I tried a wash with thinned down paint at this stage. I'm not sure I am happy with the results.

Just to mention the colours I am using. My paints are all Vallejo 'Game Color', although I do have some of the 'Model Color' range as well.

Over a white spray primer
for the skin: Ice Blue* as the base, with a wash of Electric Blue
The skin nodules are Magic Blue and I plan to highlight with Electric Blue
For the hair: Bonewhite with a very weak wash of Skin Wash**
For the loin cloth: Inner sections were done in Cobra Leather and the fur edging was done in
Charred Brown.

*The website lists this as Glacier Blue
** This is 'Game Ink'

Here is the base coloured Winter Troll. I was home sick from work today and all I could do was sit around, so I got a lot done.

I have in the past tried to do a painting blog, but I lost interest very quickly. I will try again here to post updates of work in progress. So here are my assembled and green stuffed:

Winter Troll


Gudrun the Wanderer


I think the next pic will be of the one I have decided to concentrate on. Likely I will not put up a shot of a miniature that has been spray undercoated because that seems a waste of time. I will concentrate on proper painting stages, so the next one will be fully base coloured.

In the driver's seat

One of the tenth graders in the school gaming club has designed a role playing game for his personal project. I mentored him during the process and I must say that despite my initial concerns, he has done a great job. As the final part of the game design and before he writes his final paper on the process, we are testing the game for him.

Today was Flo's first day as Game Master and he did a pretty good job. I completely let go of the controls and played a character along side the other students. The game itself was fairly standard, but its simplicity allowed us to engage with it quickly and get fully involved with the plot. My character is a crazy old man, based on my favourite card from 'magic the gathering' and I quite enjoyed playing silly buggers with the kids, instead of sitting at the helm and trying to direct them.

Same old same old

I played a fantasy rpg with my old Sydney group on Saturday night and despite looking forward to it, it was far from a success; in fact I spent the last hour looking for an excuse to end it.

Here are the problems as I saw them:
1. There were too many (eight) players.
2. Players didn't listen to each other and character cooperation was low.
3. Both in and out of character, people found ways to annoy each other and they also found in and out of character ways to become upset.
4. People spent periods of time disconnected from the game.

The first one is easy to fix: Five players max.
The next two have been problematic to different degrees for a long time.
The last one is not disruptive, so it has never been addressed, but when three people at the table are not involved in the game, it makes it difficult to maintain (GM) enthusiasm.

How do I choose who to include in the future?
How do I fix problems 2-4?

Changed some settings

Changed a few settings in the hope that pople can post here. There have been a couple of people saying they were having trouble. Hopefully now this will be smoother. I'm not sure how it will look when new posts come in, but if you want to be more than annonymous, you may need to sign the end of the post.

Let me know if this works or not.

Play the game as written

I have been a gamer for decades and have never found a gaming system that has completely satisfied me, but I have refrained (for a long while) from changing rules to suit my purposes. I used to do it all the time and over the years I learned why you shouldn't 'house rule'; read make shit up.

When you change something, you never know how that is going to affect the game down the road. It may have no effect, or at least no immediate effect, but for the most part, the rules are all interconnected.

Last night Martin and I played a 1000 point Flames of War battle and I slaughtered him. I won convincingly, mostly because we made up our own scenario on the fly, rather than following the approved ones from the rule book. The scenario we played, forced Martin to move forward while I waited in cover from which I could hammer him at my leisure.

It was still good fun though. My highlight was my command Stug IV being hit by three Sherman tanks and 2 PIATs and not even being scratched.