It comes in pints?

All right!  Another busy day with Screaming Heretic!  The first order of business was to head to Games Plus in an attempt to pick up certain critical supplies that seem to be perpetually out of stock in online markets.

Also, I wanted to test out some other items which Joe had pointed out to me.

Among these was the Black Lava.  I was replacing my old Oxide Paste, as well as my Water Effects.

I have been waiting on my Sepia Shade to show up for a while.  When I looked for it on the shelf, I saw a host of other shades!  Huzzah and glory be!  There were all these additional shades too!!!

I was also happy to find a replacement to my Woodland Scenics ivy kit.  Fantastic!!!!

I took some of the regular cork bases that were waiting for some black lava!

Some quick application of the black lava.  It has a slightly different texture from the oxide paste, although not as much as I had expected.

I tried to experiment with one of my flat sculpting tools to see if I could make the same slate texture that you can sculpt with the oxide paste.  Once again, it works a bit differently...

After that dried, I put a few layers of paint on them.

Here they are prior to the glazes.

Glazes applied!  Stay tuned for more experimentation!

They march again!!!!

Here's some stuff that has been stashed in boxes for so long!

The last time the whole shebang has been out on the table was before Adepticon 2013.

It was nice, but also sad, to see the Tomb Kings out on the table again.

It suddenly reminded me of why they ended up languishing in the box for so long.  So unplayable.  Bummer!!!

Then we get to a game that is still very playable... Lord of the Rings!

Here's me new spider unit, that is waiting to team up with my Easterling cavalry.

Itsy bitsy spiders... and Saurumon!!!  With an orb... and sad lonely hankey boy.

Easterlings!  My guys!  Always ready to kick some Gondor ass.

And the Angriest Elves in Middle Earth.  They ain't leavin'.  Screw the Grey Havens.

Someday... these guys will be good again.  Someday.

Life among Heretics

I suppose that it was appropriate for me to be a guest of the kind folks at Screaming Heretic this weekend.  Since my painting philosophies are considered heretical and blasphemous! :-)

I had been burning disks the previous 16 hours.  All during out latest Memoir '44 "paint and play" session, files were prepared, disks were burned, more files prepped... rinse and repeat.

I was still burning the last of the 100 disk stack when it was time to do the final packing and get ready to be whisked away!

This is a very unorthodox setup, but it certainly kept the line moving.  With so many people switching to disks, I had to get cranking on burning new versions!

Time to meet the pets!!!  First, the doggie!

Then I was surprised to find myself wearing a set of earphones and sitting in on the 64th podcast by Screaming Heretic.  A wide variety of topics were discussed.

The discussion covered interesting kickstarters, what people were working on, a report from ACEN, Girls on Gaming, how to keep campaigns fun but challenging, and much more!

My Little Pony likes it hard...

Podcast finished... time for some 40K

  The full soundstage!  

Shelves of miniatures everywhere!!!!

And gaming tables.  A few of the blog readers will know exactly where these came from.

Setting up for some paint work and some demos.

Just about ready...

Time for a basing demo!!!  Tools, sculpey, cork, and samples!!

Later that night, it was time to meet the denizens of the above world...  the kitties!!! 

The Americans take revenge!

So, it was time for Rich and I to play the other half of his scenario.  And now, I would be playing the U.S.!  Rich sees just how precarious the Axis position is in his scenario :-)

By the way, if you are interesting in purchasing this game... just head over to the Wandering Dragon Shoppe in Plainfield!  It is a gaming palace, and Kevin and Laura are the best!!!

You can also test it out, as we did, with their 'open box games' section.

Here's my starting cards.  Idea for me, since killing off the Italians in the church and cemetery would be a huge path to victory.  You see all those order cards for the right flank, which means I can make a sustained push over there!

You can see that I am already shifting over as many units as I can with my other order cards.

Rich is desperately trying to move his heavy units out onto the road, so that he can 'rescue' the Italians.

Contact!  The Italians are already dying and retreating!

This is very bad for the Axis, since it is a certainty that all three Italian units will be killed, meaning that I only need to take out one more Axis unit to win.

I decided to feed some units to the Germans, to lure them out into the open road.  That way, I could pick off one exposed unit for the win.

That's exactly what happens, and we also learn how devastating fast infantry can be!  Those darn jeeps hit really hard!  Moving 4 spaces and pounding the enemy is very nasty indeed!

The Germans concentrate a lot of energy on a Sherman unit that I had replenished with my MASH card.  This was the ideal distraction.

Almost there!  The Italian artillery is completely surrounded!  Looks bad!

And now the unwitting Germans have fallen into the trap.  The unit of elite Waffen SS are cut down from all sides!  Just one more victory point to go!

After wiping out that last German unit with the fast infantry, it was time to make short work of the cowering Italian Artillerymen!  The Stars and Stripes are avenged!!!

A small collection

Every so often, I like to take some group shots of 'unrelated' miniatures.  In this case, it is almost entirely Reaper minis.

It's fun to see the color variety, and the different sculpting styles.

That is something that you don't often see within one miniature line these days... some variation between sculptors!

It's very cool to see the differences between these three... the way the faces are sculpted alone is fascinating. 

They all have a lot of dynamism to the poses.

These really cover the full gamut of colors... greens, yellows, blues, browns and reds.

Even the bases are fun to compare.

I especially wanted to see these, since they are all gone now... I will miss them!

Another group shot!

I hope you guys didn't mind seeing this latest 'mini' collection! :-)