Kobolds: There A Little Bit Like Gremlins

Kobolds. I love Kobolds. What they lack in strength and resilience, they make up for by large numbers, being small target and being sneaky, tricksy little gits. They are, in my opinion, one of the best bad guys in D&D (which may not be saying a lot as I am not a fan). Not powerful, but good enough to keep the players thinking.

I was doing some tidying up I found the box with them in. They are very old Citadel minis from back in the days when they were a fun company to deal with. I saw some pictures of them in a flyer I got in my first Citadel order and wanted some. I could only find two at the time and the poverty of being a teenager meant that I didn't get any more. I got a single kobold in a box of D&D plastic figures. One badly sculpted kobold was not going to be enough. Then I found five resin ones from Reaper. Nice, but very D&D and something totally un-Viking, which is my particular flavour. Then I managed to order a load more on eBay. So now I have just short of fifty. So I painted them up a while back.

For the Viking game, kobolds are perfect. My arch villain needs needs minions and I could not have made these guys any more minion like if I had painted them yellow and given them goggles and dungarees. In Savage Worlds they are small, swift rather than sneaky but sneaky is all down to the referee anyway. They are skilled at hit and run which always annoys the players. Which is fun.

I

Playing The Walking Dead: All Out War

I found myself with an afternoon free a little while ago so I thought about what I could do. Accidently I had watched a video about the game on YouTube about its reissue, so it was sticking in my mind. Since I bought the game mainly for the figures, the game was more or less an afterthought. From the first time I saw it online, the game game seems to have some nice ideas and and playable mechanisms.

Until the point this game out I felt that a lot of games like this had produced fairly low par minis. Whilst not the best I have ever seen, these are still pretty good. There are plenty of them. Like a lot of games, I continually think I should rebase them so that they fit with everything else I have.

As a way to get the game going, Mantic created The Road To Woodbury as a solo experience of the game. It's a game for one character that helps teach the mechanisms. It is a little dumbed down but not too much. The idea is to see whether you can get past the three zombies (and any friends they might acquire along the way) to recover the three potential resources. 

On the face of it, this is a game of three against one. Not such great odds. The way the zombies operate (the A.I. if you like) means that although it is a challenge you can win as long as you don't do anything stupid or get really unlucky.

I went on to play a couple more games. The original plan was to use these for other games. I haven't found anyone who wants to play with little toy zombies recently. Big sigh....

If you want to have a look at the figures for the game I painted them previously as part of Zomtober.

Start Of The Week

So it's Tuesday. I am still trying to figure out what happened to Monday. Sounds like a good title for a film. Yesterday was a bit of a wash. Today is not looking like it will be much better. It is all about. the Soviets. Still. So I have put another twenty Soviet infantry on the bench. I haven't got a picture of them yet as I can't get to the bench. There is no prospect these will get finished this year. It will probably be Friday before I even start them. The queue expanded last week with a couple of bargain purchases.

I got a few more bits over the weekend. There are some Robot Friends from Bad Squiddo. Although a little on the small side, I figured that they would work with the Paranoia game I am working on. This is still a ways off but I guess they have all sorts of sci-fi uses. I also got some ATS and a Scots Officer by Bad Squddo. The plan here is really for sUnderDground but I still have a Weird War Two project somewhere in the deep background. 

The immediate future is still looking fairly Soviet. I have all these shiny new Imperial Assault minis to paint. There are a number of duplicates but there are at least twenty that need painting and probably closer to thirty. There may even be a few more Imperial Assault minis coming. 

It occurs to me that I really need to up my game again. Whilst I am happy doing ten minis a week, I will get to where I want to be at the beginning of 2028. That assumes no more purchases, which, lets face it is a fairly dumb assumption. I also need to get back into the terrain building side of things.

Right now though, the week is all about family. So I better go and concentrate on that.

End Of The Week (12)+(Lots)

So I finished another twelve WW2 Soviet. It's a good job they are easy to paint. I've been board  gaming over the weekend. So not been a huge amount of time.

I made a couple of games purchases. The first was Star Wars Imperial Assault. Been after this for a while to finally found the right deal. It cost about a third of the retail price and I got a lot of extra figures too. Almost a double set with five boxed sets and a load of heroes. This may lead to a few extra purchases.

Mandi got me Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion a while back. Played it a couple of times and had a plan to buy the other boxes. This was about a sixth of the retail price. I can see a campaign coming up.

I think Imperial Assault was unsealed and aside from some of the minis being painted, it was completely unpunched and in mint condition. The Frosthaven box was a little scuffed but it was still sealed with the silica packets still in the box. This means a few more weeks have been added to the queue.

I've put a few small bits of plastic kit terrain together. Nothing major, but more is always better. Then there another batch of green stuff bits.

A good week all round.

Looking forward, next week is also going to be a bit busy. I have family staying for a few days. Not sure what impact this is going to have on the queue but I think it might be catastrophic. Well a first world catastrophe.

Midweek Mildness

I've not got much done today. Even with a plan,  the plan has gone all to cock. Not really my fault as everyone else seems to have got times wrong. So now I am having to push stuff into the one hour I have tomorrow.

Still, I got some more stuff done yesterday. I've green stuffed the joints of the last of the Athena Miniatures minis. Maybe I can get through the priming process.

Then I am working a couple of projects that need a few more bits. I have a plan for the Quar Crusader cavalry. The pack doesn't have enough rifles to attach to the ",horses". So I thought I would mould a few more. Whilst I was at it,  I thought I'd do a few more for the Sludge cavalry I have planned.

I made a little more progress on the Soviets for the week. These are not finished. There are four more colours to do. These are not big coverage areas and aside from the flesh are mostly fairly simple. There is a good bet I won't get them completely finished as the next four days look like they will be manic. In fact the next week is looking a bit manic.

Today has had a fun afternoon though. First day of school. So things, in the week after next should get back to normal.

Life Is Good In The UK

I had a strange experience today. Stranger still is that I was in Blackpool for the last day of my daughter's summer holidays. I wanted her to have some fun and something to remember when she rolls up at school in the morning.

Despite giving her the chance to go to the Pleasure Beach, she wanted to go to one of the piers. She always does. It's usually the waltzers she wants to go on. If you knew her, you would understand that this is a lot funnier than it sounds.

Blackpool is a strange place. A northern sea side town that is perhaps a little past it's prime. But then it has an iron tower that looks a lot like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It's usually windy and it seems to rain there more often than anywhere else I know. It has had a few problems but it's not a bad place. In fact it's got nothing but happy memories for me.

So my daughter goes on a ride. I get more enjoyment out of watching her go nuts with excitement than I do going on a ride. But for one I did get a demand for a command performance. 

So I am spinning around. There is a bit of a buzz from my daughter's reaction, I am enjoying it but I am also grateful that I have some good painkillers. 

None of this is the strange bit. As I am spinning around. Life, is pretty good in the UK. The last few years have been a problem for me. Hell the last decade feels like it has been one crisis after another. Today was different. 

Life in the UK seems to get a bad rep at the moment. Mostly by my fellow Brits. As I am spinning around I thought that most of my concerns are in the "first world problem" category. Whilst spinning around it struck me that this is a good day, in a decent day in one of the best countries in the world. Life is pretty good.

Regrets? Well there are always regrets. The only one I could really come up with was perhaps I shouldn't have had fish and chips before going on the ride.

Start Of The Week - It's Storming

So the Soviet storm continues. The work bench, not in Ukraine. Yes I know the current are not Soviets. It wasn't much of a joke to start with. I am hoping for a little more success on the table top than the current Russians manage, well anywhere. I am feeling slightly bad about painting these guys because of Ukraine. So even if I lose on table top, I probably won't feel too bad. Unlike the Russians, I have a tactic so I am hopeful they will do okay.

It's looking like a busy week again. Alhough today is looking fairly open, the long weekend ahead is looking busy. I'm not confident I will finish these this week. If I don't, they will get finished next week. Which is also looking busy. I may not even get to the bench despite being at home.

My plan was to do ten minis this week. I've ended up with a dozen. The army has several types of headgear. Each calls for a different paint job with different paints. When it comes to batch painting, the only way to paint an army, my batches look at painting similar figures together. So I have done almost the troops with helmets and this week it's mostly the minis with ushankas. Then it will be the pilotkas, the standard Soviet side cap.

If this do go to plan, I have a follow on. I'll put the rest of the Quar Crusader cavalry dismounts together. Like I say, I could do with building up a bit of a seasonal buffer for primed minis. Winter is coming. Although when I look outside it seems more like monsoon season. Having had a couple of months of brown plants, everything looks really green at the moment. The background projects are likely to stay in the background.