(Painting) The Black Cats of Millie

I'm proud to say that my daughter Millie came down to visit.   My daughter Maja is the older one, the gamer, the convention attendee, the game master.  Millie is the basketball junkie, the animal lover, and its been more than six months since I got to spend quality with just her...

I picked her up from an event at a friend in the former neighborhood, and we set off for food on a later Saturday afternoon, to find everything crazy.  We finally resorted to the dining section of a local pizza joint down the street from my apartment.   Buffalo Chicken Pizza, fries, and self-serve fountain drinks?   No complaints from me.  

Right behind Millie's shoulder was a bank of bubble gum and other vending machines, mostly the classic capsule/egg dispensers.  Quarters were acquired... and dug out of the door of my car, and she tried out most of them.  

I don't remember giving into these machines when she was a kid, so as I watched her go through capsule after capsule of the barnyard animals machine, just because she saw one with a cat in it, which meant there had to be others to it, I went through my own version of PTSD with the NFL helmets and a collection of Houston Oiler and Creamsicle orange Tampa Bay Buccannears no matter what machine she used.

When we got home, she took matters into her own hands, taking multiples of frogs, elephants, and capybaras and made three black cats. 

Red Panda for original sample.

Now I might have to break out blood bowl or something similar for some giant game with all these critters running around.

(Painting) All My Ducks in a Row

One thing that has made me keep my opinions to myself about the kids schooling, is the fact that they they do give the kids a dive into home ec, shop, and stem-adjacent activities.  Both have used 3-D printing in class.  Maja used it in a design presentation for a marketing mini-course, and Millie... Millie was just being Millie.  

This year's computers overview course in junior high had a portion on 3-D printing.  One day, as I Ubered her between practices, she handed me a little duck form, obviously printed.    The next time, I got another, then another, then, as that block of instruction finished, she handed me three more.  Each student was supposed to have the machine print off one of half-dozen designs.  The rules be damned, every time there was downtime in class, she slide another into the queue.  

And before she moves to Upstate New York at the end of the month, I handed her a minis case with the six complete.

The stl files were pretty chunky, too much to file down, but they were also not to bad when compared to some other pieces we've acquired.  

In the Queue: Gnomes,  Lots of Terrain for Carf, and two amusing men.

(Painting of Millie) Rarity from My Little Pony #Wizkids

 I had the good fortune this weekend to see my eldest daughter Maja, perform in two showings of Willy Wonka.  Friday into Saturday I had Millie, and had a happy mixture of watching basketball, Christmas shopping, and in a rare act, yelling at Dunkin' employees who had misplaced my order not once, not twice, but thrice!  Time to go back to the local donut shop...

Oh yeah, Millie and I got painting time.  A decent portion of that time devolved into Millie cleaning the accumulated crud in the caps of my craft paint bottles, but she did finally finish the second of her WizKids My Little Pony miniatures.

Here's Rarity, 

Her Jackson Pollock technique remains strong, and while we had no good concept for the base, breaking out some of my "Objective Jewels" for the base seems like a good direction.  Of course, I put them on the base before spray sealing them, but they are just white glued on.  I'll probably research some different options for her (diamond patterns, etc), but I'll probably just Zap-A-Gap fresher, shinier jewels on.

(Painting) A Full Haunting of the Irish Ghost Brigade for Gnome Wars

Maja managed to knock out the original group of Irish Ghosts for her Gnome Wars game, but I was quite impressed with Millie's performance knocking out the remaining Irish I had in my collection.  I'm not saying this unit will ever see the light of day at an HMGS conventions (Can pots of gold be ghostly?).  Perhaps it's time to write up some rules.   

Millie was over for a solo weekend of quality time with dear old Dad and jumped at the opportunity to use the new painting bench.

Millie awesome contribution

Stanton's Irish Ghost Brigade

Still used a variant of the "Ghost Juice" videos from YouTube, with the lighter ghost glow taking over the bases of the newly painted figures.  Definitely thinking about the fantasy figure bin and finding some ghostly figures to keep applying this technique on. 

In the Queue: Death Planet Iota sort of has the feel between Sakar from Thor Ragnarok and the Void from Loki,so whle my figure selection is appropriately random, so is a random group of new terrain.  Gnome Wars, Star Wars, Pulp, OGRE, and possibly some Stargrave to sweeten the pot.

Project 350: A bump up as more stuff gets finished for future community project:  502 (310/192)  from 501 (319/182)

(Painting) The Irish Ghost Brigade for Gnome Wars

Here they are, hopefully the surprise of this afternoon's Gnome Wars game, the Irish Ghost Brigade.

Maja and I knocked these out fairly quickly using one of the "Ghost Juice" videos on YouTube.   Pastel Seafoam Speed Paint was nowhere to be found at any of my local game stores, so regular Toxic Mist was as close as we could get.

I have a feeling we'll use this technique in some form for other minis in the future.

(Edit:  The rest of the Irish are completed in the same style, you can find it here.)

In the Queue: TBA.  Who knows what conversation at the con is tilting me in one direction or another.  All I know is I'm not buying a trunk-load of lead to add to the pile. I officially have boxes and boxes of stuff still in blisters and bags.  

Project 350: I've made a little progress 507 (322/185) from 513 (324/189) thanks to an end-of-month backlog of small articles and holiday posts.  I only have nine more posts set up for November, and four are my Gamma World Actual Plays, which naturally refresh most weeks.  One interesting pre-con purchase last month was a legit copy of TOON from Steve Jackson Games on Warehouse 23.  In reality, there's only a handful of character I want to write-up using those rules for the #CharacterCreationChallenge for January, but I hope it's the kick in the pants I need to get past the halfway point and focus on some of the more complicated ideas I have. 

(Painting of Millie) Applejack from My Little Pony #Wizkids

With Fall sports officially ended, I got the girls for a portion of the weekend finally.  There was was much-needed napping, and once they were even keel, the painting broke out, namely, they found all the blisters of WizKids My Little Pony miniatures and went to town.  

The only one they finished before they needed to leave was Applejack, by Millie.    She likes a certain Jackson Pollack aspect to the large open expanses of color on all of the ponies she started painting. 

The eyes and cutie mark come as stickers AND water decals.  I much prefer the decals to the sticks, as Applejacks eyes are not perfect (the cutie marks were decals with zero issue).

We may have a commission for Millie, painting a generic pony named Peanut Butter.  More to come.  

I was responsible for the stickers/decals and the basing.  

Between Fall-In!, Mepacon, and the start of winter sports/holidays, I don't know when we'll have quiet time again, but the rest of the ponies are safely stowed away for this to continue...

(Painting) Venusian Pond Scum

I know I'm a broken record when it comes to this, but my blog drafts is my repository of cool ideas I've "stolen" from the internet.   While I don't have a timestamp on when I originally saved these little kernels of awesomeness, I know I was reading Armored Ink fairly early on in my blogging.  Alfrik hasn't posted anything since 2015, and slowly but surely, the pictures are disappearing into the ether of the World Wide Web, but I'm a fan of all his projects, big and small. 

I saved the Venus Pond Scum project early on, with the intention of it being something I could do with my kids.  The idea of using bulk scenery using plastic plants from Michael's (and a gift card and big coupon) seemed right up my alley.  My girls are far more competent with a glue gun than I'll ever be, so it was just finding time, with school and more basketball than the NBA on Christmas.  

Like many Millie projects she boldly dashed forward, clipping the leaves from the sprues and going to town gluing them only the wooden bases, but when she thought she was done with one, she was done with everything.  It took to months to finally get some time, but over the holidays, I cleaned up the bench after a long hiatus, and finished up the three little ponds.  

For Millie's I did give a quick drybrush of purple over the excess glue, and some of the leaves.  I also took an old, extra-crusty cap from a bottle of Zap-a-Gap, and painted it to look like some toxic waste barrel, to fill on one large spot that Millie never finished.  

The other two I finished over two days of clipping and gluing.  I learned three things about glue guns: they are HOT, they can be sticky, but they cool/dry/harden ridiculously quick.    I was lucky to get four, maybe five, leaves glued on before even the slightest tackiness disappeared.

An assumed surprise:  Using a matte sealer on plastic plants will dull them down.

A bigger surprise: The full-sized glue gun I purchased in the distant past and never opened, survived the last basement flood during Hurricane Ida.  

PROJECT: 350 - Even after a holiday of pre-set daily posts full of Gnome/Tomte/Elf art, I've discovered even more Gnome/Tomte/Elf art to add more pre-set posts, plus I'm framing the posts of the #CharacterCreationChallenge.  I'm surprised it only rose to 475 (315 drafts/160 scheduled) from 469 (317 drafts /152 scheduled)

Next:  With one project down, I'm going to knock out some random individual figures before going back to the Gnomish Space Marines.  The individual figures are pretty significant, as they are actual GW space marines, and will be my first test concepts into the WarWorld concept I have to bring the small mass of 40k and other lines into the GSM universe.  

From this point forward, I'm also painting the GSM not only by the pack, but also to match up to Imperium Battle Lists for Laserburn, complete with scouts, medics, and heavy weapons.  I may abort that mission soon, but I'd like to have some cohesiveness before I complete another swath of them.  

(Painting) Figures Within the Past Fortnite

Oddly enough, it has been two weeks since I posted my last painting projects.

First,  "The Smuggler" from Macrocosm Miniatures'  "The 7 Dwarves"  crew of Space Dwarves.

While The Smuggler painted up for the Kickstarter looked cool, in the world of the Gnomish Space Marines, he's Donnie Riddlebottom, retired Galactic Welder, and Sergeant Major of the Royal Order of Space Winnebagos.  He spends his retirement flying around with his wife, in a Space Winnebago, and is the honorary head of this fraternity of galactic motor homes.  Doesn't stop him from knocking off a bank or two with his modified flare gun/laser pistol. 

Second, a teaser of the great Nauvoo Legion project. One out of sixteen is finished!

Using the Confederate Officer from Gnomes Wars

A great excuse to break out the Butterscotch and Zinc paints from the Americana line.

I also need to get some structure into the kid's painting.  Millie continues to sneak down to the bench and paint random things.  Not figures, but toys, parts to broken things she's uncovered in the garage.  

[Edit:  I will note that when I woke the girls up for school today, only to find out they didn't have school due to a service day, I discovered that little burro in the hallway.  Seems the kittens are not just stealing tmy army guys from the basement.]

My eldest, Maja has always had the bigger flair for building things, and video games.  Minecraft turned into Roblox, since everyone in the neighborhood was playing it, and she's finally taken up to using her XBox to play... Fortnite.  It's an excitement I reserved to myself in the pre-Nintendo era.

Even good ol' Dad has jumped into a Battle Royale or three now.  I'm dating myself, but the last time I've done a shooter game was Goldeneye for the N64.  

I understand I'm playing six-year old kids, but I'll take whatever COVID victories there are.

Project 350: 527 (354/173) from 529 (354/175) - I'm caught up on Actual Plays and my new project planners I put on Google Drive have been helpful (8 out of 11 projects done in September, 5 of 15 already complete in October).  In addition to that, I was able to correct the "accordion effect" of all my blogging backlog during an insufferable conference call.  For the first half of calendar year I spread out all the work I want to do so each month has 2 game projects, 2 modelling projects, and 2 writing projects.  Things just fill in as they go to begin with, and if I somehow get two games in, I can always move to the next month... or I can wake up from the coma I'm in, cause I must be dreaming.

Which leads me to my final rant: My backdoor for the legacy version of Blogger was finally locked, so I'm certainly forced to use the new mobile-friendly but desktop frustrating new version.  

Next: The Nauvoo Legion sees the light at the end of the tunnel.  Problem is I haven't been to gauge whether the light is a small LED fifty foot away or a raging star fifty light-years away.  More Gnomish Space Marines, and a few more one-off figures, if the cats or Millie don't destroy everything first. 

Next Year's Projects for 2020-21

Will there ever be another con game?  Heck, we've still got a cruise in May that we don't know the status of!

Face to Face?  My group is jonesing for a game.

Facebook,  Twitter: @tabletopinq  Insta: @tabletopinquirer

The Gnomish Space Marines:  This has been a running gag since the parody song in Dragon Magazine and we started statting up TWERPS characters in the early 90s, but thanks to the delivery of all the "Sci-Fi Dwarf" Kickstarter, I think I should make a Squat-By-Any-Other-Name army a reality.  I'm not statting up a 9th Edition IG army for 40k.  Looking into some vehicles and the Mantic and Wargames Atlantic Plastics.

Star Wars d6: With the exception of an extra player or two, running Star Wars was the perfect tonic for the doom and gloom of COVID.  I got to get the creative juices of campaign building flowing, I'm constantly collaborating with the group to add more depth to the story, and my proudest moment, they've taken on the roles of not only NPCs to keep everyone active, but entire side-stories with Bo'Non'as and Oopsa.  With a few breaks here and there, I'd like to see this going on through at least June.

Retro Twilight: 2000: I broke down and pledged for Free League's (Tales from the Loop) Kickstarter for Twilight:2000.  They're looking at a June 2021 release, and they're pretty good at delivering, so I'm thinking of going completely retro by that point and play from T:2000 face-to-face.  Heck, I might just invest in some cheap microarmor.

Yellowstone
We still don't know the status of 2021 cons (heck we don't know the status of Halloween or the kids going to school/staying virtual.  Why predict anything?)  Cold Wars 2021 will be in Ocean City, MD and will be another attempt to promote Wargaming in Education.  After reading, Watching Over Yellowstone, it's a good time to dust off the old rules, update the turn-based mechanics (and add more cool trivia) and spruce it up for the 2020s.  Call me crazy, but after running the Gnome Wars-themed version, I may break down and purchase "proper" US Cav, civilians, and even animals for a "serious" game.

The Lack of Basketball: The community league I'm on the board of has cancelled any season for at least the 2020 portion, probably the entire winter season.  Fall ball is curtailed for the girls so much Maja has returned to dancing and both Maja and Millie are participating in flag football through the beginning of November.

What does this mean?  I need to set aside weeknight and weekend time to play and paint with the girls.  A great excuse to get us all off of devices/Fornite/etc... Too many figures to paint and family games to play that aren't seeing use.

Edit: And just before I was to give the final approval to publish this post, both Maja and Millie were invited to play for two different programs.  No overlap, for better or for worse.  Still, my goal stands firm.

Actual Play Archive: In scant weeks, the Lost Dispatches of Feraso will wrap up with Episode #100.  Immediately following that, Adventures in Gulluvia will fill in the normal Tuesday slot,  and my much ballyhooed Star Wars d6 game will premiere on the best Tuesday of 2021, May the Fourth.

I'm regularly two episodes behind on writing up Star Wars, but I still have more  FRPG Actual Play write-ups to complete. I ran a Hackmaster campaign back in 2007-2008 and it's set in the near future of the Trogs Redux campaign concept, so I'll attach those sessions to that campaign.  I have no idea if they'll see the light of day within these next twelve months, but I'm shooting to finish them.

The Lead Pile:  The Gnomish Space Marine project is going to move the lead pile along, but I do have some plastic boxed sets that the girls are old enough to learn the horrors of crazy glue/Zap-A-Gap/plastic cement.

Georic Gazetteer Update: I say at least once a year that Blogger format (at least prior to the latest update) was what I was missing as a kid,  a repository, an archive, a wiki of my hobby.  Even though my FRPG campaign experience is now well-documented, I might as well start my old info, clean it up country by country, and make that a regular weekly addition on a non-Tuesday.  I can list them on a page, just like the actual play episode, and add the data on my Google Drive for posterity.  

(Painting) The Ring of Fire

First off, I completely goofed on when Father's Day was.  I did not realize that it's next Sunday, so with some of my activities set up already, I decided to give some painting with the kids a go during some weekday downtime. 

Presenting The Ring of Fire, a collaboration between ViscountEric, Maja (now age 11) and Millie (age 9).

 Most of our little phoenix and hellhound friends came from the Magic: The Gathering boardgame, Arena of the Planeswalkers.  The creatures in the box are molded in clear plastic of their appropriate game color, so these were pretty cool to begin with. 

Maja, Millie, and Dad....

 The best part, of course was the price of these.  I believe there were 30-some-odd actual minis in the box, and with my wife's keen eye, it was snagged at Five Below for a measly five bucks.

I guess they're not hellhouds, according to WotC, they're Blazing Firecats, ho!

A bit of a disaster while I was taking them outside to be photographed.  A combination of pets and a clumsy ViscountEric resulted in the box they were in going airborne the pieces scattering across the floor.   The Hellhounds above took the worst damage, as the double base coat of yellow just popped right off.  I'll fix that up before they get used this weekend.

The two below are variations on our theme.  The one on the left is an actual Hell Hound from the Reaper Bones line, painted by Millie.  She picked this up from the FLGS years ago, and I'm happy she finally painted it.  With a slightly smaller size and brighter yellow, we'll make this one the pup/kitten of the group.

To counter that I fooled around with shading on one of the boardgame pieces and it came out so dull and bland, I turned it into the aging leader of the group.  A little black drybrushing and he goes from blazing firecat to a seething magma feline.

I also continue the personal hell of assembling tiny box after tiny box from Things from the Basement.  Don't get me wrong, they're part of some great sets, but my Hulk-like fingers, tiny parts, and glue do not go well together.  Another reason my Frostgrave and Warlord plastics are still on the sprues.

Next: I'd like to finish my Nauvoo Legion Gnomes before International Gnome Week  (June 21-27), plus some more single figures.  "Real" Father's Day is this weekend and I'm shooting for the Annual tea party plus THREE games.

(Painting) Mushrooms by Windsword Accessories

Items are slowly coming off the lead pile, although these are technically a dental composite.

The girls and I completed painting some miniatures from Windsword Accessories.

Millie's

 A pretty diverse selection of mushroom are available in Windsword's Natural World line.  Plenty of variations there, and at $3.50 apiece, there a decent steal.

Maja's 

While Maja wanted some bright colors, Millie and I went a more traditional route, with a heavy dose of Citadel Seraphim Sepia.  I know everybody else is going wild trying out the contrast paint, but I'm still relying heavily on the almost $8/bottle sepia.  For my preferences in miniature painting, it almost do not wrong.

My two.

 And here's a little pre-game diorama of what they're being used for (AAR forthcoming).

I forget when my wife and kids got them for me, but the "gnome/mice houses" were finally used in the game.  Some are Dollar Tree, some were Dollar General, but they were a bargain for a table full of terrain. 

(Painting) The Easter Island Holiday Disaster

As this was the first real holiday in the midst of COVID, it was nice to stay at home and limit our travels to Saturday take out and and quick run to the corner store on Sunday.

However, it was not without its trials. 

With no place to go, my wife tried to cook for eight on Sunday, when we have only four, and one of those only eats mashed potatoes, and the other is an all-out carnivore. Like Thanksgiving, we have way too many leftovers.

And staging the arrival of the Easter Bunny continues to more and more daunting.  I'm not sure if my eldest is still a believer, but she's hardcore in finding someone delivering something to the house.  It was a game of cat -and- mouse into the wee hours as I had to disable motion lights in order to dish out the Easter egg hunt outside. 

I finally had everything ready, and was predisposed to collapse on the playroom sofa, when I heard footsteps at 4am and giggling girls following thereafter. 

We did get some gaming done with weekend, but first the holiday painting. 

Nothing seemed better to get paint to figure than some Easter Island Heads from Windsword.  We did a little research about the island and the Moai, and plotted a paint scheme.  It was an enjoyable afternoon, even if Maja was still sleep deprived from her secret mission.  Each person painted a head, did their own interpretation of shading (with the same colors), and then told be where to put all the grass tufts, flowers, and miscellaneous growths (all Huge Miniatures).

And then, mission completed, dear old Dad screwed something up.

Given that I do the same process for sealing the minis that I do every time,  I'm scratching my head as to why this group became cloudy.   All that awesome of work of the girls ruined. 

The saving grace is that no one got upset (except Dad) and we moved onto the next project. 

And a for a screw-up, they don't look too bad.

Not the Dark Brown base we were looking for....

Biggest complaint about Windsword's heads is that their way too smooth, when compared to the pictures from Easter Island. 

Next: Some actual attempts at games, and the girls try their hands at more Windsword products.

Dad will shake up the sealer and hold it a foot further away for future proejcts.

(Painting) Cultists, Giant Gnomes, and Death Rays!

With assists from Maja and Millie, here are some Cultists from Pulp Figures:

These started as a kid's project, because nothing says bonding with your Dad than painting violent cultists.  We got base coats, washes, and Millie got her half drybrushed, but I needed to power through the details and equipment to get them done this week.

I also got a ceramic gnome project from the kids for my birthday, and that's finally complete.

Roughly 200mm tall!

My Reaper Bones 3 Kickstarter is a mere 15 miles from my house, expecting arrival tomorrow.

What trumps that?  Having my Psi-Paladins and Tech Barbarian Kickstarter beat it to the house:

Next:  Painting bench was cleaned, repapered, and reorganized in anticipation for my Bones.   Pulp Figures German Colonial Rifles prepped and mounted, plus a slew of simple kids projects to make room for Mouslings!

(Painting) The Incredible Impenetrable Egg

Things have calmed down.  The basement is dry, although some items are still drying out.  The new pump is resting nicely where it belongs, and with the nice weather for a day or two, I got some much-need yardwork done.

That doesn't mean I didn't spend time on the workbench, although more time was spent with the kids painting at the dining room table.

First off is some Easter Egg Terrain.

Maja was off at a hockey game with Mom, so I got Millie to paint up the gold one.  I had a heckuva time gluing the bottle cap and the bottom of the egg together.   No superglue would work, so I ended up using Elmer's, prayer, and a few layers of primer, paint, and sealant.  So far, so good.

Despite their suggestion for using liquid latex for rivets, I found an alternative using tiny sprinkles, just didn't have the time to find them in a supermarket.

These two items (plus a third if Maja finds the time) will play a prominent part in our annual Easter game.

Finally, a quick sample of what I should be finishing up over the weekend.  Here's the head chief of the Cult of the Ape God for our upcoming Pulp game.

www.pulpfigures.com

I hope to have the entire cult finished up shortly, and then I can take a nice picture of my "Polynesian Army"  with everything else I've painted up from Bob Murch. 

Sniperbots, Terrain, and a Millie Mousling

When the boss tells you take an extra day off, "just because,"  you take the extra day off.

That conversation gave me a four-day weekend through Tuesday, plenty of time to paint, catch up on television, and still do family related activities.  

This week's minor accomplishments:

I continue to find more terrain in boxes, the cheap green army guy variety.  The elephant grass isn't perfect, but sometimes you need things to fill up a table.

G6 Sniperbot from Legions of Steel (Global Games)

We got a nice variety of gaming in this weekend:  Uno, Santa's Bag, the next episode of Legions of Steel, and even a game of TIARA!   The sniperbot above is now ready for episode #3 of the sci-fi story arc.  Armed with an average weapon and four long-range (75") rockets, this robot should be fairly effective on the table.

We also got Tuesday morning in the basement for some painting.  Millie knocked out this mousling in 90 minutes!   No drybrushing, no shading, and Daddy flocked the base (and touched up a few errant spots of pink), but a great effort indeed.  Maja now has two figures half-finished in her queue.  A dragon and a princess mousling.  For once it's the eldest who has trouble keeping focused.

In the Queue:  The Gnome Sikhs are nearing completion, Pulp Figures, and more mouslings (if the kids don't get them first).

Dragon Hatchling by Millie

An afternoon with Mille properly evolved into a painting session. We finally finished the Dragon Hatchling Green from Reaper Bones

Dad only handled the glue, the sealer, and the near mishap of Millie dropping the near-finished figure in the water mug. Lucky for us we could refocus our energy on painting eyes on a horse while the mini completely dried. 



Between Millie's stories and the action shot, I may need to run a fantasy game for them shortly. 

 

Painting Class with the Girls

We have survived Easter weekend, with many a nap, some chocolate, and strange desire to rename the holiday Thanksgiving 2:  Bunny Boogaloo. 

Not much got accomplished on the gaming front, although the automotive issues have been resolved.  You could say that we're back in a little positive "Car-ma."

Saturday night I let my wife have the night off and took the girls down to the FLGS for a painting class.   One of the local painter's TripleP ran the glass which ran from consistent painters, fledgling painters, and of course my two girls, ages 5 and 6. 

Each of us got a Bones version of Reaper's Avatar of Sokar to paint, a good supply of brushes and a vat of GW paints to try out.  A few dropped out after an hour, but the rest who stayed had a great time.  

I'm not used to fiddling around with GW paints.  I've got my last remaining pot of Citadel Copper circa 1997 that's still good and the rest are horribly overpriced.  However the Sepia and Earthtone washes worked really well, the orange was nice, and the Technical line of paints did make life a little easier (although I don't know if it was $4.99 for a tiny bottle easier.)

Millie performed admirably for the two and a half hour session. Maja was a little overwhelmed by the painting table and horde of people in for Blood Bowl and Magic games that night.  On top of that, she wanted everything white, which made her lack of concentration filling in the block painting even more pronounced. 

(l to r) Maja's, Mine, and Millie's

Given that I've seen some fine work on these figures for the most recent Reaper painting contest, and most have taken 6+ hours, I feel like everything we did was a good start.   I have the kiddos Thurs-Sat as my wife is away at a course, so we'll continue to work on these guys (and the girl's dragons) over next weekend.

 

Steve, the man behind TripleP, was very helpful, slightly overwhelmed, and ran the class from all angles, jumping from helping my extremely excited girls to talking about airbrushing with another fella, to painting suggestions to yet another. 

 

One thing I rarely do at Evolution (or any store for that matter), is buy stuff.  With the store hosting something I really wanted, I happily felt obliged to snag stuff off the shelf... and give the kids a chance.  Not surprisingly, they picked up more Bones.

Maja had requested a Super-Hero game, a la the Pulp Game, and I broke down and purchased my first ever brick of Heroclix.   Pulling a Stargirl made my day.  The girls don't know who she is, but they will soon enough. 

 

I mentioned to Joe, the owner, a chance to give him a list of common clix that I could buy cheap (Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Miss Martian commons, etc...) and not only did he agree to that, he gave the girls a small box of random commons to go wild with.  Those commons have trumped everything they got from the Easter Bunny, save a few little stuffed animal unicorns and pandas. 

 

Painting at Home:  The French/Quebecois gnomes are done for the treasure hunt game, and I'm working on some leftover wolves, dire and normal.  It's fitting then that my wife got me some Wolf King Warrior Stout for Easter.

 

I love me some Stout, in most shapes and forms, but this stuff is overpowering.  It doesn't mean I didn't finish it, though. 

And before I forget, everyone who paid for the class got a chance at a $50 gift certificate for TripleP's painting service.  With three entries, it's not surprising that I won!   I have two LoS fellas who are going to push his envelope, and maybe a figure or three after that.

 

Millie's Chupacabra and Schutztruppe Askaris

Since it is finally my daughter Millie's "friend" 5th birthday party, after delays and cancellations, let us celebrate with her first completed miniature, yet another Chupacabra mini from Brigade Games.  

As is right and proper with the second child, I rushed her through drybrushing technique, but I was eternally grateful for her choice of flocking as there's a clump of sand on the back leg of the figure that I applied.   With the bushes, no one will know Daddy screwed up.

 

The whole Chupacabra Family:  (L to R) Maja, Daddy, and Millie

With those dastardly palm trees gone, there's a number of small projects to do, and I've gotten some German Schutztruppe Askari Skirmishing from Brigade Games finished:

Between the late hour, the flourescent lights, and the touch screen of my smart phone going wonky, I still don't know why the pictures all of drained of color.


Halfway through February and I've exceeded my new painting for all of last year!    Now I did refurbish over 200 minis last year and rebased a bunch more, but the fact that my work bench has a dent in the lead pile warms my cold, cold heart.

NEXT:  The next kid's painting session is next Sunday, and their queues are getting to look like mine.  I've looking at Bugbears, wild animals, and a boatload of GNOMES!!!