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!

And Just Like That... Three Months Go By!

 

Apparently it has been three months since my last update. There has been a bit going on lately. For one, I had some down time due to a thumb injury...

I have also done a bit of travelling (survived a tornado near Chicago, an earthquake near LA, and less dramatic visits to Palm Desert/Joshua Tree NP, and Miami) for work. On the topic of work, I have also made a significant career change and taken a new job. To be honest... I've also been a bit uninspired lately. I think my head has just been elsewhere with everything else going on. Really, I'm not terribly good at keeping up with this blog lately either.

But there has still been painting going on, though no real gaming.

I wasn't very successful with my "Five Months From Painted Factions" but I did make some more progress. I built and painted some mutants!

I also painted Ambassador Khan Cern. He has no patience for your shenanigans.

Following up on my previous Five Bananas entry, I purchased my crew. Just tonight I started putting a bit of paint on them. More to come on that soon. "Soon." Like maybe in a few months again?

For now, I have also returned to painting the mercenaries that I had started working on before my thumb injury.

On the fantasy side....

Satyr Art Studio zombies...

...and some old Ral Partha zombies.

The middle figure is my D&D character, if the family D&D campaign ever gets started. Nettie Coldwater, middle-aged empty nester forest gnome turned druid. This is the second time I have painted this figure from Reaper Miniatures. The one on the left is the "stock" figure, and Nettie was converted a bit to more accurately reflect my character. The dog on the right was painted previously but I was thinking that it would be interesting if she brought her dog along with her.

Random daemon. Daemonette. Had the figure, figured I would paint it for my mixed-daemon horde. 

D&D figure, Grick. 

Dwarf With No Name.

Giant flies/stirges.

Painted a couple of tiny bunny toys, inspired by the Black Rabbit of Inle.

Fungus infected ant swarm.

I was fortunate to live within the path of the recent total eclipse in the US. I could not get a good pic during the total eclipse, and really didn't want to spend that brief time messing around with my phone trying to take pics instead of fully enjoying the experience. But here's the closest thing -- I got a couple of decent pics of the approach to totality.

Warhammer The Old World Ramblings

The new Warhammer: The Old World seems to be making a big splash. I've only been keeping up with it a little bit, and while there seems to be quite a bit to like about it, I'm not really sold on it.

Instead of getting into some of the heated social media discussions, I'm just going to put my general opinions here. By opinions I possibly mean the grumblings of an old nerd. ;)

Like I said, it seems like there's definitely some things I like about it.

• GW going back to a "ranks & flanks" battle game.
• Incorporating some old mechanics that I missed from later editions.
• Bringing back players who won't play non-current editions of the game. (I have never understood why players would stop playing a game that they enjoy just because it's not being sold new anymore!)
• Putting old models into production again. I already have two of the Marauder giant, but I love the idea that more people can get their hands on such a classic!
• Exploring a different time period of the in-game history.
• I actually like the idea of scaling up bases to 25mm, even if I have a ton of old 20mm based figures. Plenty of easy ways to deal with this since it's ranked units. This probably would have been difficult to do previously, but this "reboot" was a great opportunity to make it happen.

However, there are some things I'm definitely not crazy about.

• The format of the game/rules. I think it originally went downhill after 3rd ed. where you bought a rulebook and an armies book and you had everything you needed to play, and could spend the rest of your cash on shiny, shiny miniatures. Those days are long gone and the new edition seems to be continuing the later trend of a constant stream of army books in order to "keep up." So far there is a $70 core book, plus two $50 books for the basic lists. So that's $170 for 3 books just to get started. Then the stream of additional army/faction books, two of which are already out now (bringing the actual starting rules-only investment to $224) with more to come.
• Or $156 for all digital. I actually buy more digital books than physical books these days But they better have a decent price break.
• Figure prices are insane, especially given that they've already been sculpted & molded long ago. I hope the artists are getting a fat commission! :D
• "Legacy Factions." 🙄
• As long a history as I had playing Warhammer (3rd ed. through 8th ed.) it was ultimately never a great "wargame." It always seemed stuck somewhere between a battle game and a skirmish game, but didn't do either thing well. I feel Warmaster was a much better large battle game, and Mordheim was a great skirmish game. Still are. I'd play either of those any day! And there are also other games on the market, made by (*gasp*) other publishers that also do what Warhammer does... but better. It's a golden age of wargaming, with a ton of options available. It will take more than nostalgia to get me to invest in WFB again, and from what I've read/seen I'm not sure there's enough here to bring me back.
• Competitive play. Highly competitive play and an obsession with tournaments, winning at all costs, and *shudder" "the meta" seemed to dominate from at least 6th ed. onward. I've had my fill of that. Narrative play, campaigns, and "fun" scenarios were almost completely missing. This is something I've rediscovered in newer solo games, retro wargames, and a possible re-entry into RPGs with my kid. This may not be part of the game as sold, but I expect this to continue, especially since it's the focus the big post-WFB/AOS successor games took (9th Age, Mantic, Kings of War...)

I think the only way I would buy into the new game would be if I could get a bootleg PDF to "try before I buy" the physical game and find at least one, if not more, players interested in non-tournament gaming. The idea of picking up some old figures I missed back in the day seems appealing, but based on the prices I've seen so far, that's not terribly likely either.

This is 2024. There are a lot of options for both games and figures. 

New Year New...?

2023 ended not with a bang, but a whimper. But over the last week of the old year and the first week or so of the new year, I did get a little painting time in. 

I did some more painting and basing of "unaligned chaos daemons." I've been thinking about that idea since I received the Drachenfels figure a few years ago. It/he has long since been painted, and I even (finally) finished the novel! Lately my mind has turned back to the idea of chaos as chaotic, like in old Moorcock novels & early fantasy gaming. Not a bunch of organized, uniform creatures.

This will be a slow, ongoing project. I'll just keep adding any odd figures that seem like they belong as I continue to work on other projects.

Since I started this entry a week or so ago, I've added some more. Most are actually for a potential D&D campaign, but I feel they will fit the chaos vibe. The undead gnoll things I just got because I thought they looked cool. :)

The ochre jelly is homemade from some wire and melted hot glue, similar to some I did previously with different paint. The flameskull is just a plastic skull with some crudely sculpted flames. I liked the floating skull thing I did the same with a Bones cow skull painted blue. The rest are soft plastic D&D figurses

I also finally painted a pair of figures to represent our current two dogs. I had one but had been searching for the other for over a year before painting. On the left is Moji-Tater, our Corgi-Sheltie mix. He's the youngest. In the center is Cookie, a shelter rescue dog who we think may be a mix of Boxer & Border Collie. On the right is Sasha aka "Muffin Butt", another shelter dog who passed away almost 10 years ago. She was a German Shepherd-Husky mix. Cookie was the tough one to find, but since I was recently looking at D&D figures I found a pack of three dogs, one was a pointer with a pretty close body & head shape, but I had to cut off the ears and re-sculpt them to fit the real thing.

I've also painted a few sci-fi figures of mixed quality & complexity. The first is an Eru-Kin and jagual figure from Knightmare Games. I will be using Eru-Kin for K'Erin in Five Parsecs From Home. You can almost rearrange the the letters to shift between teh two names. Maybe the apostrophe is for the "u"? This one will be a member of my crew. 

I also finished the space goblins/Malig from Alternative Army's Ion Age range, which will serve as pirates in Five Parsecs. I painted a test figure earlier in 2023, but never got any further until December. One more faction down, and another month of "Five Months From Painted Factions" under my belt!

Lastly, my slacker painting from this week. First is Orbus, a sentient sphere of what appears to be some sort of plasma like matter. No one knows for sure. Orbus is literally a pearlescent bead on a stick. I didn't even paint it. Just drill a hole, make a base, and glue it on the stick. Next to that is the second of the two D&D nothics that came in the pack. One is for D&D, the other I thought would make a good sci-fi alien or mutant. Super quick paint job, mostly just abase coat, wash, then a few details. I almost want a whole squad of them now.

November Minis

A little bit of a shift going on in ZeroTwentythreeLand.

As much as I've looked forward to it every year for the past five or six years, I am going to pass on this year's Old World Army Challenge. There's just too much in flux, and although I have melodramatically struggled the past few years in my monthly entries, 2023 was honestly very difficult and a bit of a let down for me. The OWAC is meant to be a challenge, but also fun. I also feel like I didn't keep up with everyone else's projects very much, which is usually half the enjoyment. I also feel that my current interests diverge from the "Oldhammer" canon.

I've mentioned in some of my recent entries, I will instead be pursuing my own monthly challenge in order to help push me over the edge for some sci-fi solo gaming, hence the Five Months From Painted Factions challenge. I am actually off to a really good start.

Per previous entries, the goal is to start playing some Five Parsecs solo games in my own "Alt Trader" sci-fit setting. To help facilitate that, I will try to frantically paint figures for some of the many factions in Five Parsecs, as well as some terrain each month to provide me with a decent table to actually plat some games!

Thus... I now have the Soulless faction completed. I forget who originally started these sculpts/range, but Heresy Miniature picked up the ones that were previously available, added a couple to the set and started casting them a year or more ago. I had two of the ten and the figures were exactly what I wanted. So I bought a couple packs from Heresy and finally got them painted. My own concept in my Five Parsecs/Alt Trader setting is that they are a former security team who got sick of the corporate shit and have gone off on their own.

Speaking of going off on their own, I painted this chaos renegade-ish figure from Satyr Arts. I liked the idea of a renegade sister from the merc. company I have (barely) started, so tried to keep a similar color scheme. Such a cool, old-school figure. Drew Williams (sculptor) always seems right on target with his "Oldhammer" sculpts. This one is a great tribute to one of the original RT figures.

Speaking of Oldhammer, this little orange guy will serve as a... I don't know. Little space blob sidekick?

Each month I will attempt to figure out and prep/paint some sort of terrain so I can actualy start playing some games!! Here's the latest, some barely modified segments from a "mini brands" type sphere, plus a cap from some feminine shaving cream with some miscellaneous plastic bits added on. Hopefully looks like some sort of small scale radiation harvester set-up or equally vague sci-fi-B.S. ;) 

Green Dragon and Space Bug

Just a little painting lately. Green dragon and space bug.

June OWAC Skaven (Leader) and Skavenslaves

This is the way the challenge ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

For various reasons, I limped across the finish line for this year's Old World Army Challenge. Not a great year for me. This Grey Seer did turn out pretty well, even if it was the only figure I painted all month.

Last month I painted half of the slaves I had intended to paint, but at least the quantity was lucky number 13!

Due to landlord shenanigans, I lost use of the basement for painting and gaming, and have had to pack up and move most of my stuff into storage. Hopefully temporary, but not sure. The Skavenslaves were painted outside, which looks pleasant but is very difficult on my old eyes.

OWAC April - Clan Skryre

This month's entry is up at the Old World Army Challenge site. I used my wild card month to paint mostly Skryre troops/monsters/contraptions.

Pics below, but click the link above for the full entry.

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A comparison shot of the new (red) Satyr Art Studio jabberwock with the old ones from Ral Partha & Citadel.

Red Dragon

The first big dragon I painted when I was a kid was a Grenadier red dragon. That figure is long gone, but it was the inspiration for painting this old Ral Partha/Citadel dragon that I bought from eBay last year and recently repaired (broken tail). A bit monochrome, I'm tempted to go back and touch it up a bit. But here it is for now.

Since I've been dabbling with painting dragons again the past year or two, and I'm not sure all of them have made it here, I think I may set up a dragon gallery. I should do the same thing for my giants. And update the undead galleries... when I get the time!

Hill Troll

 

It's been a while since I painted any trolls. I had wanted to collect a set of the later Citadel C20 trolls, but never got very far. I recently managed to get the hill troll, though, and painted it up right away. Halfway there!