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.

A Random Encounter - A Knight's Quest Tale

Hi All,

Hope your December is going ok thus far. As usual for me this time of year, I'm stressing about all the things I haven't done. Such is life.

Here's a report of a game of Knight's Quest I lead my Brother and Son through over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Rather than prepare an adventure, I brought an assortment of figures and dungeon tiles and worked out a random system on the fly for generating the encounters.

I also wanted to try and get know how Serif PagePlus X9 works, so i used that program to make the report. I intend to use it for the Oldhammer in the New World Zine moving forward.

So here it is.

So there you have it. It was a brutal slugfest and the party was totally decimated by the first encounter. I need to figure out how to balance things a little better if we continue to use this. The general consensus was it was too brutal and hard for the PC's. Anyhow it was fun getting in a game and throwing some dice, even if we didn't make it to the Orcs, Bugbears and Ogres.

I'll probably be painting up my Analogue Hobbies VI entry fee and side duel figures (from last year) and then trying to sort my minis and get to work on all the half finished stuff.

Later.

The Fall of Tropilium over at Talomir Tales

Hi All,

The latest Battle report is up on Talomir Tales here.

I've got a ton of news to share with you all, but I'll parse it out over the next few days.

Thanks for looking.

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.

2nd post of the AHPC VI - Little Goblins

Hi All,

You can read the post on the challenge blog here.

The green paint I use was having some pigment issues, so it was a struggle get an even not chalky layer on them.

I thought I had painted the spear wielders before, but didn't notice their hats at first.

I phoned it in on the fur bikini briefs but like how the colored loin clothes came out in general.

I need to update my painting challenge log. I have 76 points on the board right now and should have another 5 on the way.

We went to see the new Star Wars movie last night and we all enjoyed it very much. If you're a fan of the series I don't think you will be disappointed. It left me wanting to see the next one.

We're in that post Christmas lull, we'll see if I can get anything else finished before Monday.

First post of the Challenge - 1/72 Gladiators

Hi All,

Finally got in my first submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge VI, here. I'll show you the same pictures on the blog, but I do recommend checking it out for all the other submissions. The themed rounds are especially good. I haven't decided if I'mm gong to participate in those yet or not.

Anyway, here's the Gladiators.

As I tagged in the labels, these are a mix of Italeri, Pegasus and Orion figures. Each set has it's strengths and weaknesses. The main issue with the Orion is the amount of flash and the rubbery plastic that is hard to trim cleanly.

I mixed in a lot of bronze and brass with the silver metallics, to keep it interesting. I also used the Reaper Dark and Golden skin triads in addition to my standby, Tanned skin.

These lads and lady (and bear) gave me 36 points. I'm trying to be a tad more consistent this year, we'll see how that goes.

Just a look behind the scenes. I didn't bring a variety of backgrounds with me so I thought I'd try using my tablet as the background. I probably should have wiped the finger prints off the screen.

I should be posting another batch of figures to the challenge later today.

PTS 104 - The finale of Orctober 2015, Talomir Tales and Orktober?

Hi All,

Not super productive but finished of these 20mm(1/72) Orcs. Mostly from Caeser, but one from Dark Alliance.

The usual process for me. I'm going to start trying harder to blend my layers on 28mm figures, I don't think I'm ready to do it on 20mm. The hand motif on the banner was a real pain. The sculpted folds, as you may already know, make it hard to paint a defined shape.

I also wanted to draw your attention to a battle report I did for Talomir Tales here. My terrain and the photos are pretty crap but the battle went pretty well. My son helped me roll dice and push soldiers around, it was quite enjoyable. He still hasn't totally caught the bug, but he asked me when the next game was.

I'm running out of time for Orktober, barring a cheeky rephotographing of that fantasy Black Orc on a star field background. I've revised down and will try to bang out the Gretchin Army Standard bearer whose tab says Runty but I have seen called Makari.

Lastly I'd like to welcome 4Graffiti to the blog. They appear to have several sites about products for Graffiti artists. If you are looking for such things you can look up their profile in the followers section. If there is a wargame hobby blog link I missed from 4Graffiti, please let me know.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Paint Table Staurday (Friday Night) - You must WIP it!

Hi All,

Well it's Saturday in certain parts of the world.

I've been busy/mopey. Found out I'm going to lose my tooth and then they were worried I was on the verge of having a heart condition because of my left shoulder, side of face issues.

Clear bill of health, normal EKG, although there was an unpleasant conversation about the effects of Brain tumors on facial nerves. But we seem to be in good shape.

Sorry, your here for pictures of little men. Right!

Above are those 40mm zombies. I missed last week for Zombtober, seems to happen every time I start to assembly line paint. There are not finished,but are a wash and a couple of details away.

Basing gunk on the 20mm metal Lizard men and remaining 1/72 plastic goblins.

I decided to was on sprue the plastic 28mm GW zombies I got from Stevo. The are underneath a spreu of Gripping Beast Celts I'm planning to paint up as Thugs for my Tzeentch Warband.

I figured, while I had the tub out for the zombies I'd wash the High Elves and Skaven from the 8th Ed. WFB box set I bought awhile back. I thought it was a good deal for the figures and figured to capitalize on the purge due to AoS before these became "rare" and "OOP".

I also received my first big box Kickstarter in the mail today. Blood Rage. I'll show it off soon.

Another Cross Country meet in the morning for the boy. Wish him luck.

EDIT

I keep on forgetting to welcome Brummie to the blog. He runs Brummie's Wargaming Blog and is also running the Zombtober festivities. Go check him and the other Zombtoberers out.

/EDIT

Potion Pilferers (Part 2): The Death of Sir Chicken.

Spoiler Alert!

If you missed any of the previous adventures of Sir Chicken you can find them at Potion Pilferers (Part1) and The Quest for the King's Treasure.

On with our tale of high adventure!

I was able to bring my son in for some dice rolling. He seemed to like it better when the fate of our heroes did not rest on his decision making. I ended up finishing it out by myself, as it had taken up space on the table for too long and was in peril of being subsumed by all the end of year stuff the kids are bringing home from school.

I resisted the temptation to use the heroic combat rule half way through, even after rolling 20 - 1 twice in one combat. In the future I will use the rule. Magic has me stumped, while it was quite useful a couple of times, Marlin was quickly turned into a liability once he had lost half his hits and half his spells. Bad luck of the draw found him with unusable spells for several turns. I'll have to chat with Stephen about the design philosophy before I totally scrap it. I feel like magic is more dangerous to the caster than it is to the opponent.

Although it was a bummer to see Sir Chicken fall, I'm going to use it as an opportunity to explore he men at arms rules, maybe even a squire. I think the evil magician, emboldened by our heroes inability to recover all the potions, may kidnap the King's daughter. Branwen the Fair.

As you can see I started to dig deep for different terms for chopping. This was a good resource, but don't click on it if you don't like sites with lots of ads.

Off to clear the table for Tereken vs. Altengard with more unfinished figures. More on that another time.

Potion Pilferers (part 1), A Knight's Quest Adventure

The game mechanics are mostly the same from the last time we played. I should have made myself a quick reference sheet o remind me of key things that come up a lot. As I showed in the comic I forgot to apply the small attribute and remembered the vicious attribute for the orcs, but then jettisoned it when they started to get the upper hand.

Losing a hit 50% of the time when you use magic seems a little harsh. So far my use of magic has not been very effective. I also need to play the monsters a little stupider. While the Imps should be shifty and try to gang up on people I think the Orcs holding back so they could lure the knights into unfavorable situations was too hard for the boy.

Sorry for the dodgy photos. I tried some  presets and they stunk. I finally settled on using manual settings and they got clearer, but only realized I needed to fiddle with the white balance on the last photo. I will also play with the EV more next. I'm always trying to strike a balance between documenting and playing. Playing usually wins out.

I hope to wrap this up this weekend, see Mad Max, and get the Talomir battle started.

"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.

Finished Wind Maiden and Dettol

Hi All,

Well since the response to my last post was so underwhelming, I'll bore you with another. Here's that figure from the Caeser fantasy adventurer set that I've used for a sorceress and a wind maiden of late in my games of Rally Round the King (RRtK).

She definitely doesn't merit the uber closeup photography, but she is done. Overall my layering is too rough and the gold belt in particular kind of globbed on a little. Techniques that work well on 28mm are hit and miss on 1/72. I still need to figure out how to improve my female skin.

Anyhow, no progress on the hobby for me today as we went to our first track meet. It was 90F today (so 32C ? or 305K). It felt damn hot. Unfortunately we missed our time for the 800m and then sat around in the sun for 2.5 hours until the 400m. I was proud of the boy. He came in 4th in his heat and, unlike some, did not throw up after his race. Since the race was way down south of us in Chandler, we took the opportunity to stop by a dim sum restaurant and asian market we had not been to in ages.

That's where I found a, relatively, local supply of dettol.

It's right across the aisle from the PG tips tea. So now I know where to go when I run out of my giant tin of Ahmad Earl Grey.

I'll have to check in on the stuff I've had soaking in Simple Green since last December and see if the paint is coming off.

Cheers.

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.

More Splintered Light comparison shots

Happy New Year everyone. I had hoped to have a few more posts for you but the holiday travels left me tired and I just didn't have it in me.

One question that did come to me was a comparison of the Splintered Light 20mm figures with Zvezda English 100 Years War.

Fladnag, four English and the two SLM Bugbears

 In the above picture we have our friend Fladnag from the Caesar Adventurers set. The next four are the Zvezda 100 Years War English Infantry and then the SLM Bugbears. The Zvezda figures are a tad larger, but not horribly so. You may recall that I always thought the Bugbears should be bigger.

With SLM Lizard men

 The SLM Lizard men look small net to the Zvezda guys, maybe more like skinks in Warhammer.

Beastman and Minotaur.

 Again the SLM Beastmen are a little diminuative, but the Minotaur looks right.

SLM Goblins

 I'm not sure if this shot with the goblins are helpful, but I think they work.

With SLM Kobolds

 I really like these Kobold sculpts, a lot of character. Little and nasty looking.

Hill Giant from SLM 28mm Range.

 I got this 28mm Giant to use as a Troll for 1/72. I think he looks great but I will put him on a sheet metal base.

Caeser Goblins, SLM Goblins and Kobolds.

 Here's a comparison shot with the Caeser Goblins and the Splintered Light Goblins and Kobolds. A little smaller but you could put a layer of something between washer and integral base to match the thickness of the Caeser integral base. It doesn't really bother me.

Caesar Troll and SLM Hill Giant

I thought that this 28mm scale Hill Giant would make a good 1/72 Troll. I'll base him on my galvanized roofers tin, I think he'll look good.

Hope you found these comparison shots useful.

The quest for the King's treasure!

Lords and Ladies! Please gather round and hear the daring tale of Sir Waffles and Sir Chicken as they vied for the hand of the fair Princess Gunnora.

Well, we finally wrapped it up over the school holiday yesterday. It didn't take long. Sir Waffles was generally unlucky and took a lot of damage from goblin and troll alike. Sir Chicken was generally more effective in combat. The system worked fairly well but my son didn't feel the need to gang up on things until it was a little too late. I wonder if the Tough attribute of the Trolls was too powerful. Essentially a 50% chance to shrug off damage. I also need to do a better job of tracking what dice characters and monsters are on. I did it in my head, which became a tad problematic coming back a week later. Fun was had. I think we need to use some of that treasure to hire some men at arms or a wizard. I'm also wondering if just setting out the whole dungeon is going to break the game or not. Setting it up as discovered didn't seem to add much for my son.

I used Comic Life 3 for the comic. I feel like I am getting a better feel for the interface and tried a few different things such as the curling paper captions. My photographs were all weirdly dark, so I ran them through the auto white balance in gimp. Unfortunately the figures still remained dark so I applied a rotoscope filter to all the images. It makes them a little more interesting. I'm still struggling to find good settings for quick game snapshots so that I am not interrupting game play more than I have to.