Talomir Tales - Spring 1001 - Tereken vs Altengard

Hi All,

Just posted a comic over at Talomir Tales here.

You can read the rest of it at the link above.

Go take a look.

The Talomir Tales Saga continues.

Hi All,

Finally did my battle and report for Talomir Tales. You can read mine here and Ed's there.

I used the latest update of Comic Life 3 and the Zombies template. I did have one crash, but didn't lose too much work. I can't stress enough, save early and often when using this program.

One of the things I need to do is finish off many of my 1/72 (20mm) figures. Too many are unpainted or half done. I also am still finding it difficult to get the photos I want. Right now it's a case of too much knowledge leading to frustration. I should be able to get well lit, sharp photos but I don't set myself up for success.

I'd also like to welcome Arjen. He appears to have a youtube channel which I'll let you discover in his friend connect profile. Arjen will be coming to the US soon and is on the opponent finder now. Hopefully he can find some people to get in games with locally and also come to the next Oldhammer USA event.

That's all for now. I've got to go to the gym and get back in time so we can do Mother's Day stuff. Call and/or kiss your mother.

New comic report over at Talomir Tales.

Hi All,

  Just a quick plug for the comic book battle report I did over on Talomir Tales the other day. Read it here.

Comic Life 3 had another update. They have some new templates, so I'll be trying them out. I also adjusted the exposure of all the shots in program. I'm not sure if that was doable before, it saved my rushed and crappy photos.

I have a busy weekend with track, going to be in the 80's here. I'll try to dig out my painting table so that I can paint and show you what I'm working on for Paint Table Saturday 126 tomorrow.

Cheers.

"Battle of the Hill" report over at Talomir Tales

I finally finished the report on my Rally Round the King battle for the Talomir Tales Campaign. You can read about it here.

I used one of the muslin backdrops I bought for doing portraits and I think it worked pretty well. I think what I really may need is more space to game. The loft area, where I do all my hobby stuff, is a little cramped with a 6 x 4 foot table.

We had fun at the Phoenix Invitational track meet yesterday. The only issue was we got there way too early. We only had one event, the 800m, but we didn't want to miss it like we did on our first meet. So we got there at 7:30am and waited until 1:30pm for the boy to run his race. This event has 1000's of competitors from several states. No results yet, the boy came in 6th in his heat.

In Oldhammer news, I got a pass to go to Oldhammer Weekend USA. \m/ So now I just have to figure out all the logistics.

Prep for next Talomir Tales Battle

I've been busy this week during the kids spring break. I've fallen behind on Talomir Tales, but what else is new. The current campaign season is Autumn 997. You can read about Tropilium vs. Stygustan here, and Altengard vs. Stygustan here.

So with all the various chores and activities I've put off my battle, I'm hoping to get it in this weekend. My son just started track, so we'll see how much of Saturday is eaten up by his first meet.

Here is the figure I've been using for the Wind maiden. I'll try to get some more paint on her tonight before San Soo class. I think that trying to get the last of the figures painted/ finished for these two forces will give me a good focus for painting.

Here is the army of Treyine. As you can see, mostly painted back in the AHPCIV. But some Knights, Infantry, Archers and Arquebusiers still need painting.

Tereken is in a much sorrier state. Only the Dwarf artillery man, Fladnag and the one mounted huscarl are finished. Although everything but the canon has some paint on it.

Welcome to Martin Cooke. Martin does not appear to have a blog, but was one of the fellow challengers for Curt's AHPCV a list of participants and their blogs can be found here. I really enjoyed Martin's work during the challenge as he obviously broke out of his comfort zone and successfully added many new techniques to his painting style. He also came up with some incredibly creative figures and bases. Thanks for following, and if you do have a blog I would love to post a link to it and follow it as well.

Hopefully a report will be here soon.

New Talomir Tales Battle report, Isle of Blood

Just to let you know, I've posted another battle report over at Talomir tales here.

Fladnag and his magic really made the difference.

Caught with my paints down.

Well I procrastinated again and had to play out another battle with unfinished figures. It was over quick as the forces were definitely in favor of Treyine. You can read about it here.

In addition to droppingthe ball with the Talomir project, I have lagged with a Tale of Several Gamers and the Vth Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I did figure out what I might paint to reach my goal of 1,000 pts. I still have a lot of work to do, bat putting it to paper makes it seem more achievable.

 Welcome to Brigadier General of Brigadier General Wargame. An interesting looking set of rules. I'm currently travelling for the holidays, but I hope to catch up with the blogs soon. Happy Thanksgiving!

This Week in Talomir- Brethren vs Treyine Update

Hi All,

Busy weekend, what with watching TMNT and doing some long overdue tidying of the house.

I did manage to clean and glue on washers a bunch of the figures I will need to fight my battle for Talomir Tales.

A mixture of figures.  Starting from the left. Miniart German Knights, the green are Airfix Robin Hood. Strelets Military Order Warriors, 3 Strelets Medieval Crossbow. all the way in the back 2 Slingers from Zvezda Medieval Peasant Army, another Strelets Military order  Warrior and Three Feudal Levy #2. The Six pink figures are Zvezda 100 Years War English.

I took all these on the auto portrait setting. The all look underexposed to me.

These two I have already painted as Treyine Infantry, so I was thinking about a weapon hand swap. You can see I accidentally cut the axe head off, thinking it was a bizarre piece of flash. I'm trying to think how I can remove and/or transfer the sword hilt from the back of the one to the other. I do have some insta mold, but I've never tried it.

Some Red Box Town and Country Levy plus two more Airfix Robin Hood to round out the Archers. Two Templars and one Crusader from the Italeri boxes. Three Strelets Military Order Sergeants.

I also have some Teutonic and Livonian knights, but I ended up wanting to go simple for the brethren in this battle. No crazy helmet horns.

I realize that I've fallen woefully behind on the 10 x 10 challenge, I'll try to get to that soon and I have a few more things to put together for the final (?) installment in the photography posts.

On the Workbench - I never learn

Still no photography post, but I have some rushed snapshots of the forces I'm trying to assemble for the next battle for Talomir Tales.

I drew the Invasion of Treyine by the renegade Brethren Mercenaries who are trying to re-establish a holy state in the North of Talomir. If you go back and read the beginning of the campaign the Bretheren were originally played as a faction that was defeated by Treyine.

You may recall I finished the majority of the Treyine force during the Anologue Hobbies painting challenge here and here. For this battle I am short four units (12 figures) of Archers, three units of Infantry (12 figures), 1 unit of Knights (3 figures) and the Wind Maiden and her three ships.

Ass you can see from the picture I need to paint up 3 MiniArt German Knight for the Knights, finish the Dark Dream Studio Landsknects for the Arquebusiers, and paint up the twelve remaining Strelets Military order Warriors to finish of the Infantry units. I could use the Airfix Robin Hood set to finish out the Archers, but I ordered some more figures that I think will be better. I also have a ton of Egyptian Archers should I be forced to proxy.

The Brethren have fewer figures, but I'm further behind.

I'm missing the Brother Knights and the Sergeants. I have a bunch of Crusader/ Templars on order and found a source for the Strelets Sergeants. I'll use the Zvezda 100 Years war English Halberds (in pink) for the heavy spear. I had thought to use the same Strelets Military order warriors as Treyine but decided against it. The Crossbows are Strelets as well, I have three based and primed. The Peasants are from the Zvezda Medieval Peasants and, at first, I cut out the slingers to use for the peasant archers. I then remembered good old Airfix Robin Hood so I cut out those two green figures next to the slingers to use instead. The Eskelin Knights are common mercenaries in Talomir, so I had three started already. You can see them on the left. Again, in a pinch, I have some units I can proxy if the shipments take to long, or my painting for that matter.

I have some 1:1 scale modelling to do. A little dry wall patching. Shouldn't take too long. You can't work in a Martial Arts school and not learn how to patch dry wall.

The forces of Northern Tropilium

So I'm trying to get these two Armies ready for the next Talomir campaign battle. You can read about the first two battles of the Autumn of 995, Lettum Pass and Face of the Demon. I, of course, am still scrambling to have remotely playable forces. I never learn.

The forces of Northern Tropilium are supposed to represent Later Western Rome, so I will reuse many of the figures that I used to fight the other battle with Tropilium proper. You can see them here in Final Countdown?

The Army list is:

1st Tertile progress and battle report

Since everyone does quarterly reports I thought I would be different and do the first third of the year. (That and I was too lazy to write something up at the end of March.) You can find the definition for tertile here.

So what happened hobby wise in January - April 2014?

I've played 10 games so far, an average of 2.5 per month. I need to step it up if I'm going to come anywhere near last years totals.

I painted 49 1/72 foot, 4 28mm foot, 1 1/72 vehicle and 2 fleet scale spaceships. All during the challenge and nothing for the last month or so. I can't rest on that, I need to push myself to get back to a habit of painting daily. But I'm way ahead of my 9 figures for 2013.

Blog wise, I've written 30 posts and received 16,276 page views, and not all of them searching for tits. (Although I get a disturbing amount of traffic where that is the keyword.)

I finally finished the Talomir Tales battle report I've been working on and you can read all about it here.

I feel that I some how failed to hit the mark with this one,  perhaps it effectively conveys how long the battle took. I'm still trying to emulate who I think is the master, check out Flashcove's latest here and see what you think.

And welcome to MiniMike of MiniStories. Another very talented painter who just had some really nice battle mats made. Again this is one of those blogs that you can't figure out why you haven't been following it all along.

Well have a good one, and may your 2nd tertile be an improvement upon the 1st.

Welcome and unboxing

Hi All,

It's been busy here with school winding down and activities picking up. I've had a mild reprieve here since we have a night game for my son's flag football team tonight. I hope you all had a Happy Easter, ours was quite pleasant.

First order of business, since I tend to wander in these posts, is to welcome new follower Paul Waechter. I don't see a blog for you Paul. If you have one, or more, please let me know so I can link it here and follow you back. Welcome aboard.*** Paul is another blogger from Down Underer (Sorry, I love Flight of the Conchords) you can find some great painted stuff for Saga and Flames of War at his blog Dog of War.***

Now on to the unboxing. First up are the Undead figures I ordered from Taiwan with excellent service from Always Model. I think I actually ordered through his ebay store.

(I'm getting back int the practice of using the page break to display more posts on the page. Nothing unsafe to follow.)

This week in Talomir #8

Over at Talomir Tales we have the battle fought by Stygustan and Treyine on St. Lindorf's day. Any resemblance between St. Lindorf and St. Patrick is purely coincidental. You can read about it here.

Leaving for London tomorrow. I'm mostly packed and just have a few things left to sort out. I'm not sure if I'll have time to schedule some posts, or post on the fly. But I'll try.

I did the comic with Comic Life 3. In the past I have used GIMP. I think it was quicker and easier overall, but I still have a lot to learn and I think that some of the choices I made may not have been the best. Please let me know if you have any constructive criticism. One of the things I'm still trying to learn is when to take a picture that tells the story I want to tell.

Cheers.

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.

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.

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.

This week in Talomir - More Plastic

Well I'd like to say that more progress was made on this project but here we are.

Ready to be washed.

Looks like the Equites, Arquebusiers, 2 units of legionaries and the Hykar Mercenary cavalry. These are the Republican Roman cavalry and infantry from Italeri that I showed you here. Dark Dream Studio Landsknechts with muskets, and Strelets Turcopoles.

These are the things I ordered from Hobby Bunker. Oops, I forgot to order the Orion Pirates, doh! I'll just have to remember them when I place my next order for random projects. Right now I'm trying to stay focused. The Zvezda Roman Auxiliaries look more like what I envision Romans to look like. I probably should have gone with them for the Legionaries but I was trying to buy locally and jump start the project. The Egpytians look great as do the Nubians which are not for this project. I can't remember whether  had them tagged for Kurinthia or Zamba, but I think it was the former. My other idea was the Mayan figures, but I digress.

To break up the monotony I tried to paint the Troll from the Caesar adventurers pack. I knocked him of his base again, so am going to have to bring out the big guns and use super glue. For some reason I have it in my head that I need to be able to back out of any basing scheme so I've been doing it with PVA.

This is a shot of my magnifying lamp thing. I believe Paradox0n had asked me about it. It works but I knock my brushes and knife on it when I'm working so am considering a visor since I now have to face the fact that I just can no longer see things up close. Hard to admit for someone who has been near sighted almost their entire life. The brand appears to be Carson and I had never heard of it before. It appeared to be a return to Hobby Lobby. The light is provided by LED's.

So lots of work to do. I haven't had much energy due to my ramping up of exercise, I will try and post updates when I get some more accomplished.

And if you hadn't noticed, facebook for Android now allows you to save images.

https://www.facebook.com/ladiesofmetal

So now I can lavish you with the weird and sublime stuff that comes across my news feed.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

The kids are starting back to school today, and I have to say I'm ecstatic. I'm all out of ideas for "fun" activities and just want to be able to do my thing without the peanut gallery.

I also received my 1/72 plastics that I ordered from Megahobby. I try to spread it around and find the best deals that I can.

The Greek Catapults are for use as Tropilium Ballistae, and the Egyptian Chariots for their Stygustani counterparts. The chariots both had the Hittite King Bonus figure, woo hoo!

The Algerian pirates just looked fun and the Carribean ones are for use in THW's And a Bottle of Rum (AaBoR). They look just about as bad as the review picture on PSR. A few even have miscast holes in them. But I think I can get some service out of them. More stuff coming from Hobby Bunker as well.

Welcome to Kasper, somehow I totally missed him following between Kev and Justin. How could I with such a distinctive avatar? Kasper is the author of no less than six blogs?! I follow Warmaster and must admit to finding it on a search for chainmail bikini. But I stayed for the battle reports and painting and modelling. Scroll down to the bottom of his blog, if you dare, and see what his two most popular posts are.

I'm going to schedule this for 7AM Thursday my time, to try and get ahead on some posting. The upcoming post feature has fallen by the wayside, but I have some bloggery and some oldhammer on my mind at the moment.

Battle report over at Talomir Tales

Just to let you know that there is another battle report up over at Talomir Tales here.

I played it out over the weekend and felt it was not my finest hour. Too many distractions and my brain was addled from I don't know what. Perhaps too much time away from the rules hurt as well.

Just a tease, get thee to Talomir Tales.

I've got to get my truck serviced today, but I've been thinking about bloggery again lately. I also need to buckle down and get some paint on some figures. I know same old story.

I'll leave you with some Man flesh for Anne: