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I bought this book based on a passing remark that someone else made. I can't hardly recommend this book enough! This book pivots on the events of Dec 20th, 1943 as a crippled B-17 heads for home and is escorted over the coast by the pilot of a ME-109. This really isn't the central focus of the book though just the event that would eventually bring two WWII vets together. This is one of those rare books that I could not put down. It is primarily about the career of the ME-109. Starting and flying almost his entire career in the ME-109 and ending as part of JV-44 in ME-262s. This is book is something that is going to become increasingly rare, a story told by the veterans themselves. I don't really want to go into much here, this is a great book, just read it!

Its a been a very busy week around here and last night was the first night I was able to sit back down with the model of Calamity. I played around with the road and stream arrangement a bit and decided to make the first cuts into the boards. After cutting out the roads I glued them in place and put on a layer of clay. I then built the boards up to the road level and layed on a different color of clay for the "off road" portion of the boards. I kept the clay pretty thin so if I need to scrap the clay off I can. If I decide I don't like the road and stream arrangement I'll just make another set of boards. I have plenty of clay left over. The pictures probably say more than I can so let's just show those off.

Here's the initial playing around with the road arrangement.

I wanted the main road to have a slight cosmetic curve, This will partially block the line of sight from end to end and give a nice view for photographs. A shot taken from either end should look the road continues. Will see how that works out.

Gluing the roads down.

The stream has been cut out as well

A few preliminary street scenes





Putting down the clay on the road

Then I built up the surrounding area to the level of the roads and used a different color of clay for that.

I only finished one board to this level. It will be the "west" edge. This is the arrangement I came up with last night. Of course its very easy to change,just move the buildings around! If I decide I don't like the road arrangement I'll have to make a new board, but that's pretty easy to do. Nothing is set in stone at this point...just clay.

I'll have to come up with a little fence to go around the two sides of the livery stable. That's the large purple building sitting by itself at the edge of the board.

Construction of Calamity has been proceeding, kits are being built, weathered and painted. While this process will be ongoing for some time I need to turn some attention to the boards. I have already posted some possible configurations for the boards and there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, there will be three 2'x4' boards that will make up the heart of Calamity and they will be permanent. Second, these boards will be used at conventions and will be traveling which brings up the issue of if the buildings should be permanently attached or removable.

In favor of permanently attaching the buildings there is an amazing blog out there featuring the city of Leadwood. This is the level of quality that I'm shooting for. You can find the city of Leadwood at: Colonel O'Truth's Miniature Issues

In favor of removable buildings is the ability to keep them from damage while being transported and making storage much easier.

But those are secondary to the big dilemma; What should Calamity look like? Pushing pieces of paper around on a map just wasn't giving me the view I needed to get a concrete idea of how things should be arranged. It certainly helped in figuring out possible road and stream locations but I can't get a "feel" for how the town will look from that. I need something more 3D for my mind to chew on.

While I was wandering through Hobby Lobby, I stumbled across a pack of mattboard, 5"x7" for $3.99 and about 2" thick. That's a lot of mattboard! That's when it hit me, I would follow a model railroad practice and build a model of Calamity! I grabbed the pack of mattboard and some clay and I was set to get started.

I have spent the weekend making tiny mockups of the buildings that I currently have from the various manufacturers, I even color coded them. I know there are some more coming but I'll deal with that when they arrive. The key here is to build small representations of the buildings to a scale (in this case 1/8"=1", so 12" would be 1 1/2" inches). There is no need for anything behind a basic mockup, no doors, no windows, skip the exterior stairs but leave space for them. You just need something that you can move around and get an idea of things will look at. The modeling clay will be for building up the boards. I'll start with some broad elevation changes using mattboard and then work everything else in with the clay.

Here's the beginning of the model of Calamity.

X-Acto Knife, Mechanical Pencil, Mattboad, Steel Ruler, Good Cutting Surface

Cutting Out the Pieces

Ready to Glue

The Hotel/Saloon Back

The Hotel/Saloon from the Front

The Hotel/Saloon Top

The Hotel/Saloon Finished

Finished Buildings and construction debris.

A bit closer in. The buildings are sitting on the scaled down versions of the 2'x4' boards. The center board is gridded off in to 12" squares. The outer border is 2" wide, and no buildings can be in this zone, its basically terrain only in this zone. this allows for plenty of entrance points for games.

Green will be scratchbuilt, Dark Green are Gamecraft, Purple are Sarissa Precision

Off White are Battle Flag, Red is Aetherworks, Yellow is Knuckleduster/Tri City Laser

Ready for Phase II - Terra-forming

Critical Mass Games' Kickstarter campaign is coming to a close, about 44 hours left at this point, and it seems to have lost a bit of steam. You know you need a 15mm Sci/Fi army for "Tomorrows War" and this is a good time to jump in and get that army started. The ZAS mercs would be a good starter force for just about every ruleset out there. After my exposure to Ambush Alley's Force on Force rules I'm pretty content to go with that right now. Of course, nothing will prevent me from playing other rules either.  I also received my reinforcements for my Mech Company this week, although I'm going to set those aside for a bit while I work on Calamity and my entries for ReaperCon this year.


So here's your selections for the ZAS mercs:

What you get

How much it will cost you later. Its a steal right now.

Because you know you want it all

What you get

How much it will cost you later

And of course I need to show off the reinforcements that my mech company will be using. This arrived on Wednesday, great service from CMG!

Hellfire - Self Propelled Anti-Aircraft (Grav Version)

Vanquisher - Self Propelled Artillery (Grav Version)

Warmonger - Heavy Tank (Grav Version)