Painting Challenge: This and That

This post originally appeared on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

I spent a lot of my hobby time over the last few weeks preparing and running our club's first local game convention. Despite a busy schedule, I managed to sneak in a bit of painting. No giant point bombs today, but at least I polished off a few more figures.

I added machine guns and a new matte black finish to this 20mm scale car for Gaslands. I intended to paint it in some sort of garish silver or purple, but it simply called out to be painted black in homage to the 1989 Batmobile. It's hit the table a few times and has proven especially deadly!

Luke Skywalker has been fighting in my Monday night Star Wars Legion battles for months in a simple brown primer coat. I rushed a quick paint job on him, good enough for tabletop play and maybe a few points for the challenge.

Finally I finished up my collection of Astropolis krogloggs. The intricate sculpts and detail warrant additional painting time which I've enjoyed, but certainly slowed my progress in the challenge.

That's it for this week! Four 28mm figures and a 20mm vehicle.

Scrum Con 2019 is in the Bag

Hot damn, we did it! Forgive my crowing, but I'm thrilled we managed to set up and launch our one day con within six months of the idea first percolating through our club's brain trust. Renting a hall, setting up tables and putting out hot dogs doesn't really make a gaming convention though. While I may have helped set the stage, it was really our game masters and attendees who brought the event to life.  Based on our post-convention satisfaction surveys, and the comments we received during the convention it sounds like our little con sated a hunger for a gaming focused local event.

Our Scrum Club learned quite a bit from our inaugural event, but with one nominally successful game day completed we've already begun discussing improvements for "the next one".

While I didn't get a chance to run or play in a game, I still had a great time chatting with attendees, welcoming some folks to their first con ever, and getting a chance to watch some very talented GMs work their magic.

If you attended Scrum Con, thank you for taking a risk on our little venture. And special thanks to the game masters who trekked in to put on a show for our players, especially Buck Surdu, Eric Schlegel, Greg Priebe of the HAWKS, Kelly Armstrong and Neil Carmichael of the Army of Central Maryland Wargaming, Joey McGuire, Ed Watts, and our RPG hosts Zeb Cook, Elizabeth Ferrara, Luke Stacks, Scott McKinley and Keith Sloan.

And to the Scrum team, Walt, Jared, Rich, Steve, Francesco, Zach, Josh and Joe thanks for all the hard work. You guys are really a great team to work with. Now let's get crackin' on planning Scrum Con 2!

Painting Challenge: A Plethora of Krogloggs

This post originally appeared on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

I adore these goggle eyed kroglogg aliens and managed to boot several more off my lead pile and into active duty.

These chaps are labeled as "hunters" in the Astropolis line of miniatures and act as pest control aboard the enormous star cruiser that serves as their home, but in my collection they'll pressed into service as front line troops of a rebellious alien rabble. Kroglogg eyes are widely set on hammerhead shaped noggins. I assume the forward facing optical sensors on these ceremonial helmet give these particular alien soldiers binocular vision so they can act as sharpshooters for their depth perception lacking kin.

In so many science fiction series the aliens are part of a monoculture devoid of individual character. All klingons are warlike. All hutts are obese gangsters. I appreciate that many of the figures in the Astropolis line have individualistic characters woven into them through their sculpts.

This beverage sipper looks like a cranky old fart, while the mother and child are expectedly awaiting the arrival of a loved one.

Our dutiful papa is enroute, lugging his work parcels with him while this dimwitted attendant barely notices his passing. Love 'em!

I'm used to polishing off dozens of identical historical figures at a time, but these individual figures are requiring more attention to get right than I'm used to. My Painting Challenge point goal is looking increasingly overly optimistic, but I'm hoping that with just a few more individual sci fi figure to do I'll be able to drop some point bombs with mass units of uniformed figures soon.

In total these 10 figures should bump me up another 50 points.