The Painted Thumb

Sometime in the early 2000's, my wife and I started collecting the ceramic village houses that would go on sale around the Christmas season. We purchased the various models such as shops, houses, office and government buildings. Back then we would have friends and family come over to our house and spend some time painting the stuff. We would spread out the houses on whatever flat surface we could find in our house as part of our Christmas decorating. After a few seasons, we had assembled a fairly large collection. I think it was Christmas of 2005 that we were too busy to setup the village and the models remained in storage. This was all done before I became interested in miniature figures and wargames. This year, we've decided to restart our tradition. I pulled the best looking houses and setup a small street on the mantle. I added some lighting, painted a backdrop and printed out some dungeon tiles for use as a cobblestone street. In case anyone was wondering ho

This is the the continuation of my review. You can find part 1 here . ***SPOILERS after this point! You have been warned!**** *********************************************************** While the Men, Elves, and Dwarves assemble their forces, Azog the Orc General constructs a wooden signal tower on top of a nearby highpoint called Ravenhill. Somehow, no one from the other three armies notices this. The tower is installed with an elaborate system of pulleys and flags that can display several different commands to Azog's troops and is visible throughout the entire battle-space. Azog sends the signal to attack but his army is nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, several gigantic earthworms rise out of the earth like a scene from 'Dune'. They retreat back into the dirt leaving large tunnels from which the evil army emerges. Our fourth army has arrived. Game Discussion SBG: Yowza! I did not see that coming. Did anyone expect the giant worms from Dune to show up in Mid

I am a fan of the first two Hobbit movies. So I got my ticket to see the last episode, "The Battle of Five Armies" as soon as I could. I saw the movie and thought it was a thoroughly entertaining movie. Specifically, it's a movie with plenty of juicy content for use in any fantasy themed game, whether it be miniatures, RPG's or other. BTW, I play several different games set in the Lord of the Rings world including Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game , War of the Ring , and The Battle of Five armies 10mm box game . I believe that many fun game sessions can be played by drawing inspiration from this film. Possible spoilers are ahead but I'm not going to discuss the overall story line much in this review. My focus will be on the fight sequences and elements that would be of interest to the gamer or someone interested in developing scenarios in existing game systems or perhaps developing their own game. Many of my friends are not