|
April, 2012
Item: A Nearly 10 Year Project Rises Again!
It's taken an overlong 3 full months to
prepare the revision of Mean Streets, designing, test assembling,
photographing, and laying out the newly expanded page, but it's finally
done. Now I only hope some folks will appreciate their opportunity and
give the new designs, and reworked originals, a try.
I still have a number of Block Sections to
build and photograph, but time is short and in the meantime I have taken the
short cut of posting images of the PDF's themselves for the front and back sides
(only). This does a give a fair idea of what each has to offer, visually,
while full details appear on the page with the remainder of the models.
There are now 20 unique Block Sections (each
10" square) for some 800 linear inches--60 feet!--of city streets
and alleys, with multiple concrete, brick, and asphalt surfaces, with real 3D
curbs and other features. More photographic textures have been used, and
more authentic Art Deco styles added. It is literally possible to fill an
8' x 5' gaming surface with virtually a full city center, complete with ethnic
neighborhoods, allowing whole campaigns and detailed Pulp Fiction and other
scenarios to be played right down to the last dank alley.
Of course, adding Chinatown has been part of
the plan from the start, and I am thrilled finally to have been able to do
so. The authentic architectural details (e.g. "Earth" and
"Fire" Elemental Gable designs), proper Mandarin signage, and
"community" features such as Chinese language Newspaper, medicine
shops, movie theater, Joss house, and more, make Chinatown ideal for playing
miniatures games.
But of almost equal satisfaction has been
adding The Cotton Club to the mix. Carefully modeled after actual period
photos, it joins other models in Mean Streets which represent
historical sites related to old Chicago and elsewhere. It took a long time
to copy the details from the photos, matching fonts, and getting colors from
other illustrations, but I think gamers will want to have The Cotton Club in
their set ups, if only for the class it represents!
If it wasn't obvious already, Mean
Streets is, and has been, a labor of love, and I hope gamers will have
the same "romance" with The City that I have.
Item: What's Coming Down The Pike
Now that "Houston's Naval Guns & Ship
Fittings" are back--and ONLY a week late!-- the exhaustive and accurate Naval
Gun Data of The World for the period of roughly 1890-1945 will start being
offered here at TVAG with gun collections being offered by national navy.
There will be more background info on that new page when I can finish building
it, but my colleague, Chris Ferree, has been able to make more up-to-date
computer runs of gun data from all Navies from programs originally developed by
the late Eric Just as part designing the miniatures naval game Cordite And
Steel (C&S) published back in the 70's by TSR.
Newly improved computer programs now provide
all the gun data any game player or naval history buff would want. Using
muzzle velocity, angle of fire, shell weight and shape (from ogival radii), and
height of platform above the water, the program provides danger spaces against
all targets in 5' increments up to 50' above the waterline, penetration values
of Krupp Cemented Armor in 100' increments all the way out to maximum range, and
the percentile chances to hit with the first shot, with extra chances of
subsequent hits in the same solution.
Only very limited amounts of this data were provided with the original
printing of Cordite And Steel, but
now we have decided to release it all as a service to any and all anywhere who
can appreciate the data.
Not surprisingly, C&S is slated to return
with some rules changes (very few, actually), the most significant of which
being the means of determining hits without requiring the use of the traditional
4-Umpire Team. The game can still be played in any scale (with appropriate
adjustments to ranges), but now even lends itself to the table top for the
larger scales (1:2400 up to 1:6000).
Last remaining bottleneck involved with
C&S' return lies in the transcription of the several hundred Ship Record
Cards. These provided the personalized Hit Tables (percentage chances of
hitting any one part of the ship), and the Armor equivalents for use with the
Penetration Table for any AP shot that might strike. These cannot be
calculated by a single formula by players alone, so the original Cards must be
brought back in a new graphic format befitting the 21st Century.
We have a cunning plan to address this, and
that, too, will come along in due course!
Item: Little Warriors
The Japanese Army is finished, and most of the 54mm
original sculpts are in the capable hands of the "Rodmen", Jeff and
Ben, of Fortress Figures. The metal Master molds for Infantry and
Artillery have been made, and special resin Production molds are being cut in
the second week of April.
Chris Ferree has finished the last details of separate
arms, heads, weapons, etc, as well as the new Cavalry Mount, and these are
heading into FF already.
The hope is to have the Subscription--supported by
photos of all figures and accessories--start in this month, so please watch for
details here and among the usual suspects.
And a major head start on Balkanoids
is already underway with a dozen or more Foot and Cavalry figures for the
Serbians, Montenegrins, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks already in
hand! Work is also moving towards finalizing the three basic artillery
models, plus Machine Guns. The Spandau is ready, and the Vickers/Maxim
type, plus the Hotchkiss (for the French, Japanese, etc) are to follow ASAP.
Indeed, we ought to be able to triple, if not
quadruple, our total line of these figures almost literally overnight, or
certainly as soon as I can pay for the molds to be made for the already
completed figures to go into their molds.
As I'm pressed for time as I compose this
page, please forgive me for quoting this background data from back last
December.
"This has been a project that has taken up
a great deal of my time and energy in 2011, but if it plays out as it looks now that
it will, TVAG will be a real Toy Soldier Maker/Seller.
Specifically, the 54mm original sculpts by
my old friend and colleague, Chris Ferree, have really become The Big Thing,
and we hope to have them in full production by the end of the year.
It will be possible to price these excellent resin casts so that they can be bought in whole units
and made available through as many of the traditional Toy Soldier shops and
sellers we can get them into.
Watch not only for the 54mm (1:32) Japanese Army for the period
of 1900--1914, complete with Infantry, Cavalry (mounted and dismounted),
Artillery Crews, Command Figures, on foot and horseback, Naval Landing
Troops and Officers, and an odd-or-end, too, but for a large range of "Balkanoids"
for the era of 1912. These will also join the
first round of European Civilians, more military personality/character
figures, and so much more."
Item: Old News Reprised
Other books on the cusp of falling on my
Editor's Desk include the long awaited master work--and that's not just
hype--by Andrew Preziosi as he moves towards completion of what is being
called the Sikh Wars Resource Book. An earlier, more modest
publication, was still the Last Word on OB's for the First Sikh War, but in
the intervening years, more data has finally be found (some really
old, rare books here), and the new edition will be just as exhaustive for
the Second Sikh War, but also for the entire history of the Khalsa from 1799
to last muster in 1849. I won't try to sell you one this here, but I PROMISE
there is no other book ever written that has this much data. It's one
for the College Libraries, and that's where some issues will definitely be
going.
Current buzz is a Summer 20l2 publication
(release at HistoriCon?).
The other titles include a history of
every US Army Officer killed fighting Native Americans from 1865 to the last
to fall in 1898(!). This has been a 20+ years long project by a local
Gent and it's nearing readiness for printing even now. Should be out
this Winter.
Another book is really going to be
welcomes by fans of the Great Northern War and the Era of the Marlburian
Campaigns. It will be an illustrated history of the Brandenburg Navy
and Army, with details on ships and units that will go a long way to throw
some bright light on a comparatively obscure subject--even for War
Gamers! This one is the baby of one of the Curators at the US Army
Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, OK, and, Brother, does he have some neat
resources there!
For months I've been expecting to begin the
"Big Push" on the final edit of the
long overdue Gone To See The Elephant rules for the Mexican
War. But I have repeatedly had to postpone it in order to crank out
products which, frankly, sell faster and bring in income NOW, rather than
maybe six months from now. I hope to start again after the New Year as
some of the above projects should be coming to me "shovel ready"
(a wonderfully abused term of late) and which may be able to come to press
quicker than usual. Maybe.
I'll make a formal announcement when the glacier
starts sliding.
Mad Dogs With Guns (MDWG), by Howard Whitehouse and Roderick
Robertson should finally be coming off "Hold," soon as the latter
Gent has recently sent me a mountain of excellent photos of painted
miniatures, "Mean Streets," and properly scaled autos with which
to help illustrate the work. The ms was mostly ready the last time I
looked, and the plan is to see if I can get it into print ahead of most of
the other projects up there. Don't look for it for Christmas this
year, but it might be around for Groundhog Day. Maybe.
Other (working) titles in the queue still include
"Usuthu!": Battles of the Zulu War, 1879, a complete set
of rules with topographic maps and full OB's for re-fighting the historical battles in 1:10 (sic!) scale in short, sharp games with HORDES of
figures--unless you wear a Redcoat!. Originally developed years ago by
Chris Ferree using another original and unique gaming system
specifically designed to represent the peculiar circumstances of campaigning
in Zululand, the new edition will be expanded in several ways, and will make
battles like Isandlwana and Ulundi actually possible, practical, and exciting
as the original articles on the table top.
And if the above paragraph sounds
familiar, it ought to: It's the same one from March this year (and December, last
year). This is still very much a "goer," but there's just so
much out front....
I promise this will see publication--and
it will be well worth the wait!
I hope to have photos of these first plastic casts going up
as soon as we get our first samples--possibly in the week of December 12.
And now, we return you to the dance portion of our broadcast....
| 
