A Model Wargame

Recently I've had the chance to encounter Chirine's Workbench, a blog by a war gamer and modeling aficionado who happens to have discovered Empire of the Petal Throne and Professor Barker a couple-three decades ago, and has been gaming in Tekumel ever since. Chirine describes himself as a modeler first and foremost, and was first tasked with painting and creating miniatures for the Prof's EPT games "back in the day" before becoming enamored with the world setting; now he continues to play (and model) using the richly detailed setting along with a home-brew rule set that combines EPT with pieces of OD&D and Chainmail.

Watching videos of his recent mini-skirmish campaign (posted to YouTube here), a couple thoughts strike me, besides the obvious comparisons to Mordheim and its (online, unofficial) expansion, Lustria: Cities of Gold.

A) With regard to D&D (and all its variations, everything from EPT to my own Five Ancient Kingdoms), we just don't give enough consideration to the game's wargaming roots. So many things about the game...what might be called, I suppose, "D&Disms" are based in and on the needs and wants of the wargaming subculture. 3rd editions five foot squares are a poor substitution for the games originals inches and scales (from a war gamer's standpoint) yet is an attempt to make sense of the need for ranges and scales anyway. Personally, I have never worried all that much about whether or not a person was shooting their short bow at long range or short range...or the radius of light sources...or even (usually) the f'ing diameter of a fireball spell! Instead, I'm just "roll to hit with your bow" (assuming the character's not engaged in melee) or "you see the monsters" or "you're going to launch that thing underground into a tiny chamber? What exactly are you hoping to occur?"

[alternatively, I'll just say, "ok" and roll saving throws for the bad guys]

The micromanaging of ammo and light and rations and encumbrance and ranges, etc. is just so low down on my priority list, it just often slips through the cracks of my games (I'm writing this as a DM or "referee"). It's just not IMPORTANT...and yet we still pay dutiful attention to it when noting movement rates and tracking how many arrows are left in the quiver. This attention to detail during the game (to be clear, shopping for high, soft boots or short, hard boots during character creation can give you a distinct image of the PC you are playing), slows the pacing of the game...and when you are trying to keep a group of players engaged and enthralled in your imaginary world, it's important not to disrupt that pacing.

Having said that, I have played and enjoyed war-games in the past and my personal preference is to have those games move along at a good pace, too. An over-abundance of "realism" can make a long, slow game even longer and slower...which I detest (yes, I realize that this stance is anathema to many die-hard war-game fanatics). I don't know...maybe I just have a problem with opponents taking a shit-long time to maneuver and measuring every measly half and quarter inch when my assumptions of battle are that they tend to be kind of fast-paced and (at times) sloppy.

I will say this: Chirine's skirmish/battle was a lot quicker paced than some war-games I've seen, and faster than many (recent) edition D&D games, despite maneuvering several teams of miniatures for each player, and using two different playing surfaces.

B) Models are cool.

That's something I keep forgetting or letting slip from my mind, and not in the way I do with "D&D's wargaming roots" (the latter is something I always know "intellectually" but simply fail to process or consider or give weight to). I remember models from when I was a kid...and here I'm talking painted miniatures that represent characters/monsters...models that were owned by older players I knew but with whom I never gamed. They did not have the fantastic, realistic paint jobs you see in those Golden Demon award winners or anything, but they were still so cool...they inspired me, made me want to play a game that used them. I can see the same glow in my son's eyes when we see miniatures in a game shop...he wants to have them and hold them and play games with them. I saw it with the teenagers that I introduced to Warhammer back in the day, too.

I don't know what it is about gaming minis...they're not dolls (or "action figures") that have posable limbs for play. But their sheer static nature makes one want to fill the void...the lack of movement...with story and imagination. "This is my adventurer X; here's what he's going to do." Anyone ever see that old Henry Thomas movie, Cloak & Dagger? It's about a kid that talks to his imaginary friend, personified in an RPG miniature (from a secret agent game) that he carries around with him.

I love miniatures, love to paint them, sometimes even love to modify 'em. Here's the thing though: few of us (outside the truly dedicated) have the time and money to really go whole hog with the miniature thing. Certainly, I could never afford them as a kid...I shoplifted one once (as a pre-teen), but didn't have any paints or tools or knowledge and so did nothing with it. We never used minis in our games as kids anyway...using those stand-up cardboard cut-outs and "area maps" in Marvel Superheroes was a novelty for us (and one that we eventually dispensed with).

As an adult, I found myself (for a time) with an excess of both money and time, and became a collector and painter of minis. Since then, the money has receded somewhat (kids, dogs, mortgages, debts) and the time has dwindled to almost nothing (kids). I still have plenty of unpainted (or half-finished) minis, just no time to paint. As for modeling...wood-working and sculpting set-pieces...well, I'm fairly hopeless with anything requiring much "hands-on" creativity. Comes from being 1) a perfectionist (stopping before I start) and 2) never wanting to 'get messy.' Just beginning to paint minis in the first place (circa 1997) represented a bit of a breakthrough for me.

[and, yes, improvement does come with practice]

Killed some PCs with a very similar model.

However, using "found objects" for models (as Chirine does at times) or re-purposing other things for minis/models (like rubber frogs, plastic animals/monsters, those giant packs of generic zombies, etc.) IS something I can do...and something I experimented with good results, back when I was still running a B/X game down at the Baranof. It was a lot of fun to use minis in a game...but it sure was a pain in the ass hauling all the props and whatnot to the venue (something that really hit home when I was transporting my gear to last summer's Dragonflight convention). If you have the stereotypical basement or garage or unfinished concrete bunker in which to play with your buddies, that's certainly ideal...though I'd imagine enticing new players down to your "lair" might be tough (ugh!).

ANYway...those were my main thoughts when watching Chirine's videos. It's after 3am here, so I better hit the hay.

[oh, yeah...go USA!]

OLD School Inspiration

I've been up since 4:30 or so, but I passed out a little after 11 last night, which means I got more than five hours of sleep and am thus feeling more rested than usual. It's the "wee hours" of the morning (I think...I don't really know the definition of that phrase) and because my wife's out of town and it's Wednesday, I'm going into work late today due to the need to drop the boy off at daycare. Since I don't need to wake him up till 8, that gives me some time to drink some coffee, eat a slice of week-old apple pie, and catch up on "things."

I really hadn't intended to post ANYthing to Ye Old Blog until after the total publication of my eleven part monstrosity on role-playing, but it would seem I've been especially inspired to write this, and while that may mean a few double or triple posts, I'm sure you folks can handle it, right? After all, I'll be out of the country here pretty soon, and I doubt I'll have much time to write while on my trip (more's the pity...I still need to finish my edits/rewrites of volumes one and three of 5AK...*sigh*...man, I hope that's finished before the end of the month).

Some of the things I wanted to post about: The Lone Ranger movie, the television show Defiance, and the recent posts making the blog rounds regarding "D&D summer camp." Of all those, the only one that's really time sensitive is The Lone Ranger, because it's gotten a mixed reception and will probably be leaving the theaters soon. Since I'm not going to take the time to post on that today, you might want to go check out the movie now before it's gone: it's a weird little film, and I liked it...but for pretty different reasons than one might expect (that would be the subject of the post). However, if your budget's tight, you grew up in a time post-Ranger (I, at least, had the Saturday morning cartoons and the 1980s feature film), and if you aren't a fan of the kind of twisted-campy-action that made the first Pirates of the Caribbean film so successful you might want to skip it.

Oh, and I wouldn't take small children to see the movie, by which I mean "children under 13."

So if I've got all these things to post about and I'm NOT going to do so at this time, what exactly is the subject of this post? Inspiring old school junk, my friends. Specifically old Grenadier miniatures for AD&D.

My buddy Kris is crazy. I mean literally (he's on medication for this, not to mention SSI). But even without that, the Doc (as I call him) is nutty about stuff. He's a fairly smart guy, but he doubts himself and his own abilities a lot (he's a talented musician and painter for instance but is a bit self-consicous of both). I don't see Doc as much as I once did because he resides in a small town in Oregon where the cost o living is a lot less and where he's closer to his parents...however, we still keep in touch and our conversations are often about gaming.

So a few weeks ago he told me he was getting rid of all (or most of) his miniatures and he asked me if I wanted them. I, of course, asked "how much?" and he said something like $15 plus S&H. I believe I ended up sending him a check for $25, because I already felt like I was ripping him off. But Kris wanted to get the stuff off his hands and out of his apartment, so he felt like we were doing each other a mutual favor.

And probably we are...I'm sure my wife would be less than happy with me adding another big box of clutter to my office.

Here's the deal, Kris had picked up the 4th Edition core books when they came out and acquired a few minis and battle mats over the years and such for use with the game (to be fair, I believe the accumulation started earlier with edition 3.5, but I couldn't say for sure). Anyway, after reading the 4E books and (maybe) playing once or twice, he decided the whole game was huge stinking pile of crap. Doc got rid of the books, but he's been holding onto the minis because A) he likes to paint (he usually paints things besides minis, but painting is painting), and B) he could still use the minis in D&D games (he last ran an AD&D game for a neighbor couple a couple months back.

However, he finally decided it was time to clear some space and the minis weren't fantastically necessary to his life and so shipped me a box. Which I got (finally) a couple days ago, and which I opened last night. This morning I've been going through the specific contents and it was enough to get me to start blogging.

Wow. In addition to a rolled battle map (vinyl, I think) with squares on one side and hexes on the reverse. I received four sets of Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Tiles (kind of like three dimensional dungeon geomorphs, but with cooler artwork), each with a different theme. The sets I got included Ruins of the Wild, Dire Tombs, Lost Caverns of the Underdark, and Fane of the Forgotten Gods. They are most unassembled and appear to have been unused or almost never used. I'll have to check these out in more detail later.

Kris also sent me a large tackle box filled with foam trays containing minis in various states of paintedness. This is a mixed bag (ranging from Ral Partha to Citadel to Reaper), but includes some really nice pieces. There's an unopened Reaper blister back with what looks like a Type V demons and another unopened back of "crossbowmen," though the latter come with equipment packs and whatnot that would put any older adventuring minis to shame. Diego and I were looking these over last night and he made me put a couple of the pieces at the very bottom of the box because he found them to be too scary. The most scary? Something that appears to be a ring-wraith or something (it's just a black cloak and hood with no face or hands). D did not like the looks of that one one bit!

But that's not all! The Doctor also sent me five boxes of Grenadier models of the kind that used to be advertised in the old Dragon magazine. Four of these are specifically for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and are complete in their entirety. The fifth is from their "Fantasy Lords" line and says it is "for use with Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy games." This one, called Skeletons: Raiders of the Undead, is not complete (it's at least missing the "free starter scenario" that is supposed to be included), but since it's packed with a bunch of extra minis, I'm not too worried about it. Besides, I'm more excited by the other boxes.

The four complete boxes are all from 1980, and include the following:

5002 "Monsters"
2006 "Specialists"
2010 "Denizens of the Swamp"
2007 "Females"

These are fantastic. I've collected a lot of minis over the years (mainly from Citadel for GW games), so I've seen a huge range of quality when it comes to miniatures. These minis of 1980 are pretty substandard as far as actual modeling (they're small, their features obscured, their details simplistic at best), but they exude a charm in their themes and their forms that I just find incredibly fascinating. These figures don't feel like they were pumped out with the specific aim of flooding tournaments around the world with armies (like Warhammer), but were instead designed to be used in intimate surroundings...perhaps around a kitchen table...by people who wanted to put their imagination into a physical form. These things were NEW once upon a time...and I mean a whole new CONCEPT in what was a miniature. You don't have a dozen similar lizard men in a box; instead, you have two ("lizardman" and "lizardman with club"), along with a troll, a basilisk, a giant snake, a shambling mound, a sahuagin, and two gnolls (one of whom is a "gnoll leader"). It's like the company didn't know WHAT might be needed or required of the players, and so just put together a likely group.

The "monsters" box is a similar hodge-podge, including one of each undead type, a couple lycanthropes, a balrog (though referred to as a Type III demon which is completely inaccurate in any edition), a wind elemental, a medusa, a gargoyle, an ochre jelly (though who's to say it couldn't double as ANY particular slime), a couple goblins, and a couple orcs. The orcs and goblins are very similar in appearance (big headed thugs) but the orc figures are physically bigger and meaner looking. There is a "naga spirit" that looks like a giant hooded cobra topped by the head of a bearded old man. Stylistically weird, but interesting...it makes me want to design an adventure or dungeon or board game using ONLY the models found in the box (and I'm sure there were people "back in the day" that did just that!).

The "specialists" include ten different character types (half-orc, monk, druid, paladin, mage, ranger, bard, assassin, cleric, and gnome illusionist). What's interesting is that the specialists appear to be simply "non-fighting men." Again, they are stylistically interesting: the druid appears to be a Cossack or Hungarian, the monk is wearing a karate gi and looks like something out of a Bruce Lee movie, and the only way I can tell the paladin and ranger are the devices on their shields (a cross and tree respectively). The half-orc, too, is undistinguished except that he looks poor and filthy (slovenly) compared to the others...the assassin has a cloaked/hooded appearance with a mace raised high to brain someone. The mage has a high collared robe but is still wearing a backpack for adventuring. The cleric has a cross, a Pope hat, and something that looks like an urn of frankincense or something.

The "females" box is quite nice, as it contains all female character classes (none of the "specialists" are female). They are, for the most part, fully clothed and proportioned and outfitted as you would expect for adventurers. They include: a lady with her panther (scantily clad), a fighter, an archer, a "guardswoman," a magic-user (high collared cape and crawling with snakes!), a "swordswoman" (with a terrifically giant hat that mounts a small dragon!), a cleric (who actually looks like an adventuring cleric), a dwarf (no beard), and a thief with sling (the only other model that is scantily clad).

Despite a lack of polish, all of these characters are interesting to look at, and would provide easy inspiration when creating a character. For the most part, none of them look "superheroic" (or even really "heroic")...they look like non-nonsense adventurers in a fantasy setting, willing to do battle in their search for treasure. These old and clunky minis makes me want to play in an Old School Way...something like AD&D without being AD&D. Maybe "Advanced B/X" or something.

Hmmm...okay, I'll have to think about it. Right now it's time to put the house (and myself) in order before D wakes up. Installment #3 of my series "On Role-Playing" should be appearing in the next couple-few hours.
: )

New DM Mascot

My buddy called me up today and asked what's with all the bear stuff lately. I explained it's "Bear Week" and then realized I'm pretty much out of steam. Part of that is due to the usual exhaustion and part of it is...well, I think it's all pretty much due to exhaustion. I still like bears, but I'm going to end this series early.

I DID want to show one of the miniatures I picked up over last weekend, however...check it out:

Now THAT is pretty awesome. While the current adventure I'm running has ZERO bears in it, I find just having a beast like that on the table conveys most of what I need to say about my attitude towards the game. Because of the relatives staying with us this weekend, I won't have time to paint the new critter for awhile, but maybe I'll have a chance to finish it up before we head to Mexico.

Oh, man am I tired...my eyes are burning right now. I'm shutting off; talk at y'all later!

: )

Cheap-Ass Miniatures

I stopped into Gary's Games today to see if I could pick up some "cheap-ass miniatures" for my Thursday night game. They pointed me to the perfect purchase:

For $10, it sure beats the hell out of using those glass beads one picks up from Pier One by the jarful. Now the only question is: Will 100 zombies be enough?

Hmm...I just remembered the party cleric was killed by a mountain lion during the last session (dang claw-claw-bite attack). That could pose a bit of a dilemma. Hmm....

Must remember to check characters' movement rates next session.

[currently flattening battle mat...wasn't sure if a hot iron would melt it; thought best not to even try...]

My First Gaming Convention - Day 3

Today was the third and final day of the Dragonflight XXXI convention. I had nothing scheduled to run today, and before Friday was not even sure I would bother attending. After all I wasn't sure I was going to even enjoy myself...which of course I did.

And Saturday night, I was even feeling a might angsty about the whole role-playing thing. I had called my buddy, Kris, that night to tell him some of the hinky feelings I was starting to get (on which I will elaborate in a future post)...not vibes given off by the con or the con-goers themselves, but negative feelings I was starting to have in reaction to some of the things I was seeing. Though it wasn't enough to deter me from going back after the fun I'd had. In fact, today I even showed up early (around 11:00).

All right, all right, I'll spare you the suspense: today was the best day yet.

Really. Perhaps not as many different subjects of blog posts came to mind, but that might be because I was too busy enjoying myself. After learning of the live auction that would be going on from nine to noon, I really wanted to get down there early, though I promised myself I would not buy anything. And I didn't, but oh man...they had this un-painted 1979 Ral Partha miniature set: an anatomically correct balrog with four nubile slave girls that I could've have for $10!...but I was light on cash today anyway and they weren't taking cards, so I was able to keep my vow. Oh...and the stack of 1st edition AD&D modules that were going as one lot got sold before I made it to the auction, which is the only serious temptation I saw.

Still, I love auctions (much to my wife's chagrin)...they bring out my competitive spirit something fierce...I want to win!...and it was fun to watch the collectors and the hoary old grognards and the dealers all compete with each other. Having a little knowledge of how Gary's buys and prices used games, I could see the vendors' minds working as they judged whether or not they could recover their money and net a profit...on eBay or on-line. Most of the stuff went for bargain basement prices. One lucky chap bought a bin of board games that got bid up to $70, I'm almost sure because of the 3rd edition Blood Bowl set that was included with it (I was tempted to bid myself). I snuck a peak in the box when he was perusing it and it turns out he got a score, as there were minis from not just the set but also several boxed teams (I saw undead and skaven) as well as multiple "big guy miniatures" (at least one ogre and a troll), all primed and un-painted. That's over $100 to a BB collector (like myself) right there...plus the other board games in the box.

Anyhoo, that was great fun but after realizing my resolve was strong enough to resist temptation (and thus I was just being gleefully masochistic hanging around) I decided to move down into the gaming depths.

Before I did, though, I found a whole ballroom of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K that I had completely missed prior. At the time, most appeared to be packing it up, but I spent several long minutes admiring the love and care the players had put into their armies for the convention. If I'd known about THAT, I may have been tempted to bring my own minis down...ah, well...

Today, I also brought the new digital camera and took a few (blurry) photos which I may post to the blog in the coming days. I loved the giant battlescapes and wargaming set-ups, the Circus Maximus chariot track someone had lovingly constructed, the huge ocean map that featured hundreds of miniature sailing ships in some sort of armada on armada action...

And then I got down to the nitty-gritty: gaming.

I went straight to the shadowy corner where the freakish role-players had been sequestered from the rest of the Con and went to the sign-in sheets to see what was being gamed and what was open for sign-ups. I was actually anticipating trying to get into a Savage Worlds games to see what all the freaking fuss was about. Yesterday it appeared that SW had sucked more than half the non-RPGA role-playing attendance into some huge-ass game, and while it hadn't looked very interesting to me, it might be worth learning about. I know next-to-nothing about Savage Worlds.

But there was no SW going on and nothing else really that interested my attention, save the "Story Lounge" running indie-games which had been on the agenda for every time slot of every day so far. This time I looked a little closer at the sign-up sheet and saw that Story Lounge was being presented by Emerald City Gamefest, those nice folks from Greenwood with whom I'd played PDQ on Saturday. I decided to give this a shot.

And promptly spent the next 20-30 minutes looking in vain for their table/room. Apparently, I thought, one must pass some sort of mandatory IQ test if you want to play indie games at the convention...those arrogant bastards!

Finally, I realized that the maps posted to the walls were not only NOT to scale, but were completely inaccurate. The Story Lounge was in one of the board rooms down a DIFFERENT shadowy hallway from the other RPG tables. Sequestered from the sequestered.

Well, at least I didn't have to go play in the parking garage like the LARP people.

Having finally found the board room that was the "Story Lounge" (a very nice, private room with a long wooden table and plush office chairs...a real lounge, completely unlike any of the other RPG tables), I was able to observe the end of some crazy-ass RPG about insane people fighting their own dementia and inner demons (or something). It was the type of weirdness one might expect.

After they finished, the two players went back to working the convention (they were Con volunteers) and I and two new people settled in to play Spirit of the Century...a game I HAVE heard a lot about, but have neither owned nor played. It's one of those games where availability of money and availability of product have yet to coincide for Yours Truly. Needless to say, I was stoked and the game was a blast...the best time yet.

I'll write up a full game report review later.

While the guy running the indie demos was not a member of the EC Gamefest, it does turn out that he lives in Greenwood as well AND lives about 2 blocks from me (!!) AND he's unemployed...which means he's available for gaming on Fridays. Sweet.

He gave me his email address...he seemed very normal.

Finally, one of the other players in the game, a nice young lady from a different indie-type gaming group told me that her group runs a game at the same Greenwood coffee shop as ECG every other Saturday...why the hell have I not met any of these people before?! However, the name of her group (she's from the Capitol Hill neighborhood) completely slips my memory at this time.

Still, that's plenty of contacts made for this weekend. And they all seemed like very nice, very happy people.

As for me...well, I went home after that. I do hope to see these folks again, if only to get my game on. It's funny that I seem to live smack-dab in the middle of some sort of Seattle Gaming Mecca...completely un-wittingly. These are not youngsters, nor are they aging grognards, but rather folks about my own age, give-or-take a decade. I suppose I've just had my head buried in the sand...or buried in the blog, perhaps.

Which reminds me...I did absolutely no self-promotion at the convention. Whether this was due to bashfulness or distraction...well, who knows. However, while I had my B/X Companion on display at the table when I was hoping to run a game (Friday and Saturday) I did no hawking of my goods while playing...hell, I didn't even mention I'd recently completed work on a game book. And, no, I did not mention I have been blogging for fifteen months and over 600 posts, either. What am I...some kind of narcissist?

; )

Mmmm...anyway, it's getting close to midnight and I'm well enough to go back to work tomorrow which means I need to be hitting the hay. I'll write more later this week...well, probably tomorrow. So stay tuned.

Starting the Season Right

So the Seattle Seahawks got off to a tremendous start today by soundly crushing their division rivals, the St. Louis Rams. Now granted, the 'Hawks were playing at home where they generally have a consistent home field advantage, and the Rams did go 2-12 last year (ever worse than the Seahawks own decade worst 4-12 record). But the Seahawks showed the kind of play-off poise they need if they're going to go far in the season.

Yes, we SHOULD be destroying teams 28-0 when we play them at home...at least if we want to climb back on top of the NFC West. 

What we DON'T want to be doing is playing close, hard fought matches against mediocre (or worse) teams. Save the hard, tooth-and-claw matches for road games against stiff competition, not patsies like St. Louis. Let's face it...the Rams are definitely in a "re-building phase."

The game heralded Jim Mora's first win as a head coach, and it showed a few things...creativity, versatility, the use of multiple weapons, a balanced offense, and a helluva' deep defense (with one pro-bowler out and two more being injured in the first quarter, we still shut out the Rams for the first time in recent team history). 

Even the referees came through for a change, reversing a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown (it's always a lot easier for teams to do that with 12 guys lining up instead of 11).

All-in-all, quite pleasing, especially as I had both Matthew Hasselbeck and tight end John Carlson on my fantasy team...they hooked up for two touchdowns (too bad I left Julius Jones and Nate Burleson on the bench...I would have won my fantasy match-up this week if I'd played them, too).

[sure, sure...I realize that Blood Bowl and fantasy football isn't what one might consider REAL role-playing...but pretending to be the coach of a fantasy team is "playing a role" after all. And you should hear my wife talk to her players on the pitch...I always find it entertaining]

Sorry for the poor quality of my photos, by the way...I'm even worse with the digital camera than I am with HTML...and that's saying something!  The minis themselves give off less glare than the play field, but it's too dark to get a decent picture without a flash right now (hmm...after midnight again. It's been a loooong day of football watching!).

And to any St. Louis fans out there that may be reading this blog...you can believe me when I say "no hard feelings." I'll be rooting for you to kick the ass of both Arizona and San Francisco (at least once each).

; )

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Man, I am.

September in Seattle is generally a pretty good time of year if you’re into the NFL. My parents started taking me to Seahawk games when I was 8 or 9 years old (they got their first set of season tickets around 1978 or ’79), and my wife and I are lined up to go to 5 of 8 home games this year. Plus with the new HD TV (our first new television in 10 years), everything looks set and ready to go.

Of course, this is all assuming Jim Mora meets the fans’ expectations as a new head coach…otherwise, Seattle could be in for a loooong year.

The last three or four years I’ve been involved in a fantasy football league, with my buddy Jon. Somewhere on the blog-o-verse I read the comment “fantasy football is D&D for adults that used to beat-up D&D players as kids.” There may be some truth to that, but Jon (who is no gamer and never was) readily admits that playing the “role” of a fantasy team owner isn’t much different from playing D&D, and thus doesn’t fault me my vices. Of course, he also plays fantasy basketball AND fantasy baseball, so he is a certifiable nut job with little to criticize anyway.

(do Canadians play fantasy football with the CFL? I honestly don’t know, and there are several of our Northern Neighbors that read this blog…I’d be interested in finding out)

Of course, for me as a long-time gamer, football season always brings out my passion for the REAL fantasy football game: Blood Bowl. Games Workshop’s Blood Bowl long ago proved to be my “gateway drug” into the silly (and expensive) hobby of painting miniatures. While I played RPGs for years without a single miniature, I can trace my minis collection back to the purchase of my first Blood Bowl boxed set circa 1995.

Actually, my first Blood Bowl set (the 2nd edition version) may have been purchased PRIOR to 1995, but it was 1995 when I had graduated from college and was living off Broadway that I first became obsessive-compulsive with miniatures. Suddenly, I was working full-time and had a bunch of extra cash on my hands…and I lived just down the street from a little shop called Games & Gizmos where I could engage in Warhammer 40K (then in ITS 2nd edition) tournaments.

Ahh…the good old/bad old days.

Nowadays, I am NOT obsessive-compulsive with regard to collecting miniatures. Games Workshop has fortunately cured me of ever wanting to support them again with their quick succession of releases and re-vamps of the 3rd-4th-5th editions of 40K (are they up to 6th yet? Maybe) and their official abandonment of Mordheim and Blood Bowl (yes, I realize these games are still supported on-line…that’s a whole ‘nother issue).

However, I still have minis that are un-painted, and every Autumn, when football season rolls around, I get the urge to do some painting.

My total collection of minis is fairly enormous for a dude that doesn’t actually wargame all that much. Part of this has to do with my completionist nature; part is simply a product of purchases made over a dozen year span. The end result, though, is pretty amazing…in addition to hundreds of 40K minis I have enough Blood Bowl miniatures to field at least 24 teams.

That’s pretty crazy if I do say so myself…practically enough to form my own NFL, Blood Bowl-style. Of these, fully half are completely painted and another 7 teams are in various states of being “finished up” (the Dark Elf team is probably my most miserable bit of un-finished business, as I’ve never been able to decide on a final color for their team uniform, and they have been painted and re-pained more than once).

In all truthfulness, this really is my big pot-o-crazy…whenever I stumble across a boxed Blood Bowl team in an obscure corner of a game store I tend to buy it. I have old Ral Partha minis that I have converted to Blood Bowlers (notably there was a period of time when there were no Treeman miniatures, and I simply painted up old Mountain Giant minis to look like Birdseye, the Jolly Green Giant…hey, my hobbit team needed their Big Guys!).

Anyway, this will be my first football season in the new house, and for a change I have several possible venues for painting. The kitchen has the best light (as well as the HD TV), but I have my own “game room” where my wife won’t have to look at my paints and brushes and newpapers. Heck, I even have a spare bedroom masquerading as a “TV room” upstairs that I could use to both paint AND stay out of the wife’s path (I should point out that my wife IS a football fan AND she enjoys Blood Bowl, too…she even has her own team…but she HATES the clutter that comes with the painting projects).

Ah, well…this is the kind of “tough decision” that’s not really very painful at all. Maybe this year I’ll finally finish the Dark Elf and Skaven teams. If I get around to it, I could even post some photos.

Go Seahawks!!! (*skraaw!*)
: )

Um...Where Are The Hats?

Picked up a couple or three Reaper miniatures today.  As I may have mentioned previously, while I play a lot of GW games and own hundreds of minis for their games, I never owned, painted, or used miniatures for D&D as a kid. Certainly I may have had a couple, never painted, simply to look at...but that's it.

However, as I delve more and more into Old School D&D I find myself drawn to the idea of at least having physical representative icons of PCs (both past and present).  Plus, it's getting close to football season, which is always when I start getting the itch to paint minis.

So...Reaper.  What a great line! Not only do they have a wide variety of models to choose from, and plenty of female miniatures (a real change from the Ral Partha days)...um, why are there so few pieces with helmets?

I mean there are plenty of female warriors, rangers, knights, etc....and they all have this long flowing hair just waiting to get *clonked* on the head by an orcish war maul.  What the hell?

I asked the dealer, what kind of person goes into combat without a hat?  She told me, "Reaper sculptors."  So it would seem. I was looking for viking-type minis with beards and helmets, but apparently the main theme is the clean shaven, bare headed hero of the flowing locks (male and female). This may work for the "high fantasy" of D20, but it ain't to my taste of gritty fantasy.

I picked up two dudes with hats and one chick (of course, I had to get a "female vampire" to find a female mini with a cool helm).  If I get 'em painted anytime soon, I'll upload  pix to the blog.

Thrall of Blackrazor

Ha! I've never played the D&D Miniatures game (nor even the old New Chainmail)...but if I did I would make sure my warband contained this guy.

'Course, I might need to greenstuff the miniature to give hime a new hairstyle...and a new Blackrazor. What's up with Jimmy Neutron wielding Grazz't's sword?

Yeah, Thrall of Blackrazor...it's just such a cool name I'd be tempted to buy the piece simply for posterity. But it would probable be better to do my own conversion of an Alejandro-type piece (I found an illustration of the fighter the other day...once I figure out how to hook my scanner to my Mac, I'll upload the picture...).

I never did use miniatures in D&D games...that was one "option" I never put into practice. I always preferred the abstract "battlefield of the imagination." Even with 3rd edition it was a challenge to convert my game play to the tactical map...but I was a lot better than the "old school" players I tried with whom I tried 3E gaming...they were fairly awful with 5' steps and attacks of opportunity and such, and I was constantly getting the better of them through sheer maneuver. This is probably due to my years of WH40K, Blood Bowl, and Mordheim game play (started long after I stopped playing RPGs regularly).

Hmm...I wonder if I could convert Blackrazor's Thrall to a Mordheim sell-sword. Sounds like my upcoming 4-day weekend (sorry, jokers!) will have a project or two for me to pursue.