“my hair still wet from yesterday,

the ocean calls me back to play”

“to the oceanside return,

there’s always more to learn”

“inside you there’s an ocean

of movement and of motion”

“if you want to teach

your name should be the beach”

“at the beach we are excused

from the norm the world views”

“surfers beware the rocks,

the school of hard knocks”

Click on < or > for other categories.

Please visit again as hundreds of other sayings will be posted to this and other categories.

(c)  2009  Unknown Heartist

Unknownheartist@gmail.com

A medium-sized township somewhere on the Eastern Front…the Eastern Front in Spring 1945, that is. Two reconnaissance forces clash somewhere in or near Germany.

There was a moderate south-easterly wind blowing.

We decided to play lengthways for this game, as our AFVs could all move at very good speeds and Peter wanted me to see just how that translated onto the table.

I had a company comprised of many different AFVs – 234/2 Pumas, a 234/3 Stummel, 222s and Lynxs. Peter’s Soviet force had a high percentage of Lend-Lease vehicles – M3A1s, M3 half-tracks as well as T-70s.

FIRST TURN:

Both sides moved. My 234/2 Pumas moved at 1/2 their maximum permitted speed, so they could shoot at the T-70s they saw on the main road on the other side of town.

The Pumas hit, but at that range their shells could never penetrate, so the shells bounced off.

SECOND TURN:

More movement. The T-70’s guns can’t reach my Pumas, so my Pumas take advantage of the situation, opening fire and causing one T-70 to be Tracked.

THIRD TURN:

Now AFVs from both sides were racing across the table top.

Peter was right – these recon AFVs really could fly, and having the roads helped this aspect of the game too.

The T-70s are now in range and fire a salvo at the opposing 234/2s but with no success. The 234/2s return fire, getting a Stun result on one of T-70s and  immobilising the other.

FOURTH TURN:

With AFVs sited by both forces, I needed all my 6 ‘pips’ to split my forces up. All jockeyed for cover or to present their heavily-armoured fronts to their opponents.

Down in the south-east of the town, my Lynxs came under solid fire from the Lend-Lease M3A1s, causing one Lynx crew to panic and bail out.

To the north, the 234/2 Pumas both immobilise the already immobilised T-70 and destroy its gun too – Peter rules that it is effectively destroyed as it can do nothing else.

FIFTH TURN:

I order all my German forces to slow right down. Firing at half speed affects their aim (not surprisingly) so now they are to only move 5cm each or less. My rolling for shooting goes downhill though – I roll far too high all of a sudden so my strategy is for naught.

The Russian infantry whom had been tank-riding and dismounted back in Turn Two, hurl Molotov cocktails from their concealed positions in the railway station at the Pumas. Peter rolls the top result possible – Puma #2 is destroyed!

I make a Morale Check for the whole Company…a Shaken result. Not so good.

SIXTH TURN:

My toughest platoon on the table – my 234/2 Pumas – must Withdraw. ‘Withdraw’ means reverse 5cm but can still Shoot…I just cannot go forward under any circumstances.

This turn there was much death. Peter’s  BA-10 platoon are all effectively Tracked and so they Bail Out. My Puma platoon leader is killed. 

I roll an 8 for my Morale Check. With adjustments, the final result is 0 – my remaining Puma must Retreat – but since enemy forces are so close, it’s forced to Surrender to those nearby enemy forces.

At this stage, I declared the Germans had lost. The Russians were bloodied – the most bloodied this year – but I didn’t have enough remaining firepower to break them.

An interesting game – assembling, painting and getting a whole 6 vehicle 234/2 Puma platoon reay for a re-match is an appealing way to spend the upcoming Christmas break.

Mom loved miniature glass and other collectible items.  Today I sorted through some cobalt blue miniature dishes. She had a covered butter dish, two mixing bowls, a lemon or orange juicer, and a tiny canister.  It was so cute. She also had miniature American Indian pottery and a miniature cast iron pan. She had some antique miniature candle sticks with candles. These items are new to me. I must learn about them.  Are they rare? Are they desired by collectors? I also need to price the items. All fun, but this is a daunting task. LOL I do love it.

Découvrez la nouvelle boutique Miniatures Minichamps dans laquelle vous pourrez trouver toutes les miniatures et modèles réduits du fabricant Minichamps.

Des modèles F1, Racing, Moto, des casques ou encore des figurines aux échelles 1/43, 1/18, 1/12, 1/2.

Visitez Miniature Minichamps et découvrez les dernière nouveautés disponibles et à venir :

www.miniatures-minichamps.be

Visitez aussi le blog Miniatures Minichamps

Every now and then you run into something that is simply so AWESOME (notice all caps), that you can’t justify passing it by. For me this something – or the latest in line – was a t-shirt that I found on Threadless, named The Horde. It’s designed by Aled Lewis, and features the wonderful image below of a lone survivor stalling the inevitable. That’s just so amazingly AWESOME that I had to order two. The price? 6€ each, due to Threadless’ holiday sale.

Click to go to Threadless

I suggest you browse through the Threadless site. There are loads of cool t-shirts and hoodies available, and The Horde isn’t the only one available with a zombie theme, check out Zombie Food and The Red for two fine examples.

I haven’t made up my mind on the Wargames Factory plastic zombies. They look okay(ish) in some pictures, and utterly terrible in others. Some people in the hobby are calling them the most AWESOME thing since the last one, while others are stomping them to the ground for all their faults.

Being a zombie (and a miniature) blogger, I felt that I simply had to know first hand. With Wargames Factory having their Black Friday free shipping day, I put in an order for two zombie packs. With the Euro so strong vs. USD, the price for the 48 miniatures amounted to a little over 20€. If they’re truly horrible, it’s not a big loss, and if they’re ok, I just bought me 48 miniatures for under 0.50€ each. It’s not like I have other miniatures waiting to get painted, right?

Click to go to Wargames Factory

This should give me my zombie fix for a while, and for a pittance too. I’m slowly getting back on track with my painting as well, so I hope to get back to more frequent posting in the near future!

Découvrez les miniatures F1  1/43  Minichamps de la saison 2009 déjà disponibles !!!

Red Bull Renault RB5 – 2009 – Mark Webber – Minichamps 400090014

Scuderia Toro Rosso Showcar – 2009 – Sébastien Bourdais – Minichamps 400090081

McLaren Mercedes Showcar 2009 – Lewis Hamilton – Minichamps 530094371

Retrouvez tous ces modèles réduits de la saison 2009 de Formule 1 dans la boutique Miniatures Minichamps

Rather than being a discussion of one of the best chocolate products invented by the hand of man today’s topic is going to be about how you plan and build your armies. There are a number of different ways in which this can be accomplished and I’ve actually been through a couple of ways myself, although I have one method that, while not the best perhaps, seems to always come out on top when I get that buzz of “ZOMG, new models, must have!!!!11!!!!!!one!!!!!”

I’ll split the various ways out and then expound on them, please feel free to comment on which is your preferred method or add something totally different.

The Core Method

This method revolves around the fact that most games have a set amount of stuff that must be included to field a minimum sized force. Games like 40k make this easy as you can pick an HQ unit and two Troops choices for a viable army, to play with though you’ll need an agreed points value, this is where I like Privateer Press’ products as you can get starter boxes which give forces balanced to play each other in order for people to learn the rules. Uncharted Seas and the new Firestorm Armada also work off this premise with their starter boxes.

We kind of hybridised this method when starting 5th edition 40k. We knew we wanted to play 1000pts games, I’d sold all my 40k stuff to get something a bit different and therefore started my Orks at that points level, I could then see what I lacked and adapt accordingly (more boyz!). This is in fact one of the core benefits of doing things like this. You can play your force and see what is lacking which can guide future purchases when you expand your army,  my 1500pts force therefore fills practically every troops slot available and after playing it I’ve further modified the list to make the Boyz squads fewer but bigger. They butcher stuff in close combat even with only a few of them but they tend to take horrific casualties as they cross the plains to reach their foes. Bumping them up in size means there are more ablative wounds hopefully meaning that more boyz can get stuck in later on. I do realise though that with making the squads larger that there are therefore less squads which means less targets for the enemy to worry about. Hopefully the covering fire of the Lootas still provides a distraction as well as Big Mek “Mr Suicide” who has yet to build a Shokk Attack Gun that lasts more than one shot.

Starting small also means that you aren’t laying down a lot of cash straight away. Obviously if you are starting out with something for the first time you’re going to be guided by what you like the look of, not necessarily knowing how it will play. You may like it, you may not so spending as little as possible is a potential benefit.

The Proxy Method

This has happened with a number of the lists I have produced for my Daemons in Fantasy. If you already have some models then this can work out but you’ll want to have your opponents consent and make sure he knows what is what. Proxying (for the uninitiated) is the process whereby you use a model you have to represent something else. I’ve not done this for an entire army as I believe that would get very difficult for your opponent to deal with, but I have expanded units beyond the model count I own or used single stand in models before spending money on proper representations. This has the advantage that you don’t go out and spend money on something before you know if it does what you want or work in the way you expect.

The ZombiePirate Method

Here we go, the method by which I generally do things. With most people when they first look at getting anything the first place that is started is with the ruleset for that particular army. This works across all systems as if you get a rulebook with all the forces in them or you have to pick up individual army books you’re going to be looking through them working out what you like the look of. The start of this method can work with other methods already described, what I do is have a nice read through the book, I looks at the units and their physical stats as well as stuff that I like the look of models wise. I will choose not to collect an army if their models luck bad, no matter how awesome the rules might be and so I take my picks and write-up a list for the normal game size, 1500pts 40k, 2000pts Warhammer Fantasy, 25ss Malifaux, 35 or 50pts Warmachine/Hordes etc… For the majority of these times what I will then do is make a purchase of the entire army, maybe in stages but sometimes in one huge bank busting blaze of debit card. Now, obviously depending on the army you’ve chosen this particular method can do more or less damage to your wallet. This also means you are laying down a whole wad of greenbacks on a force that has not yet seen action so you’re not sure about how it is going to perform, this is the chief downside of doing things this way, however, there is also another drawback that is almost at the same scale.

When you’ve bought everything you need in one batch you have an entire army arrayed before you, this can cause morale issues as you are presented with just how much stuff you’re going to need to build/paint. In days of yore I’ve assembled whole armies and left them on my painting table showing me in no uncertain terms just how much work I have left if I want to do it all. This is perhaps one of the greatest reasons why I never get stuff done, after seeing it all I chop and change from one thing to another. My current project is not done in this manner, I am doing things one at a time and leaving my table clear in order to do so, nothing else is cluttering it up (bar a Lord of Change and the aforementioned Big Mek “Orky McSuicide”). I am hoping that by having a more structured approach to things I stand a better chance of getting things finished. I’m looking forward to this weekend and setting myself the challenge of getting some figures actually done, I am away in London on Saturday so this may not be achievable but I’m going to give it a shot to push myself.

Time and time again I’ve fallen back on this method, written out an army list and then gone out and bought more and more stuff so that I have it all. I don’t know why I do this but I know that getting things piecemeal can actually be more beneficial (method 1 in the list here).My preferred method is probably the worst one but I’m sure each gamer has their own style and works in their own way, so don’t let anything here prevent you from doing what you want.

So then Intarwebz, when creating your ideal army, how do you eat yours?

Check out the biggest tiny zine about Borrowers you will ever read. My A5/half-size Borrowers zine has been retired, and replaced by a 34 page accordion folded micro-zine, plus additional 8 page introduction. The text is equally tiny, hence the miniature magnifying glass included, which also fits into the box (while stocks last).  I thought the reduced scale was more appropriate to the subject matter!
Click here for more information & additional photos.

I have also added some special editions of Enchanted Times, with Intuition Doll kits in green or red, instead of the standard black & white.  There’s only one of each left (the blue was snapped up yesterday) so
click here now
for your chance to buy this limited edition version of E.T. #1.
Great colours for Christmas!

Hello to all of you gamers out there in RPG-land.  I apologize for the long delay in posting here.  I’ve been dealing with some recent personal tragedy and haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would like writing and gaming.  But… since I dislike posts that apologize for not posting, let’s get on with the real topic of the day: cheap gaming supplies.

In these times of economic crisis, it seems to be getting more and more difficult for most of us to keep up with all of the new products that get released for our favorite hobby.  Because of this, I thought it may be a good idea to show you how I cope with a lack of funds while still maintaining a healthy RPG collection.  One of the things I like about being a DM is that it gives me an excuse to collect toys… ahem, I mean, a chance to collect items to grow my hobby.

I know there are plenty of complaints out there about how 4e is a miniatures driven game, but hey, I actually like to use minis in my game.  As a result, I try to have a healthy number of minis, maps, and markers on hand to bring to the table for everyone to use.  One of the ways I do that is by shopping at thrift stores.

Yes, I said thrift stores.  For example, I found this little gem last time I went to my local thrift store:

I know what you are thinking… it seems weird, doesn’t it?  I mean, I am older than 6 years, and that is the stated age limit on the box (1.5 to 6 years, in case you can’t read it in the picture).  On the other hand, I paid very little for this set of natural wooden blocks, and these babies do a lot to enhance my dungeon tiles.  They make for great archways, pillars, and walls, plus a whole lot more.  Here is an example of wooden blocks enhancing a crypt scene:

Here is an example of some of these blocks doubling as 3D debris:

Nothing fancy, but they have an amazing effect on the players.  I notice that none of them have to ask if there is difficult terrain right there, which is what usually happens when a tile has a triangle symbol on it, but I digress… the box only cost me $1.99 – thank you Salvation Army (salvationarmyusa.org).

At the thrift store I also look around for several types of things:

1) Cheap Coasters. You know, the things you are supposed to put glasses on so that they don’t ruin the furniture… Any sort of smallish coaster works on a map.  For example, you can paint/color one blue and call it water (lake/pond/fountain/pool).

For example, this picture shows the before and after shot of some cheap plastic coasters I bought for $0.99 at a local thrift store and colored with a blue permanent marker after removing the cork.

This next view shows one of the advantages to using markers to color the plastic blue; since the markers dry relatively transparent, you can see the 1″ square grid of the dungeon tile through the coaster (under the “water”) – this is extremely helpful if there happens to be something lurking in there.

This angled view shows you just how well this little trick works.  It’s amazing how much the coaster looks like it has water in it.  A little bit of blue permanent marker is all it takes (more on these markers later).

2) Creatures.  While in the thrift store, I have often run across small plastic animals in plastic bags, usually selling as a batch for $0.99.  These bags can have all types of creatures in them, and very cheap!  Here is a bag that I recently got for $0.70:

Now, of course, not all of these creatures are usable.  Notice that I placed a couple of standard DnD minis to the right of the bugs in the picture below (for scale).  The butterflies near the top, the orange fish, the yellow dinosaur, and the red rooster will probably not fit into my campaign.  However, the horses look good, the shark is the right size, the snakes work well as giant constrictors, and I’ve already used the frog, lizards, and a couple of bugs in a game (I was short on crocodile minis and we used two lizards and the large blue bug near the middle as stand-ins).

3) Any type of generic terrain.  I have also seen generic terrain on sale.  Usually people overlook this type of thing because they think it goes with a specific set of items or a boardgame.  The whole point of going to the thrift store is that you find half-complete items and weird plastic things – this kind of stuff goes great with DnD (and other RPGs, but almost nothing else).  Here are a couple of things I recently purchased:

The elephant works well as a giant elephant (on the scale of a huge creature) and the palm trees round out an otherwise boring desert scene.

The gray pieces below appear to be from a MacFarlane Toys set put out by Warner Bros.  It is plastic and, given the MacFarlane connection,  probably came with some sort of action figure when purchased new.  They cost me a total of $0.99.  Once again, I placed a couple of standard DnD minis in the pics for scale.

4) Last but not least, I look for anything small enough to sit on a 1″ grid map and look like it belongs there.  Remember, we are talking about miniatures that sit on a 1″ base and are roughly an inch tall.  It doesn’t have to be very big or very detailed to give the impression  that it fits into the scene.

Enough with the thrift store, I think you get the point…

Another way that I try to cut costs is by shopping at my local craft store.  I know, I know – those places are expensive, aren’t they?  Well, it depends on what you are looking to buy…

As you know, there are a lot of important creature conditions in 4e that everyone needs to have knowledge about.  For the players, it may be important to know which creatures are bloodied, or which are slowed/blind/flying/etc.; for the DM, it is important to know the condition of every living thing on the map.  The best way to keep track in an easily visualized way is to use gaming condition tokens.

Basically, a gaming token is a thin, 1″ diameter round piece of material (usually plastic, wood, or cardboard), that can be placed under a miniature.  This works because standard DnD 4e minis have 1 ” round, plastic bases that are relatively sturdy.  The tokens are usually colorful and thick enough to be seen when placed under the mini.  The miniature that represents a PC that becomes bloodied, for example, will often have a small red token placed under it so that everyone knows the PC is in the bloodied state.

There are several places to purchase tokens.  One popular maker of tokens is Alea Tools (aleatools.com), a small company operating out of Colorado.  I bought a set of their tokens a couple of months ago and I must say that I like them.  They are high quality and come in a variety of colors.  They can be purchased in 1″ or 2″ sizes, so they fit standard minis and large ones as well.  A DM can buy a set of 24 (6 colors, 4 of each) for $14.99 + shipping and handling (~$4).  So, about $20 for a quality set of tokens.  A player can buy a multi-colored set of 10 tokens for $7.99 + shipping and handling.  So, also a decent price for a high quality set of tokens for a relatively low cost.

Here is a picture of the player set that I bought:

I guess my problem, as a DM, is this: I don’t want to spend 20$ for 24 tokens.  Plus, I would have to buy two sets so that I can get the reds and the blues (one set of 24 is either reds oranges and grays, or blues, dark blues, and purples, or the green spectrum).  So if I wanted to outfit my gaming bag with enough of these to make them all worthwhile, I would have to spend ~$35 instead of $20.  Not extremely expensive, but a bit too rich for my wallet at this time.

The tokens are magnetic and are partly meant to be used in a do-it-yourself sort of token making operation.  There are how-to guides on their website and it looks like a neat little way to create sturdy, steadfast magnetic tokens for any game that you are playing.  The problem is that I don’t need them for that purpose, but the cost of that benefit is built into the product.

This isn’t meant to be an indictment or critical slam of the product or the company.  In fact, I rather like the tokens.  The quality is very high and the company has a good reputation for a reason.  My problem is that I just don’t need that fancy equipment for my games right now, especially during this penny-pinching time of year.

Here is my solution to the problem:  A trip to Michaels – the arts and crafts store and a swing by the local dollar store on the way home.  At Michaels (Michaels.com) I go to the small woodworking/crafting section and grab a bag of Lara’s Crafts 1″ circles (larascrafts.com).  This is a bag of 26 (though my bag contained 27!) wooden 1″ diameter, 1/8″ thick disks  that costs $2.99 and looks like this:

On my way home I stop by my local Dollar Store and pick up a generic package of colored permanent markers.  These are, consequently, the same ones I used to color the plastic coaster I got at the thrift store.  They aren’t Sharpie brand, but instead are a Japanese knock off brand called Shariuoe.  You can get any brand that you like.  Sharpie colors tend to be sharper and more ‘true’, but all we are going to do is color a bunch of round wooden disks, so I don’t think it’s that important to have rich, true color.  Plus, Sharpies are expensive and the whole point of this is to get it done cheap – so pretty much any dollar store felt-tip permanent marker will do.

When I get home I open the markers and open the bag of wooden disks, and then color away.  I did happen to take a pair of latex gloves out of the first aid kit so that I wouldn’t get permanent marker all over my fingers, but mostly that was just because I am impatient and wanted to just get these things done without worrying about having multi-colored fingertips.

Here is a picture of two single wooden tokens before and after color, sitting on a 2×2 dungeon tile:

Here is a picture of all 27 tokens after I made them red, blue, green, or black:

Here is a comparison shot of the Alea tokens and the wooden disks:

Here is a comparison with them under minis on a map.  In this shot, the two figures on top have the wooden disks under them (one has natural wood and one red), and the two on the bottom have Alea Tools magnetic counters under them.

In the picture below, the two top figures have two home-made tokens (of different colors) under them while the lower blue/white figure has an Alea tools red token and a home-made black token under it.  The final figure in this pic has a 1″ cardboard token under it.

So, I spent $2.99 + $1.00 + tax on my 27 wooden 1″ disks, totaling ~$4.30.  Compared to the ~12$ Alea Tools tokens (for a player’s set of 10), or the ~20$ set of 24 tokens (the DM set), I saved quite a bit of money.

Note the red plastic counter (the counting chip just below the Ibixian in the picture with gray tiles above).  I use that in my games to indicate if a creature is marked/cursed.  Each PC gets their own color, so I know, for example, who has marked whom, since the fighter is green, the paladin is red, the warlock is yellow, etc.

These small chips come in a five color batch (25 of each color) for about $3.99.  I bought them at my friendly local gaming store.  They don’t work well as condition tokens because they are too small and thin to be effective in that capacity, but they do work well for markings and area effects.  They are easily worth the $4 purchase price and are useful in many ways; here is a picture of some green ones on a battle map, depicting an area affected by a 3×3 blast spell:

Well, that’s all for today.  I hope that you have gotten some useful ideas from this post – or at least that you feel you have gotten to look at some cool pictures!

My next post will be a review of Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classic # 59: Mists of Madness, which I ran as a one-shot session for my group last Friday.  I will be combining the notes I took after reading the module with the thoughts I had while running the adventure (plus pictures!), along with some after-thoughts.  It may end up being a two part post.

Until my next post, I wish you good gaming! (and a Happy Thanksgiving to you USA-ians in the crowd)!

~DM Samuel

A few years back I thought about starting a Space Marine army for Warhammer 40,000. Space Marines are incredibly easy to paint, which is probably why they’re pushed so much by Games Workshop as the ideal starter army. At the same time, you can add a lot of detail to them.

Anyway, I bought a box of Tactical Marines, a couple of the old metal Devastators (back when they were in individual blisters), and combined them with a Captain Sicarius model I had got free for subscribing to White Dwarf. That meant, of course, that I painted them in Ultramarines colours, dividing the miniatures up into two squads of six men each (so you can tell how long ago this was, seeing as how min-maxing has sadly since been outlawed), with a Lascannon and Plasmagun in each squad.

Needless to say, I never got any further with them. I eventually ended up giving these away as the prize for a local tournament. I know who won that tournament but he’s never mentioned the minis, so I figure he either hates them or he’s an ungrateful git. Actually, knowing the average Warhammer 40,000 player, I suspect it’s the latter. He’s certainly never said ‘thank you’ or the like. Oh well.

Okay, first up we have Tactical Squad Athena:

Which consists of a Veteran Sergeant, three Marines with Bolters, a Marine with a Plasmagun, and a Marine with a Lascannon:

Then we also have Tactical Squad Artemis:

Which is made up in exactly the same format as the first squad:

And these two squads are led by Captain Sicarius:

One quick note about the Captain. I built Sicarius so he had two interchangeable banners – a simple case of drilling wire into each banner and then a wire-sized hole into Sicarius’ backpack.

A few weeks back I showed some previews of Dave’s work in progress scifi bunker. We’ll it’s Thanksgiving Day here states side and Dave has provided us with something cool to build over the weekend.

30mm Bunker Deluxe Kit
Price: $6.95

The Bunker Deluxe Kit is a downloadable PDF papercraft model perfectly suited for 28mm-30mm science fiction wargames, roleplaying games, dioramas, class projects or just for fun. Construction is easy, combining simple forms that require no special skill or papercrafting experience.

MULTI-LAYERED AND SINGLE-LAYERED FILES: This kit includes a full set of multi-layered files, offering 3 color schemes (gray metal, desert brown, jungle green) for each of its components. Each part can be customized by adjusting the layers, so that you can hide or reveal battle damage, weathering, external equipment or other items. Also included is a set of single-layered files for your convenience, with a limited selection of components and color options. Whether you choose multi-layered or single-layered files to print from, you’ll be able to design a variety of bunkers, each with a unique appearance.

DIMENSIONS: The bunker has a footprint of 7″ x 9″, and stands approximately 4.2″ tall at the highest point.

CONTENTS: A ground tile, large support pillars, triangular support columns, long and short walls for the ground level, a staircase, a variety of crates and chests, upper level pieces that can be lifted off to access your soldiers within, long and short walls for the upper level, doors and window shutters that can open and close, and more. Full instructions are provided, as well as a sample layout plan for creating a larger bunker complex.

REQUIRED MATERIALS: To build one bunker, you’ll need 13 pages of cardstock to print on, a sharp hobby knife, paper glue and a cutting mat. It’s recommended that you also use scissors, a cork-backed aluminum ruler and fine-line ink markers to fill in the paper edges. To make full use of this model, you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 or a later version.

 

This collection started when my colleague Joyce Mangrobang gave me a DIY miniature kit on my birthday last September 4, 2007. I got so fascinated with it and bought more kits.

Bed Room

Warm Room

Music RoomArt Room

Bath Room

Baby's Room

Class Room

Green House

Court Yard

Japanese Garden 1

Japanese Garden 2

Jewelry Store

Delicious Pastry House

Post Office

Noodle House

Grocery

I finally finished painting an old figure: Reaper’s Argonnite, Elf Cleric (pics thread on Reaper forums; here’s the WIP thread).  The point of most interest for this post is the way I shaded the metallic parts of the miniature: rather than build up from dark metallics to bright metallics, I started with a mid-tone metallic (in this case, Reaper Master Series “tarnished steel”), then shaded darker and darker matte paint glazes into the shadows and corners.  The technique comes from this thread on Oz Painters by automaton, and the key point is that by shading with matte colours you can control shininess as well as shade.  Since miniatures are by nature shaded with respect to a fixed light source, this adds a lot more than it first seems it ought to.

Another quick and easy post today. Sorry, but I don’t have much time what with Thanksgiving tomorrow and all.

Here’s another commission piece, the first ever commission I ever did actually. A fellow gamer had collected a large Ork army and although he was quitting Warhammer 40,000… goodness, thinking about it I know so many people who have quit playing Games Workshop games… maybe I need to rethink my decision to get back into this infuriating hobby… hmm….

Sorry, I drifted off a little there, didn’t I? Where was I? Oh yes, this was a commission piece for a fellow gamer who, despite having quit playing, wanted his army leader painted. He’d already built his own version of Ghazkull Thraka (or however you spell the name of the Ork biker character) and so I had to work with what he had already built and primed. It wasn’t a perfect miniature, unfortunately, but I did my best with it. He seemed happy with the end result too.

Sadly we did not get very good photos from Legends in the Fall…my iPhone doesn’t do that great of a job. I am hoping my wife gets me a digital camera for Christmas that can render my miniatures better. I took a few photos of a few of the models after the fact…here are a couple:

Erkenbrand, Gamling and a Royal Guardsman of Rohan

One of the new GW plastic Ents...I have named him Strongbranch

Today, I’m going to share some more photos of old miniatures I painted a long time ago.

Let’s start with this horrible eyesore:

Yeah… I’m not sure where to start with this one. Well, in my defence it was one of the first miniatures I ever painted. I bought it to use in a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game many years ago, back when I was playing a Cleric in a short-lived campaign.

Good Lord, there are so many things wrong with this miniature. The badly painted eyes (eyes are always tricky but I think I’ve got a good handle on painting them now, even though I’m not a master-painter or anything), the horrible ginger unibrow, the one-tone skin colour, the terrible armour. Worse yet, back then I was varnishing with a craft store varnish. It seemed like a good idea – it had to be painted on, so I had more control over the process, and it was really protective once dry. Unfortunately, it had its bad side – even the matt varnish was really glossy (you’ll see that on more of my older miniatures) and if not careful I could easily overuse it. Case in point, this miniature here. Look at the gap between the miniatures legs in the photo above – yep, that’s solid varnish that I painted in there. Oops.

Another role-playing miniature, this samurai was painted up for a game of Legend of the Five Rings I was involved in. It wasn’t really an appropriate miniature for the character I was playing (an obese priest whose combat skills were more sumo than swordplay) but it was the only vaguely faux-Japanese miniature I could find at the time.

Again, there’s quite a few things wrong with it. Skin tones are always hard to get without lots of practice and I definitely did not have the right skin colour here. This poor samurai looks like his skin is made out of old leather. And there’s that glossy varnish again!

Ah, we’re getting a little better here, but not much. Horrible base, isn’t it? Anyway, this was a fencing miniature I purchased to use in a swashbuckling game of 7th Sea (best… role-playing game… ever) and was meant to represent a Castillan (faux Spanish) swordswoman. Yes, the gloss varnish is still there but things have improved, I think.

I bought this miniature, a High Elf Phoenix Guard warrior from Games Workshop’s Warhammer range, purely to test my painting skills and learn more. I had bought the Games Workshop book How to Paint Citadel Miniatures and one of the sample miniatures they painted in step-by-step instruction was this Elf miniature. I had decided to follow Games Workshop’s instructions exactly and the above photo is the end result.

Again, it’s an improvement of sorts. But it also goes to show that Games Workshop’s detailed instructions, which they still give out on a regular basis in White Dwarf, don’t really match the expectations.

And yes, that is gloss varnish.

More improvement here. This is a Wargames Foundry miniature (Foundry make fantastic historical miniatures, by the way), a Napoleonic French officer from a voltigeur regiment (that’s light infantry). I like the way this miniature turned out, although there are still problems with it (like the eyes being a little ’stare-y’ and the blue of the jacket being too bright).

Finally, here’s another miniature from Wargames Foundry, this time a Napoleonic British Rifleman. This is much better paintjob, I think, and shows how much my painting had improved over time.

C.A.T.

These three items were painted up as MacGuffins for Space Hulk (and any other game that might require them).  The Cyber Altered Task unit (CAT) is a data collecting item that the marines have to retrieve or transport in some scenarios.  Obviously calling the rather odd looking item pictured above a “cat” is a reference to Jones in Alien.

Teleport Homer

The teleport homer was not supplied with Space Hulk but as it came in the box of terminators that I used to paint up my Iron Men terminators, I decided to put it here.  It is painted in the Iron Men chapter colours.

Blood Angel Relic

The chalice above is the second relic supplied with 3rd edition Space Hulk.  Like the C.A.T., it provides an objective for various scenarios.

I like having little painted objective pieces like these in my games.  Sometimes they can be impractically large or inconvenient but mostly I will happily use these in preference to a flat counter.

WIP of a Sturmi as it may have appeared in late August 1944.

In addition to my earlier Sturmi posts I have now started to do a somewhat later conversion of the Finnish StuG III.

In late August 1944 some of the Sturmis where completely modified, while some, like in this case, still lacked a few of them.

This particular Stumi lacks the reinforcement plate for the loader and the plates that reinforced the commanders cupola, but otherwise most of them should be in place, inclusive the protective visor for the drivers hatch.

I Still need to add the side reinforcements and convert some crewmen but otherwise it should be completed, except for the painting…

It may be Black Friday for retailers, but it’s a fine night for flying WWII aircraft. Now that I am no longer stuck painting only Lord of the Rings miniatures (that convention game is done-phew!), I hope to get a few new aircraft ready to go for Friday night. As always, wheels up at 7:15 PM. I picked up some War at Sea miniatures from Axis & Allies, so we may feature a bombing run on some naval targets. Hope to see you there!

I had the privilege of attending the recent games day at the Dragon’s Refuge in Peotone, IL. This hobby shop sponsors a day long event every other month that includes miniatures, card games, a silent auction and a raffle. My friend Rich ran a Sword and the Flame variant set in the Belgian Congo involving a rescue column trying to link up with Belgian Askari at a native fort, then push on to rescue an archaeological team that had run afoul of the natives.

My column, replete with ammunition bearers, is ambushed by the natives.

The game was fun, although the Belgians did not fare well against the pesky native ambushes. The terrain was quite impressive, including a scratch-built earth/log jungle fort.

The Askari sally forth from the fort, only to find death in the jungle.

All-in-all, everyone had a good time.

Partially finished up the dwarf berserker model that I got from the Avatars of War range of miniatures. Really great sculpt I must say. I used it more as a testing ground for painting flesh, since I wanted Stella’s elf queen miniature to look better =) This model will be used as Shang’s character in my 4e d&d game – Thoradin the Broken, the Dwarven Berserker.

Games Day miniature revealed

The 2010 Games Day miniature is a wonderful Warhammer Chaos Sorcerer sculpted by Dave Thomas. Resplendent with tentacles, skulls and a book of forbidden lore, it oozes character.The Games Workshop Newsletter

The Games Day miniature will only be available at your country’s Games Day. Tickets for Games Day France and Games Day US will be going on sale within the next few weeks. Make sure you check out your local Community and Events pages for the date and ticket release day for your local Games Day 2010. You’ll also find preview articles, event updates and everything else you’ll want to know in order to make the most of your Games Day experience.

As has been mentioned on these boards before I am an extremely slow painter. Not only that but I am beset by a fickleness that is well documented in my MMO playing. No matter what game I play I am normally accompanied by a horde of alts. I have already described the pernicious disease that is New Army Syndrome and therefore you can imagine how my normal whimsy can sometimes mutate into “super-whimsy”(TM). Now, my purpose today is not to talk about my many and varied idiosyncrasies nor my inherent psychological instability but more of a time when cosmic forces align to somehow influence us beyond our normal ken.

Over the past few days I am feeling something that I don’t think I have felt in quite a long time. I actually do quite enjoy painting and sometimes hold myself back from doing it more often, hence the consternation of my venerable gaming brethren who are often heard to lament the fact that nothing I have is actually fully painted. However, I believe that sometimes these things are down to motivation and if you do things right, well, in my case it may be that miracles can happen. I haven’t had a fully painted army since I was in my teenage years and that’s quite a time ago now, obviously this needs rectifying. I have finally come up with a project that is enthusing me. I have plans, actual proper plans for getting things done, I have an army list that I am super excited and happy about. I believe that I know what I am doing and for the first time in as long as I can remember I want to throw down this army on the tabletop as 100% painted! A tall order no doubt considering my notoriously slow style. This is going to happen and I reckon it’s also going to look half decent. I refer you back a couple sentences to where I refer to that fact that I have PLANS!!! Yes, plans! As a part of this I need to further motivate myself so that I do not just let things flag, this army list is not going to drop down until I have painted it, hence a second level of motivation here so, I can publically declare that I will not play a proper game of Warhammer Fantasy until I have put the finishing touches to this army. I am a grown man, it’s time that I did actually have something like this to be proud of and I reckon I finally have the excitement and drive to do it.

No doubt the people in my playing circle will also be super excited to see this. Gribblin might feel annoyed that he is robbed of his regular opponent but with nBreaker and another addition to our circle I can try to lend my talents to teaching them the game while I see them enjoying themselves and thus driving my desire to play even more and increasing the chances I have of being forced to complete my pledge. I reckon that this is the only way I have of getting something full painted. I need to do it. I can still partake of Uncharted Seas and I plan too, but the fun we’ve recently been having with Warhammer I don’t want to miss out on and I am going to do this. Motivating myself in this fashion coupled with the fact that I am actually excited about this list I hope that things combine into a successful implementation.

So Interwebz, have you ever been in the same boat as this? Do you often find yourself fighting the drudgery and need something fresh to inspire you? Or are you all top-notch people who paint everything as soon as you have it and get it on the table?

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments section, which might be easier.)