Whew, finally getting around to posting some images of my latest work on the old blog! This time it's a picture of a vampire spawn that I recently painted for my Curse of Strahd campaign. I am enjoying the creepiness of the campaign quite a bit. It's a fresh change from the openly fantastic feel of Faerun. Don't get me wrong, I really like the Forgotten Realms! But I also like the dark gothic horror setting of Ravenloft and Barovia. Check out the images in the D&D Image Gallery.

What's next? Well, I have to admit that I've fallen into the Magic the Gathering collecting and playing trap! I remember playing back in the mid 90s and just hating the fact that I needed $$ to play a decent game... This time around though I'm really enjoying the deck building. It's pretty fun! As a consequence though, I've started painting some of the cards, known as 'altered art' cards. I will likely post some of them up here eventually as well!

For miniatures though I have some more D&D related stuff soon! Spiders, zombies, and more fun coming! Until then...

All right, it's six months late, and I apologize. I know a lot of people have been asking about it, and helping out with ideas, and giving encouragement. I really, really appreciate it. Why is it so late? Well, it wasn't the quick rules update that I thought it would be. The rules themselves didn't change all that much I guess, but the army lists changed quite a bit. Things like banners and musicians were taken away, and the entire point-cost stacked was completely reworked. This left me with a choice: keep the old army list points stack, or rework it completely to fit in with the new paradigm....

Naturally I decided to rework it completely. I wanted to take advantage of inspiration from some of the new lists to inform elephants and whatnot! So, after a lot of work, and - shamefully - too much procrastination, I've complete the 2nd edition update to KoWHAC! All of the four main supplements have been completely updated: Hoplon, Pike, and Arrow, Rome's Rise and Fall, The Viking Age, and Medieval Mayhem are all ready to go for Kings of War 2nd edition. Check them all out in the Kings of War Historical Ancient Combat section.

Hmmm, so what's next? I have been painting here and there, but not a lot admittedly. I also have some terrain projects on the go, but nothing quite ready yet to update. So yeah, stay tuned, there will be something sooner or later!

PS. I fixed the RSS feed today as well... Does anyone even use RSS any more?!? :)

I have enjoyed pulling out my old figs and painting them up in the past. A huge part of my undead army is made up of old figures. But I never painted up the bat swarms again, until this week! The old bat swarms were made up of huge bats, metal figs with somewhat over-exaggerated faces. Some of them were plain goofy, some pretty cool, but all of them 20+ years old... So I went to check what the bat swarms look like these days and it turns out they are still using the same figs! They must not be a real unit in the army anymore? Insanity.

In any case, I remember buying one pack, which came with two bat swarms, and then proceeding to put two bats on each 40mm base in order to make my dollars work more for me. That gave me five bat swarms! I tried to add tombstones and trees to the bases, but my friends still made fun of me :) Oh well, good times. This time around I painted them up for D&D, which should be fun! I also painted up a spectator! They are basically lower-level versions of the beholder, which I am excited to throw at my players. They should enjoy the spectacle if not the death-dealing rays! Pun very much intended :) Check out the images in the Dungeons and Dragons Image Gallery.

With Dungeons and Dragons I so rarely get to actually have dragons running around... they're just too powerful! But the Lost Mines of Phandelver start-set adventure did something awesome: they put in a dragon for low-level characters anyway! Now, my characters learned the hard way to be careful *before* they decided to go engage the dragon... Thankfully. Otherwise they would have been reduced to a sloppy, acid-melted mess of gross on some old tower floor thanks to the powerful young green dragon. But alas, they haven't even gone to fight the dragon yet, and they're leveling and learning quickly, so there's hope for them still! I also had the chance to paint some more bugbears: one King and a few archers. This should just about give me enough bugbears to carry me indefinitely, so I'll stop for now. Check out the green dragon and bugbear images in the Dungeons and Dragons Figure Gallery.

I've been painting some vampire bats to play the role of vampire bats and also stirges. What are stirges anyway? Giant blood-sucking hairy mosquito bugs? I plan to not even introduce the concept of a stirge, and just characterize them as blood-sucking bats! That's a lot more sensible and relatable I think. Also a little less goofy? So expect to see those along with some other random dungeon-crawling monsters in the near future! Until next time...

It really doesn't feel like it's been almost two years since I last painted some Andalusians in 28mm. It was all the way back in February 2014 that I last painted some Andalusians I guess... those HaT light horse figs. They were fun, but I was ecstatic when I heard that Gripping Beast was doing Arab plastics! Of course, they would need some conversion, but they would be much easier to convert than the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors I was originally planning to use! So, I picked up a few boxes... and then held on to them for about a year and a half, and now I'm finally getting to them! Check out the images in the Al-Andalus Image Gallery.

So my D&D group kinda fell apart, which means that I don't *really* need to work on D&D figs at the moment. That being said, I still am working on them! So I'll likely be posting some of those. But I've also been thinking about dusting off some Kings of War dwarves since I recently received my brand-new rulebook! I need a couple more units to give that dwarf army some teeth and then I can enlist the (now old enough) kids to defend the dwarven realms against my undead horde! So, we'll see... until next time!

I got the pumpkin twig blights painted up! I'm quite happy with these, and I think I might actually do some more. I'm pretty happy with these. Check out the images in the Undead Image Gallery.

I have a few more Dungeons and Dragons figures that are in progress on the desk, and I'll try to finish those up before I go back to the Kings of War armies that I was working on. I have so many half-finished figures on the desk now actually: zombicide characters, D&D monsters, pulp sailors, Arab plastics, Mice & Mystics rats, Kings of War panther-riding females, and even Hobbit miniatures... I may have to simply put those away for how. :) Next up though? I don't know. Until next time!

So, as mentioned before, it's all about the D&D figures now. I have to paint new characters, new monsters, and build tiles/terrain for playing. This week I have a handfull of both monsters and a character! My dex-based fighter, and then a whole slew of monsters! Check out the images in the Image Gallery.

Up next are the pumpkin critters, blights, or whatever they are. I'm painting them up and should have them done soon!

Mantic has made some great stuff, and their badger-riding dwarves are pretty awesome. It's been some time since I've received mine, and I've only painted one. They're cool, and they'll be fun to paint when I finally get around to them! Check out the images in the Image Gallery.

Next up, more D&D figures!

As always happens when I start playing D&D, all of my miniature army plans go out the door and it's all about one-off Dungeons & Dragons monsters! In this case it turns out that I needed some interesting plant-type monsters for D&D, and wasn't sure how to repsent them... then I remembered the pumpkin constructs I made and decided to create a few more. Check out four more of those in the Check out the images in the Greens Gallery.

One the topic of D&D, I've been playing a lot of fifth edition lately, and I'm really liking it. I like the simplifications, the rules feel more reasonable in general, and overall it's awesome. One little thing though, challenge rating. When I found out that challenge rating was basically gone, and that everything was calculated on experience points I was soooo happy, certainly it has to be much simpler than it was?!? And indeed it is much simpler... But I feel it could be simpler... But really, I'v really liking fifth edition! So yeah, more D&D monsters on the way!

I originally started painting these guys back in May 2014 for the Lead Adventure League competition... Turns out, I didn't actually finish them until over a year later! :) Oh well, sometimes that's how it goes. I tried to out do my previous 28mm Persians with these guys, and I think it worked out. A little more attention to detail, and better shield designs, and they are looking pretty good! Check out the images in the Ancient Persian Image Gallery.

Next up, likely some Zombicide survivors... or some more figs that I've been painting for Dungeons and Dragons. Or another Norman that I painted up... Or some new terrain that I've been working on... I guess we'll have to just wait and see if I manage to get any of the many projects done between now and next time! Until then, have fun!