Bones 3 & Bones 4 Miniatures: Bone White!

White is the color of sugar and cotton and flour and paper after you bleach out all the nutrition, lignin, and other natural goodness out of them.  Similarly, after you remove all the meat and blood and guts and other good things out of a person, you're left with a white, white skeleton (DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, by the way).

So for white, inspired by Halloween, I painted skeletons.  Bones 4 only included 6 skeletal creatures, so I included 6 skeletal characters from Bones 3.

In the front, we have the Bones 4 Bog Skeletons and the Maggotcrown Ogre Juggernaut.  Any evil necromancer will tell you that you can never have too many skeletons to do your bidding.

Real bog skeletons turn black from tannins in the bog water,
but that would be hard to see and it would look just plain weird.

In the back, we have the Bones 3 Undying Lords boss skeletons.  I have to wonder if these guys were once an adventuring party.

That's the Grim Reaper in the back, waving.  "I'll be seeing you!"

You might notice that the arms and armor used by these skeletons have a brownish hue.  In D&D 3.5, skeleton monsters are basically mindless automatons which fight until they are destroyed.  I imagine they don't care much about the state of their equipment.  I tried to imagine their metal equipment had a good deal of rust on them, but the rust would wear away at edges, joints that would grind together, and points of impact.  So I tried to put down a rusty steel color, then I would dry-brush the high-wear areas with a bright steely color.  On the Juggernaut, I added extra brown rusty splotches to the rusty base coat.

Drawtober 2019

I haven't been painting lately because my creative time is consumed by Drawtober.  Unfortunately for me, the Drawtober prompts have been arranged a little differently this year: instead of a unique drawing prompt for each day, there are only 6 drawing prompts for the month, and each drawing prompt runs for about 5 days.  I need more direction than this, so I have therefore decided to combine both the Drawtober 2019 drawing prompts and the Inktober 2019 drawing prompts into the same drawings, (although I will still be working in pencil). 

For example, the October 1 prompts for Drawtober and Inktober are "Witch's Garden" and "Ring" respectively, so I have attempted to draw a witch discovering a fairy ring near her garden.  The October 2 prompts are "Witch's Garden" and "Mindless," so I have attempted to draw the same witch defending her garden from mindless zombies.  And so on.

As of this writing, and using my prompt-combination system, I have created a drawing for every day in October 2019.  With the demise of Google+, I have created a Twitter account and posted my drawings there.  I invite you to check them out at: https://twitter.com/antonmarkwart . 

Many thanks to all of my followers!

Bones 2 Miniatures: Violet & Purple!

Scientifically speaking, spectral violet--the violet color wavelength you actually see in the rainbow--is actually one of the hardest colors to see because the rods and cones in your eyes don't respond strongly to the violet color wavelength.  The "blue" and "red" receptors in your eyes both respond to spectral violet, and your brain interprets these signals to mean "violet", which is why you can fool your brain with a mixture of red and blue light into thinking it's seeing "violet."

In color terms, "violet" is more bluish, whereas "purple" leans toward red.

Culturally, violet is the color of magic.  Purple is the color of royalty.  These are traditional fantasy tropes.  Famous violet & purple D&D monsters include the Purple Worm, the Violet Fungus, and the Shrieker.

Violet & purple are also my wife's favorite colors, so I asked her to pick out miniatures for this batch.  She came up with a mixed bag from Bones 2.

I talked about how hard it is to see violet.  Of course violet is a neighbor to the even harder (impossible?) to see ultraviolet (UV).  I decided to play around with UV-sensitive fluorescent and glow-in-the-dark paints, but it was kind of a bust.  Here you can see the same arrangement of miniatures, lit up with a UV LED bulb and a blue compact fluorescent bulb (which also radiates some UV).

Here are our adventurers, all decked out in violet and purple clothing.  In the rear we have a lady cleric and some kind of giant mushroom man.  In the middle there is a flamboyantly-dressed spellcaster, and a halfling rogue or ranger.  In the lead we have a flamboyantly-dressed lady with a staff and longsword.

Here is a giant wolf facing off against a pair of lions; from their violet and purple features we can deduce that they are infused with magic.

Here are some monsters, born into their violet and purple hues.  The turtle warrior and vulture demon guard the periphery.  In the rear is a dracolisk with its baby dragon.  The baby dragon reminded me of "Growf" from "What's New with Phil and Dixie," so I tried to color him appropriately.

Bones 4 Miniatures: Kobold Blue!

I felt like painting an army of something, and my Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards include 12 kobolds.  Cobalt blue is a marvelous deep blue pigment made from cobalt, aluminum, and oxygen.  The metal cobalt is named after Kobolds, who (according to recent editions of D&D) are distantly related to dragons.  There are blue dragons, why not blue kobolds?  Kobolds are also smaller than most people, so these miniatures are smaller than my usual miniatures. 

Wow!  That was a stretch for a dumb 'Kobold Blue' pun, wasn't it?  But did you know that Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons (and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) used to work in the insurance industry?  And did you know that D&D (and AD&D) were already common insurance industry terms for Death and Dismemberment/Disability (and Accidental Death and Dismemberment/Disability)?  And did you know that Gary Gygax was known to have a sense of humor?  My point is that the name of the game was probably always intended as a darkly humorous pun, inspired by the mayhem and gruesomeness of the typical dungeon crawl. 

On our left, we have Kobold Mooks. 

On our right, we have Kobold Leaders.

Bones 4 Miniatures: Green!

Green may be the color of growth, fertile crops, and wealth; but in the world of fantasy, green can also have darker connotations.  Green all around you means that you have left civilization and you are deep in the woods or swamp; danger can come from all sides, and help will be a long time coming.  Green is the color of nature reclaiming the ruins.  Green is the color of moldy rations, putrefying flesh, a sickly pallor, and corroded bronze.  Green is the color of orcs, goblins, frogs, and other reptiles.  Green is the color of untrustable magic.

For my adventurers this time, I chose the bad and the ugly: desperate, bitter mercenaries and amoral thugs little better than murderers and grave robbers.  Four of these seemed to have a family resemblance, so I decided to emphasize that with similar coloring.  I figured the woman (Fruella by Bob Ridolfi) would be directing the mayhem from the back, her 3 brothers (Dreadmere Mercenaries by Bob Ridolfi) would carry out most of the dirty work, and a pair of hired thugs (Hans The Brains and Karl The Killer) would do most of the heavy lifting and smashing.

The first monsters are a pair of Giant Frogs (by Jason Wiebe), followed by a pair of creepy Giant Leeches (by Enos Kline).  I used a glossy lacquer on these four, to make them look wet and gross.

Behold the beautiful but deadly Peryton (Spirit Beast by Julie Guthrie).

And the boss monster is the majestic Griffon; a symbol of divine power, half lion, half eagle.  This miniature was problematic because it's held upright on one (thin) leg and its tail.  It kept bending and flopping over at those 2 points, so I "pinned" it with a solid copper rod.  The rod kept it from bending, but then I noticed that the outstretched wing caused the entire model to fall over.  I might glue lead to the bottom at some point.

Bones 4 Miniatures in Yellow

Yellow can be one of the loudest colors, but also very soothing in the form of beiges and earth tones.  Yellow is also a fragile color, in that it can very easily veer into green or orange, or otherwise get dirty or turn gray. 

The Dungeon Aplhabet reports that yellow can be a bizarre, unearthly color, and that finding yellow creatures or features in a dungeon denotes something unsettlingly weird. 

Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis" describes unearthly secret agents with psychic powers disguised as human "Low Men in Yellow Coats."  Do these 'yellow coats' refer to khaki trenchcoats?  Or are they some poor cartoonish alien attempt to duplicate khaki, which appears yellow to human eyes? 

On to the miniatures.  These are all rewards from the Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 Kickstarter.

Bringing up the rear, we have a wizard, clad in arcane and mystical greenish yellow; and a witch or druid (Andowyn Thrushmoor by Bobby Jackson) in a more naturalistic yellowish green.  I don't play with the shapes of these models much, but I CAN choose what colors they are, and I want to improve the ethnic diversity of my miniatures.  When I saw the marvelous cloud of curly hair around Andowyn Thrushmoor's head, I decided to recognize it as African hair, like she's Whitney Houston as a witch.  I was hit hard by the vibrant and talented Whitney Houston's passing.  What a tragedy that we will never get to see Whitney Houston play a witch in a fantasy movie. 

Moving on, we have a whip-wielding rogue or cleric (Amrielle); and a grizzled veteran ranger (Jakob Knochengard by Bobby Jackson), both in muted naturalistic yellows.  Now that I think of it, Kevin Costner is good at playing grizzled veterans, and he did a movie with Whitney Houston... 

But leading the charge is a heavily-armored lady (Ava Justinia) with a proud yellow shield; and a heavily-muscled barbarian with what appears to be a golden fleece.  I almost feel sorry for the monsters. 

Maggots used to creep me out as a kid, especially when I saw their wet translucent wriggling bodies gorging on scraps of rotting meat in our poorly-sealed trash cans.  And the stench!  Yech!  I guess they still creep me out; I don't regret going vegetarian right now.  Anyway, here are 2 giant maggots, ready to eat some adventurers, and then grow into some even more terrifying bugs. 

Or maybe those larvae can be used as bait to hook these terrifying fish.  The yellowy fish (Razormouth by Chris Lewis) reminded me of a piranha, and the greenish fish (Terror Fish by Chris Lewis) reminded me of a "Green Terror" aquarium fish.

The 6-legged wolf sculpted by Sandra Garrity is called a "Bloodwolf," or maybe that's just the name for this particular 6-legged wolf.  I don't know where this creature comes from; I can't find it in any of my D&D books.  I imagined a wolf spattered with blood, with blood pouring out of its mouth, and scary glowing red eyes; or maybe its just a blood-like liquid, like betel nut juice. 

The Displacer (Phase Cat by Geoff Valley) is a classic D&D monster; this was cast in translucent purple to allude to its hard-to-visually-pin-down nature.  I decided to leave it mostly translucent, except for its eyes, mouth, and claws.  I was somewhat inspired by the Cheshire Cat,

I painted some Bones 3 miniatures

Although I did recently get my shipment of Bones 4 miniatures, these are from the Bones 3 Kickstarter, which I pledged for back in 2015. 

I kind of accidentally painted a lot of guys red last time, so I decided to just do batches with predominant colors.  This time it's orange's turn; maybe yellow in the next batch.  I figure I can gradually cycle through the color wheel and beyond.

Orange can be a noisy, jarring color, but it can also be the color of some marvelous beers.  I couldn't resist drafting (sorry) this orange-garbed dwarven brewmaster civilian into an orange-themed adventuring party.  Or maybe he's hauling a keg of healing potion.

Orange is a great color for fire, and what wizard doesn't know about throwing fire at enemies.  So why not dress this wizard in a stately fire-inspired orange robe, with a glowing orange gem on his staff.
Once you get to front-line fighters, you want to dress to distract, and this orange-garbed sorceror seems to be enchanting a blade with an arc of magical flames.

Up next is a dashing halfling rogue, charismatically dressed in more orange.

And leading the pack is a woman wielding dual swords, grabbing our attention with more orange.
Not too much orange on the monsters, certainly not on the giant ticks pestering our adventurers.  I've never met a giant tick, but I can tell you that I already hate it more than almost any other monster.

Once we get past the ticks, we have some serious monsters.  The whitish column is an air elemental.  The photo doesn't do it justice, but it's actually translucent.  I used dullcote for a primer, and laid down some washes to hopefully simulate smoke and dust picked up by this creature of solid air as it moves around; I was inspired by images of LA smog.  According to the monster books, air elementals are actually invisible, but that makes for a boring paint job.  This air elemental seems to have a head in its shape, so I decided to paint on some glowing eyes.  Artistic license; and hopefully it makes this air elemental more memorable as a monster than a mere description of an invisible pain cloud.

Continuing with the theme of air, we have a blue dragon.  Blue dragons hang out in high places and breathe lightning at their victims.  Notice that this dragon is perched on a broken statue; I imagine a temple high on a mountain, and then this blue dragon decided to show the humans how feeble their gods are by destroying the temple and scaring off the human attendants, before moving in.

Last but certainly not least we have a beautiful lady sphinx.  This sphinx has nice clothing and jewelry; I imagine that this sphinx may be less of a "monster" and more of a "large esteemed citizen."  I gave her tan skin to make her look somewhat Egyptian (as Egypt is known for its sphinxes), and dressed her in royal purple.  I was also inspired by the friendly sphinx in the webcomic Subnormality.

Exotic Soda Pops Review

I visited Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, and it was amazing.  I didn't buy any candy, but I did buy some bottles of soda pop which looked exotic and/or tasty.

Here you can see the bottles of soda pop, photographed with and without flash in order to portray their color and clarity under varying lighting.  The dark one on the left is actually an extremely dark blue, as you will see below.

Most of these reviews will not have much depth to them, because honestly I didn't perceive much depth or layers of rich flavor to most of the beverages.  I poured each beverage into a glass with several ice cubes in it, so I could taste the beverage at full strength, and then slightly diluted as the ice melted away.

Name: Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer
How much/how fattening: 12 ounces, 120 calories
Notable ingredients: GMO free; Stevia Rebaudiana leaf extract; Cane sugar, not high fructose corn syrup
From: Reed's, Maybe now made by Virgil's?
"Butterscotch cream soda"
Appearance: Beige 'ginger ale' color, clear
Observations: I like shiny gold foil and purple on the label; it really makes it look special.  The many typefaces are cheesy, but so is the art direction in the Harry Potter movies.
The taste is very butterscotchy!  Just like classic amber butterscotch candies.  EXTREMELY sweet and syrupy.
The label says 'cream soda'.  In America, 'cream soda' is (in my experience) a clear beige vanilla-flavored beverage; but in Canada 'cream soda' tastes like grenadine.  As a muggle, I don't know what 'cream soda' tastes like in the mythical Scottish neverland where Harry Potter's fictional alma mater Hogwarts is described.  Regardless, I am not a fan of American-style vanilla cream soda, and I am relieved that I did not notice any unpleasant amount of vanilla cream soda flavor.
No doubt good for Harry Potter fans, maybe appropriate for a Harry Potter-themed birthday party?  I can imagine getting someone dressed like an owl to deliver invitations or something.

Name: Cool Mountain Peach Fountain Classic
How much/how fattening: 12 ounces, 160 calories
Notable ingredients: Cane sugar, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate
From: Cool Mountain Beverages Inc., Des Plaines IL 60016
Appearance: Red-orange color, intense, clear.
Observations: I like a nice ripe peach, and I like peach candy; a peach soda pop sounds delightful.
It's mild flavor doesn't really taste like peaches.  Tastes kind of like wax, somehow.  I was disappointed by, and didn't really enjoy, this soda pop.

Name: Filbert's Blueberry Soda

How much/how fattening: 12 ounces, 150 calories
Notable ingredients: Corn syrup, sodium benzoate
From: www.filbertsrootbeer.com
Appearance: Very blue!  Clear, but dark.
Observations: Minnesota adopted the blueberry muffin as the official State Muffin in 1988.  My wife and I love blueberries, blueberry jam, blueberry syrup, and blueberry baked goods, and I had high hopes for this soda pop.
Mild, fruity flavor.  Tastes nice.  Maybe not like real blueberries, but nice.
I told you how bluish it is.  It turns your stools bluish, too.  WOW.

Name: Lester's Fixins Pumpkin Pie Soda
How much/how fattening: 12 ounces, 170 calories
Notable ingredients: Sugar (Pure Cane Sugar?), sodium benzoate
From: Rocket Fizz Soda Pop and Candy Shops LLC, PO Box 3663, Camarilla CA  93011[]
Appearance: Deep red-orange color, cloudy
Observations: Pumpkin Pie is my favorite pie, and I had high hopes for this soda pop.  I was a little put off by the fact that Lester's Fixins is also known for bacon soda, buffalo wing soda, and mustard soda; all of which sound horrible.  Would Lester's Fixins treat the great, beloved taste of Pumpkin Pie with respect?
On opening the bottle, I could smell the nutmeg.  Nice.
On tasting, I tasted the nutmeg, and also strong cinnamon flavors.  Very nice.
As I progressed through the bottle, I was treated to these strong spice flavors.  If there were other spices (like allspice or clove), then I could not isolate them specifically for sure.
Finally, I think there was some kind of fruity taste lurking between these assertive spices, but I couldn't quite place it.  I'm not complaining, though.
This soda pop is definitely the winner out of the four I purchased.  Complex, fun and strong classic spice flavors show that the creators worked hard on this and didn't skimp.
If you like Pumpkin Spice lattes, treat yourself to a Lester's Fixins Pumpkin Pie Soda.

I Painted Some More Bones 4 Miniatures

Hey, I painted some more Bones 4 miniatures.

From left to right:

I'm not fond of vampires, but I do like Goths.  I was finally inspired to paint the Vampire bride like a seductive Marceline the Vampire Queen.  Unfortunately, the lacquer on her went haywire and I caused a disaster while trying to fix it; I will explain this below.

The big bug man is a Burrowing Behemoth (by Kevin Williams) inspired by the classic D&D Umber Hulk monster.  Accordingly, I painted this guy in shades of Raw Umber and Burnt Umber.  Sometimes it's convenient to get color hints from source material.

These snake people are Nagendra, inspired by D&D Yuan-Ti monstrous humanoids.  I wanted these characters to look like they had an exotic and developed culture, so I painted them flamboyantly with lots of scarlet and bronze, and purple leather.  More about this red later.

The pointy character with tentacles is a Stone Lurker (by Jason Wiebe), inspired by the D&D Roper monster.  This monster pulls its tentacles inside and pretends to be a cave stalagmite, sometimes whispering beckoning words in an echoey cave to an unsuspecting human ("Hello?  Is someone there?  Please help me!"), until the poor guy gets within tentacle range.

Lukesia D'Vandra (by Bobby Jackson) is a vision in blue (denim?).  I suspect that she shovels really well.

Juliana the Herbalist (by Bobby Jackson) has 2 hedgehogs for familiars.  I asked my wife: what color should I paint the hedgehogs?  "Blue!"

And finally there is a wizard with an orb.  I recall that I mixed up some red paint for his wizard's robe, and then I had all this red paint left over, so I put it on the Vampire bride ('Why not red?  Marceline loves red!'), and then the snake people ('Why not red?  It looks expensive and exotic!'), and the herbalist ('Why not red?  Seriously, why not?')...

Not-So Protective Lacquer

I used Games Workshop's "Purity Seal" protective lacquer on this batch of miniatures on a rainy rainy day, and half of the miniatures got exhibited the "frosted" effect.  I think this happens because the "Purity Seal" lacquer isn't sticking to the mini so well, and the gap between the lacquer and the model creates a cloudy appearance.

I got some acetone nail polish remover, cotton swabs, and cotton balls.  This was kind of a mistake.

My best results came from using cotton balls, by gently dabbing and saturating the surface of the mini with the acetone, apparently re-dissolving the Purity Seal lacquer, and allowing it to re-adhere to the surface of the mini.  This worked for several of the snake people.

My big mistake came from using cotton swabs to try to "brush" the mini.  The acetone is a much more powerful solvent than I expected; it dissolved the lacquer, the polyurethane varnish, the paint, the primer, and it made the plastic gummy; the swab scrubbed my painting efforts right off and mushed the plastic model, as a result.  I severely compromised the details of my vampire bride model.  I tried to (gently) wipe the remaining paint off the model with cotton swabs and the acetone, but there was a lot of paint left in wrinkles and tight corners, obscuring detail.  Her nose is severely flattened, and the headstone's carvings are eroded away.  I tried to repaint it.  The resulting mini is smoothed out as a result, like a rough wall that's got several coats of paint on it.  I probably should have soaked it in "Simple Green" overnight, and started over from scratch, but I thought I could wipe off the lacquer and leave the paint behind.  Live and learn!

Nonetheless, it's very frustrating.  Many other users have complained about "Purity Seal," and one theory is that this "frosted" effect is caused by high humidity; another theory is that the spray just goes bad in the can with age.  It was certainly humid when I used it, but the can is old, too.  I assume the matte surface is generated by microscopic particles which deform the surface of the drying lacquer; maybe these particles get concentrated if the user doesn't shake the spray can long enough prior to use, and you wind up with the wrong proportions of particles-to-lacquer.  Whatever the case, I plan to switch to other sprays with future models.

I painted some Bones 4 Minis

I finally got my Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 Kickstarter pledge rewards, and I could hardly wait to start painting them.  The Kickstarter ended at the beginning of September 2017, and my rewards arrived in mid-April 2019, so I'd been waiting over 19 months for these--pretty much according to schedule, but still a delight when it happens.  Others have referred to these events as "Reapermas."

I was a little surprised to discover that the Bones 4 Miniatures are made of "Bones Black," a more rigid (and brittle) plastic material than the rubbery vinyl-like material of previous Bones Kickstarters, but I am not disappointed; in almost every regard it has proven to be a superior material for miniatures.  These Bones Black miniatures were easily realigned with my Wagner Heat Tool, the plastic accepted Games Workshop's Skull White (primer) spray, and cyanoacrylate glue sticks them together well.

My previous batch was adventurer-heavy, so this batch of miniatures is almost all monsters.

 

From left to right, we have 3 "Hell Hounds," a parrot/lizard/mantis monster ("Gloom Stalker"), a tentacled lobster monster ("Tidal Lurker"), an Owlbear, a Flail Snail, 3 giant bats, and 2 catfolk warriors.

I saw the cracks and rifts in the Hell Hounds, and I was reminded of the cracks in stone.  I imagined that these Hell Hounds might be full of molten lava, so I painted them to look like basalt and lava rocks I've seen in Duluth and Hawaii (respectively); with the cracks painted fluorescent orange, revealing the glowing lava inside.

Because I already immortalized my black Maine Coon cats as sabertooth tigers, I painted the catfolk to represent my Bengal kitten.

Making Mini Terrain

I was so excited when I got my Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards from Reaper Miniatures; so many amazing miniatures!  I picked out 12 miniatures for a batch run, but when I made plans to attach them to a pedestal, I realized that several of these miniatures did not come with a base attached.  The Bones 4 package included some simple plastic bases, and I glued these minis to the plastic discs, but the minis looked out of place on the flat featureless disc, like they're sitting on someone's kitchen countertop rather than a dungeon.

It's possible to buy various styles of cast resin miniature bases, or laser-cut plywood miniature bases.  They look good, but they are pricey, I'm kind of cheap, and I don't want the base to be so nice that it distracts from the miniature.

Tiny Piece of Terrain

I decided to look into how to make a tiny scrap of terrain surface for the base.  I've tried gluing sand to the base after attaching the mini, but it doesn't work so well; the tiny feet get swallowed in the layer of sand and glue.  You gotta put the terrain down first.  Terrain is typically somewhat chaotic and amorphous, and this stuff needs to stick to the base and the mini. 

Don't fight forces, use them.

-- Richard Buckminster Fuller

If you've ever used Gorilla Glue, you've probaly made a mess with it.  Gorilla Glue is kind of a cross between varnish and expanding foam.  Like a good varnish, it's main ingredient is tough polyurethane; but it cures using airborne moisture and it turns into a foam, bulking up like a foam blob until it is several times its original size, thereby expanding into the gap you're gluing.  It goes on looking like maple syrup, but it foams into hard yellow spittle and makes a mess. 

It occurs to me that the randomness of this glue could provide me with the randomness I need to make convincing terrain.  But how random is it?  How big will it foam up?  I decided to experiment with white Gorilla Glue, sand, and gravel. 

Experiments

I thoroughly washed an old food package lid, drew 1-inch circles on the back with a Sharpie, and numbered them 1 through 7. 
In each circle, I put a drop of white Gorilla Glue. 
In circle 1, I left the drop in the center of the circle.
In circles 2 through 7, I smeared the drop around to basically cover the whole circle.
In circle 3, I sprinkled sand on the glue.  The sand came out of a 50-pound bag I bought at a hardware store, and it has some tiny bits of gravel mixed in. 
In circle 4, I sprinkled gravel on the glue.
In circle 5, I sprinkled gravel on the glue, then poured on sand to fill the gaps.
In circle 6, I let the glue foam up, then I mixed sand into the sticky glue to form a gritty paste.
In circle 7, I let the glue foam up, then I mixed gravel into the sticky glue.
I devised some of these experiments to prevent something I call the "chocolate chip cookie" effect, wherein glue foams around pieces of gravel, resembling the way cookie dough rises around chocolate chips; this is unlike the way rocks appear on the ground, poking up through dirt which washes away from the rock. 

Here I let the glue cure overnight, and shook the excess sand and gravel off it.  In circle 1, you can see the glue in circle 1 hardened on the outside, then foamed and expanded through a hole, kind of like a volcanic ejection.  In most of the other circles, you can see the glue has neatly foamed to resemble white spittle, where it is not mixed with sand.

Here I sprayed white primer on the terrain.  #4 and #7 have a little of the chocolate chip cookie effect.  Honestly, though, all of them (except for #1) look like believable terrain.

Here I painted #2 through #7 with dirt- and rock-colored paint.  They mostly look believable, but #3 looks the nicest; you can see there is only a little gravel on #3, so I suspect that a few pieces of "accent" gravel provide decent contrast with the appearance of dirt and sand from the other experiments.  It could also be a psychological effect wherein my mind doesn't like the more gravelly sections because they look too rocky and irregular to walk on without twisting my ankle. 

Conclusions

A little gravel goes a long way, but in general the sand on the glue works pretty well. 

But even if you wind up with terrain that REALLY looks like a chocolate chip cookie, there's at least 1 monster for whom you have the perfect terrain!

He doesn't want to eat your adventurers, he wants their rations.

Latest batch of Miniatures

I got burned out on miniatures...for about a year.  I paint miniatures in batches of 12 at a time, and I just stopped right in the middle of a batch, and let them sit in the corner, gathering dust.  I don't know why I didn't get back to them.  Video games were definitely one distraction.

Then I got my Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards, and I had a lot of awesome miniatures to paint!  That got me to finish my current batch in a hurry. 

Only one monster!

It's adventurer vs. adventurer!

Most of these are Reaper Bones, some are metal miniatures from various manufacturers, and 1 of them is sculpted my me out of Green Stuff epoxy putty. 

Farewell, Google+

I don't WANT to go to Twitter, but where else should I go to post brief status updates?  I'll never go back to those F***ing B***ards at that other social network site. 

Shadow Blaster

If you like D&D and other role-playing games, you probably like dice.  Unfortunately, one of the standard RPG dice is problematic: the d4; it's hard to pick up, it doesn't roll so easily, and it's a hazard on the floor.

The typical d4 is shaped like a Platonic tetrahedron.  In its most stable state, it presents only angled sides, making it difficult to pick up.  If the weather (and your hand) is dry enough, squeezing it will only force it to slip out of your fingers.

You may be able to slide it off the edge of the table into your other hand, but if you drop it, the sharp peak on the top makes it hazardous to step on; it's the caltrop of dice.

The solution is to roll the d4 without ever needing to pick it up, or even letting it loose in the gaming environment.

Shadow Blast

Many years ago, my Game Master ran a game wherein me and my friends played as extra-dimensional creatures who posessed some kind of weird raygun-like ranged attack called the Shadow Blast.  The Shadow Blast did multiple d4s of damage.  At some point, we were expected to roll 20d4 for damage.  Picking up all those d4s made the attack a ridiculous time-waster at the game table.

The Pop-O-Matic bubble is a classic way to "roll" dice without picking them up, and lots of people have hacked the Pop-O-Matic bubbles out of old board games in order to fill them with other dice.  Unfortunately, you can only roll about 4 d4s in one of those little domes.  It would be neat to craft your own, but I have been unable to find a source for the "popping" spring at the heart of a Pop-O-Matic, other than by sawing apart old Pop-O-Matics.

Enter the Shadow Blaster

That's why I invented The Shadow Blaster.  The Shadow Blaster meant that I never needed to pick up a d4 ever again.  It's stupidly simple: it's a jar filled with d4s.

For a jar, you want a wide, squat glass jar with a flat bottom, like a salsa jar, or maybe some other kind of chip dip/vegetable dip/pickle jar.  The flatter the bottom, the less likely the dice will end up 'cocked' at an angle.  The wider the jar, the more d4s you can put in it.

Wash the jar.  Use Citra-Solv to remove any label stickum, and maybe try to dissolve out any stale chili pepper smell from the lid.  Let it air out for a while.  Drop in some minty chewing gum.  You will never completely remove the stale chili pepper smell.  But once you put dice in the Shadow Blaster, you will never need to open it again, so who cares what they smell like.

Now get various d4s.  You want to pick d4s with numbers at the peak (so you can read them when they're crowded together).

You will also want to get these d4s in color groupings such that you can call out how many dice you roll by color.  For example, my Shadow Blaster has 12d4 in it, colored much like this:
4 dark d4s
3 red d4s
2 yellow d4s
2 green d4s
1 blue d4

In this way, if I wanted to roll any number of d4s from 1 to 12, I could specify which colors I would read (or "all of them") before rolling.

Put the dice in the jar, seal it up, glue on a cool label, and you're set.  Shake up the jar!  The dice should make a satisfying popping and clinking rattle.

Let the dice settle at the bottom, and read your random numbers.

Need a cool label?  I've got you covered; print out this logo, cut it out, and glue-stick it to your jar.

Cool Tool for the Disabled

You might think this stupidly simple idea isn't valuable; that you never had much trouble picking up a d4 in your life, and you never needed to roll more than one d4 at any time.  But suppose you have a friend with a motor-control disability (maybe Parkinson's disease, a broken arm, arthritis, or Carpal Tunnel syndrome) which makes picking up small slippery dice difficult or even impossible.  If they can pick up a jar, then Shadow Blaster to the rescue!  Just drop a complete set of 7 dice in the jar (or whichever dice your game needs), and if they all lay flat at the bottom, have your friend shake the whole jar every time they need to roll a die, and only read the one die they need.

Polar Vortex

POLAR VORTEX: Coming to a front yard near YOU.