Sauron

The Dark Lord himself, an imposing figure of shadow and death wrapped in armor with the One Ring blazing away on his finger, reaching down to slay Isildur at the height of his power, the moment before his defeat.  

I've owned this mini for literally decades. I bought it when it was originally released. Last year I decided I was finally going to paint it, and added it to my "to do" shelf. Then I didn't get around to it. This year, I finally did. It's honestly such a beautiful sculpt that it practically paints itself... but first, assembly. 

Sauron is a solid metal mini, and the connection points for the head and arms are both flat. Not ideal for such a heavy mini, and just asking to be knocked over and have an arm or 2 snap off. So out with the pin vice and wire, and make sure that The Dark Lord is solidly assembled. 

I primed Sauron with Stynalrez Metal Tone primer, a favorite of mine when the weather is too cold to spray prime, and also a great base layer for the armor. 

The cape I painted first with Reaper's Red Liner paint mixed with Brown Liner. I washed it with black wash, then did pure Red Liner, followed up with some highlights using Asmodeus Red, washed that with black wash, and then more Asmodeus Red mixed with some Cloudy Grey... followed by yet another black wash. Are you seeing a theme? 

For the armor, I highlighted the armor tone primer with Shadowed Steel, followed by yet more Black Wash. I repeated the highlight and then used a Numinara Rust wash splotched on to add a little more color. 

Finally the One Ring I painted first with Asmodeus Red, and then with Dwarven Gold, and teeny tiny highlights of Dragon Gold. I then went back and added just a bit of the Asmodeus Red to the shadows of the helm.

As seems to be a theme this year, I haven't done anything with his base. He deserves more than just some sand, but I haven't decided what yet. So here he is, finished, but not based.

March '25 In Review

This month went way too quickly. It started with the 25+ year old oil furnace/boiler breaking, sprinkling a big leak, and a few days without hot water. Thankfully it happened after we got back from China.Also got the taxes done, and had my dental check-up, so all sorts of fun activities!

I wrapped the month starting my veggie garden journey. I have a notoriously black thumb, so I'm limiting myself to just a few “crops” tomatoes (in containers) lettuce (in a palette), sunchokes, and some squash. I have no idea how this is going to go, but I’m giving it a shot.

Gaming
My Sunday night game wrapped up our Call of Cthulhu game, and got back to the Rappan/Stonehell game after a 3 month break. We're currently exploring a large haunted monastery, and when I say large, I mean HUGE. Well over 100 rooms. If we can wrap it up by the end of April, I’ll be shocked.

The Thursday work game shocked me again, and headed off with the Castellain when he was summoned away to a meeting in the nearest big town. Problem is, I hadn’t actually planned anything for that… I expected them to stick around and deal with the events at the keep… instead they're heading into the feywild to deal with a lord of the winter court who has laid claim on the adjoining land on the prime plane.


Miniatures
I really buckled down to get things done this month, and finished off a bunch of minis. I do need to refocus on painting more non-Reaper minis though.

A pretty productive month!

Media
Hidden Figures
Daredevil Born Again
Star Wars Skeleton Crew (1st episode)
What we do in the shadows (final season)
The remarkable life of Ibelin
Wallace and Gromit Vengeance Most Foul

Loot
I finally got my hand in Gods of the Forbidden North volume 1 & 2, and almost immediately started reading it. Massive volumes, and I was really looking forward to seeing that they had in store for me.

"biological sex" come on.... 

Turns out, a lot of conservative Christian ideas.

You aren't even trying to hide it... 

Needless to say, I was disappointed. When vol 3 arrives, I'm putting them on eBay.


Goals for April
Catch back up with session reports

Get my garden growing! 

Mini-Reviews: Polite Society Chang'an, Fast Times! The Surprises!

This set of reviews were the movies that exceeded my expectations. 

Polite Society

I absolutely love a good bonkers bollywood movie, and Polite Society delivers exactly that. Priya Kansara as the younger sister trying to stop the wedding of her older sister (played by wonderfully by Ritu Arya) was a blast to watch. It was over the top, action packed, and fun. It also wasn't too long, it did what it was going to do, made it fun and pretty, and then wrapped itself up.  

Fast Times At Ridgemont High

Okay, the only reason I really wanted to watch this movie was because of the Jimmy Buffett doing Spicoli's Theme. Being an early 80's coming of age high school movie there was the expected nudity and sex. What I didn't expect was how well developed the characters were, and how frankly it addressed abortion. I can only imagine the negative press that it would have gotten if it was released today. 

Chang'an

I saw a clip from this movie at one of the museums we visited in China, and I was thrilled to see it was available on the flight home. It's a historical drama that "follows the story of the decades-long friendship of poets Li Bai and Gao Shi amid the Tang dynasty's transition from peak prosperity to the turmoil of the rebellion led by An Lushan, one of Emperor Xuanzong's most favored generals." (from Wiki) It was beautiful and moving. I wish that I spoke Mandarin well enough to understand it without subtitles, because the poets are some of the most revered in China. 

Purple People Eater

One of the Reaper Challenge League challenges for this month was "one eyed one horned flying purple people eater" with the caveat that to meet the challenge for this category is that you only needed to hit one of the parts of the challenge... but what's the fun of that?

Of course I don't have a mini in my collection that fulflls all the requirements, so I went digging. I do have a large cyclops, but didn't feel like painting a giant. So I kept digging and came across my bag of early Bones Kickstarter demons, and the ape demon felt perfect. Well, aside from the 2 eyes and no horn. 

I can fix that. I just cut off his face, and grabbed the greenstuff. The hardest part was the teeth. I wasn't originally going for big flat mollar type teeth, but I liked how it turned it.

Once the greenstuff had cured, it was time to paint. I primed/base coated with Kraken Ink (purple liner) and the eye with linen white. 

I then used a mix of Kraken Ink, Clear Purple, Ruddy Flesh, Dragon Red, and Aged Bone to do the rest of the mini. The final step, aside from basing, was to apply a gloss varnish on the eye and the tongue. 

 

Not sure when I'll get to the base, so here's the finished but the base pic.

Mini-Reviews: Annihilation, Jupiter Ascending, 65

Annihilation

This was an interesting, kinda artsy movie, full of beautiful visuals, and characters that should have been more interesting than they were. I kept expecting the movie to pay off, but in the end it just didn't do it for me. 

I did appreciate that it was basically an all woman team, that they were all competent professionals (well, maybe not the team leader/psychologist. She needed her own therapist.) but I had a hard time caring about them, especially Natalie Portman's character. All in all it just fell flat. 

Jupiter Ascending

Yet another pretty movie with some really interesting ideas that the movie just barely touches on. There's so much interesting world building that is mentioned, hinted at, and... largely ignored. The story itself was bland, and yes Channing and Mila and Eddie are all very pretty and nice to look at, but man did it leave me wanting SO MUCH MORE. Someone give me a setting book for this universe and I'll happily run a sci-fi game set in it.

65

I... ok, crashed astronauts vs dinosaurs. But they're alien astronauts...  so the fact that it's on Earth, in spite of the fact they look human... Eh.

Mini-Reviews: Venom, Jurassic World, Indiana Jones, & Godzilla! The Sequels!

Another set of airplane movies for review, this time the direct sequel reviews!

Venom last dance 
Look, this was never going to be high cinema. The Venom movies are fucking goofy, and this one is that. If you aren't into this duo's homoerotic symbiosis, violence, and just over the top silliness, I don't know what you're even looking at the 3rd movie in this series for.

Indiana Jones dial of destiny
After The Crystal Skull, I did not go into this with high expectations, but... damn. They did it. They made old Indiana Jones work, they still made the Nazis the bad guys, and brought back other characters in a way that works. This was really good.

Jurassic World: Domination
This is another one that exceeded my expectations. I wasn't a big fan of the earlier installments of Jurassic World, but I actually like how they addressed the world building here. What does the reintroduction of dinosaurs into the modern world look like? Messy. Also, just like Indiana Jones above, and the Ghostbusters reboot, the return of the original trio of characters was great. Honestly this whole movie was a bunch of nostalgia bait, and callbacks. Do I wonder what the dinosaurs in the caves or the subway were eating? Sure. Do I really care? No.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

While a sequel, I haven't actually seen any of the other movies in the monster universe series. Did I feel like I was missing out on anything? Not even a little. It's a giant monster movie, the plot is simple and clearly explained. It was fun, and good enough that I'm kinda interested in seeing the other movies in the series. 

Mini-Reviews: I ain't afraid of no ghost! The Reboots

While flying to and from China, I got to watch a lot of movies, and they were all new to me. I specifically picked things that I hadn't yet seen, and wanted to, but hadn't for various reasons. Some are just too new, others haven't hit a streaming service I have access too, others got skipped because it felt like there were other movies I wanted to see more. 

Ghostbusters Afterlife
Ghostbusters Frozen Empire

I've been waiting forever for Afterlife to hit a streaming service I have forever, and just before I left for China Frozen Empire hit Netflix... but not Afterlife! Thankfully the plane had both. I really enjoyed how they brought back the Ghostbusters in this reboot. While I liked the 2016 version this was a clearly much more connected to the original way to go, and brought back the original cast & characters in a much more organic way. By the time we get to Frozen Empire, things are a little busier, a little more serious. Still fun though, and I hope to see another installment in this series. 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I was really unsure how this was going to work... but it did. It isn't great, and not as good as the Ghostbusters movies, but still enjoyable.I will say the cast was great, but Monica Bellucci was wasted in the role, and her character, such as it was, felt so flat (a word that should never be used in a sentence with her).

All in all an enjoyable movie, solid followup to the wonderful original. I hope they skip making a third movie.