A New Project and Some Other Unpainted Lead I Picked Up

    Pics from the company website (Crucible Crush) -- I will not begin painting my figs till March

Say goodbye to the positive Acquired vs. Painted ratio till, say, summer? One period that I've been thinking about doing for years, but never got around to pulling the trigger on, has been the Vietnam War. I finally decided that I'd take the plunge. The games that I want to do will be small scale, though, with each of my players controlling a squad or fire team. So, 28mm is the obvious choice here. My hope is to do it as a cooperative game, with all of my players controlling the U.S. side and the game mechanics dictating the actions of the Vietnamese.

I looked at a number of manufacturers and narrowed it down to several. One was Gringo 40s (but in 28mm, despite the name). They have lots of cool figures, but all are Marines, not Army. Not that the difference is a non-starter at that scale, but it is a consideration if I go ahead with my plan to do U.S. Army platoon in Vietnam. Gringo40s are also located in Britain, which likely meant a considerable shipping charge. Another possibility was Empress Miniatures. Once again, all Marines, but with a U.S. distributor, Age of Glory. My third choice, and the one I eventually went with, was the Black Sun range from Crucible Crush -- an arm of Bob Murch's Pulp Figures. Technically, these are for their "Weird War" Vietnam, with all kinds of inter-dimensional Cthulu-like horrors. However, their standard rank and file figures are solidly historical, and they included U.S. Army troops.

    Picture from Crucible Crush website of their 28mm Vietcong figures

Crucible Crush is located in Canada, so I reached out to them prior to the Trump tariffs and asked if they'd raise their price if those were put into place. The gist of the answer was it would be very likely. My friend Jim W in Michigan owns figs from the Black Sun range and liked them, so that tipped the scale. What's more, with the tariffs only weeks away at that time (enacted now), I quickly reached out and ordered what I wanted. I picked up seven packs of five American GIs each and five packs of VC. They kindly gave me a bonus pack, and I chose one of their "Children of Hastur" -- hippies with guns -- which I could use for my post-apocalyptic games. I looked through the miniatures when I unpacked them, and they seem very nice -- as one would expect from the Pulp Figures line. I am using pictures from their website with this blog post, rather than taking my own poorer quality ones!

What rules will I use? Wellll, I am actually going to write my own! Sort of. My plan is to playtest and adapt the Ganesha Games "Sellswords & Spellslingers" system to the Vietnam War. The gist of SS&SS is that a player rolls between one and three d20s to activate each figure. Any failures result in the draw of a card from a deck. These cards cause new enemies to appear on the table, or those already on board to act. The cards can also spring traps or cause other events. My job as "GM" will simply be to adjudicate these events while the players or game's "AI" make all the decisions. I also plan on tracking the platoon's progress through their year-long tour in Vietnam. Figures will likely get wounded or killed, necessitating brand new replacements, who will likely be less skilled. The survivors will progress in skill. The players, as sergeants, will be trying to shepherd as many of their men safely through their yearlong tour in Vietnam.

    Of course, I ordered the Hollywood personalities pack from Crucible Crush's 28mm Vietnam range!

The package from Canada arrived the day before I left for my vacation in Ecuador ("Whew!"). I will likely begin painting the figures in March. There are a few things I want to finish up before I undertake this new project, painting-wise. I've already begun my research -- reading highly regarded memoirs and other non-fiction on Vietnam. So, look for lots of Vietnam figures being painted this year!

What else did I buy to totally screw up that Painted vs. Acquired total? This purchase is also for SS&SS, but for the Dark Age Britain semi-historical games I plan to run. These will be the "semi" part, actually! After fighting Vikings for awhile, I plan on having my players encounter mythical elements from Scottish or northern British myths. These little guys will be the "Redcaps." These goblin-like creatures are the evil equivalent of the household "brownies" -- benevolent little sprites that help families keep their homes nice and tidy. Well, in my world, they are one in the same creatures. Something will happen to turn them into enemies (Redcaps), and the players will encounter them and try to solve the mystery of why a previously friendly race is all of a sudden hellbent on human blood. That's down the road in the story arc, though. So, these will likely not get painted soon. The figures are from Conquest Games and are in their "Myths of Albion" range and are called, Svartalfar. I picked up 23 of them -- more than enough. Or more accurately, my friend Will G picked them up for me when he was visiting England a couple weeks ago!

    Once again, pics from Conquest Games website of their "Svartalfar" (which will be my Redcaps)

Unfortunately, the ratio is likely only to get worse after my visit next weekend to Cincycon. I will likely pick up some figures there, but will do a report on my purchases after the show. In the meantime, I am just about done with the two Bad Goblin Games trailers, so look for pictures of those soon. What's more, I will likely follow them up with a couple of my own takes on a shipping container building. As for miniatures, I am going to mix in a batch of Dark Age cavalry for our Lion Rampant games on Sunday nights. So, stay tuned for more coming soon!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Miniatures acquired in 2025: 95
  
• Miniatures painted in 2025: 15 

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Terrain acquired in 2025: 5
  
• Terrain painted in 2025: 7

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Scatter acquired in 2025: 9
  
• Scatter painted in 2025: 5