Sunday, June 29, 2014

Dungeon Crawl 2014



My wife and I hosted a full day of gaming out our house this weekend. She handled the Just Dance tournament while I ran a dungeon crawl for eight players. I wanted to capture the fun of smashing monsters, gathering loot and leveling up from hopeful adventurer to epic world shaker, all in four hours. Check out the fantasy saga after the jump.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Reaper Snakes and Wizards




Polished off a few more Reaper Bones figures. First up, a pair of snakemen. The original concept sketch was pretty cool, but I think the final sculpt shipped in the Kickstarter was merely adequate. Still a decent figure, and they paint up quickly.

Metal fig on the left, still in need of basing.


The Kickstarter also included a wizard holding a snake staff, a figure I'd already painted in metal. I had an idea to use both for the dungeon crawl I'm running later this month, so I painted the wizard up in a different color scheme.




Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Desert Wasteland Terrain Revisited


My desert terrain tutorial has received a good deal interest since I posted it a few years ago, but a few readers were concerned about the durability of the latex covered terrain cloth.  I haven't had a chance to put it to the test until now. After creating the desert terrain cloth I had to roll it up and place it in storage while we prepared our old house for sale, built our new house and moved in. Things are starting to settle down and I was able to unfurl the desert terrain cloth. And the verdict is...



Perfect! I anticipated some damage, perhaps some sand that came loose, but I don't think the cloth lost a single grain.



The cloth remained flexible and intact, despite being rolled, thrown into storage, and manhandled into our new house, where it was stashed unceremoniously in a basement storage closet. Now... I just need some more desert figures to fight out some battles on it.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Reaper Scorpion, Bones Warlord, and Bones Lizardmen



There's nothing like a deadline to kickstart my painting into high gear. I'm hosting a multi-person dungeon crawl at the end of the month, and using the intervening time to finish off a few lingering figures and dig in to my Reaper Bones pile.

 

This giant scorpion is a metal figure by Reaper I've had in the lead pile for close to a decade. I thought he'd make a good pet for this Mad Max barbarian warlord from the Bones kickstarter

I've found painting the Bones figures can be a bit tricky. The shallow detail can require more dedicated attention when painting. These lizardmen were a different story. They're still Bones, but for some reason I found painting them up a joy.



I slopped on a coat of Spicy Mustard, applied some Vallejo Gunship Green and went to town with various green and brown washes. Maybe my eye was more forgiving to variations in lizard skin texture and color, but I was able to get these guys up to a reasonable standard in half the time I expected. They were a lot of fun to paint up, and with their low cost I'm thinking of picking up dozens more for a fantasy lizard army.