Must....Resist....

Fireforge, long known for the quality of their historical miniatures, have launched this kickstarter.
It's an interesting project, two (at least) armies of hard plastic minis and a set of rules as well.
Clever move to package infantry in 12s and cavalry in 6s, just right for Dragon Rampant.  The Northerners look very nice, they have avoided the hairy barbarian style of Northerner and gone for something a little more *ahem* 'Stark'.  One of the stretch goals is a force of well armoured Southerners, ideal opponents for the Northerners when Winter comes.
There is a lot I like about this project.  Fireforge have apparently already got the moulds for the initial releases done, so the wait time should be pretty short.  The Undead opposition have nice details such as the inclusion of female bodies in the zombie villagers set, and equipment details to link them to the Northerners.

I do think I will be able to resist it though; I don't want a new games system at the moment.  I may well pick the odd box up at retail, and if I didn't have a goodly sized force of ex-Empire troops for my Kingdoms of Men, I would be all over this.

EDIT: One I didn't resist, Deep Madness has just arrived.  A humongous load of minis, it makes the Conan boardgame seem quite small.
Once I've gone through it a bit I'll post pictures, but the pieces are nicely sculpted and cast.

EDIT 2: the Fireforge Kickstarter did finally fund, though it didn't reach the dizzy heights I think they were expecting, based on the stretch goals they showed.  I'll doubtless pick up some of the boxes at retail; I can see a lot of use for them for both RPG and Dragon Rampant.  They might even make nice Kingdoms of Men for Kings of War, or possibly Northern Alliance when we find out a bit more about them.

3rd phalanx finally finished.

It has taken a while but I finally finished painting the third phalanx of greek hoplites. I also include a group shot of all the hoplites so far...

3D Texture Stamps

If you build using XPS foam (as I do) and have tried, or thought of trying, textured rollers (as I do) and have a 3D printer (as I don't) then the following kickstarter might be of interest.

The textured rollers should prove very useful for buildings for both RPG and wargaming, and I suspect it is possible to print them out at different sizes to match different scales of buildings.
I've used the Green Stuff World rollers on some of my builds, after watching the Black Magic Craft video on the subject.  As they aren't designed for XPS I sometimes have to go over and deepen the textures.

Ooo, Shiny

I'm back from a great holiday; great music and cheese again.  I took some painting to do, some Reaper Bones and a couple of their paint sets, but only managed to get one mini almost finished, there was that much else to do.

I also took a good bit of time to a) read other hobby blogs and b) try and sort out where I'm going in the hobby.
I tend to suffer from 'Ooo Shiny' syndrome, even more than most gamers.  I read several blogs giving tips on how the writers dealt with it themselves.  There's the 'Conquering the Lead Mountain' challenge, which I might implement, but for sorting out and organising what I am doing I liked the 'five box' system.  This is designed to help keep focus without restricting hobby time to just one thing.  I read about this on a Dutch gamer's blog (Gunbird, he mentions it about halfway down this page) and it seems a good way to rein in the 'Ooo Shiny' impulse.  I've made a list of projects and organised them according to priority.  My first box will be for Frostgrave, as I've a mausoleum to finish, and I promised one of the gamers I'd paint his warband for him (just ten figures, can't be too hard, right?).  I'll decide on the box contents as I go, the second one will probably be 15mm Greeks.

BTW, I'm also trying to tidy out my stuff, so I'll be doing a lot of sorting through and thinning the Lead Mountain over the next few weeks.

Or months.

I'll also try to keep a bit more up to date on the blog and generally improve it.  I do enjoy doing this, though sometimes it feels a bit lonely, but I have a lot of projects that have been done, and not shown.  I should remedy this.  I hope the larger picture size I'm trying here helps make out the details a bit better, please let me know what you think.

Anyway, with the holidays generally over, we are back to the D&D 4E campaign.  For last night's game I needed a larger version of the crystalline constructs I made here.  I already had a mixed bag of plastic 'crystals' that I got off eBay (I think they are sold as table scatter for weddings?) *EDIT; they are available as counters for Magic the Gathering etc, here* , but the flight stands I made were just too flimsy.  I had no clear plastic rod, but a quick search in my local independant Poundsaver type shop turned up a set of party cocktail bits.  I didn't use the paper umbrellas, but the stirring sticks were ideal.  I cut a length of about 50mm and drilled a number 6 hole in the centre of a 40mm clear acrylic base.  Friction has kept the rod in place.  then simply a case of hot gluing on randomly a selection of the crystals a few at a time.

Ozzie the wizard (for scale) looks on and tries to remember what energy type this is vulnerable to.