Modelling Tips

Miniature Scenery has a number of useful painting techniques and effects. It's mostly geared towards building and terrain, but a few may be useful for figures.

Necromunda Game Report

As I mentioned, Mik and I played Necromunda last night. It was a fun game, as always. I managed to pull out two wins last night-- I barely scraped by in a Gang Fight, and then dominated a Shootout, despite losing my nerve.

The Littlest Wargamer

I got my five year old son Heroscape for Christmas. He is really enjoying it. We played a little intro game, which he won, and then he played a lot "free style." Mik was coming over tonight for some Necromunda, and my son wanted him to play Heroscape, so he ran his first game ever! He really got into it. He and I were on a team, and things were going poorly for us. We had killed nothing all game and were on the ropes, when he kills his sister's dragon. The boy stands up in his chair and and goes crazy!! We almost pulled it out, but in the end, we lost. He had his head in his arms and was about to cry. I will have to have a talk with him tomorrow about sportsmanship. After he went to bed, Mik and I played Necromunda and I kicked his ass!!!!!!!! TWICE!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!! IN YOUR FACE, MIK!!!!!! ;-) I'll try to post some pics tomorrow.

Site Upgraded

I upgraded to the latest version of blog software. Please let me know of any problems you notice. In particular, I'm trying to turn off the old blacklisting utility which had, I think, started to cause more problems than it solved. Update: Okay, I think I broke all comments. Give me a little while, I'm tied up at work and can't work on it right now. Update: I think I've fixed it now. There may be more spam on the site now, but I will try to nuke it as I see it.

Two More Books

That reminds me, I also finished two more books-- The Cunning Blood and The Android's Dream.

Resolution broken!

Well, I finally broke down and bought some figures. There was a batch of Infinity figures on eBay and I bought a fair bit. I could have let them pass, but I got them at 20% off the War Store prices, including shipping, so it was a deal too good to let pass. In all fairness, I had achieved the monetary goal I was looking for, if still three weeks short of when I expected to.

The Greatest Computer Game of All Time

Maybe people don't believe it at first sight, but below is a screen capture of the greatest video game ever made, a game I have been playing for around 15 years-- Nethack.

More IDPA Videos

A gaming buddy, Mik, and I went to the local IDPA match again, and here are the videos. I will see if I can't get the fullscreen stuff working later. Update: the full screen videos now work, with a resolution of 640x400, so they're a little larger. Update 2: Results are up, we did alright. That's the first time I've made the top third, and a bunch of the top guys are best in the state from Cleveland.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everybody enjoyed Thanksgiving. I haven't been updating much because I was in Atlanta for a week on training and then in Kansas City for Thanksgiving. That's a lot of driving! Yet, despite visiting the War Room and Table Top Game and Hobby, my resolution to buy no miniatures through the end of this year remains in tact. I doubt I'll finish up the 40mm AWI I recently got in time to buy any more...I just haven't had time for the hobby much this month, and my Grenadiers are languishing, half-painted.

What I Did This Weekend

This weekend, I was working with lead in a different form. I shot an International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) match sponsored by the Oak Ridge Sporting Association (ORSA, IDPA page). I just found out that had started-- it's one of a couple around Knoxville, and fortunately closer than Greenville and Chattanooga. It's been about a year since I last participated in IDPA, and I was pretty rusty but glad to be back in it. We spent a very nice Saturday morning running through seven stages. I then beat my head against the wall for several days figuring out how to embed the video in my website.

Selecting Tabletop Terrain

Saxe-Bearstein has a very interesting article called Terrain Selection Concept, a fun and interesting looking method of two players establishing the terrain for a game. Personally, I have used the mechanisms in Theater of War a lot, but Command Decision has an improved version of it (which I use for Field of Battle!) I'm still looking for Warplan 5/5, though...if you have a copy you'd like to sell, let me know!

New Podcasts

AllAboutMiniatures episode 3 is available. I must have missed the TMP announcement. Napoleon 101 is up to episode 13, which covers the war of the Third Coalition and apparently ends before Austerlitz.