension at the front of the creature. Like many forms of aerofauna, Haler's Kraken is equipped with a trailing, non-prehensile tentacle which is uses as a sort of rudder and wind sensor. The Haler's Kraken is armed with four long, muscular tentacles that extend from it's "head" and normally trail behind and underneath it when not in use.

The kraken is a is a voracious predator and can be found following pods of smaller creatures across the skies. It is not adverse to attacking larger prey up to its own size and can even be found predating its own kind. Due to the brazen nature of this predator, it is also a threat to aerial vessels as these can often be mistaken for prey species and fall victim to its crushing tentacles.

Haler's Kraken is recognizable for its banded gray and black coloring which is broken up by mottling of white speckles. It's head and tentacles as well as its dorsal flange are a bright red, marking it for both mating and threat purposes. The Haler's Kraken sports a number of biol-luminescent spots along both of its sides.

Next we take a look at, the Yellow Bow. Filling a niche analogous to terrestrial dolphins or smaller whales, the Yellow Bow, named so for the yellow spot on the front of its body, is a relatively harmless creature. Sporting the common trailing tail tendril it utilizes a pectoral flange to propel itself at great speeds.

Yellow Bows are not predators but instead strain off massive amounts of cloud-borne algae common in the upper reaches of the sky. When threatened or during mating season, they can become quite agitated and dangerous, attacking anything they perceive as a threat natural or man-made alike.

In addition to its characteristic yellow front spot, the Yellow Bow is distinguished by its sky blue color with grey and white banding along their sides. Each of their three bands is marked by three bio-luminescent spots which it uses for communication.

The last aerofauna we shall discuss today is known as the Silky Sky Marshal. A rather graceful name for an equally graceful creature, the "Silky" as it is more commonly referred to, is a passive aerial opportunity feeder that easily blends int other surrounding clouds. From this position of concealment it will reach out and snare passing creatures with one of its many tentacles, moving them to its central mass where they will be stored in one of its expandable storage sacks for slow digestion.

Silkies are most commonly encountered by humans by accident as they seem to show no appetite for man flesh. Aerial vessels have become snared in their tentacles or outright collided with them, not having seen them as they floated hidden among the clouds. Silkies are sometimes found in the company of other aerial browsers as these creatures often blunder too close and become meals. Though too massive to fall prey to the likes of Haler's Kraken, Silkies do have predators in the form of flocks of Sky Darts or even the feared Shark Bats.

Silkies are identified by their melon, shaped bodies under which hangs a silky mass of filaments and sacks as well as defensive stinging pods. They have the ability to change their colors to blend in with the ambient colors of whatever cloud cover they are in and have even been seen flashing light across their bodies to simulate lightning. This last notable trait has often caused the unnecessary diversion of aerial conveyances who thought themselves in danger of colliding with an oncoming storm.

I do hope you have enjoyed this little adventure into the wondrous world of aerofauna.

Sincerely,

Dr. Herman Zolta
Zangief Insistute of Science

Aerofauna Sightings

For a long time now, I have been wanting to make some aerial life forms for our Aeronef games but have never really jumped into it, until now. While collecting supplies for the construction of the nest huts for my Parrot Men, I ended up with several fake eggs that are too big to use for the Parrot Men (thought might make good 28mm dino eggs). After having initially set them aside, I later took a second look and realized that they looked like some sort of giant floating gas bag creatures.

Taking some putty and extra wire to make a trailing tendril and some fin-like flanges. I then drilled a few holes and made some quick wire flight bases. The end result is a collection of bulbous creatures with squiggly tails out the back. Unfortunately, as you can see that also bear a very unflattering resemblance to giant flying sperm. Ah well, they are still cool looking.

The larger creature pictured above was made out of a small deco squash. Using the same technique as used on the smaller creatures above, I made the trailing wire look a bit more organic, added a flange to the base. I wanted this creature to be a bit more menacing, however. If the smaller ones were analogous to porpoises then this was going to be like a giant squid.

Drilling several holes on the front of the squash, I then bent up several pieces of wires of a mostly uniform length so that they looked alive. I glued them into place inside the holes and applied a layer of putty around the area to reinforce that weak material where the holes had been drilled. Whatever the squash was made out of was very brittle once compromised and I found the holes basically tore out once I started trying to fit the tentacles. The tentacles were then arranged in a swept back manner to show the creature was in motion. I then based up my giant floating predator on a quickly made wire flight base.

This passive floater was done using the same techniques as the others but this time I was able to integrate the wire that came attached to the deco squash into the tendril mass suspended below it. I then added sprigs of fake berries arounf the bottom of the main body. This added a nice effect, even after the spray paint melted the berries (always check to make sure what sort of material your components are made of!).

I plan to do more creatures and will post them as I get them finished but I hope you have enjoyed the first glimpse into the majestic beasts that inhabit the skies of our Aeronef campaign world of Terra Secundus.

Watch the skies,

-Eli

Steampunk Away From "Home"

Since my group and I began our plans for Aeronef, we have discussed whether or not we wanted to use Earthly nations or go with something original. For me, this brought up an interesting question. Is Steampunk/VSF reliant upon Earthly components to avoid becoming purely science fiction or are the elements that make it Steampunk/VSF more a matter of style rather than historical reference? To me, it seems to be about style and theme, but perhaps a bit of a look at the setting we intend to play in will help to demonstrate where I am coming from.

Our setting is on an alien world outside of Earth's celestial sphere, the idea being that it had been reached by humans through an Ethereal Hyper-locative Aperture (wormhole) some time ago. Though colonized by Earthly explorers, the planet known as Terra Secundus was later isolated when the EHA closed. Since then, the human colonies have formed into their own nations, developing technologies to adapt to their new world.

Terra Secundus is not an Earth analog, though it does have many similar environments. It is characterized by massive mountain ranges winding steeply across the face of the planet. So extreme are these ranges that some go beyond the limits of human airship technology to overcome and in many places they dive down in sheer cliffs to a veritable maze of sees, oceans and water ways. This leaves little in the way of flat land to colonize, making such areas crucial peaces of real estate.

The planet sports a variety of habitats in the valleys and plateaus that make up its more level lands, but much of these have been settled and converted to one extent or another by humanity. In other places communities have sprouted out of the sides of mountains or built upon reclaimed land jutting into one water way or another. In all cases, humanity balances on an eternal precipice, not just figuratively but quite literally, his existence forever challenged.

The planet has a few indigenous sentient species some hostile, some friendly and some simply disinterested in the presence of humanity. Most notable are the humanoid Deva, a red-skinned people similar to the Martians and possibly related in the same way that the humans of Terra Secundus are to terrestrial humans. The Deva are masters of the aerofauna of the planet and live in towering terraced cities or in travelling caravans made up of domesticated floaters carrying barque-like vessels under them. Relations with the Deva have been hit and miss and much of it has to do with the particular city or tribe one is dealing with.

The other notable race is a rarely scene and as yet identified insectoid species which occupies an area rich in contragravital minerals. This species will be dealt with more once the player playing them defines them more.

The above mentioned contragravital mineral is called Gravicite and it is found naturally in deposits throughout the planet in varying quantities. The raw ore can be used to power gravity drives thus making the heavier than air movement of massive vessels as possible as moving nautical dreadnoughts through the use of coal. But Gravicite is not only available as mined ore.

The aerofauna of Terra Secundus are also rich in contragravitic compounds and, if hunted and processed properly, can produce industrial quantities of Gravicine, a liquid with contragravitic characteristics. This has led to the thriving industry of "sky whaling" with entire fleets of ships combing the skies of Terra Secundus, harvesting the massive floaters for their valuable Gravicine. This has brought humanity into several direct conflict with the Deva who do not take kindly to the industrial slaughter of the creature that have so defined their culture.

One last source of contragravitic compounds is a through refining of chemicals and mineral that can be extracted from various flora natural to the planet. These plants, though not all demonstrating their own contragravitic characteristics, have been cultivated on massive industrial plantations where they are harvested and refined into Grivicine Distilate. This is a poor form of Gravicine which cannot produce military grade contragravitic properties but is enough to power and drive smaller or commercial vessels of smaller sizes. It's primary use is by smaller or poorer nations or city states, or as a way to take the burden off of more effective contragravitic compounds in larger nations.

As you can see, the setting has all the basic building blocks for good old colonial fun as well as being founded on basic VSF/Steampunk themes. I have just chosen to take the setting out of our solar system and away from conventional Earth governments, though certain cultural elements will persist. This frees me and my group to create what we want, allowing us to use familiar themes in ways that the conventional frameworks do not allow for. For me, it means being able to design aeronef vessels that do not look like they belong in conventional earthly fleets.

Thanks for reading,

-Eli

The Fleets Gather...

With Krazygit's offering to the Aeronef setup, I was inspired to put something together myself. As I had notted before, I was hoping to go with something different. Using the Anatoray Battleships from Last Exile as inspiration, I cobbled some ships together from scrap balsa wood.

Using plastic sprue for detailling as well as a collection of metal brads in various sizes for turrets (along with the road wheels for some 1/72 scale tanks). The results have been crude by most modelling standards but this is a judgement made prior to any serious detail work and panting. Many of the designs are experimental and may not be put into "production" as I flesh out the fleet.

So far, I have managed to come up with a battleship, carrier, escort carrier, two types of crusiers, something I am calling an invasion barge, and what will be either a frigate or a destroyer. I've also managed to build a dreadnought, a couple more cruiser deisngs and a destroyer as well. Below is a picture showing a general idea of the theme I am going with.




The battleship and carrier are massive, with the battleship measuring 9cm long and the carrier at least 10cm. Do keep in mind that these ships are not the conventional, flat-decked style common in Aeronef, but rather are proportioned to be tall and narrow (cutting through the air easier?). The carrier is designed to be a mammoth beast with a cavernous internal landing bay. This will likely be a one of a kind ship in the fleet...okay...maybe two of a kind.

I'm not sure if these are VSF enough, and I am still working on ways to detail them properly. But this is my first stab at building ships in small scale, so who knows what will happen.

Ether, The Final Frontier

It's been an exciting week. Since we got it in our heads to play Aeronef, the groups has been abuzz with ideas for fleets and scratchbuilt ships. There has been a lot of talk about what sort of ships we wanted and Krazygit managed to pull a pretty nice build off ...

As you can see, it's a very basic design and still has a lot of detail to be worked out. And yes, he was going for a Star Trek look. KG likes to spoof things in his games and it's all in good fun, so why not.

Aeronef Ahoy!

Rather than unload a lifetime's worth of gaming on you, I thought I might begin with a recent project. There will be plenty of time to delve into my gaming history.

For some time I have been interested in the concept of airships and their like. I have been a big fan of Victoran Science Fiction for sometime and also the various other permutations of the broader genre now called Steampunk. I had heard about Wessex Games' "Aeronef" ages ago, but had never been able to conjure enough interest in my group to justify diving into it. Flash forward to the present and we are now gearing up to play it.

Taking the initative, I challenged my group to cobble up some scratchbuilt fleets, having had an interest in doing so myself. I shared with them some of the ideas I had seen on various sites and posts over the years I had considered the game. So far we hve two navies in the planning stages.

My buddy (he goes by Krazygit online) decided to go with the tired and true method of making airships using plastic model bombs and fuel tanks, plastic card, and balsa wood. Thisi s a quick and easy way to get into the game as a single box o bombs will usually give you an entire fleet. I beleive the set he went with was a 1/48 scale model set from Accurate Miniatures.

It cost him about $20 for about 20 usable bombs/torpedoes, etc.. I know there are some other products out there so you may find something better but it works. Now that he had decided on what direction he was going, it was my turn.

I decided that if we were going to be making our own gaming pieces then I wanted to do something that I couldn't buy. Why put in the labor to build what was already done? I had recently discovered an anime series called Last Exile, which is on the more modern cusp of the whole Steampunk genre, and found therein some lovely airships. I became especially enamored with the Anatoray Battleships.

The Anatoray Battleships look like they are built with technology contemporary with Aeronef's published technology. They are essentially vertically oriented Predreadnoughts consistent with late 19th, early 20th century technology and style. I am hoping to capture the style of these ships through the careful and modest use of card, balsa and a few beading accesories. If I can avoid it, I won't be buying a single piece of actual purpose made detailing, though that may go out the window.

Now, let's see how this fleshes out, shall we...