The Painted Thumb

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...

This past Thursday, I met up with Ed and Johnny for an intro game of All the King's Men . This is a fairly new game that can be played with 28mm figs or with the gorgeous 54mm figs. My impressions of ATKM.. It's a fun, quick game with some simple mechanics. Ed taught the game to me and Johnny Rod in just a few minutes. The game is played with movement trays and usually 12 individuals to one tray.  Each tray is a single unit.  Every unit has a status of green, yellow, red, or tapped. This is to symbolize how tired the unit has become and it also indicates how well it can perform an attack and defend. Each army has one or more commanders who can give one order. If a unit is given an order, it executes the order and then moves down one status level, (ex. green to yellow). Each unit has twelve hits and routs after losing half it's hits.  A standard deck of cards is used to determine which commander can act (red or black suite) and face cards (J, K, Q, A) results in some ...

Argh!  I hate it when the spears break off of the model especially on 10mm infantry stands.  It's especially bad on the Warmaster High Elf infantry. I just can't stand looking at a gorgeous line of elf warriors and seeing an missing spear.  What's worse is these elaborate Elvish spear points are uniquely detailed and barely wider than the narrow spear shafts. My current painting project is to rehab an old GW High Elf army and most of the elf spears are bent, broken or twisted.  Efforts to fix the bent and twisted spears have resulted in only more broken spears. Ugh! I searched on Google for others who may have run into the same issue and found a single article.  This player had decided to do away with the wonky spears altogether. He cut off all the original spears and replaced them with thick sewing needles. That seemed a bit crazy! Each stand had five sharp tiny daggers pointed skyward. I would need to take extra care when handling such models. If I weren't...

This past weekend we held our Winter is Coming!  Warmaster tournament.  We held a previous tournament back in 2012 where Mark R. won the tournament with his Dark Elf army. For anyone unfamiliar with Warmaster Fantasy Battles, this is an older Games Workshop game. The armies come from the Warhammer Fantasy setting. The figures are all 10mm and represent grand battles between two division-level armies. The figures from GW are out of print but they were of high quality and look really nice on the battlefield. There are variants of the rules for historical games (Ancients and Renaissance) and there are a few games that use similar mechanics (Blitzkrieg Commander, Future War Commander) This year we had good turnout of six players.  Not bad considering the age of the Warmaster rules. The selection of armies was very good as there were only two players (Chip and his son Alec) who both brought dwarf armies. We also had a great venue in Weyland Baptist university.  There...