Vampire Hunters

Here's a couple of cool figures I picked up at Historicon in 2007, the Wargames Foundry limited edition "Father Eamon McSweeney & His Cousin, Elizabeth Ann McSweeny[sic]." I wanted these for a while, and wanted to paint them for a while since I had them, and finally got around to it. I feel like I need to buy Occult Wars now...

January Terrain Finished

Got the fountain finished, completing my January terrain for the Trucidos campaign and giving me 162 square inches of terrain for the full three campaign points.

Dawn of Worlds

The ClanWebsite.org games page contains a link to Dawn of World (direct link to PDF). It's a cooperative fantasy world building game, or process, that looks pretty interesting. Check it out.

The Last January Terrain

Here's my last bit of January terrain getting finished up. This is an old ceramic Christmas village fountain I found in a box as I was cleaning up some old terrain junk. I had used it for some 25mm WW2 skirmish gaming, but never done anything with it. The chipped areas were two red birds I knocked away. Snow patches were covered with spackle mixed with brown paint, which also served as a contour for the rubble I would glue on. The rubble was my usual mix of clay cat litter and bits from my rubble bag...I saw sprues, both metal and lead, a computer case fan, a piece of a blade and some side mounted machine guns from a destroyed 1/72 helicopter model kit, sculpture contour mesh, stripped wire insulation, dried paint scrapped from a bottle...

Firezone Studios

Firezone Studios has some very nice pictures, especially of some recent 6mm figures apparently for Future War Commander.

Dan Abnett's Blog

Hey! Dan Abnett of Eisenhorn fame has a blog. Seems like all the cool kids are doing that...

Cursed Treasures

I really liked looking through Cursed Treasures. He has lots of really nice, inspirational pictures and some cool little terrain pieces.

Tradin' Stuff

I"ve accumulated a Wants and Haves list for some trading, check it out on Bartertown.

Crane Finished

Got the crane finished tonight. It's 10.5x12", or 126 square inches. I have two other small pieces under development that will put me over 144 for January for my campaign points, just need to get one done. With the two 7.5" square pieces I did before the campaign started, I have around 472 square inches, or almost four square feet, of this white industrial terrain. It feels like a lot, yet it's only 1/3 of what I should end up with for the duration of the campaign.

Soundtrack Please!

Fun with GIMP while waiting for my washes to dry!

Dirty Water Wash

Pictures of more "dirty water wash" across my crane. The dark wash is all dirty paint water, and I've also laid down some rust. I should note that I added some flow-aid to my paint water before using it as a wash. I'll go over the whole thing with a diluted Gryphonne Sepia wash next. The rubble is drybrushed a series of lighter greys. I then put put small areas of various washes on it. Next, I'll cover the whole thing in undiluted Badab Black and, after that dries, a light drybrushing of tan.

The Perfect Urban Rubble Wash?

"Heh heh, oh man, my brush water is getting dirty. That's awful. It's really time to change it. Why, there's so much pigment floating around in there, it's like cleaning my brush with another paint! Well, okay, not so much a paint, but definitely a...wash!!"

The God-Emperor's Conquerors!

I had been considering painting some Space Marines, and was digging through some old figures and stumbled across this old Assault Marine. So, I started dabbling around with creating my own chapter. If I'm doing armored heroes running across open fields towards machine gun nests, they're going to be painted like clowns, so I went for a quartered paint scheme. This represents the first Space Marine I've painted in 18-19 years. And I enjoyed it! I actually sculpted some custom shoulder pads, but I haven't cast them yet, so I painted him how I thought a veteran's shoulder pad might look. Plus, I'd like to do some fancy bases for them, and I haven't done that yet, so the base in unfinished as well.

Bike Week?

A little 40k Chaplain in a bike. I picked this up with the Squat a while back. It was actually a few Necron models I was buying and these were in the mix as well, and yet here they are being painted up first. I actually have been dithering between working on a Witch Hunter or a Space Marine army...I finally decided just to do both and painted this chaplain up for myself. It will be either full on Witch Hunter with Sisters of Battle, or a Space Marine army led by a chaplain and allied with the Witch Hunters.

Nick's 5150 SciFi Skirmish

Nick's 5150 SciFi Skirmish is a nice page devoted to 5150. It has some really nice pictures of games in action, as well as a well-developed variant called Roach Wars. I absolutely love the look of the swarm of roaches coming across the table...I'm going to have to get some of my own!

Drunken Samurai Painting Blog

Not just a really cool name, Drunken Samurai Painting Blog has a lot of really nice pictures of a variety of miniatures, as well as some modeling tips and game reports.

The Wargame Shed

The Wargames Shed has a lot of interesting info, check it out.

Squat

I painted my first 40k Squat! I picked this up cheap as part of a bundle of interesting stuff a while ago, and have been looking forward to painting it. Putting it up against modern 40k figures, you can really see the difference in quality. Its sculpting isn't anywhere as crisp. But it has a lot of something lacking in modern figures-- character. The GW suits may think of the Squats as a "joke" race, but that means they're taking seriously guys charging tanks with swords...

From the Warp

From the Warp has a lot of terrain, modeling and painting tutorials.

Noisemaker's Podcast

I've been catching up on noisemaker's podcast, I have enjoyed it. It's a good quality podcast that doesn't focus on mainstream games, and brings some solo gaming in to play, which I enjoy. Take a listen.

Olicanalad's Games

Olicanalad's Games has some interesting posts on modelling and conversions. He's also a Piquet player, and active on the Piquet list.

Lord Ashram's House of War

Lord Ashram's House of War has an awesome interior decorator.

Trucidos, Game 2

I got the second game of our Trucidos campaign finished tonight. It was a 750 point rematch between Chris and me, and a much harder fought battle. However, I managed through tactics and forgotten rules to wrangle out, in the end, a draw...

Forge of War

Gawd 'elp us Games has a set of alternative 40k rules called Forge of War, using some modern rules mechanics like Activation Rolls. They look like something I want to try out...

40k Comics

Dark Reign, a Dark Heresy RPG site, hosts several 40k themed comics-- three out of four of which are clearly Order of the Stick inspired...but Servants of the Imperium was pretty good.

The Studio McVey Blog

Mike and Ali McVey have a blog with lots of pictures...

Recreational Conflict

Scroll down to the Coming Soon section of Recreational Conflict's front page, and take a look at that sweet looking Big Daddy.

Inspirational Terrain

I just found this Adepticon gallery of terrain. Lots of stuff to steal from in there. I haven't looked through it all, but I really liked what I saw in Marcin Ignasiak's gallery.

Awesome Scratch Building

DEI GRECI has some pictures of his awesome scratch building of a super heavy 40k tank, along with an example of his resin casting technique.

January Terrain: Ready to Prime

My Necromunda gang scrabbles over the ruined crane. Who needs Vents when you've got a crane, baby! I had hoped to prime it today, since it had stopped raining and we had some nice weather, but I never got the rubble on until tonight. I'll let it (hopefully) dry over night, and prime it tomorrow. The forecast looks cold, but dry. With a little bit of luck, I'll have it done in time for our campaign game on Thursday.

Eisenhorn

I just posted my review of the 40k novel Eisenhorn on Amazon. In short: I liked it a lot, 5 stars.

Size Matters

It may not be 24' x 7', but I'm still pretty pleased with how large I can make my gaming table! For our Trucidos campaign, we were discussing how we could play simultaneous campaign games so that we would all be together for each game. Mik and I both have dedicated tables-- he has a custom built 8' x 4' tabletop, and I have two 8' x 2.5' banquet tables I cover with felt to get 8' x 5'. I initially thought we would have to play our games separately, but then realized I had two 6' x 2.5' tables up in the attic. I spent most of my Saturday moving crap around and hauling them downstairs and finally got them set up for a huge (for me) 14' x 5' table!!

More Table Pictures

Oh yeah, Daddy like.

Geektactica

I really enjoyed browsing through Geektactica. He has lots of really nicely painted figures, but I really like his series on constructing cheap Western buildings detailed here.

January Terrain

I kind of didn't want to post anything until I was finished, but I'm excited about this and thought I'd post some work in progress shots. I was at the store with my wife today, doing some shopping. I needed some more epoxy for what I was planning for my January Trucidos terrain. It was kind of an extension of my industrial style terrain I've done so far. One of the things I had been thinking about was a crane, but it seemed very intimidating and time consuming to scratch build myself. And as I was walking through the discount toys, I saw this...

Fictional Reality

Fictional Reality is an interesting downloadable wargaming magazine. They cover a very wide variety of topics, so check it out.

Nice Custom Terrain

This Dome on Terraforming Planet gallery on TerraGenesis is chock full of fascinating scratch built detail. I alse loved the ideas in the Lighted Figure Bases gallery. I'd love to make something half as nice.

2009

I haven't had time to do much retrospection on 2008. I think it was a pretty good hobby year. I certainly enjoyed my hobby last year, although I can't really think of any major achievement off hand. It was kind of a half year due to birth of my third child (who's doing great). I suppose the things I'm most pleased with were getting my kids to paint and making a moderate amount of decent terrain. So, what is in store for 2009?

The Grand Armies of Liliputia

Freewargamesrules blog link to a new 2mm wargaming site. I love the idea of 2mm.

Vibrating Table

I've been working on a vibrating table for the last couple of weeks (around holidays, family and campaign terrain), based on Ultrawerke's. I've wanted to do something like this for a while, and after seeing his, I realized I had pretty much all the parts he used. The only things I actually had to buy was the "shadowbox" frame I got on sale for $10 and a couple bucks worth of springs.

Cityfight

That's not a Cityfight...THIS is a Cityfight. A superb post-apocalyptic skyscraper-filled city, with custom wallpaper to match the terrain. The Work In Progress forums are just chock full of interesting little (and not so little) gems like this...

Miniaturespace

Miniaturespace has a ton of really inspirational pictures.

dTotal

Okay, I've been on a dice kick lately, but I really like this dTotal die. One single die can roll d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, d7, d8, d10, d12, d20 and d24. A few types require a reroll, like the d10 and d20. Still, it's pretty clever, and would cut down on the number of dice you had to carry around with you. It's not going to be useful for "buckets of dice" games at 25 bucks a pop, though. Still, I'm sure it looks great in your world's largest collection of dice... Update: ...and d30, d40, d50, d60, d70, d80 and d100.

DiceCollector

DiceCollector.com hosts the world's largest collection of dice-- 25,769. I can see that as the sort of activity that starts out fun and exciting, but by the time you have so many that you are referring to databases to prevent duplicates, the real fun is pretty much sucked out of it. I would have to put them all in a tub at some point and jump in. Well, maybe without the d4s...

Game Science Dice

Lou Zocchi of GameScience makes you hate your dice. Continues with part 2. He gets bonus points in my book for claming that "...a lot of gamemasters prematurely kill off characters who deserve to live..." by using bad dice. This man hates bad dice!

The Chambers of Miniatures

The Chambers of Miniatures has a great gallery in its Archive, and I think it would take a couple of days to get through the Nexus of Links.

Dampf's Modeling Page

Dampf's modeling page has a wealth of scratch building projects and really inspirational photos.