I just went nuts with my $$$ - Or, what am I buying for gaming

Due to various things, I have not been spending any money towards my ‘Anarchy in the UK’ project lately.  I have been slowly been picking up on other things, but no more!  I got my expense pay check back last weekend (my money that I have to use for company things, but they eventually pay me back for using).  Since I finally got to it, (over a grand!), I sort of went on an uncontrolled splurge on stuff my urban ‘AitUK’ terrain board.  One of the main reasons that I decide to keep my 20mm stuff is that it designed with OO scale (AKA 4mm or 1:76) model railroading kits, which is very popular in the UK.  So there is a lot of stuff that is available.  While HO scale is popular here in the US, it is 1:87^th scale.  So while some things work with the 20mm, others are too small. 

Anyways, I really went nuts for scenery to do a scrap yard.  I did this for a few reasons.  First, I like the idea of have a nasty looking area that would create an interesting fighting condition.  Secondly, the first scenario in the Geezers, Shut It! rules takes place in a scrap yard.  And finally, in my upcoming zombie / post- apocalypse games they will make great objectives for scrappers to fight over.  So with this in mind, I ordered the following items:  scrap metal super pile (very large with large items), scrap metal bales pile, tires scrap pile, misc. scrap pile, four stacks of flattened cars, a double portacabin office, and three meters of grey wire mesh fencing!  I think that I will have fairly nice looking scrap yard when it is done.

Now for the suburban / residential & commercial area board, I picked up the following:  a telephone box, four Royal Mail Post boxes, twelve dustbins (US: trash cans), a pile of roadside garbage for pickup day, some fruit & vegetable crates, and some piles of mail bags, plus sixteen stack of sacks, that I am going to paint up for garbage bags to give a feeling for that period of time during the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in the UK.  I also picked up a set of 1970’s framed adverts and 41 piece set of sand brown stone wall fencing. 

I also picked up my final pack of Metcalfe tarmac sheets.  What I am doing is gluing four sheets in a 2x2 sheet pattern on 5mm foam board to make an urban terrain base (56cm x 40cm; 22” x 15.75”).  I will need to cut down the board to have it fit in my 33L Really Useful Box that I store my 20mm Metcalfe buildings (interior dimensions: 24” x 14”).  So with two rows of three sheets will get me a board area of 48” x 42” or close to my ideal 4’x4’ area.  Maybe one day I can find a decent roll-up mat that looks like tarmac and don’t have 28mm shell holes or other silly stuff painted on it.  I want it to be just plain Jane so I can move my buildings around and have various road lanes.  I will eventually make some little park / green templates to place on it too.

Next I picked up some odds and ends, like 20 cheap OO scale cars (modern, but I am not going to worry over that too much), a moonshine still (OK, I had to get one!).  I also picked up a pack of 100 miniature tiny bricks, a pack of larger miniature bricks (250 pieces), and a pack of dark red brick modeling dust.   I plan to make some brick piles for pre-located riot weapons or representing damage markers for damage on buildings.  I went ahead and order both sizes of bricks to see what works better.  The tiny ones measure 3.13mm x 1.45mm x 0.93mm in size or to scaled brick of 23.8cm (9.37“) x 11cm (4.3“) x 7cm (2.75“).  The average US red brick is about 8” × 4” × 2.25” and in the UK, they are about 21.5cm × 10.25cm × 6.5cm. So they are a little bit on the big side and really close enough for a scale purist/Nazi.  The large bricks measure 2.19mm x 4.69mm x 1.4mm, so don’t scale out to my 20mm, but they do scale out towards 28mm figures…hmmm…I think my Dead Rabbits now have piles of Irish confetti for the Crushers.  B’hoys!

Finally, I picked up a couple of vehicles that are also 1:72 or 20mm.  Considering the time frame of my ‘AitUK’ project, I couldn’t pass them up.  Let’s just say that one is a yellow gyrocopter and the other is a silver Aston Martin DB5…cue ‘Spies in the Night’

 

Good Evening, Miss Moneypenny

Sapper