Who You Gonna Call? Part 2

Work on my Paranormal Exterminators has continued, slowly. I need to pick up some masking tape to cover the slots in the bases. Either that, or cut off the tabs and glue them to other bases. What I opted to do in this case was fill it in with green stuff. Since I'm just planning on making it look like they're standing on asphalt, I mostly just need the hole filled.

You can see the 2 different methods I tried for these guys. One was to fill in the slot with green stuff from below, and smooth it out on top. The other was to make a very thin sheet and just lay it over the slot.




Back to the figures themselves, after giving the skin a flesh wash I went back and did some highlights. I really struggled with painting their eyes. Not the doing it, but whether I *should* do it. In the end, I decided that yes, it was worth doing. I can only get better by practicing the hard stuff. The characters I'm calling Zedd, Ray, and Pete I painted with green eyes, while Egon's glasses were painted with linen white and Frost Blue. I even went a little crazy and tried to really give the iris a highlight, and add the white dot of light reflection. This was less than successful.



Thankfully these guys aren't a contest entry.



I also did a little bit of detail work on the equipment. Kind of difficult to make equipment that's mostly black look interesting. Especially against the jump suits. Honestly painting so much black and other dark colors around the light jump suits was probably the hardest part of the mini. Not helpful were my dying brushes. I really need to replace and upgrade some of my tools... I also need to make my shadows deeper, and my highlights brighter.

Painting At Work

I decided to bring a travel paint kit to work so that I can paint during lunch.



I picked an assortment of (mostly Reaper) colors mostly based on what I had doubles of... these paints will likely rotate based on what I'm painting or what I feel like I need more of, but currently I have:

• Sapphire Blue
• Burgundy Wine
• Heraldic Red
• Marigold Yellow
• Pumpkin Orange
• Golden Glow
• Tanned Leather
• Fair Skin
• Grass Green
• Vampiric Highlight
• Warpaints White
• Cloudy Grey
• Walnut Brown
• Ebony Flesh
• New Gold
• Dragon Copper
• Warpaints Armor
• Honed Steel
• Flow Improver
• Brown Liner

I also have 2 brushes, a GW Starter Brush (size 1 or 2 I think?) and a no name size 000.

I figure if I can get even 10-15 minutes 5 days a week, I should be able to knock out tabletop level paint jobs on a mini a week. We'll see how it goes this week.


The minis are Devona 77036 and Almaran the Gold, Paladin 77058

And after the first sitdown, these are my first thoughts:

• Bring a bigger brush for base coating or base coat at home.
• Base the minis first so there's something to hold onto!
• Need to find somewhere to stash them while they dry.

After I finish these 2, I think I'm going to work on the Bones Lizardmen as stand ins for the Snake-men from Ghost Archipelago. We'll see...

Thor: Ragnarok

Over the weekend I made it out to the theater for a 9:45 am showing of the newest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

This review will contain spoilers!

I saw it at the Alamo Draft House, and they did this cool thing before the previews where the showed clips from the previous movies that included Thor, and giving basic plot summaries. It was useful, because I'd almost completely forgotten what happened in Thor 2: The Dark World. Seriously, of all the MCU movies, I think it's the only one I haven't seen multiple times. Thankfully, even without all that, Ragnarok stands on it's own.

It's also something of a reboot for Thor, who never really seemed to quite fit in with the rest of the Avengers. He was always just sort of there, and part of that is the fact that even among Iron Man and Captain America, Thor is... well, a god from a magical realm... Kind of at odds with everything else, up till Doctor Strange anyway. There's just something a little goofy about Thor, his hammer, the rainbow bridge, etc that doesn't fit in with the aesthetic of The Winter Soldier or Ant-Man. In a lot of ways Hulk has the same problem.

On the other hand, that bright Jack Kirby craziness fits right in with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ragnarok took not only it's color pallet from that series, but also the goofiness of it all. And it works! It fully embraces the weirdness, and crafts an amazing story out of it.



To offset the goofy is the darker side of the story. Thor and Loki's older sister Hela, as portrayed by Cate Blanchett, was pitch perfect! Her costume, taking it's cues from Loki is form fitting and no nonsense, except for that horned helmet, and looks fantastic as Hela tosses swords in her attempt to take her rightful place (oldest child) on the throne of Asgard. I can't get over how much ass she kicked, and all without one instance where it felt like she was a female villain. Hela was clearly the bad guy first, and a woman second.



Valkyrie, played by Tessa Thompson, was also spectacular at kicking ass and taking names. I really enjoyed her no-nonsense way of handling Thor, Loki, and the Hulk! I hope that she gets a fair amount of screen time going forward. I'll be disappointed if she doesn't show up in Infinity War.



As much as I enjoyed Jeff Goldblum's GrandMaster, Topaz's reactions to Goldblum's acting stole each and every scene they were together in.

And the bit with Doctor Strange, where he was having none of that Asgardian bullshit? Brilliantly done. Can't even imagine his reaction if/when the ship arrives on Earth to set up a new city... Of course with Thanos in the picture, that'll probably be near the bottom of his priority list.

In short, if you liked Guardians of the Galaxy, and thought Thor 2 was forgettable, you'll probably like Ragnarok!

Sunday Inspirational Image: Showtime

By Maciej Kuciara

Prince Chamring, Reanimator, Revisited

I ran FT0 Prince Chamring, Reanimator by Daniel Bishop twice in 2014, and hadn't given it too much thought since, as I got distracted by running D&D 5e both at home and at my FLGS. Wednesday, I found myself unexpectedly running it again.

Originally I'd planned on running a special Tales from the Floating vagabond Halloween adventure based somewhat loosely on Jason X (In Spaaaaace!!!!!) and had brought the book and my notebook to work to finish prep at lunch. I then forgot to bring it home with me.

Go me...

Since my options are a little limited based on what I've got on my shelf, I decided to run DCC instead. And as I was going for something Halloween appropriate, twisted fairy tales seemed a good way to go. So I grabbed it, some pregen zero level characters, and the quickstart rules, and headed off to game.



Without telling them what was up, I dropped the character sheets onto the table, and jumped right in. The bailiff had barely finished telling the characters what they'd been "volunteered" to do when the jester of the party started in. The bailiff motioned to the men at arms, and 2 crossbow bolts silenced the joker. "Anyone have anything else to say? No? Good. Get going."

Not even 2 minutes in, and the first character was down!

The party (all 27 of them, plus a cow and a lamb) took the wide passage to the castle. They came upon the large section of shattered wall, choked with bones and rose vines, and discovered the small crack in the adjacent tower, and also the trap door leading underground! Two dwarves jumped down the hole, ignoring the ladder. The second one fumbled his check, and landed on the first, killing him.

And then they split the party! Half explored below ground, discovering the ancient tomb. The other half visited Dr. Chapman's laboratory. As usual, I had a lot of fun playing Dr. Chapman, and at the end, when one character asked if there was anything Chapman needed, he gave that character a piece of blank paper that will become a scroll of Patron Bond (though he doesn't know it yet). Chapman gave his warnings, and his gifts, and sent the party on its way. One character tried to take the bottle with the imp. He ended up a mass of charred flesh. After that no one else tried to take anything.

In the tomb, the party encountered the hobyas, but only lost a single character in the encounter. They collected loot, and made their way to the chapel. A few offerings were made... And I just realized that I got distracted and forgot to to give out the blessings... ah well, next adventure.

The two halves of the party, met back up. The owner of the cow tried to bring it through the gap in the wall, which did not go well, either for the character or the cow. The party decided to head into the main section of the castle toward the tallest remaining tower. There they encountered the fairy princesses. One PC decided to head up the stairs while the rest of the group searched through the feast hall, rousing the dragon. The PC ran back down the steps, while the dragon leapt from the balcony down into the middle of the feast hall.

The fight was tough going, and several PCs dropped each round. Some ran. Sadly, bad initiative rolls meant that most of the PCs all got to go before the dragon pretty much every round.AC 19 is nothing to sneeze at, and for 0 level characters with crappy ability scores? Even harder. WHen one PC managed an 18, I let them know about burning luck. That was the final blow needed to kill the beast!

Deeper in the castle another PC died when they were playing around with the spinning wheel. The floorless room didn't slow them down for long, through when they asked the demon in the mirror how to get across, and he answered "You walk" they weren't amused.

No one tried to kiss Beauty, seeing what state she was in. They bundled her up, and brought her to the Prince. Remembering the words of Dr. Chapman, they just watched the bloody carnage, then looted the bodies before fleeing the undead horde.

Next week, we'll level up the surviving characters to level 1, then continue with our regularly scheduled 5e game. I think that the DCC game will get played at least semi-regularly going forward, because that was a lot of fun!

Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: First Thoughts...

Far from the frozen wastes of Felstad, the new setting for Frostgrave takes place in a mysterious archipelago of tropical islands that tend to pop out of existence for centuries at a time. Islands inhabited by all sorts of strange creatures, from dinosaurs to snake-men, with treasures both magical and mundane to tempt the bravest of treasure hunters.



Those familiar with Frostgrave will find a lot familiar in the rules. The core of the system remains pretty unchanged, with only a few changes to the system, but they're some interesting changes!

Most obviously, your main character is a Heritor, the descendant of a previous treasure hunter in the Ghost Archipelago who retains a bit of extra magic in his blood, and is looking for the source of that magic to boost it back up.

Joining him is a Warden, a magic-user of middling power. Hedge-witch to the mages that prowl Felstad. With fewer spells of lesser potency than their colder counterparts, they seem at first under powered, but I get the feeling that in play they'll hold their own.


Interestingly both the Heritors and the Wardens track their XP separately...

The rest of the crew is a similar mix of thugs, thieves, and various combat specialists. The recruiting mechanism is different here than in Frostgrave, as only half of your crew will be specialized, and the other half will just be sailors. And if you need to replace specialists, it's going to cost you an expensive trip back to the mainland!

The new rules for moving in water and small boats seem like they'll be fun, and I like that aquatic monsters get the equivalent of a 2" move onto land to show their reach from the water. It stinks that the Bones 4 minis are still more than a year away... I need so many of them now!!

As with Frostgrave, there is a sad lack of example battlefields shown, with only the briefest discussion of what the tabletop should look like. Thankfully the scenarios do give some clear descriptions of things that need to be included on the field, including various ruins, standing stones, and a tall tower/temple. I think I'm going to use the jungle islands of Indonesia as my inspiration.

One thing I miss in the rule book is the little snippets of quotes and stories that helped make Felstad seem like a more magical place that just the rules and scenarios suggested.

All in all, I'm looking forward to making my first Ghost Archipelago warband, and I think I'll be working on that just as soon as I finish up the Paranormal Investigators currently on my painting table!

Who You Gonna Call? Part 1

The Paranormal Investigators of course!

These fantastic minis from Crooked Dice were pulled out to work on shortly after ReaperCon and right before Halloween. They’re great sculpts with a minimum of flash or mold lines that need dealing with. I'll be sticking pretty closely to the paint scheme chosen by Crooked Dice, since it just feels right.



I also got the potato ghost, but that’s one big hunk of metal that may end up on next year’s melt table rather than as something I paint up. In addition to being a large lump of metal, there’s also no pre-drilled hole for the flight stand. He’s more useful to me as scrap. I’ve got other ghosts.

After cleaning up the exterminators, I primed them with Reaper’s Brush-On-Primer mixed with a drop or two of flow improver. This was my first time thinning the primer, and I’m not sure I’ll do it again in the future.



For the base coat of the jump suits I used Desert Stone with just a tiny bit of Brown Liner to darken it up a shade. The various bits of equipment, gloves, and boots were all painted black.



The straps for the backpack and elbow pads were painted with Olive Grey, and the elbow pads were then given a coat of Rainy Grey. Egon, Venkman, and Stance’s skin was painted with Tanned Flesh and washed with flesh wash. Their hair is Nut Brown. Winston has Nut Brown for his skin and Brown Liner for his hair.

"Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back."