Because I have no self-control, that's why!



Why, oh why, did I buy more spaceship minis?

I picked up another metric crapload of minis on ebay, including the 14 packages of Stardate: 3000 ships pictured above.  In addition to various Earth ships, including some I didn't have before, the lot includes some of the alien ships as well.  Still deciding on a paint scheme. 

Any idea of which line of miniatures these ships are from?

Not only that, but I also won an auction of a dozen ships from another fleet--which fleet, I have no idea.  (EDIT: RavenFeast has identified these as Star Raiders from Garrison Miniatures.  Thanks, RF!)  I like the design of these guys, but I hate the bright red paint job, so this batch is headed for a Pine-Sol bath sometime soon.  Not sure how I'll end up painting them, either.  Any color scheme suggestions, for either the Stardate 3000 ships or the red guys?

HotT this weekend

I won't be able to make it, but if any of y'all are in San Antonio and looking to play Hordes of the Things, the guys are meeting at Dragon's Lair for some games this Saturday (June 25).

The games will use the usual shooter/warband movement rate swap and start around noon, running till about 6 or so.

So gather your armies and head over for some generic fantasy combat.  Painted or unpainted, we're generally pretty casual about it.  Don't have any armies based for HotT?  I'm sure someone has an extra army or two to loan you.

Have fun playing, and let me know how it goes.

Losing weight

I was searching various blog recaps of the Northwestern Historical Miniatures Gaming Society's Enfilade convention, hoping to find some pictures of the MAATAC and Galactic Knights scenarios that Monday Knight Productions ran at the convention.  No luck in as far as pics of those games, but Dave S., author of the blog Naval Gazing, did post photos of his acquisitions from MKP, including these resin casts of the GK ships:

Photo from the blog Naval Gazing.

That's right, it looks like Monday Knight Productions has started making the massive GK ships in a material much less dense.  Not only is this substance a lot cheaper than pewter, bringing down the prices of these models, but because it's so much lighter it will probably reduce shipping costs--or at least save postal workers from hernias.

Although MKP had these for sale at the convention, no word on when these are gonna be offered for sale on their website.  Also, I don't know if the company will switch to resin for the smaller ships as well, or if they'll remain metal.

I ♥ HPB

Yet another great score from Half-Price Books.  Thanks to a tip earlier today from Sovereigneternal, I went to an HPB store in San Antonio, where there were a couple dozen boxes of sci-fi miniatures on sale for (wait for it) half price.  There were a couple of boxes of Noble Armada ships, over a dozen boxes of Star Wars minis from West End Games and boxes of starter fleets for just about every faction in Firestorm Armada. 

Although I was tempted to abuse my credit card and get everything, fiscal self-disipline held out.  I limited to one box and picked up this Aquan Prime fleet.  I like the smooth lines of these ships; quite a contrast from the greebly-encrusted vessels of the Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights range.  Since they're compatible size-wise, I plan on using them in my games--probably as passengers ships.  You can see how they look compared to a SfW/GK Terran cruiser.

The Aquan battleship especially seems like it would work well as a massive superliner from the Whitestar line.  For paint scheme I'm gonna avoid my usual drybrush technique and go with a bright white base coat with maybe a few thin color stripes; I need to check out some photos of ocean liners for ideas.  I'll probably print up some decals instead of attempting to put those markings on with a paintbrush.

Even though I have plenty of bare metal in my game closet, I've been thinking about getting a Firestorm Armada fleet for some time, so I just couldn't resist picking these up.  Of course, no telling when I'll actually get them painted.

The Con is On

As Chris announced over at the Hill Cantons, the South Texas Mini Con (for lack of a better name) is a go.  The official date is Saturday, August 20, and our little gathering will take place here in New Braunfels. 

It will be a day of as much RPG and minis gaming that we can fit into our conference room at the New Braunfels Convention Center.  We hope some of our fellow Texas gamers will be able to join us.

In addition to my Starfleet Wars, it looks like we'll have Empire of the Petal Throne from ckutalik and AD&D from Brad.  Other old-school possibilities include the original Chainmail rules and the more recent EPT prequel Humanspace Empires.  I'll see if I can get someone to run a Civil War game as well.

There's no entrance fee (but we'll gladly accept donations to offset the cost of renting the venue).  However, we're trying to get an idea of how many people to expect, so if you plan on attending, please let us know ASAP so we can get a head count. 

We're gonna have three or four tables set up at once, and we're still locking down the schedule.  We still have table space open, so if you want to run a game, let one of us know.  Here's what the place looks like:

Should be nice and cozy.  See you there in August!

Action in the Hill Cantons

I haven't posted in awhile, but I have been gaming.  Here's a snapshot from today's session of the Hill Cantons, taken from my phone:

The Hill Cantons crew takes on a giant and his prehistoric panther.  From left: Uma (thief), Rellus the Braggart (0-level NPC promoted to 1st-level henchman), Judah the Hammer (cleric), Demitros (fighter), Barbarella the Amazon (fighter), and Mandamus a.k.a. the Professor (magic-user).

Our group of player characters, henchmen, and NPCs took out a giant and a primitive great cat (above), made it to town, and went back with the intent to explore his lair.  That's when things got weird.  Long story short: we don't trust the skinny guys, our reward money got blown on healing--but we acquired a nifty metal tube that makes a big blue mess.  We sure could have used a druid.

Well, I guess it's official

So it looks like we're throwing a mini convention this summer--and in New Braunfels, of all places!

After some initial discussion about a possible local gaming get-together, the intertubes fell silent for awhile.  Now ckutalik (rather unilaterally, I'm afraid) has announced what we're calling for lack of a better name, the South Texas Mini-Con (how's Braun-Con sound?).  In celebration, I made the lame logo you can see at left.

The gameday is tentatively set for August 13 here in NB.  Looks like I will be running some obscure spaceship game, Mr. Hill Cantons will run some Tekumel for a change, and Brad, that crusher of skulls, said he wants to run an AD&D adventure.  And it looks like the town's RPG artist in residence will be there, too.

See y'all in August.  Maybe by then we'll have a better logo.