Bytor and the Snow Dog

 This is probably the longest time I have gone without posting. Its not like I have not been doing anything hobby wise, it is just that I have not had the time to post. Also, a lot of things have been happening in my life, mainly my mother passing away over the 4th of July weekend. It was not unexpected but it was still unexpected. We came up for our annual summer visit to see my mom and sister and her family. We got there on the 3rd and she passed away on either very late on the 4th or early in the morning on the 5th. It further reinforces one of those morbid cliches that once an elderly person breaks a bone, it is quickly downhill health wise. She had broken her ankle in late November and it all went down hill from there. It has been hard and I am still processing it all. It does not help that I am the executor and have to figure out how to handle the estate.

In terms of the hobby, I have been on a roll to paint up as many 15s as I could. I really wanted to whittle down the pile. I have a new project that I have started so really wanted to clear the deck, so to speak. I still have a pile of lead to be painted but I feel like I can switch project now.

One of the last few figures painted is Bytor and the Snow Dog. If you are a RUSH fan, you will know which RUSH albums they come from. Yes, Bytor is a bad guy who fights and loses to the Snow Dog, but in a later song Bytor is a good guy that defeats the Necromancer. The main reason for these two is that long ago, in the very early 80s, one of the members of the D&D group I played in named his fighter Bytor. As he went up a few levels, the DM gave him an animal companion (familiar) that was a large beast that was part  arctic wolf/part polar bear. This was Snow Dog. They fought many battles together. I've aways wanted to have a model of these two in my 15mm world. This is my interpretation based on what I could find in 15mm scale:

I wanted a more fantasy Viking figure to be Bytor, but this Wiglaf Miniatures warlord did the trick. Nothing really matched my vision of Snow Dog. I thought of using a Reaper Miniature wolf or dire wolf, but they were way too big. I happened to find this wolf from Lone Gunman Miniatures and seemed to be a good size as it was a little larger than some of the other manufacturers' dire wolves. 

For fun, I played around with having them on a snow base, with some iced over puddles on Snow Dog's base. 

Now that I've got my 15mm painting out of my system, I am moving on to my next project. 

Shapeways Out of Business

 This is probably old news to a number of you, but Shapeways is officially out of business. It filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last week, which means there is no restructuring. I don't know the details of what happened to cause this. I have to wonder what the vendors are going to now do, especially those in the table top gaming business is going to do. In this day and age, they can probably set up their own machines to print out figures. 

I am glad I managed to get some of the models that I did. Many of these vendors had a niche market for aircraft, AFVs, and ships that are not found elsewhere. There are a whole bunch of companies that make F-16s or MIG-21s, but nobody I know of in the "mainstream" makes a Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano in 1/600 scale. 

This news brought back a memory I had several years ago. I struck up a conversation of sorts with one of the vendors who made aircraft. He was seriously considering parting ways with Shapeways due to some policies that had with the vendors. I can't remember what the issues were, but he was pretty unhappy. 

Well, despite your ridiculously high shipping prices and shipping times measured in geologic time periods, I will miss you as a company that offered unique miniatures to the hobby. 

Once Again Great Service from The Last Square

Playing Victory At Sea two weeks ago at Will's gaming store got the naval warfare juices pumping. Me being me, I have been slowing accumulating 1/6000 ships mostly Figurehead with a few Shapeways models thrown in. In the US, the place to order Figurehead ships is from The Last Square in the great state of Wisconsin. Their server is rather slow, but they have always provided prompt service and quickly respond to any emails sent.  A while ago, I had ordered some naval rules from them, and for some reason it never got to me. Even thought they stated that they had sent it, they sent me a new copy. 

This time, I put in an order for a bunch of ships. One of the packs was supposed to have four WWII South Dakota class battleship in it. When I looked at them, two were South Dakotas but the other two were North Carolina class battleships. There is separate pack for the North Carolinas. It wasn't a big deal and I didn't want a replacement, but I thought I'd let The Last Square know for quality control purposes.  Sure enough, even though I stated that they didn't need to send me a replacement, I got two South Dakotas in the mail!

In this day and age, its nice that at least with our hobby, companies are willing to go the extra mile for their customers.

Health Update

 I got the results back from the CT scan. There was still some infections in my lungs but my doctor saw another thing that probably was why the standard x-rays were sort of hard to read. I have blood clots in my lungs. I should have asked but he didn't say how extensive they were. I am supposed to go to have an ultrasound of my legs, but unless there is an earlier cancellation, it won't be until two weeks. I'm not on any treatment other than to make sure my Coumadin (blood thinner) levels are in the proper range. I am now more paranoid than before about any food that has high levels of vitamin K. 

The weird thing is when and really how it happened. I consulted a old friend of mine who had them about three years ago. First, he said congrats! That I had survived it. Usually, it is severe enough to get you to the hospital. Second, he wondered why I didn't feel anything in my legs. Severe and acute pain in the lower legs is that the tell-tale sign that you are developing clots. My left lower leg has been somewhat swollen for several years but I have never had any pain in that leg, certainly not anything severe. So, it is hard to say where these clots originated from or when it happened, unless they developed in the heart. 

I have been recovering. The weather has been horrendously hot and humid, but I continue to go for walks. I did finish my antibiotics (my digestive system thanked me for that), and I have cut way back on the use of the nebulizer. I am not coughing up junk from my lungs anymore. I actually went in to work yesterday. I am a teacher, so I am off this summer. It was nice to get out of the house for a few hours. I did link up with a friend who is also my department chair and had lunch. It was nice to hear about his recent sabbatical as it took my mind off of my health issues.

I have managed to do a few things at the work bench. My current painting challenge is almost done. I would not say it will be my best, but it is not horrible either.  I have a scattering of a few 15mm left to do. I am going to focus on a newish project of making crude but effective scratch built modern ships. They are not going to really have any specific scale, but they will be more-or-less scaled to each other in size. 

I'm Sick of Being Sick

Like many people out there, I have had a running battle with respiratory illnesses since back in December. Currently, its been on and off sinus infections. I had planned on taking and posting pictures of all the medieval and fantasy figures I have been frantically painting, but instead I am laid up in bed, or too miserable to function.

I have to say, the one advantage to waking up at 4 am and feeling like you are going to choke to death on all this junk you've built up is that I just go into my work home and paint until the sun comes up. I'm being sarcastic here. Yesterday, I probably got about 2 hours of sleep. As a result I barely made it through the day.

Here are three pictures of stuff.

It might be a stretch, but what is that on his shield? Hint:
it was used to kill the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

Cool LEGO minifigs series this year. My kids are big fans. You can't get any Orc-ier than this guy.

Wooden Hexes

I ordered these about a month ago and am now just picking them up. 25mm hexes look a lot tiny-er than I envisioned, but they will do for my air combat games or ship battles with 1/6000 models. I will carefully glue them together and then mount them on some sort of board.

Happy Father's Day 2022!

 Happy Father's Day to all of you are out there who are fathers, grandfathers, biologically, and even those in spirit!

I loves these two to the stars and back!

Gifts from my daughter:

A Brain Collector from Wizkids Pathfinder plastic minis. Comes with clear plastic domes that cover the brains. I have to figure out what glue to use for them.

Shirren Technomancers also from Wizkids. This is from their relatively new rpg Starfinder. Starfinder using the same game mechanics as Pathfinder. I played a demo game at Will's game shop a few weeks back. It was a lot of fun. Technomancers are sci-fi magic users. 

FYI, Wizkids makes several lines of plastic, pre-primed miniatures for D&D as well as the above. They are similar to the plastic ones that Reaper Minis makes (Reaper Bones series). It seems like they use a different plastic that is a little more flexible than that of Reaper. They also coat their figures with a primer whereas Reaper claims adding a primer to theirs is not necessary. I think the Wizkids has a little more detail to theirs compared to the Reapers, at least with the earlier Reaper Bones series, which were plastic versions of their metal figures. The Wizkids tend to be proportionally slimmer than those of Reaper. and slightly shorter. That being said, I have yet to decide which brand of plastic miniatures I like. The Reaper ones seem to paint up a little faster. I still have several Wizkids D&D figures that I am trying to finish. It is almost as if they have too much detail (is that possible?) and it has been somewhat frustrating.  

It is funny, but the packaging does not indicate what the scale of these are. I will have to look on an unopened Reapers package to see if it is still listed.  

News Flash: I See Light at the End of the Tunnel for My Floors

 I just got a text from the contractor in charge of fixing my house that tomorrow the flooring guys are going to start on the new floors! It will be nice to walk on something other than subflooring. Once they do that, the house will be more livable. Fingers crossed!

More Odds and Ends

 Just some more pictures of things that I recently finished. I am trying to get things done before I leave for Chicago for the holidays. 

Dwarf Challenge 2:

My old buddy from grad school days and I decided to do another painting challenge. This time it was dwarf magic users and he got to picture the figure. I've had a lot of bad luck with Reaper Miniatures. They seem to come broken. I had one earlier whose weapon came broken. Reaper was nice enough to send me a new one. This time, the top of the dwarf's staff was broken. I figured that I'd just work with it. After painting him, I glued a red translucent bead on top. I think it looks better than what was originally on there. Hopefully, it will hold. The guy standing next to him is a bonus that I will send my friend. He is a Reapers Bones figure that is made out of a plastic similar to what 1/72 figures are made out of. He's supposed to be a dwarf ranger, but looks like he's holding a giant wrench for a weapon. I bought him for my son to paint, but he didn't seem interested, so off he goes with the magic user.

More 1/600 Moderns:

As part of my effort to paint lots of stuff, I got these done for the Bovatopian army. I was also testing out a new shade. Its one of the Citadel shaders. 

Baron Henri of Emoree:

This is another pair of 15mm fantasy figures that were at the bottom of my lead pile. I ran of of ideas for coat of arms, so I used the symbol from the college I teach at. These are Demonworld Empire figures.

The car finished:

Here's the Cub Scout all ready to march in the Christmas parade. Fewer scouts than we thought built one. Hopefully, more will build one next year.

The Latest Insanity

 If September was family Covid month, October was flood-the-first-floor-of-your-house month! Whoopie! The little tube that connects the toilet tank to the tap that is on the floor decided it wanted to make a splash, and splash it did! My son came home about 20 minutes before I did from school, opened the door, and there was about an inch of water on the entire first floor of our house. We don't know how long it had been gushing, but it was a major mess both on the first floor and in the crawlspace. I guess I should be happy that it seems to be just the tube and not the spigot. My wife, daughter, and I spent the evening with shop vacuums borrowed from neighbors sucking up the water, and throwing out whatever paper items that were soaked beyond use.  

The upshot is that all our heating ducts had to be replaced, the restoration people (they are responsible for power drying the subflooring and walls) had to tear all our beautiful flooring that my wife and I put in about two months work on last year, and our first floor currently sounds like the inside of a C-130 transport plane from all the blowers and industrial-strength dehumidifiers running 24 hours a day. Fortunately, it seems that our house insurance will pay for most if not all of it, including putting in new flooring. Equally fortunate, the contractor in charge is very no-nonsense, and seems to really know what he is doing. The owner of the HVAC company that tore out our old ducts and put in the new ones that this guy is the best in the business. If all goes well, we should have our new floor in no later than about two weeks. Hopefully, the rest of November will be very uneventful. 

What I've been up to

 Hey out there. I have been doing hobby stuff, but lately, I have not had the time or really the energy to put things up on the blog. I did celebrate International Naval Wargaming day on August 6th by having a test battle using the old Sea Strike II rules. It involved four missile boats that were cardboard counters, two on each side and lasted all of 10 minutes. The Red side lost one missile boat but managed to sink the two Blue boats. I had planned to have a few more games with more ships, but it was probably 85 degrees in my garage so the desire to play another game fizzled. I liked the rules, but I don't know if I like them enough to use for my various ImagiNation campaigns. 

I have been painting a lot of 15mm fantasy in an attempt to reduce the pile. It doesn't help that I keep buying more. I am also inching forward on my 6mm American War of Independence project. I am not sure when that will start, but I have a few rule sets that I'm looking at.

One thing that is new on my blog is that I have a rules folder. I put up my home brewed science fiction skirmish rules. This is the one I use with my son. I plan to put up the fantasy version it soon. 

That is basically it. 

I Got My Life Back!

 My wife and I debate how long it took, but Friday we put in our last floor plank and yesterday, we put the appliances back in the kitchen. There are a few minor things left to do, but nothing disrupting. I'm happy the way our new floor project turned out, but I don't plan to do any projects of this level for a long time.

Update: Life Goes On

 Its been forever, or at least it seems like forever since my last post. The culprit: my house. We've been thinking about this for years, but finally, we are remodeling our main floor of our house....pretty much ourselves! The floor is the first, and probably main thing that is being done. 

This is a job for a younger man. Even wearing knee pads, its killing me. My wife is helping a lot, though her constant obsessing with the smallest measurements is not really helping. The other issue is that its only now that we are putting down the floor. The last three weeks have been nothing but prep work. The people who built this house were idiots. But hey, I got to use a nail gun! And, my Dremel tool has been put to good use cutting the flooring. I also learned to take all YouTube home-improvement videos with a huge grain of salt. Nothing every goes as smoothly as they show (see above comment about the idiots who built this house). 

So this is the state of things for now.  Laundry, washing dishes, my teaching, all that other stuff have gone out the window. I'm lucky that my kids get fed. My hobby daydreams are the closest I get to things for now. One other thing I want to mention. I am a lucky man to know people who can lend some time, even if its just for an hour or two to help. Both my boss and a friend from church who is a retired software engineer who seems to know a lot about this stuff and has almost all the tools I need have been helping a lot. Without them, I'd be swimming in quicksand.

Pinewood Derby Car

The completed car:

Update on Life

Last week, I got that bile duct stone removed. My recovery was a little slower than I expected but I did get to work on some stuff including the SA-2 missile battery that I posted previously. But so far, so good.

Besides the missiles, my main project has been to help my son finish his pinewood derby car for this Saturday's race. Like most projects, I get bogged down on my ambitions. Adding to this has been my recovery from the surgery. By about 3:00 in the afternoon, I have been hitting a wall have little energy to do anything. Originally, I had plans to be mostly finished with the car last weekend, but Friday and Saturday was pretty much a bust. I think I was in bed by 7:00 last Friday. But if all goes well, we should be done tonight. Here is a work in progress picture.

The boy painted it. As you can see, it wasn't the neatest job, so I touched it up. When its done, there will be a driver in the form of a LEGO Star Wars minifigure. The holes behind the cockpit is to put lead weights in. 

Last Post of the Old Year

2019 didn't end very well. The gastro-intestinal issue that hit me hard back in August in China made a comeback. Once again, I was in a Chicago hospital from the 23rd to the 25th, and then recovering. Finally, they figured out what is going on. It turns out that even though I no longer have a gall bladder, I managed to made me a gall stone that clogged up the bile duct going from the liver to the small intestine. Because I am on. blood thinner, they couldn't remove it, but they did put in a stint to widen the duct and allow some of the bile to flow out. When I get back to Bristol, I will contact a GI and get the stone and the stint removed.

Reflection
While recovering, I did go through my blog and reread my 2019 posts. I actually did do more than I had time to post. Here's a reflection of what I did.

1. As I said a number of times, I've spent a lot more time than I wanted to working on my 15mm fantasy project involving rival barbarian armies.

2. I got in a micro armor battle and tested a game. I had hoped to have some more games to test other rules but that never happened.

3. I got everything ready for my latest campaign involving 1/600 micro armor and air combat. What's bogged me down with that is terrain, but I think I've made enough for a game.

4. I had an itch to game American War of Independence using Black Powder, which I bought a couple of years ago. That itch seems to have gone away.

Plans
I don't like to make resolutions, but here is some thoughts.

1. Game more.

2. Try really hard to avoid going down the rabbit hole of detailed painting and terrain building, and just get down to playing some games. It reminds me a lot of my grad school days. Students "waste" a lot of time trying to complete the perfect research dissertation. As a result, many run out of their funding before they finish.

4. I've had a terrible itch to get back into WWII naval wargaming. I am exploring rules that are quick and dirty.

5. Still trying to figure out that whole campaign dilemma. Will continue to figure out how to have a plausible campaign, but like everything else, I am not going dwell on it at the expense of gaming,

6. I noticed that I might have been working on some stuff just to put on Facebook. Not sure what this means, but I not sure I like it.

Well, that is about it. I hope those of you who are readers have a happy New Years and may 2020 be good to you and your loved ones.

What I Did on My Fall Break

No game-related activities while on my fall break. For three days my daughter and I repainted my son's bedroom. The prep time, plus running around to various DYI stores probably took two of the three days. The Soldier Room, as my kids call it, is so full of my son's stuff that there was no way I could get to my work bench even if I had time.

A Brief Update on Life

I went to China for the last two weeks in July. It was not a trip to remember. Worst part is that I ended up in the emergency room for two days almost as soon as I touched down in Chicago.

A perfect storm of overly oily food, food poisoning, extreme heat and humidity, and having to drink far more alcohol than I wanted or normally do (nothing like endearing macho drinking customs), led to jaundice and a heart arrhythmia due to dehydration. The arrhythmia seems to be under control thanks to IV bags of water + potassium, the liver thing might be a larger problem. They ruled out hepatitis, and the liver enzymes were back to normal by the time I left the hospital, but I go for follow ups with my doctor tomorrow. I'm hoping that it was due to my lack of a gall bladder, but we will see. Frankly, I am a little nervous.

Since I have come back to Tennessee, I have been puttering around the workbench a little, but I've had mostly odd handyman jobs around the house that needed attending. I had a further scare yesterday. I was looking for some tools in my garage and for some reason, I lost my balance and fell. I am still a little achy on the left side today.

I am not a super religious man, but I'd appreciate any thoughts and prayers you can send my way.

A Warm Post Over at Irishserb's Miniature Adventrures

I've been following Irishserb's blog for quite some time. He has an engaging ImagiNation campaign going on between two fictional African nations. In addition to that, he has some other gaming activities that he shares that are also good reads.

Recently, he decided to use 1/300 scale minis to play out some bigger battles between his two African nations. In a recent post, he pulls out some rather old model buildings that represent his home town of Steubenville, Ohio. It is one man's walk down memory lane. Not only are the buildings well done, but his narrative really really reflects a love and appreciation for where he grew up.  It is not often do I feel a connection with another gamer's blog post beyond the hobby itself, but this one did and you and I who read it are better for it.

Thanks Irish Serb for sharing with us.

Still Without Good Lighting

Its USTA Juniors tennis finals season, so my days have been on the road. My daughter did pretty well at the Tennessee state finals. Because of that, she was seeded for the upcoming regional games. What does that mean for gaming? Not much other than we leave Saturday rather than tomorrow. This lowered my blood pressure somewhat. I was rushing all day today trying to get ready, and then I got the news. So I managed to sneak in a little painting between packing and all the other crap I have to do to get ready to go. Packing and be completed tomorrow.

I think I solved my problem with O8 3mm infantry. They are cast in some very hard metal and the infantry come in strips.  It has been next to impossible to separate the tiny dudes without either sending one into orbit or snapping them off at the knees. So, I powered up my old Dremel tool and bought some thin cut-off disks. That did the trick! I ground down the bases between each infantry man enough to easily cut them off with a metal cutter, and they don't go flying off into the unknown!

I am still without good lighting. I borrowed a goose neck lamp from my daughter. Its a small one so it doesn't cover much area in terms of light. Also, it uses an old daylight bulb so its a sickly yellow glow. My local craft store USED to carry lights for craft purposes, but not any longer. I guess all that frew-frew junk is more important. I guess I need to order one, but I am too crazy about shipping charges. Well, with all the upcoming trips this June, I will not be really needing it until maybe July.