Chocobos Work in Progress

I have been occupied with battling my health insurance company to pay for a least some of my hospital visit of three weeks ago. They seem to think dehydration, jaundice, and a heart arrhythmia are no big deal. Probably because of this, I've not been sleeping well lately. If I can't sleep, I might as well do something. That something is chocobo.

I was never a Final Fantasy fan, but it the idea of warriors riding large birds was sort of cool.

Source: www.creativeuncut.com

Then, there is Taarna the warrior riding on her bird-pterosaur-creature from the movie Heavy Metal:

So, I decided to make my own chocobos, but it took me a long time to start this project. I'm not breaking any new ground here. A gamer has his own avian army, which gave me some inspiration.

This is what I've done so far:

I used Splintered Light Miniatures' terror birds for the steeds. The riders are Essex Miniatures Tartar light bowmen. I had to pull apart the legs as much as I could, carve away some of the bird's body, and then use polymer clay for a saddle to get the bowmen to sit somewhat naturally on the bird. The bird's tack was made with glue-soaked paper. I should have made the reins thinner and they look pretty stiff, but I am not sure how else to make them. Knowing some about bird anatomy, I decided against having a bit in the mouth. Having a metal bit would probably break or damage the beak.

The next step is to paint them and then decide how I want to base them. I normally base my fantasy armies using the old WRG Ancients basing scheme, but the birds are pretty big and they don't really fit the 40mm x 30mm bases that are used for cavalry.

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.

More Fantasy 15s

My postings on this blog have really tanked. Its not that I haven't done anything hobby related, its more a matter that I have not had the time to post things.

I've been cramming, so to speak, to finish up my 15mm fantasy barbarian project. It is never going to be really finished, but I want to get to the point of, "enough with the painting!" I am at the burn out point with painting fantasy figures, and I want to get back to 6mm and 3mm gaming (emphasis on GAMING). I think I am close to that goal. Here are my recent pieces:

Barbarian Chief on Beastman Chariot

I combined a Demonworld barbarian riding on a Khurasan beastman chariot. I've been looking for some sort of fantasy chariot for the barbarian to ride and this fit the bill.

The Scarlet Sorcerer and His Minions
These I painted up for my son. With the exception of the velociraptors, which are from Khurasan miniatures, these are all a hodgepodge of figures sitting around in my storages boxes.

Scarlet Sorcerer

His hentchmen

Mounted guards

Red Ninjas

Palace guards

Pet Velociraptors

One Post for April

The end of the semester is always crazy for me. I am wrapping up school, but seems like my kids' activities have tripled. I have been doing a lot of painting, but I don't have time to sit down and record things on my blog.

I've been working really hard to complete these fantasy figures, but I think I reached burn-out on them, and want to get back to the microarmor universe. I started a little fantasy, side project. My son Ivan has a number of invisible friends. Don't worry, he knows they are pretend. When he has a hard time going to sleep, I tell him these stories about the adventures of King Ivan and his knight friends. The stories are pretty bad, but I try to inject some sort of moral to the story. He's been goofing around with my figures and having little battles involving King Ivan's army versus the evil Red Wizard and his army of ninjas. So, I thought I would paint up some of the characters. I'm far from finished. Here is King Ivan's standard bearer:

I can't remember off the top of my head who makes this guy other than its an Italian company. My son loves penguins and wanted the king's coat-of-arms to be a penguin. I've got a trumpeter also finished and I'm still working on the king and the evil red wizard. I used to be pretty good at painting coats-of-arms onto shields and such, but my eye sight was a lot better and my hands were less shaky than now. I have some ninjas on order and once I get them and paint them up, I will take a break from the 15mm fantasy for awhile and get back to moderns.

Thoughts about Campain Maps

I hope this does not bore you, but I am thinking out loud here. Maybe some of you have thought about this too.

I am building my final touches on my campaign map for my Bovatopian campaign. I am not really ready to post it, but a few things that I am working on/struggling with. What I have been very deliberate as I put together this map is the need for geographical locations to be strategically important. This is the problem with my map of Gambusia. I really didn't make it with a strategic game in mind. Here are some issues that I now see with my Gambusian map:

1. Lines of Communication
Wikipedia defines lines of communication as the routes that connect an operating military unit with its supply base. First, and probably the most major problem is that there are too many lines of communication in the form of roads and to a lesser extend railroads. Armies of both sides can easily bypass various towns or cities. Urban centers have no strategic significance in terms of blocking or cutting off the enemy, or keeping lines of communication open. The only urban centers that are important are the capitals of the opposing nations.

2. Cities and Towns
In addition to too many roads, there are way too many cities and towns. It is likely that the two are related. Too many cities and towns leads to too many roads.

3. Reasons for Naval Operations
When I started my Gambusian campaign I envisioned having naval battles as well as land and air battles. I've come to notice that the two main antagonists share such a long border that there doesn't seem to be a need for any naval battles, other than some of the islands that could be contested. I suppose the two nations can blockade each other to keep supplies from coming in, but because the ports are on opposite ends of each nation, there'd be too much risk involved for each nation to set up a blockade.

How to fix the problems? Look at board games
Sadly, I got rid of many of my old Avalon Hill games a long time ago, however, I stated looking at those that I do have to see how I can set up strategically-important lines of communication. I do have VASSAL installed on my computer, though I've never figured out how to use it. I can pull up the digital versions of old wargames and see how they do things. I am using the Bovatopia campaign to resolve these issues. When I am happy with Bovatopia, I will then redo Gambusia.

Standard of the High King

Demonworld Thain standard of the High King. Now produced by Ral Partha Europe.

Gnolls

I am still busy painting fantasy figures. Here are my latest: Gnolls (Hyaenamen) from Splintered Light Miniatures. Originally, I bought the gnoll warband, but it turned out that they are the same as their Hyaenamen line, so I bought more to build a larger army than what you get from the warbands.

Rank and File

I used a Raw Sienna craft paint followed by a highlight of raw sienna and Vallejo flesh color for the highlights. I think did my usual black ink wash.

Standard Bearer

The standard was kind of boring. Its just two sticks with some feathers hanging from it. So I found some 25mm plastic skulls in a bin box. There were from Fortress Figures and I had used them on the stands for my 28mm Terminator miniatures. I drilled a hole and the bottom of the skull and glued it on. Looks much better than before!

Leader & Drummer

Apparently, Gnolls have a matriarchal society. Just to be different, I gave the general blonde hair. I couldn't tell if her top was made out of cloth or skins or was an armor breastplate. I chose the armor route.

Shaman

The shaman is my favorite of the bunch, at least I think she is painted the best. I didn't want them to have an African theme, but I wanted a little more to her and the general's outfits. I did a cheetah or leopard spotted outfit for both. I think the shaman's turned out better than the leader's. I have no clue what her staff has on the top of it, so I went with copper. 

I have a lot more to go including more rank & file, archers, some elite female warriors, and some riders mounted on large hyaenas. However, I'm kind of getting burnt out on fantasy painting. Also, I noticed that I seemed to be painting stuff as quick as possible to put up on the Facebook 15mm fantasy page. I guess its an inducement to get a lot painted, but at the same time, I wonder if I'm rushing through just to post stuff up on Facebook; bowing to social media as it were.