SELWG Show 2021 Part 1 - The Loot

 

Today was SELWG 2021, my first show since SELWG 2019. They have now moved the show from Crystal Palace in South East London to the Lea Valley Athletics Centre in North London. The new venue is much better, with the show itself inside the indoor athletics track. It was much more spacious and airy, and there was also lots of seating available if you needed a break. It's also much easier for me to get to, being two short bus rides (and a short walk at either end) away.

There seemed to be fewer traders than normal and perhaps a small reduction in the number of games being put on. Nevertheless, it was still quite busy.

Edit to correct: There were in fact more games and more traders than SELWG 2019. I'm guessing that the more spacious layout made it appear that there weren't as many.

Disappointingly, two of the big name traders had brought very limited stock with them, having sent most of their trade-show items to Spiel Essen. Oh, well, at least there's Salute in four weeks time.

It was good to meet up in person with various people from the blogosphere and from the club. It was especially good to see Geoff out and about again after his very nasty run-in with Covid-19.

Of course, Ray insisted on selfies:

Edited to add:

Whilst going round the games taking photos I had an unexpected moment of fame/infamy. "I recognise that voice. It's you, from the podcast!"

The Loot Haul

The photo at the top of this post shows the loot all stacked up. I went along with three quite short lists and a few tentative ideas. One of the lists was for a trader who had been on the list, but must have dropped out since I last checked. Another list was for Warlord, who had only brought limited stock - they only had one item off my list:

I's forgotten that Battlezone were going to be there, and somehow walked past their stand several times before realising it was them, but it did mean that I was able to pick up an extra bit for my Barbarian horde:

Bases, bases, bases from Colonel Bill's:

An impulse purchase from Helion:

And a bunch of MDF from Blotz:

28mm Crashed Starship bits

Small generators and some building bits

Oh, that white box...

Well, that was another impulse purchase, this time from TT Combat. They hadn't brought a lot along with them (I suspect that their main trade show team and stock was in Essen), but they did have a selection of their "white box" bundles.

It cost £60 - I checked the website after getting home and the contents would cost £98 if bought individually. The one suggestion I would make to TT Combat is to change the boxes to deeper ones with half the footprint (something around the size of a 9 litre Really Useful Box) so that they are easier to fit into carrier bags.

I'll post photos of the games tomorrow. I think I took them of every table, but might have missed one or two. 

Paint Table Saturday 16 October

 

I had a bad back at the start of the week which stopped me painting until Thursday - sitting still for long enough to apply brush to figures just wasn't an option. However, I've made good progress and over the past three days I have finished painting all of these:

...and started on these:

It does help that the 48 figures I've finished were quite simple paint schemes that I have done many, many times before. The 24 I'm working on now should also be quite quick to finish.

Tomorrow I will be going to SELWG 2021, my first show since SELWG 2019. It will be good to meet up with some people who I know will be going. I also have a small shopping list.

Paint Table Saturday 09 October

 

I'm back! In case you were worried about my not having posted anything for a whole two weeks, please rest assured that I am alive and well and that nothing untoward has happened to me. I was quite simply busy with all sorts of odd little bits and didn't have anything to post until today.

As you can tell from the photo above, I actually have some figures on the table ready for painting. Over the last few days I got all of this lost prepped:

and primed them today with the airbrush:

That's 96 foot and 18 cavalry for my Choson Korean and Ming Chinese armies. Some will be ADLG specific bases, the rest will be towards my megalomaniacal Korean army for FoG/FoGR.

Why did it take me until this week to start prepping them? Well, I was away for a few days at the beginning of last week, and then when I got back I managed to sidetrack myself to deal with a bug going round my in my brain.

For those who know the Traveller RPG system, I came across what I thought might be a clash between the world generation system and the stated average Imperial tech level. According to most sources I'd read, the average TL is 11-12 (Jump-2 to Jump-3). However, all the Sector data I'd seen suggested a much lower average TL. So....

...I thought it would be a good idea to do a quick check to confirm my suspicions. At least, I thought it would be quick. It wasn't. It took me a day and a half to build and run the spreadsheets to work it out. That's because there are six different factors that generate die roll modifiers for the tech level roll and many of them interact with each other. My suspicions were confirmed - the average TL using the systems in Book 3 and Book 6 comes out as around 8. 

Clearly an additional DM on the TL roll is required to give an average tL of 11-12. Not knowing how big a DM would be needed, I did an initial recalculation using a +2 DM - that shifted the average TL to a bit over 9. I then tried +3 which shifted it to a bit more over 10. I finally tried a +4 DM which gave an solid 11.5 as the average. There was still a full range of TLs from 0-15, but the distribution was skewed much more toward the higher TLs. That makes much more sense given the published TL timelines - at the time the RPG is set, the Imperium has had Jump-3 for over a thousand years and Jump-4 for about 500 years. How likely is it that the majority of worlds would be TL 8 or below after all that time?

Oh, yes, each run of the additional DM took the best part of a day to complete as a lot of copying/cutting and pasting had to be done.

Which is why I wasn't doing actual hobby stuff to post here until this week.

Paint Table Saturday 25 September

 

I haven't got anything being painted at the moment, as you can tell from the photo above, but do have a couple of things going on.

The baggies in the box at the back are some 15mm Korean and Ming Chinese figures that I am in the middle of prepping.

The larger baggies contain bits of stick that I have cut up today to make a couple of wide log bridges for vehicles. I don't currently have enough of the linen thread to do the lashings, but have just ordered some off Amazon - they should arrive tomorrow. I might need to cut some more bits of stick when I can see how the project is going.

Finished: Jungle Log Bridges

 

They're done! These have taken me a bit over a week, but there wasn't a great deal I could do to speed things up. Here are some pics of the individual bridges:

A close-up photo of some of the lashings:

Earlier this week I bought a wicker trellis section from B&Q which I spent an hour or so separating out the individual twigs. I've ended up with more than enough of the thicker ones to make a couple of wider bridges for vehicles:

and thinner ones for doing Japanese log bunkers and making some stand-alone bridges to span between "islands" of swamp terrain:

Wednesday Workbench 22 September

 

I've been taking things slowly with these, mostly because of drying times. I also took a good few hours out on Monday to get in a game of ADLG at the club (my Sea Peoples masquerading as Philistines against Mike R's Neo Babylonians). Shockingly, I won - it was a very close call as my army was only one point away from itself being broken.

However, they are very nearly finished now. As you can see, I have added some plastic plants to the "hasty" bridge along with some underbrush; I've also added scrub mix to all of the end bases.

There's not much to do now. I just need to fix the scrub mix and underbrush with scenic cement, airbrush the plastic plants with my brown ink wash and then seal everything with a spray coat of matt varnish. They should be finished on Friday.

I'm not sure what to do next. I still need to do some bunkers and entrenchments for the jungle project, but I will need to order some more materials as I'm almost out of my scrub mix. I might make a start on prepping the Korean and Ming Chinese figures I received a few weeks ago and get them ready for painting.

Paint Table Saturday 18 September

 

As you can see, I have made some good progress on the log bridges. Most of it has been done today - I finally knuckled down and did the lashings. 

The thread has been reinforced with thin superglue. That should harden it and prevent the ends fraying.

It turned out that I did have enough linen thread for these, but I will need some more as I plan to do a vehicle-width bridge (or maybe two) as well.

I decided this afternoon to do a rough-and-ready "trunks laid across the stream" type bridge as well. I glued some 10mm blue foam onto oval bases, then shaped the foam with my hot-wire cutter and a sanding block. I then scooped out a recess on each piece using the hot-knife for the logs to sit in.

Tomorrow I will be seating various log bits onto the bases with brown frame sealant. On Monday I will add some basing texture and might think about adding some small jungle plants.