The Painted Thumb

He's big. He's nasty. He wreathed in unholy fire! Mom, can I keep him? I was able to purchase this handsome devil from a local 40K gamer.  He had purchased a large lot of Games Workshop models and the Balrog was part of it. He thought it was some sort of 40K unit and never really knew what it was. Strange. Anyway, he was willing to sell it at a decent price. The Balrog came partially assembled and a bit beat up. That's nothing a little TLC and a lot of modelling putty can't fix. The legs and wings are barely attached. There are many visible seams and mold lines that will need to be cleaned.  And, there will be the challenge of painting him with realistic looking flames. Eventually, it will be the leader of my Moria Goblin army and will be whipping up on meddling wizards who wander into the deep places of the earth. Also on the 'Thumb'-bench. were these little paper terrain walls. Oringinally, I printed them out from a PDF file and taped them together to m...

Alas, here is the long awaited report on the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit SBG tournament report. Sorry for the delay but many Wood Elves and Dwarves were trampled by Mumakils in the effort to bring us this information. The first tournament of 2014 was held back in March. Charlie, the tournament coordinator, decided to make this a ‘doubles’ tournament which meant each team comprised of two players with 500pt armies each. My esteemed teammate was Ted with his army of white-primed Dwarves. I took my usual Wood Elves but changed up the list a little bit. I left me in a hurry to paint them up but I got the whole group ready for play just in time. Most of this report is from Ted. I’ve made some changes to his original report but credit should go to him for the write up. The tournament lasted three rounds. Over the course of the day, we fought two Cave Trolls, a Dweller-in-Dark, thousands of Goblins and Orcs, and were chased around the map by a raging Mumakil. When the dust settled,...

The months of February through April are the hardest months for me to make new blog posts.  I really don't know what causes this drought yet is seems very cyclical. Despite the lack of posts, there has not been a shortage of games being played.  So, rather than trying to write AAR's for all the games played over the past few months, I'll just post up some photos of the most recent game sessions.  I did participate in a Lord  of the Rings SBG 'Doubles' tournament which deserves it's own post and AAR.  For now here is a montage of the latest battles. Played some 'Saga' at OwlCon, it was a great game!  But like many new games, it requires custom dice. Also at OwlCon, had a great game of Blood Bowl vs. Coach K I used a borrowed Human team, in green uniforms ...

OWLCon is a RPG/Boardgame/Miniatures convention held every year on the campus of Rice University in Houston, TX.  I was able to make the trip and participate for Saturday only. This is a great convention! It has a mix of RPGs, boardgames, and miniatures so everyone can find something that fits their tastes. I showed up for the morning session of OGRE in the dining area of the small cafe. It was convenient for me because the day just doesn't begin for me without a cup of coffee! Basically, the game was HUGE! A series of five boards lined up side-by-side. The same scenario was setup on each board with three players per board. Two attacking players commanded on MkV Ogre each while the third player ran a fencer.  The GM handled the infantry units, GEVs, laser towers and howitzers on all the boards. I played one of the MkV's. My co-OGRE was commanded by young paduwan Daniel. Our opponent was William. The Order of Battle was as follows: 2x Mk V Ogres Vs 1x fencer wi...

There is a local Internet VideoCast called GeekOutSA! It is hosted by Vince Guzman of ChimeraCon and the show is a forum for various 'geeky' topics such as comic books, sci-fi/fantasy tv shows and movies, etc. Vince invited me on the show to talk about the historical miniatures hobby, LSHM, and MillenniumCon. It was a fun time! We actually spent about an hour before the show started just chatting about various topics. Below is a link to the show on YouTube. The show starts talking in detail about comics and "The Walking Dead". Around the 34 minute point, we start discussing miniatures. Check it out!

Lucky are the gamers who have family members with whom they can share in this crazy hobby. The wife and I don't have children but, we have been blessed with a large amount of nieces and nephews. I've considered trying to encourage the hobby among the kids but I'm not sure which games would be successful with them.  The nephews are generally older teens and are in the "chasing girls and driving trucks" phase. They haven't shown much interest in my hobby no matter what the game.  That leaves me with lots of nieces. They are definitely not the ideal recruits for the war game hobby. Honestly, they would probably rather watch a Disney Sing-a-long marathon. Never the less, I started to think up some ideas for a game that they might like. I dove into my storage closet and found my venerable copy of HeroQuest! Feelings of nostalgia overwhelmed me. I remembered what a great game this was and how much fun I had playing it as a kid. I decided that this was the right ...

We had planned a Flames of War game day this past Saturday but the turnout was light. Good thing that Garrett had also planned a introductory game of "I Ain't Been Shot Mum!" that same day. IABSM is another WWII miniatures game using the same size and bases as Flames of War. For this game, Garrett laid out a beautiful map based on an actual location in northern France.  One of the features of IABSM is the map uses a 'true' scale with 15mm figs. If a figure or squad has line of sight to a target then they can hit that target assuming they have standard rifles or better. Actions were determined by flipping the top card of the deck. Each card had a platoon's name or a leader's name on it. So, when a card is flipped, that platoon or leader could take action. There were two 'Tea Break' cards in the deck and once both of these cards have been pulled, the turn ends. This is a different system than the IGO-UGO routine in FoW and that created some tac...