Plastic legions update , Iron Shadows in the Moon

 

Well from my last post you can see where I started messing around with Board games, and that continued sparingly throughout  this year- Gloomhaven, Zombicide, A Touch of Evil, Catan nothing really stuck for us more than an occasional game here and there. Skirmish games like Rangers of Shadow Deep, Frostgrave,  and Fallout: Wasteland Warfare fell by the wayside with the  advent of the introduction of D&D with my kids.  Its pretty much taken over and when we do get to game, we are doing that, any hobby Time I have had is for prepping those games, and it should go without saying- I do a lot of prepping!.   I think I have definitely painted more single figures in the last year than I have since back when I was war gaming on weekly  basis and doing a 2-3 events conventions a year.

 

While the blog here has been out of commission  technically since last fall,  I still , despite the my time sinkhole,  have a keen interest in the hobby. The change is really how the hobby has just morphed for me in the last decade and a half.  Wargaming easily translates into roleplaying games, to ever think that as a kid when we were pushing  unpainted miniatures around on black and white grid. , I would have the massive amount of painted figures and terrain that I do now, is somewhat unreal , it wasn’t even a gleam in my eye back then.

 

Needless to say the my kids today take this for granted and have no idea but remain quite impressed as their games come to life on the table top.  While we started out with modern 5e D&D, some of them found the rules a bit complex additionally with my lack of knowledge in the explanation department on said new rules.  I did an experiment and moved us over into a one off with some B/X D&D , which isn’t even my background, ( Im a blue box, the 1^st Ed late 70’s guy) but I know it well enough and surprisingly we ended up sticking with it , so here I am in mid 50’s running an 80’s style B/X game with my 14 year old and her friends, and its been really fun. I find the Kids prefer to just be an “Elf” or a “Fighter” or a “Thief” and not a one of 3 strains of elves and then whatever  subclass of your main class, with the extra tracking of abilities , actions, bonus actions etc. (and I will certain be pontificating on the new D&D vs old moving forward as that is quite of modern topic of conversation)

 

Needless to say, I no longer taking to time to log entire playthru’s  of various skirmish games like I was or writing up the blow by blow to a D&D session both of which incredibly time consuming,  previously I was making an audio recording the session then painstakingly going thru the play back.  And typing out the details. As your can imagine that takes awhile.

 

Moving forward here, you will see pictures of painted models and terrain and a typical chronicling of the hobby that I have always tried to do here. Now that I am refocused I think its appropriate that I separate my new interests from the old and let the cross over happen where it may. 

If you are an occasional visitor here who wants to check out my models and terrain , look for bunch of it being posted before year end.  IF you are interested in a narratives about OSR D&D games, or essays on classic Fantasy and Science Fiction in Books, Magazines and Comics about characters like Conan, Kull, Fafhrd and the Gray mouser,  or countless others, please come check out  the reinvention of the my hobby over at Iron Shadows in the Moon

New Series: D&D tactics: 5E Style.

14 years of hobby/gaming blogging and scant mention of Dungeons and Dragons. Its interesting to note since D&D is literally what introduced me wargaming in the late 1970’s.  Other than brief mention of some OSR rules I used for an early version of my Blackbarrow Chronicles series I don’t think I have mentioned the worlds oldest roleplaying game at all, it doesnt even have a label and there is well over 100  labels in the sidebar.

 Let start with some backstory: As far gaming and this hobby goes I’ve been around a long time,  I go so far back that I played the original Dungeons and Dragons getting the “Holmes” Blue box when its was a "new thing"  back in the fall of 1977. That Summer two of my favorite movies of my adolescences came out , Star Wars and Ralph Bashki’s Lord of Rings,  I had local game store in my town that I used to go to easily a couple times a week and where my previous fix had been Airfix plastic soldiers. As all these new games started showing up and I was drawn to both D&D and its Sci Fi counterpart Traveller .  I remember taking the money I got for my birthday and getting that blue box and bunch of Heritage miniatures and rushing home with a gleam in my eye.

The box that started it all..

 My brother and I and some neighborhood kids , played D&D , and other RPG’s  close to weekly right thru about 1983…we had a heck of good time as kids but then inevitable other interests took over my late teens, then I was off to college and didn’t really do much gaming other than occasional  video games for a long time , so long In fact- I was like Gandalf disappearing for 17 years to search the archives of Minas Tirith.. ” as it was exactly 17 years before D&D and I crossed paths again.  Somewhere in 2000 rumblings of 3^rd Edition caught my attention, I had missed the entire second edition of the game  with no interest in gaming at all other than some of the early gold box computer games.

 Out at a bookstore one day (we still did that back then ) I picked up some 3^rd Ed books and soon enough thru the wonders of technology I got into some early online D&D gaming this was before things like Fantasy Grounds where you were just had a chat window and die roller and you could post images, we may have some type of trackable grid with chits , eventually I moved up into the early editions of Fantasy Grounds..I ran two online campaigns 3.0 and 3.5  with the latter burning out over the game becoming ridiculously overpowered and way over complicated with high level creatures with massive 2 page stat blocks and players showing up with some silly new book almost weekly giving them more and more super powered abilities it was to the point of crushing my old school sensibilities and I was done. 

 I was already doing plenty of PC gaming and getting into wargames at that point so D&D again disappeared into a box in the closet for another long sabbatical.  Not too long after that my incessant interest with vintage miniatures leads me to check out some Warhammer Fantasy and you can check out the last 14 years on this blog to see where it goes after that

Which leads me to the current date of 2020…43 years after getting that Holmes blue box,  My now 13 year old daughter after binging  “Stranger Things”  earlier this summer  comes home from a trip to Barnes and Noble with a bunch of manga books and  the 5^th Ed D&D starter set.  Apparently All the wargames, miniatures and terrain and years of games in the basement rubbed off, “I thought you could run this for me and some friends since we have all the stuff, I heard its pretty fun” Done, and Done I said..

40+ years later........

 This was awhile back earlier in July , I off course had to do some research as I had no idea what was going on with the rules , I completely missed the 4^th edition of the game (apparently no great loss) and D&D is now so mainstream, its crazy, with all the streamed gameplay and things on You Tube.  

 I was most surprised by the 5^th ed rules out for like what ? 6 years now? I wasnt close to aware how "old school" these rules seem to me. Of course there is going to be some stuff I raise a 1^st ed eyebrow to. But hey its 40+ years later and given the shit-show that was 3^rd  edition? , I’m pleasantly surprised. ,I’ve watched a bunch of videos on running the game but that leads me to this series, what about the combats?

 Obviously- that’s my interests and I’m not going to hammer a bunch of teens with my uber nerd tactical combats that I spend much of my late nights running in the basement. For them its about the social aspects and story of the game

But as Im prepping for this , I am of course going to build some cool stuff, paint some miniatures and roll some dice because that’s what I like to do..

As I prep to run this great adventure “The lost mines of Phandelver” I am going to demo these combats so I can a run them properly during an actual D&D session and figure out how I can make this fun for them by getting my kicks now

If your familiar with this adventure this should be instantly recognizable, more on how I made it in a future post.

Running these tactical battles and working out all  the rules, I already have the terrain all planned out for all but the last chapter , so I’ll run a couple of these write it up as a bat rep, and then I will run the the RPG session for the kids.

I’ve already built some great new stuff and its some prophetic how useful things like my modular tiles and skirmish dungeon and my Inn, suddenly become.  So this is going to keep me hoping the next couple months,  especially since I’ll want to squeeze a Rangers of Shadow Deep or Fallout Wasteland Warfare game in there as well..  so D&D Tactics, 5e Style coming up,  The first skirmish consists of two battles,  from Chapter 1 : Goblin Arrows.

 

 

A Tale of Two Companies...

 While I'm currently working on something quite different than I have done in awhile for my next series of battle reports , I had incident happen in the last week that merits a post because both companies involved  deserve a mention for going above and beyond with their customer service . Its these little details that keep me coming back as a customer, and why I want fully endorse that you should too.

Here's the story: Earlier this month I needed  some miniatures for the current project I'm working on, some classic old school figs, that I was amiss to have " zero"  of in my collection of countless fantasy figures.

I knew Reaper Miniatures had the figures I was looking for but unfortunately  they aren't yet in cast in bones plastic  and probably won't ever be as they are quite old sculpts. A single blister of 3 was going to cost me about $20 before I either keep buying and go for free shipping or end up paying about 8 bucks per figure on a single blister as a solo purchase. This projects a "one off" and that's not the kind of cabbage I wanted to spend on what probably a one time encounter . so in comes eBay.

Browsing my saved sellers i find Noble Knight Games in nearby Wisconsin has the blister I'm looking for at about $11 and change so around roughly 33% discount. I've bought quite a few things  from them over the years  they often discount old stock and overstock items with reasonable and quick shipping . I have  never had an issue, buying from them so   I picked up a couple more things while I was at it and made my purchase

When the package shows up days later, all the items purchased are for this current project I'm well into -  so I crack it open and start prepping the figs for the paint bench. When I get to the blister in question I  open it,  then immediately notice it's missing a figure , weird?  I say , then I notice a sticker on the blister saying plain as day it's missing a figure ( obviously a mispack from Reaper they never returned and sold as a discount)  I'm somewhat peeved because , I'm like -how HELL did I miss this.?  Well NKG's listing didn't mention anything it in the listing title and they showed the stock photo with 3 figures in the listing. But down below in the listings small print in their full text description it clearly says - it's missing a figure , I then check my receipt and its listed  there too!.

Well at that point I'm figure I'm screwed, I've been an eBay 'er for 20 years now and I know better than to not read the fine print , but when its a saved seller you've never had an issue with, it's easy to get lazy and that's when you get bit, That's my only excuse, other than I just screwed up.

I sent a email off the NKG customer service  saying I'm not looking for a refund or anything , I'm a big boy and didn't read all the way thru the listing ,But i said please do us all a favor a mention this kind of thing in the damn listing title even a "2 of 3 "in the title  would have alerted me this was not a full blister. I was more annoyed with myself when I sent email and did not expect a response.

The next day I contact Reaper Miniatures  explaining the situation , That I accidentally  bought a mispacked factory blister from a 3rd party seller  , opened it and wondered if I could buy the single figure . I have been a customer long enough  to remember the old  days before  plastic Bones where they had a a " bones graveyard" where you could buy loose metal figures from blisters. 

Reaper  surprises me by not only saying sure! But only asking me to pay the shipping for the missing fig, I am of course saying, thank you , thank you . Now I have all 3 figures and I'm still slightly under retail and im reminded why I just should of have bought it from Reaper in the 1st place, because trying to bargain  shop sometimes is more trouble than the few bucks you save. Right? , 

Wrong, the next day, NKG customer  service gets ahold of me and says. " Hey, sorry- that sucks. We have a massive inventory and our system won't let us change catalog titles to mention things like that,  so detail are  always in the description. I know you weren't asking for anything in return but we are going to credit you $4 for the hassle. I'm like - Wow? ok thanks!

Not the ideal way to end up with 50% discount on an old blister but that's what I ended up with. 

The main reason I'm writing this is that in these difficult  times of social strife and division,  it's nice to see how just a simple misunderstanding can be easily  solved by just a little goodwill between people who don't even know each other. 

It  was nice to see it and brightened up what was otherwise a dour week. and as a result I have two virtual shopping carts loaded up and ready to go for new purchases from both places.

Hats off to both Reaper Miniatures  and Noble Knight Games , thanks all.

Rangers of Shadow Deep, Mission: Bloodmoon. The prologue

       Time to revisit my favorite game of note  which has me finally getting around to playing Rangers of Shadow Deep : Blood Moon, the second supplement for game!  This is long overdue and if I hadn’t taken the Fallout Wasteland Warfare plunge, I surely would have gotten to it late last year.  Things being as they may, I’m glad I waited. While I never got around to building the Manor house I had designed as my next Hirst Arts project. That would have been my centerpiece of Bloodmoon , That inevitable 100 hours of hobby time never quite materialized. While its easy to blame things like PC games sucking away hours of my life , I think after several recent cleanup and reorganization of our basement /storage space my procrastination really boils down to a space issue.

     Back in the late 2000’s when I when I was living in Chicago, I had a huge basement that was gaming HQ for our club of exiled GW store regulars and I had 4  tables going  24/7 and could  go up to 6 if we had events. I had many shelves  lining the walls and tons of space.  Now I have a 15 x 10 workroom/ storage  room and 1 table tucked away in the corner of basement. Despite my best efforts of giving tons of stuff away when I moved and working diligently selling older unused things, I am still packed to gills and much of it is still gaming terrain.

       Thankfully I did receive and paint my Stable from the excellent table top world Kickstarter and while tempted to pickup another building , I just replaced the manor house with my table centerpiece Wayside Inn, which is a tad larger the the games mentioned requirements but then again so was this manor house I may or may not ever get around to building.  I also went ahead and picked up the deluxe version of the RoSD rule-book, really nice to have all the rules from the 6 supplements (inc the rules update) in one place.  

       With my buildings complete, I still needed to make the pond, then paint around 10 figures and the boat and the cart….I didn’t get to all the nice details that come with the stable but will as time goes on as they aren’t needed for bloodmoon.

      While all this was going on and I was filling out roster sheets and re-reading the new rules, I started to get an itch to make some new Rangers. While I of course must continue the tales of Blackwulf and his comrades, I also found it very convenient that bloodmoon is designed with two sets of event card one for levels 0-5 and and one for 6-10.  Since Blackwulf is currently level 8. I have decided to run the scenario twice,  1^st up with Blackwulf and Co. , then with three new novice rangers and 0 companions (for this adventure), emulating a fresh team as a three player game.

      Pretty excited for both of these, both will be full game write ups, the first one happens this week, the new one of rookies as soon as I paint the models, (they are on the bench ready to go)  Ill leave you with some shots of the basic models and terrain and board and save the rest for the first run of Rangers of Shadow Deep: Bloodmoon.!

 

table is 3 x 3 , Clockwise L to R  Stable, Inn ( Manor house) , Cart, Woods, Pond with small boat

Threw this pond together pretty quick , I should have used something other than wood as the grain shows thru the water effect..not my best but works.

Looking forward to all the bell and whistles on the Stable here.

Stable interior with Clue Marker

Cart and Woods

Nice to get to use the Inn again its been awhile since I have used it in a game

The Inn usually packed full, now sits abandoned. per the scenario each room with a clue marker  has an exit 

Upstairs, again each room has an exit. here it just a window.

Bestiary and NPC's  Back Lto R,  Werewolves,  5 giant flies, 2 Grim Wolves, 3 Wolves, Old Man, Little Girl, Little Boy, Giant Snake,  Companions Covin, Seb, Nicolan, ( Orla is drying on the bench as I type this) 4 Giant Rats 

New Years Thoughts

       Just some New Years musings on the year that was 2019 for gaming at Plastic Legions.  I was working on the write up for the final showdown for the Burning Light Campaign but quickly realized there was no way I was going to get that written up and have all the pictures wrangled to post in the next few hours before New Years Eve festivities, start so I figure I end the year with this:

Obviously the year was devoted to Rangers of Shadow Deep, my favorite game of recent memory for a lot of reasons but specifically because I don’t have the time or even much inclination to get out and “game” . I prefer the quite time of fiddling away with my models in my basement, and an occasional solo game, and it’s a great solo game.

If you follow Rangers at all, you’re probably aware of its success, not just for its author who already had the massive hit that is Frostgrave on his hands ( Congrats Joe!) but for Northstar miniature’s as well, who keeps churning out great miniature’s for the line. Joe’s  self released the Core book, a rules update and 4 Supplements all in just over a year.  It got the attention of enough folks that Modiphus is soon releasing a deluxe version of rulebook , and if that is a success who knows what else.

Blood Moon is the next mission for me for Rangers, and I have to build quite a bit for it so its going to be awhile..I have started some basic casting for the Manor , (my next hirst arts project) and I also picked up the Tabletop World- Altburg Stable thru the Kickstarter and I am proud to say it was my ONLY Kickstarter of the entire year!...I have always loved Tabletop Worlds models but never took the plunge., this was tough to pass on it will look great on my massive Blackbarrow table and we need a stable for Blood Moon..so it was done . I got the tracking info right around Christmas day , its coming from Croatia but I expect here not before too long...

I made very few purchases this year for gaming, and managed to stick to my guns on selling things and not buying anything new. I don’t think I purchased more than a dozen single models all year (mainly Reaper) and I totally avoided Reapers most recent Kickstarter, even  thou by the end there were a few things tempting me, but then I would just go re read MY OWN POST.

I didn’t do a ton of painting this year either, other than what I needed for Rangers games but I did paint a variety of other things for some other games. Mainly things from the Reaper 4 Kickstarter that will be showing up in Blood Moon and I did paint some Prehistoric models so I could try out Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten  which for whatever reason really intrigues me. I’ll be showing these off as I talk about that game coming up. Oh and I started another Boat nothing huge but something cool, for Rangers, or Pirates of whatever.. Im sure Ill get to before too long.

Finally Speaking of Modiphius ,  Browsing the Modiphius website while talking about the Rangers Book , I scrolled over to Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.. Now I have known about this game since it was announced and despite playing all  4 Fallout Games since 1997 all of them more than once…the first two, easily a half dozen full run thrus each.  I purposely STAYED AWAY due to the cost and the fact I don’t need to get into any more games, I probably will never play BUT I was looking at it with my 13 year old daughter chatting about it and why I love the models but don’t want to get into it…and she must have told my wife because WHAT DO I GET FOR CHRISTMAS.

Now they didn’t get the distinction between the PVC and Resin models and I have the PVC set..I have not done anything with it yet..but I watched a bunch of gameplay videos and it looks like it’s a great solo game too. SO it looks like I am going down the rabbit hole here..Im going to see how good I can make these crappy plastic models look before I pull the trigger on one of these resin boxes..this game is like Games Workshop money .something I washed my hands of  5 or 6 years ago, so where this  goes remains to be seen…I’ll see you all in 2020 probably more , not less and its my 14^th year on the blog and counting

Happy New Year.

Reaper Bones V, it's one hot potato.

Tomorrow Reaper Bones V drops its newest Kickstarter , I dropped the being a gaming industry gadfly a long long time ago and haven't posted any kind commentary in I dont know how long.

Anyone who has read this blog more than a couple time since 2007!!! knows I am a long time supporter of Reaper Miniatures- the company, in fact these days most of my miniatures either as gaming or display pieces are from Reaper.

I was supporter on Bones 4 which just delivered in April of this year from my Wave 5 status due to certain pieces in my order being shipped late from the factory in China.  I didnt bother blogging about my hassles then but as time has gone on with another Bones KS dropping seemingly crazy soon after,  its worth pointing out some the issues I had and some of my observations.

Reaper just finalized delivery of Bones 4 this summer to the final Australian  markets.  Now barely 3 months later moving to Bones 5 seemingly finalizes the move into Reaper Miniatures joining the existing slew of companies that are funding their entire operations through crowd source funding . While I'm pretty sure Reaper at this point could operate conventionally without it, there is just no reason for them to with so many people lining up to throw millions of dollar at them up front.

 More isnt always better., there  is a reason "less is more" is prescribed mantra ..I'll be surprised if the quality is as good as the stellar designs of B4, I can already see from the base core set photos, its clearly not.

While that's just my opinion the following is just the reality:

The delivery window based on these 100% crowd sourcing models is inherently longer, The Bones 4 delivery window was very close to 1.5 years in the US  2 years for people in Australia, and somewhere between for the rest of the world.

One thing I have certainly noticed and have personal experience with that is very common with alot of these game oriented Kickstarters. People get consumed by the hype and often buy "all in"  into these and like many things in the crowd sourcing world by the time they are delivered  to your door years later , the hype is gone , buyers remorse has set in or you have have lost interest. The result is alot of product getting dumped on ebay right away and the whole "Exclusive for Kickstarter pledges" goes right out the window,


Not only that but Reaper's "Waves" distribution is actually meaningless...yes , orders are shipped as they are received but Reaper makes no distinction between its single customer and resellers (who are really just retailers , as much as the fandom would have you not believe) . Kickstarter exclusive products are big business for resellers who front the money for huge amounts of Reaper KS product then resell it at big margins for easy cash while the long delivery window of Repaers "Waves" is in effect.

Last time around every single piece my order was held up for 2 months for was already- for sale on ebay a few days after Wave 1 started shipping,. Granted at a higher price than I paid,  but resellers last time actually shot themselves in the foot because so many people did it..that prices were pretty competitive.

 Reaper also manufactured alot more product last time around than wasy ordered thru the Kickstarter, selling these extra sets thru the website immediately upon that Countries fulfillment, so if you say lived in another country and  fulfillment was delayed for what ever reason and the US had completed delivery you could beat out your own KS fulfillment by just ordering off the website. These qualities were limited, and went fast but between that and ebay you could have gotten everything a Kickstarter backer waited 2 years for "on demand" and not paid much more than retail, even less in  some cases.

The moral of the story here is there is no reason to rush your pledge or if you are one of the many people with only a causal interest in a few pieces. The reality is there is no reason to pledge at all.

History has shown with the last two outings  that you will be able to easily get what you want during the KS fulfillment phase when the time comes,  without having to front Reaper your money , and without having to pay much more that actual retail price when it "x" piece finally sees a general release. Also there is no incentive if you are not a US customer to buy in  because again, odds are you'll  be able to get it sooner elsewhere, then thru the normal fulfillment.

That fact that pledging thru Kickstarter isnt really offering you anything special outside the person who just wants a alot of miniatures at a discount and can wait "as long as it takes" for it. We will see if this actually catches up with Reaper and hurts them- I really have no idea, but I am certainly sitting this one out and odds are I am not alone  because then there is THIS

Kickstarter the Company has recently been accused (I'd say admitted) to Union busting, firing 3 employees that were in charge of attempting to unionize kickstarters work force. Initially claiming these employees where fired for cause but at they same time announcing they will NOT voluntarily recognize a employee union.

Regardless of your political stripes , this isnt really a Left / Right  debate about Unions in its reality its a Us vs Them debate because Kickstarter is at its worst a 250 million dollar a year company and IF its employees, are trying to unionize its due to workplace conditions or perceived unfair pay.  This might not bother you depending on whatever political bullshit you subscribe to but I'm old enough to been taught the reason you even have a free weekend to play with your toy soldiers at all is because of organized labor and that wasnt even until 1938.

 Most sensible people agree we dont need anymore Amazons or Walmarts in the world where huge portions of  its workforce are on public assistance because these Billion dollar companies cant pay their own workforce a living wage (and dont pay any taxes, but that's a whole other can of worms) .

 Kickstarter the company is of course nowhere near that huge by any stretch but as more and more companies like Reaper start basing their whole financial operations around crowd source funding can Kickstarter and similar companies growth as financial powerhouses in manufacturing really be that far behind? Pretty soon they'll be partnering with Banks and fulfilling KS orders through Amazon Prime. (Sign up for Amazon Prime and your KS orders 2 weeks faster!)

The fact Reaper can merrily go along taking millions of dollars thru Kickstarter for the pre-ordering of toy soldiers and not address this, should be of some concern to anyone who actually works for a living.

Ok, back to maybe doing some painting, I'll be watching this one from afar with interest.

My Favorite Things 2018

My Favorite Things 2018

I always finish the year out on the blog with some sort of year  end commentary on my wargaming hobby. This year I thought I’d try something different, instead of toothless resolutions or lamenting my lack of posting I thought I mention my favorite wargaming related things of 2018, I may not have played a ton of games this year or go to Adepticon but I did actually do more than last couple years combined (or least it feels like it) so as we kiss off 2018 here’s what was keeping me busy this year when it comes to wargaming.

Favorite Miniatures Company:

Reaper Miniatures

Not too much of a shock if you’ve read the blog the last 12 years, they’re always in the background and always right there besides whatever else I am talking about.  I’ve been a fan, I’ve been highly irritated by some decisions thye’ve made but they’ve have persevered and have kept my loyalty longer than any other miniature company. This year I bought , built and painted more Reaper than any other manufacture, for  overall variety., customer service and turning The “Bones”  line around- I would say 180 degrees in the time between Bones I and IV. Reaper I don’t give you props enough and while you don’t get the credit in the wargaming world  like you do from the RPG world…this year I want to take the time and say you rocked.

Favorite Gaming product

Hands down, no contest. 

 Terrain Crate from Mantic Games.

 Ronnie Renton is clearly a "throw it all at the wall and see what sticks kind of guy", Mantics taken its lumps when it comes to its games , games design and its miniatures , they’ve got stuff people love and stuff people hate but there is definitely something to be said about  their ability to “please some of the people- all of the time”  in fact -they should use that as their new motto !.  Terrain Crate was a well designed brilliant idea.  I am kicking myself (no pun intended) for not getting in huge (or at all) on the Kickstarter , I was happy I got in early post kickstarter ebay scene to gobble some stuff up before it all KS releases sold out.  Now I am not sure how the Kickstarter played out for backers but for as the retail consumer on this it worked out great for me, large sets, small sets , even little one of tiny sets,. Well priced and good durable material and  nice solid , old school designs without stupid skulls all over everything….. Great job Mantic.

Favorite Hobby Accessory

Woodland Scenics Earth Colors Black Pigment- 

This stuff is my hobby mojo, black gold, magic powder.It’s been around forever I’ve used it forever and its something again I don’t mention enough. I use it for terrain painting and shading , vehicle detailing and shading  and as miniature wash and shade. A thick pigment that you can use as is or mix with water or a medium gel  to create the desired consistency, I never found a black wash on the market I’ve liked as much as any I can make from this stuff. I use their Raw and Brunt Umber pigments with much regularity too, but not as much as black…If you think my miniatures look cool..Ive used this on all of them!

Favorite Game 2018-

Another “no contest”  choice :

Rangers of Shadow Deep by Joseph McCullough

While I have not played a ton of games this year , I have picked up or at least  checked out a decent amount of games. Things I played : Otherworld Skirmish, Rogue Stars, Deadzone and even a refresher game of Frostgrave, just the other day.  Things I checked out I wish I could play but know I never will:  Song of Ice and Fire, Gaslands, This is not a Test, and Last Days: Zombie apocalypse and Dracula’s America .To finally games I bought but never played or have not gotten a chance to yet: Frostgrave -(Maze of Malcor), Star Saga,  New Releases for Song of Blades and Heroes, and Bolt Action 2^nd Edition books.  Out of all that- nothing got me as excited to roll dice as Rangers of Shadow Deep, what can I say it just clicks all  the right buttons for me AND I get to use my painted miniatures and terrain that I haven’t in used in years again..WIN/WIN

Thanks Joe.   (Rangers Ep3 ..is coming soon hopefully this year!)

Favorite You Tube “Gamer” Channel  2018

Guerrilla Miniature Games- 

I probably subscribe to about dozen or so Hobby related You Tube channels. This one kind of took off for me this year. I met Ash Barker way back in probably 2007 when he was still with GW and was visiting my local GW shop that my pal Jeff used to run. It took a while of watching the channel to realize I had actually met the guy years ago  and chatted with him about our WFB club at the time. Not sure if the fleeting personal connection  has biased me but I started gravitating to his channel more and more. As a stay home at dad, he manages to produce a mind blowing amount of content,  sure I don’t like at least half of it , but the other half I do and he’s is great at play testing and demoing games and his hobby skills are top notch. check him out and subscribe and even support him if you are so inclined.

 Favorite Stupid Idea 2018

Mantic Games – Star Saga

Mantic has to take the good with bad, another “promise you the world” , “looks awesome” Kickstarter that you’ll get at some point- long after you stopped caring . This was actually ordered in 2016!!  Shipped Dec 2017 And didn’t arrive at my door until first thing 2018..  To make the pain a little stronger- all my extras (what I wanted most ) were in Wave 2 AND didn’t arrive until just this month a year! after the initial game shipped, while this looked super cool at the time of the KS campaign, In the end  I was way less than impressed with the final components  and did even want to punch it out, after checking out the figures , I packed it up nice and sold this thing on eBay  ASAP while the release buzz was hot. The reason I call this my favorite stupid idea was I sold it to a nice fellow who paid for it and the mystery wave 2 game play items  in advance even thou I couldn’t ship it to him until 9 months later , I got a great price and got to keep the resin core figures and extra terrain I added on as an extra and still made all my money back and some…for me that doesn’t happen too often. I should backed Terrain Crate instead, no..I should just say NO to Mantic kickstarters and get the stuff retail.

Favorite Kickstarter 2018

Reaper Bones IV

Some of you might remember  I was big Bones I supporter, and I came out right away calling it “crap” as soon as I got my hands on it. And I still stand by that -the Bones I figures are crap, I cut them up use them as tokens , dead bodies , scenery whatever, some of the small figures paint up ok, many are unusable sitting in a box my kids test paint them.- they’ll never see the gaming table.  Cheap bendy plastic lacking the detail of even your average board game pieces on the market  today. All of the larger figures were ok I always said that, BUT Bones has come along way and Reaper has taken all that investment to making these figures better, The Bones figures  now at retail that were in Bones I are miles better than their original counterparts. Post Bones II and III releases have gotten progressively and noticeable better and better.  Its why I decided to take the plunge and back Bones IV, I love the designs many done by my favorite Reaper Sculptors  , Bob Ridolfi and Julie Guthrie,  This was 2017 Buy in for 2019 delivery , it my favorite Kickstarter because of regular  informed updates all thru the year with pictures of finished products and delivery looks to be on time for Feb 2019…Reaper has got the KS thing figured out.

And…That’s it for my obligatory year end post….one more Bat Rep for me this year  and I’ll be head down work mode with a big project in January, Ill be back in the new year, with more Blackbarrow, More Rangers of Shadow Deep, A new Hirst Arts project,  Frostgrave and Adepticon…see ya then .

Godzilla Facepalm

Let's start the New Year out right with a Godzilla sized facepalm, Mea Cupla . I got a text from my friend Tim out in AZ about the last blog post and the comments. mentioning to check about notifications for publishing them. I did ,and found a couple things. First of all blogger seems to changed the way it notified me about pending comments, I was used to an alert posting in my main feed where you see the overview of your blogposts. that seems to have changed and I missed the memo on said changes. Coincidentally-this must of happened in fall of last year right when my reader comments stopped. when I clicked on the "awaiting moderation" sub menu of  "Comments"...I found 35 unpublished comments since the fall of 2016!, Wait you ask! what about email notifications for comments ?? yes, but it had my old comcast email address, (which is long long dead) in there that I swear to god I freaking changed!!

So, I am a moron. However its been corrected..And if you commented in the last year, or didnt and just read the blog. I want you to know That I appreciate it thank you!.  having that said, it doesnt change my commentary from the last post although from a personal standpoint, I'll roll back the bleakness just a bit.

Currently working on Blackbarrow Chronicles Episode 1, we had a great game , figuring things out  and I got a ton of great pictures. It's a longish post and its taking some time , plus all the photo sorting so hopefully up by the weekend , worst case sunday night...

Thanks again!

And those new days will dawn......

I am wrapping up my 11th year at Plastic Legions with not some toothless resolutions but just some obvious facts that will hopefully lead to a new direction here.  This blogs been around a long time now, long past the heyday of gaming blogs. These days its clear most people go to social media for their gaming fix. Blogs originally were the now boring successor to the much maligned public forum. Now its just quick snap shots on social media, be it Facebook groups, Twitter feeds, Instagram or Pinterest. (I am sure there is some new one I don't even now about) and yes, I have succumb to these things just like you have. My own interest in my own blog roll is few and far between these day only occasionally catching a snappy title or good photo in the feed. I cant begrudge anyone no longer coming by here either.

For instance I haven’t had a reader comment here since October of 2016! I still seem to hang on to same number of followers , picking up new ones  at the same rate I lose them, the result being stagnant at slightly under 400 for at least 4 years now. Of course my content is severely lacking and basically if you are not interested in my projects I haven’t had a lot to say. The same goes for the forums. Most forums are graveyards  even the big ones that are isolated communities of old timers see alot less traffic .I'll still cross post my big projects over at LAF or Hirst forums barely get a comment where even 2 years ago, I'd get 30 and a good traffic spike here..  I dont think its that people suddenly don’t care for it, its just they aren’t looking for that type of content at those places anymore, or if so, not enough so  to comment, they are getting their fix immediately thru the bigger gaming websites , Twitter or Facebook. 

I belong to a whole bunch of Facebook groups, they are all very busy but I never post in them- I dont like them as conversation places . To me they are just like like the old public forums you ran away from.  I just check them out to see whats going on and maybe see what someone I know is doing or most importantly get updates from the company who have mostly shut down all their own forums in favor of FB groups. While Facebook has some value for me its not for gaming , Its for keeping up with old friends, their lives, their kids , their real life experiences…I don’t  want to see the doodlings of whatever hobby their into any more than I want to see  whatever political junk their posting , so its too bad  Social Media has taken over gaming, I don’t really like the one stop shop format, (as in Facebook, because  I don’t do Twitter) there is so much crap in my Facebook feed even with filters that I recently missed out on important things in peoples  lives that I actually care about!

 I used to like spending an afternoon checking out peoples weird hobby blogs in my own quite corner of digital space. These days the blogs are mostly dead, in fact of all the old guys I used to game all had blogs and currently I think I am the only one who still even remotely posts, theirs have just been deleted or have been DOA for years., even other old blogs Ive read frequently have fallen away like mine .--So RIP to the Hobby Blogs,  I'll raise a glass to ye days of old! 

Having said all that-  why I am still limping along here averaging a post a month? Trust me  I have been thinking about about making changes here for sometime, even packing it in completely .. I really just do this for myself anyway.

My life has changed a bunch since I got public with my Hobby back in 2005, I don’t  have nearly the time I did for playing games in the basement or painting miniatures sure I’ve gotten some big  terrain projects done this year  but that is basically all I did, I painted maybe a dozen or so miniatures.  I didn’t play a game with another human that wasn’t my kid in 2017. I've spent most of my hobby time selling off  the tons of stuff I collected in the last decade, including all kinds of recent  things from  Kickstarters that I buy and  realize ill never play and then end up selling, (at least I am making money on it,)  I had even started talking about the adventures of selling off my bloated collections and gaming secondary markets on a separate blog but quickly realized I was the only one interested.

So what’s new at Plastic Legions for 2018?,  well, I still plan on posting at least once a month (maybe more,) Content will be pretty focused, since I now have this really cool massive fantasy table / diorama, I am going to start putting it to use.  One of the more popular things I have done the last couple years where these lengthy blow by blow game write ups specifically Otherworld Skirmish, (thou I did do some Frostgrave and  Sci Fi ones) .  I’ll be focusing on those as a ongoing narrative campaign, called " The Blackbarrow Chronicles " using a simpler streamlined ruleset  (more on that in a sec) we are going to run at least a dozen linked scenarios using tons of different models and hopefully create a cool narrative as these characters live, die, succeed, fail, find glory and find horrible deaths. I have  no idea hows it going to play out but it looks good on paper and we are even going to keep an updated role call of the dead, like some sinster old school RPG.

Logo and Header for the new project , Art courtesy of the great William McAusland.

And that’s it - The Blackbarrow Chronicles for 2018- the game reports and any projects that arise from them may get spotlighted but thats pretty much it, I may even change the blog title and move it over to Word Press leaving Plastic Legions up as a tombstone (no decision has been made there at all just a thought) Anyway outside my huge all collection of  generic fantasy gaming figures and terrain,  look for A LOT of items from me on eBay -if you want some nicely painted figures and terrain on the cheap. !

So- Speaking of that ruleset for the coming year, I am afraid I have been Hacked!

 As in “The Black Hack” . If you follow OSR RPGs at all as I do, (not that I actually play but more as an interest in nostalgia from wayback when I did.)  You might have heard of “The Black Hack” (TBH) which is basically a very simple RPG system inspired by  B/X D&D it uses bits from various rulesets  over the years to create very simple modern fantasy role playing ruleset, thats dripping with  “back in the day”old school feel  Last year it succeed getting going from blog to published product on Kickstarter  and you can pick it up for like $2 from the usual digital places. The core document is really bare bones at a measly 20 pages  However a quick google search will find you a lot of free fan made content that fills in a lot of the gaps and well as the authors updates and additional docs..

For use with Blackbarrow I have re-framed TBH as a miniatures gaming rule-set,  let’s call it the “Mini Hack”. I originally read about the TBH  on some forums, I checked it out and a lightbulb immediately went off.- I thought this could be the “RPG light” ruleset I was looking for , It has got all the standard Fantasy tropes , a D20 mechanic (which I want -as I am so tired of D6 games) and I felt it was pretty intuitive for a RPG campaign type system based on miniature battles.  I made a couple quick hacks of my own based my personal preferences.  First off all  I swapped the dice around so you roll to hit by “more than a target number” versus the TBH which uses “less than the target number”, in the RPG -all rolls are based on testing vs your attribute stats as in: I have a 14 strength, I need to a less than 14 to “hit”…, I have a 9 Dexterity I need to roll less than a 8 to avoid that ranged attacked.  It was pretty easy to swap around and say my 14 = needing a 7 or better on a D20..this works with the standard mechanic we are familiar with from RPGs or games like Frostgrave.

My converted D20 dice chart

Another Hack on my end was movement and distance.. TBH uses a very abstract range/distance system of “Close, Nearby, Far Away and Distant great for tale tales with Pen and Paper but not quite precise enough for miniatures battles- but by simply adding a 5^th range of “Over There” we have 5  standard distances, I have used in many a miniatures game :  1.contact base to base or touching 2. up to 6 inches, 3. 6-12 inches, 4. 12-24 inches and 5. 24+ inches, pretty simple.

scale chart.

 I wont  ramble on here about every detail-  if you have played fantasy RPGs or Fantasy miniature games , I think the rules  will all be pretty self explanatory and I’ll save that for the first write up for the Blackbarrow Chronicles which should be showing up year right after the New Year flips to 2018 , 12 years a blogging, crazy.

Happy New Year!

Reaper Bones 4, and some new painted Reaper figures

If your reading this I am sure you are aware of the Reapers current 4th "Bones" Kickstarter which is winding down as it approaches the 2 million mark, consider 2015's  Bones 3, is still shipping just over 2 years from it's Kickstarter close, I'm still in "what are people thinking" camp. As I've mentioned earlier I was a Bones 1 supporter and thou I was happy with the value, I wasnt thrilled with the majority of the quality of miniatures, I dont think I've really used or painted more than a couple dozen of the years since then and the rest are in a box.

I probably own more Reaper figures than any other line since I liquidated most of Games Workshop inventory over the last few years. I've been collecting Reaper going on close to 20 years..
But because I just wasnt as excited about Bones as the general public I had chosen not to buy into either Bones 2 or 3, picking up just a few random figures over years.
Bones 4 seems to be whole different story, I've definitely noticed the quality of plastic in the miniature improving, especially in the larger models where Bones has really found its niche. While the Core set this time around is certainly on the same value as the other, its the Expansions and Add On's that were attractive to me, beside the Core there are now 4 separate $50 expansions plus the add on figures. Personally its was Dreadmere expansion that sold it for me, there is enough weird stuff in there that works for my gaming plus some of it was already on my  metal "buy" list. with a few add on I am interested in, I'm pledged at $100 already, with no Core Set that's my limit unless something late blows me away enough to not knock something else out.

The crazy thing about Bones, and its still head shaking to me that folks who "are all in ",  I follow the Reaper Facebook group and have some posts from folks with obscene numbers of figures from the 1st three Bones, let alone this one which is well over 500 figures at this point if your are "all in" , I though my paint que was deep?, anyway there is still some stuff I'll want to cherry pick from these sets 3 or so years from now when they hit the shelves. That's the other crazy thing the lead times...but we are talking millions of dollars and hundreds of the new molds here.

Anyway Bones 4 is raging in big way, good for them

Below I posted some recent pictures I took of the Reaper figures that recently left the paint bench for the Blackbarrow table or shelf . Just some stuff I got done this summer, not all of it, put just Reaper I hadn't already posted in previous entries.

My personal favorite sculptors going for Reaper are Julie Guthrie and Bob Ridolfi.
I find most of what I am attracted to is theirs and I know they are both well represented in Bones 4,

The Pathfinder Red Dragon I painted is for sale  I'll add the ebay link as soon as I get it listed, its was really a test color scheme for the massive Forge World Red Dragon I have had sitting on the shelf since 2009 ,
I'm actually finding the inspiration to take it on again, since its "almost" got built as "not Smaug" in the dying days of the GW "LotR/Hobbit strategy game.

Still working on writing up the Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes we played earlier this month, cobbling it together off phone audio and notes isnt fun, I should have done it sooner. but I'll get it done if not just as an excuse to post more photos.

Bat Demon 03747

Reaper Bones Red Dragon 89001  eBay Auction

Burrowing Horror 02919

Town Guard 03165