Turelio's Hobby Hoard

NB: This was written a while ago, but never published. When I say 'over the weekend', it was a few months ago... Over the weekend I encountered an RPG in play, and overheard one of the NPCs interacting with the players, and I overhead a snippet of the game which was something like: She waves her hands in a strange pattern and mutters some arcane words you don't understand. Her appearance is no longer disheveled. She thanks you for your help. When the players asked about her, she replied: "I am but a simple merchant, who was waylaid by bandits..." Wait a moment... I've heard this before... I've realised that there are some tropes about role playing characters that do get played out a bit. Quests turn into the murder-hobo tour, princesses are captured by dragons, magic swords are a standard first magic item reward. But I never twigged to the following formula being used so much:  I am but a (adjective indicating they do not think highly of ...

Warning - This will get gruesome... Last night, with more KD:M games looming next weekend, I decided to start my own solo campaign. Gems Light. I wanted to run through the game a few times in the hopes of starting a full blown campaign. I was tired from the heat, but I still wanted to do this. As you might guess from the title, it didn't end well, but nonetheless I'm going to blog about it, and turn it into a learning experience... I hope... For some reason I decided to name the survivors after gemstones, and after trying to recall more than about two name in the heat, decided metals could be used as well. Later I would just name survivors after things like Cordite, which in retrospect probably means I gave up on these survivors quicker than I thought I did.. Anyway, my previous times through this game had all started very positively as I recall, with survivors getting home in one piece, and nothing bad happening. This was different. Quickly surrounding ...

My first project to start and finish this year was some terrain, which was immediately uses in DnD the next day. It was a few simple pieces; the base of the GW Arcane Ruins set, and a Lord of the Rings statue. As it was terrain, I wasn't too fussed with gap filling. The base had the tabs trimmed off and undercoated, and the statue was glued together with excess poly cement, which was trimmed back later in an effort to hide the seams. It was also stuck to a 40mm mdf base, but not textured. Everything was given a white undercoat, a coat of P3 Hammerfall Khaki, then a wash of Army  Painter Strong Tone. I then drybrushed with Menoth White Base and Menoth White Highlight. The base of the statue was painted with Reaper Dirt Brown before being coated in PVA glue and static grass. This meant any static grass that rubbed off had a dirt colour underneath, so it wasn't too obvious. The skull on the ruins was painted Reaper Stone Grey, washed with GW Nuln Oil, gla...