I finished a quick couple of buildings for 40k and other mini games this evening. These two pieces are mostly for 40k. The green building was made from the box I received an award in and some balsa wood, a wooden plaque and some bits from a Games Workshop building. The water tank is a coffee can covered in bass or balsa wood strips (lots of them) and the metal rings were made from comic book backing boards. These two house are usually help make up the battle field for my Bolt Action battles. They are house kits from Plasticville and make great generic cottages/houses for European theater battles. They aren't my best work but I plan on donating them to the store so they are likely to get abused or stolen anyway. I was in a painting frenzy tonight and I knocked out the first base coat of English Uniform and mud on the bases on 25 British Tommies. Next I plan on assembly painting the green helmets and khaki bits, then each troop will get personal attention when I ...

Here are a few recent things from my painting desk. This White Scar biker is almost done. I just need to paint the backpack and glue it on and he's ready to ride for the Emperor and the Khan. I really, really like my cruddy, battle damaged armor. I didn't think I would, and most of my models have nice, clean parade uniforms, but I enjoy the soot, dirt, and chipped paint look on my Scars. This hut/shanty house was built from an old Christmas gift box. I glued some bass and balsa wood, along with some wood shingles (to act as wood shingles) and I've got a quick little building that might work in just about any futuristic game or dystopian setting. It'll probably be in my WWII tables as well. Speaking of WWII, I will never play a FOO in Bolt Action again. In two games today, the artillery barrage drifted back into my opponent's control and destroyed another one of my units or was delayed and then shifted away from my troops three times before crashing harmle...

I picked up another blister pack of Early War British troops to add to my growing army. Normally, the models are well inspected before being sent off to market with just a little flash that needs to be sanded off. However, this blister had two models with some filled in neck holes. The Early War Brit BA models come with separate heads on a sprue that have long neck stalks that allow gamers to select from 10 different heads and have them face in a variety of directions. A couple of models in this blister had filled in neck holes that required a bit of extra trimming and sanding to get the head to sit properly on the models shoulders. It's not that big of a deal, except that I managed to glue my fingers to the model while holding it in place and waiting for the glue to set. Yar.

Here's my lone painted figure from Bolt Action. Hopefully I'll have more troops painted soon for him to boss about.

There are a handful useful Bolt Action Web sites out there, but here are a couple I enjoy reading. First is the  the Demo Gamers.  They have an infectious way of writing battle reports and blog entries that makes me want to play more and write more about my games. Another useful site is  boltaction.easyarmy.com  There you can build just about any Bolt Action army list you need to play a game. It uses simple check boxes to generate an army list, with all of the options so don't have to do any math, and it creates an easy to read army list. I haven't tried it on my phone yet, but that would be super handy for casual play and pick up games (not that Bolt Action lists are difficult to assemble.) Even though my army was not painted, I couldn't wait any longer to play with my early war Brits so my buddy Russ and I duked it out on the field of battle this past weekend. As you can see in the picture, I used the cool battle mat from Frontline Gaming to cover our 6x...

Recently, I've been working on my Bolt Action British early war "Tommies" and getting them ready for war. I'm very close to getting my models on the table for a game and I've been pouring over the rules. (Too many games leaves me with a bunch of mixed-up rule sets in my head...) When we ordered our armies, my pal Russ also put in an order for some MDF bases for us to use instead of trying to track down GW bases or use the flat style Warlord bases. The MDF bases are nice, light, and have a pleasant smell of burned wood from the laser cutting- not to mention inexpensive. Before I even took a model out of the package, I was concerned about the little "hump" the Warlord metal minis might produce from the model's base but I've been pleasantly surprised how little you notice after adding some rock, sand and other materials. The rough battlefield I'd like to put on my troops is a perfect camouflage to hide any raised areas or sharp edges. Af...

I had a great holiday! Not only did I spend it with friends and family, but I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she said yes! I made a comic book about our lives together and asked her to marry me on the last page; which caught her by surprise! While I've been able to woo her into the exciting world of comic books, getting her to play any table top game has been pretty difficult. As crafty as she is, I figured she would enjoy painting or the modeling portion of the hobby, but alas, she has no interest. A much less exciting gift this holiday season was my first blister of Bolt Action minis from Warlord Games. After deciding to pick up conflicting armies to duke it out on the fields of WWII, Kraig made the first move and gifted me the first pack of lead. Kraig will take the side of ze Germans and I will pick up the Union Jack. We've both been pretty impressed by the rules but we haven't actually played any games yet. Like I wrote, the British Airborne blister is ...