Fungal-Infected Dryads & Puff-Pack Shroombeasts

The fungal-infected dryads & puff-pack of shroombeasts are complete! (For now?)

Site Update

 

I made some updates to the site. Not new painting, but just some re-organization & updating the pages/galleries (links at top of page)

• Added Sea Elf gallery
• Added Wood Elf gallery
• Added Mo' Death gallery
• Added to Jackrabbit Trading Company gallery
• Updated Five Leagues from Eternity page/gallery

Test Shrooms, Farmer Maggot, Tolkien Musings

I spent part of my New Year holiday back at the workbench. Continuing on with the homebrew Shroomfolk faction for various games (but still eyeing Five Leagues from the Borderlands first) I did some test figures for a couple of enemy types.

Fungal infected dryads. Plastic GW dryads with some shrooms sculpted on. 

 

These were inspired by hikes in the woods.

Next were some scratch built puff ball shroom-beasts made from putty and bits of florist wire.

Once again, inspired by my hikes.

And lastly, unrelated to the Shroomfolk, I painted Farmer Maggot and his wife.

NOT inspired by my hikes in the woods, but rather because I found a bag of super cheap rubber maggots at the craft store after Halloween and wanted to see if paint would adhere. And it did.

Although I joke about Tolkien, that wasn't really an inspiration to paint the Maggots/maggots. However, it brings me to a point I've thought about while out wandering the woods & mountains the last year or two. I've more frequently been acknowledging that I feel an inspiration to create when hiking, and have related this to my understanding of how much Tolkien was inspired by his walks in nature as well. The difference, of course, is that he created a universe, his legendarium. I paint toys. ;) But I will admit to having urges to get back into sketching & watercolors, and delve more deeply into world building.

Maybe I should follow those urges. But for now I'm still struggling to find enough time to get out among the trees and hills and rivers and mountains, or sit down and sculpt or paint critters like the ones above. In fact, the only reason I've done much this year has been a couple of recent holidays. I'm not one to make New Year resolutions, but I'm hoping 2026 is a better year and gives me a little more time to indulge in creative projects as well as more time outdoors.

Shroombeasts

I'll need some shroombeasts if I ever get this Five Leagues campaign started. This is my quick & cheap solution for now. I may try sculpting something else in the future.

Slime

DIY slime made from hot glue.

Not exactly fungi, but they are initially for the fungal/Shroomfolk faction.

The Funks of Shroomsbury

OMFG I painted! 🤯
OMFG Blogger got an update! 🤯

It's been a complicated year and there's a lot of change. As the wind & snow moved in to our part of the world, I decided to take a day OFF from most other responsibilities and just slack for a while. I painted for the first time since the couple of convention figures in July. Prior to that, I had painted a figure in March, and my OWAC entries in January & February. So it's been a slow hobby year.

I've been going over my ideas for another solo fantasy campaign, flip-flopping from wanting to try Five Leagues from the Borderlands and going back to Sellswords and Spellslingers. In the process, I've also been thinking about setting & theme and decided to lean into the fungal faction I've been dabbling with for the past few years. I've had the Midlam Miniatures Mushroom Folk on my table for a while, and they were a perfect fit for one of my proxy ideas for 5 Leagues campaign. So here we are...

The Funks of Shroomsbury!

Most are from Midlam Miniatures, except for the hunched over figure on the far right (3d print picked up at the anime convention in July), the little gob-shroom near the center (Gin Fritter/Armorcast), and the infected human (Satyr Art Studio wizard's apprentice with converted shroom sprout.)

Yes, I'm a fan of the Cadfael mysteries and couldn't resist the awful pun. ;)

Vapor Gaming - My Unrealized Ideas and a Lack of Hobby Time

A rambling, reflective update after an absence of some months. Reformatted because Blogger sucks on mobile.

I dropped out of the Old World Army Challenge after the second month and haven't really painted or done any gaming related stuff since then. In fact, lately I haven't done anything much more than work, try to manage family stuff, and keep my head above water.

I'm trying to figure out some ways to get my painting/gaming mojo back but nothing going on yet. Got me thinking about my many vaporous gaming ideas over the years.

* I bought Tether, a journaling RPG, with the intent of playing it with my wife. But we haven't started yet. But she bought a journal, and I bought some ink pens. I still hope to start sometime.

* I brought Dark Tomb on a couple of work trips and have left it on my desk on occasion as a reminder to play. But still haven't tried it yet.

* I've made just as little progress with Rise.

* I've thought quite a bit about some of the solo miniatures gaming ideas I've had over the last few years but haven't got very far.

• Five Parsecs From Home.
• Five Bananas. I don't feel like I ever "finished" the campaign. It just sort of fizzled as I ran out of free time. I also feel sad that I didn't keep up with documenting it here. I did only slightly better on Instagram, Just realized I never even posted a pic of the fully painted crew here! I will need to fix that. It was very enjoyable while it lasted, and got better the more I played!
• Five Units From a Place - Crew of the LAGWAFIS. I had a "serious" crew rolled up and painted, but wanted to try the game out with the Five Bananas as a joke before I got attached with them. Not sure if I will return or start over with a new crew or go back to the Bananas. (I have since painted a new figure to replace Egon in the pic below.)
  
• Five Leagues From the Borderlands. I enjoyed Five Parsecs, so I bought Five Leagues but haven't played yet.
• Five Leagues From Eternity. Mortal survivors in a war-town world dominated by undead, daemons, and the primal fungi-based life that were awakened by the destruction.
• Five Leagues From the Little Country. A small skirmish idea based on my "Alt-Hammer" setting and the Jackrabbit Trading Company.
• Sellswords and Spellslingers.
• Plain of Thieves. I had a warband, backstory, and homebrew campaign mostly written out regarding a band of goblins on a mission to take back their artifacts, which had been stolen by a bunch of thieving "adventurers" and scattered among the human dominated lands.
• Old Hammer New World. I'd like to do a campaign set in the new world as described in 2nd & 3rd edition WFB publications, with some of my own additions.
  
  
• Miscellaneous.
• Warhammer -1313. Hasn't really solidified, not sure what rules to use, but still like the concept.
  
  
• Lichemaster. I've considered playing the various Kemmler campaigns/scenarios solo using WFB3 but using proxy figures since I'm not that lucky.
• Vengeance of the Witch-blaster. I also had an idea for an alternate parody-ish game based on Vengeance of the Lichemaster but involving some dwarven smugglers, the half-orcs they stole from, and an enthusiastic but slightly dimwitted witch hunter and his mob of misfits. See also, "Beers Un-numbered."
• Alt-Hammer / Jackrabbit Trading Company / Anabasis / Kings of Old / Zogmar. I have a bunch of backstory as well as several campaigns of battles outlined. But I never worked out good solo rules for larger scale gaming nor do I have any opponents to play with.
• Drachenfels. I'd like to work him into either a solo skirmish or a campaign to add to the others above.
• Meat Hating Robot Pirates. Has never moved beyond a concept and painting a bunch of robots.
• Rangers of Shadow Deep. Bought & read the book, thought about playing. Painted some infected trees and webbed victims.
• Planet 28. Bought & read the book, thought about playing.
• D&D. Still sometimes think about trying my hands at the modern game with small group of family & friends. I haven't played since 2nd ed.
• Giants! I wrote some rules for games of brawling giants but never tried them out. Just now thought that I could add a Dragons! add on.
• OMFG (Of Mercenaries, Fighting, and Gold. Many years ago I had an idea for games between "regiments of renown" using a "game before the game" bidding system to integrate with various fantasy battle rules.

I've sat down to paint a few times since February, but haven't done anything other than a single color basecoat on some Shroomfolk. I did prep some figures for painting. But all I've really done since dropping out of the OWAC was paint a few figures at an anime convention we took my kid to over the summer (where they had a painting table). I'll have to dig up some photos, I've been horrible about posting here vs. IG.

Return of the Cold September

Return of the Cold September

Eldar Pirates

Old World Army Challenge 8

After taking a year off the OWAC (#7) I'm back for The Ocho in 2025. This year I'm returning to the Crew of the Cold September project from OWAC4, Eldar Pirates based (loosely) on the Eldrich Raiders army list from Chapter Approved: Book of the Astronomican plus the subsequent White Dwarf articles that followed.

Instead of copy/pasting the full text here here, I will direct you to the intro & monthly entry pages. 

Intro:

https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2024/12/zerotwentythrees-eldar-pirates-intro.html

January:

https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2025/02/zerotwentythrees-january-eldar-rank.html

February:

https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2025/03/zerotwentythrees-february-eldar-rank.html

However, here's a few preview photos.

Since it's been a few years since the previous project and they've been hidden in bins since then*, I created a quick ID guide using the OWAC4 images to help me remember how to paint the new infantry squads! There are slight variations in the "uniform" on the different green squads. The two "heavy" squads below have identical color schemes, now that I'm looking at that I should have made some minor variation. 

New Year 2025

Happy New Year!

A couple of quick updates.

First off, my goal for a vampiric Deadcember was a pretty big flop. But I did get this lovely couple and their pet bat painted.

Second, I've decided to get back to organizing pages of painted miniatures. I started this years ago. The links are at the top, with figures organized into categories. But a lot of the photos are old and piecemeal. The Dragon page was done recently, and the Half-Orc page is mostly newer photos. And the Five Parsecs faction page has been my big project for the past year and a half. But I'd like to work on revising some of the others with better photos & organization, and creating pages for some of the unrepresented factions (wood elves, trolls, etc.) 

I started today with a small one: the Shroomfolk!

Deadcember 2024 - The Plan

My plan for Deadcember 2024 is to paint these (mostly) old vampires. And the one dreg, because vampires need a minion. I also have a couple of newer "accessory" figures to go with them (not pictured,) a bat and a dire wolf.