Gods And Monsters

Two Weeks? Two Weeks!
It appears I have missed an entire two weeks of blog postings. Two Wednesday Night Musings and last Satyrday's Frostgrave posting. To be honest, it has been a rough two weeks. Kids were sick last week, I went gaming last Satyrday and did not get home until late, and this last week was absolutely awful, full of a variety of dramas. Now i understand why some animals eat their young.

Ducks!
As I have been hinting at for a while, I have re-tooled my Duck miniatures for Frostgrave. This mostly involved converting an already-converted Spearduck into an Apprentice, but he turned out so mighty looking he might become my Wizard. Except for the big ol' backpack, he has that and it is really for the Apprentice to carry.

The new Apprentice is second from the left.

Monsters Of The Frozen City
I have been painting up the various critters for random encounters in my Frostgrave games. First up is skeletons, wolves, a boar, a frost giant, and an ape. The skeletons and wolves are not new paint jobs, but I did re-base them to match the rest of my Frostgrave figures. The frost giant was also re-based, and I repainted the skin to a more natural humanoid tone that the previous tree leaf green when she was a faerie giant for a D&D game. The boar and the ape are totally fresh paint jobs.

Skeletons and wolves. The skeletons with shields are the "armoured skeletons" from the rules.

A boar, an ape, and a frost giantess. I think the frost giantess has a real "Alice the Goon" look from the old Popeye cartoons.

New Kingdom Egyptians In Frostgrave
Once upon a time, I painted up ten Egyptian miniatures as a small warband for Song of Blades and Heroes. They were immediately declared Household Egyptian Decor, placed on a shelf, and were forbidden from gaming. Fast forward five years, and she has agreed they can be used for Frostgrave, along with two miniatures I had painted up for her to play D&D with. The only condition was, I could not modify any of the existing miniatures. Chipped paint and unmatched bases not withstanding. Naturally I wanted her to have more options than just archers, men at arms, and a large construct, so I converted and painted some treasure hunters, added some dogs (jackals, really,) a small and medium construct, and a mummy to use as a zombie if she goes that way with her spells. Then I was looking through my big bag o' plastic animals, and she said she wanted a lion in her warband as well when she was looking over my shoulder and saw the big pile o' lions. For reference, her main character in World of Warcraft has a black lion as a pet, so the opportunity to have a black lion in her warband could not be passed up.

Apprentice and Wizard

Archers and Men-At-Arms

Treasure Hunters and Dogs

Mummy (as Zombie) and three different sizes of Constructs

The black Lion (as Summoned Snow Leopard) and a Knight

I should have taken a group shot! Maybe next week...

Wednesday Night Musings VIII

Progress!
I had hit a nice rhythm for a few days in painting, and managed to complete a couple of outstanding projects. First up, everything for my wife's Egyptian Warband for Frostgrave is done. I added two Treasure Hunters, two Dogs, a small and a medium Construct, and a mummy to act as a Zombie. The Constructs and Zombie are "just in case" she wants to use the particular spells to create those types. The Treasure Hunters and Dogs are to give her more options than just Men-At-Arms/Knights and Archers/Rangers. I also finished my Duck Apprentice. This has the net effect of finishing up the personal warbands for everyone in our home (Ducks for me, Egyptians for my wife, and Elves for the kid to share.) Unfortunately, we have had rain and fog (fog in Las Vegas? Crazy, I know!) for the last few days so I have been unable to Dullcote anything, and hence no pictures are available of anything new.

The Pledge
I have seen any references to "The Pledge" over the years at TMP, but I never really bothered paying much attention to it. This year however, I am taking up The Pledge for myself.

I formally pledge to buy fewer miniatures than I paint.

At the end of each month, I will post how many miniatures I have bought, how many I have painted, and how many unpainted figures I have remaining. This last bit is a little wiggly, because I really have no idea how many unpainted miniatures I have. Many of them are in Storage. So I am going to inventory what I have on-hand here at the house unpainted, and sort them into "for a specific project" and "along for the ride" groups. If anything migrates from Storage to the house, it will be added to one of these two groups.

De Bellis Antiquitatis
I have been a big fan of DBA since I started playing the first edition back in 1993. It's a fun little historical game that has gone through a few revisions over the years. My first army for DBA was 15mmEarly Hebrews, which were haphazardly painted in a "I have no idea about researching historical outfits" kind of way and they were later cannibalized for a couple different Hordes of the Things armies. My second army was 15mm Aztecs, which was the whole reason I started doing DBA, and then I did a 15mm Scots-Irish army as sort of a "my history" project. I recently found both of these armies in storage, and did a little refurbishing to bring them into compliance with the DBA 3.0 army lists. I should have some pictures up next week.

These day, I am having some difficulty seeing the detail on 15mm models, even with reading glasses, and find myself a little too shaky most of the time to try painting them. Howver, last year I took a stab at starting some 28mm DBA armies, and my first completed army was an Amazon-themed Hoplite army that can be seen on my other blog. I am also working on New Kingdom Egyptians for my wife, and an Achaemenid Persian army for myself.

28mm New Kingdom Egyptian chariot frpm Black Tree Design

Within the context of my 28mm DBA armies, I am working on two different timeframes. The first is 1200 BC, which will include my wife's New Kingdom Egyptian, a more historically accurate Early Hebrews than the ones I did in 15mm, Early Libyans, and a Sea Peoples army based on some Mycenean figure range or another.  The second will be 500 BC, which will have the Hoplites and the Persians, and at least Meroitic Kushites. I may have a few others as well, but nothing planned solidly yet.

28mm Amazon Hoplites from Wargames Factory

Happy New Year!

Ermahgerd I Played A Game!
OK, so not a Frostgrave game, but a game nonetheless. A rather longish, but entirely fun game of modified Space Hulk. I was on the human side, Steve From Alaska was the other human player, Mike From Las Vegas was the bug player, and Bashytubits moderated. The bugs caught us early on and we lost an entire squad before we could even react, but after that we hit our stride and nearly got halfway into the complex looking for the Secret Target before we were all eaten by the bugs.

This what we started with, three squads of Defiance marines. We were down to just two squads very quickly.

See this guy? He had like five bugs surrounding him in the following turn, and I jokingly said, "Bugs, Mr. Rico!" He then went on to kill many, many bugs on his own, including several with jut his trusty combat knife. Sergeant Rico was my hero of the day.

Lieutenant Dan's last stand! That guy down at the bottom was Steve's officer. After the bugs ate the other two guys, Lieutenant Dan killed maybe 15 bugs all by his lonesome before they finally ate him. He was the other hero of the game.

I took a batch of pictures, but a long series of grey on grey on grey on green photos would get pretty boring pretty quickly. Bashytubits promised us painted miniatures for next time. And yes, he has many more Defiance marines. But not for sale.

VSF Japanese Colonial Forces
As I mentioned in my Wednesday Night Musings earlier this week, I am making some progress with my Japanese Colonial group. Since then, I have finished two Maxim machine gun teams. The remainder of my line infantry will be painted like the gunners here, all NCO's and Guard Infantry/Ronin will be individually painted Samurai like the NCO for this team. And I should get cracking on painting up some more of these, I need four infantry and a leader for next Satyrday's Big Hunt game at Empire Game Shop here in Sin City. That translates as four Ashigaru and one Samurai for those of you keeping score at home.

Again, wholly historically inaccurate, but damn are they stylish!

Frostgrave
This wouldn't be much of a Frostgrave blog if I didn't have any Frostgrave content, now would it? But, I haven't really finished anything for Frostgrave this week. I am in progress on the remaining figure for my wife's Egyptian warband, and I have started on the Apprentice for my Duck warband. Bases are in progress for many of the beasties and critters that are painted but need proper basing. If things go right, I should have a "metric crapton" of varied Frostgrave goodness by next weekend. Check back here in seven days!

Wednesday Night Musings V

Stupid Wind!
Really, all I wanted was to be able to Dullcote my WizarDecember Week 2 entry... 25 mile per hour winds,with gusts up to 35 mph since last Friday has kept me from being able to do so until this afternoon. I haven't had time to do any pictures yet, but since I finished my Week 3 entry today I expect to be doing pictures tomorrow.

Glorantha Again
Last week, I posted a bit about Glorantha and my Ducks and my plans and all that good jazz. As I was looking through my various Warbands, I noticed that first one I did last month would work well as a Gloranthan Warband. It really does have "Lunar" written all over it, doesn't it? Greek helmets, red shields, spears... and a perfect first opponent for my Ducks. Hmmm... now I need to actually finish my Ducks! Really, only a Wizard and Apprentice, but still...

Also, I have started conversion work on my Morokanth Wizard, for painting next week as my WizarDecember entry.

Scenery
How much scenery is too much? I have enough to cover my 2'x2' board twice over, and still have plenty left over to build. I've been a bit busy this week, so no new terrain this week. But here is what's in the cardstock queue...

Not only a LOT of cardstock projects, but arranged in an attractive pattern.

Best Wife Ever
A few years back, I painted up a semi-historical New Kingdom Egyptian warband statted for Song of Blades and Heroes as a gift to my wife, with the cunning plan that she would actually play the game with me. As it turned out, she wanted to put them on display with the rest of her Egyptian display items, and forbade them from being used for gaming. Since we have moved to our smaller home, these miniatures have been living in a box in the closet due to lack of shelf space. In any event, I recently pulled them out and asked her if she would like to try playing a game of Frostgrave with them. She quickly agreed, but did not want me to touch up any of the chipped paint nor re-base the one model that had been for D&D. I want her to have a little more in the way of Warband options than is currently finished, so I have a few more models to finish for her and we will be playing a game!

She and I also  recently did some re-arranging of furniture and re-organizing of the bedroom. In her infinite wisdom and general goodness, she designated a shelving unit to be solely for my hobby stuff. I don't have too many finished miniatures here at the house, so the top shelf is currently DBA and Frostgrave forces, the next two shelves are scenery (at least until I need the shelf space for finished miniatures,) and finally books on the bottom shelf. You can also see some of my model airplanes hanging from the ceiling (another one of her suggestions.)

Best. Wife. Ever.

Future Plans
I've got four Warbands for Frostgrave finished, four more in the works, and I am still rolling hot on wanting to get them done. But I know I am going to want a change of pace soon. I have been feeling the urge to start painting my DBA Persians again, and a local gaming group has invited me to play VSF Colonials with them. So, while this blog will remain Tumbhelada de Punkrabbitt, in January I will be posting occasional forays into other genres. You have been warned!