My first sculpts - dragons

There's an artist that makes 'dice dragons' and they're darn cute.  They're very much chibi in style and while that's not my kind of thing the dragons have potential.  They're also a simple style and the artist was kind enough to post a YouTube video on making them.  So I had a step-by-step tutorial on making the basic figure.

I had to get past my "I can't sculpt" mental block.  It took a while and once I started I found that I could do this.  I could sculpt!

This was my first dragon.  I learned a lot from him, mostly in terms of body size.  He's longer than I wanted but hey, it was my first one.

The wings need to be pre-baked before adding the membrane and I didn't want to haul out the toaster oven so I made a second one using the experience from the first one.

As you can see I got the scale better.  I still have work to do on refining things like the spine spikes and all the horns.  I think I need to leech the clay for those so they're not as droopy.  The front legs are also thinner than I want them to be.  I don't know if I want to paint irises on the eyes or not either.

After saying everything that's wrong I still think they're cute.

Insult to Injury

I'm not going to name the company here.  It wouldn't do any good.  But here's my tale.

I was accumulating a 15mm army as a gift.  A large army.  As such it's generally not something you can do at one time.

By the time it was about 2/3 complete there was no longer a reason to have it, since I wasn't going to be giving it as a gift.  I won't get into that either.

The company says I need receipts to return them.  Um, who keeps receipts for extended purchases?  A pack here and a pack there add up over time but I can't see who would keep all the receipts.

I was willing to pay the 20% restocking fee even though I tend to disagree with restocking fees when I know they just put them back in the bins.  It was worth it to me to get back the 80% of the cost I would recover.

I received an insulting reply insinuating that I may not be the rightful owner of the minis, that without receipts they can't prove that I deserve a refund, and that I should try eBay.

I did reply with affront but I think I'll be out the shipping cost and end up with a box full of minis I never wanted to see again much less go through all the headache of trying to sell online.  I'll be lucky if they don't try to charge me return shipping.

I won't be buying from them again.  Ever.  Their customer service has shown me that they don't really care about the customers that aren't known, repeat customers.  This is appalling.

If I were vindictive I would make this far more public and be a lot harsher.  Since I don't plan on patronizing them again I would be burning a bridge I never planned to cross again.  But I know it's useless since their loyal customers won't change and there's no benefit in making a public fuss.  Well, any more of a public fuss than this.

Serenity RPG - First Reading

For whatever reason I got a bug that I needed the Serenity RPG.  More on the bug in a moment.

Unfortunately Paizo seems to have half the books in stock and seems to be in no rush to get the other half back in stock.  I happened to be on Amazon buying a different book when I decided to look around.  Yeah.  My seven dollar purchase turned into more.

I did my first read through of the rules tonight.  Mind you, it wasn't scouring the rules so I knew everything there was to know about the game.  What struck me immediately was how closely they resembled the rules for Savage Worlds.   I would almost say Serenity is Savage Worlds in Space with Licensed Characters.  This isn't a bad thing because the Savage Worlds rules are fun and flexible and it's nice that they're similar in nature so that knowing one gives you a leg up on the other.

A few things got old quick.  Quotes from the movie litter the book.  References to Firefly episodes are scattered throughout the text.  The writing style tries for the vernacular of the series/movie.  It's like they were trying to make SURE that you knew this was a Licensed book by using as much as they could.  Given that they probably paid quite a bit for that licensing I can't say as I blame them.  Yes, I just did the same here.

I'm on the fence about this now that I own everything.  They do provide pre-gens for the Characters as well as pre-gens for characters, if you get my drift.  If anything I could see running this as an RPG at a convention using the Characters but I don't know how it would hold up for a campaign.  Trying to stay as close as possible to the canon means it's very possible to come up with characters even more useless than a bard in a core group.  Someone is going to want to be Inara and it just may be the 50 year old guy.  Creepy but true.

The bug.  The reason this all came about was someone asking about the game and minis in a forum.  It doesn't seem like there's a good set of Character minis out there.  There's some attempts but I haven't seen The Crew and the singles I saw weren't of the greatest quality.  This is where the bug comes in.

I've been meaning to try sculpting.  I took some classes at ReaperCon when I still went and I've got extensive notes and pictures.  It's something that I've almost done many times.  Now I've got a project with detailed artwork I didn't have to provide.  I'm not sure when I'll start and now that I've read the rules I'm not feeling the push to do it immediately.  We'll see how things go with creative leanings.  If a miracle occurs and I turn out good figs then I can decide if I want to start a "Space Cowboy" line in my store to go along with the rules.  That's really a pipe dream but I'm not ruling it out.  I won't pay to have others sculpt them but if I can do it myself it's a possibility.

DungeonBash is active again

Well, it will be soon.  I'm working on it!



These are most of the unfinished minis.  OK.  Some of them.  I've got friends helping paint the monster and they have or are painting about 3/4 of them.  Props to Michelle B and Lyn S to doing this.



Michelle painted most of these.  I did paint the player characters!

I've got a few 1 inch dungeon sections left to finish painting and one piece to repair from the last time I ran the game.  Nothing some epoxy won't fix.

The most difficult part for me is getting all the new lists together.  There's very few spells that are appropriate for a non role playing game.  Everything has to deal with combat.  I'm scouring the books looking for those spells.

I've got a nice deadline for play testing now.  One of the gamers here has been after me to run this for his group and we've settled on next Sunday.  I won't have the final versions of anything since this is playtesting and we'll be using empty bases for some of the monsters but that's all part of the process.

I'll try to get some pictures of the new game in progress.  Depending on how much time we have I hope to run a full game (2 hours) and then spend some time running encounters to see how they balance.

Yes!  Once I get it all worked out and after I've run it at the convention I'll post all the rules.  I'll even post the list of miniatures I used for the monsters for those who don't want to hunt for them.  This is a fan derived work for DungeonBash (a copyrighted game) but I have permission to post it as such.  I've mangled the original game enough that I don't think I have any problem meeting the guideline for a derivative work.

Teaser - Mini Conversion Soon

I'm starting in a Deadlands game and of course need a mini.  I've decided that going forward, when game appropriate, I will make both a standing and riding version of my mini.  It's just cooler.  I know Litko makes horse stand bases and they're very nice but they're just not as cool as the mini on a horse.

I plan on doing a WIP on how I do this since it will be an interesting process.  I know it already.  The minis have been ordered.  It isn't the same mini for both either.  Painting will make them look the same but I liked the different looks for each situation.

For anyone who's interested the character I created is a Deserter.  She deserted from both armies and I took the Wanted major hindrance. Added on top of that she's got a very distinctive revolver.  I think this is going to be a very fun character to play and the GM is happy with all the horrible things she'll be able to set up for my character.  I'm not afraid to make characters that are going to have trouble in the game.

Dystopian Wars - Covenant of Antarctica

This isn't all of the ships I have painted but it's all I have pictures of at this time.  I wanted to get SOME of them posted.  I'll deal with taking pictures of the rest later.

Dreadnaught

Frigates (aka guppies)

Plato Cruiser (aka - everyone's favorite target for some unknown reason)

Zeno Cruiser

Battleship

Destroyers

15mm Ready to Rebase

I made ~ahem~ a few mistakes when I started basing my 15mm for Lasalle.  The first mistake was basing for Lasalle.  I'm going to be basing for Napoleon's Battles - a classic set of rules with basing that will work with most other rule sets.  The second mistake was not sealing the wooden bases before gluing on the minis.  With wood glue.  These were the causes for the problems that made rebasing a necessity.

I live in a semi-arid climate.  I'm still not used to this on many levels.  Because the bases weren't sealed they absorbed a lot of the water from the glue causing some interesting but unwanted effects with the flock.  I ended up with a stripe all around the edge with no flock.  The other problem was the the whole reason for doing a glue base on top of the main base is so that if the base gets dropped there's a good chance the entire set of minis will pop off with the glue and cause less damage.  This does not work when the wood glue adheres wonderfully to the base.

Removing them was a chore, to say the least.  These are AB minis and have tiny little ankles.  One of the ones waiting to be based is already broken off at the ankles and will be reattached soon enough.  I'm quite proud to say that I removed all 64 minis without breaking any or breaking off the bayonets.  There's some bent bayonets but I won't straighten them out until they're on their final base.



Yes it looks like the terrible aftermath of a battle and in some ways that's what it was.  The pile of wooden pieces to the right are what's left of the original bases.  I couldn't soak them well enough to pry them off the bases without the real potential for damage so I started breaking and peeling the bases from the bottom to pull the support away from them.  I did soak them a few times and the glue did soften up the in the process.  I will give lots of good press for Litko plywood bases.  They didn't want to be destroyed and it took some effort to do so.  I also couldn't use the attached figures as a grip so it was an interesting project for the evening.

I need to get a can of black spray paint to seal the new wooden bases and hope to do that today.  I think I've got enough finished minis for at least 30 infantry bases.  I also need to pick up some storage for them.  Since I need containers that are around 2 inches tall it will be easy enough - that's a standard depth on a lot of them.  I can pick them up in stages since I'm going to get larger containers for these.  I also need to make movement trays and that will help keep them from sliding around in the containers.

As you can tell I'm getting ready to start painting these again.  The goal is to get all the infantry done before changing over to another project.  Mixing it up keeps things interesting.

I'm still doing stuff!

I've been doing a lot of painting and not a lot of taking pictures.  I need to correct that.

I've also got an interesting assembly to do since I want to make the ship modular with rare earth magnets and it's not quite designed for that like a simple turret attachment.  The ship is nifty but it looks fragile for transport and kind of tall for my case.  Wish me luck on that one and I'll try to take pictures as I go.

So far I've got most of my Dystopian Wars naval models painted along with a couple of air ships.  I'm leaving the land forces for later.

Pictures soon!  I promise!

A brief update

I've got almost all the navy Dystopian Wars ships painted.  I'm waiting on a replacement part for the carrier and in the meantime I've failed my roll against temptation for painting the airships that I have.  It's not many and the sky fortress seems to have some good tactical value against Russians.  The gaming group has a lot of Russian fleets.  I'll be posting pictures in batches in the near future.

This is the current state of my table.  I finally found the missing dungeon crawl minis that my friend Michelle is going to be painting for me.  We've done a barter and this means there's a chance that they'll get painted.  I'm only sending her the nasties and not even all of those.  Barter does have its limits.  We haven't done the final negotiations.  I didn't post a picture of the ones that are ready to be painted.

On a final note I'm getting the Hirst Arts kits to make the old WizWar boards.  I bought the wizard minis and I'm looking forward to doing a straightforward build again.  The painting seems to be tedious but I'm thinking it will be a good chance to try my airbrush.  There's also some fun accessories to make.

A quick status shows that I still have 6 1/2 armies to paint (the CoA one I've been painting counts as 1/2 done to me), the dungeon crawl and now WizWar.  Yeah.  Plenty to keep me busy.