Updates, D&D Report

The wife was out of town last week, so I spent a lot of time bored to tears, but I did get more work done on Space Hulk.  I pretty much just need to do the highlights on about half of the marines and I'll be done.  I did get together with lars4life over at Funderhammer one night and worked on some conversions - we'll have some pictures of a joint project up soon.  (We also have an idea for an interesting take on a speed-painting contest).

On Sunday I got together for our weekly D&D game, and had a blast:

For the last few games in our campaign, our DM has adapted the Palace of the Silver Princess module.  Sunday's game involved tons of interacting with NPC's, bluffing, etc - you know, the stuff that gives "Role Playing Games" their namesake.  Sometimes these elements take a backseat in our rush to kill monsters and find loot (especially since we lost our player who tried to bluff constantly, and consistently had the worst charisma rolls of all time).  I felt this last game struck the balance perfectly. 

Near the end of the game, our DM's wife & son returned home from visiting family.  The boy likes to sit in Dad's lap and help him roll dice when we play.  This time he decided he wanted to play with the minis (or "guys", as he calls them) - since we were still in the middle of combat, I suggested giving him his own set of dungeon tiles.  With Dad's collection of minis conveniently next to him, he was free to set up his own encounter.  Let's just say this kid's gonna be a brutal DM:

...let's hope they're all minions.

Couple of Things...

Just a few things of note - I got a box of goodies from MicroMark today:

MicroMark is a fantastic resource, but they slip under the radar of a lot of wargamers, since they primarily market themselves to model railroaders / scale modelers.  While there is some specialized stuff in their catalog, they have a lot of great stuff for anyone who paints or builds terrain.  (I first learned about them when I took a terrain-building seminar at GenCon from David Dresch).  The things above were all on my "wish list" for a while, but they did a 50% off sale last week that finally got me to bite.  From left to right:  pearl tweezer, micro hand drill, micro holding tool, wood strip cutter, & paint mixer.  I'm using the wood strip cutter for plasticard, and it's worth it's weight in gold (or at least in plasticard) since it's already saved me tons of waste from futilely trying to cut thin strips by hand.  The paint mixer seems a bit lazy, but I'm using the airbrush more lately, and the GW Foundation & other high-pigment paints can take forever to get thoroughly mixed by hand.

I also picked up the new D&D Essentials book, Heroes of the Fallen Lands:

... I mainly picked it up because there are some new powers for my cleric that don't appear in the Player's Handbook, and my DM mentioned that they've rejiggered the feats, which were notoriously fiddly.  I've only glanced at it so far, but I like the new size & format, and the fact that it's softcover (maybe that's just because the memory of lugging four full-size hardcover 4th Edition books to my game last weekend is still fresh in my mind).  I'm not thrilled that it appears Wizards isn't making anything other than the errata available to players who have already bought the 4th Edition handbooks - not to mention that I've had to buy three separate Player's Handbooks for 4th Edition, and the last one was just released seven months ago...

Talbot The Cleric

I've been playing in a sporadic D&D campaign with some friends for years - after several years our DM recently finished his Ph.D. (congrats Jer!) and our game got upgraded from "sporadic" to "semi-regular".  Shortly after 4th Edition debuted, we all decided to make the switch, and I went with one of the new races and a class I had never played before - a Longtooth Shifter Cleric.  Up until now I had actually never painted my a model to represent my character in a RPG - I just used one of the pre-painted figures from the D&D Minis line, or borrowed a mini from our DM.  I decided it was time to remedy that and went looking for a model that fit the bill.  I found this model over at Reaper:

(picture from Reapermini.com)

I liked the look, and since I was ordering more parts for my Freebootas anyway, I added him to my order.  A few days later, he showed up:

...he was gonna need a bit of work, so I got started - first of all, I knew I was going to use a custom base, so I needed to remove his current base.  I clipped most of it away with my flat clippers, then shaped the feet with my jeweler's files:

I noticed that his mace lost a bit of detail on the segment that was up against his leg - I used my pin vice to drill the "cutout" shape:

Next I decided he needed to look more "longtooth-y", so I went with the obvious choice:  Mutton chops!  I pretty much slapped some Green Stuff to his face and started shaping it:

They actually came out pretty well.  My next step was to pin his feet:

And I mounted him to an old soda cap for painting:

...I pretty much painted him in one go on my day off, and didn't really take any "in-progress" pics - here he is finished:

(I will be posting a tutorial about the scenic base soon).

Overall I was pretty pleased with how he came out.  I wasn't aiming for competition-quality - I have a game this weekend, and he's going to be thrown in my backpack every few weeks with my books & dice and hauled across town, so a bit above tabletop-standard was the goal.  Here's the paint schematic for those who are interested:

- Armor (gauntlets/shield):  Based w/ GW Boltgun Metal, washed with Badab Black, highlighted w/ Mithril Silver.  Insignia on shield: GW Tin Bitz

-Armor (chest plate): GW Shining Gold, washed w/ Gryphonne Sepia

-Robes (blue): 50/50 mix of GW Ice Blue & Vallejo Imperial Blue, with just a bit of GW Space Wolves Gray; washed with GW Asurmen Blue

-Robes (red): GW Mechrite Red, washed w/ GW Baal Red

-Robe (border): 50/50 mix of Vallejo Bald Moon Yellow & P3 Brown ink; washed w/ GW Devlan Mud

-Leather (bags, belts, etc): P3 Brown Ink

-Leather (boots): GW Snakebite Leather; washed w/ GW Devlan Mud

-Hair: Vallejo Black, drybrushed w/ GW Adeptus Battlegray

-Flesh: 70/30 mix of GW Dark Flesh & Elf Flesh; washed w/ GW Baal Red

-Vial on belt: GW Warlock purple, (cork) GW Bestial Brown