Eff Me

Now my microwave has gone out!!!

International D&D Contest

I'm entering Troll in the Corner's International D&D contest.  I feel like my luck has to break soon...  My luck is so bad.  How bad is it?  My luck is so bad I just went to look at a car, and the previous test driver wrecked it!  Stay away from me, people!

In just the last two weeks...

I've had to completely replace the water service line to my house, had my car diagnosed with bad bearings in the crankshaft (read: new car), dropped a tumbler and shattered my wife's ceramic cooktop, and now just had a screw put a quarter inch hole right through a tire, and spent an hour on the side of the road trying to figure out how to get the spare loose and change the tire!  The only upside of all of this is that vehicle needed new tires anyway.  My poor wife has spent the last three hours at the tire dealer, waiting around with our irritable two year old who should have napped two hours ago.  Ah well.  Having had two people in our lives diagnosed with cancer in the last couple of years, we're able to keep things in perspective!  I still want to complain to the Internet, though!!

Edit: Got home and my fridge light was out...

Taking my eye off the prize

Speaking of being distracted, checking out the time stamps on my blog...it appears to have taken me over two weeks just to assemble, glue to tongue depressors, prime, and glue to paint bottles a single 88 battery-- two guns, three vehicles and around twenty dudes.  Jeez, I'm slow.  Well, not just slow; a married father of three.  Even when I find time, I'm often too tired to produce.

Reaper 03125: Bailey Silverbell, Dwarf

Not sure what I did wrong with these pictures, but they are really not doing the subjects justice. This sweet little girl may be my best female face ever. I will definitely have to take another shot at photographing her at some point. I thought her clothes colors turned out really well, and the large gold armor looks good enough. That's something I could work on, definitely. Not too crazy about the blade, either. It just seems like it needs a little something more. The cape also looks like it was quickly drybrushed instead of having more time spent on it-- I wonder why? Overall, though, I'm very pleased with this figure, one of my better ones. Now, it's back to 15mm WW2, when and if ever I get more painting time...

Reaper 03227: Garrett, Adventuring Cleric

Just another couple of distractions, I swear! I have my Flames of War 88 battery primed and rigged up to glue. It just takes a few nights for the rubber cement to dry, prime, etc... And, I have had a few primed fantasy figures on the table now for several months. I finally picked one up and starting slopping paint on it. I was pretty concerned about the colors on this guy, but went and picked up a bunch of Reaper Master series paints, including that Weathered Blues triad. I really liked it, it actually looks much better in person than in this photo. I wasn't really pleased with these photos, but just couldn't be bothered working too hard on it. It was a long weekend.

Zombie Werewolves in London

Here's another little distraction I painted up, Reaper's 02132: Zombie Werewolf. This was a parting gift from Brian, who recently left our gaming group to head for greener pastures. Brian will never truly be gone-- there will also be a piece of him here. A mindless, vicious, undead, rotting piece of him, but still.

Together, They Chase Time!

A little diversion away from painting 15mm WW2 figures all the time. This is Reaper Miniatures Chronoscope 50178: Andre Durand, Time Chaser. Since I had already done up the other Time Chaser, 50001: Sascha Dubois, I thought it would be nice to have him, too. He's a nice looking figure-- could go Pulp or Steampunk with him easily enough, or even a 40k dude with a power fist. I, of course, actually have no use for him in any of those roles right now, but wouldn't let that stop me from buying him! He's part of a team-- He's a notorious womanizer with a steam powered bronze fist. She's vivacious mutant opera singer from a secret island of lost women. They chase time!

Trounced by Children, part deux

Huh. This is starting to become a habit! I ran a 1,500 point game of Flames of War with my son. I'm still a little rusty on the rules, so I will use that as my excuse, because I was routed handily again! This, despite me giving him the Americans that I had lost with last time. I forgot the scenario name, but either of us could win the game by starting a turn occupying one of our objectives on the other half of the board. Junior here got his Shermans on the road, and with great audacity, drove them halfway across the table in front of two platoons of Panzergrenadiers that did not have their Panzerfausts set up yet. He then ducked into the woods where he had placed his objective before I could turn my sIG 33 battery on him. While my Panzer IVs were blazing away futilely with their machine guns and ducking fire from four or five bazooka teams (which, coincidentally, can move and fire-- how fair is that?), his Shermans promptly machine gunned and assaulted my company command. I threw a few Sd Kfzs 251/1s at him to try and stay in the game for another turn, yet all was lost in the end.

Flames of War Pak40 (GBX23)

Finally got my Pak40s finished. I have some Old Glory Sd Kfz 251/1s on order to run these with my Gepanzerte Panzergrenadiers, but I don't have them yet. I complained about these figures before, but in the end, I like how they turned out. Oh, and for what it's worth, other than the metallics and wash, these figures are completely craft paints.

About Had It With Craft Paints

I have been a big proponent of cheap craft paints for painting miniatures for many years. The vast majority of the paints I have used for all my miniatures tend to be dollar a bottle craft paints, usually Delta Ceramcoat but maybe Apple Barrel or some other. I'm not picky. There have been irritations along the way, such as when Ceramcoat dropped one of my favorite colors, Palomino Tan, and of course they tend to be sparse on military colors like olive green, which I mixed up myself. But now, it is really getting infuriating. I recently restocked some core brown and grey colors, parts of my "triads" of those shades, and the paints are worthless. Thin little anemic wash that I can't use for anything. And they're really backbone colors of my painting, especially right now as I'm painting lots of WW2 Germans. It's infuriating. I'm wondering if I shouldn't just jump ship to some dedicated hobby paints.

More Concertina

Greg's Wargaming Blog shows an easier method for making larger scale concertina wire obstacles.