Archive for February 2014

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Steve Jackson's Ogre - Its all Mine!

Its been a couple of weeks since Genghis Con XXXV now and I have, finally, fully recovered my voice. Between the six hours of auctioning on Friday and getting sick with a cold immediately afterwards while I was in California its been kind of a struggle. Now I have time to really soak in my biggest score during the convention; a copy of the designer's edition of Ogre by Steve Jackson. The original portfolio game was published back in the late 70's and my friends and I played it to death and happily added on GEV when that was released. I have some incredibly fond memories of playing this little pocket game which was easily affordable on my allowance at the time, unlike some of the other games that had my attention like SPI's Atlantic Wall, and War in the Pacific or even the new Squad Leader expansions like Cross of Iron and Crescendo of Doom from AH. While I know that this has been done to death already by other bloggers, here are my box opening pictures. The photo quality leaves a lot to be desired but my focus was on other things.

The shipping box, I may still keep this.

Okay, the box is massive and weighs in at a hefty 30#. That's one of my 18" steel rulers across the bottom of the box.

And now the ruler up the side of the box, let's call the whole thing about 22"x20"x8"

The back of the box with the all important read me first label.

The back of the sheet with all the assembly instructions. It clearly states that you should not punch all the counters out, in that way lies madness. Ha, I'm an old school wargamer and I cut my teeth on SPI monster games. There were certainly not enough counters to scare me off. So I spent a very pleasant evening punching out counters and assembling Ogres of various types.

The Ogre Blueprint, very cool, keeping it in the box for now. I may frame this someday.

The four stacks of counter sheets. I don't count them, I just dove in and released the components from their cardboard shackles

The Ogre Garage, where you can store your completed Ogres and other bits

And the boards and I think I kind of stopped taking pictures at this point. What you are seeing in s the back side of the original boards, underneath them is the counter storage tray and the GEV boards. Maybe I'll get some more pictures taken, I think I'm just going to play the game though.

Another Off the Cuff Mini - Lovecraftian Painting Circle

With all the traveling lately and trying to have a piece done for Genghis Con I still managed to squeeze in a mini for the latest paint club on the Lead Adventurers forum. The current club is the Lovecraftian Painting Circle and the theme is creatures. I know this maybe hard to believe considering the amount of miniatures in my stash but I didn't have anything along these lines (although I'm seriously considering getting into some pulp). The numbers in the LPC were clocking up pretty quick there in the beginning but I decided to go ahead and order a Hound of Tindalos from Reaper anyway. I knew getting the mini wasn't going to be a problem it was finding time to paint. I finally sat down with some paint and brushes Sunday and got to work on this guy.

There aren't a lot of descriptions of the Hound other than it seems to come from smoke so I tried to create that effect using a monochrome palette. I had the Black & White Scalecolor set from Scale 75 and decided to try that out. Its not precisely black and white there are some definite purple and brown tones in the colors (which is a good thing!). So, appropriately, this mini was more of an experiment than anything else. I banged it out in a couple of hours and while its not one of my best efforts it would certainly get the job done on the table.

This was the first time I worked with the Scalecolor paints exclusively on a mini. I discovered that you have to pay attention when thinning them down. While they come out of the bottle quite thick it doesn't take much to thin them down. I find myself over thinning them most of the time and really having to build up my colors again that probably worked in my favor in bringing out the different tones.

I would probably fail my insanity check if I met this guy on a dark night

Pics from the Air - Orange CA to Denver CO

It doesn't always work out this well but I had a window seat and I was flying in the daylight, a rare combination since most of my travel is done at the last minute. I flew out of the John Wayne Airport in Orange CA this time (close to Disneyland apparently), and managed to catch some pretty neat scenic shots. Its amazing how things look from 35 - 38,000 feet. I had my camera with me this time but, of course, the batteries died almost right away so all these photos are from my cell phone, which isn't bad but it isn't the greatest for shooting through a dirty airplane window.

On the plane at John Wayne Airport

Apparently when leaving John Wayne you have to fly west over the Pacific before heading east.

From farmland to desert

I think we are seeing the Little San Bernadino mountains here

Crossing the desert

Upper right corner is the Grand Canyon

Just an interesting geologic formation, not really sure where, probably Arizona

First signs of snow heading east

And then a lot of snow!

Snow capped peaks and clouds picking up the sunset

Genghis Con XXXV - Saturday

Sometimes its hard to get pictures taken when you have so much going on at a convention. Thursday night I brought over all the lights and helped get the room ready for the competition and the classes. Friday I had to work all day and then head straight in to the auction to sell the multitude of stuff that gets checked in to be sold at the auction. Saturday just seemed to be a whorl wind blur. The figure case was filling up and we started judging at 4, wrapped that up in a reasonable fashion and headed to dinner. The awards ceremony was at 8. We had some really beautiful pieces in the case this year (lots of high quality paint jobs). A few photos of quite moments during the day and I'll post some of the pictures that were taken of the miniatures tomorrow.

WIP shot of my entry. Didn't have time to start this till Thursday night

Friday, before I left for the auction. You can see some of the entries started to come in.

Friday evening classes

Getting ready for the Saturday morning classes

Michael Proctor, contemplating his phone. Dark Sword was our sponsor this year.

Lyn Stahl, Metal Head Minis

Case full of entries

Some of the vehicles

Single Miniatures

Units

Vignettes

Wells Fargo Stage Coach Reference Pictures

The other night when I left my client's site I saw a stage coach inside the building across the street. I left a little the next morning and went inside to get some pictures of it. Very convenient to spot this just when I was thinking about how to paint the Sarissa model that I had just built. I wonder if there are some Wells Fargo decals out there.

So if you are in need of some prototype pictures of a stage coach here you go!

I may have to go back and get another shot of the seating. There is a center bench seat right in the middle. I can't even imagine having to sit on this for any length of time. I guess it pays to be at the stage coach station early to claim a seat on either side.

Now I'll have to do a little more research. Looking at this photo and the next you can see that the spot for the whip is on the wagon's right side and so is the brake. I think the "driver's" position was on the right and not the left. I think I need to go back and watch some more western movies, I think those always have the driver on the left and the"shotgun" position on the right.

The wagon's right side notice, here you can see the painting and scroll work on the door.

I was right about the back of the Sarissa kit being far to straight, here you can see how the leather cover really drapes over the back. The angle is much different too. I think I'll need to make some modifications to the second kit that I have.

A closer look at the brake

A close up off the door painting and the scroll work.

The back wheel

The front steering axle and the fancy paintwork that's on it.

I decided that I didn't quite cover everything so I went back across the street this morning and took some additional pictures just to make sure I had covered just about everything.