Murder at Rosa Bella, a Pulp Alley Adventure

Posted on by

I enjoyed another adventure using the awesome Pulp Alley rules. The adventure uses scenario 2 from the Scenario Book, the solo deck as well as the horror deck. Our story continues with Victoria and her league of monster hunters roaming the Caribbean and ridding the new world of old world monsters. Having recently aided the pirate captain Morgan escape capture, the crew sails south to the small fishing town of Rosa Bella…

What follows are excerpts from the log of adventures of Victoria’s Monster Slayers…

Five plot points (gold coins) were randomly placed as clues. With the recent murders, the local militia was out in force as well.

With amazing luck, many 1d challenges, and great dice rolls, Victoria and her league were able to prevail! Alas, Diego did not make it.

It was a lot of fun! I only pulled a single horror card (mad as a hatter for Marcos) but that could have swung the game quite a bit.

Pulp Alley is an amazing game! The combat is fast and dynamic. Really! It’s the best skirmish game I’ve ever played! I highly recommend it!!!

Honestly, going into the game, I doubted I could solve all 4 plot points and still slay the beast inside 7 turns. I had already prepared mentally for a jungle hunt scenario to track the killer beast. However, with great dice rolls and card draws combined with conveniently wandering patrols, it was a success!

With the ship resupplied with rum, where will the winds take our next adventure?

My New “Speed” Painting Style

Posted on by

Okay. So normally, I paint really slowly. I also have a ton of minis to paint, mine as well as others! There is no way I can possibly finish all of them and still have time to sculpt. I can barely even put a dent in the mountain of minis. So I need a faster technique to accomplish this. Over the weekend, I tried a new method and here it is. It’s definitely not new to the hobby but its new to me.

I have had these Northstar Military Miniatures pirates for quite a long time. I have wanted to paint them for a long time. I have painted a few of them in the past, but mostly, they just stand around unpainted. They are the perfect test subjects! I started with a zenithal priming and pre-shading with my airbrush. I tried a couple different colors.

Next I attacked the minis with the army painter technique of base coating followed by the quickshade. I have way too many paints to choose from so for this test, I limited my choices to a small set of colors. Also, I did not use the dip cans but instead used the warpaints shades in the dropper bottles. I mostly used the strong tone but also spot shaded with dark tone and blue tone just to give these a try.


When these were dry, I gave them a quick coat of dullcoat so I would not chip them before they were even finished. With the varnish dry, I epoxied them to a base and then textured around them with a blob of greenstuff. Waiting for epoxy putty to harden is like watching paint dry. Boring and takes forever.

So, when the greenstuff finally cured, I used brush-on primer and then painted the base. This went pretty quickly.

Finally, I added a little foliage to the base and then gave the whole thing a couple more coats of Dullcoat.

So, that is 3 out of the 4 models complete. Three seems to be the optimal number I can work on at a time. Or at least it was for this batch. They definitely are not the greatest painted minis I have ever done, but they are not horrible either especially considering the total amount of time that I spent. Total time spent was probably 6 or 7 hours not counting waiting time. I think this is a viable method for me to attempt to tackle my personal mountain of metal. Also, I am excited that I actually completed them. I have honestly been dreading painting as it takes away from sculpting new stuff, but with this method, there might be hope for me.

Sculpting Sneak Peak

Posted on by

Ahoy thar!
It’s been quite the extended hiatus from this here blog beast. The foul beast Yahoo has made updating this much more challenging, all in the name of her majesty Security. Well, that be the sort of world we live in I suppose. An honest pirate can’t but fear for the loss of his own property.
Enough of that cankerous nonsense! Ye be not here for that! I got a couple of pics of some sculpts that be fitting themselves up for casting. They be sort of a secret so, don’t ye go blabbing.


I’ll be making the mold today. Hopefully, barring any problems, they should be up and available withing a couple of weeks or less.

Palm Tree Scatter

Posted on by

Well, I finished the two palm tree scatter pieces. I think they turned out well.
Looking at my jungle terrain pieces, I think I could use more scatter… 30mm and 40mm resin blanks…

Palm Tree Scatter

Posted on by

A quick update… I made many palm trees a while a go and still had a couple extra left over. This combined with a lack of small tree bases when setting up a game of Pulp Alley the other night led me to this. Palm tree scatter bases.
So I started with a couple of 4Ground 50mm round mdf bases and glued a couple of lead ingots to the top. (I know! Bad lead! Evil lead! I know, but I didn’t eat it, lick it, sniff it or in any other way try to ingest it. And let’s face it. Lead is great for adding weight!)

Now I needed to smooth out the edges and create a sandy effect. I looked around for something that would stick to lead and mdf and epoxy glue. Now, I have a fair amount of sculpting putty in a variety of flavors but they are pricey and take a while to cure. While checking over my stock in the freezer (cuz that’s where you keep sculpting putty!) I found some actual plumber’s putty. Why not? Cures hard. Sticks to metal pipe. I have it and I’ll probably otherwise never use it. So, plumber’s putty it is. Now, me being a male who “knows putty” didn’t bother to read the directions. Of particular notice would have been the curing time. I dove right in. I cut off a section and mixed away. Once mixed, I applied it to the base and started to smooth it out with my fingers. It’s sticky but workable. I had it roughly pressed into all the crevices and surfaces when I thought “I’ll add a rock.” Tearing off a chunk from the mixed supply, I realized the stuff was getting quite hard already! Light switch “on!” Faster cure time than my usual sculpting putty. I quickly added a dash of saliva and madly attempted to erase all of may many finger prints. It was a frenzy but I was able to erase most of them. I repeated this process on the second base.
Within 10 minutes, both bases were rock hard and presumably ready for paint. All in all, this went much faster than I had thought it would.
Notes to self…
1. Plumber’s putty is a great terrain medium.
2. Plumber’s putty cures REALLY REALLY quickly.
3. I should probably read the package of the products that I use.
Hopefully, I remember at least one of those things.