Loki's and Monty's giveaways and what's next

This time I'll promote the giveaways up front.

Loki, in celebration of garnering his 200th follower is giving away a magnificently painted Scots Warlord. You can enter for the draw here.

Monty is commemorating his 50,000 page view with a two part giveaway. I mentioned the first part in the last post, the second part is here. Put your name in for some great 1/72 kits.

Just before starting to type this I happened across the latest update by Anna Meyer to her Greyhawk map on her blog here. I'm still waiting for it to finish loading.

As far as projects go, well....

I have to fight out Tropilium vs. Stygustan 3 (or is it 4) without completing the figures. I see a pattern developing here. I've almost completely color blocked the Tropilium side but I've worked in fits and starts and just haven't been able to make the time when I've needed to.

So fight this battle, write it up. Jump on a play test I got mailed the other day, then try my damnedest to finish these guys before moving on to the Altenburg stuff. Although I may do the basing and priming to break up the monotony.

I'm hoping to do the A-Z book post and I want to encourage something for November, but I need to get cracking.

I'll leave you with Pervy IT Guy.

That map is still loading. I've cancelled it and will try again.

My funky stats and Monty's prize draw

Hi All,

Not posting as frequently as I'd like but sort of muddling along and making a bit of progress. There has been some talk and sharing of stats of late and I thought I'd get in on the topic as I am a stats nerd at heart, even if I have little aptitude for being a true statistician.

First off the page view numbers, while they can give you the warm fuzzies, are never going to be a true reflection of the "success" of your blog. There are too many bots and vagaries of the internet to really know how many souls are actually reading your stuff. Also take into account that feed readers tend not to give you page views it is all together possible that people are actually reading your stuff and it's just not tracking. So what I'm trying to say is that don't let your page views numbers get in your head for good or bad.

Numbers of followers. This number feels a little more personal. "They like me, they really like me." It is nice to get new followers, and it does feel a tad sad when one drops off, even if I can't tell who it was, but keep in mind that people can also follow your blog without actually subscribing via the followers widget. I also try to follow back everyone who follows me, so let me know if I've some how missed your blog.

Comments. To me it is the interaction with other bloggers via comments that is the true fun of blogging. I know that it can seem daunting to comment on some of the more popular blogs, and you may really not have anything more to say than "me too" but it's a simple way to show that you actually read and care about what someone had to say.

So on to the numbers. As of writing this I have. 131 Followers and 82484 page views.

I added the flag counter in September as I was interested in more than just the top 10 countries. The top ten all time are:

Well on my way to be New Zealand's fourth most popular 1/72 scale fantasy blog promoting Two Hour Wargames.

My views took a hit when I ditched dynamic views, you can see the time I used it between January and July of this year.

Getting back to respectable monthly numbers of a little over 3K per month.

This is coming from 259 posts and 1493 comments. Take into consideration that I answer most comments so we'll say that I have 745 comments from viewers.

It's interesting to see what you all like:

Most popular search terms

 In one of the views a few people were looking for my friend Ashley Salazar, but I guess that's not the main reason people find me. I've also had a few people land on the page looking for Olivia Munn.

Most popular posts.

 I'm glad the Sexy miniatures post has broken through to the top spot, I think it may be the most commented on post on my blog. I've never really been sure why the next three were so popular. Go figure.

Not all bots.

I'm surprised that referer and vampirestat aren't more than 381 pageviews out of my 82,483. Not too bad.

So thanks for reading the blog and commenting. I just want to encourage anyone who has started a blog to not worry about the numbers. Share yourself and your passion and get out there and network with other bloggers. It's easier than all that painting and modelling. ;)

Now, if your still here, you need to know about Monty's giveaway here. He's passed 50K views and has a great blog. So follow him, leave a comment and possibly win some kit.

Welcome to Sun of York. Thanks for following and commenting. You friend connect doesn't list your blog so please let me know if you have one.

That's it for this one. Kids homework and Football practice before going to the gym. Bleh.

Orky links

Since I haven't been able to work on my orcs because of prior commitments I wanted to post up some links to orc things that I find interesting. This is somewhat of a place holder but I hope will be of interest to others and possibly start some sharing on thoughts about orc kind.

First, aside from the Caesar fantasy set, what are some other 1/72 (20mm) options for goblins? 1/72 Multiverse had a good pos ton the subject here. To me the Alternative army orcs look like they would fit the bill. Perhaps talking about goblins in a post ostensibly about orcs is bad form, but an orc army without goblins just seems wrong.

Although not strictly Warhammer, Orcs and Teiravon give some good overview of orcish society. For Orc deities I like this wikipedia entry as it comes from the AD&D books that I poured over as a kid. Forgotten Realms Wiki has a little more fluff here.

While the Orcs website has a name generator there is a fun one that uses your name as an input at The Land of Shadow here. Watch out for the music. Or you can use the Inspiration Pad Pro file I made from the name generator in the back of the Mighty Empires rule book. My files page on my lame google site here you want to download the file named MEGoblinoidNames.ipt

I'll also have to look around and see if I can't find my notes for when I was on about conlangs and structuring a conglomerate orc language combining Tolkien and Warhammer. There was a great program called Langmaker, which is sadly no longer supported, that allowed you to make word banks and a sort of dictionary. You could also generate languages with it.

Well, sorry for the ramble. We are off to take the kids to a costume party while we have a "date" night at IKEA picking up an armoire that we can't seem to order online for delivery.

I hope to opine on stats and books in future posts as well as play out my next battle in Talomir. There have been some goings on there and two of the four battles for this season have taken place already.

I promise to have some pictures next time.

Very slow progress and revisiting Orcs Drift

So although I am painting more, it is still painfully slow. I am however slogging through the Tropilium forces.

24hrs and still wet.

Slow but steady, armor bits.

These Roman riders look almost finished!?

I also realized that MC Monkey Dew had played out some battles with the Marauder Orcs and I did a search and found out that he was using Warrior Heroes to play out Orcs Drift. He said he was following Javier's example here. MC Monkey Dews posts here.

So my thoughts on doing Warhammer with Warrior Heroes, as usual, are completely unoriginal. But I sort of already knew that. Anyway I'll have more of a read through and try statting the Forces for The Altenburg Chronicles soon.

Welcome to new follower Subedai author of The Lost and the Damned. He is working on those Marauder Orcs, among other things for some awesome 3rd Ed Warhammer. Definitely worth a look.

Also looks like I've lost someone, although the numbers always seem a little skittish.

Me personally, I've been feeling a tad blah over the last few days, shoulder acting up etc. So a quick pick me up for those inclined. After the break:

Home made Wet Palette

Hi all, after reading Paradox0n's post here and generally having trouble with paint drying too rapidly here in Phoenix, I decided to go ahead and make my own wet palette.

I was one about the size of a 15" laptop for sale at JoAnn for about $34, but as usual thought I could do just as well at the grocery store. Store Brand Parchment Paper $2.50 on sale, Store Brand Tupperware $3.99 on sale and Brand name Sponge cloth $2.99. So essentially enough for two wet palettes for $9.48 excluding tax.

So far it has worked like a charm, my paint on the palette stays wet. Who'd have thunk it? I left some paint in it for about an hour and a half while I did other things and it stayed wet. Perhaps the paint sucked up a little too much water in that time but not too bad. So a big thank you to Paradox0n and I think you'll see some more output from me as I don't have to struggle with the paint as much.

The parchment has lifted away from the sponge after an hour of painting.

Welcome to new follower Attila13, I'm not familiar with your avatar and don't see a blog listed for you. Let me know if you have one.

Mid-Orctober, I have a plan

Well either today or the 12th was mid-Orctober and I don't have much to show for it.

I have pulled out all the figures I would need to fight out The Altenburg Chronicles: A bridge over troubled waters, but I'm still on the fence about whether or not to play it out using actually WFB 3rd or Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures. I have actually played some WFB but 20 years ago. I haven't played WHAA yet but am more familiar with the THW mechanics and I want to use their reaction tables and PEF's (possible enemy forces) for playing the scenario solo. I salso still need to work out how animosity would work in WHAA. In fact I need to refresh my memory of how it worked in WFB.

Here are the figures I intend to use:

Capt. Stoischen and Garfunkel Gefahrlich

Fladnag as Paul Schuler

Artisan Hargrump

Hef's Bows

Hans' Xbows

Franz' Swords

Greediguts Boyz and Rumbleguts

Frinkelgob (banner) and Troll Catchers -4.

Durk

Snapjaw and Snagtooth

I also now have worked out a plan for the Tropilium vs Stygustan next battle. I will finish color blocking the forces before the next battle and I will get started on this right away.

So for Tropilium I need to finish color blocking 32 figures plus 5 horses and possibly 6 figures to crew the Ballista.

For Stygustan I need to finish 41 more figures, this includes the chariots as a figure although they are really more like 5 figures for each one.

So lets say 60 figures to finish color blocking. Most are partly blocked in already with flesh and uniform base color. To get this done by Friday I'd have to do 20 per day. Let's see what we can do.

Welcome to Tomsche of Societa di archeologia e cimeli a nice blog with a range of interests. He happens to be having a giveaway for reaching 100 followers. Go check him out.

Palouse Wargaming Giveaway, Trebian's Article and project creep.

Apparently you all like posts that range around a bit as the last one garnered about two and a half times the normal hits.

Palouse Wargaming Journal Giveaway

Palouse Wargaming Journal is having a giveaway for its one year anniversary. Interesting looking blog and you get the usual extra chances to win by promoting. Go have a look.

Trebian's Article

Aaron over at Here's no great matter turned me on to an article on Trebian's blog about finishing projects here. For many of you the advice is not necessary, as you are very prolific painters. I have only ever finished maybe one or two units and Fladnag, so I took this article to heart a little bit. Although I had already ordered more stuff, which I'll detail next, I think I have a plan back in place. That plan is to set aside a daily painting time, finish the Tropilium and Stygustan figures then jump to Warlord Paul's Oldhammer scenario and then to Chris Stoeson's ACW scenario. I definitely need to buy some ACW cavalry for that last project, I think I already have buildings and terrain items that can cut across these already purchased, if not built.

Project Creep

As hinted at I have gone on a buying binge again, maybe binge is too strong, and bought some figures for some projects that I intend to do further on down the road. Splintered Light Miniatures had a sale so I snapped up some 20mm Ratmen, Lizard Men and Beastmen. I'll show them to you in a follow up. I also think I have all the figures necessary for Warlord Paul's scenario, but I would like to buy some 15mm orcs to proxy as goblins. I will however resist and use what I have for now.

Thoughts on Flags, ACW, Boer figures,Viking Swords and The War Game.

As you can see another post where I can't rein it in and go in depth into one topic. Perhaps I should spring for some ADD testing. My dad became convinced he has ADD, but he thought his doctor thought that he just wanted to be proscribed some kind of speed. But I digress.

Flags and or Banners

There are some great ones available on the internet, check out Ray's for example, but for some reason I have always balked because I'm not sure what size to make them. Well today I did something about it and printed out some flags from Warflag. In the printing section he gives some guides on how to print them out and scale them using various software, none of which I have of course. But what I came away with was we could take it that if 30mm is 1:60 and 25mm is 1:72 we can see that both figures give a size difference of 83%, or rather 1:72 is 83% the size of 1:60. (Hopefully this last sentence makes sense. I had a ten year old trying to get my attention the entire time I was try to write it.)

Original size and scaled with some measurement notes

Just wedged on to show scale, sorry for the anachronism.

 The space for wrapping around the banner pole is 3mm, which is fine for piano wire but I want to use tubing to slide over piano  wire so it needs to be more like 6 - 7mm. I think that will still work with the overall dimensions being 65mm across, both faces, and 24.5 mm high.

I was also bummed to see that the flags are gone from Dansk Figurspilsforening there were some good ones on there.

ACW

There's a new E-zine in town called ACW Gamer, I heard about it from Chris Stoesen here. I thought I'd give it a try. Looks good so far. I had already downloaded Pohick Church, now I have double incentive to get it ready and play it out using THW's Rifles and Rebels rule set. I'll be in touch Chris. I may also submit my two ancestors to the magazine. We'll see.

Boer figures

You ever have a set of figures you've been thinking about buying only to find that they are as rare as hens teeth now that you're ready to buy them? It was Sam in Cow-Boys Part 1 and Part 2 that showed how nice these figures work for the old west as well as colonial. But of course no one has them except this guy.

£5,000!? Not bloody likely!

Umm, you could have just said they were out of stock. FML.

Viking Swords

Watched the Nova special "Secrets of the Viking Sword" on Netflix the other day and it was pretty interesting. The PBS link is here if you want to buy it and I noticed that a few have put the whole thing up on youtube if you search for it. Aside from the guy who actually made one using what they thought were medieval techniques there were two things that interested me. First was that there were knock offs of these swords being produced and then there was an interesting demo by a swordsman who cut clean through a tatami mat, first with a samurai sword and then with an un-sharpened viking sword. Interesting. I did notice that he was cutting just the rolled up  mat, there was no dowel or bamboo in the center as there sometimes is. I wonder if that would have made a difference, I suspect so.

The War Game

I came across this game while looking at a site that carries Pegasus models and figures here in the US. You can see the game at Board Game Geek here. I think that someone said it was Axis & Allies on steroids. Has the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of World records as the largest board game ever.

T.W.I.T. #7 - Battle report and ponderings

It's been awhile since the last This Week In Talomir post and I've decided that this one must be #7. Never mind that there are 24 posts with the Talomir tag. I've posted the latest battle report over at Talomir Tales here. The title "Ager Dedecus" is my google translate attempt to get the Latin for Field of Disgrace. You might be able to get the gist of how it went for the forces of Tropilium from the title.

Ruarigh has informed me that the war continues, so I'll need to fight the battle with a dwindling Tropilium army. (Spoiler alert) I need to come up with a new name for a Tropilium general as Manlius Gluteus Maximus has been forced to take his own life so as to spare his family further humiliation and forfeiture of wealth to the Emperor. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I could just use the Roman tri nomina generator that I posted awhile back here. I had forgotten about my free google website completely. Looks like it may be time for a freshen up.

In looking for more Roman names I found a couple of good ideas. Ted's Roman Name Generator is pretty decent, but it is one that works off of an input name, and also not very silly. My name returns Aulus Vergilius Servilianus. Not bad. Paizo had some good ones on this thread and so I may look to Asterix for some good names and I can see from links here and here that there are some promising ones.

Back to the battle, the game was pretty good but was really over in about 3 maybe four turns. I played out an attempted retreat that took the game to 7 turns but the writing was on the wall. I may need to investigate a mechanism for calling the battle, just so as not to slog them out when that is really not all that fun. I have had a few battles down to the last man, but those should be rare. I'll definitely ask on the THW forum but perhaps you all have some thoughts on how a game should end. Realizing that I am playing these solo. Honestly I don't fret about things too much, but perhaps there is a rational way to come to terms when the battle is really decided except for the end game.

Highlights of the battle? Fladnag exploding in a ball of green fire as he attempted to cast a defensive spell. The Stygustan infantry going toe to toe with better armored foes and standing up to them. The ballista driving off one chariot with a precise shot. The Drums of Doom really did doom the Tropilium army with a -1 to reaction tests which was especially bad after the Amulet of Sorbrowane went out of action with Fladnag.

Low lights? Every spell was randomly a defense spell. The fact that the Axemen repeatedly failed a maneuver test after having a spell cast on them, there by losing activation and the spell effect.

A word about the figures. The Stygustani are all Egyptians from Caesar sets H47, H24 with four Nubians from H49 to help fill out the ranks of bowmen. The Priest(ess) is from the Caesar Fantasy Adventurers set F104. For Tropilium it was Italeri sets 6021 and 6028 with Zvezda 8052 thrown in. The Ballista was from HaT Greek Catapult 8184 and the Mercenary Skirmishing cavalry were Strelets Turcopoles 090. Fladnag is also from the Caesar Fantasy Adventurers set.

I thought that the Magnetic sheeting painted brown worked pretty well. I will add random blotches of earth and green and may experiment with a little flock. The 8.5 x 11 sheet that I used was thicker  and remained curved while the business card and 4 x 6 that I cut stayed flat. The only in game issue was the sheeting snagging on some of the sand I had put down on the terrain boards. I had been warned about that.

And welcome to Robin Sutton of Wargaming NZ and two other blogs I am less familiar with. He has some great 1/72 stuff and has been playing a lot of Spearhead and now Great War Spearhead.

There was another person to bring the followers up to 128, but I can't for the life of me tell who.

And a correction for Snickit's Tail.

Zombtober, Bloggery and Basing

Zombtober

Although I don't think I can fully participate, what with Talomir and Orctober taking up a lot of my time, I thought this was a good idea.

I first heard about it from Sheldrake here, but I understand that it originated here. Since most of my hobby time is spoken for right now I thought I'd just make an effort to game Zombies. I think we'll do it this way. We'll play Zombies!!!, I'll start getting my head around ATZ-FFO, and then we'll maybe try using Zombies!!! game pieces and the ATZ city deck. We'll culminate trying to use the 54mm zombies and survivors that we have. Sounds like a plan.

Around 50mm tall, green is the international color for zombies.

Bloggery

I think it was Paradox0n again who noted in passing that his stats had changed. I think he said that his page views had lowered because blogger was no longer counting bot crawls as page views. Mine have been hovering around 100 per day, more if I post, less if I don't. I've also noticed a lot more traffic sourced from google or blogger as the refferring URL, not sure what that is all about. I also received an email from Feedspot, telling me about how many new viewers were reading Talomir Tales on their feed reader. I find this odd as I am only one of about five authors on the blog and not even the admin. When I independently (ie did not follow the link on the email) tracked them down they basically look exactly like Feedly. So I'm not sure why I would change to them.

Basing

Now that push is coming to shove for finally gaming an RRtK battle with figures I'm going to actually have to work out my basing scheme. As you may recall I was going to use magnetic sheeting as stands/movement trays. They are 3.5" x 2" and I was going to use a full one for cavalry, engines and monsters while using half of one (3.5' x 1") for infantry. Well the chariots alone would not fit on a 2" deep base if I'm trying to keep the 3.5" frontages consistent. 3.5" is a frontage of about 89mm, which also begs the question if I should be playing on a larger table. I currently play with these frontages on a 4' x 3' table, but I think that size was with 40mm frontages in mind so I should probably be playing at least 6' x 4' if not 8' x 6'.

That will have to be sorted another time as I need to get this done. I'm happy to report that painting the magnets looks okay. For now I'll just paint them my base earth tone. In the future I'll experiment with some light flocking.

Still way behind.

And welcome new follower Snickit. You got stuck in the back of the followers widget because you don't have an avatar, one of the annoyances of blogger. I thought your blog was Snickit's Tale but that appears to have been deleted. I thought I was following it as well. If you have a new blog, or can resurrect that one, just let me know.

Orctober

So Erny, over at Erny's place has come up with an idea to get Orky in October. Or rather Orctober. He's doing this by having a giveaway here and 25 days of featuring Orcs.

I am definitely in for the plastic Orcs, they'll fit in nicely with my batch.

My 10 plastic Orcs. Looks like I need shields.

I thought I'd take it one step further and use this month long (or 25 day long) celebration to motivate my finishing up some orc figures. I have plenty of 28mm and 1/72 to work on.

1/72 Caesar and Dark Alliance

Dark Alliance and Ironwind Metals Wolves

Straight from the Ukraine, I'm not sure why the picture will not display horizontally.

Of course I still have to finish my Talomir forces and play out the battle.

I've had a few new followers to the blog so welcome to:

Phil, your blog is not listed in your friend connect but I'm sure it is the blog Association - Les Riflemen. A very nice blog with well painted figures and good battle reports. It has the plus of an inline English version of text for those of us who are Francophonically challenged.

Dennis Hutchinson, I don't see a blog listed for you either. Let me know if you have one and I'll post a link.

wKfB5nhpy8kvEj44APoPXM7nHFixHoKE, I have to say that I am troubled by your name. I can't tell if I've been butt added (sort of like butt dialed or butt posts to facebook) or if you are real. My apologies if you are real. You also do not have a blog link. Let me know if you have one you would like me to link to.

My kind of maid service, after the break.