Show Qids

This weekend I’ve had a chance to get some work done on the participation version of “Call it Qids” for the Society of Ancient’s show stand. The aim is to have it ready to coincide with the distribution of the incentive game to members.

For the show game it has to be portable and robust and hopefully eye-catching. So that means solid bits of wood, polyfilla (spackle) and textured paint. Which meant spending time in the garage with power tools and full sized paint brushes, acting like a proper Grown Up.

It has to be said that despite there not being any frost it was a bit cool in the work area over the weekend, not helped by me knocking the fan heater on the floor whilst measuring up and causing a minor fire in the casing. Admittedly that warmed the garage up but it wasn’t completely safe and the smell of burning plastic led me to put this out fairly pronto.

The final gluing takes place, using all the clamps I can find

I’ve written before about the joys of owning a Black and Decker jigsaw, and it came into play again to make nice, neat, accurate, mitre joints for the corners of the board frame. Alas my measuring skills, much cause of pain to me in my third year wood-working classes,  let me down again and I produced a beautifully aligned lozenge shape rather than the desired square. However, a judicious application of Surform and sand paper soon rectified the errors.

Alas I need to report that the jigsaw is starting to play up slightly, with the operating control getting jammed on. This is a bit disconcerting in the same weekend that the news of Paul Daniels, the circular saw and the missing digits became public.

All this left me with the liberal application of Brilliant White gloss to seal the edge of the board and provide a “reference” area away from the game board, and the use of my reliable Antique Pine quick drying Ronseal on the frame to give it a more distinguished air.

Just the centre tower to fill in this picture

The little model of Qids, or Qadesh, is close to completion. This was more of a modelling task that a piece of Grown Up DIY. It is a complete guess based on the wall reliefs, but I’m quite pleased with it now all the turrets and towers are crowded with little Baccus Hittites.

I’m pretty much done with the figures for the game as well. I’ve even put a third figure in the Hittite chariots. I’m using Egyptian chariots for my Hittites not the normal block sided monsters you usually see. Qids’ author, Ian RL argues a pretty convincing case for this approach (for example the second wave chariots only had two crew, and the third man really surprised Ramesses indicating that it wasn’t at all normal). At the weekend I got a nice packet from Pete at Baccus with a goodly number of bullocks and asses to cram onto the baggage bases. These are now cleaned up and sitting on the painting sticks ready to go.

After them I have to do some Combat Resolution tables to stick on the game board and a turn track to do as well. However until I get some bits and pieces from our other sponsor (not due until February) the production will stall.

Although I could start working on the shrine to the gods, of course…..