Spring round up

   With spring thawing and freezing and thawing and freezing it's way on the prairies, my backyard is constantly underwater. This was shot after the first high of 20 Celcius (68 F for the reads that aren't from Canada), melting a good majority of the snow in my yard.

      The walkway, pillar and the base are all separate pieces. My plan is to make a couple different pillars for easy swapping to match what I need to connect other terrain pieces. I also staggered pieces of flat metal on the walkway for future covers to be magnetized to. 

      While preparing Heroquest miniatures, I had some poxwalkers that were sitting on my hobby desk. They were painted without anything on their base, so I have now corrected that.

That's it for now, I will be posting some finished Heroquest miniatures next. Stay tuned! Oh and Monster Mayhem will be starting soon! I need to think of something to paint for that!

Paint What You Got 2026 Finale

     Alright, so not the most productive challenge I have been a part of. Most nights when I usually do my painting I have been too tired to get off the couch. 

    But alas, this is the results of getting back to the hobby desk! Not a single Battletech amongst them for shame! And worse yet, I bought the new Heroquest from the used market (definitely 100 + miniatures), I think I lost the true meaning of this seasons Paint What You Got Challenge. Maybe I find it's meaning later in the year. 

Unmatched - Tyrannosaurus Rex

Unmatched - Dr. Sattler 

Unmatched - Ingen worker

Unmatched - Velociraptors

Would would win?

Fatal Four way!

    These were painted up with contract paints, in the mess that is my hobby desk, I seemed to have misplaced the T-rex's base. Time to try out a pomodoro technique, usually my answer to moving stuff off my desk is painting it which usually does get it cleaned off.... eventually.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I wouldn't mind diving into the Heroquest miniatures, or continue with Unmatched (I have Tales of Amaze and Cobble & Fog, 10 minis in all) or the Dark Eldar. Hmmm choices, I also have some scratch build terrain ready for some quick painting, that might get done soon too.

Remembering the Dark Eldar

        Back in the early 2000s, my buddies, Pilon, Mike and I walked into our first Games Workshop store in Edmonton. We were all enamored by the idea of pushing around miniatures on the table. We had started playing Dungeons and Dragons around this time, and Warhammer 40k seemed to be the next level in the RPG hobby. We all picked out a faction, Mike went with Tyranids. They look like Zerg from Star Craft, which probably helped. Andrew picked up a 3rd Edition starter set with the rules, Dark Eldar and Space Marines. Being a teenager without much money to my name, I picked up some Dark Eldar Wyches to supplement the Kabalite Warriors in Andrew's starter set as well as the faction codex. 

        We didn't really play much, and my paint supplies were limited as my hometown didn't have a dedicated hobby store. Also Dark Eldar without a transport Raider is a suicide mission. Proxying didn't seem to enter my mind at this point. 

    Pushing around models on the table felt larger then anything in D&D. It was probably the stack of books and other household items on the table that really shaped the battlefield.

    I eventually turned to Chaos, mostly to rival Andrew's loyalists. But Dark Eldar were and still are one of my favourite factions in 40k. Specifically, the models that I started with. Here are a few I painted up to compliment the Archon, handful of Wyches and Icubi which I have already painted up. 

    Which led to digging out more warriors to paint up...

    I paused on this project as my brother was getting into Unmatched. So I started painting up those models, but hopefully will swing back around once I get them finished up.

2025 Wrap Up

    I have been a bit neglectful on the upkeep of this blog. Posting a demo game and terrain I painted in November only a couple of days ago? But I had to get it in for the end of the year wrap up to total up all the painting and purchasing I have been doing or others have been doing for me.

    Here are the items I acquired over November and December:

A Touch of Evil - Revised

     I have heard good things about this game, that it's like Horrified with more atmosphere and tension. We shall see, it plays 1-8 players so a solo play through will likely be in the mix soon.

    I had a moment of weakness when I went on Ebay to find two Dark Eldar Raiders in alright condition. After using some of my dark eldar for the OPR demo, a couple kalabite warriors and a jetbike have landed on my paint table. So seeing these two raiders for a steal make me want to continue shaping up my 3rd Edition Dark Eldar. This won't be a purist list as there will be newer models in the mix as well.

    Rachel gave me an Fantasy Miniature advent calendar to open throughout December. Quality ranges a lot in these miniatures. For the most part, they will work well.

Here are a few highlights of the bunch.

AI sculpt?

All the short minis look great

I don't think you belong here

    And now, my short painted miniatures section. 

     I can't recall where I got these lizardmen from but they will be used in Ghost of Archipelago. Demoing this or Mech Attack! in 2026 has definitely crossed my mind.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Well, I should get to work painting some of the items on my desk, maybe some of the board games I am hoping to get to the table? I don't have a solid plan at the moment.

One Page Rules Demo Day

       I ran a One Page Rules - Firefight demo at our community room, The Spot, at one of our malls. It is only available on Sundays and I given time off parents to spend the afternoon there. 

      I was able to run two demo games. One was with Jon who helps run The Spot. The other was with Matt, who ran a Blood Bowl league that I played in when I first returned to this fine hobby of ours. 

       A handful of people came to check out the tabletop games being played. I was able to give my 1 minute pitch about OPR and how easy it is to get into the hobby. I was hoping for more players as I had prepared to run a four player game. 

       I will try to get more demo events over the next year. My goal is to show off indie games (though, I don't think OPR is that indie anymore), and grow the community with terrain/ kit bashing opportunities. I think this might be an either/or situation as the terrain bashing didn't get any focus while I was demoing.

      Enjoy my one picture from the event. Note the Terminator on the walkway, which should have been more menacing then he was.

       I would tell the bystanders that the terrain was a printer, to which they assumed, 3D Printed. Please, you give me too much credit, I am not that fancy.

       Talking with my friend about the event, I realized I forgot to add pictures of some of the terrain I had finished. So here it is, my disassembled printer terrain.

My favourite side

Garbage hill

Next on the hobby desk

      I have small projects on the desk, most are 80% completed to get stuff flowing off quicker.

Warcry - Heart of Ghur terrain

    Here it is! The large terrain pieces out of the Heart of Ghur second edition of Warcry, as well as bamboo bridges to connect them together. Since the last post, I added more vegetation to add a jungle feeling to these pieces. 

    There are still 6 scatter terrain features to paint up. I was thinking of adding them to small bases and add more jungle elements to them, as I want to use these in Ghost Archipelago as well.

    I painted up some wandering monsters as well, 2 Sailbacks, a Snapping Turtle and a Crocodile. I had to paint them as washes didn't like the plastic all that much, no surprise with the cheap plastics these toys are made of. Expect more in the future as I'll need a decent pool of them for some of the scenarios.

   

Wandering monsters enjoying the swamp

    I have signed up to do a demo for One Page Rules Firefight at our mall's community gaming area. My thought process for events like this always seem to lead me to trying to make it grandiose. Of course, you want people to enjoy the game, but packing too much into just a demo could push potential players away from the system. 

    My original plan was to set it on my death world, painting up a bunch of new models and terrain for the event, but realistically, as it's at the end of the month, I should use terrain and models that I already have finished. So now I will run something smaller in scope, zooming in on a hive and having chaos worshippers attempting to summon daemons. That way I could add some kitbashed models and wandering monsters that I create as well, this will help if there are more players that want to pop in. I also want to print out pamphlets to hand out with simple points for playing OPR and how to get into wargaming cheaply, where to buy models, etc. 

 

     I also wanted to focus on junk terrain making and kitbashing, but running the demo should keep me busy enough and I didn't want to have any of the three aspects to falter so why not focus on the demo itself. Learning and fun first!

Next on the Hobby Desk

   I have start a few pieces of terrain for the OPR event and went through some of my bits to get kit bashing. The problem with that is that I mostly have fantasy miniatures (every model is a necromunda mini, right?) and sorting out fodder for kitbashing would go a long way. So next up on my blog, ORGANIZING! Wait? where are you going? Please! come back, I swear I'll have something more fun!

Season of Scenery 2025

                               To start, let's go with the short list of terrain/ vehicles that I have completed. 

Crimson Typhoon

    Another Pacific Rim action figured based for Mech Attack, his head was lost when our cat, Hubbie, started his own version of Mech Attack. I believe I know where it might be, just need to move a lot of stuff around.

Crimson Typhoon with previous year's, Gypsy Danger

Heart of Ghurr scatter terrain added to swamp base.

    Hope you enjoyed my lack of work this year. Okay, I know, I am giving myself a hard time, summer is always super busy with vacation and the like. I also made good progress on a bunch of my terrain, I was just hoping to have the Heart of Ghurr terrain off my desk by now.

The four largest pieces in the HoG box

    And here in no real order, the "in progress" terrain. First up are corridors I was experiment making out of cold coffee containers. Was thinking to use it for Space Hulk

    I picked up some cassettes (like over 100) for this terrain that Iron hands made for his Gundam models. I hope to use these for Battletech if my brother lets me without hexes. 

    

A quick Mordheim building? This was very rough, "eyeballed" the windows and only measured 3 inches for each level. I might use a template for my next building. That concludes my slideshow of terrain I have been experimenting with. Some more successful then others. 

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    As with the years previous, I get into building and painting terrain, so I will probably continue my Season of Scenery into September. Who's going to stop me? Dave? Well... he might...