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All my photo's from this years event (33 in total) can be viewed on my Picasa page as usual by following this link.
All my photo's from this years event (33 in total) can be viewed on my Picasa page as usual by following this link.
I've not been very active on the painting/modeling front recently. Family life (and death) have been occupying most of my free time for the last few months. Most evenings have consisted of a round of phone calls and other chores and frankly by the time I'm finished, I'm finished, if you know what I mean. The final straw came when I sat down and made an accurate tally of the models I have painted so far this year. Here it is:
28mm Fantasy/Foot - 9
28mm Fantasy/Mounted - 1
28mm Fantasy/Creature - 1
28mm Fantasy/Terrain - 1
28mm Call of Cthulhu - 1
28mm Warhammer 40k - 1
15mm WWII/Infantry - 0
15mm WWII/Vehicles - 13
15mm WWII/Terrain - 8
That's a grand total of 35 models in a year. Pathetic! So this week I was determined to get back on track and do some painting.... I got as far as undercoating some models before the plan fell apart. Sigh.
Here's a link to my painted mini gallery, most of which date from this year. I'm making an early new years resolution to significantly add to this gallery over the next 13 months. After all the original reason for starting this blog was to encourage me to paint more. If I am to achieve that goal I need to pull my finger out and get busy.
I'll be there, camera in hand, and will post my pictures on my return.
Where ever you are I would like to wish you and yours a safe and memorable Thanksgiving.
Then I realised I could make relatively simple maps using nothing more complex than the drawing tools in Microsoft PowerPoint. Its surprising what you can achieve using just the basic shapes available. It may take a little experimentation and fiddling with the formatting of items etc but the results can be quite impressive. The main advantage of using such a simple system is it is quick and easy to learn and all that is needed is a little bit of creativity and patience. The other advantage is that once you have created one standard 'house' for instance you can copy and repeat it very easily.
Here are some examples of the sort of results I have achieved using PowerPoint. This was my map of the Bronze Citadel, a city of Hell for my last campaign. I didn't need individual houses just an overview of the regions of the city and the location of specific buildings and streets.
(Source: http://plognark.com/)
The December issue of Wargames Illustrated landed on my doormat this morning. This months issue is a Vietnam special and coincides with the release of a limited range of Flames of War Vietnam figures.
The Unspeakable Vault of Doom is a quirky but very very funny Cthulhu Mythos inspired comic. True, stories of cosmic horror and tales of the old ones seem like a strange subject for comedy. But if you like your humor in five dimensions, this is the comic for you. If H.P.Lovecraft were still alive I think he would definatly approve of this tribute to his work.
The Order of the Stick is probably one of the longest running story arcs in comic form on the net. There are plenty of in-jokes about the rules and contradictions inherent in D&D that will make any player chuckle. There are also some great moments of slapstick guaranteed to make you guffaw - embarrassing if you're reading the strip at your desk in work. OOTS strips have been collected together into a series of excellent books (each with bonus material) which would sit nicely on any gamers shelves.
Billed as the Gamers comic strip it features the hapless Wargamer Larry Leadhead. Written with an insiders understanding of wargaming humor and sympathy for our poor dice rolls & shaky grasp of the rules. One of my favorites is why painters should never paint their last miniature. As with OOTS there are several book compendiums of Larry strips that you can purchase online. I feature a Larry Leadhead strip at the foot of this blog.
Another favorite of mine, and a web comic I have been following for years, is Dork Tower by John Kovalik, a fellow Brit now living in the US. John describes his comic thus "DORK TOWER is for anybody who’s ever played Dungeons and Dragons, who’s ever gone to a Star Trek convention, anyone who suspects that Anime is more than just a passing fad, or anyone who KNOWS one of these people." John has a large web presence with a Blog, a twitter page, and a Facebook page! He's also a very nice chap and not only signed my copies of his books but drew me a personal Igor portrait (my favorite character from the strip).
Last but not least are two comics, Nodwick and Full Frontal Nerdity, by Aaron Williams. Both have been around for a long time and, in the case of Nodwick, debuted in Dragon Magazine (issue #246 - April 1998). Nodwick is the long suffering Henchman in a disfunctional group of adventurers that most gamers will instantly recognise. Capable of carrying the huge ammounts of loot aquired by his companions nodwick is also employed to find (read 'trigger') traps. He spends a lot of his time being put back together again by the party cleric, Piffany, with the aid of large rolls of Duct tape.
Anyone who has ever played D&D will recognise the tavern as a regular launching point for a campaign. Even the one time I played a Sci-fi RPG it started in a tavern. Its become such an iconic plot devise it has almost taken on the aura of a cliche. But I think this is a great pity because I believe the Tavern or Inn as a location can be so much more than a place for meetings or a bar room brawl (fun as they are).
The Tavern has become a Cliche but this is because its such a versatile location. Hopefully this article has given you a few ideas for spicing up your local watering hole and reinventing the most used location of them all.
"The Elephant then came to centre stage and he addressed the whole assembly thus; Just like a tower, safe and fortified, a fort impregnable, firm in the end, thus too stand I, robust beyond compare. Thus bastions are built on me, made of boards, and solid towers, also, out of wood, soundly fortified. Soldiers in those towers stand resolute, fiercely combat their foes, and overpower and defeat them all."
(Source: A Medieval Miscellany by Judith Herrin - Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1999)
The description reminded me of a model I painted about 18 years ago. I'm not sure who made this model but I remember going to Oxford Street to buy it. Looking at it now its not a very animated war elephant but still a grand centerpiece. In fact I used it a couple of years ago in the climax of a D&D campaign as my players helped defend the city walls against an attack by Dark Elves and their undead allies.The real War Elephant has been used continuously throughout history but especially by the Indians. They were also adopted by Aleksander (Alexander the Great) and are most famously associated with Hannibal and the Carthaginians. Useful for crushing infantry formations they were also used to break up cavalry charges, because horses hate the smell of them and panic in their presence.
A War Elephant could charge at 20mph and their thick hide and sheer mass made them invulnerable to all except the most experienced infantry. Even the disciplined soldiers of the Romans could not stand against an elephant charge, although they later adopted the tactic of severing the Elephants trunk to induce panic and cause the beast to run amok. Many cultures designed elephant Armour to protect the body and legs of the animal whilst it attacked the enemy. It was also common for a Howdah (the wooden structure described above) to be built and used as a mobile weapons platform. Often archers would shelter here but some armies even mounted heavy weapons such as large crossbow platforms (similar to the ballista) to fire long armor-piercing shafts to kill other enemy war elephants.
Aside from anti-elephant weapons other tactics were also used as a countermeasure against such seemingly unstoppable foes. Disciplined cavalry could induce an Elephant to panic but horses needed to be specially trained for this as the pachyderm smell often scared them. There is also one intriguing (if unverified) account of the use of War Pigs against elephants. Allegedly the squeal of a pig can induce panic in a group of War Elephants and on one occasion flaming pigs were supposedly used to disperse a besieging force that included a large contingent of the beasts!
There are lots of examples of War Elephants in miniature. Pretty much all manufacturers of Ancients miniatures do a version of such an important heavy weapon. Some of my favorites are the 15mm scale elephant by Corvus Belli and the 28mm one by Old Glory. Of course if fantasy (and Lord of the Rings in Particular) is your thing then you can't ignore the War Mumak of Harad by games Workshop.
I've used of these (except the Kitty Litter) items at one time or another. They look good, they cost next to nothing and your recycling stuff that might otherwise end up in the bin. So do your bit for the environment and save the planet, one base at a time.
Above all remember this excellent quotation:
"At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth."
(re quoted from WWdN: IN Exile)
At this point my son wanders off and I breath a sigh of relief. Then he comes back having counted £5 out of his money box "Can I buy that one dad..."
So now I feel really really mean! Obviously I refused to take his money, and try to steer his attention to something else. It's not that I don't want him to have nice models, it's just that at his age they are just stuff to play with, and the rarity and perceived value is irrelevant. He'd be just as happy with two 50p Troglodytes or Giant Centipedes.
I know I was being sensible not letting him waste his money, and if I am running this as any kind of a business I can't give my most valuable stock away just because he thinks it's a nice shiny thing... So why do I feel like such a heel?
I can foresee the day coming when he buys his own models and comes home one day to show me the Aspect of Orcus he's just found. And when he refuses to sell or swap I know that flapping sound I hear will be the chickens coming home to roost.
Fortunately Battlefront have a parts replacement service. I've heard that they are pretty good at sending out missing parts so here I am checking the service out! I'll keep you posted when and if I get the missing counterweight.