A Long, Strange Road

Six months is enough of a break, Get back to work, slacker.

First off, thanks very much to those of you who have emailed and made sure that I am still of-this-earth. It is nice to feel a part of a global community of like-minded individuals.

I am, in fact, still hard at work painting- it's just that much of the work I have been getting done minis-wise of late has seemed less-than-sharable via this blog. I've been exclusively performing all those mundane tasks that I know all serious hobbyists will nod their heads knowingly about: re-basing warbands (no, NOT for that!), prepping Kickstarter reward packages, and painting minis for other people. These things take time, and they are not the most exciting of topics . . .

Whatcha starin' at?

I have managed to get through two batches of commission work since the last time I wrote. Avid readers of this blog (hah!) will remember that I had given this up earlier in the year to focus more on my own collection. Well, the money is too good and I need too much of it, so it's back on that wagon for ol' VeronaKid.

The first group was this set of beholders. I can't imagine why my client would possibly need so many considering the monster represented is usually a unique addition to a D&D campaign, but hey- these were fun as hell to paint up. My favorite of the batch was certainly the Julie Guthrie-sculpted Reaper version in purple here in the back-left:

The three goofy looking guys that are painted in aqua were also great sculpts, although I have no idea what company or sculptor they come from.

After polishing them off, my client sent me this sweet batch of elementals and constructs, which I just finished off last weekend:


I know the picture here is dark, but I never managed to shoot a decent one of this batch before I sent it back. The huge rock guy in the top right is a killer sculpt from Reaper, and this one in particular was the Bones plastic version, so I assume it is very inexpensive to pick up. My favorite from this batch though is definitely the Albion Fenbeast who is right in front of the rock-hulk. The summer GW campaign that he came from was one of the highpoints of my own personal gaming career. That summer, I must have played WHFB at least three times a week with a really great group of guys. Good memories, and a great sculpt.

Other than that, as I mentioned I have been re-prepping older minis of mine for use as various Skulldred warbands. These were originally all based in very hap-hazard, non-matching manners (different basing materials; some round, some square, some hex-based; etc), so I am trying to "tidy up" the collection, so to speak. Plus, it's cheaper than buying new minis!

Here's shots of a few representative minis from each of the war bands my various family members play in our weekend games:

My older boys' early (Asgard) Goodwin barbarian horde

My recently painted up Skaven

Mostly Reaper lizard men, who usually are mercenary baddies

A couple members of my little guys' greenskin toughs

Wifey's Reaper Amazonians. I can't recommend this line of sculpts enough. Brilliant.

That's really about it. Life has been far too crazy to do anything like actually play games with any of these figures, but I hope to remedy that soon.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

I have to say, I am very amazed at the thunderous silence in this community (and it's associated blog-o-sphere) over the new Warhammer "Age of Sigmar" stuff. I would have expected a much louder outcry along the lines of "See??!!! We knew they would ruin it!!!" I would think that the quiet murmurings simply indicate that old-timers have long since given up altogether. I, for one, still check the GW site frequently. I wouldn't dream of purchasing a plastic figure at their prices, so I haven't ordered anything from them in probably five years now, but I do think, actually, that the new game indicates a step or three in the right direction. Smaller forces encouraged and therefore a smaller initial investment required to participate? Check. Easier-to-digest rules (a la Skulldred, or SOBH) which in turn encourages a younger audience? Check. Elimination of ranked models which in turn eliminates fiddly maneuvers and the subsequent "wait an hour while your opponent moves his entire army" syndrome? Check. It really does feel that the new game is headed back towards its more narrative-driven roots and away from things like Death Star units, killer combos, and out-of-control magic phases.

I do applaud GW for once for not just making the game more bloated and (worse) more exclusive. Blow it up and start anew. Good job.

Hope you are well, wherever you might be. Take care, leadheads. Hopefully the next post here will be before the winter holidays roll around again. :)

A Tough Pill To Swallow

This week's hobby goodness features one of my ten favorite Citadel miniatures of all time, Brian Nelson's incredible orc shaman. To me, this mini always stood as a kind of island of old-school character amid an ocean of slack-jawed, GIANT-AXE!!!'d, skull-festooned silliness that the greenskins turned into at Citadel circa 1997.

Citadel Orc Shaman; sculpted by Brian Nelson

My copy, bought as usual at great discount on eBay, lacked the sweet short sword on his back, so I had to sculpt a wee waterskin to hide the peg and open area on his back where the sword was supposed to go:

Given my extremely limited sculpting skillz, I am pretty happy with how the flask turned out.

The reason for the post title today, though, is because of an utter failure on my part to see this great mini through to its planned finish. I really wanted to do a nice checkerboard pattern on the hood opening around the face and on the sleeve ends, but after attempting said pattern six separate times, re-basecoating and starting over each time, I finally threw in the towel and went for this rather drab finish instead.

A few years ago now, I painted these Harlequins up, and they were covered almost head to toe in various check patterns:

So, I thought I'd be able to paint a little black and white patterning with no problemo. Perhaps it was the extremely folded and curved surfaces on the orc's robes, but I think my utter failure has more to do with my advancing age/decreasing eyesight/failing patience .No matter what I tried, or how slowly I went, I ended up each attempt just looking like a very messy painter. Oh well. The shaman will fit into a Skulldred warband just fine as he is. Alas.

It was not an easy thing for me to decide mid paint-project that my plans were too ambitious for my talent and skill to see through. I am sure it won't be the last time, unfortunately. . .

On the topic of Harlequins (by the way), GW finally listened to the 4 bajillion email, forum posts, and comments made in retail stores I have made over the years on the subject and announced this week that the Harlies are finally going to be their own army, with a brand-new hardbound codex (do they still call them that? Dunno.). I assume that there will be several plasticrud sets released as well, to go along with the $60 army book and $30 painting guide coming out in a few weeks.

Too little, too late for me, I'm afraid. I admit I got a little excited at first, but those price tags just hammered home how done with the current iteration of GW I am. When I paint more harlies, it will be my old metal Jes Goodwin figs languishing for too long in the pile. My checkerboard patterns will probably end up looking like crap, but I'll still love them so much more.

//End grumpy old man rant.

Until next time, brethren- may the paint brush gods grant you a nice pointy, hairy bit every time you need it.

Rabbit, Rabbit

Happy New Year to all of you out there in leadland. To kick off 2015, I put the finishing touches this morning on what I was working on when I was so rudely interrupted by the greatest miniature of all time. Today's lead candy comes from the talented and long-toothed hand of Tony Ackland, he of "Grandmaster of Chaos" fame:

King F'yar of the heinous Kwae Karr orcs

Here's Citadel's TA3 Arcane Monstrosity-Orc War Wyvern, which got re-used as part of the Blood Bath at Orc's Drift scenario pack. He'll get added to my modest greenskins warband for use in larger games of Skulldred.

In the D&D campaign, the family made an interesting choice that I wanted to document here before it escapes my memory. On the way back from the barrows, the party was attacked by crocodiles. The two hirelings/meatshields were both grievously injured (poor Ardo got his leg bitten clean off) and ended up having to be stretchered back to town. When the party arrived back in Helix, they were stopped by the guild master who revealed that the priest of the only shrine in town had been found murdered while they were away. The family decided to turn detective and investigate. . . not rest and recuperate from their brief trip into undead land.

They made their way to the nearby town of Ironguard Motte, where the cleric of the much larger temple revealed that the rubbing they had secured from the barrows was virtually worthless without a means to translate it. . . a means that can only be found back in the tombs. No closer to determining the murderer, they hired a couple of experienced men-at-arms and headed back to Helix.

One of these days, we'll get to the dungeon. . .

Hope you are all well. Take care and thanks for the peep.

Building The Community

It's funny the way life works. Miniatures, too.

For the last couple of days, I have been reading all of Masterminis "The Future of Games Workshop" posts. If you haven't read through all of them, I highly recommend them (despite the fact that it will take a couple of hours reading time- they're really, REALLY good). The gist of the series is that the current downtrend being experienced by the great white tower is all related to their indifference to the miniature community at large. I happen to believe that the biggest problem that we mini painters, and the rest of this little niche community, have with GW is something totally different- to put it in a nutshell, they've ignored the fact that they are a company that relies on artists for their profits.

But that is a blog post that I don't really want to write. As far as I am concerned, it's already been written by a whole bunch of people who are far better bloggers than I.

What I want to talk about today is about community, something else that Masterminis, and his company Painting Buddha, are very interested in.

This morning, it was really, really rainy out here in beautiful central Florida ("The Sunshine State"). To pass the time, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do my own little bit of community building, courtesy of my four-year-old son Miles.

For those of you who have read through previous posts, you'll already know that Miles is a fanatical RPG'er. His exploits with his now-3rd level ninja character named "Kendo" are a thing of legend around my household. But he has never played a tabletop battle. . . until today.

The first steps in a brave new world

Using a simplified version of Delaney King's Skulldred game (which, again, if you've never happened to check this out before, stop reading this stupid blog now and go check out the best skirmish rules available in the whole friggin' world), little M and Dad played out a little dwarf v. orc grudge match.

We took 5 figures per side- a leader, two fighting types, and two shooters each. I gave each model only 3 stats to keep it easy- "Dice," which is simply the number of 6-sided dice they would roll to attack, "Power," which is the number that they need to roll under in order to succeed in an attack, and hit points- Miles is totally down with the concept of HP's, so I gave each leader 3 and everyone else 1 a piece.

Skulldred uses a fantastic activation mechanic wherein you roll a special 6-sided die marked 1,2,2,3,wild, wild- the number rolled is number of actions that the model can take during their turn. A "wild" means that we needed to check to see if the model was within range of the leader- if yes, they got 2 actions, but if not, they did something else. In our case, we decided that the brave dwarfs would get one action, while the cowardly orcs and gobbos would head for the nearest cover to hide. All the fighters got 2 dice to attack at power 2; shooters got 2 dice to shoot at power 2 (but would only get 1 die in HTH), and the leaders got a whopping 4 dice at power 4. That was all the rules he needed.

Daddy- I am shooting your leader in the face!

It was amazing to watch just how quickly the little man picked up concepts like activation, movement rates, and how important getting a lot of "action" pips was. He groaned whenever he rolled a '1' for his actions, and got up and danced for those lucky '3's. I made sure to use lots of funny voices and expressions throughout the game, and he joined right in saying funny things for his dwarfs ("Wait for me, boss!").

He pounded me. When it was all over, both leaders lay dead; all the orcs got finished off in roughly six turns, and he still had a shooter and a fighter left over. Victory dance time!

Take that, chump! (Asgard Dwarf King and Troll)

Of course, the genie is out of the bottle now. He is already making plans to stomp both his mother and his brother in Skulldred, and he has grand plans of a 2 v 2 game on Dad's big table "with the castle in the middle." Success.

I feel accomplished. Like I have done my part for "the community" today. Huzzah!

Have a good one, wherever you are. Thanks for the read!

Nick Lund Is Also Really Swell

So, of all the things about the Ansell-era of Citadel that I love that have completely disappeared over the years, my favorite may be the box sets of metal miniatures that the company used to release. The Dungeon Monsters Starter Set, the Goodly Knights of Law. . . they were like little bite-sized painting projects allowing you to try out painting characters for new forces without splurging on whole units designed to be part of a giant army. Perhaps most importantly, they allowed for the creation of wonderful little skirmish forces or groups for dungeon crawls right out of the box.

I think that Nick Lund's Mighty Ugezod's Death Commandos, released under the Chronicle "sub-brand," might be the best of the bunch. A few years ago, shortly after I picked up this box on fleabay, I read in a few online forums that Lund's sculpts weren't (and still aren't) exactly loved universally. This stunned me, as I think his crouched over, hunched-up orcs are so much more savage and downright "orky" looking than the goofier ones the company regularly releases. There is a wildness and a ferocity to these guys that I feel are lacking in a lot of greenskin sculpts. The shaman from the set has got to be on my top ten list, and all those shields just beg for the Blanchitsu treatment. Dunno- I guess it's all personal preference, but I like them a lot.

My version of Eeza and his boys. Makes for a heck of a good Skulldred skirmish force.

On the commission front, I managed to get the finishing glazes done last night on a batch of tables, headed for a 12th century fantasy blacksmith near you.

Anyone need a file? Pliers perhaps? Maybe an eight-foot pole arm?

That's all for me this evening. Buenos noches, lead lovers.