What I've painted since May

It's late and I should probably go to bed, but I really want to get a post in. While I've been muddling my way through life, not getting many games played or miniatures painted, built, or otherwise progressed has sometimes gotten me down a bit. I made a realization today, around the 16th RV septic tank pumping of the day (that's one of the things I've been doing this summer and fall). 

The realization came on the heels of something I think I remember Uncle Atom of Tabletop Minions saying in one of his videos. He said something to the effect that we are all going to have stages in life where our hobby will take a back seat for a while. Sometimes a long while. Maybe even years. And that's okay. 

I guess I'm realizing that with the increased age of my kids comes an increased need to give up time I might use for hobbying as they need rides to things, help with things, etc. This need for me to be there has been increasing. We're pulling back the reins a bit compared to last year, so we may have plateaued on our busy-ness, but it's going to sit at this level for quite a while. Of course, I'm likely to start driving a school bus soon, so that's probably going to shift our dynamic again.

The next thing that came to me was the thought I'd been having about starting a YouTube channel, probably one of the types where I record myself painting or building something while I play some kind of free to use soothing music or I talk about something. Like what I realized about 3d printing, vlogging would just be another thing to to add to an already full plate. Do I really need or want that right now? I feel that I'd feel stressed about getting a video up and might start to lose the relaxation factor of doing something just to do it.

The third realization was that it must have been a while since I last posted anything here. Looking back, this looks to be the 4th posting of the year. Again, feeling a twinge of guilt that I'm not keeping up too well, but then remembering it's okay. These things can stay in the back seat for now and I'll occasionally let them come up front as circumstances allow. 

I thought there was another realization in there, but my eyes are getting heavy and my brain is going numb. Perhaps I can get through some descriptions of the paining I've done since May.

Here is a horrible picture of the Blacklist Miniatures human cleric (left), dire bear, and halfling rogue. My youngest daughter (8) did paint the base brown of the dire bear.

Blacklist Miniatures goblins. I tried some of the XArty Hub paints on these, mainly the Metallic Black on the swords these guys are holding.

Blacklist earth elemental or stone golum or something. Loved painting this guy. I doesn't show up well in the image, but I added colours to my base grey to give the impression of mineral variety in the stones.

A Nolzar's pack mule, painted by my 11 year old daughter.

Another fun one to paint, the Blacklist shambling mound. The mushroom on its humped back took 6 layers of red paint to get it to where it is. I really like this sculpt.

This sci-fi armoured soldier is a 3d print my nephew wanted me to paint for him. I brought it home and promptly forgot about it until he asked about it at Thanksgiving dinner. So I went home that evening and got it painted up real quick (with the help of a heat gun used for embossing). Mounted on the lower half of a Heroclix dial (sans status sticker and sanded down).                                          

With that, I'll end my ruminating for now. Hopefully, someone reading this at a time they are feeling stressed about not getting their hobby out much, they can take comfort in the fact that they aren't the only one and they can take things at their own pace. Only the dire bear and the sci-fi soldier were painted in one sitting. The rest have been half-hour here and there until I felt done enough.

Catch you later.

A dragon and Alaska

 Gosh, I look at the date on the last post and can't believe it was three or more months ago. No games on my table since then, but some painting done. Our D&D group hasn't met in that time span either, though I did go over to one friend's house and we sat and painted; he, some furniture and me, some goblins (from the Blacklist set). 

I pulled out the airbrush again and attempted the big dragon from the Blacklist set. My first 'big' mini.

Green = craft acrylics thinned down with windshield washer fluid. Burgundy strips on the armour plates (also craft paint). Vallejo Bone White claws, teeth and horns, Sun Yellow eyes. Lightly washed with a homemade black wash. 

Another first in my life happened in the between time as well: a cruise. Me and my wife went on an Alaska cruise as chaperones with the high-school band, of which our oldest daughter is a member. Here's some cool things I actually took pictures of:

Retired boat at Icy Straight Point

A longhouse at Saxman, a village by Ketchican.

There were a number of model boats on display around the ship, this one of the ship we were on. I wish I took pictures of some of the other models. 

This one was tough to get a pic without the reflection. 

Neat layering of islands in the morning as we cruised through them back to Vancouver.

Alaska was a fun adventure, at least the parts I got to see. I wondered if seasickness would be a problem and I probably was seasick the first full day at sea, it was choppy seas, but the symptoms were similar to the migraines I get, so I'm not sure. Otherwise, I was okay. My daughter had to lay down for a long while that day, even with three seasickness patches on. The three of us were fine the rest of the time.

My goblins are not done, or I'd have shown a pic. What is done is a halfling rogue, a cleric, a dire bear, and a mod inspired by a scenario for the Cairn RPG. However, I am waiting to post those as I painted them with some cheapish paints I bought and want to talk about them after using them on a few more models.

Cheerio!

First Play: Midnight Death Race

Hello racing fans!

I was perusing the new offerings on Wargame Vault when I came across the title Midnight Death Race. It was free and the cover art grabbed my attention, so I ordered and downloaded the game. The description says it's a minimalist game and there really isn't a whole lot for rules; only 11 pages and many of those are mostly art. It's a game for putting your Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars onto your game table, or the floor, and racing them in a no holds barred death match. The game is described as gritty, dangerous street racing set in the '70s and recommends using cars that fit that aesthetic.

Each player choses a car, takes a d6 to keep track of what gear they're in, and fills out a character sheet. Depending on the type of car the player chooses to use, they have a certain number of points with which to buy driver perks and/or car upgrades (write these on the character sheet). Perks are driver attributes that give some kind of bonus during the game (for example, the perk Anxious lets the driver go first at the beginning of the race). Upgrades add defensive or offensive bonuses to vehicles, like a thrust-jumper, caltrops, or flamethrower. A player can also choose to add a flaw, limiting their driver in some way in exchange for more points to spend.

The game uses the Gaslands movement templates (you'll need two sets, I downloaded a free PDF from the Osprey Publishing website). On their turn, the player chooses a number of templates equal to their current gear, but the caveat is that the templates must be used in the order they are picked up and if you touch it, you take it. Lay them out and move the car along them to the end (reminds me of Wings of War/Glory). Collect hazard tokens for being involved in crashes or for pushing the limits of your car. Any turn a player begins with a hazard token requires a driving check to see if they complete their path as planned or lose control.

Gaslands looks so cool. However, from what I've seen of Gaslands (mostly people playing on YouTube), it has never really grabbed me. I think there's two main reasons I don't pull the trigger on that game that Midnight Death Race solves: 

1. Simplicity - it seems each player controls a team of vehicles in Gaslands and it's a bit daunting to me to want to modify six or so die-cast cars to prep for a two-player game (I've worked on three, only one is finished). MDR gives you one vehicle and there's not much for an arsenal available, so it feels okay to field an unmodified vehicle (none of the cars in the book art have guns and things sticking out of them). 

2. Physicality -  Gaslands seemed formulaic in its chaos. For example, if a player's car spins out, it seemed like there's a formula to it and they can sometimes plan it to gain an advantage. The chaos in MDR seems more authentic with the addition of actually letting the cars contact each other in a crash or a player being forced to manipulate their car in a way that they truly have limited control. For example, if a player fails a driving check and spins out, they flick their car at one of its quarters to actually spin it and then play it from where it comes to rest.

Anyway, after making templates from the downloaded PDFs, all I had to do was make a track on the kitchen table with some Jenga blocks and other terrain pieces and get the kids to choose their cars. In order to not overwhelm us, I told everyone to only choose from the perks list. We were playing within 15 minutes. We had a blast and a surprising come-from-behind win after the leader took a hard turn when he needed a hairpin and crashed into a wall.

Top center: The Jaguar that spent most of the game in the lead comes within millimeters of the Willy's Jeepster that found a chance to overtake it. Left side: You can see the polka-dot top of Toad from Mario Kart hugging the green divider wall. Toad was the underdog success story.

All the kids liked it and had a bunch of laughs. I'll definitely be introducing this game to my brothers next chance I get.

One note I should mention: when I ordered the rules from Wargame Vault, they were free, but it must have been a temporary promotion or something, because I looked again a week later and they were $5 (USD). Still not a bad price, though.

Note 2: The rules did not lay out how to decide turn order, so I chose order based on cars positions after every round, so leader first, then 2nd place car, and so on. Made sense to me and seemed to work well.

A quick showcase of the my holiday hobbying

I've got a couple of other posts in development, but I've had to put a pause on those ruminations. I've been trying to fix up our family vehicle to a condition that is acceptable for our oldest to take a driving test, fighting with getting a clothes dryer working (this one is now done), and to top it all off dealing with a toothache and root-canal and my wife's broken leg and a couple of sick kids. Yeah, what a start to the new year we've been having.

Back in December, or maybe early January (while school was still out) I did manage to paint these Pirates I bought at a thrift store. They are a set intended for playing the "Rum and Bones" miniatures skirmish game. The band is called the Skull Kickers, for those who are interested.

These were fun to paint. The characters are from some graphic novel and they have a specific look from those pages. I decided to go with the colour schemes on the box, or close to them.

I was also randomly gifted with a Gundam-type kit quite a few months ago. A friend received it in error from Temu and he wasn't going to build it so he offered it to me. I built it over the Holidays as well.

A "big, stompy robot."

And I played a little game of kind-of-Aeronef as a test of concept of ideas I started having about how I'd like to play a flying battleships game. Maybe more on this later, but here's a pic.

With the new firing and damage rules I put together, I made this a three-on-one, the one being this circular ship in the foreground. Despite her superior firepower entering the fray, she ended up with rudders crippled and, unable to steer, the other three ships slipped in behind to pour fire into her.