Raggy's Gaming Adventures

I have been taking a look at some ways to try and improve my blog's load times, try and reduce the image load. I haven't really found a good way to manage this - at least not without a lot of work on my end to manually resize all of my images and reupload and relink them. If anyone knows of a good way to achieve this for blogger / google photos (where the images are hosted) - please let me know! Get the Ref! Modryn Wanderers! Pihrana Swamp Steelers! Old Teams! Boulderbelly Bludgers! Blood Bowl Crew Yokai Hackers! Carnal Cavaliers! - Raggy, signing out

I would like to introduce you all to Trixie! Of course, regular readers have seen her before but as I mentioned in this post ; I had been unable to identify her origins for sure... Well, all that has changed! The lady's name is Trixie and she is a free model! Well free when you get another model. I was correct that she is a Ramshackle Games model, this model . From the blurb, it seems that she is something of a Siren that draws people in and betrays them... that's not really how I ever imagined this figure. And the finalé: The final effect is rather less impressive than I'd hoped, particularly for the sheer fabric but I think it has taught me a lot of how to do this in the future. I will be trying something similar on the Trolls for my Goblin team. - Raggy, signing out

With all the talk of the Goblins, I haven't forgotten about the Carnal Cavaliers! As things in our local league have panned out, we won't actually be starting the next full season until after West Coast Quake ; because of this, because our league doesn't have a painting contest but the Quake does, and because I already have the three color minimum to qualify them as 'painted' these guys are on the back burner while the goblins get some love. Having said that, Sunday I spent a good chunk of time painting these buggers instead of the goblins I was meant to be working on! These pictures were actually taken last Friday so the bits and bobs I did on Sunday aren't reflected (NMM on the beastmen chains, numbering and some smoothing of the colors). What's with the dude in white? Did I forget to paint up one of my figures? Well yeah... kinda. He is the coach of the team and will be an albino beastman, he also got some paint on him on Sunday so looks a littl...

For those of you that don't understand where the title of this blogpost came from, there's a great new Patreon project to learn how to paint miniatures with solid foundations. If you want to find out more you can check it out on their page: Miniature Monthly . The idea is that you watch the monthly videos and practice the techniques they demonstrate. There are two new videos each month and this is month 1! So you can get in right on the ground floor. I will try not to spoil too much of the content of those videos (just go and sign up for yourselves). One of the things that is covered is looking at different primer colors and how they impact the colors layered over them. As it happens I am just getting going with my Goblins (yes those goblins, the ones I've been harping on about every single post for about a month). Anyway half the goblins, the other half are wearing very little and the Trolls are going to be red... sounds like 3 different primers to me! You saw this in m...

It's been a pretty productive weekend all in all. I didn't have too much on my plate so I knuckled down to some serious miniatures work. First up... drilling all of my Blood Bowl minis to allow them to have the new pegged balls placed on their bases like this: Having done all of those, I got my Goblin team for West Coast Quake primed and started painting them up: Just like the original ninja - these guys spring up out of nowhere ;-) I took photos of them in waves to try and get them all reasonably in focus. The Oni-Trolls are actually pretty badly primed and after taking this photo I ended up stripping them and will re-prime them. I will try one with the Pure Red primer and see if I can do it without filling the details in. - Raggy, signing out

Of course Black Friday was also the launch date of Blood Bowl and so our league commissioner and I ran a few demos at our local game store: We saw good interest and I think made a couple of sales and may even get a couple of gamers to join our league. If you are in the Bay Area and are looking to meet some Blood Bowl players, we game at the Mountain View Game Kastle on Wednesdays and will mostly be at the West Coast Quake . - Raggy, signing out

I have only been in the US for a few years and on previous Thanksgivings, that has meant taking some time to look back on all the things that I have to be thankful for in this world and put them down on (electronic) paper. In previous years this was done on another blog  which has since fallen by the wayside and I thought that this year, rather than resurrect that one, I would move to this one as my main blog. This year has seen a lot of shifting and changing, and whilst it has definitely not all been good, I'm still here. With so much going on, having a reason to really look on the good in life is really important so here goes: I am really really thankful to have a wonderful, supportive partner who deals with me when I am emo-y and a grouch. To all my friends, wherever you are, I am blessed to have so many of you, to call on you whenever and wherever and know you've got my back. I'd like to give an especially big shout to the Tuesday night gaming crew for dialing me in...