To the Strongest Hard copy, explosion graphic resources, track and malaise

Hi All

  Sorry for the wordy title, I've got a lot on my mind.

  My hard copy of To the Strongest came in over the weekend. Simon Miller had a special and threw in some laser cut chits. I've had the PDF's for awhile, but have been sitting on this game for too long. What I envision doing with it is playing out a War of the Roses campaign using the old Avalon Hill board game Kingmaker as a campaign map. My dream was to make it a play by blog, but I don't have period specific figures or recognizable personalities painted up. I'm also not sure if it would be better to try and have participants play on their own and report back or try to live play via video conference. I'm not sure if that would even appeal to people.

  Over on face book people were talking about ipad apps for putting muzzle flashes and explosions into their 40K battle report pictures. I don't own an ipad, but have done a fair bit of photo manipulating for my comic reports in both GIMP and Comic Life 3. Following is a list of resources from deviant art:

http://www.deviantart.com/art/muzzle-flash-stock-pack-2-189572285

http://hq-hq.deviantart.com/art/muzzle-flash-stock-pack-189571261

http://josiahreeves.deviantart.com/art/Explosion-Stock-Set-1-105411546

http://josiahreeves.deviantart.com/art/Explosion-Stock-Set-2-105411660

http://josiahreeves.deviantart.com/art/Explosion-Stock-Set-3-105411939

http://pixelchemist-stock.deviantart.com/art/Misc-Effects-001-70902206

http://frostbo.deviantart.com/art/Fire-effect-PNG-295096844

http://frostbo.deviantart.com/art/Explosion-Render-PNG-272872038

I felt like FrostBo in particular had a lot of good resources on his profile. Lots of useful Photoshop and GIMP brushes that I didn't list here.

The boy ran his first races of the season on Saturday. 3:10 800m and 6:29 1500m just about dead on his average for both races last season.

I've been even more quiet than usual on the bloggisphere as I'm feeling a tad nihilistic at the moment. I'm just trying to soldier on and not let the amount of work undone paralyze me. Right now I've lost my mojo for the painting challenge. I'll try to get it back but I think I'm done with trying to put out bulk units. It was never my forte and the thought of it right now is putting me off painting altogether.

Bye for now.

To the Strongest, Dragon Rampant - News you can use

Hi All,

Just wanted to share a few things that came across my "desk" that you may find useful.

Simon sent out another To the Strongest newsletter. There are some new free army lists available here, as well as more aids for playing TtS. What also interested me was a listing of battle reports. I'm going to paste it here for my reference and for others who may be interested.

Sightings of To the Strongest! on the Web

A good many games of TtS! have been played since the last newsletter- here are some links that I have found (apologies in advance if I have missed your game!).

• The 1000footgeneral has a bash; I love the way he marks out his grid, I plan to nick that!
• Scrivs helps to spread the word.  Lovely Punics... 
• "Emperor" Barry Lee introduced some friends to the game in Bristol.
• Mate Aaron Bell in Japan who did sterling proofing work plays a couple of games.
• His opponent Luke Ueda-Sarson enjoyed the same games but reckons I need an editor!  He's not wrong. Form a line. :-)
• Glorygeek mate Richard Crawley does it in 6mm.
• Goliad has tweaked the rules for the Renaissance.  His game looks stunning!  
• The Baron does it with Orcs and Romans.... and again
• Bevan Marchand has been playing ECW.  I'm looking at TYW and ECW variants at the moment.
• Mate Darrell Hindley has been trying the rules out for the 100 Years War. 
• This is a great looking game from the Wargaming Magpie, using the new Forged in Battle 15's. 
• http://aberdeenwargamesclub.com/2015/06/16062015/
• And last, but very much not least, James "Olicanalad" Roach has been giving the rules a thrashing in his lovely games room.

If you are organising a game, please take photos and post on your blog of choice, or mail to me and I'll post them on the BigRedBatCave, so that we can spread the word...

(Simon let me know if you don't approve of this)

I need to get off my duff and play these rules.

I also wanted to let you know that Dragon Rampant is finally available for pre-order on Amazon in the US. If you didn't know, this is the adaptation of Lion Rampant to a fantasy setting.

And lastly, I posted over on A Tale of Several Gamers about the Arrer Boyz, go check the blog out and give the people there some mojo for working on their stuff.

And I still need to dig out my hobby space for stuff for the giveaway.

Update (with Death Metal Cat)

I've been struggling with updates this week. Just trying to prepare some tax documents and schedule volunteering and dentist visits for the family.

It's cut into the painting time and has generally made me cranky:



I did finish reading "To the Strongest" and am excited about getting in some games of that. You can read about the game at The Big Red Bat Cave or purchase them at his shop.

I have the seed of an idea for a play by blog, but I need to do some ground work to see if it is feasible.

Toodles.