Building Pottersville

OK, with about 3 weeks to go to Hotlead, I fell hard off the wagon and ordered a pile of Sarissa Precision's 28mm buildings from their City Block range. A growing sense of frustration with trying to run bigger or more complex and tactical games lead my thoughts back to buying The Chicago Way last Hotlead and resurrecting my pulp gangsters to have a fun, fast game to play with a variable group of people. This would also be in a very different tone from just more troops in big battles like the other things on my list of desires. Besides I like hard boiled detective novels, old and new.

So on Friday, I got off work early (which was nice, wish we could do that every Friday!) and I got home to find this in the mail box, package 1 of 3:

This is the big warehouse, which I think will be central to a lot of scenarios (or does one call them plots or stories in Pulp games?).

It took all weekend to get to it, but some 90 minutes of work with a bottle of Aileen's Tacky Glue before bed on Sunday and maybe 40 minutes this morning, results in this:

 As you can see, the mezzanine floor comes off to give access to the lower offices. I've left the stairs unglued in case I need to move them for something.

The pillars holding up the mezzanine were quite clever. The front steps, back steps and the stairs up to the mezzanine all used different methods of construction too.

I've left the big doors loose so I can have them open or closed. Maybe I'll make some card hinges before I paint. My only quibbles are that the main floor need a slight trim to get it to fit and the front door doesn't open. I'll have to paint it on the inside so you know where it is. The instructions are a bit vague as well and the parts are unidentified by any number or letter code, so it took a bit of thinking and a lot of dry fitting first.

4Ground have a very nice warehouse that is prepainted and has working doors, but it is also twice the price. So I'll suck up the minor quibbles since I've been able to purchased a bunch of buildings for the cost of the single 4Ground kit.

Still en route are a couple of shops and tenements, so there can be raids on speakeasies or a Mobster's HQ. Plus in previous games I learned that the players always ignore my approach to solid buildings "It's locked, you can't go in!" and they want to go in. So having every building with an accessible interior, even if it isn't central to the plot, is essential.

I'll just arm the fair citizens of Pottersville and they'll get shot at if they run into Mrs. McReady's apartment uninvited.

Gamer ADHD Postscript

While compiling my list I also totally forgot about my 30s gangster project, which is stalled waiting for more buildings.
And I really do need a simple silly game for when I've got a big gang of friends over and something thinkier like Chain of Command isn't going to work.
While I've been cycling around kicking tires, distracted by other projects, I failed to notice that Crescent Root's VERY nice 28mm factory buildings, which included a lovely assembled and painted warehouse for a reasonable price had gone out of production.
So I will probably have to buy unpainted Sarissa buildings and assemble them myself.

So discipline can cost one sometimes!

In the meantime, in this past week I've posted over 40 events to the www.hotlead.ca website! Friday evening and Saturday will have a full slate of games.