O Gauge Model Buildings For Modern 28Mm Wargames

I've been tinkering around with a 28mm Cops and Robbers mini Project during the lock down and got the vast majority of the figures done. Let's face it for a historical gamer 30 figures a side doesn't really count as a Project.

So this got me to looking into terrain and vehicles, both vital to getting a game like this, often played on a small table, to look good.

Vehicles are sorted and as they appear on eBay I pick them up. The 1/43 scale cars and vans are the best scale for the figures and when you leave the immaculate boxes collectors stuff alone, you can pick up some rite bargains.

So that brings me to the buildings. Just by random I came across  O Gauge Cardstock buildings for Model Railway layouts. Now that as it turns out was a good idea. Video below, text and photo explanation underneath that.

I found a company called Purple Bob's Hobbies, liked the look of the photos and ordered the Factory you see in the picture above, the rest is history and a tube of PVA. Link to purchase the kits below,

https://purplebob.co.uk

Above is a picture of the contents of one of the models, this is for a double fronted terrace. The printing is high quality and very realistic, also included is a detailed set of instructions and some clear perspex for Windows.

Above shows the finished Pub model, I think they look brilliant. They are quite time consuming to put together but very rewarding. Here are my top tips to get them looking something like,

1) Follow the instructions, they are quite long but very detailed and getting things out of order can be difficult to put right.

2) When you cut parts out of the card, it will leave a white edge, always paint that edge before you put the pieces together. One great thing about being a gamer is that you will have shed loads of paint lying around.

3) Some parts are very fragile when cut, the 3d parts on the doors and windows especially and I ended leaving them off (best explained in the video) but the model still looks great without them.

4) When complete they are quite sturdy for a card building but these are designed for sitting at the back of a Model Railway layout not for gaming where they will get a bit more handling so I recommend a MDF base.

The above model is the Pub named after the one in my home village, I can still visit the Pub (in normal times) and sit at the table my Grandad used to do his A Level homework. I still need to sort some curtains out for the upstairs windows. The downstairs rooms are a fully fitted bar and snug, I couldn't get a decent photo of it but if you watch the video the detail is on there.

The Factory model (about 17 quid, the Pub is the same price) is huge, 20 inch frontage in the photos above and below are some 28mm figures for scale.

The bottom picture shows the MDF base, cut from an old bit I had lying around, I'm not sure I'd like to try and move the building without it ! I've ordered some roads from Sally Forth which I've been waiting on for a couple of weeks, once I have those I can decide what I am going to do with the pavements on the Pub and Terrace house models.

The buildings aren't the normal 360 buildings we as gamers are used to, they are made in what's called half relief. Not something that all gamers would want but I plan to use them as a background to the game and boy do they look good for that.

These are the backs of the models, just for your information, I will probably put an Artist Mounting board backing on them to give a little more strength.

Price wise they compare well with MDF models and if you are looking at covering a big area with buildings they are ideal. A factory the same size for Sarrisa or similar would be at least 50 quid. On the down side these have taken me a day each to make, they are not quick but you have to remember that other than a bit of edging they are already painted, they are also quite flimsy compared to the MDF alternatives.

So there you go. I don't think card Model Railway buildings are a replacement for traditional gaming buildings but they are very useful tool to have in the box.

The Year In Review, Just The Leisure Time

Last January I did a review of how I spent my leisure time the previous year, and I set down a few expectations for the coming year, now past. It's time to look back and see how my actual activities stacked up to my expectations, and maybe learn something for the fresh year to come in 2020. I had big ambitions between reading, blogging, and playing, and not all of them were achieved. But, that's okay because it makes it easier to figure out what I want to do this year—some of what I didn't finish last year, and some new ideas and desires. How I spend my leisure time is very important to me. It should be at the same time relaxing and reinvigorating, enjoyable and enriching, soothing and stimulating. If one thing is obvious, it's that I still love to read because it hits all of those notes, and that is likely to continue in the year(s) to come.

Blog Posts

I'll start out again with what I've done on my blog, and I very nearly did everything I set out to do. I wrote 17 posts (not counting this one) instead of the predicted 18 because of how the 3-week intervals fell. They were almost all Tech Book Face Offs, except for the last two that were a general review of books I will read again and programming practice sites that I've enjoyed, and a random Physics Book Face Off that I threw in there in April to mix things up.

The most popular post by far was the review of books that I'll read again, which racked up over twice as many hits as the next most popular post, and it was pretty fun to write as well. This was not your normal list of best books because I'm tired of reading best-programming-book lists that put up the same old safe books like CLRS or Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This post had a little of that just because some of those books are great to reread, but these were all genuinely books that I want to read again, not just because they're instructive, but because they're enjoyable reads. They make my brain tingle. They get me excited about programming and learning (or relearning) new things.

Of the Tech Book Face Off posts, the top three most visited ones were Python For Data Analysis Vs. Python Data Science Handbook, How To Design Programs Vs. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks Vs. CUDA by Example. These were all good, but the one that was most fun for me was easily Game Engine Black Book [Wolfenstien 3D Vs. Doom]. Reading these books was a blast, and writing down my thoughts about them was just as fun and satisfying. I'm surprised it didn't gain more traction, but I'm pretty much done trying to figure out which posts are going to take off and which ones will fly under the radar of the Internet.

For the coming year, I'm planning on keeping up the same cadence, which means 18 more posts. That's really 18 posts, too. I checked. I didn't get to that exciting blog series I alluded to last year because the schedule was filled up with reviews, but I'm intending to start in on it right away this year. The book review posts will be much reduced as well. I've only got about a dozen programming books on my list that I'd still like to read, and I'll probably hold off on them while I work on this other project.

Technical Books

I really dug into the technical books this past year, even more than the previous year, and I just met my goal of 22 books (plus 2 pop physics books) while working through most of my tech book backlog. As I had hoped, most of these books were quite good. A fair number of them even made it onto my read-again list. There were only a few duds and one stinker. Here's a run-down of them, roughly ranked in order of preference and linked to the longer Tech Book Face Off reviews.

The Good

• Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D - Between the high level of nostalgia and the fascinating topic, there was no way this book wasn't going to top this list. It's an incredibly well-done guide to how Wolfenstein 3D was made.
• Game Engine Black Book: Doom - Arguably, this book is even better than the Wolf3D one, but you should really read that one first so this one comes second. I highly recommend them both for anyone curious about how these legendary games were done on such feeble hardware.
• Rails AntiPatterns - I loved the tactic this book took of showing bad Rails code, explaining why it's bad, and then showing how to fix it. Some books do this sporadically without telling you in advance, but this worked so much better, knowing that each example was intentionally bad from the start so there was no confusion about what was the right way to do things.
• Data Smart - This was the most fun I've had reading a book on Excel spreadsheets. Not that I read many books on spreadsheets, but if I did this would definitely be the best. It's about implementing data science algorithms in Excel with humor, and it's so much better than it sounds.
• Don't Make Me Think Revisited - I enjoyed the first book, and the revised edition is just as good. Learn all about how to design user interfaces that make sense, and have a great time doing it.
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - A classic that still holds up today for teaching the fundamentals of programming and much more, this book has a steep learning curve, but the rewards match the effort it takes to get through it.
• The Hidden Reality - This was a super fun and mind-expanding read, taking us through the numerous types of multiverse concepts that have been thought up by cosmologists. Brian Greene continues his excellent, approachable writing style with this enjoyable book.
• Parallel Worlds - Michio Kaku does his own tour of the different types of multiverses we can conceive of, with a few more fantastical stories thrown in for good measure. This is another great book to read to get the high-level overview of this topic.
• Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering - You don't have to agree with everything in a book for it to be excellent, and that's the case here with Robert L. Glass' thought-provoking arguments about the software engineering industry. Still relevant after 17 years.
• Professional CUDA C Programming - If you're interested in GPU programming and want to play around with your nVidia graphics card, this book has all the information you need to get started in a nicely written, diagrammed, and organized guide.
• Python Machine Learning - It's a solid introductory text on the fundamental machine learning algorithms, both in how they work mathematically, how they're implemented in Python, and how to use them in scikit-learn and TensorFlow.
• Data Science From Scratch - Fundamentals are so important to learning a topic well, and this book does a great job of teaching the fundamentals of data science by implementing the algorithms from scratch in Python.
• Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks - I've loved every 7-in-7 Weeks book that I've read, and this one is no exception. It's an entertaining read through seven different ways to do concurrent programming with today's technology.
• The Non-Designer's Design Book - Learn how to design boldly in text and graphics with a few simple rules and clear, straightforward guidelines. Anyone and everyone who works around websites should give this quick read a look.
• Getting Clojure - If you're looking for a fun read and a tour of the Clojure programming language, this is the book to pick up.
• Effective Python - Every programming language has its beyond-the-beginner-level book on how to write programs in that language well, and this is the one to read for Python.
• Programming Elixir ≥ 1.6 - An excellent book for learning the ins and outs of this highly concurrent, fault-tolerant language, and it's well worth a read if you're operating in that domain.
• Metaprogramming Elixir - This book fills in the few gaps in Programming Elixir ≥ 1.6, and it's a great companion to that book.
• Programming Pearls 2 - This is a fairly decent algorithms book that's worth a read as a casual second or third book on programming algorithms.

The Not-So-Good

• CUDA by Example - This book is clearly written, but not especially well-written. Still, it's a good introduction to CUDA programming that covers the basics. Just don't feel compelled to read it all the way through, as the later chapters are fairly useless.
• Learn Functional Programming With Elixir - Neither thorough on Elixir nor especially focused on teaching the unique aspects of functional programming, this book left a lot to be desired. It's fine, but not great in any respect.
• Programming Massively Parallel Processors - For a subject that is inherently interesting to me, this book managed to be tedious, verbose, and opaque in its explanations, and way, way, way too long. The necessary information is in there, but it's not worth the effort when there are better options available.
• The Rails 5 Way - This book was so much longer than it had to be. It was light on discussion and super heavy on documentation, as if it was simply a transcription of the online documentation into a book.

The Suck

• How to Design Programs - Nearly 750 pages of the most tedious, drawn-out, agonizing explanations about learning to program, I disagree with the title given to this book. Nowhere in it does the reader learn how to design programs, maybe design of functions at best.

This showing is much better than last year, with a half-dozen more good books, and less bad books. It was actually quite hard to rank the good section beyond the first few because they were all well-written and engaging. I don't know if I was better at selecting good books to read, or if I just got lucky, but I was pleased with the high level of quality in this year's book list.

Novels

As planned, I read even more technical books this year than last, but I still managed to read some great novels in the past year. Partly, this is because of listening to audiobooks in the car, and I have a 30 minute commute to fill. The number of books I got through was still less, but some of them were much longer than what I read the previous year. Again, they're roughly ranked.

• The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer - Wow. Just WOW. I could not believe how wonderful these books are. The characters are all flawed and broken and so human, the story drags you along as you watch in amazement at how everything develops, and the world that Brandon Sanderson built in this Stormlight Archive series is simply incredible. It has weight. It has life. It has history. I can't wait for the next book to come out.
• The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky - This trilogy is just as awesome as the Stormlight Archive series, and I was constantly amazed at how clearly written the world of the Stillness is. The fantastical powers that the orogenes and Guardians have could be confusing, but N. K. Jemisin writes so simply and beautifully that everything was crystal clear in my mind as I read it. The story is at the same time one of the most engrossing tales I've ever read and a powerful allegory about the struggles of racism in society. It's enlightening and revealing without being accusatory. Beautifully done.
• The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass - Throughout this trilogy I was continually surprised by the incredible imagination of Philip Pullman. Each book brings entirely unique new elements into an already rich and diverse world, or rather many-worlds. Even with all of these new elements being introduced, the world always felt cohesive and real. Everything made sense within the context of the story. This is a hard thing to do right, and Pullman did it masterfully.
• The Eye of the World - I'm just getting started in this long Wheel of Time series, and I'm already hooked. The first book is essentially one long, thrilling chase through a world of mystery and magic. The reality of the world is revealed slowly, and the suspense of wondering when you'll find out that next tidbit of knowledge about the world was gripping. By the end I have more questions than answers, and I'm ready to learn more about the Wheel of Time.
• Snow Crash - This book was ridiculously fun, plain and simple. The setup makes no sense at all and the story doesn't care one whit about anything, but it doesn't matter. You're a pizza delivery boy in the future who also happens to be the world's best samurai swordsman and an elite haxxor. You get mixed up in some crazy shit and lots of weird stuff happens. It's a wild ride, and you're just going to have to read the book to see how it all works out.
• Jurassic Park - It's a book about man recreating dinosaurs in the modern age. What could go wrong? And what's not to like? This book is basically a classic at this point, and great fun to read.
• Ringworld - While the premise of this book was interesting—humans and aliens go visit an enormous world built in a ring around the aliens' host star—I just couldn't get into this book by Larry Niven. The story was only tangentially about the ringworld, and the main focus was actually about whether people could be bred for luck. It seemed like Niven wanted to write about building a ringworld, but couldn't figure out how to write a compelling story around that so he had to also write about this other thing to justify it. Also, his writing was too disjointed for my tastes. Scenes changed so abruptly and dialog and narration was so terse that I had trouble understanding what was going on most of the time. That was a huge disappointment, especially considering the other books on this list.
• The Color of Magic - This book was another disappointment, but for a different reason than Ringworld. The writing was fine, even funny sometimes, but the discworld made no sense at all. Completely random and nonsensical things would happen to the main characters at every turn, and I never could figure out what the plot was about. It didn't take long to lose interest in the characters altogether, since whatever happened to them wouldn't make any sense whatsoever and they were probably going to end up fine anyway. There were a lot of similarities in style to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and while similar elements somehow worked there, they fell totally flat in The Color of Magic. That leaves me with no reason to read the other 40 books in the series, lucky me.

One of my goals here was to branch out and read new authors, and I mostly held to that goal. There's no Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, or Dragonlance books on the list, but I did read another book by Neal Stephenson after Seveneves and was not disappointed. The first eleven books were extremely hard to rank. They're all basically equivalent levels of awesome in my mind, and you absolutely should go read them if you haven't already. The stories are incredible, and the worlds these authors imagined and built are even more incredible. 

I also reread Jurassic Park, from my youth, by way of introducing it to my daughter, who absolutely loves dinosaurs. It was well received. For this year, I already know I'll be rereading The Lost World with her. I'll also be continuing The Wheel of Time saga, and starting another new author for me, Ursula K. Le Guin, with A Wizard of Earthsea. Other than that, I'm thinking of finishing up the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov and reading a few more new authors. All I know is there are a lot more worlds to explore.

Video Games & Movies

I actually have not watched many movies this year. It didn't seem like there were too many worth watching. I did see Avengers: Endgame, of course, and it was probably one of the best movies I've ever seen, considering the vast context and buildup of the rest of the MCU. I also finally saw Captain Marvel (I wait until I can get movies from the library), and that was pretty good, too. 

One of the more unique movies that I did end up watching was Annihilation. I happened to get it when I was by myself in the house one night, and I popped it in the PS4, turned off the lights, and turned the sound way up. That was an intense, wonderfully creepy experience. Do you know how great the sound effects are in that movie? And that freaking bear, holy crap. I'm surprised I got any sleep that night. 

I also rewatched The Lord of the Rings with my wife. Those movies hold up really well. If the movie drought continues, I've got a growing list of other (not-so) old movies to watch again, like Jurassic Park.

As for video games, I'm still enjoying the LEGO videogames with the kids. We finished up Jurassic Park (are you seeing a theme here?), The Hobbit (much better than the movies), and most of Marvel Super Heroes. We're still working on The LEGO Movie, Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, and LEGO City: Undercover (this game is ginormous). Then we've started Marvel Super Heroes 2, Marvel's Avengers, and we just got another batch of LEGO games for Christmas. I don't know why, but I don't ever seem to get tired of these games. It's gotta be the character development. (I'm kidding; it's the graphics.)

For myself, I ended up playing Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and God of War III. These are two very different games, and yes, they're both older than dirt. I said last year my backlog was deep. I know Final Fantasy XIII got a lot of criticism, but I still enjoyed the whole trilogy. I especially liked Lightning Returns for the new battle system. Gone are the menus and inventory lists, and instead you link four different actions to each of three different outfits to set up your available commands for a battle. You have a few other special actions that you can do, and then you're choosing actions in real time during battles. It's a much more dynamic, exciting battle mechanic than selecting actions from menus, and like most Final Fantasy mechanics, surprisingly deep. It really made the game for me. Lord knows the plot didn't.

God of War III was another installment of hack-n-slash, vengeance-upon-the-gods action game that was pure entertainment. I was reminded of how perfectly responsive the controls are in these games, and I think the most fun to be had was beating the crap out of Hercules.

The Year Ahead

I have more than enough games to play this year as I play through my backlog. I actually got more new games than I finished, so that backlog is just getting deeper. If only there was more time. I won't be reading as many technical books, so there's that, but I'll probably fill a lot of that time with more novels and the next blog project. Still, maybe I can squeeze in a couple more games, and I haven't picked up the guitar again, yet.

Storium Basics: Cardless Moves

Last time, we discussed multi-card moves here on Storium Basics. This time, I'd like to spend a bit of time on their opposite: cardless moves.

While most moves in Storium games will probably involve cards, cardless moves are an option in Storium. Narrators will vary on how much they like them. For my part, I'm totally fine with them as they add some great color to scenes, but I do want to caution that you not allow them to overwhelm scenes. They're great for adding detail but can also sap a scene of momentum if they are overused.

When writing a cardless move, think similarly to how you write a move for a Neutral card like a Subplot - but unlike neutral cards, cardless moves don't push the scene closer to completion. Remember, a challenge's remaining card slots are, in a way, the measure of how much "story" is left in the challenge, and how close it is to a conclusion. When you play cardless, you aren't changing that at all. You also aren't in any way tipping the challenge's balance - cardless moves obviously don't count as Strong or Weak, or even Neutral. In other words, the story of the challenge does not move forward in a significant fashion, and the actions of your character do not have a particularly noteworthy impact on the challenge.

When you write a cardless move it should be more about showing what your character is doing in the current status of the scene than anything else. Your move doesn't significantly impact the scene and doesn't move the situation forward in any notable way…but it still needs to relate to what's going on. You're not playing on a challenge, but…still think about the move in relation to a challenge and/or the scene all the same. It should never drift totally away from what the scene is focused on.

I'm fond of using cardless moves to show my character's reactions to big moments - to help make other players awesome by making clear that what they've done got a reaction out of my character. That's one good way of using these.

They can also be used to just develop a point a little more, without actually pushing it forward. Maybe your last move was about conversing with a character, trying to convince him of something, and while other stuff is going on in the scene, you'd like to take a moment to show that the conversation is still going on and develop the character's motivations a bit more, without actually having the challenge's situation change yet. That can be a good use of a cardless move.

The trick is to use them, but not abuse them. It's easy to fall into a trap of overusing these move types when a challenge is active. They're good for reactions, and good for further development...but don't react to everything, and don't develop everything. When challenges are active, keep the focus on playing on the challenges. Moves with cards, for most games, should clearly outnumber cardless moves while challenges are active...otherwise, games really risk losing momentum. Use them with restraint, and they'll work best.

That does bring up an important side note, though: There are times when a narrator will set up or continue a scene without challenges, specifically to give you the opportunity to roleplay with cardless moves. Obviously at that point, cardless moves are what the game's all about! Just remember to play according to the story, and even if there aren't challenges present, don't allow your character to overwhelm the rest of the game.

For more information on cardless moves and cardless moments, see these articles:

• Add Some Color with Cardless Moves
• A Chance to Breathe: Cardless Moments

Ep 28: Grimdunk Is Live!

Ep 28: Grimdunk is live!

We talk with Mike Hobbs about Warhammer 40,000 and his new fantasy wargame project.

https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-28-grimdunk

Join the conversation at https://theveteranwargamer.blogspot.com, email theveteranwargamer@gmail.com, Twitter @veteranwargamer

Follow Mike on Twitter @wargamer_mike or his blog http://mikehobbs.co.uk/

Other companies we mentioned:

McVitie's Dark Chocolate Digestives http://www.mcvities.co.uk/products/chocolate-digestives

McVitie's Chocolate Hobnobs http://www.mcvities.co.uk/products/hobnobs

Sachertorte https://www.sacher.com/en/original-sacher-cake/

Previous Episode with Mike https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-15-in-my-day

Oldhammer https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-3-everything-oldhammer-is-new-again

Oldhammer II https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-22-give-me-lead-til-im-dead

Meeples and Minatures with Jon Tuffley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH4MJlW8vHk

Music courtesy bensound.com. Recorded with zencastr.com. Edited with Audacity. Make your town beautiful; get a haircut.

TECNO: The Base (PC) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, occasional guest poster mecha-neko's back to show off... uh, I have no idea what this is. I've never heard of this game before. What even is this?

Hello everyone!

I'm playing TECNO: The Base, "An FPS-Adventure game with its own unique style".

Developer:

Paolo Cosentino GURUY Entertainment (Uruguay)

|

Release Date:

7th September 2007 (freeware May 2012)

|

Systems:

Windows

---

Set in a huge research facility run amok, TECNO: The Base promises a plethora of lethal robots, an arsenal of experimental weaponry and many ingenious objectives to complete. Sounds awesome to me!
Read on »