Monday 17 September 2018

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.


2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Cheers.
      The extra large pics do kind of creep out of their space though. Still, I think everything is still readable.

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