Junk Shoppin'!

So we've been hitting pretty much every Thrift store, garage sale, junk shop, and scrap pile we can find lately. For the most part, there's not much to blog about in the "we went antiquing again," category, at least not for a Red Blooded American Man like myself. But there have been a few little gems. For one, I can tell you now that Huntsville is an undiscovered SteamPunk gold mine. Makes sense, all those old NASA sub-contractors, staffed by retiring former rocket scientists who never could throw away a box of old vaccuum tubes... But enough of that! I don't want our secret stash getting out just yet.

No, mostly I'm making this post just as an excuse to post these two old phone cam pics. I found these at an antique store -- seriously, not making this up -- two doors down from my local game shop. They are never open when I'm over there, so I never went in. Well, turns out its about the manlyiest antique shop I've ever seen. Like, old coppies of PlayBoy stuck in between old rusty syths and old steel Coka Cola vending machines, good condition 1950's cap guns right next to giant gold clocks. Fancy stuff. These two sort of sum up the best, at least in my eyes. The picture above is a 1940's battery tester, held over what I think is some kind of circuit tester, also 1940s vintage. The battery tester feels like a piece of farming equipment, with that heavy old wooden handle and big steel teeth. It feels like it still works.... daddy want!

Here's the other noteworthy item:


Its about 250 pounds of beautiful, functional, polished brass manufactured in 1904 by the National Cash Register company, later to be known as NCR. This is the company who made my first computers in the 1980s, where my father worked as a tech and salesman after he got out of the Navy, where my grandfather was a MainFrame tech back when he got out of the Navy. I grew up going to company picnics in the company's sprawling private park in down town Dayton, Ohio as a kid.

And these folks, right next to my FLGS, have a working 1904 Nation register. If I had $350 burning a hole in my pocket... (well, OK, I'd probably buy a gun, but still!)

US Paratroopers Army Update -9: Hittin’ the Books

Retrocative Data: 17 January 2007

At this point I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with the army, and I knew it was going to take a lot of research. I was already familiar with the 101st and Easy Company, but at nothing approaching the level of detail and accuracy I wanted to achieve. Reading all the books and articles I’d assembled for the project took a while, but as I did a much clearer picture of what I would need to do in order to mesh my artistic desires, game requirements, and history together. I needed a roster. And I couldn’t find one.

If you haven’t researched World War II very much or are unfamiliar with Army organization, let me just tell you that trying to get a platoon-level specific, historically accurate roster for any given unit on any given day is… difficult. I wanted my army to reflect Easy Company on “the first day of snow” in December, 1944. For one, I’d have to nail down the exact date that it started snowing (the 17th? 18th?) but beyond that I couldn’t find a roster anywhere. I did find a post on http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/ with D-Day stick lists – on D-Day, the paratroopers jumping from each plane were called “sticks,” and consisted of a single platoon. Starting with these stick lists I added and removed names for every casualty, replacement, transfer, and promotion I could find until mid December.

At that point, I figured I was close enough.

If anyone ever wants to actually see this roster, post a comment on this blog. Just one requesting comment (admin does not count) and I’ll bother to post the Easy Company roster I came up with for everyone. Actually, maybe I should take it back to Wild Bill’s sight and have them pick it apart…

Once I had the roster completed, I could move on to Obsessive/Compulsive Document #2. I figured the only way I could keep all the teams in order, with the right names, right game bits, and look like the parts of the Band of Brothers miniseries I wanted them to was with another list. I made a spreadsheet for every model in the army, organized by platoon. The data included the in-game Team Type, its model’s serial number, the castings I might use and what would be required for the game, the names of the men I was representing, sometimes a quote, and a screen shot from the move. I would try to match these screen shots as closely as possible when I (someday…) got to modeling the army. Yes, this is actually as retarded and excessive as it sounds.



Meanwhile, as Christmas rolled through, I dealt with the various shipping difficulties associated with all the miniatures. Everything from Battle Front was late (as each release has been to the time of this posting), either because Battle Front delayed it, the local game store dropped the ball, or US Customs seized it. Things started to trickle in though, and D-1 was finally released. This book is the Late War army guide for the Paratroopers in Flames of War, and before it came out I was sort of guessing as to what would and wouldn’t be legal in the new army lists. Its pretty good as far as army books go. The first new models to arrive were the Resistant Roosters US Infantry in Great Coats. Between them and the used figures I’d been picking up, I was starting to need to find some place to billet all these guys…

US Paratroopers Army Update -10: Initial Recruitment

Retrocative Date: December 2006

Easy Company is the force I got into Flames of War to model. The original Battlefront castings were just starting to be pulled when I got into the game, so I went with a German force to start with, but the Paratroopers were always in the back of my mind. I knew from general comments that, when the army was re-released, everyone and their brother was going to build a paratrooper army. I also expected a lot of "fanboy" comments for anyone modeling the 101st, particularly Easy Company. Lets face it, they are kinda high profile. But I wasn't going to be a fanboy. I was going to be the fan boy. I didn't want to just slap together some paratrooper castings and call it Easy. I was going to make in Easy Company the ultimate Paratrooper army.


I set as my goal to make the finest 15mm wargames force my hands could create. It was to be historically accurate down to the smallest detail. It was to be exquisitely modeled, rich in detail and dramatic action. I wanted it to look like Band of Brothers -- in other words, I wanted people to recognize scenes from the miniseries represented in the models. I wanted to be able to pick up any model in the army, and be able to tell you who was on the stand. The real Easy Company was the best. I wanted mine to be the best.


As I read the prerelease hype Battlefront was releasing for the re-released Paratroopers, I started to firm up my ideas about how and what I wanted to do with this project. I started gathering books and scowering the internet for historical information and uniform details. At the same time, I watched Band of Brothers again, with an eye for truly memorable moments and impressive actions. While I wanted to model every member of the company, it quickly became obvious that in terms of screen time there was going to be some repetition. Not every soldier got a close up, while several "stars" of the show had many instances of model-worth badassery. I could pick the best moment to represent any particular character, but I didn't want to just throw all the rest away. There were also modeling considerations to consider. For instance, I planned to make every platoon in the army distinct but matching. That is, there would be some elements common throughout the army -- the color of dirt and rocks, the style of basing, the snow I planned to add at the end -- while other elements would be used to distinguish one platoon from another -- ammo boxes on one platoon, trees on another, rocks on a third, etc. All that would require planning, and would come to affect which moments I would pick for certain characters. A given scene might have been very memorable, but if it really didn't fit in with the theme of the platoon that individual actually served in, it just wouldn't work. I would resolve this by giving that action to another soldier in the platoon that best matched the scene. This would let me use the most moments from the miniseries possible, while giving something special to do to the soldiers who did not benefit from close attention on screen.

I got to work on the research even before the models were released. Coming up with an historically accurate roster was going to be a challenge. Before the Company Briefing was released I was working in the dark in terms of how troops would be bought and deployed, but I had a pretty good idea of what platoons I was going to make -- all of them. I was able to find pretty much all the original Battlefront castings for most of the units in the army, but decided to buy the new ones, too. This would give me as many poses as possible without using too much non-Battlefront stuff. I don't have a problem going to other brands, but with as much work as I was going to do I really wanted to be able to show these guys off on the Battlefront forums. Also, I knew I was going to chew up a lot of guys doing all the conversions and customizations this force would entail, and I was going to need the extras.

I was setting my sights high with this project. It was going to take a lot of planning, and a lot of time. The conversion work alone was probably going to take months, to say nothing of the painting. There were to be no cut corners, nothing short changed because it would be easier or cheaper. Time was the real expense here, not the money to buy castings or bits or whatever. From an artistic standpoint, Easy Company was to be nothing less than my masterpiece.