Keep Your Pimp Hand Strong

From www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

A few more giveaways to pimp.

Trouble at T'Mill is giving away £25 worth of Two Fat Lardies games here. I'm hoping to win this one as I'm intrigued by TFL but haven't pulled the trigger and ordered any of their rules. Still too many unread rule sets I guess.

Also James over at Exiles Wargames Painters is having a cool giveaway to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of his blog. You get extra entries for promoting and more still for writing a limerick, my favorite. You can find it here.

I would add more but the internet is wonky and the air is filled with onion and making my eyes water.

Games played, Comics read, giveaways entered.

Hi All,

Still on vacation, and as usual not really finding the time to get to all the things that I packed for down time during the trip.

We just finished our second game of Conan Munchkin in as many days. My daughter won yesterday with an actual strategy and some fairly cunning play. It makes a barbarian father proud. My son won today, and although my wife helps him make most of his decisions, he had a pretty good end game for the win. My wife threatened me with the sofa after I played a Level 19 wandering monster on her to stop her from reaching level 9. She ended up having to run away and died in the attempt.

I purchased a couple of graphic novels yesterday. The first was King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword

From www.comicastle.com

Good quick read, great art. I think you can't go wrong with any of the Timothy Truman Conan comics.

Next was the Walking Dead Vol 1.

From darkfaerietales.com

I am an avid follower of the television series and considered buying the compendium, but didn't want to carry the phone book sized thing in my luggage. So I've gone with the trade paper graphic novel. Even if you know the story from the show the book is different enough to keep it interesting. This book was like potato chips, I devoured it and wanted another immediately. Although it has a lot of swear words my 7 year old was very engaged by it and even picked it up and read some on his own. I'll take it because he is not a very strong reader and avoids reading at all costs. If he has to be exposed to a few "sentence enhancers" along the way, that's a price I'm willing to pay. He hears that and worse from his old man anyway, so who am I kidding.

Now onto pimpin' the giveaways.

I got over my self pity and threw my name in for the Darksword miniatures over at Wargames and Railroads here.

I then also jumped in on the 100K views giveaway happening over at Trouble at T'Mill, you can see the prizes for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

Good luck to everyone entered.

Book Review: Halcyon Classics The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft: 67 Tales of Horror

Well I finally finished reading the Kindle Edition of this H.P. Lovecraft Anthology.

While the price was very good I will say that my interest in Lovecraft really ebbed and flowed. Some of the stories just didn't capture my interest as much and I found myself getting tired with some of Lovecraft's literary devices. But that is somewhat par for the course when reading collected works. I found Howard to get to me at times as well when I read the Conan anthologies.

What I was not prepared for was Lovecraft's racism. It doesn't come up in every story, and a lot of it is garden variety Anglophile world view of "lesser" races. His racism against blacks, or African - Americans if you prefer, is repugnant.

Sorry, but I gotta calls it as I sees it. I personally was totally unprepared for it. At first I was inclined to think that it was just a sort of period bias against barbaric non white, non Christians and it was that. But it was actually worse than that. I still enjoy the true horror stories and the Dreamlands stuff is pretty good but I probably would have come away with a better taste in my mouth if I had stopped at Call of Cthulhu and Dunwich Horror etc.

Gorgonmilk in the comments here pointed me to an interesting essay here.

I still enjoy the Cthulhu mythos and spinoff games, but I have to say I was disappointed to read this tripe from Lovecraft.

So I can't fault the book itself. Good value, you get a ton of stories. But if you only want to read the main stories and be subjected to to the other stuff less, maybe try a different book.

Lets make a statement with charity

On the heels of the mind numbing events in Woolwich, Bob Cordery, via Nigel Drury came up with an outstanding idea for a response here. Give to Charity. The gentleman killed was wearing a shirt for the Charity Help for Heroes. But we can also give to similar organizations in the US if so inclined. Such as Wounded Warrior Project or the Pat Tillman Foundation, to name just a few.

We can also support fellow bloggers in their attempt to raise money for Help for Heroes and Men Matter at Bloggers for Charity.

I forget who said it, and I'm sure I'm paraphrasing, but if we all pursue an eye for an eye we'll all just end up blind.

Stay safe my friends.

Final days to get in on the Modular Gaming Table

Dreamfish, from over at Realms of Miniatures is winding down his Indiegogo for his Modular Gaming Table here.

Same picture borrowed from Realms of Miniatures

Also welcome to new followers:

Eldorf.Dragonsbane: Your friend connect does not list any blogs you write but your avatar looks similar to Doug, whose two blogs I just followed. If it is you I'll link to your blogs, if not let me know if you have a blog and I'll link to it.

Asslessman is the author of Leadplague a talented painter and devotee of Oldhammer (aka WFB 3rd edition). I'm not sure why I'm not showing up on you google friend bar, I'll go ahead and fix that.

Planning games for vacation.

As I mentioned previously, I am going on vacation this weekend and I need to put together a gaming kit. I intend to do some more Chronicales of Loa, and perhaps an RRtK battle in the Talomir campaign. In addition to this I was thinking on how I could make a sort of portable gaming kit.

So here is my plan so far:

I've ordered some stands from Precis Intermedia for paper figures here. I'm going to print out some figures from Paper Friends and print out some terrain form the various sets that I have.

I'm thinking of focusing on WHAA/ Swordplay / WHL for a dungeon crawl. I also have the Jewel of Murinae scenario from THW. I still also want to do a Cthulhu themed game of LTL. Thus far I have read WHAA and LTL but only thumbed through Swordplay and not read WHL at all. so I may cut my losses with WHL. The other question is if my brothers friends want to play. He said they will be coming for this big party my folks are throwing and like to game, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go live with a bunch of gamers. On the other hand it could be fun.

I also did a little retail therapy the other day and bought a card game box and die bag made by Fantasy Flight Games from my local Barnes & Noble bookstore. The box is meant for holding your Magic cards, but will work well for holding Munchkin Conan. It even has a little box that attaches to the bottom that I'm going to use for holding the die and level marker tokens.

Two part card game box and large die bag.

Pimping Tamsin's giveaway and the rules of Buffet Line.

Hi All,

  Just pimping Tamsin's giveaway to shamelessly earn more chances to win. You can try for the dual giveaway of purchases from GZG and/ or Baccus here and the box of Warlord Games 28mm Brits here.

While we were in Vegas I had to educate my son about Buffet lines.

What is the first rule of Buffet line?

Don't touch anything with your hands!

What is the second rule of Buffet line?

Don't eat stuff until you get back to your table!

He didn't get the fight club reference. But we actually did see a sign discouraging people from just standing in front of the crab and eating it from the service line.

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.

Greetings from Vegas

No gaming today, at least not with little men.

We're in Las Vegas to celebrate Mothers Day and went to uncorked last night.

Had some good food and drink. Many good dishes, for some reason I remember Gordon Ramsey's take on pork and beans on toast.

Celebs we saw. Robin Leach, someone spilled red wine all over his white pants. Ken Jong, the Asian guy from the Hangover movies. Morimoto and Ramsey.

My brother in law texted his sister and she said he was full of shit. No pictures you see.

So 100 vendors, food and beverage. I don't remember all that I drank but the Oro do Milano beer that I spilled was good and the Pyrat Rum punch was good to. Pyrat is the official Rum of this blog.

Afterwards we played video roulette and I won $21.50 woohoo! I'm such a high roller.

Pimping some giveaways

Hi All,

Just pimping some more giveaways.

Back to the minis has. Blood Bowl Figs, Foundry Painting and Modelling Guide, GZG NAC starter Fleet, and now Two books. Good stuff. Put your name in the hat and boost his page views.

Also check out Hive Zero and his Epic Giveaway. Even if you don't want Epic space marines give him a bit of encouragement. There's nothing worse than having a giveaway that no one enters. Come on it's free stuff.

Welcome to John Yorio. You also don't have your blog listed in your links, but I know it is Table Top Diversions, a very nice solo, rpg and eclectic miniatures games blog.

And now, just to increase hits on this post and thereby hopefully drive traffic to the aforementioned giveaways lets talk about our favorite ladies dressed up as Princess Leia in the Jabba slave outfit.Shall we?

First off the original, Carrie Fisher.

Hard to beat the original.

 Next, Adrienne Curry.

 I had no idea who she was.

Then Jennifer Aniston as Rachel from friends.

This one made an impression on me because of the comedy of her fulfilling Ross's geek fantasy. Admit it, it's yours as well.

And last but not least Olivia Munn. I do know who she is and I'd have to say she is my favorite.

And then for comic relief, an impromptu Jabba's lair scene.

From  college humor

Defeating Torpor

And I don't mean that guy who played Tevya.

Chaim Topol from imdb.com

 I have been in a sort of funk these days with barely the energy to get out of bed, or so it seems. Trying to resume my fitness regimen has been difficult to say the least. I can do it but afterwards I just want to sleep. In addition to this I have tried, and mostly failed, to get back to doing my chores around the house that I have let slide since before I got sick, if I'm truly honest with myself.

  So what does this have to do with gaming? Well it means that I have done precious little. I was doing some play testing and hope to get back to it, but I think the author has given up on me. Can't say that I blame him. I also just have lost what little painting mojo I had in the push to finish Fladnag.

  But today I had a thought. How about a dungeon crawl? Make up those cool paper dungeons I bought, get out the rest of the Caesar Adventurers and start pulling out the other Caesar Fantasy stuff and play some games with the stuff.

Sounds like a plan.

Other news:

You've probably heard about it but Sebastofig of Back to the Minis is having a giveaway to celebrate his second blog birthday. Go check it out.

Two Hour Wargames is also doing an Indiegogo Campaign for All things Zombie that looks cool here. Since I do 1/72 I'll probably be doing the deck and supplement option.

Realms of Miniatures is just about halfway funded with 25 days left to go. You can find the super cool gaming table project here. I'm tempted on this one but the timing is just not right for me. I think my wife would kill me if I tried to purchase a full on gaming table, no matter how cool or space age it is.

Welcome to Thantsants. You're blogger friend link doesn't show what blog you write and it's killing me that I can't remember where I know your name from. So as usual please let me know if you do have a blog so that I can link to it. * I finally figured it out Thantsants is from Somewhere the tea's getting cold, an Oldhammer themed blog. Right now there's some great stuff about some Blood Bowl teams he is working on.

Off to drink some more wine and make some flank steak for dinner.