Wright Patterson Museum

Testing the mobile posting. Mercury capsule at the Air Force Museum in Dayton.

Tomorrow is the Marauders tournament.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

Countdown to Marauders 09

I head out tomorrow for Dayton and Maruaders Mayhem '09. Below is my "display" army list, recycling the map of the city I painted for the Crisis in Marienburg campaign.




I'm still frantically painting a few more items before leaving.

While down in DTon, I'm planning on visiting the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum. I haven't been there since I was very young, probably no more than 6 or 7 years old.

Rats

Oh hell...

My plan was to wrap up some commission stuff and then dive into my Roman army after Marauders in a few weeks.

Then I saw the pics of the new Skaven:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat1491876&rootCatGameStyle=wh&_requestid=24189


So much for planning.

I wonder how well I could split my time between two projects.




Please note the small print on the can, too. ;)

Con on the Cob

Looks like the weekend of Oct. 16-18th is overflowing with gaming.

As I've mentioned, I'm on my way to Marauders Mayhem in Dayton.

Unfortunately that means I miss the Twinsburg Wargaming Association's Gamefest (again.)

I also just found out about Con on the Cob, which is the same weekend. I'd love to go. I'm trying to re-discover local (which seemed to have vanished for a while) and more regional cons. Also, the "Supreme Overlord" is apparently an old friend from college.

Mini-Sculpt: Geier

A while ago I mentioned submitting some figures to the Mini Sculpt program at Black Orc Games. The first one is now up on their site:

http://cart.blackorc.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=80&products_id=489

I should be getting my castings soon, so will have some assembled & painted pics of my own in the near future.


A bit of background...

I started sculpting a group of vulture creatures ages ago for the hell of it, and submitted one of them to the "Visions in Putty" group on one of the Yahoo sculpting lists. (Long.... long time ago.) A few others never got finished. Earlier in the year I heard about Black Orc's program, and figured it would be a great way to see a few things professionally cast, and give me some more motivation to try sculpting again, see how they translate to casting, and hopefully improve.

So, the one at the link above, Geier, was my second attempt. I was aiming for a shambling sort of "horror movie" thing, but wanted to leave the arms separate for multiple posing options, and possibly to eventually do some alternate arms. Originally I was going to try casting this myself, in resin, and pop out a few copies. But along came Mini-Sculpt, and here we are.


So that's the only figure of mine they have at the moment. I've got another "Carrion People" figure about 98% done, and another small group of other figures, also started long ago, that I'm hoping to complete by the end of the year.

Marauders Mayhem

Everything's submitted for Marauder's Mayhem "Autumn Rage."

I sent my list in before the weekend. I had been running a similar Empire (Marienburg) list for over a year, then started "up-powering" it by dropping the vulnerable & useless infantry, and adding in stuff like Steam Tanks & War Altars. It worked. I started winning more games. Some of them fairly easily.

For Marauders, I've not only scaled back down, but I've started heading back to my original concept for the Marienburg themed army, in which I leave out a lot of the specifically "Empire" elements. So no tanks, no war altar, not even any rockets. I'm testing a few quirky things out in the list. I haven't actually tried them in a game yet, but submitted the list anyway, figuring if I'm going to lose, at least I will lose with style. If I win a lot, then I'm still doing that with style, but also with one hand tied behind my back. ;)

I just wish I could have got a unit of Birdmen painted up in time, so I could fight with two hands firmly tied behind my back. I'm on a tight schedule to paint a fellow "Team BREWS" member's figures in time for Marauders, though, so I can only use what I've already painted for my own army.

W-E "double surprise," WF Romans, Space Hulk

Space Hulk

I feel like putting my fingers in my ears and going, "nanananananaaaa... I can't hear you." Except it's mostly reading and I don't feel like poking my eyes out.

Everyone's talking about Space Hulk and it sounds great. I picked up the box at the local store and it weighs a ton.

I'd love to get it, but I really can't justify the price.

I feel like I should add a "Not Spending $100 on Space Hulk" tag to my blog. :/


Wargames Factory Romans

In the opposite direction, I just bought a few more boxes of Romans because of the $9.99 one day sale. Hard to pass it up. I can now field a core of 6 x 18 legion plus allied/auxiliary/support troops for two Roman armies. As soon as I get them painted, I plan on running some "De Bellis Civili" demo games. They may jump to the head of my painting priorities, especially since I think I can do them fairly quickly.



Warhammer-Empire.com "surprise"

Soth has the figures, so I'm going to go ahead and post my pic here. Rumor on the Warhammer-Empire.com forum has it that Cisse has photos of all the figures to be posted soon.

A step back: I took part in the second "Pleasant Surprises" figure exchange at W-E. Everyone taking part secretly gets assigned another participant from the forum and makes a figure specifically and secretly for them, then sends it off in the mail. I previously posted my contribution, for Cannon of Doom.

Warhammerlord Soth is the organizer/motivator behind the exchange. So this year, as a surprise and thank-you, a couple of the other forum members (Cisse & Dihenydd) secretly asked everyone participating if they'd like to contribute a figure representing their self to send as a thank-you for Soth. The idea, as I understand it, was to form a W-E "mercenary" unit or two for him. Obviously there would be a few command figures required, and I accepted the offer as a musician. Fitting, since I'm more of a lover than a fighter. ;)

So below are pics of my contribution of my self portrait as an Empire soldier:














My intent was to incorporate elements of my own appearance, my "forum presence" in regard to my user icon and fondness for Marienburg, and (obviously) the Empire figures. I had wanted to sculpt an olive in the martini glass, but had to settle for painting one on both the inside and outside, which I don't think turned out too bad.

Chalk Festival

A couple of blogs I follow have occasionally offered a glimpse into some of the other creative pursuits of their authors. This will be my first along those lines.

This weekend is the 20th annual Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival. It's something my fiancé introduced me to two years ago. I enjoyed the first festival so much, I anxiously look forward to it each year since. This will only be my third.


Chalk Festival 2007

This was my first Chalk Festival. It's held in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art. They usually have a stage with live music and a refreshment station. We got up bright and early to find a prime location Saturday morning. The weather was absolutely beautiful.



Following my fiancé's advice, I made no plans for what to do. I just showed up and started chalking. I've got a fascination with Rabbit legends/myths, which grew out of a related fascination with Moon legends/myths. To tell the truth, I'm not sure where the snail came from. I have some ideas, but enough with the rambling...



My fiancé had a spot almost next to mine. The little spiral towards the bottom of the photo was her proof to me that one could draw a stick-figure snail. A couple of (inconsiderate) onlookers walked right across both of our drawings, so I put the arrows between them in frustration.




Here's my more-or-less finished product. I couldn't figure out what to do about the snail eyes, so left them off. The spirals aren't normally my sort of thing, but I felt like I needed to do something with all that blank background.





Chalk Festival 2008

Second year for me, and another beautiful day!


I don't have any in-progress pics handy, but I'm apparently on the brochure (see the link above) for this year. :D


My fiancé's final drawing, inspired by a creepy dream she had recently had.



And my second year Rabbit & Snail. I was flattered that a couple people came by and asked me about the previous year's drawing. Again I had the boring background, but got to have fun playing with the gradation of the color. At least this snail had eyes.


When I was in (architecture) school I developed a (very) bad habit of biting my lip when really focusing on some manual activity. I only rarely do this with painting miniatures, but here's the giant blood blister thing I gave myself while drawing last year. A bit hard to see, but it was really huge and disgusting.




Chalk Festival 2009


This year looks like the weather will be good once again. Our schedule is a bit tight, so we probably won't be able to go Saturday, as we usually do, and will have to wait til Sunday. I may be have a bit of time to go by myself first thing Saturday for a quick "chalk fix" (like an addict), but I'm not certain how polite that is.

I've tried to avoid thinking about what I will draw again, but I've had a few ideas floating around. We'll see how things go.

Time for a New Game Table

Summer is winding down, as Cleveland's weather has reminded us the past few days. September will still be fairly busy, but I'd like to start up my long-talked-about Game Night at my place.

For miniatures games, I've been using an old set of 2x4 terrain boards on top of our dining room table. I previously posted a photo of a 3000 point WFB game in progress, during the "Crisis in Marienburg" campaign that was played in my dining room.

It's worked OK, though I'm always nervous about tipping the table. The dining room is nice and roomy. The terrain boards are not too heavy, and are stored in the basement.

But I am considering two things. First, the terrain boards need replaced. Either with four new 2x4 boards, or a 2x4 and a pair of 3x4 boards. The swampy boards in the photo were done with some particular skirmish games in mind. I'd like something plain. I'm debating about whether or not to glue a layer of sand, and then paint and flock to match my usual basing (and the swamp boards, and my terrain, etc.) or whether to just paint the flat to match.

I'd like to do the sand, but that's quite a bit of extra effort and I fear the possibility of warping. I would be using 3/4" plywood, but I believe that's the size of the last boards and they warped. But it would definitely look better.

The second thing I'm considering scheming is how to get a permanent game room/space somewhere in the house. I've got a couple of options, but all have their negatives. Ideally I'd sort out both at the same time, as a permanent space (or even semi-permanent) would involve me making different decisions about what to do for the table. But I may just have to be satisfied with the dining room temporary accommodations for now. Perhaps more thoughts on that in the future...

Skaven

The Skaven were my first WFB army way back in 3rd edition, and have been a favorite since then. So I've been waiting anxiously for the 7th edition update. The rumors are finally starting to surface and...

I'm pretty excited! The pics of the new clanrats look great. I've heard various grumbling, mainly around Warseer (the home of whining). But as a fan of the original Jes Goodwin sculpts and art, I think the new clanrats really look like the best and most direct evolution of that original look since then.

I won't comment on the various rumors, since I'd like to remain somewhat skeptical until we see something direct from GW. But from what I'm hearing, I'm excited about the new book as well.

I just dug out my existing Skaven army, and will try to make a few repairs over the next few months. I'll be keeping all/most of the old models, but will be happy to get some new clanrats. After being in storage for a year and a half, I can't figure out how to get three of my plastic clanrat units back into ranks! Some of my WIP slaves have also escaped! I have no idea where they are.

For now it's back to Marienburg, though. I'll need to finish my War Altar for Marauders Mayhem in October, along with some commission work I've been dragging my feet on.