Interregnum

Apologies for the long gap in posts.  It is not that I lacked for subject matter, but rather that I had simultaneously too much to say and too little time in which to say it, leading to silence.  Blogging is as much a habit as it is a skill, and unfortunately I let myself fall out of the habit.

That it was also tax season, gardening work has restarted, and that I went to a conference for work, did not help matters either.

In any case, I have a couple of posts queued up, and will be making those soonish.

As an interesting aside, somehow the blog remains as, if not more, popular when I am not posting, and March and April have shattered all previous page view records, while I have also gained a few followers (and thank you kindly for deciding to follow!).

the 300

No, not the Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, That here, obedient to Spartan law, we lie, 300.

I have not posted for a while, both because I have some pending projects that I wanted to finish and be cause of regular life taking up more time; but also, and possibly more importantly because I wanted to do something for the 300th post to the blog.

So yeah, 300 posts.  Pretty amazing if you think about it, particularly if you consider that my lovely and supportive wife and I bought a house and had two kids during that time; and over 46,000 page views and 60 followers is also quite gratifying.  So yay, me, and here is a bit of blog celebration and some highlights.

Top Five Posts
The top five posts of this blog, as measured by page views are:

1. Armies of the Napoleonic Wars: An Illustrated History A new post and popular for reasons unknown to me.  Seems to be popular in Spain.
2. From WFRP to fine art  Also popular in Spain, I think because it mentions WFRP and Estalia.   Sometimes I flatter myself and think it is because of this:
   
3. Swords Popular as a Google search, possibly because there are not many pictures of "short swords" out there.
4. Post Possibly popular because of the sprue picture, popular with me because it features the Games Workshop brochure that Tony kindly sent me.
5. Kampfgruppe Normandy Was popular at the time of its posting because there was lots of interest in the book... most of which is no doubt gone now that it is OOP.

Four Favorite Creations
The four favorite things I have done since I started this blog:

1. Baneblade: Built during the past four years, I need to paint it.  It has a number of alterations from the original kit, which is part of why it took so darn long...
2. Giant: the largest kit I have painted (since the Baneblade is still unpainted!).  I think I could do a better job now, but it still quite imposing.
3. Scratch built galley:  Turning scrap wood and paper into a scale model was extremely satisfying, and I think that the result is quite nice as well, considering.
4. Deepest Sea Players' Guide: by far my most ambitious project, with 28 pages of content covering the various things that a player in my little universe needs to know, both about the setting, and D&D play generally.

Three things to look forward to

1. Inq28: Poised to explode onto this blog, now that I have over 20 figures near to the "complete" phase and ready for paint.  This has been underway for years, so it will warm the cockles of my heart to get the blighters painted and on the 'net for everyone to see.
2. Bo5A: As the last Hobbit movie comes out in December, and as the movie features the aforementioned Battle of Five Armies, this needs to be done!  23 battalions is a bit daunting, but it can be done. (and I have a few ideas to jazz the standard set up a bit if I get done before hand)
3. Inquisitor d1000: Seven segments deep now, and only a few more to go. I will make up a new page to the blog when it is done for ready access.

Two things done recently, but unposted

1. Finish painting Tau: All done!  Just need to dulcoat and take pictures
2. Dwarf Sculpting: Decided to DIY my Longbeard regiment... one miniature at a time.

One important last thing:

Thank you, dear readers for helping me along the way, and for continuing to read that which I pour out.

Knights

No, not the kind with horses, the kind that are striding battle machines from the universe of Warhammer 40k.  You know, like this one:

Scanned from next week's White Dwarf, not by me.

This is an Imperial Knight Errant, which is apparently coming out in a couple of weeks from GW.  Knights Errant and Knights in general were part of the Epic game, but obviously were too large for Warhammer 40k back in the day... and now they are being released in glorious plastic.  I said previously that a DakkaJet would be my next big kit (was it really nearly two years ago?), but one of these guys, with banners flying and on a modeled display base is going to have to be it instead.  Wow. 

 

[more rumors suggest that a rule book is forthcoming (with more variants and equipment options?) and other scans from this White Dwarf say that it can be taken as a allied detachment. If the price is less than $100 US, I expect these to sell very very well]

Dwarfs

Long ago I painted up a regiment of dwarfs for use as a Dogs of War regiment in my Empire army.  Correspondingly, they had some puff and slash arms, and a few other "Empire" features.  I decided that I liked dwarfs enough to get more, and as was my habit at the time, bought some (many).

With the latest release from Games Workshop being the Dwarfs, I felt inspired, and had a rummage through my various boxes and bit bins and discovered that I have well over 2000 points worth of Dwarfs unbuilt, and of course unpainted.  These are mostly 5th edition metal and 6th edition plastics, with a few newer pieces courtesy of the 7th edition starter box, Battle at Skull Pass.  Really, All I lack are rare pieces, such as a flame cannon or a gyrocopter, but neither of those are particularly expensive if I wanted to add them.

I do not have any pictures of my first regiment at hand, but I do have pictures of my converted lord carried on a shield, which I built in 2008, and in a rare move for me, painted very quickly.

Magnetized so he can walk as well.

Hopefully my next dwarfs will be painted sooner than 6 years from now!

Synas LED light box

Yesterday my wife sent me a link to this newish IKEA LED light box. Called "Synas" it is a 24cm cube with 5 clear sides, and one that is a LED panel.  A bit pricey at $30 US, but it could make a nice miniature display case for either that special unit, or for people with out the room for a big display case.  It would particularly interesting to make use of the LED light coming up from below for a miniature diorama, possibly with light filtering up through a chemical pond or similar...

X-Wing Wave 4

That would be an E-Wing, Z-95, TIE Defender, and TIE Phantom

Fantasy Flight has just announced their next wave of expansions for the X-wing game, which will include my favorite, the Z-95, as well as fan favorite TIE Defender. 

The Z-95 stats out at 2/2/2/2, and starts at 12 points, so with no upgrades you could have eight in a 100 point list, just like an Academy TIE list, but with the ability to take missiles.  (and with 16 ships on the table, those two lists would be great fun to fight each other with!)

The TIE defender is a 3/3/3/3 ship with the ability to get cannon and missile upgrades, which coupled with TIE manoeuvrability should be pretty interesting (although it does seem to lack a tractor beam upgrade)

The E-wing is 3/3/2/3 can take droid and system upgrades, which with elite pilot skills will make for a huge combinations of potential abilities.

The TIE phantom is 4/2/2/2 but has a cloaking system.. not sure how that is going to work.

Pretty excited about this release.. still need to play the darn game though!

Inquisitor d1000 Part 7 - Appearance

Here is a d100 table of Appearance as part of the d1000 inquisitor attributes project. Go back and read that post if you want to know what this is about. (has it really been 11 months since I had one of these?)

Still to come are tables for Demeanor, Psyker, and Stats, and then a combined chart which will have all of the options (and some from Porky and other places)
 

Roll	Appearance
1	ancient
2	angled
3	Attractive
4	average
5	bewildered
6	bloodied
7	cadaverous
8	cute
9	dandy
10	disheveled
11	dowdy
12	drab
13	elfish
14	fancy
15	feminine
16	filthy
17	gaunt
18	gorgeous
19	graceful
20	handsome
21	ill
22	masculine
23	plain
24	polished
25	presentable
26	repulsive
27	scruffy
28	sexy
29	ugly
30	unkempt
31	well built
32	wizened
33	young
34	blue-eyed
35	brown-eyed
36	green-eyed
37	Grey-eyed
38	red-eyed
39	unusual eyes (mismatched, violet, replicant, golden, cadaver)
40	wide-eyed
41	fat
42	fit
43	flabby
44	muscular
45	over muscled
46	Bald
47	black hair
48	blonde hair
49	brunette hair
50	greasy hair
51	grey hair
52	red hair
53	shaved head
54	thinning hair
55	unusual hair
56	white hair
57	Big head
58	colossal
59	crooked
60	curvy
61	deep chest/busty
62	gangly
63	heavy frame
64	hunched
65	long legged
66	misproportioned
67	narrow frame
68	obese
69	plump
70	scrawny
71	shapely
72	Small head
73	square
74	stocky
75	Svelte
76	thick frame
77	diminutive
78	dwarfish
79	large body
80	petite
81	short
82	small
83	tall
84	albino
85	bearded
86	black skin
87	dark skin
88	dry skin
89	flaky skin
90	hairy body (Legs, arms, chest, all over)
91	itchy skin
92	moist skin
93	painted skin
94	pallid skin
95	pierced skin (d4 face, torso, R arm, L arm)
96	ruddy completion
97	scarred skin
98	tan skin
99	tattooed  (d6 face, torso, R arm, L arm, back, roll twice)
100	unusual skin (Grey, necrotic, transparent, scaled, rough)

Anyway, as always, let me know what you think.

Lead Painter League 8

As I mentioned last year, Lead Painter League is a contest put on by the excellent Lead Adventure forum.

Here are the rules for this year. Changes are that photography is further limited, and that the bonus themes are just one team, rather than having one or more of them with two opposing teams.

And the bonus themes this time around are "Fantasy", "Ancient World", and "Great War", the last of which is obviously quite topical.

Even if you do not particpate (although you should!) it is certainly worth browsing the contest entries as they are in the main, quite excellent.  The competition starts March 22nd, and there are only 50 spaces available, so get painting.

White Dwarf Weekend

This weekend I made it into the local game store to get the new weekly White Dwarf, the new monthly Warhammer Visions, and also to scope out all the newest and greatest things.

I was partly successful, in that they did not have any copies of Warhammer Visions, but I did manage to get the weekly White Dwarf, as well as the previous two months' magazines.  I also noticed that Flames of War is down to about 3 feet of space in the very large store, and Bolt Action has taken all of its wall space.  X-wing was down to a couple of starter boxes and some TIE fighters, where as Star Trek Fleet Action took up all of its former space. The store was pretty quiet, but there were some older guys playing Battletech (with unpainted miniatures of course).

In regards to the weekly White Dwarf, it seems like a nice enough little magazine to me, and with a few tweaks I would be happy to subscribe to it.  However, there is currently no subscription option for the White Dwarf (just the Warhammer Visions), and having to go down to the shop weekly and spend $208 a year is a bit more than I can stomach.  So, in the absence of some sort of money saving subscription, I think that I will have to restrict myself to buying only the magazines associated with the games/armies I have, which will be difficult, as they are not announced in advance.

I have only had the chance to flip through the new magazine, so all I can say is that I liked the articles and material that were retained as compared to what was cut (no more store listings!).  I will also say that I was surprised that a more "disposable" version of the magazine has an even higher print quality, as the cover and pages are quite thick and durable.  Indeed, it compares to the quality of a Warhammer 40k 3rd edition Codex, but full color.

Painting progress

I am in fact still alive, and still working on Tau, albeit a bit slowly.  Previously I had base coated, based, and inked all the figures, as reported here.  Then I laboriously went back and highlighted with the base coats again, wherein the poor definition of the casting for these figures annoyed me again (particularly in the legs).  Yesterday I finished up the armor paint job, and today I painted the feet and hooves, so I am just a few colors away from completion.  At this point I estimate that I will have invested around 25 hours into this project, which works out to be an hour per figure.  Not too bad from sprue to finished project, but a bit long if I were intending to paint up another couple platoons worth for a full company.

When these figures are finished, I have the pathfinders to build and paint, as well as a few filler figures for this platoon (mostly to allow them to be standard 40k Tau, instead of configured for StarGrunt II)

In other news, White Dwarf Weekly and Warhammer Visions both launch on Saturday, so if I can slip out of the house to buy copies of each, look forward to a review of sorts.