Weekend catchup

The overlap between oldhammer and being (or expecting to be soon) a parent of young children was pretty clearly shown yesterday when I posted the picture below from my weekend prepping my recently acquired Space Ork Raiders set (RTB02, I think) and got well over a hundred likes/comments. I guess that puts the majority of online oldhammerers in the late twenties to mid forties bracket...

How a [boy] shall be armed for his ease when fighting on foot

Long time readers will know that I have two sons, the Rab-ble as it were. By nature, and certainly by nurture, they have a keen fantastical and chivalric interest - their wooden swords have slain many a fearsome foe and graced many a tournament field. All good stuff.

When we were at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge earlier in the week (absolutely fascinating exhibition on personal vs. public devotional items in 16th century Italy), they spotted these felt scabbard in the shop and, without nagging, made their admiration of them quite clear.

Holiday bits'n'bobs

I always have grand plans for the holidays - all those hours I won't be at work, all that time to get on and do some hobby stuff, rather than just doing it exhaustedly and vicariously in late night internet bursts.

Yeah.

Right.

Those "free" hours soon get filled. Some of it with pleasurable things (actually spending time with my family, going walking, reading, a museum or art gallery or two), and some of it with chores that have built up (I'm typing this with paint-flecked fingers, not from geeking, but from repainting what feels like half the house).

Nevertheless, some geeking has happened:

There has been a lot more Talisman from the boys (I've introduced the City expansion, next up, the Dungeon)

I made some tentative steps forward on my Chaos Army project which rather stalled for personal reasons over the last two months and needs to be radically accelerated if I'm going to get even close to completing it in 2017. I do have a backup plan involving a giant to reach the points target with less painting...

Actually, that minotaur lord on the left is nearly done now, and I'll post him when he's finished.

Toodles,
Rab

While the wife's away...

...the geeks will play!

The incomparably wonderful Mrs Rab is away this week, leaving me in sole charge of the two little'uns - we worked out it's the longest she's been away from them since they were born which caused her all sorts of angst! To take their minds off her absence, what else was there but to cook up a decent chilli, crack out the PS2 from the loft for a bit of LEGO Star Wars and Burnout - Takedown, and then get on with some good old pre-digital gaming? Nice!

Yesterday saw this:

Terrain boards - 04

Gettin' dirty! I've been looking forward to this stage, the point at which all the splatters of filler, the cork bark and the blue foam get brought together and become a unified surface. In a word, gloop.

Terrain boards - 01

A good spot of holiday geeking today. Last year I built a gaming table, complete with shelves and a sunken surface to hold terrain boards. It has seen some action (Inquisimunda, X-Wing, Knights' Quest, Dragon Rampant, and Blood Bowl), but it hasn't reached its potential yet because it was missing its terrain boards.

Time to do something about that!

My intention, since the start of this project, was to produce four terrain boards that could be rearranged to give multiple configurations of three of them. One would be completely flat, the other three will have more or less river and hill and are shown below.

Lego Rampant

I can't quite believe I'm the first to do this, but a quick spot of googling seemed to say otherwise. I give you... Lego Rampant!

Tidying up after another day in which my boys seemed to have the sole aim of carpeting the house in tiny bits of... stuff, I realised that their Big Present from Christmas (a rather fab Lego castle) would provide them with a warband apiece for a game of Dragon Rampant tomorrow.

Introducing the dramatis personae. First, the "goodies"...

King Larenath
Elite riders, Level headed, Single Model Unit, Leader [8pts]

NaGaDeMon 2015

I wasn't going to get involved in National Game Design Month this year, really I wasn't, but then I was laying in bed while my two sons charged around like lunatics and I had no choice but to hear their game. It revolved around using lasers on each door to stop the ghosts from stealing their duplo models because it would give the ghosts special powers that would allow them to take over the world.

You couldn't make it up.

[KQ] Pest control - part 1

Sir Reginald had been missed at the Midsummer banquet at the King's high court. In fact, his fellow knights realised, no-one had seen him since they had all ridden home after the Christmas court. Concerned that something amiss might have befallen Reginald, Sir CJ and Sir EM decide to investigate, riding to his small but strong castle which they both knew so well from years of friendship. The entrance was barred and no-one answered their call, neither Reginald nor his servants - something was definitely wrong! The two knights pretended to ride away in case anyone or anything was watching, carefully made their way to the postern gate, drew their swords and prepared to adventure on behalf of their friend...

Her Majesty's Airship "Ennaychess Vombowl"

Sometimes, just sometimes, one of my boys gets a homework that I really want to get involved in. This week the elder lad had to invent a new form of transport, draw it and then go to town using adjectives and similes to describe it. So far, so educational. However, the chip off the old block wasn't content with a picture, oh no, he wanted to build it. The invention? A flying boat!

A rainy day at Rabbington Towers

Back in July I shared a post from The Crooked Staff blog which concerned the creation of simple, effective and good-looking trees for afforesting a wargaming table. I had expected there to be a rainy, low-energy sort of day during the summer hols, but the weather was fine and we kept being invited to stay with non-gaming folks in beautiful parts of this green and pleasant land.

Fast forward to half term (i.e. now last Wednesday) - you can even do the wibbly-wobbly Scooby Doo sound effects at this point if you wish - and we have rain, children who want to do something but are too tired to game, and I have some carefully hoarded bits and bobs. Time to get making trees!