Chariots!

So I think I mentioned that I'm a tad behind. I got some more work done on the Stygustan and Tropilium armies for my Talomir Tales battle using the RRtK rules from THW.

As you may recall I did not have a ready made base handy so I was going to make some from roofers tin. Here's what I came up with.

Not glued down just positioned. Sorry for the cellphone picture.

So I just laid them on the shingle, marked off a rectangle with a sharpie marker and then traced the arc of a 1.5" washer to help get the rounded edge. Only really had one burr from cutting and some casual passes with a file took any troublesome edge down. My normal procedure is to glue the figure to the base and then build it up with clay, but I thought that would be difficult for this application. So I spread a thin layer of the air drying modelling clay on the tin, added the texture goop and then spot PVA glue on the chariot wheels and horse hooves. The assembled chariots were a tad warped, so an apple sauce jar lid was laid on top to hold the figure down. As usual the green aquarium sand was sprinkled on while the goop was still wet. I think it was Mathyoo who mentioned mixing PVA into the clay. I did not do this but will henceforth modify my basing procedure by spreading PVA on the metal surface of the base before applying the clay. I have been successful in gluing dry clay down with the goop, but it can be difficult. Especially with thinner layers of clay.

Said Chariots

Chariot crews

I am beginning to appreciate that fully assembling the chariots is going to make them difficult to paint, but I am desperate to have assembled models at this point.

The Ballista and crew (HaT Greek catapult)

The camera refused to focus on the figures on sticks

And I just wanted to show you how I rigged up some balsa block with tooth picks for painting riders and shields. I need to figure out a good way to affix things so that they won't fall off when I paint them but won't be permanently glued there as well. I received a pile o' figures from someone that had a few that had suffered the permanent attachment to the painting stick.

So that's that as they say. In other news the Old School Gamers group on facebook just had its second anniversary.

Old School Gamers

And I'm excited about Orctober. You can read about it at Erny's place here.

Random news for today

I'm feeling a little loopy today, just tired I guess, but there have been a few interesting things I've read about today that I wanted to share.

First there is this truly amazing chart comparing sizes of almost every starship you can think of over on Deviant Art. I heard about it on Old School Gamers and then again on the Hive Zero blog here.

Chris Stoeson is having a giveaway over at Wargamer's Odds and Ends here. In celebration of 300+ posts and his birthday if I remember correctly. Anyway go check him out. The prizes are some limited edition 28mm figures for Sharp Practice, some 15mm armor and the scenario books that he sells. Pretty awesome. You can read a review of his latest over on Ray's blog here.

There is also a rumbling over on the THW forums, from Ed himself, that the 5150 big battle rules might be underway. Another step closer to replaying Squad Leader with THW mechanics. Although if I had any imagination I could probably just figure it out for myself.

I think the caffeine is finally kicking in and the children are restless for homework assistance. Sorry I don't have time for invigorating photos today.

Anne's Awesome (and super secret) giveaway.

Just a quick one today. The not so well kept secret is out, and you may already be entered without knowing it. Anne over at O'Leary Miniatures is have a super secret giveaway on her blog here. The offerings are very good and honestly it is exciting just to be in the running.This give away is being sponsored in part by author Patrick Hatt. You can find Mr. Hatt's Amazon Writers Page at http://www.amazon.com/Pat-Hatt/e/B00AGFMYVC. Best of luck to everyone whose gotten their name in and I have been lucky enough to win something from Anne once before, so hopefully I still have a little luck left.

I finally found my d10's, they were inside the boxes for Munchkin bites and Munchkin Cthulhu. I think I had the bright idea to use them for level counters. I discovered them just before my horrific loss at Munchkin Bites.

Here is my updated dice challenge table.

Die	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Avg.
d4	2	4	4	2	2	4	4	4	3	4	3.3
d6	6	4	3	4	2	5	5	2	1	5	3.7
d8	2	6	1	4	3	3	5	1	6	4	3.5
d10	3	4	8	3	1	5	3	2	5	9	4.3
d12	5	6	5	8	10	6	5	12	9	4	7
d20	2	17	1	17	8	6	17	19	9	8	10.4
d100	94	60	36	96	34	62	27	50	36	32	52.7

Fairly poor on the d10 but just about average on the d100.

Ray asked to see the visor in action, and I finally figured out how to work my webcam, so here are a couple of shots.

I'm wearing my glasses underneath. And for fun some more Ladies of Metal, after the break.

Magnifying Visor

I went ahead and purchased a magnifying visor to help with my deteriorating eyesight. It seems I am suffering from the inability to focus up close, even though I have been near sighted my whole life. Quite frustrating really. You may recall that I have a magnifying lamp that I mentioned here, but I find it to be problematic in some instances as I bang paint brush and knife handles on it as I'm trying to work.

The visor gets around this rather well. I ordered this one from Amazon for $6.85 and it arrived in two days.

From Amazon.com

The knob adjustment for size can be difficult, and the plastic pad across the forehead a bit sweaty, but it works pretty well. It has the fixed magnifier, another inside the visor that flips down, and the small one that swings down on the outside. I did a couple of hour session with it last night and it worked fairly well. The light is pretty good and runs off of two AAA batteries. It can be adjusted vertically and horizontally. One word of caution. Be careful when flipping the visor up. I had a few instances where I was tilting my head down with the visor up and it flipped down of its own accord. The visor drove my glasses into the bridge of my nose, which is annoying at best and painful at worst. The hinge adjustment knobs seem to be difficult to tighten sufficiently to totally remove this possibility. And then my wife says it makes me look like James Hom from Blade Runner.

I got it from here. Where he got it from is anybody's guess.

In other news (ie putting this here to remind myself), Warlord Paul has listed some more blogs that may be of interest here. Orlygg at has a post about Oldhammer in the States here. I want to get back into 3rd edition, but I fear I'm so far behind on painting etc that it will lead to stress related illness. In any event I will tap into what is going on.

And lastly just to inform those of you who are into 1/72 in general and fantasy at this scale in particular I stumbled across a blog that was new to me. Cheap Fantasy Minis is definitely worth your time and ranks highly, in my opinion, as a resource for those interested in this niche of a niche.

Had a great weekend. My son's team won their first flag football game of the season, and my back only hurt marginally as I got thrown around. Also the weather actually felt cool with a breeze. I have some volunteering to do at the school today and a project to design some sort of background for a Tai Chi presentation. Other than that I hope to get these figures painted and play out my next battle for Talomir. You can see the battle reports that have already come in at Talomir Tales. My Tereken forces were defeated and there is now an enforced peace between us and Altengard for the next two years.

Do you like (American) Football?

There have been several good posts about Blood Bowl lately and as you may recall I once rambled about a thought for playing games out with 1/72 figures here.

The Laughing Ferret's recent tournament experience here and Kasper's post about Blood Bowl resources here, got me fired up to play again. That, coupled with a discussion about a THW game for football on the forums may have pushed me over the edge.

Now I just have to decide if I use the over sized football figures I bought my son, paper figures, 28mm proxies or 1/72 proxies.

You may recall said plastic figures and the Football dice game "Go Long" that we got for Christmas here and here. We haven't gamed with either much, the dice game was too abstract for my son and frankly it didn't capture my interest as much as I thought it would.

Speaking of dice,

I still haven't found my d10's

A member of the Oldschool Gamers facebook group posted a link to these videos of Lou Zocchi discussing dice science, or rather why you should buy his dice. But it's still very informative. Especially after about 4:30 on the first video where he starts talking about die shape in detail.

The Science of Dice with Lou Zocch (1 of 2)

The Science of Dice with Lou Zocch (2 of 2)

He actually rolls the dice at around 3:30 of the second video. He makes some very interesting points and what it all points to is are your dice actually misshapen or poorly made so that they effect the out come?

Quote of the day. "Fresh oats cost more than used oats even though the used oats have passed through the horse only once."

(I still seem to be having an issue linking embedded videos into my blog, the old way tells me there is no video. The share feature on youtube want's to make an individual post. I'm not sure what's going on.)

The Dice Challenge

So Lee was bemoaning his statistically aberrant dice rolling here, and Ray offered a challenge to see if anyone could possibly roll worse here.

Die	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Avg.
d4	2	4	4	2	2	4	4	4	3	4	3.3
d6	6	4	3	4	2	5	5	2	1	5	3.7
d8	2	6	1	4	3	3	5	1	6	4	3.5
d10											#DIV/0!
d12	5	6	5	8	10	6	5	12	9	4	7
d20	2	17	1	17	8	6	17	19	9	8	10.4
d100											#DIV/0!

So mostly average to above average. Nowhere near Lee "Dice" Hadley's awful luck. I was rather displeased to find my dice spread out on the table, and floor and nary a d10 to be had. I'll have to turn the place over to locate them.

Well as Leonard Courtney, 1st Baron Courtney of Penwith, said. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:1stLordCourteney.jpg

And some random pictures of dice:

It has occurred to me that I am behind on my schedule to play out this nest game with figures. Time to get cracking.

Forums using Feedly, MOMBAT and painting in bed.

Perhaps this should be three separate posts, but my track record is such that if I don't post about it while I'm thinking about it it will be lost in the sands of time.

Forums on Feedly

Those of you who frequent the Two Hour Wargames Yahoo Group will know that, with the switch to neo, there were some things that frustrated the moderators enough to set up a forum. I was one of the many who was annoyed by the way neo seemed to be garbling messages but didn't know how I was going to keep up with the Forum in the same way, since groups emails me with each new message.

Ed sent through a message saying that one could use Feedly to stay updated. Now as you know I use it, with varying levels of success, so I thought I'd give it a try.

So I typed the Forum address into the feed search bar and it was done. I made a category called forums and I will probably start adding some others on there that I am a member of but fell away from because I felt it was too time consuming and locking me to my computer.

MOMBAT

Bob Cordery and Archduke Piccolo have been working on some updates to the MOMBAT rules recently. You may recall that I threw in my version Memoir Third Age 3019. I'll have to take a look at what I wrote and update it to this new system, as it just makes too much sense not to.

Paintig in bed

Last night I reclaimed the plastic kids craft tray that I had bought for sitting in bed watching tv with the wife for our evening "quality time". Worked pretty well but I need to remember to do something about lighting and magnification. In the light of day this morning there are quite a few missed spots, but I got 14 more figures flesh blocked out, so I'll take any progress I can get.

Two Hour Wargames goodness

Well, although I've been sitting on it for awhile, now might be the time to tell you all about some recent things I received from Two Hour Wargames.

As you may recall, as my first venture into crowd funding, I supported the indiegogo for High Rise to Hell. I opted for the rules and cards only option as I don't game in 15mm. (He said trying to resist the urge to buy full armies in 15mm).

With my pledge I received a PDF of the rules, the City card deck, and the Risk and Rewards card deck. These are designed as game aids to get you up and running fast. Need a city block? Deal out some cards and the streets will become full of offices, shops and bars. Need a rural area? Deal out fewer cards. Need to know what's in the building? Deal a risk and reward card. It'll tell you how many zombies and if there are any other people in there who want your stuff, plus whatever loot is in there.

These cards also offer a way to play with just the cards and minis or tokens. Now I can take ATZ on the road and play with my brother when we get together for the holidays without chipping and breaking all my figures. (Wow that just occurred to me as I wrote it).

I also pulled the trigger on some more spaceship figures that Ed was selling from his personal horde. I take it that he gathers things together to play test rules he is working on and then sells them when he is done. I thought it was a good opportunity to bootstrap my fleet situation for both Star Navy and Fighter command since I have been so lame about getting those ships I won from Doug painted. (Sorry Doug).

On the Talomir front I have been progressing, albeit slowly. All of the Romans have received their flesh color and I began on the Egyptians using some Raw Sienna, which looks okay. The main concern with using earth tones is that I don't start making them look like they're made out of boot leather or whatever I normally use to paint belts and scabbards.

I mentioned that I had run out of washers, my preferred base, and I was struggling with what to do about basing the chariots. I've invested in a Galvanized roof shingle 64¢ and a pair of tin snips for ~$12. The shingle is thinner than a washer but will stick to magnets, which is part of my basing system idea. I'll let you know how it turns out and if I slice myself open with sheet metal.

You should also all be aware of Ian's giveaway on The blog with no name. Register your entry here. I'm gunning for the Rosemary & Co. brushes, but so are a lot of people.

I also backed my first Kickstarter. It's a book for helping run solo adventures called "The Covetous Poet's Adventure Creator and Solo GM Guidebook" you can find it here. Five days to go, check it out.

I've suffered a minor setback in my quest to dominate the fat loss competition. It appears the scale they were using was off so I haven't lost as much body fat as I thought. Grrr! Oh well, got to knuckle down.

Gratuitous picture to follow:

Wishing a friend some luck

Hi all,

A few days ago Justin over at The Royalist Roundhead posted about his terrible real life luck lately and his solution for uplifting his spirits a little bit in his post here.

Knights of the Dinner Table rings a bell somewhere deep in my subconscious but I'm not sure I've seen it before. I didn't quite get the comic that Justin linked to, I felt like I was coming in in the middle so here's a link to a random one that seemed funny to me.

So pop on over to Justin's blog to say hi or give him a show of support. He's a thoughtful and interesting guy. And if you feel inclined to subscribe to KODT tell 'em Justin sent ya.

The legacy of Donald Featherstone

As many around the internet have noted, this week saw the passing of an icon of the wargaming community. Mr Donald Featherstone.

I only became aware of his works recently through the effort of John Curry in reproducing many of Mr. Faetherstone's works. I found these titles through Amazon but I believe you can also order them through Lulu and Mr. Curry's own site, History of Wargaming.

I enjoy his works because they emphasize the feel of the game rather than getting bogged down in weighty rules and statistics. This is something I personally need to get back to and remember that we are playing the games to have fun, not argue whether this or that rule is "real" or if such and such force is orthodox.

I just wanted to express my thanks to Mr. Featherstone for making wargames what they are today.

That's all.

Fruit of my Labor Day Weekend

Monday was Labor Day here in the US, you know the holiday where we celebrate the struggle of the worker by grilling dead animal flesh and drinking beer. ;) Aside from the fact that it's how we celebrate all holidays here.

Anyhow I actually put in some concerted hobby time and got all of the forces washed up and glued to washers. I finished the clay layer on the bases as well, still need to add goop and sand. I will do some more priming today and hopefully start applying the first wash to help pick out detail.

The whole lot.

Egyptians (Stygustan)

Romans (Tropilium)

I'll have to get the gooping on these done later today or tonight. I have not been at all productive today. One thing I need to remember is that the air drying modelling clay has one draw back. If you let it dry it cracks very easily with handling. It comes out much better if you apply the texture gel to the clay while it is still wet. You can "glue the shards of clay together with the texture gel, but it is obviously a pain.

Although I still have a lot of work to do I am feeling good about this project, thus far. I'm not sure why the flash didn't seem to go off, I rushed these pics to get this post out.

Also note that the Swiss pikemen by MiniArt, the silver guys behind the gray Zvezda roman auxiliaries were modified in that I snipped off the pike stub and drilled out their forward hand to make a socket for the rest of the pike. The little piece included to join pike handle to pike shaft was clunky and crappy. I only had one drill slip where it looks like it os coming out of his wrist instead of his hand. Not too bad.