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.  

Rules for Interwar Air Combat

 In my previous post, I was putting assembling various aircraft for my ImagiNation interwar campaign The timeline is pretty loose, ranging from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s. I have not had a chance to work beyond gluing wings onto the biplanes, but I have been searching for a suitable rule set. I think I will go with the second edition of Too Fat Lardies' Bag the Hun. 

I considered Wings at War's Scramble for Britain. I am familiar with their game mechanics, but I would have to make up a lot of the stats for the aircraft I am interested in. Bag the Hun has pretty much all the stats I am interested in and someone on the Bag the Hun Facebook page has filled in the few gaps that there are. It seems a little more complex than I wanted, but I like all the various maneuvers a plane can make. I will need to read it over a bunch of times. I will finally get to use that felt hex gaming mat that I bought a long time ago and have never gotten around to using.

New Project or Crazy Impulse Buy?

 Many, many years ago (late 1980s), I did mini-campaign for my fictional WWII world that pitted the Soviet Union against the UK for a race to take over Iran for its oil resources. It used mainly early war tanks and equipment. I altered the geography such that there was more seaway. That allowed for some naval battles to be fought. I had a map, but its long gone. Also, having read The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater, my brain got all going to recreate that Iran campaign though set even earlier, and expand it geographically include other foreign nations. I have been slowly building up fleets in 1/6000 scale. 

So, I started buying a bunch of 1/600 aircraft for the air combat portion of it. These guys are from Tumbling Dice Miniatures

Hawker Furies

Polikapov I-15

Henschel Hs 123

Martin B-10

The biplanes were a major pain in the arse to put together. Plus, I only got three fuselages for the Hs 123s. I did get the upper wing and even two sets of landing gear, but not the rest of the fourth plane. 

I also got the Martin B-10 bomber. I've always like slightly archaic weapons and the B-10 especially. I need to figure out what rules to use. I might use Wings at War Battle of Britain rules and make up the stats. I might even try Bag the Hun. Jim over at his Jim's Wargames Workbench has a lot of variants for these rules and I might crib some of his stats for the rules. Unlike my modern air gaming, I am less interested in detailed aircraft stats. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 4

 I finally got the statue of the lizard deity finished. Time to pack it all up and send to my friend. I had planned to make it much more "jungley" by putting a lot more plants around, but I didn't want to obscure some of the details on the sides of the base. Plus, I was starting to get burned out on making it and just wanted it finished.

I enjoyed making the statue and I learned a lot, but I think I need a break. It was very time consuming and as I said above, I was getting rather burned out. Hopefully for the next challenge, we will just stick to miniatures. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 3

 I am moving along on my part of the challenge. I hope to be done this week. I leave Saturday or Sunday (weather permitting) for the beautiful state of Kansas and I won't be back until them following Saturday or Sunday (weather permitting). It's a road trip to visit some natural history museums and to hopefully visit some friends that are still out there. Renting a car is a LOT cheaper then flying and then renting a car. I hope the bean counters at my college appreciate this. Other than the weather, I am somewhat apprehensive about the drive. I used to do this sort of long distance thing (about 13 hours), but that was when I was young. Anyways, I want to wrap this project up and send it to my friend.

As I said in part 2, there needs to be some sort of scenic piece to go with the figurine. I decided on a statue of some Lizardman deity. My sculpting abilities are crap and it shows, but I figure that monumental sculpture is not a hallmark of Lizardman culture. 

Most of it is made of polymer clay that is slathered over the an aluminum foil armature for the statue and a block of wood for the pedestal. Most of the bas-relief lizard heads were also sculpted from polymer clay, but for a couple of them, I experimented with Green Stuff. The whole thing rests on some foam core board where I removed one side of the paper. That in turn sits on top of a base made of a scrap of vinyl flooring from our first, pre-flood floor. We have lots of that in our garage. With the except of the pedestal to the foam core, everything is glued to each other with E6000 glue. Its strong but it would have melted the foam board. As of right now, I am at the stage where I need to put some ground cover on the base, paint and then add some sort of foliage. Since this is the first time I'm making something like this, I am not going to make it overly ruin-like. I'm heading to Walmart today to pick up a prescription and might see if there are some cheap aquarium plants to use. We had some plants from an old aquarium but when I picked it up, they fell apart. 

Stay tuned for the final installment!

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: My Friend's Entry Arrived

 I got a package at my door and I was expecting it to be my mother's annual chocolate Easter bunnies for the kids. Instead, it was my friend Chris' entry. While I have been slowly moving along on my lizardman, he got his done. Here is some quick pictures right out of the box.

Well done! Spurs me on to complete my diorama.

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 2

 Here he (she?) is. Turned out better than I thought it would. The figure's base had flagstone-like rocks sculpted into it, so I extended that theme onto the larger base using rocks made out of polymer clay.

Now, the challenge is not over! We decided to add some sort of terrain to go with the figure. I'm not sure what Chris is going to make, but I am thinking along the lines of some sort of totem/alter. I've been looking at various examples from the Warhammer universe for inspiration.