Defining Moments For Me In The Gaming Hobby Part Two

So I thought I would look at the games and what has influence my gaming life in adulthood. See what you think?

When I started my degree I met up with Jim and we played a lot of Traveller. Jim's other love was 6mm WW2. He had Brits and Germans and plenty of other stuff but no Americans. So I embarked on a crusade of trying to be able to play just about every formation which I failed. At the time the money I spent on Heroics and Ros seemed obscene at the time. We played a lot of Command Decision, the only game I think I was ever any good at and I lost, a lot. I dipped my toe in again a few years, on a smaller scale, but using GHQ figures. Still love it.

After I started work and got my own PC I started playing UFO: Enemy Unknown but you probably know it as X-Com. This was my first computer gaming obsession. I spent days playing it. I have gone on to play this game over and over. I have completed it well over a dozen times. Although I haven't played all the games in the franchise I have played nearly all of them. This has been another crossover experience. This has become a game I want to do on tabletop.

After finishing my degree I had a fairly stable gaming group. Most of the GMing was done by Mike and Mike loved Cyberpunk. This is a game I had looked and I had read the William Gibson novels and I liked them. The system was okay and I was more into sci-fi than fantasy games so it was a win win for me. What really made the game tho was Mike. He created a great game with plenty of paranoia. It was the kind of campaign that still lives in my head and my main character in that is still one of my all time faves.

Fallout came out not long after UFO. This was another game I have played and played. I have always considered myself as a child of the apocalypse that never came. The world of Fallout would have been one that I could have carved a life out for myself, if the worst had come to the worst. I had read some post-apocalyptic books and  looked at games like Aftermath and Gamma World. This has started a lifelong love of the genre as a gaming arena.

We moved on from that to Harn. Again this was with Mike as a GM. This was another great campaign. As a team we really gelled, apart from one of the mages who had a habit of killing his mates with a crazy  powerful spell. This is a game I really brought into. My character is this was one of my most beloved. Sadly, due to player pressure it was turned into a D&D game as 3rd edition had just come out at the time. This gutted my character and the game for me. I ran it myself a couple of times and it has become one of those games that I would really like to play again.

Conspiracy X was the first real campaign I ran as an adult. Although I guess inspired by The X-Files it was it's own game. There were aliens but the main focus was on the supernatural. This game has over 50 detailed NPCs and a database of well over 600 hundred entries. I spent years of using all my gaming time devoted to this.  I had player characters from one season battle their characters from the season before. It went on for a few years and has been reborn a couple of times and had a few special one off sessions. Although I love all the stuff I have one this is the one I have the softest spot for.

Savage Worlds came along after an introduction by a friend of mine called Mark. This has become a staple of the games I have been running for over a decade. It is a great, yet simple set of rules. Given that I play in an environment where the games change frequently, it is even more ideal. It has become the backbone of the Viking Game I am running on and off and what I have aimed to convert all my other games into.

When Fallout 3 came out I was hooked. It had been a decade it more since I last played the game and I kind of missed it. It took a game that I loved and turned into an open world shooter with a lot of choices to make. I have played it through to the end multiple times and still not finished it off. The post apocalyptic vibe is still one I love. New Vegas and Fallout 4 have just reinforced that for me. This became a game I spent years trying to reproduce. The figures I have for this are all in 15mm and that hasn't really got much of a look in for a long time. I keep hoping that Bethesda is going to release another game although I guess I might be a bit hopeful.

I remember seeing a promo video for Skyrim in HMV and being hooked immediately. It is perhaps the perfect fantasy setting for a computer game and to me at least the definition of open world game. Whilst I couldn't say for certain I am pretty sure this is the individual game that I have the longest time investment in, although it may be UFO. There is just so much to do. After all this time I am still finding stuff to do in the game. There is DLC I haven't even touch yet.

Defining Moments For Me In The Gaming Hobby Part One

I thought I might give a meme another go. For a while now I have been thinking about what influenced me to be the gamer I am today. There have been a huge amount of influences over the years and I have been working out what they were. So I guess this is where I start. Well I wrote a list and figured that it was a massive piece of work so I decided  to split it into two. This part is really about my childhood. I will do a post about adult life next.

It starts with my first day at school. At nursery school I had played with some Britains toy soldiers but they hadn't really stuck with me. One of the kids in my class had brought his brothers painted Airfix Romans with him. I remember them looking really good to my five year old eyes and losing one of them down a crack in a step as we threw stones at them to knock them down. As I recall he got into a world of trouble. This is really where it all started for me.

As I got a little older I moved into  buying them myself. Mostly in the form of WW2 HO/OO figures. Over time I moved onto the 1/32nd scale stuff. I ended up with huge numbers of these. I suspect the owner of the house I grew up in is still finding them in the garden. If there is one thing that still makes me think back to my early childhood it is the box of British Paratroopers. About the only 28mm modern figures I have painted have been paras.

My later childhood was dominiated and I mean dominated by one thing alone. Star Wars. It was all I had heard about for months and it was all I ever dreamed of. Playing with the toys is a guess where I learned about narrative. There were heroes and villains and sometimes the villains were in black and white. I has been a constant in my life, I see relics of my life with this film every day.

Tunnels and Trolls was the first role-playing game I bought and I have mentioned my love of it before. I got my dad to go to Game in Liverpool which I am always grateful for. It's tongue in cheek approach still impacts what I do as a GM today. As rulebooks go, it is perhaps the one I have read the most. You just have to look at it to see how loved this book once was. It was the solo gamebooks from T&T that created the Fighting Fantasy surge of the mid eighties which was also a lot of fun.

Reading the T&T books got me into playing the games but it was seeing the citadel miniatures fantasy figures that really sold me on the who hobby. The first figures I ordered from GW had a leaflet with them. This leaflet was so well read that the paper just wore away at the folds.

The next load of GW figures I ordered came with a catalogue. This to got read and re-read. As well as all the lists of figures and pictures it had the first painting guide I had read along with types for customising figures. For me this represents a golden age of figures. It is the figures from this book that still have the biggest pul for me.

One holiday I found a shop that sold so roleplaying books so I brought the original D&D basic set. I spent the rest of the holiday creating characters and running them through The Keep On The Borderlands. Back then I kind of loved the game then but I have had a real falling out with it since. D&D, whilst it has improved, has become about selling the next book and the next, each in turn allowing the creation of stronger characters which create an unpleasant kind of arms race. What D&D did do for me was give me Imagine Magazine. This really was one of the best RPG magazines of all time and I still refer to it even now.

As part of what I was doing I kept buying wargaming magazines as that was all that was really available. As a christmas present I got some 15mm figures and I especially fell in love with the Navwar ECW. This started a love affair with not only the period but reading about the periods I love. The first Osprey books I got were about this period and I would borrow books from the library to.

In the months after that I purchased the Traveller Starter set. In the years that followed I hand generated a whole sector and did a few detailed subsectors. A few years ago I threw about a card filing system with two hundred hand generated characters. I miss them now. A decade or so ago I made it a mission, still to be completed, to collect all the classic GDW stuff and anything else I could get hold of from the classic era. It is a game I have played and run a lot. I found a fellow obsessive about the rules in Jim and we still talk about the good old days even now.

As I got more and more into sci-fi the film Alien became a big pull. I read the novel and got a books about the set and costume design for the film. I was way too young to watch the film at the time it came out but remember sneaking around to watch it late at night on the 14" black and white TV. This film caused me to create my own Traveller universe just to fulfil the fantasy. It is a series of films that I have watched a lot (well maybe not the third one...travesty). I have brought figures and played board games, role-playing games, card games and even computer games.  Whilst it isn't Star Wars it is a close second.

In the first issue of Miniature Wargames had a sci-fi ship to ship combat system. I used this ruleset to make my own game. Counters were made from cornflake packets and games were played out on a large piece of paper with a hand drawn grid. I set up the different species as different fantasy races. This is probably because I didn't have much imagination.

Whilst I was doing my A levels videos were all the rage. One of my mates rented Dawn Of The Dead. The film was a revelation. Survival and horror. It made me a life long Romero fan. It was a world I could relate to and problems that I could actually sort out. Zombie horror films became my main source entertainment for two decades. Later on computer games like Resident Evil and Dead Rising have occupied me dir many days.

This one is an odd one. 40k was a great game in its day. Sadly that day was really in 1987. It's figures were a change and I loved them at the time. The races were fantasy one and this appealed to me at the time. What was I saying about not having much imagination? It seems like I was not the only one. I spent a lot of money on the figures at the time. In many ways it was this game and the figures I painted that got me through some of my darkest teenage years. It is also a time I lament. White Dwarf had become a staple of my life and it was around this time that it, like the shops, changed into something I started not to like.

More tommorrow.

Really Not A Tabletop Post

As ever the painting of figures, specifically post-apocalypse and modern ish 28mm figures continues. My blogging mojo and my work ethic is definitely back in its right place. When I have had a moment I have been able to do a bit of writing and game prep for games that don't look like they are about to come off. Even so I enjoyed doing it. Although I have only finished the one figure today, the real world has been getting in the way and this evening has kind of blown me out of the water.

I am pretty sure I have compared what I do here to the nerd version of the book Bridget Jones' Diary, or rather I have indicated a wish for it not to turn into that kind of thing. Today, having looked at what is going on in my life I am pretty sure that I have got it all wrong. It's been a of week of hard work and disappointment and I am really hacked off with it all. The phrase "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" springs to mind.

It is time for me to make a decision about a few things. At the moment people are telling me to do one thing or the other. The next thing I know they are pulling the rug from underneath me. Now I don't know what to do. Whilst there are a number of options open to me they all require a very ballsy decision. My aim was not to gamble about my life but to ramble about it. At the moment it feels like it's about time to spin the wheel.

Workbench Update

Really not a lot to post today. I have done a fair bit but I can't say that would actually notice much unless you looked really hard. Most of what I have done would constitute thinking and that does not make for an especially interesting blog post.

I really should put some of this paint away

As part of the workbench clean up I have been putting things into various forms of storage. In the big picture a move may happen this year and I would like to be ready of it does. One of the areas that I am lacking suitable storage for is larger figures. I am mainly thinking about base size and overall height. I have a fair number of figures with 40-50mm bases and up to 60mm high. My only current plan is to build something. The current plan is to build something out of foam core and for it to be about double the height of my existing storage tray and the same overall base dimension. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.

So The End Of The Week (Is Nigh)

So I have painted some more Future Skirmish Savages and I am quite happy with them. They are nicely complicated models which have given me a whole load of ideas. Whilst I have been painting them I have also been writing up a bit of a background for them as well. I am mainly thinking about my Underground background as I have been going along. This has also inspired me to do a similar background for the Cultists I did a few weeks ago. Which in turn lead to ideas about raiders, cleansers, bygones (mutated neanderthal/chimpanzee ish throwbacks), crazies and wilders. These should all fit in with my figure painting plans. I have also been painting some other Grenadier figures. Sadly I am not so happy with them.

My plan is to get some more but money is a bit tight at the moment so I might have to put that plan off for a bit. Another five or six of the right figures would be enough to have all the savages I might want.

During the week I was doing some sorting out and found most of the rest of the Copplestone / Grenadier figures I have. I have started work on some of them and have some more for next week. This has given me a bit of a first world problem. I have started using old GW plastic bases for sci-fi stuff lately but all the older stuff is on 2p sized bases. This is kicking me in my aesthetic core.

Anyway The New Cruelty is happy. I have finished eight figures this week and there are a load of figures very close to being done. I also have some stuff I want to work on now. I have managed to get most of my health goals done with the odd near miss. I haven't spent much, if any, time playing video games this week. This has given me time to do the writing.

The post-apocalypse vibe is pulling me in again. I am looking at figures and even thinking in terms of terrain in a serious way. In part I am think about Summerland and Underground but even Fallout would be a nice game to get back into although that would have to be a different game than I originally had planned. My original game had involved a lot of big battles and I am not sure how I would manage to get hold of the number of figures (I think it was over two hundred) that I would need. That said, I have other projects on the go that I currently have figures for.

So next week is looking like more of the old Grenadier / Copplestone stuff and maybe planning some terrain.

Too Early Or Too Late - When Collections Get Out Of Hand

The clocks have gone forward and it is now officially very late. I haven't posted yet as I have been out having fun. I suspect Sunday is going to be a lazy day.

Although I have done a bit of painting today I have been mainly sorting through figures. I found a load of stuff that I thought I had lost. Along with all the stuff I have put away recently my eyes have been opened up to my collection.

The truth is I have no idea what I actually have. The amount of unpainted lead I have is obscene and the amount of plastic seems to be growing even faster. I think I need a proper storage system.  Not just for what I have painted but for the stuff that is yet to be painted/ Perhaps in general I need to review what I actually have a look at the gaps in the collection that need filling before I buy anything else.

Profound And Vivid Insights

Whilst I am prone to introspection I tend not to do I have spent a good part of the day trying to tart up some more of the old Grenadier figures in my collection. The difference I am noticing is fairly frightening. The stuff I have been repainting recent was either not painted by me or was painted twenty years ago. I was not surprised when it was a bit kack.

Today I am repainting stuff I have painted about five years ago. This was when I was first getting into painting 28mm again for the first time in years. All my painting for a long time before that had been 6mm or 15mm with the odd foray into 28mm. So I was surprised when I realised how bad my painting was five years ago. It is almost easier to recover the stuff that is twenty years old.

Now I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I am quite pleased about how far I have come on my skill building journey. On the other hand I am a little disappointed in myself. I thought I had more talent. Now as I recall it I did push through the painting queue at the time because I had a game to run. I have to say that I thought I had done better back then.

Anyway, I found some foam trays. For months I have been after buying more foam trays. Now I have found ten empty ones. This means that I have finally got somewhere safe to put most of the figures I have painted. This has made me think about some of the large figures I have painted later. This might be a project for the near future.

Detailing And Moving Onto The Next Project

The Future Savages are doing okay. They don't seem to have gotten especially more detailed but I seem to have worked on them for ages.

Perhaps I have spent too much time trying to figure out what to do next. The background projects are still there but they are not really keeping my interest. There are plenty of figures available to paint but most of them are part of what I expected to be much bigger projects. I have a Skaven Blood Bowl Team but I am missing a load of players so I don't want to start it.

So I went ambling around trying to find some more storage space and I found some more Grenadier figures (and a few Foundry figures as well). These were painted quite a while ago. More recently than some of the other Grenadier figures I have put up on the blog. So I guess that I am looking at some more repaints. I seem to remember doing them in a hurry about five years ago. I am hoping that they will look okay with a bit more work and hopefully my skills have improved a little. At the time I was painting almost exclusively 15mm figures and I have learnt a lot about painting 28mm since.

Tomorrow I am hoping to finish off the Savages and more onto at least some of the above figures.

Blogging Mojo

My blogging mojo seems to be back. Last year I posted almost every day and on average just a little over once per day. This year started with an ambitious plan which has been a little less auspicious. I am starting to see a bit of a turn around and I started to think about how and why. So I thought about how I was doing this and I thought I would share it with you.

I initially started with a much smaller plan. Most years before 2017 I have had a month where I have gone out to write a blog post every day. This was down to having a reason to do it. One year I posted very little across the year. In 2015 I had the sum total of 25 posts. My plan became that in one month in 2016 I would do more posts than I had done in the previous year. This gave me a great feel good effect. Things dropped off for a bit after that but I still ended up doing three times as many posts that year as I had done the year before. I think the key here is small, achievable goals and follow this up with other small achievable goals. In 2017 the plan became to do the same thing in January. Then it became a few more months, and a few more. Then it got to a nice round number of posts. Swapping and changing all the while.

As part of what I have been doing I created a challenge for myself which I ended up calling The New Cruelty. This gives me, amongst other things, a minimum number of figures to paint every week and an intention to play at least one game per week. This gives me something to blog about. If there is always progress, then there is always something to look at and talk about.

This year has been hard because I knew it was going to be difficult to top last years numbers. If you are having a similar problem then learn to accept it. It is what it is. Find a way to do something without over facing yourself and keep doing it. What I have done has taken a bit of time to work up to it. I am not sure I will keep up the almost daily posting but I am looking to post much more often. Maybe you want to take smaller steps if not baby steps.

Over the years I have suffered from what I call Project Fatigue. In terms of what I paint, I like to mix up what figures are on the bench. If there is a painting event I might get involved in that to, especially if it is of interest to me and it's not something I would paint all the while. This keeps me interested in what I am doing. Chopping and changing might not work for you if you really like one area of the hobby. However you may wish to reframe that if you are painting an army or armies. You might just want to doing something a bit different, chopping and changing to keep you interest up. Another way is to have what I call Background Projects. Figures that are not really my main focus but fulfil one of my over all goals. They are there when I fancy a break or I end up with too much paint on the palette. This gives me other options too blog about.

Having specific things going on during the week is always a big help. In the last few years I have had a regular game night and spent some time at the local FabLab. This gives me something else to do and a whole wealth of subjects to talk about.

Future Savages

These are more of the old Grenadier (Mirliton/Moonraker) Future Skirmish Savages. I have decided that I really like the aesthetic and thought about getting some more. When I worked out what this would cost (along with what I would order from Copplestone) the cost came out to well over £300 for about 200 figures. So not a project for this year and the apparent shortages of funds.

The figures have progress nicely. I am already at the ink stage and have a few more colours to do. Then on to the highlighting. So currently reasonably confident that these will be finished before the week is out. Then it would be a case of working out what to move onto next.

Beginning The Process All Over Again

So I have eight figures from the old Grenadier Future Skirmish range to repaint. Not happy about the fact that they are repaints but I am hoping that might make it easier. Last week's experience says that there are pros and cons, maonly cons.

I like the figures and the Mark Copplestone sculpting vibe in general. Obviously there is plenty in this range and a lot of almost identical stuff in the Copplestone Castings Range. There is enough choice of figures for me to do a lot of what I want. I can see me revisiting these figures in the near future.

These figures should not take too long, at least I hope so. As my plan has been  to clear my work bench I wasn't expecting there to be too much to do. It is clear that I am already developing a whole load of new background projects to fill in any gaps I might have.

End Of The (Most Productive) Week

This week has not really been about  painting 28mm miniatures. It's been about  me finishing of what I have started. Whilst i haven't finished off every half paint figure on the bench, I have come pretty close. Some are abandoned rather than finished but not in bad condition all the same.

A couple of years ago I got these Grenadier tribal type figures from a bring and buy. There are fifteen of them in all so these are the first batch. I am not generally a big fan of repainting figures but I thought at the time I could maybe strip them. Upon close inspection I thought that the paint might be enamel so I decided against it. Repaints rarely turn out especially well (see the Grenadier figures a few weeks ago) but these didn't turn out especially badly. From a distance they look okay.

The Blood Bowl Troll has been sat around since the beginning of last year. I have fiddled with it every now and again. So in the spirit of what I am doing I decided to add some finishing details. I could go a lot further with this figure but I think it is time to call it a day.

There is a whole load of scatter terrain to finish off from earlier in the week. This is what I have finished so far. Most of this is relatively recent although I think the well was brought in the mid nineties. Some is Ainsty, some Scotia, some Midlam and some Ristul Market. Just glad to have them done really.
The stone monster (golem or construct) is a Reaper Bones mini. I have painted one of these before. It's a nice easy paint job. I got this at the last show I went to in December.

The de-bearded carrion crawlers came from a D&D boardgame that I got at a fete for a pound a couple of years ago. Realistically I think these were the only two figures worth having from the set and I suspect the rest of the game, with maybe the odd exception. The type of plastic is a bigger to paint but I have learnt a few new tricks since starting on this.

I painted four actual fantasy miniatures this week. Three dwarves and a human priest. The dwarves are two from Midlam and one from Northstar and I think the cleric is from Gripping Beast. Some of these were not actually on the bench and the blacksmith and king had only been started recently but in my head they still count. I guess none of these are more than three years old.

The Ver'men (not Skaven) priest was started this week. I found myself with some paint to spare. Just a quick no frills paint job. I have a few more of these guys hanging around and I am not sure that I am that inspired to paint them but I can see them on the bench already. I think I got these last year or the year before.

Finally there are four Cold War Miniatures zombies. Nice minis but a little bit small compared to some. They do however fit with a lot of newer minis and you cannot fault them for character. The figures are probable ten plus years old and have been on the bench for at least five years.

As far as The New Cruelty goes this has been my best week for ages. I would argue that I have completed the equivalent of twenty five figures this week. I have done a fair bit of exercise this week including my first 5k run in over 7 years. I have kept up on the less vigorous exercise and kept to my step count. I have played one boardgame and I have even managed to do a blog post every day this week, for the first time this year I think. The New Cruelty is satisfied. Ish.

There Was A Reason For This Post

I remember waking up with a really good idea for a post this morning. I should have written it down.

The day has worked out quite well and I think I am getting closer to my eventual painting goal for the week. At close of play today I am pretty relaxed about there being almost no half painted figures on the workbench. Oddly, I am less relaxed because I have no clear plan for the next project. This morning I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what to do next. Having gone through all the figure storage draws I have, I drew a complete blank.

Despite saying I was going to finish everything off before starting something else I have found another three figures to paint. Both had kind of been started but almost nothing had been done. They did get finished very quickly although they were easy paint jobs really. To be honest I am not sure if they spoke to me or I just had some spare paint that suited them so I started them.

Currently I am wracking my brains for what to do next. I went back on the blog to look for my annual The Plan post from last year yesterday. This is turning into a somewhat frugal year for me. So no new figures and all I see are figures that I want to buy.

So the current plan is I have some more of these old Grenadier (now Mirliton) tribal figures to re-paint. I did think about striping them but I am never sure that this is a good idea having had a couple of very bad (read costly and psychically painful) experiences with stripping figures so I have stick with the repaints. My plan for the was originally for the Fallout game. The game has a number of tribal groupings which are essentially native American on origin but not exclusively so. These figures give a nice evocation of that. The plan had been to get some Apache figures from Artizan. I already have a few of them but wanted to do a bit of conversion as well to make them look more the part. Another game I have worked on was a game set in a post-apocalyptic London called Underground and these figures would be perfect for that. Maybe Titansgrave as well.

This all got me back to one of my biggest problems at the moment, admittedly it's a first world problem. I don't have the time for it and I don't have any regular people to play with. Most of my inspiration comes from playing console and PC games and, thanks the the missus, my console has been disconnected since November. My head is constantly flowing with ideas for games and they all want to come out but there is currently no outlet for it.

Maybe I should get back to Fallout or some form of post-apocalypse gaming. Over the years I has really been my first love. Fantasy RPG is good and I like my Viking Game  but it's the events after a disaster that make my RPG mojo let loose.

So, after a little bit of using the blog as therapy, maybe I will get back to dealing with the apocalypse then.

Blood Bowl - Doom Lords

Blood Bowl is definitely one of my favourite games. Board games and figures and almost certainly the odd death....what  more could a tabletop gamer want.

There are many blood bowl players out there who love a nice friendly game with a certain amount of strategy. I am partial to this on occasion to. The teams that have been brought out so far are all about the finer points of the game and may even on occasion wish to pass the ball. This is what my games used to be about when I used to play older editions of Blood Bowl. Skaven, various elves, dwarves, humans and even orcs have a few options on attacks and defence and I would make the most of all of them.

This all stopped when I played a game with a Chaos team. Offence is all about the grind. Put almost all your players in a cage and push on through. Defence is all about the grind. Hit em. Hit em. Hit em again. The trouble is my old Chaos team looks a little small compared to the new figures.

But is looks like they are coming. The Doom Lords are on their way. Sadly there isn't much detail out there yet but I remain hopeful. I would guess it will be another sprue of six with probably 2 chaos warriors and 4 beastmen. There may be a bit of variety in there.

Just So I can Have Something To Aspire To

28mm figure painting is my life at the moment Not much else is getting a look in, not tabletop and not console or PC gaming. This last couple of weeks has really been about tidying up my work bench. Well more about putting on some final details so I can clear the piles of figures that are either outstanding for some time or just need a few details finishing off. Some of these figures have been on the bench for more than four years. I guess if I had a more immediate use for them they would have been done ages ago.

Anyway I thought about doing a bench clear up. And this is what happened. This is as tidy as the bench is ever likely to be so I thought I would put a picture on the blog to remind me. That said this pictures was taken four days ago.

And four days later...

New stuff is already starting to creep in not to mention the fact that I am already getting close to not being able to see the bench again.

RIP Stephen Hawking

It's amazing how quickly bad news circulates the globe these days. At the first hint of bad news it is there staring at you on a news feed somewhere. before you know it, even Wikipedia has been updated, usually before the news has had chance to sink in.

Most of my inspirations, I will use that word rather that heroes, have been science fiction writers. But there are a few scientists out there that have had a big impact on me. I guess the first physics book I read, other than a textbook at school, was A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking. The book was everywhere in the late eighties and a book I read for kicks, rather than studying for my degree. Over the years I have read a few more of his books including The Universe In A Nutshell and A Briefer History of Time.

Physics was not really my thing in school, but over the decades I have become more and more interested in it. Most of this is down to Mr Hawking. More than physics, he was a force for good in the world and never missed the opportunity for a moment of fun it would appear. So it is sad to hear that he has died today. I can think of few really great minds in my lifetime and he is really the only one who springs to mind when I think about the word genius.

Early Work

I got a bit of time this morning and I finished off a few details on some scatter terrain for my fantasy RPG games. I have moved on to other stuff now but much of that is getting close to being finished.

I think the chests are from Midlam Miniatures, the logs are from Ristuls Extraordinary Market and the other stuff is from Ainsty Castings.

All Over Again

This is going to be a week of change. Hectic, painful but ultimately for the best. Still the week begins again, all over again. Here is what is on the table. I don't expect to finish it all but I remain hopeful.

I have already managed to finish off some terrain pieces and perhaps one figure with a few more fairly close. My plan, to only work on what was on the bench has kind of waivered with a couple of extra figures now on the table. I am hoping that these will be quick wins.

So as with any busy week, it has started off with a plan that I have kind of broken already, I am expecting it to be a productive week.

End Of The Week All Over Again

This week has all been about desk clean up. I have an unspoken rule that nothing new hots the bench until everything that is on it is complete. I have already managed about a dozen figures in the week and have finished off a few more over the weekend.

The Frostgrave soldiers are a bit of a let down. Aside from being tiny compared to everything else (including the metal Frostgrave stuff) they haven't turned out quite so well. The word I am thinking is abandoned rather than finished. There are a few nice details on them but in the main I am say "Meh" to myself over and over.

The Reaper giant demon is a much better proposition. I really like the figure and can see a few uses for it. In general I like the reaper bones range. The detail is good (as good as the metal figures) and of course the price is right.

The remaining two human figures are also Frostgrave miniatures. All of these have been hanging around since I got the Nickstarter. The one on the middle bottom row has been on the bench is various states of incompletion for over two years no. I did not find either of these two figures especially interesting to paint. They have turned out alright though.

So in the round for the week that is 18 figures down. In my way of thinking the demon is probably the painting equivalent of 3 figures and the ogre/giant orc/goblin is about two. So call that 21 figures for the week. The New Cruelty is very satisfied.

To be honest it's been a crap week for me. One element of my job has come to a head and that looks like it's about to resolve itself but not in a good way. This has meant I have been really busy and I suspect that I am now going to be skint for a while as well.  In general it has been a week full of arguments and upset and the fact today has been mother's day has really not helped me out. So all in all I am hoping for a better week next week but I am not extremely hopeful.

Progressing Nicely

I haven't had that much time this week. Real life seems to be getting in the way of the fun stuff. Most of the work here has been finished a couple of days ago. As all of these figures have been sat on the bench for ages, and gathering dust, so to me this is an all round win.

So as far as The New Cruelty goes, I am calling this about a dozen complete (thanks to the big guy). This makes it another week where I have hit my painting target and then some. With a bit of luck I will get a few more finished off.

Back To Work

The stated goal of the week is to have a workbench clearout. Anything that is part painted is fair game. Let's face it, if it's on the bench it's also fair game. Hopefully the five dark age figures I am working on will be at the top of the list for completion. So starting as I mean to go on.

I got this Reaper Bones figure lat year. Although it's kind of a demon, in my game it is a big fire giant. There are plenty of smaller demons and even a larger demon in the collection so I was tempted to do him as something else but he really does look demonic so I guess not. Although there is some paint on the details, the skin tone is mainly ink. I found a mix of red and orange gave a nice looking and solid colour. There is also a bit of purple in then for shading and more on the scaly back.

So the dark age figures have been tinkered with but they were not exactly the only thing I have looked at today. I have attended to a few details but they are not substantially closer to being finished than they were before.

Summerland - The RPG That Got Away From Me.

A while back I did a list of the best RPGs that I have played. This had the emphasis on the word "played". There was one game that has fascinated me since it came out called Summerland. It was a great narrative game. This made it a difficult thing for me to get my players involved in. Most like a good narrative but they don't like playing games that are not heavy with stats. So this became a game I loved but could not play. If anything I became a bit of a fanboy about it. I spent some time trying to recreate it with Savage Worlds but never quite got there.

The premise is that the world has suffered an apocalypse called "The Event". Somehow it was caused by nature itself called The Sea Of Leaves which appeared overnight. One day people woke up and the world was a forest. The forest emitted a strange siren like summoning known as The Call that called people into the woods permanently changing them. Most ended up subject to it and were effectively lost forever. Some became a darker version of themselves and some were twisted into something else altogether. Even those not taken by it straight away were vulnerable and almost anyone staying in the forest too long was taken by it. Those with a survived found that it was possible to resist The Call if they had a strong human connection.

A few were able to resist The Call. Their past history was always full of traumas and this in some way makes them immune and they can travel through the forests. There is still danger for them but The Call is not as strong. However, their traumas and the nature of the world mean that they can never stay anywhere for long assuming that their mental or emotional traumas were not by themselves enough to cause people to drive them out. The people of the world call the Drifters and they wander from settlement to settlement trying to find a way to heal themselves. This is the role of the PCs.

This is a world full of dangers. Settlements are always a place of risk and reward. There are often people within communities who are far more damaged than the players. Other drifters pose all sorts of mundane dangers to the players. Then there are The Lost, those that have succumbed to The Call and The Wild who have lost their grip on reality and become completely feral. The world is also populated by a variety of unusual and unnatural animals which have become twisted by the ramifications of The Event. Darker still are the spirits and the ghosts that inhabit what is left behind.

As backgrounds go Summerland is fairly lightweight. Whilst there is an incredible amount of ideas within the game, it is very much open to how a GM wants to run it. When and where the game takes place is pretty much down to the person running it. Likewise, what you take

So why am I bringing this up now? Well a second edition is up on Kickstarter and I am just loving the idea. It has been converted to the Open D6, the system of the original Star Wars game. Having given the game a system more amenable to players, I can now run a game of it. There are a lot of ideas floating around in my head and it would appear the designer is about to release a lot of Kickstarter freebies along with it.

End Of The (Disappointing) Week

Well I have managed to achieve my targets this week and a few more. I have managed to finish nine old Grenadier. The final results were a little disappointing. I really don't feel much like showing the pictures. Whilst I am calling them finished I am thinking the operative word is abandoned.

There are a lot of figures hanging around the bench. This is mainly down to details on bases needing to be finished. So today I have made an effort to finish them off. This means that the bench now looks comparatively clear.

So onto the goals for next week. The plan is to continue with the bench clear up. There are a lot of part-finished background projects to finish and there is still some more basing to do. Now I have the five part finished figures I talked about the other day. These are the aim for the week. With a bit of luck I will get some more done. I am hoping that I might do some more basing and priming as well.

It's Proving To Be A Far From Steller Week

Not the worst week in my life but I have been unhappy about the way a lot of things are going with my hobby life. This is the third attempt at this post as I have been blue screen of death'ed twice. I lost a whole load of work on my Viking game as well which I have had to redo. Mainly though, it's the painting.

Still work in progress

I started the week with a simple plan. There are nine figures, mostly part painted and what was left only needed a few bits doing to them. Having finished ten old Grenadier figures last week, I had some others that had been hanging around for years. As well as a few more soldiers, there were some agents and a couple of armed civilians. Most in a part painted state and the others were primed black. Experience tells me that figures primed black do not end up well but they were that way when I got them. So rather than create problems I opted to keep them in a black uniform. To be honest I haven't been overjoyed with the results. Still tomorrow is another day and I am hoping that I can bring them around.

But there is a limit to how much you can polish somethings

It is a little bit therapeutic in a way. These figures have been float around for a long time (1990 I am thinking) and whilst I was given some of these, I think they all came from the same shop about the same time. Because they are fairly generic I can see a lot of uses for them. Modern is the most obvious use but things like Fallout, Titansgrave, Shadowrun, Conspiracy-X and any number of post-apocalypse and sci-fi backgrounds are also out there.

There are some other figures on the bench which I have also been playing around with. My secondary focus has been on these fantasy/dark age miniatures for the King/Skyrim game. I think one is Gripping Beast and the others are Westwind. Although there is still some work to do, I am much happier with these than the Grenadier stuff.