Burned-out peasant cottage finished

As the title says, I think I’m done.

8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy?

So, GW hasn’t released all the army books yet, but realize that they have done some bad army books.  Ergo, we get new rules, apparently with Empire and Orcs again.  Seventh edition was released in September 2006, although it seems like it was just yesterday.  That’s probably because I’m still sitting on piles of unpainted dwarfs. It also explains my immediate reaction of “WHAA!!!  Those greedy SOB’s!” but then going, “oh well, it actually has been a while…”  Four years ago is actually a lot longer than I think some times.

Another WIP shot of the hovel

Got a little behind with mostly real-life problems, but here is the interior of Anda’s burned down and overgrown farm house.

WIP

WIP

Fieldstone 6: the burned hovel

It’s been a long time since I posted something substantive.  I don’t like to burden my hobbyist audience with real life quasi-drama, but suffice to say that my plate has gotten just a bit more full over the past few weeks, and yes it has impacted my hobby time.  I’m still running my RPG on a regular basis, but the evening hobby time is a little pinched.

Anyways, onto other news.   As it turns out, I won the grand prize for the Andaville raffle, a good sized gift card for the Home Depot.  Since it isn’t a gaming-related prize, the field is wide open.  But for now, I’m doing Andadas a favor by throwing together one or two of the pieces for his town that either weren’t taken or were taken but not made.  Ergo, here’s a WIP shot of what I’m doing now, a burned-down peasant farmhouse.

 

WIP burned down farmhouse

I’ll probably have it done next week.  Stay tuned.

 

My paint is failing me

I’m usually a black-primer guy for all the reasons miniature painters use black primer: hides mistakes, does the easy blacklining, can paint metallics without another layer, etc.  But lately I’ve been priming in white because the Marauders are fairly brightly colored, being mostly red and flesh colored.  But in the process I’ve discovered that paints that work great over black (like my dark brown and gray paints) look terrible over white.

I use a lot of craft paints for miniatures, because I’m not of the level of painter that really is hampered by the quality issues, but now they are starting to let me down.  When the paint looks bad, I get discouraged and stop painting, or at least let it fall by the wayside for a while.  So now I have two options–really try to work the cheap craft paints or overcome my frugal nature and invest in some decent paints.

My most likely course of action will be to “power through” the last Chaos Marauders (there’s 11 of them left) with the cheap paints, so they all match.  Then, take stock of whatever the next painting project will be, then make the decision.

When did I get so frugal?

Nothing against the two big FLGS’s in Dayton, Ohio, but if I’m in Columbus, I’m going to the Guard Tower.  For the years that I lived in Columbus, the Guard Tower was a place where I’d often go on my way home from school or work and hang out and buy way too much stuff.

So yesterday I’m in Columbus so, as I said, I’m at the Guard Tower.  And I’m not buying anything.  I stopped reading Knights of the Dinner Table after it became all about the Black Hands and World of Warcraft, plus the very protracted “BA gets his revenge” storyline (shark, jumped).  I dropped White Dwarf almost a year ago when it became less about battle reports and modelling and more of just a catalog.

Pathfinder Beastiary?  No thanks.  DMG2?  Pass.  4E splatbooks with more powers or magic items?  I don’t even use all the options I have now.  The hardest things to pass on were Mantic’s new plastic elves.  Cheap and only slightly funky looking, I’ve been giving them the covetous eyeball ever since I saw them sprayed-and-dipped over at The Army Painter.  They are a little funky looking on the packaging–I think they could’ve come up with a more striking and effective paint scheme.

But, then I remembered that I’m still in the running for Andadas’ lottery over at the HA site, and that I had promised myself I wouldn’t buy anything until both the lottery was over and I had finished painting the Chaos Marauders.

Stupid mature judgement and new-found frugal nature.

So, I’m thinking strongly about having a marathon painting day Friday.  It’s my day off, the schedule looks clear (knock on wood) and I’ll be pretty busy over the weekend between trying out the new Skype-based RPG I’m playing in, work, the lottery, and having the missus be out of town so I’m single-parenting.  So maybe, maybe I can get the rest of the Marauders primed and perhaps a few of the major block-painting steps done before that, and then do the rest Friday.  That way, when the lottery is over I can jump into whatever I’m going to do next.

One final note: I did see while I was at the store four guys playing a pretty lively game of 1949 Secrets of the Third Reich.  It looked like fun and I’m always a sucker for games that other people enjoy, but the $40 price tag and the knowledge that I would have to find players allowed me to resist temptation.

Why some monsters are better than others

Howling Hag, or if you prefer the witch from Army of Darkness where Ash says, “It’s a trick–get an axe.”

Why is this monster great?  Because of the debate that always occurs with PC’s going “old lady we need to rescue, or hideous trap?”

I'm a level 8 Controller

Gaming Pathfinder with nine-year olds

Don’t do it.

Seriously, my son Mac has been pestering me for ages to run Pathfinder for him because he occasionally reads OotS (missing the blue humor) and liked the idea of paladins summoning animals, something that doesn’t happen in Fourth Edition D&D.  I should have, in retrospect, pushed Castles & Crusades with some scratchbuilt rules about alternatives mounts, but Pathfinder had the slick art and whatnot so after being worn down by constant pestering I finally caved and ran a session.

After three rooms, the kids and I were all sick of it.

When you’re nine, you want everything to go your way, you want to be able to win after an appropriate amount of effort, you don’t want to keep track of Armor Checks and skill modifiers.  What Mac and his friend did was just go put on capes and toy swords and use their imagination instead, which was fine with me.

I get the game isn’t for children, and I understand why.  But I’m also aware that teaching the damn game was a pain in the backside, and afterwards Mac came up to me and said, “next time, let’s do Labyrinth Lord.”

Ruined Fieldstone 5

I realized that I can’t keep coming up with names for all the different pieces for my ruined fieldstone set, so I’ve just decided to be really uninspired and number them.  In any case, here’s the fifth one I’ve built to date.

Frugal Gaming: cheap robots

I leaving my local K-Mart when I passed these guys in the gumball-machines:

My $2 Mech Lance

Obviously inspired by Battletech minis, these guys are made of soft plastic (think Heroclix).  At $.50 each, they are pretty reasonable.  I gave a couple to my kids, but I may try to paint one up just to see how they come out.