VSF adventures of Menelduir

Sunday, April 6, 2025

Fist Full of Lead GAAS edition


The 'Wild' Martians with the Franco-Irish on their left flank

So, we had our first game of Fist Full of Lead, Glorious Adventures in the Age of Steam. Given that this was our first go at the game you might think that we would start with only a few forces, but no, I could not resist adding more and more units. I just had to see my stuff on a table in action and I wanted to try out as many different 'things' as we could. So we had artillery, tanks, cavalry, infantry, an airship, beasts, special hi-tech artillery, flying forces and trikes with guns! We also went with a free for all format so it was everyone against each other.

It was chaos.

It was fun

Here are some pics of the action and some of each force. I will do up an AAR soon.

Upcoming VSF game

So, I am finally going to get a game of VSF on the table. Four-five players have strangely agreed to participate in a game of Glorious Adventures in the Age of Steam (GAAS) a Fist full of Lead game.

It will be on an 8' by 4'+ table and there will be different factions all competing with each other. I have gathered together 6 different factions to choose from, each with there own goals and with different troop types.

Apparently I have a lot more finished (or nearly finished) units. I really did not realize how much I have painted until I suddenly decided to run this game. Depending on how many people show up, there could be over 300 miniatures on the table and to my surprise I still have many more figures that will not be shoeing up on the table.

Each faction has 5 infantry/cavalry units, an artillery piece and a tank or tank like equivalent. In the case of the 'Wild" Martians, they will be aided by a unit of High Martian flyers.

Most of them will be fighting over this plot point.

Queen Victoria, a local Prince & her bodyguards hide in ruins near their broken down conveyance

WIP Cloudships

So, after more than a year without posting anything I have now suddenly made 3 posts in one day!

This time up are some flyers that I am working on. These items are mostly built, though in some cases I have left them unfinished to make it easier to prime and paint. The ship pictured above does not need paint as it is a pre-coloured model. (but it will need some weathering) It is a small skiff that was clearly modeled after the Star Wars sand skiff, just a lot smaller. I actually have 4 of the Kenner sand skiff toys waiting to be converted to Martian and American air ships.

The following ships all come from Blotz.

So I picked up this rule set recently and I am itching to give it a try. It is by Wiley games, makers of the Fist Full of Lead (FFoL)series of games that have been around for quite some time. What this book is, is that rule system but with stats and ideas specifically for VSF. It is divided into three sections, skirmish level, big battles and sky ship combat. Each section can be played on their own but they are compatible with each other for the full effect. Apparently FFoL is a fast play card driven system that delivers a quick fun game. While I have many of it's iterations I have yet to give the rules a try as I have been too focused on my Pulp Alley campaigns.

However I have found a new gaming partner who is interested in giving VSF a try, so now I have an incentive to haul out my stuff for a game. Fingers crossed that I will have an AAR to post soon...

Somehow missed posting these up on the main page artillery and big robots.

So, a couple of years back I painted up these figures for the Analogue Painting Challenge. While I posted them up for that event I somehow failed to add them to the main page of this blog. I did add them to the Prussian page, but who visits those pages?😉 I only realized this now because I have recently started to work on some more VSF stuff, specifically some flyers. The odd thing is that I did post up images of other figures that were painted around the same time.

Parroom Station Martian marines

Classic Parroom Station figures finally done. These represent airship marines in service to one of the city states (at least in my universe) They are delicate looking figures compared to RAFM and some details that are hard to get to but they do look good to me!

These bring me to 73, 1889 style figures done for this year.