3; 152; 323; 2209; 115158

Hi All,

  That's going on 3 years; 152 followers; 323 posts; 2209 comments and 115158 page views as I'm writing this.

So let's get this party started. I really like doing giveaway's, but I've struggled with the question of what could I really give you all that you would actually want?

First off I'd like to give a home to some very nice 15mm figures that I purchased, but realize I will never actually game with.  They are these fantastic little Ratmen from Splintered Light Miniatures.

In addition to these, I will somehow include a copy of the Two Hour Wargames Scenario, Jewel of Murinae that I bought them for.

The next question is painted or unpainted? To me it's almost like the W.C. Fields joke. First prize is unpainted, second prize is painted.

There may be more, we'll see what shakes out as I get the gaming dungeon de-cluttered.

The usual rules apply:

1. Be a follower of the blog
2. Leave a comment that you want to enter.
3. A winner will be drawn using a complex algorithm involving a hat on Monday June 30th in the US.

One entry per person, and thanks for being a part of the madness.

That is all.

Late but here's Old Stuff Day, GM's day and 100K views

Well, I've been floundering around a bit with projects and let several things pass by that I wanted to touch on.

March 2nd was Old Stuff Day. I did this last year here, and think that this is a good thing to observe on your blog to try to breath life into those posts that need a little more love.

This year I want to draw attention to these posts:

Yet again I'll point your attention to Fabulous Maps of Greyhawk, not so much for the post itself but for the maps. Anna Meyer has done an incredible amount of work and her finished maps are quite stunning.

I have no idea how many view this one got, but Superhero SFX Tokens was a good bit of fun.

No one took up the call in Another Meme? Perhaps it was too silly.

And of course Fladnag the Beige.

March 4th was GM's day a sort of memorial to Gary Gygax and an excuse to break out your RPG stuff. I'm getting excited about the Kickstarter I joined for solo gaming, it's releasing fairly soon. It is The Covetous Poet's Adventure Creator and Solo GM Guidebook. Frank Lee's blog is here.

It also snuck up on me this week, but I've passed the 100K views. I will have a giveaway to mark this milestone, but I will have to put it off for a little bit so that I can complete a few things.

Lastly I just wanted to mention that the family will be travelling to London and Paris over our kids spring break. We'll be in London on the 22nd to 25th and Paris from the 26th to the 30th. So if anybody wants to get together drop me a comment or an email. I may not have time for a game, but SWMBO says I may be allowed some time for a pint or something when were not on the sight seeing thing.

I missed it, perhaps you didn't, but the battle report for Mirish versus the Abyss is up on Talomir Tales.

Watch this space.

Big Lee's 1 millionth hit prize draw.

Shameless bid to gain five more entries into Big Lee's giveaway. You can find it here. Don't dally like I have, you have until Monday to enter.

I've been feeling a little run down after the big vacation. I found the spot on my ribs that I was denying is cracked. I don't have picto-graphic evidence but it hurts like hell if I press on it just right. So denial was not the cure all I had hoped it would be.

I'll share some pictures of San Diego and the Safari Park in a day or so, I only took about 1000. Lots of stuff from the Air & Space Museum and the Aircraft Carrier Midway. We also were stalked by a pair of Tigers.

I also hope to bring you an outline of my ancestors who fought in the Civil War. I'm sure I mentioned it before but Gettysburg sparked my interest again and I found a book devoted to the regiment my Great great grandfather was in. Also confirmed that elements of my grandfather's story is true, just not the specifics of time and place.

I've also been reading, albeit slowly, And a Bottle of Rum. In a bit of synchronicity my son is doing a summer camp about Pirates so my Pirate will be Jack Rancid, Captain of the Calico. If he becomes a pirate I'm thinking he will be Throat Beard the Pirate.

I'll finish up with  few milestones. I am now over 70K views and June was my highest viewed month ever with 11,679 hits. I am over 200 posts and have finally broken the 100 follower barrier. Now that I have achieved some of these targets I am going to focus more on comments and conversation as that is more appealing to me.

Welcome to new followers:

Don Hans of Realm of Citadel a fine painter and Oldhammer adherent. Check out his Thugs and Nurgle warband. And while you're at it give him a few more followers. You won't be disappointed.

Warlord Paul of The Black Hole great looking terrain and figures. It looks like many of the heavy hitters already follow WP. Be cool like us and follow him too.

I have actually primed a few fantasy adventurers and am trying just gluing them to the washer and will base goop after painting. The theory is it will get them painted faster. Already had one incident with the troll. I knocked him off his washer and so had to handle him to paint him. I ended up peeling off some primer with my fingers, so he looks like he has a skin condition on his hand. I'm going to try and make it work. I'm thinking an Orky green palette with maybe some grayish highlights.

I've rambled enough for now. Have a good one.

2nd Bloggiversary Giveaway

Well, next week is the 2nd anniversary of the blog so I thought I'd give away a copy of THW's And a Bottle of Rum.

This is a game of swash buckling pirate adventures on the Spanish main.

Rules of the giveaway:

1.) Be a follower of the blog.
2.) Leave a comment as an entry to the draw.
3.) If you pimp this post and leave a link here (so I can check it) I'll give you a second entry.
4.) I will post the winner on the morning of Friday June 28th (my time).

Another point about this giveaway is this is one of the first that I've done where I actually bought the rules first myself. I mainly got this title because I liked what I saw in terms of ship battles and thought it was something I could use for my 18th century Imagi-nation project.

I will endeavor to read these and give you guys a mini review. That way I can digest it in chunks and maybe get some games in as well.

So don't be shy, come get yer hands on some pirate booty!

By Ravven78

200+ posts, 50K+ views and not much else.

Hi All,

  While I had fun in Vegas it left me even more lethargic, if that's even possible. Here are some pictures of what I have been working on.

Paper model I was working on before it went wrong.

Tereken (Saxon) warriors in their Yellow Ochre.

Ding to the Bugbear's ear after dropping a sleeve of CD's on him.

(L to R) Caeser Undead, Dwarves and Elves awaiting the knife.

Ochre base for flesh on Sorceress and another hero glued to washer.

I also cleaned up the rest of the Adventurers but didn't photograph them.

I have been meaning to post more but just haven't got the ideas into the computer. What I may do is try and start scheduling posts and put a few in the can so I can keep to a schedule when I get in ruts like this.

I need to do some kind of giveaway, but with all of the truly awesome giveaways that have been occurring I feel like I don't really have anything to offer. So I'll think on it some more.

Old Stuff Day

I saw this originally mentioned over on Creative Twilight who credited the idea to Warhammer 39999. But the first concise explanation I saw for what this is was on The Wargaming Site.


"On this day, each blogger can go through their history and find posts that they’d like to shake the dust off and present again to the community at large. Some suggestions for content that would be good to post: 

* Posts that you considered special that didn’t receive as much attention as you thought they deserved
* Content that people liked in the past, but haven’t seen recently 
* Posts you might have created before your site received much traffic, and now deserve to be reshown
* Or any content you’re particularly proud of!" 

So here are my entries:

Flag Ripple Tutorial Series

How to Texture a Flag for Ray Part 1 the one that started it all, only got 42 views and the comments were that it was difficult to understand.

Flag Ripple Effect Video Tutorial was my attempt to show in realish time how to do it. I thought it might be clearer. Only 24 views and a "worst ever" review on Youtube for my efforts. See what you think.

Alternate Flag Ripple Tutorial actually got 71 views so as such was fairly popular by my blog standards. It took a question about possibly doing the ripples from a source image of actual rippled fabric. As it turns out it is a better way to do it. I was thinking of making another video on this method, I'll edit it to be concise, and perhaps a listing on TMP.

Maps of Greyhawk

Did you play AD&D? Did you stomp around the Flanaess slaying Giants and whatnot? Or did you just spend hours looking at the old Greyhawk maps and Gazeteer? Well prepare to have your mind blown by the truly awesome maps of Anna Meyer!

Fabulous maps of Greyhawk only got 23 views. Now it is quite possible that you all have just seen her stuff already. LOOK AT IT AGAIN. But seriously, she is constantly updating the maps and releasing them free on her website Fantasy Maps by Anna B. Meyer. If I had any gripe at all it would be that these are all post Greyhawk Wars. But that is just sour grapes because that passed me by when I stopped role playing. (Basically 1985).

Boardgame Resources

The Boardgame Resources wasn't really much of a post so it only garnered 17 views. Too bad really because the stuff on the site I linked to is really great. For this one I'll make you go and look at my post.

Don't overlook Cthulhu

Again The Cultist wasn't much of a post and only got 13 views. It was essentially a reblog pointing to a youtube video that had been a submission for a Strange Aeons competition. The video is quite good and really got me enthralled by the idea of setting up my own Cthulhu campaign. I still haven't done it, but I hope to this year.

Well that's my look back at Old Stuff. I hope you enjoyed it.

And just a note about turning over a new leaf blogging wise. I have righted a terrible wrong and followed back people who followed me over the last year plus. As I said there really is no excuse, just a thought at the time that I wanted to stay on task with my own blog. I've since come to realize that my interests are so all over the place that there really is no point to trying to compartmentalize on blogs I follow. I will however, still try to restrict the blogs I follow to game related as much as possible. I also think that active blogging (ie more commenting, replying etc) is driving more traffic to me. I could be wrong but there seems to be a slight up tick.

Fantasy Heraldry pt 3 - Tracing gifs tutorial

Hi All,

  As you can see I am starting to suffer from ooh shinitis. So to keep on track here is how you convert those pesky gif files into lovely SVG and PNG formats using Inkscape.

First, if you haven't already done so, download the latest version of Inkscape from here. I'm using 0.48 and it looks like I'm a little behind. As always this should be FREE. Never pay anyone for Inkscape.

Step 1: Open your copy of Inscape.

Open Inkscape

Step 2: Open your desired gif image it will pop up asking you to link or embed, choose embed.

You now opened gif image.

Step 3: Make sure the image is selected by mouse clicking on it. You will see the little black arrows.

Arrows show that it has been selected

Step 4: Go to the Path dialog and select Trace Bitmap.

 This window will pop up. I hit update in the picture, but all it did was give me the white rectangle in the preview. I just left all the values at their defaults and hit okay.

It will be hard to tell, the black lines may look thicker.

Step 5: Drag the tracing off of the gif. It should be on top so you can select it with the mouse and then drag it where you like. It is possible that you could just hit delete at this point, since your original bitmap should still be selected. I didn't do that just to give myself visual proof of the two different layers.

Trace on the left, original on the right.

 Step 5a: I now have to go back and select the gif image again.

Step 6: Delete the gif. We don't need it any more.

Step 7: Move our tracing back into the image area.

Final step is to "Save As". It will default to SVG you can select PNG or whatever you'd like. You now have a clean scalable image to use in your heraldry projects.

As always, let me know if you have any questions or if you need me to do a video to help you understand the process more readily.

Cheers.

I've also just noticed that I've passed 15,000 views and this is my 151st post. Since I wasn't paying attention I'll have to figure out something to do for 20,000 views and my 200th post. 

Quietly making progress

With the Thanksgiving Holiday coming up and only a few weeks left in November, I've been making more effort to get these two armies done for a proper battle. The terrain is all rolled up, flat clear and no obstacles. It will just be mano a mano, no fancy wizards or canons.

The Tereken forces are all cleaned and ready for basing. In organizing myself I realized that I had prepped too many models for the levy and not enough for the huscarls, so I remedied that. The Mirholme forces still need 15 figures cleaned, but I should be able to multi-task and block out the colors for the based and primed figures which are 20 Tereken and 13 Mirholme.

14 of 16 levies, 2 skirmishers in the back, huscarls to the right.

I wanted to test my new phone's camera, not too shabby. I need to figure out the flash and obviously need much more light to work at night. This is yesterdays work of blocking out the flesh and metal bits.

The Mirholme Veteran Warriors, Gunnar Broadaxe front right.

I'm flailing around for a color scheme right now but thinking of Red and Blue for the vikings and Green and Yellow for the Saxons. Of course this is mainly for the wealthy troops. The masses of levies/ warriors will be slightly more drab.

Archer wearing gray pants. Warrior in the background, oops forgot flesh on two.

So I'm cautiously optimistic. I think the hardest part thus far is acknowledging the fact that I'm starting from square one skill wise. What I did 20 years ago is irrelevant. Not to say I was a Golden Demon award winning painter, but I still cling to the belief that I was passably decent.

I'll make note of one milestone that happened, passing 12,000 views, before going on to a little non hobby content.

*** Non Hobby Content Warning***

Thanks for all the well wishes for my son and I. I'm feeling mush better but still have a lingering cough. The Panthers really excelled in last weeks game, handing a previously undefeated team a 10 point loss. Although we should have been outright division champions, we are now co-division champions with the team we beat. We retain our #2 seeding in the tournament, which is just as well, so we will have the opportunity to beat the only team that defeated us. If all goes well we will play for the championship. The team has also been invited to a special all city tournament in December.

Also a bit of nostalgia. Last month my parents were able to re-purchase a cabin overlooking Lake Tahoe that they had sold almost 40 years ago. I have many fond childhood memories and hope to be able to share that with my kids in the coming years. Too cold and under construction/renovation for this winter but definitely next summer and the following winter.

Front entrance.

View of Tahoe from the back yard.

Now those are the icicles I remember.

Towards Tahoe with snow.

10,000 hits prize draw

Woohoo! The blog passed 10K views.

You know the drill.

1. Be a follower of the blog.
2. Leave a comment indicating you want to put your name in the hat.
3. By next Friday I'll pick a winner and you shall receive the prize.

If I get enough entries, say double digits, I may give a second place prize of a map to your specifications.

Good luck.

Anticipation...

or a watched hit counter never reaches 10,000.

Some of you may remember when Heinz ketchup used the Carly Simon song in an add.

So since I can't wait by not posting anything I'll tell you what will be happening once I reach 10K. To celebrate this milestone, and in honor of what some are calling Zomtober, I will be giving away a copy of Two Hour Wargames latest release: All Things Zombie - Final Fade Out (ATZ - FFO).

This is an update of their top selling Zombie skirmish game with all the newest rule mechanics etc. You may have read about on Vampifan's blog here, or Colgar6's here.

I am very excited about this title myself, and the only reason I have not bought it already is the massive shame and guilt I feel at still not having played all the other titles I own. And realistically I don't have any models made up.

Oh and if you do a search for Zomtober you may find something silly like this:

Silliness! So while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for the interwebs to take notice of my littleslice o' the net and wait for Battle Cry to come in the mail I wish you all happy gaming.

Battle Cry, Battle Lore and almost 10k hits.

I just pulled the trigger on Battle Cry and Battles of Westeros on Amazon. I don't know if it was specifically a sale or not, but $46.92 for Battle Cry and 29.99 for Battles of Westeros sounds like a good deal.

  Progress in modelling and gaming has taken a back seat to landscaping and bicycle maintenance. It is finally getting cool enough to be outdoors more and my drip irrigation and sprinklers have kindly decided to break on me.

[RANT WARNING, NOT ABOUT GAMING]

My bicycle broke about a month ago and I am now nearing the point in money and frustration where I should have bought a new bike. I just thought that throwing away a whole bike just because the pedal broke was assinine. The crank was some how cross threaded, so no pedal was going to fit in. You can't just buy a crank arm, you have to buy a whole crank set. Then you have to match the bottom bracket. Oh yeah and then you have to order the wrong tool, then the right tool then find out that your old bottom bracket is so seized up you can't get it off. Then you take it to another bike shop, because you're still pissed at the last bike shop and they barely even try to help you before telling you you should just buy a new bike.

GRRRR! And that's the nice way of putting it.

[/RANT]

Anyway Battle Cry should get here by the weekend. Should be fun.

And before I forget, I'm almost at 10K hits and am trying to think of some kind of giveaway. I'd like to give away a copy of All Things Zombie - Final Fade Out (ATZ-FFO) but I'm not sure when the release date is. Of course I could do a map or activation/event cards. We'll see, maybe I'll figure out how to do a poll.

A bold plan.

On Sunday I formulated a bold plan for getting my rear in gear for actually painting figures. Many regular readers will note that I have done much more hand wringing than painting, and to be honest I'm not really sure what is/ has been holding me back.

On with the plan. I have a battle to fight for the Talomir Tales campaign. The Army of Treyine vs. the Orcish army of Naz-Goth. I have until the end of the month to paint 108 figures and play out the battle. Ambitious? Yes, but I think I can manage it.

Here are the forces and proposed figures.

Treyine:

• Foot Knights 4 figures - General and Spear of St. Lindorf in element.
• Infantry 16 figures
• Archers 27 figures
• Merc. Arquebusiers 6 figures
• Hykar Cav 2 figures
• Tropilium Equites 3 figures
• Zog-Rot Goblins 4 figures
• The White Company 3 Mtd Knights (Incl. Sir Geoffrey Chambers), 3 Archers
• Eskelin Knights 3 figures
• Hero (Sir Alaric Fitzhugh) 1 figure
• 1 L2 Wizard (Dansforth) 1 figure

Total: 73

Naz-Goth:

• Orcs 20 figures
• Dire Wolf Riders 4 figures
• Archers 4 figures
• Black Moon Orcs 4 figures (General)
• Bugbears 2 figures
• Hero (Hogash) 1 figure

Total: 35

So a grand total of 108.

Wish me luck. I hope to follow up post with WIPs and figure sourcing along the way.

Welcome to two new followers:

Hugh, I don't know if you have a blog but your avatar leads me to believe it is Ten Mil Wargames, correct me if I am wrong.

Monty from Monty's War Gaming, a nice site that has reviews of movies and computer games as well as some finely painted 15mm stuff.

And lastly the blog has surpassed 9,000 views.

Time to start thinking about a giveaway for 10,000.

100th Post and a Prize

Well the time has arrived! It's my 100th post.

I "borrowed" this from  http://onelostroad.blogspot.com/2011/07/1lr-100-pageviews.html 

And as with such milestones I suppose I should have some sort of give away. Being a hoarder and a cheapskate, I'm having a little trouble coming up with ideas for a good prize. My painting skills have deteriorated past the point of being able to offer them up. But I can do some things with GIMP so I thought I'd start there. So my prize is the lucky winner will have their choice of Flags/ Heraldry or Ripples added to such; a map of their campaign setting; or design of some kind of game aid (ie cards).

If you can't decide if you would even find value in that I shall direct you the relevant posts.

Flag Ripples: here and here.

Maps: here (unfinished) and here. But I feel that this is my crowning achievement.

Game Aids: here and a picture of them.

So if you care to "win" just become a follower and leave a comment indicating so. In one week (Aug 7th, 2012) I'll randomly select a winner from the entrants and then work out with you what you'll have me do.

Thanks for reading.

Happy Birthday to me (the blog that is)

Well it was actually yesterday, but I was busy galavanting around the Arboretum at UC Davis and cursing my now 4 month old hip/ groin injury that doesn't seem to want to heal.

One of the things we did was pull out my old Traveller books. My brother has been holding them as I gave him all of my role playing stuff when I moved out of the house at 18.

Sorry for the blur, I must have moved. I thought I had the Navy book as well.

The adventures. I only remember playing the Fasa one.

It was a nice trip down memory lane, and now I know where I can go to get a resource for reinvigorating a sci fi campaign. Now only to buy 5150: Star army and maybe 5150: Star Navy when it comes out.

As far as the blog goes, not too bad for a blog with no real goals, but obviously one could do better. Look to The Angry Lurker, Don't Throw a One and Frontline Gamer if you want to see how it's done.

I'll be going more blog lists and trying a little more to cross promote in the coming year. My goals are still nebulous, and I'll try to define them more in my own mind. The one thing is to get on the TGN Blog network. In the words of Mike Tyson "I'm gonna make you love me!"

Cheers!

Next up will be some set up of the re-tool of Blod Orn and some more Nuts & Bolts about the upcoming Talomir campaign. I'll try to post the blow by blow here while making the posts on Talomir Tales more narrative.

Perhaps the goal should be to double my totals thus far, or rather get twice as much done in one year. So that would equate to roughly 180 more posts, 12,000 more views and 86 more followers. Something to shoot for.

Games that define us.

Well, a day late as usual. But I thought that this was an interesting one to try. So, here goes.

1.Risk:
I played many, many games of this over the years, quite a few solo when I had mono in the 6th grade. I still love this game, but can't get my family to play it. I bought Lord of The Rings Risk when it came out and am tempted to buy Risk Legacy

2. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons:
What else can I say. Started playing this around 12 or 13. I had seen the basic boxed set when I was 10 but did not understand it at all. Played all through high school but drifted away as the group went their separate ways to college etc.

80's Fanzine of your blog

Hi all,

  I saw this on The Stronghold Rebuilt and thought I should give it a try. Basically take your last five blog posts and mock up an 80's fanzine with appropriate art and make it look like it was poorly photocopied etc. He sets it up much better than I am doing. Anyway here it is.

Now a bit has to be said about the art work. This is a sketch that a friend of mine did for me in 7th grade. I was telling him about my latest D&D character at the time (we died a lot) and he whipped this out as we chatted. He told me that he got "How to draw comics the Marvel way" for his birthday and this was the result. Now I also had this book and I immediately stopped drawing after I learned this. Well perhaps an exaggeration but I had no illusions that I could teach myself to draw after that.

The kids name? Tristan Schane.

http://marvel.wikia.com/Category:Tristan_Schane/Cover_Artist

http://marvel.wikia.com/File:Storm_%26_Professor_X_(by_Tristan_Schane).jpg

http://www.tristanschane.com/

Anyhow it's probably not as memorable for him as it is for me, but there you have it.

I have a few posts in the works, some family Civil War history, ideas for an RRtK game based on the game Machiavelli, and perhaps a write up of that flag technique so that one could print it out and have an easier time doing it.

In the meantime I've also surpassed 4,000 views.

Nicholas Has Chosen

It took a few days, but I made contact with Nicholas and he chose Long Rifle.

The description starts "Long Rifle is the black powder period immersion game centered on the French and Indian War."


There are some good posts about it on the Two Hour Wargames Blog starting with the Story of Thomas Howard here.


So I'm sure we all hope, after he gets comfortable with the rules of course, that Nicholas will share an AAR or two from his games at his site http://colony13.blogspot.com/.

Also Welcome to Mats Lintonson of Mono Desire, a nice gaming blog with some interesting projects. I like the painting station he made.

Oh and somehow when I wasn't looking, I passed 3000 views. It's the little blog that could.

Have a great rest of whatever time of day it is where you are.

2012 page views

Wow, I was just taking a look at my page and saw I had 2012 views. Maybe people from over at the Two Hour Wargames group on Yahoo checking me out. I've been working on a Anglo-Saxon army list for my campaign and asked over there for some help.

Thanks to all who stop by and to those who comment a double thanks.

And I realize now it's Space Crusade, but for some reason I always type Star Crusade. Perhaps why I had trouble finding it at first.

1500 Views

Well, despite not really posting much I have made it to 1500 views. So here is an image of a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle of the map of Middle Earth. I think this would drive one insane faster than painting 2mm figures.

Unfortunately, what with the Holidays and all, gaming has been zero. For some reason I have been husbanding my posts (or post ideas) and then not committing them them to the blog. Bad blogmanship. Or is that bloggering?

So my immediate plan is to take some Two Hour Wargames stuff and try to press my brother into service. My folks still have all my old Army Men so they can be pressed into service like the old days, German paratroopers for Orcs etc.

I have a lot of notes for a Talomir campaign and am planning to do a combined RRtK (Rally Round the King)/ WHAA (Warrior Heroes: Armies & Adventures) campaign following the exploits of a dispossessed (wouldn't you know there were five s' in that) Mirholme (read Viking) noble. Most of this is not really my idea but following the lead of Ruaridh over at Talomir Tales.

Also plenty of reading to do on all those THW titles I purchased.

Oh yeah, I'm also coming up on 6 months since I started this thing and so would be eligible to list to Table Top Gaming News Blog Network. Which is of course where I first got sucked into reading blogs. Actually that isn't wholly true. I think the one that started it all for me was An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields.

1000 page views.

Well I'm up to 1000 page views, hopefully not too many of them are me checking in from my smart phone. Since I love maps I thought it would be fitting to have this image of Europe in 1000AD.

Welcome to Vladdd309 from Just too much free time, he has reviews and news about GW, Privateer Press and Osprey/Warlord Games stuff on his page.