All That Jazz

 

Velma honked at the coal truck that cut her off. "Hey, watch it buster!"

She pulled to a stop in front of Cohen's Deli. Roxie was waiting out front, looking like she was ready for a golf date and checking her face in a compact. She put a big bag holding her 12 gauge pump in the back seat and climbed in the front. She held a paper sack on her lap.

"What's in the bag?"

"Lenny made us a couple of Reubens. We should eat them before they go cold." The bag clinked.

"Pickles?"

"Uh huh. And some sodas."

Lenny always packed the girls a nice lunch ever since they helped his cousin out of a jam.

Velma pulled back into traffic,  getting honked at by a delivery van.

"Sure thing. We can park by the river and watch the ducks. Lester the Lecher ain't goin' anywhere."

Roxie looked in the back seat. "Bring your gat?"

Velma smiled and flicked her cigarette out the window. "You bet your bippy. Les ain't gonna be a lech for much longer."

These are a couple of figures from the Pulp Figures Gangland Gals set that a good friend gave me last summer. I painted Velma, the fedora wearing one, pretty quickly but was stumped by shotgun wielding Roxie. The definition on her clothing was soft and I wasn't sure how to approach her outfit. I didn't want to do a plain solid dress and trying to paint a floral pattern was intimidating.

Velma

Then inspiration struck and I gave her a sweater vest. I'd wanted to give her ironic knitted hearts, but Mrs Rabbitman says knit patterns like that weren't a thing in the 30s, however Argyle was the height of fashion. So this is my attempt at a pink and white Argyle sweater vest. The fashionable knitwear and the yellow blouse also tie her in with Velma.

Roxie

With all these bright, possibly anachronistic, colours I decided that they should have a bright yellow car with whitewall tires too.

I've named them Velma and Roxie because I quite like Chicago and their hair reminds me of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zelwinger from the movie.

The thunderous roar of Velma's Tommy gun stopped suddenly when the breech block sat open on an empty magazine. Roxie ejected a spent shell from her 12 gauge. Velma tossed her cigarette on the bloodied heaps that had, until a few moments ago, been Lester and his four heavies.

"C'mon Roxie, I need a drink."

Roxie looked down. "Gosh darn it! I got a run in my stocking!"

June SITREP

Busy, busy this month with wrapping up the cadet training year. So progress on the Pacific naval stuff has been slow. 

Assorted flavors of US cruisers 

First attempt to base them was set back by vapors from the superglue clouding the plastic. Shame it didn't make a nice wake pattern. 

Aaaaaargh!

 

USN Fletcher class DDs and Atlanta class CLs waiting for decisions to be made about bases 

I switched to PVA which seems to be giving a good enough bond.

Assorted flavors of US cruisers on new bases 

IJN CAs and BBs 

IJN DDs and CL 

I am thinking that maybe just a tag big enough for a label would be better, easier to store and not accentuate the "banana boat" issues. I'm currently making labels in MS Word and trying to name each ship. The names may not be exact to the ship silhouette, but will adhere to the class, number of turrets etc. For economy I only bought one .stl each for all Japanese heavy cruisers and US 8" and 6" cruisers. I find the differences between a Northampton, Portland and Pensecola class 8" cruiser pretty small. Same with the two major classes of 6" cruisers, so I went with the Brooklyn, because it's iconic. All my US destroyers are Fletchers as well. The Fletcher class DD is just a good looking ship.

Last weekend Weirdy Beardy and I trekked down to deepest, darkest southern Ontario for a friend's 60th birthday. The birthday boy started out by running a game of "Charlie Company." He plays this like an RPG. All the players play the Americans and he runs the VC/NVA who remain hidden until we successfully spot or they come out int he open to attack etc. We were an American Armored Infantry platoon, recently transferred form Germany and tasked to sweep the area for signs of the reported NVA regiment in the area. I played the Lt, other friends played the section commanders, platoon Sgt, and the tank commander.

You can see that his set up, put together when kids were small and money tight, is basic, but still works and the game is still good.

The Zippo and two sections pour fire onto some bunkers and trenches spotted in the brush across the river while the Combat Engineers and the 3rd squad search the hooches. Black electrical tape and narrow masking tape are berms for flooded rice paddies.

MEDEVAC arrives to dust-off my serious casualty.

It was all suitably chaotic and foggy as some of my Grunts tripped mines and mortar bombs rained down us. My Lt earned the Silver Star for running into the mortar barrage to pull a wounded man out while under fire. We didn't kill anyone and never did see the enemy as our reactions successfully frustrated the planned ambush as we learned in the post-game debrief. Historically, the NVA launched their ambush and tricked the American forces into firing into the village, where villagers had been tied up to become victims of the cross-fire and provide the Communists with political capital on the international stage. So even though we didn't know it, and took four casualties and didn't get any body count, it was a major victory for the US.

After dinner I ran an eight sided Hunt for the Golden Teapot of Petra. Adventuring archaeologist, Ohio Smith has sent back a priceless artifact and a group of mysterious Foreign Gentlemen wearing fezzes have arrived in Pottersville to retrieve it mid-transit to Harvard. Their hired PI, Jack Malory, has made inquiries and this has got all the major players in Pottersville descending on the warehouse to grab the loot for themselves. I even got to play this time.

My gang, Bugs Malarky and his crew deploys in an alley

Mysterious Foreign Gentlemen

Pa Clampett and his boys leave the still in the scrap yard

Tong go after one of the Cohen gang

Pottersville Post arrive to get front page shots of my gang getting gunned down in a three way shoot out. Bugs Malarky Blasted! Mob Mayhem in the Streets!

Cohen gang and Pottersville PD square off over the hood of a truck before they decide to join forces against the Tong

Detective Paczki lays down some heat on the hated Tong

"Say hello to my little friend!" Ethan Cohen blasts away at the G-Men in the warehouse, who were incredibly close to finding the loot before they got taken out.

I got wiped out, but it was big fun. With most of us eliminated or down to 1 or 2 figures, we declared the birthday boy (Pottersville PD) the winner, since he still had all five of his characters left and control of the warehouse. Sgt. Crueller is going to have a nice retirement nest-egg set aside.

Cars

Painting the 3d printed cars like a mad thing this week as I'd offered to run an 8 sided game of The Chicago Way at a friend's retirement party. 

I tried various techniques to get some variations in colour. These were red air brush paint as a glaze over a red base and blue air brush paint over a light grey.

The green and the dark blue (2nd from left so dark it's almost black) cars are my first uses of contrast paints.

I'm becoming a fan of the 2 tone paint schemes. 

The new cars really helped Pottersville look the part. Although no one tried to drive one in game.

There was lots of carnage as they all tried to get The Golden Teapot of Petra.

The until now unplayed Foreign Gentlemen gang all got gunned down in the street trying to escape with their ancient relic. 

One player got distracted by fighting with my roving trio of nuns and even took a couple of hits from rulers before driving them away with Tommy Gun fire.

We also played a zombie game. Our host has a big zombie city layout. Everyone had to get down the board to the helicopter to escape. 

There are some cute details. 

Nice use of the old Fisher Price garage.

It was good to roll some dice and have a good chin wag and feed with a bunch of my best mates. It was also good to be drawn out of the hermit crab shell that I've noticed growing over me these last few months. 

While I was painting this week I was listening to some New Wave. I'll leave you with this:

Gary Numan Cars 1979

Cars for Pottersville

 Until recently my Pulp Gangster town for The Chicago Way games has been sadly lacking in cars. Die cast trucks are pretty easy and cheap to find, but period cars are quite rare. I almost bought some resin and metal from Great Escape Games so I could have more than the odd selection of roadsters, coupes and jallopies that I currently possessed.

But my good friend Don has taken to 3D printing like a fiend and found a fellow doing 20s period car designs for printing and ran me off a baker's dozen. The interiors are printed as a separate piece to make painting easier and then just push fit inside.

Here are the first three.

Here is the truck beside a recondition matchbox toy. 

The cars scale quite well with the figures I think.