Done!

Aaaaaaaaaand DONE! Got my December pieces done just under the wire. I'm in with 267.75 square inches of campaign terrain. I think I will start my January terrain tomorrow, so I don't run into this crunch again! But, I have to say, deadlines work. That's 267.75 square inches of terrain that I would not have had were it not for our campaign.

Washed and Ready to Base

Went ahead and drybrushed the rubble tan, washed it with some GW Badab Black, and then washed all the models and some of the rubble with GW Gryphonne Sepia cut 1:1 with water. It's a little thin, but better that than too thick. I'll probably leave it like that, go ahead and glue on the bridge over the pipes, and flock the base.

Over the Hump

Okay. That's an awful lot of white to have left after painting on it for four or so hours, but I have brought it up to a basic rust "drip" wash. I'll let that dry over night (hopefully!). Tomorrow, I'll dust the rubble with a tan drybrush, then start some GW washes-- some Badab Black on the rubble, and 1:1 watered down Gyphonne Sepia over the whole model.

Crazy, Am I?

It's-a primed. IT'S-A PRIMED!!

OH POOP!

The glue isn't dry after five hours!! I probably can't do any more work tonight!! OH NOES...
Update: A hair dryer seems to be working to really speed up drying the watered down Elmer's white/PVA glue I used. I wonder if I could accelerate washes with that...

Ready to Paint NOW

Weeeeell, last time I kind of forgot about the rubble, which is actually a somewhat lengthy process, waiting for all the glues to dry. I usually paint the piece first, and then base it, including the rubble. I wanted to do it before painting this time so I could primer over the rubble and help it adhere to the base. So, actually painting the pieces has been pushed out a bit. It is going down to the wire here, folks! I had wanted to try out some more interesting weathering techniques on these, but that will have to wait. I won't be able to work on these tomorrow night, since it is New Year's Eve and the family has plans, so I've got to bust my butt getting this stuff done. Still, I can't make the glue dry any faster than it does. I took my lunch today and got the debris all glued down. It can dry, and I can start working on it again when I get home tonight. Hopefully, I will be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon! My confidence is currently high, but it waxes and wanes depending on how I think about it...

The Workbench

The Workbench is a blog worth checking out. He has some very nice pictures, sculpts his own figures and has painting tip videos. Very nice.

A Year of Frugal Gaming

One Man's Mission to Spend Less and Game More... Best of luck to you! If you can pull it off, you're a better man than me. I haven't bought anything hobby related all day, I'm doing pretty well so far...

Sweet Uncharted Seas

Craig of the d6 Generation has some really sweet pictures of his Uncharted Seas set up. Everybody seems to like this game. I'm trying to stay away, but the siren call is hard to resist...

Ready to Paint

I've got the main piece ready to paint...I added some greebles and random pipes...some of which are on the far side and perfectly not pictured! Ah well, a few hours well spent. 2 points I can count on, at least! Decent terrain is, indeed, fairly time consuming...time for some Rowan's Creek!

Trucidos Terrain Work in Progress

Here are pictures of the current state of my December terrain for our Trucidos campaign. It's down to the wire for me, but I have a few more evenings left to finish. I'm glad December has 31 days!

Good Horse Painting Reference

Junior General hosts a few stock horses in his paper figure collection, which serve nicely as quick and easy horse painting guides. He has Bay, Chestnut, Black, Brown and Dun, Buckskin, Palomino, Gray, Dapple Gray, and Roan, and Pinto. Thanks to Kaiserliks.

Two Hour Wargames Fanzine

Two Hour Wargames has a free fanzine, Insight. It looks interesting.

Cool Christmas Light Lava Board

I liked this idea for a lighted lava board. There's not much detail, but it looks like he's sandwiched painted fluorescent light panels between insulation foam, and run Christmas lights underneath to make his lava glow. Hot! A great use for those old Christmas lights you're going to have to take down soon...Merry Christmas!

Green Stuff Press Mold

Now this green stuff press mold article looks really useful. I've done simple, one-sided versions of this in the past, but this is the most developed version of it I've seen. Epoxy putty is a lot easier to work with than RTV silicone and liquid resin.

Tabletop Terrain

Tabletop Terrain can suck up a lot of your time, even if you don't play the games covered. There are a lot of nice terrain ideas there, and don't miss the tutorials. He uses Ultracal 30 for his Hirst molds, may have to try that.

Spitfires, Check Your Six!

Brian has some nice game reports of our recent Check Your Six games up at Repple Depple. My Spitfires flew over Paris with ace Johnnie Johnson, and defended the Nijmegen bridges, escaping by the skin of their teeth. CY6 are some fun rules!

Unfinished Armies

Unfinished Armies should have been the title for my blog. I'm jealous! I always love to see painting desks, and his reminds me a lot of mine. His modeling skills, however, put me to shame. Guess I need to work on my quantity...

Tiny Tin Toys

Tiny Tin Toys is a nice little blog. It's first post was in September...and it's last post was in that same September. I hope it gets updated again, but I'm afraid it's yet another gamer's flash in the pan blog. Still, I liked this post about creating custom markers for his army. Very nice, plus he linked to this Coding Horror post about how Quantity trumps Quality. I'd seen that post before, but forgotten about it, and I'm glad to have stumbled across it again, as I do agree with it. My children are very, very tired of me constantly harping about how they have to actually keep doing something before they can expect to actually do it well, but I forget about it myself. When I haven't painted or done something hobbyish for an extended period, and finally get back into, I can really feel that my skills have weakened.

Aliens Board Game in Flash

Oh, yeah! Play the old Aliens board game with this flash version.

Amazing Vehicle Weathering

Ultrawerke once again shows you how it's done.

Trucidos Game 1 Report

I faced off against Chris's Tyranid's for the first game of our Trucidos 40k Campaign. Here is the tale of my inglorious defeat...

Outlander

Now this movie sounds fun-- Vikings vs. Aliens. There are some decent looking trailers here.

Figure Design 2.0

Wargames Factory is really blowing my mind. Their Liberty and Union League takes ideas for new products from the public and gets pre-orders as votes, a la Eureka's 100 and 300 Clubs. But they don't just stop there. Since they are designing the figures digitally, they are posting renderings of the figures and changing them in real time based on potential customer's comments. That's pretty awesome. I committed to 10 sprues of their zombies. I already have 20 West Wind and Foundry SWAT figures and a couple of civilian survivors...time to start looking for some zombie rules and scratch build that mall terrain I've always wanted...

The Trucidos Campaign, Game One

The opening shots of the Trucidos Campaign have been fired. Last night we played 500 point 40k games on 4x4 tables, which I'm pretty sure were everybody's first 5th edition games played to completion. In typical fashion, I came out of the gate firmly in last place! You can check the website for current standings and little fluff bits we're writing for campaign points, plus I'll be posting a more detailed game report tomorrow if I can scrounge up the time. Long story short-- I blame the dice!

Plot Aid Card Deck

So, I've always been somewhat enamored with solo games and solo campaigns. I do play solo games, especially just in terms of learning new rules or trying out some new figures. Solo campaigns, on the other hand, have seemed rather daunting. This plot aid card deck from Table Top Titans seems like a nice, general tool to prod your imagination along in something like that.

MiniWarGaming

MiniWarGaming is a video-heavy blog with some useful terrain tips.

CWC Yom Kippur Retooling

It's not all giant monsters, failed super apes and 40k here at Little Lead Heroes, folks. I have also been working on some manly historicals, too. Figuring that Cold War Commander was a decent set of rules, I went back over my Yom Kippur figures and rebased some elements to make them more distinctive. I also filled out a few gaps in my armies.

More Godzilla Art

This time it's my son, who has recreated the cover of Godzilla 2000. We haven't watched it yet, and he's been begging me the last couple of days to watch Rodan, but I imagine we'll get around to it before too long.

Baron Vega's Solo Wargaming Page

Baron Vega's Solo Wargaming Page was always a nice collection of solo wargaming information, but it appears to have died. I have a mirror from 2005 I saved here.

Godzilla vs. Dr. Serizawa

My daughter drew this for me today-- the dramatic finale of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Dr. Serizawa has just detonated the Oxygen Destroyer to kill Godzilla and save humanity, then cut his own lifeline, sacrificing himself so that all knowledge of the terrible device would die with him and never be used as a weapon. Plus, his wife can now honorably marry the man she really loves.

Someday...

Miltoon Soong got a new gaming table...

Oh No, There Goes Tokyo...

My oldest boy has strep and my girl has a cold, so I tried to think of something fun I could do for them as they are quarantined at home. Having been playing MPoc with the boy a bit recently, we camped out a safe distance apart on the couches and I popped in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

Fast and Dirty

I've been meaning to take a look at the Fast and Dirty SciFi Skirmish rules for a while. It looks like there's been some recent work on them, and it's probably a good time to do so. They also have a Yahoo group.

Just Frelling Typical

So, some of you may have realized that I like super apes. I was tooling around the Reaper site today, and saw that they produce a new super ape, Ape-X, Super Villian, in their new Chronoscape line. Naturally, I ran out and bought one. It's not evident from the picture, but Ape-X includes four separate hands-- the fist and chain gun shown, plus a wrecking ball/mace and a drill. Now, this excited me because I have been looking for a chance to do some swappable bits with rare earth magnets, which is all the rage lately...

Merry Nerdmas

"This is how the fate of the world should be decided!

More Pew Pew!

I somehow managed to miss this Armorcast coolness. I have to have some, even if I only mount them temporarily...

My Christmas List

Juuuuust in case you were wondering what to get me for Christmas...

Monsterpocalypse Essentials

This thread on the Monsterpocalypse Forums links to a lot of good information, but the most useful I found was this thread on unit cards. The figures themselves have all the info you need on little icons. They can be hard to read on the Unit figures, and it requires a lot of cross-referencing to figure out what they all mean. A few people have created their own unit cards with all the rules for each figure in one place. This made a lot of difference for my son! Now, I just need to get him to play longer than twenty minutes at a time...

The Coolest Necrons Ever

These are the coolest Necron figures I've seen. Also, it includes some very interesting rust techniques I will have to try.

Iron Mitten

Iron Mitten is an interesting blog with the coolest campaign reports I've seen. I also loved the Death by Decal cartoon. Funny and cool stuff!

Fact Follows Fiction

The chainsaw bayonet.

This Week in Wargaming

I just started listening to This Week in Wargaming. I like it. The presentation isn't pretentious, and the audio is very listenable. I will be following this regularly.

Barrel of Monkeys

Mik pointed out the other day that I hadn't posted pictures of my Barrel of Monkeys Superbot. Created and piloted by a super-intelligent group mind made up of cute, tiny gibbons, the Barrel of Monkeys can often be found teaming up with Harangutan and the Super Simians.

Home Sick

Home sick today. Was already taking the day off, just happened to have the cold I've been fighting the last week flare up and ruin it. I don't even feel well enough to paint. I did manage to get a little basing done, though... Dangerous stuff, a gamer trapped in his gaming room, nothing to really do but think...think about all those new projects he could be doing...

Doc's Projects

Doc's Projects is a nice 40k-focused blog. I was very interested in this recent entry on bases, although he doesn't list Iron Halo or Scibor Monstrous Miniatures. He also has lots of nice pictures, so browse around.

Chicago Terrain Factory

Chicago Terrain Factory has a lot of informative articles. There's some nice pictures of his Hirst Arts projects, info on resin casting, and more. I really like his tournament markers.

40k Trucidos Campaign

Some of the local boys and I are starting a little 40k campaign. There will be my Necrons, Mik's Dark Angels, Tyranids and Imperial Guard. We're all adults with families, so we're trying to keep it fairly low commitment with one game a month, for six months. We are also trying to incentivize terrain building by offer campaign points based on the total square footage of terrain you make each month. Hopefully, it will go well and be fun for everybody!

Okay, Okay, I Give In...

I'm going to have buy into some Weird War 2 stuff after seeing Slugger Murphy. Maybe I'll turn my Hellboy stuff into a Weird War 2 game...

Overheard at the table

After delaying the start of our Monsterpocalpse game a bit by trying to explain some of the more advanced options, my son says excitedly, "Can I do--", followed by, dejectedly, "Oh, nevermind, you'll probably have to read more rules..." However, he sure didn't mind knowing those rules once he started Swatting my units with his Zor-Maxim!!

Scorpia

A quick little one-off I just painted-- the Superfigs Scorpia. After more than a week away from my painting table, I was ready to paint, and I tried some new stuff on her, notably the stone floor on the base, and using non-metallic metals on her wrist weapons. I think that turned out pretty well, although it's not very noticeable since the weapons are pretty much the same color as her outfit. Think of her every time you visit Union Station in Kansas City, MO!

Boromir and Kermit's Hobby Page

Boromir and Kermit's Hobby Page is chock full of interesting content, including a custom Blood Bowl board. I've got to get around to updating the blog roll soon...

American Akira

Check out the trailer from the upcoming remake of Akira. On the other hand, this fan trailer is pretty cool.

A Couple of New Things

Gaming Terrain is a very new blog which looks like could be interesting to following. Also, I stumbled across a forum I hadn't seen before, Mini Art of War.

Thirty Years War in Plastic

I've thought about doing 25mm Thirty Years War for a couple of years now, sort of covering all the wars of Germany. I now see that Warlord Games is planning an ECW and TYW line in hard plastic... I will definitely need to pick up the productivity to pull that off...

Using Point Motivator Software

Steve's Random Musing has an interesting post about using points motivator software to encourage painting. Sounds interesting. I'm interested in making more work more focused, but this sounds a bit too much like turning my hobby into a second job.

Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog

Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog looks like an interesting blog, with recent posts on a HOTT campaign, something I often think about, and some very nice "mud-brick" terrain. He also has a lot of posts on Cold War Commander, and is sculpting his own figures.

A Little Bit of Sculpting Again

As I struggled against postprandial Thanksgiving sedation, I found the time to work on some new sculpting tools I got here. The first is ProCreate Epoxy Putty. I'm no expert on epoxy putties, although I've used most of them at some point, and ProCreate has immediately become my favorite. However, this may well be because of the new clay shapers I bought. Mine are a mixture of firm and extra firm, which is definitely better, but both are workable. Anyway, I wound up creating the new shoulder pads for my upcoming Space Marines. Pictures once I get back to my camera...

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for a lot of things, but somewhere down the list you're going to get to walking into Table Top Game and Hobby and buying two of their three Monsterpocalypse starters right out of the UPS box. I dabbled a little bit with my son, and I think it'll probably be a fun game.

Sanding Sticks

The best tip I've seen in a while comes from FichtenFoo. I've always been bad about leaving seams and mold lines on my figures. Metal files work well, but quickly clog with soft lead. Sanding is too clumsy to get into small areas. However, FichtenFoo's sanding sticks have been a real eye-opener here. Quick to make and disposable, they are just the thing for a lot of material removal.

Table Top Game and Hobby

I'm in Kansas City for the holidays, but it's okay-- Table Top Game and Hobby is a very nice little gaming store in the area. The best thing about it is that they have a lot of extremely nicely painted miniatures on display. It just makes you want to jump up and paint everything you own!

Some Very Cool Miniatures

This Inquisitor and Grey Knight Squad by Victoria Lamb are some of the coolest figures I've seen.

Golden Demon Winners

Daemon Winner is tracking all Golden Demon winners. I always love to just look at the winning models. There's some really amazing, creative stuff there.

Soft Edge Camo on Vehicles

This Kevin Dalimore article on painting vehicles shows how soft edge camo should be done-- with an airbrush. That's why he's the man and I'm not!

Bugs, Sir! Millions of 'em!

Now these are some seriously awesome bugholes. From An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields.

Hlynrian: Sculpting Sites of Interest

Hlynrian is a blog from a guy who is sculpting his own armies. He seems pretty early in the process, but I really like his sculpting sites of interest post. That is a commendable objective, to sculpt and cast your own army, and I wish him lots of luck!

Blue Moon Spacemen

I some how managed to miss the fact that Blue Moon Manufacturing now makes space men and aliens. They look very pulp oriented (Pulp being the new Zombies), but many of the aliens could serve outside the setting.

Tau Piranha

I've bought Tau off and on over the years, just because I liked the style of the figures. I've always wanted a Piranha, and with my recent success at painting some vehciles and a Hobbytown coupon, I went ahead and bought one

Cleaning House, Part 2

I have been pretty discouraged with gaming desk lately. The area to work on got smaller and smaller as it filled up with miniatures waiting to be painted, spare bottles of paint, and general other junk. The last straw was that I flocked my recent terrain pieces on it, and naturally have a fine dusting of flock everywhere.

How I Painted What I Painted

I have a high tech system for recording and cataloging the paint schemes I use on my miniatures. I scrawl them out onto a piece of paper and then stack it on my desk! It actually is quite useful, although I forget to do it sometimes. I record mixtures, or any unusual techniques I did, as well. For colors not available anymore, I'll write down the mixture for something similar when I need it again. It comes in handy when you return to a project after a couple of years away from it.

Inspirational Terrain

Over at Miniature Wargaming, there's a link to IronHands.com's list of Terrain How-To Pages. It's frustratingly inspirational-- I have all the ingredients listed except for the vision, patience and the skill. It's one thing to make terrain from scrap, but this stuff ends up looking professional. I just don't see the trash anymore, even when I know what it is! Looking through their links, I see a few sites I haven't noticed before: Parasitic Studios and NetTerrain.

Spirit Games

I just received an order in for some H&R micro-armor from Spirit Games. I ordered it on November 1, a Saturday, and got it November 13, so about a week and a half turnaround. Not bad at all, across the Atlantic! I don't get that kind of speed from some stores in the US. Spirit Games has been around a long time, and I wouldn't hesitate to order from them again. I've ordered a few times over the years, and always had really great service. Glad to see the exchange rate creeping back to our favor so it makes sense to order from them again!

The Ruins of Tolen

Over at Junior General, there's a Ruins of Tolen Sci Fi campaign being set up which includes world development and paper figure creating. It looks pretty interesting.

Cleaning House

My painting desk was getting very crowded. It's about 2 feet by 4-5 feet in surface area. I pulled all the stuff off of it, and more than filled an 8 x 2.5 table. Some things didn't even make it to the table, like that 15 year old bunch of rock hard milliput. You know, I just don't think I'm ever going to use that. New rule-- if I haven't used it in 10 years, it goes straight into the trash. The worst is the paint. I have way more paint than I'll ever be able to use in my lifetime, but I have a hard time getting rid of any. You just know that one of these days I'm going to need that metallic purple or hydrangea pink paint, and then I would really regret ever having thrown it away!

IRONDOG Studios

I've had a lot of fun browsing IRONDOG Studios this weekend, especially the very inspirational Tater Titan.

Another Piece of Terrain

I finished another piece of terrain yesterday, started alongside the CD case tower. It, too, had been sitting around a couple of years, assembled but unpainted. I'm glad to finally finish it!

More Painting From the Kids

Got the kids back painting again for about an hour and a half, in which time, together, we all finished eleven figures total. Not bad. Here's a sort of step-by-step through the procedure, with some better pictures of their work. I almost think that such detailed photography of the figures does them no justice, because much of their inexperience just doesn't show when you're not examining them critically.

More old stuff back up for sale

Here is more old stuff that never sold that has been setting around, rephotographed. I think I'm having a change of heart, though. If the kids are painting and playing Fantasy with me, then maybe I should be hanging onto my Fantasy to play with them instead of just selling it off for cash. And, I like these two Old Glory cowboy figures (Poncho and Lefty), and there has been talk about gaming cowboys in our gaming group. So...I'll just have to think about whether or not to sell this stuff.

That was quick

My old pictures of those GZG resin hovercrafts languished with no interested on Bartertown. Within 48 hours of placing the new pictures of those resin tanks, I've got the money in my PayPal account. Hmmmmm... I will be using this money to buy the 40k main rules (with a little left over), which complete my attempt to trade a headless, worthless figure for the 40k rules. Only took me over a year...

Better Pictures of items for sale

While I'm on the picture kick, I might as well take some decent pictures of some things I have for sale. Here are the painted figures of my WarMachine Khador and some resin GZG vehicles I have available.

More Redone Pictures

I retook some more pictures using these newfangled ideas...

Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Okay. Well. I recently complained about how much I hated photography. I have taken some good pictures in the past, it's just always been a huge hassle-- set up a light tent, remember all the friggin' settings on my camera, muck about with lighting, loading each picture in some complicated program like GIMP, etc... It just wasn't worth it to me. However, reading that post from Wee Toy Soldiers, I really thought he made it sound manageable, so I took another crack at it-- and was suitably impressed. It's still a bit of a hassle, but something I'm willing to manage to get pictures that look like this. I think the key thing I brought away from the article was using Picasa. It was simple and had all the tools I needed ready and easily available, as well as letting me have quick access to all my different photographs. Win! So, I went ahead and took pictures of my Orlock Necromunda gang, something I've been wanting to do for a while.

As though to mock me

Yes, as though to mock me, my surfing around today alighted upon the very interesting and informative article entitled You Don't Need A Fancy Camera (To Take Great Photos of Your Miniatures).

Recently Painted

Finished up some more figures I have been working on tonight-- some Necromunda figures and Pulp Figures U.S. Rocket Corps. I have also decided that I detest miniature photography more than anything else on the planet. I couldn't take a decent picture to save my life.

Sixtwentyeight

sixtwentyeight has some very nice pictures of his modern Israelis for CWC, as well as other really beautiful 6mm figures.

Playtest Rules from GZG

Jon Tuffley from Ground Zero Games, makers of Full Thrust, Dirtside 2, and Stargrunt 2, is working on a new set of rules called Stargrunt: Assault Company. They are geared to reside between Stargrunt and Dirtside in terms of scale, with multiple 15mm figures per base. I'm sure the rules will be great, just like all the other GZG rules, and I will probably buy them just to have them, but I just don't see myself playing them. I've never seen a single multi-figure base Sci-Fi game in the US. I've seen pictures of a few in the UK, so maybe they're more common there. Jon seems to be gearing rules towards his better selling 15mm line, and after 14+ years, FMA Skirmish seems to be officially Jon's lowest priority, which makes me quite sad and disappointed.

Guadalcanal Game Report

Brian of our historical gaming group ran a Check Your Six Guadalcanal campaign. I had so far missed every single game in this campaign, but managed to make it out for the very fun finale. Two of my three Zeros were shot down, and the third accidentally flew off the board, which is pretty typical of my flying skills; however, in this game I did manage to down Brian's American veteran and run another American off with engine trouble-- three Americans were damaged and two crashed instead of making it back to base. The campaign ending was a razor-thin win for the Japanese. Check out the pictures, Brian runs beautiful CY6 games (well, all his games look great).

CD Tower Terrain

I've mentioned picking up 40k with Mik and some others, and we've bemoaned the fact they while we all (now) have fully painted and nice looking armies, we don't have the terrain to match. So, this is my first effort to try and bring the table up to speed with the figures.

Cheap Sci-Fi Buildings

I spent some time tracking down this informative thread on Sci-Fi buildings and wanted to record it somewhere for posterity.

More Painting From the Kids

More painting from the kids (and a few by me)...

Are Ya Ready for some BLOOD BOWL?

It's BLOOD BOWL TIME in Tennessee! I just finished up my Orc Blood Bowl team. This surpasses my Ogryn Genestealer hybrid in the length of time to finish...neigh unto 15 years in the making?

Painting Vehicles

I got these 25mm Ground Zero Games Stargrunt vehicles in trade a while back. I had intended to trade them up for the 40k rules, but procrastinated-- a good thing, since the new version was coming out. Anyway, the main reason I held off painting them is because I just don't paint vehicles. I've never been any good at it, and was frankly hesitant to do it. I took them as a challenge, and I think that the results of my attempt are good. See for yourself how I did it.

40k 5th

I started my miniature gaming with Epic and Blood Bowl back in the day. I still play Blood Bowl, but have never been a fan of the mainstream GW games. I got tired of the rules complications and contradictions. I also complain a lot about the prices, but the fact is that have bought a large number of 40k models, just because I liked them (and could, typically, get them at a discount on eBay or where ever). The fact remains that I never cared for the 40k rules much and have stayed away for a long while. Until last night...

Cold War Commander

Today being Yom Kippur, it is somewhat appropriate that I have broken out the Cold War Commander rules and my old Yom Kippur War micro armor and given it a go. I really like the rules so far. They are fairly simple, which is a plus for me any more, and seem to give a fun, relatively quick and reasonable game.

The AIW Reader

I must have had my head down a while, as I missed the creation of the AIW Reader.

The Pound is Getting Cheaper

If you've been holding off buying any UK figures because of the poor exchange rate the last few years, things have rapidly been getting better for you.

Pictures of My Kids' Figures

Some pictures of my kids' painted figures.

Grow Your Own Painting Service

Why ship your figures halfway across the world to pay Sri Lankan children to paint your figures, when you can just grow your own locally? Now, I'm sure once you start accounting for prorated shelter, food, education, bail, etc..., it's not quite as cost effective, but if you ignore all those real costs, it actually looks quite cheap!

Nice Gaming Table!

I have found the design for my dream wargaming table. Now I just need a house large enough to fit it in.

The World Turned Upside Down

What kind of world is it that we live in when we are so blessed with choice that it has become impossible to determine the best comic book superhero movie? Because, let me tell you, the Dark Knight is awesome. It completely gives Iron Man a run for its money. Heath Ledger was the best Joker ever-- no laughing gas, no stupidity, just sheer broken insanity-- but he couldn't have carried the movie, and the awesome performance by all the other major actors here really make for a quality movie. I think I would pick Iron Man as my favorite, although I'm not sure it's fair to compare-- the Dark Knight is a very dark movie, in terms of world view and morality, whereas Iron Man is much more traditional.

Talk to your children about Evolution...

...before someone else does!

Pokemons for Fudge

By request: Eevee, Flareon, Jolteon and Umbreon (I'm detecting a pattern here).

Not so GURPS Pokemon

Okay, so I've been working on this a bit. I love GURPS, but I stopped using it for this. While I wanted some mechanics in my kids' first RPG, GURPS was just too much. For one thing, the mechanics were more rigid that I wanted, and I felt that by throwing out so much of the rules and home ruling so much, I was probably just using the wrong system.

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace

So the son and I watched Ep 1 yesterday-- the daughter was grounded, so she will be catching up on Friday. Anyway, I went in as open minded as I could. I didn't let my opinions cloud my son's judgment, and I thought maybe I was simply playing into the conventional wisdom about how bad the movie was. But no. It really is a genuinely bad movie. It has genuinely terrible dialogue at times. Ah well. My son knew all the names of everything from reading (and rereading) a Visual Dictionary I have. Especially during the underwater scenes. As they enter the water, he says, "Ah, that's the Water Breather 99!" or some such. A monster appears, "That's the Sando." I was on the verge of laughter! He seemed to enjoy the movie, and didn't seem to think it was any better or worse than any of the others he had seen (IV-VI).

Shadows Over Camelot

Verily! There is much goodness in yon game. We played two games of Shadows Over Camelot last night. It way the first time for Mik and me to play, and our buddy Ray, who owns the game, ran us through it. We played the first time without a traitor, and although we had a tough time defending Camelot towards the end thanks to taking catapults earlier in the game, won pretty handily. The second game, though, we played with the Traitor and had an absolute blast!

Friggin' Star Wars

My kids have been on a big Star Wars kick lately, and I've bought them some of the Collectible Miniatures. You may recall that I bought a bunch of these a while back. There is now a fixed Obi-Wan in a starter, so I picked that up, too. Well, my son got a Reek in his pack and was about to wet himself wanting to play with it, so I sat down and rumbled with my 7 year old son.

Cool gameroom pictures

I always love to see pictures of people's gamerooms and imagine how I could do mine. I kind of think his "GM" space could be a little more pretentious...maybe he should raise it up on a 6" dais. ;-)

Return of the Jedi

The kids finished the original Star Wars trilogy this weekend. Both really enjoyed it, but my daughter has quickly turned into a full-on Star Wars geek. She immediately went out and created her own visual dictionary with pictures of all the main characters. I mentioned the Thrawn Trilogy, and the Solo twins, and she whipped up an illustrated short story about Luke's daughter Ashley Skywalker fighting the Emperor's son. She's already half-way through Heir to the Empire. This has gone too far! I've got to sit her down and make her watch Star Trek (the original series).

The Empire Strikes Back

I rented TESB over the weekend. I had plans to, anyway, to make sure the kids found out Darth Vader was Luke's father by watching the movie, but it was also a good way to give the kids something to think about other than Bear's death. They really enjoyed it, my 8 year old daughter especially. As Darth Vader asked Luke to join him to rule the galaxy, she was yelling, "No! Say no! Say no!" And when Darth Vader said he was Luke's father, she just sat there for a minute, then said, "He's lying."

My Dog Died This Morning

R.I.P. Bear, my good friend.

The Fun in Star Wars

My 7 year old son recently reached a nice reading goal at school, and I rewarded him by renting Star Wars for him. I have never seen such gratitude from my son, who leaped onto me while thanking me profusely. Now, those that know me know that I am absolutely no fan of George Lucas. In fact, I could be characterized at times as actively hostile. However, I refrained from poisoning my son's opinion, and let him and his sister watch it. It's really been great to see them enjoying it. They know of Anakin Skywalker and know that he's Luke's father, and they know that Darth Vader killed Anakin...but they don't KNOW. I'm going to get ESB very soon so that none of their friends spoil it for them. My son is currently in his room, playing the Star Wars theme on his stereo too loudly and singing along with it (dunh dunh dunh duuuuuunh duuunh, dunh dunh dunh DUUUUUUUNH duuunh...) and laying in the floor playing with my old old Star Wars figures...from when I was just about his age... Anyway, it's not that I can't enjoy playing with Star Wars figures, too.

I Am Iron Man

I went to see Iron Man last night with Mik and a few other comic book nerds I know. It was AWESOME!! Mik beat me and already has his own review up.
Looking at Comic Book adaptations, before this movie my favorite was Spider-Man 2, followed by X2, and then a less specific mixture of Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman Begins and Blade. I have to say that Iron Man trumped them all, hands down. Make sure you read The Ultimates and stay through the credits!

May Gawd Have Pity On Me...GURPS Pokemon

Yes folks, I have taken definite steps in my plans to run GURPS: Pokemon for my children.

The d6 Generation

The d6 Generation is a fairly new gaming podcast. I haven't got to hear much yet, but they appear to have started strong and I can't wait to give the whole series a listen.

Third World Y Chromosome Mutants

I picked up the recently released Mutants and Death Ray Guns from Ganesha Games. It's a real beer and pretzels Gamma World-style post-apocalypse game. Plus, it includes rules for something I have absolutely no figures for-- mutant plants. So, I had to whip some up.

I'm not dead yet...

...I'm just very, very tired. My wife and I had our third child, Silas, on March 12.