The Painted Thumb

Whew! My life has been a whirlwind for the past 9 weeks. It started out at the end of September when my wife and I sold our house and moved into a 500 sq ft. guest house for a few weeks. We moved all our possessions into a storage unit, then moved it all out of storage into a new home. Just shortly after that, I was informed that our convention director was having problems with his heart and was rushed off to the hospital just a week before the convention. This meant that I would have to pick up the directorial duties for the entire convention! The whole weekend, we struggled with organizational problems. The convention started on Friday afternoon in Austin, TX, which is about a two-hour drive from my home in San Antonio. I was the single staff member present when the conventions started at noon. No registration materials, no operating cash, no t-shirts, no programs, no snack bar available at the time the convention began. It was the living definition of "winging it"! Fort...

My wife and I have decided to sell our house and move into a new one. Hopefully, a place with more space, easier commute to work, a better kitchen and, fingers crossed, an awesome Game Room!! Our house sold in just a few hours after we put it on the market. We will be closing at the end of this month. But, we haven't found a beautiful new house yet, so we'll be in an apartment for awhile. It's an inconvenience, but it is all in the process of moving to a better home. The sad part is I'll have to put all the miniatures and games in storage until further notice! That's disappointing because I am not sure how long we will be in an apartment situation. Gaming, painting, and modelling for the next few weeks will be limited. Instead, my focus will be on this year's MillenniumCon convention! In case I haven't mentioned, I'm on the staff for Millennium 17 , the premiere miniature wargaming convention in the state of Texas! We've had a change up in th...

One of my favorite ways to spend a lazy summer afternoon is by taking a quick trip to the local Half Price Books. I just never know what I might find there. On this most recent visit, I picked up a copy of Force on Force by Ambush Alley Games . It is a miniatures game designed to recreate modern era skirmish level battles from 1950's to the present. Typcial forces include, SAS commandos, Navy Seal Teams, Marine Recon, Spetznaz, Middle East Insurgents and so forth. I've only browsed through the rules so far but it appears to be promising.  The designer notes that the game puts an emphasis on the quality of the soldiers and not on the type of weaponry. This makes sense to me. I imagine any soldier from any modern army would be well trained and deadly at close range with just about any kind of slug throwing weapons in their possession.  Strangely, this game does not provide any army lists. There are no point systems to build an army. Everything is based on scenarios that de...

Our Tuesday night gaming group was looking for more games to add into the weekly rotation. I offered to host a session of BattleSworn - Bid for Victory from Ganesha Games . I had reviewed the game before but never actually played a game. So, this was a great opportunity to get some real player's reactions to the rules. Most miniature games resolve combat by assigning a probability based on the individual stats of the units and situational modifiers, and then rolling a die to determine success or failure. Initiative is often nothing more than a randomized die roll.  However, BattleSworn uses a bidding mechanic for initiative and combat. For initiative, the players secretly bid a number between 1 and 6. The players reveal this number and the player with the lowest bid wins the initiative. The initiative player gets as many actions as his bid.  The other player gets the difference of the two bids in re-actions. In combat, the players bid just like with initiative. Low bidde...

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 ...