Ben Franklins War at Cold Wars 2011

[Jonas]

Wonderful stuff! 

[verd]

 Amazing work there!    

It looks like a memorable game

[zebcook]

Amazing work there!    

It looks like a memorable game

It was. Working from memory here (talked to Jeff while we played);

The bandstand, the turtle tank, and the gondolas of some of the balloons were cobbled from Italieri's Da Vinci model kits. The balloon itself was a Fiddler's Green paper kit. Jeff is amazingly clever at cobbling together all sorts of grand creations.

His games usually involve 12 or more players with everyone getting a small unique force and encouragement to attempt bold and frequently comical heroics. This one had (among other things):

Ben Franklin with electro-cannons
Horatio Hornblower with British landship
Dolly Madison and the women's militia
Prince Rupert (pronounced Pwince Wupewt) with harmonic projector (the bandstand) -- the Rupert family is a recurring cast in many of Jeff's games
British steam heavy cavalry
Magua with Indian irregulars and some wendigo(s)
The Headless Horsemen with Hessians
Benedict Arnold with American regulars
Assorted British regulars with proto-Industrial steam gun carriages
Balloons (there was even a boarding action when we played!)

And way more than I can remember.

[Pappa Midnight]

That band stand is totally bonkers!!!!!
Really nice set-up in an unusual setting.

PM

[abdul666lw]

Colonel O'Truth marvelous Faraday Galvanic Field Gun
http://colonelotruth.blogspot.co.nz/p/weapons-of-mass-delusion.html

 in animal-drawn (oxen instead of a dinosaur?) and without too many rivets, could well be crewed by men in tricornes.
Similarly his 'Pantagruel' bipedal walker, of wooden construction, could be a 'Lacepunk' contraption:

Ideally he would have rococo decoration http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=39498.msg511939#msg511939

A model of the French galley 'La Reale' in suitable scale (1/144? Smaller?) could provide all required baroque decoration.
Btw, Armorcast had smaller (2-men crew?), enclosed, wooden bipedal walkers that would need only such added decoration to become 18th C. war engines... Not that I'm convinced of the viability of less than hexa- or octopodal walkers as war engines.

Now, Lacepunk can even include "Space 1745"
http://www.drunkendragoonproductions.com/18thcentimagi-nation/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=80
If interplanetary travel is too much for you, you well set such adventures on the newly discovered continent of Mu in the Pacific ocean. To prevent any cataclysmic 'butterfly effect' of 'advanced' technologies (skyships, specially) spreading out of it, just suppose that a geostationary hole in the ozone layer happens to allow aether winds to reach the ground there and there only: 'lightwood' receives its anti-g capacity from them. Actually, it's the constant bombardment of the soil by aether winds for millions of years which transmuted selenium into cavorium (the salts of which form cavorite): the 'Lighwood bush' accumulates cavorium in its cell walls just like other plants accumulate selenium or silicon...

[Melnibonean]

Absolutely fantactic. There is som much on offer it's hard to know where to begin heaping the praise.
I like what you've done with the Eureka string quartet. I've had those figures sitting around for a while now trying to figure out what to do with them.

And those ballons...