Extremely Dumb Military Designs

Extremely Dumb Military Designs from G.I. Joe. Now you know...and knowing is half the battle!

My Reaper Warlord Entry

The results are in for the Reaper Warlord v2 contest and, sadly, I did not win. Because my entry got lost in transit somewhere, I'm sure. Anyway, I will now regale you with my submission, to the tune of the Major-General's Song from the Pirates of Penzance:


I am the very model of a modern Warlord commander
I'm making warbands Nefsokar, Overlord and Crusader
I paint a lot and have a bucketload of Reaper miniatures
And a review on my weblog will certainly travel far!


I mean, it's all there, folks-- the witty play on a well-known tune, references to the factions of Taltos, a commercial plug for Reaper's miniatures and the subtle bribery attempt by offering a positive review on my website! I blame-- well, somebody, anybody else, as clearly my submission was flawless.

Happy Birthday, Mik!

Today is Mik's birthday. I have played more games with Mik than with any other human being, and he started off his birthday with a blast, as he wound down our first game of 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars as we passed midnight.

Ooooh MY!

Mongo's Wafflehouse is an interesting blog with lots of 15mm zombie and Super System entries...including a converted Ambiguously Gay Duo...

The Ultimate Dice Bag

Somebody make me one of these for Christmas!! Please!

Wargaming in the 28mm

Just found Wargaming in the 28mm, a mainly Napoleonics blog which includes a Battle of Vimeiro scenario for my favorite rules in the world, Piquet's Field of Battle.

More Moonscape

Hey, found a nifty way to post pictures directly from Flickr, that's cool! I'm trying it out with this new picture of my two latest Moonscape pieces I've finished. These do look really nice, although I wonder if I shoudn't have chosen a color other than grey. In they pictures, it almost looks like I just drybrushed the bare plastic. In reality, they look quite good, I can't wait to get some games in on them.

Speaking of scapes, I see Drunken Samurai has an extensive write up on how he finished his Blastscape pieces. Somebody suggested using insulating foam to back these, and I couldn't image how you would contain it. Drunken Samurai doesn't, he just trims it to shape once it dries. That's an idea, I might do it on the Blastscape pieces with the higher raised areas.

Maybe someday...

...until then, visit Little Lead Heroes.

Finishing GW's Moonscape

Got some new terrain done. Here are the first two craters I've done of the GW Moonscape set. I also have the Blastscape set and the old Battle for MacCraggae terrain to do, so I'm looking at around 6-7 square feet of terrain to do...it may take me a bit.

I cut most of the MDF for the bases tonight. It was hot and took me a couple of hours, and the bases for the largest Blastscape pieces wound up warped, so I need to do them again. Yay!

There has been a ton of negative criticism about the Blastscape pieces. Mine don't seem that fragile, but they definitely aren't as crisply detailed as the Moonscape pieces.

Moving the Blog

It's well past due, but the time has come for me to move this blog to something with a little better performance. I have hosted it on my own Linux box since 2002, and it was an old piece of scrap then. I had a few choices. I could have bought a beefier server to install it on, and have come close a few time. But, even if I don't buy top of the line, that's a few hundred dollars that don't go towards miniatures, so, you know, that's a negative. I could have hosted a virtual server on our family's more modern Windows XP machine, but I think that's going to be more trouble than it's worth, plus I'm still hosting it out of my house. I could pay for a hosting service on the Internet (and still might), but right now the easiest option seems to simply move the blog content to a new service. So that's what I'm going to do. The new home will be http://littleleadheroes.wordpress.com (currently working to move it over), but don't change your links just yet. It may still move somewhere else, but I will always be pointing http://www.littleleadheroes.com/ at the current location. The gallery will reside on the old server at www2.littleleadheroes.com for a while longer...I'm not seeing an easy way to move my large image gallery easily while correcting all the old links in all the old blog entries. But, I may work on it over the next few weeks and see what I can come up with.

Theft at Historicon

Conquest Miniatures is reporting a theft of a display miniature during Historicon-- take a look and see if you can help find it.

Historicon is now a holiday!

So, at work, I'm given eight scheduled holidays and two floating holidays to be used at my convenience. I used them for my Historicon trip, thus officially making Historicon a holiday!

Making Custom Hot Wire Tools

Making Foam Tools has some really good ideas about making your own custom hot wire foam cutting tools. I'm not sure you'd be saving much money over, say, Hot Wire Foam Factory. You would gain the flexibility of custom tools, though. It's something to think about.

The Ooh Shiny Complex

I have discovered a new blog, the Ooh Shiny Complex. I liked his Tusk game report.

More Historicon Pictures

I got the rest of my Historicon pictures uploaded. I'm back home now and tired, having gotten a couple of months worth of gaming in during a weekend!

Fri and Sat Pictures

I'm uploading these now. I'll probably have them up Monday morning.

Historicon 2009 Was Awesome

So, yet another Historicon has (mostly) gone by, and I have to say, I had a great time. Think what you like about HMGS East, about the only way they actually effect me is in how they run their cons, and so far, I think they have done a great job. There was a lot of complaining about the move to Baltimore next year. I don't know-- the host is a bit of a dump, but it has a nice atmosphere. I really take it for granted that we'll be able to drink beer at our games for Historicon, and it sounds like we won't next year. That will affect a lot of people's enjoyment. No more coolers (or mini kegs!) at the game tables. The free kegs on Friday night might have been a bit much-- I heard one guy was found passed out on some stairs and the police were called in-- but they were still appreciated. Anyway, 2009 ranks up there as a great con for me.

Goodnight

Too drunk to upload pics tonight...spent the night drinking with Piquet and Wargames Factory guys...g'night...

Historicon Pictures

Here are the Historicon 2009 pictures I've taken. I'll update them in the evenings as I get more. I also made a little video of the vendor hall.

Sculpting Tools

I am a sculpting voyeur. I don't do it much myself, but I love to watch other people doing it. And I have just found the coolest page yet for this-- Make Your Own Scuplting Tools.

This is not Fox Company!

I got the second platoon of my Airborne done and sealed today. They actually paint up fairly quickly, I'm pleased.

3rd Wave Imperial Guard

Forget those Lemun Ruses-- I've got the M-85 "Black Cat" for my Imperial Guard!! Single use only, though; this one had a spectacular trial run out in the street. However, I'm pretty sure one of these could take a good portion of any 40k army out there, especially if they're plastic.

This is not Dog Company!

I got to leave work early today, and thought I'd crack out some US Airborne before the family gets back from Germany tomorrow night. I started on these around 2:00, and finished...well, it looks like around 2:00... I didn't paint all the way through, but almost. I'd call it eight hours. I think in this one fell swoop I have doubled my poor painting productivity for the year.

Zombie Cinema

We didn't have anything on the plate last night, so we dabbled in some RPG stuff. We're planning to run through a D&D 4e campaign, so we worked on our characters a bit. Then, we decided to break out Zombie Cinema and give it a go. Zombie Cinema is a small, rules-light, "storytelling" RPG, where the players are survivors of some sort of zombie breakout, in the vein of Night of the Living Dead or any of its stylistic descendants.

Carry a Big Stick

I picked this tip up from a recent White Dwarf, where they mentioned using a stick for priming. I typically use a sheet of cardboard with figures around the outside, which makes it difficult to get to the inside; or I used a strip of cardboard, which works well, but can't hold that many figures. A yard long, one inch square board of wood is just what I need, and I tried it out this morning with my Battlefront US Paratroopers which I'm finally getting around to painting. I really need to leave both ends free, though, and just put the figures in the middle. That would allow my to switch ends easily and spray from the other side. Now, in the White Dwarf article, they actually used all four sides at the same time, rotating the stick and spraying different angles. I'm just not that brave with my figures...