Finally working on Curt's figures

Or how to really procrastinate and then take the long and tortuous route to complete a simple task.

As you may or may not recall, I'm beginning to become hazy on the details myself, I was supposed to do some Cross of Iron themed figures for Curt as my entry. I'll ignore the shame I feel at not only not doing them during the competition, but also taking essentially three months off.

As usual I had a vague plan but I have dragged my feet at every step. I bought four Artizan late war Germans from FRP Games. I sculpted a mustache on one to make him look more like Schnurrbart and then I decided I would use the paints and techniques from the Reaper “Learn to Paint” Skin tone set.

So that was done while watching Spain vs. Chile, I'm not 100% happy with the results. I think I put too much highlight and covered the midtone. I may give it a glaze or a wash we'll see.

What I spent (wasted) most of my time today doing was looking up paint and conversion charts for craft paint to vallejo  (or is it the other way around?)

With the Farnsworth guide (here) as my source, this is what I found:

The chart at Nordalia, while not wholly inclusive, is pretty good. When I made my list though I had a little difficulty finding the colors I wanted as they were spread across “brands”. As it turns out Apple Barrel, Delta Ceramcoat, and Folk Art are all made by Plaid. Americana is made by Deco Art.

As I was writing this it also occurred to me that I could use a color picker to look at the computer colors used to represent the paint colors in the manufacturers published literature. I added ColorZilla to my Chrome browser and downloaded colorcop for reading colors from the pdf catalogs. I also looked into a color mixing program which I downloaded as a zip file as well (Different Color Software). My idea is that looking at the color codes for these various things will help get me in the ball park.

This post is getting long and rambling, so I'll wrap it up for now and give you some updates as I progress. Yesterday I bought most of the colors I needed for the Germans, so I will press on with that.

3; 152; 323; 2209; 115158

Hi All,

  That's going on 3 years; 152 followers; 323 posts; 2209 comments and 115158 page views as I'm writing this.

So let's get this party started. I really like doing giveaway's, but I've struggled with the question of what could I really give you all that you would actually want?

First off I'd like to give a home to some very nice 15mm figures that I purchased, but realize I will never actually game with.  They are these fantastic little Ratmen from Splintered Light Miniatures.

In addition to these, I will somehow include a copy of the Two Hour Wargames Scenario, Jewel of Murinae that I bought them for.

The next question is painted or unpainted? To me it's almost like the W.C. Fields joke. First prize is unpainted, second prize is painted.

There may be more, we'll see what shakes out as I get the gaming dungeon de-cluttered.

The usual rules apply:

1. Be a follower of the blog
2. Leave a comment that you want to enter.
3. A winner will be drawn using a complex algorithm involving a hat on Monday June 30th in the US.

One entry per person, and thanks for being a part of the madness.

That is all.

New Battle Report and Welcome!

Hi All, finally got the game played and report written for Talomir tales here.

I also whipped up a little banner for Talomir Tales using some techniques that I had forgotten how to do precisely. But I got it sorted.

Welcome to new followers:

David Billinghurst, who you may remember from his blog I Liebstered; The Inward-curving Isentropic Endoscope of Dr Cornelius or his other blog Waystar High Port which I am not yet familiar with.

Doc Grognard, who has no less than five blogs. The Book of Going Forth with Dice, Martin's Hundred, Hereiswhere, Making Friends with Big Data, Crawdads and Dragons. When I get a chance I will take a look and follow one or more.

Cluck Amok, whose blog Cluck Amok I also Liebstered.

The birthday swag is rolling in, so I will share that with you as well as my up coming Junetacular Bloggiversary giveaway!

I've been Liebstered Pt. 2 - (I'm a stubborn SOB)

Well, I've finally slogged through all 309 blogs that I follow in preparation for nominating some for this award. I used getting this award myself to finally knuckle down and do this as the list is getting unwieldy and I have many that now appear to be defunct.

As you may recall I was awarded the latest iteration of the award here. If I recall correctly the main criteria is for blogs that are under 200 followers. Many of the blogs I follow either don't include the follower widget or are WordPress blogs which also don't count followers. So I excluded those. I also wanted to be a little more restrictive and give some more love to those blogs that were under 100 followers, but with the stipulation that they had to have posted at least once in the last couple of months. Sadly I've noticed many of the blogs I follow not updating for 5 months or more.

So here are my nominations: (Please feel free to just accept it and not go through the hassle of answering the questions and nominating other blogs, I'm totally fine with that).

Avid Wargamer's House - A THW and Ganesha games player and battle reporter.

Steveo's Mini Soldiers - Warhammer, a guy having fun with miniatures. He's a new blogger so show him some love.

Luke: hoti to kratistos - Very interesting 1/300 modern and Dark Age gaming. Interesting way of making battle mats.

Amateur Hour - Great character development, figures and art. I also may have seen someone else nominate him but I can't see where right now.

Ancient Miniatures - 1/72 Ancients, nicely painted and a wide variety of ranges.

Oldhammer in the New World - Oldhammer USA style!

Cluck Amok - 54mm FIW with beautiful figures and Terrain.

The Inward Curving Isentropic Endoscope of Dr Cornelius - 15mm, RRtK and hexographer. Nuff said.

Brigantes Studio - Loki and Kev's painting service.

Toy Construct - Reviews of Cool toys and games.

Pushing Tin - Interesting looking games and the Valeur et Discipline Rules

So those are my 11, I don't think it specified how many. There were of course many more blogs, all deserving in their own right, but I've spent way to long on this as it is. I also wanted to give a boost to those blogs that are out there but not getting the exposure they deserve.

Have a good one all. An RRtK battle report is coming soon.

It is sooo on!

I've been working on lots of stuff, but nothing ready to share yet. Except for this.

Yesterday, after I got home from my martial arts stuff, my son told me that he didn't want to play with the neighbor kid across the street anymore.

They've had their ups and downs, but my son seemed to genuinely like the kid and want to play with him in general. So what was the difference? This kid, who is at most a year younger, has been teaming up with a girl who is almost 12 and going around with NERF guns. The pair of them seem to find it hilarious to shoot at my son. He has a NERF gun, that big revolver one, but can't find it right now.

When he told me of this I came up with a plan. I told him I was proud of him for not wanting to put up with jerks, and today I went out and bought him this.

It came with an 18 round magazine and can fire full auto. It's powered by 4 C size 1.5V batteries. I bought him a second clip and we may duct tape them together. The advertising says 75ft range, a youtube video demonstrated about 50ft.


We're going to work on getting comfortable with it and use it only if they want to "play" again. It's on now bitch!

I've been Liebstered part 1

Well knock me down with a feather. I've just been awarded a Liebster in the latest go round of the award by the inimitable Justin Penwith of The Royalist Roundhead. It turns out I last received one back in December of 2012.

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: