Under the Tree

These past couple weeks have been eventful in that I've renewed work on my Sylvaneth army for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. Also managed to play a big game with 3 vs 4 last weekend at the local game shop. It was fun. The Sylvaneth are a straightforward faction with a large degree of synergy at their core.

Here's a pic of our setup for that game. Despite the big table and various factions involved it was a fast, crazy game. I always wanted to like prior editions of Warhammer, but they were often too convoluted for me to keep up with.

The scenario required two of our four opponents to deploy their forces on the ziggurat in the middle of the board. My team's goal was to prevent these opponents from escaping off the short board edges, while help from both sides trickled in from various points.

Durthu, the treelord, teleported out of those trees on  the ridge and took out the enemy standard bearer hiding up there. We had a good laugh about it.

Speaking of treelords, here's work on my treelord ancient. Construction was similar to Durthu, but the finished ancient is a very different-looking model.

My only difficulty with this kit is that attaching the talons to the left hand was fiddly, and the fingers project up and outward, so I keep snagging them on things.

I put a bit of extra time into the base, trying to make it intricate, but subtle. The cobblestones are sheet styrene whose edges I roughed up with an exacto-knife. Then I added some roots and vines pushing out from under some of those.

Next, I applied some spackle with a bit of black acrylic paint mixed in. The paint dyes the spackle and is useful for gauging the level of moisture as it is applied to the base. I find I can push it around with a paintbrush and simulate gnarled roots.

The final step before priming is to apply pvc glue and gravel to fill bald spots on the base.

Thanks for looking.

Hobbies, Ice-Skating, and Stuff

At least once a week our kitchen table is transformed into a miniature warzone where the denizens of the 41st century settle their differences by attacking each other with guns and chainsaws. Warhammer 40k is one of my favorite games of all time. If you are friend or family, you've more than likely found me sitting on your couch painting and assembling warhammer models sometime in recent history. The pic here is from a game a few weeks ago: Ken's loyalist space marines squaring off against my traitor berserkers (the traitors are hiding behind cover in the mid-ground.) Also note the chaos dreadnought staggering around in the background looking for something to blow up.

I went ice-skating for the first time in my life today (technically yesterday. I'm up late). Some close family friends invited us to their son's birthday party at the Chiller, and we were happy to oblige. It was a lot like roller-blading, though with the added element of dodging children and other obstacles while endlessly circling the rink. To my credit I did not fall down, though we all wore furrows into the ice that kept tripping me up.

The experience made me nostalgic; I remembered my mom taking us to the skating rink at the Rutland Civic Center when we were kids. Mind you, this was back before the existence of roller-blades. I'm talking about these unwieldly things: clicky. You should remember these. They're a part of your past. Anyway, I remember some fantastic crashes at that civic center. Perhaps we should stop attaching extra bits to the bottoms of our shoes?

When I was in college, I was convinced by friends to take up rollerblading... the new, cooler version of roller-skating. Three of us bought some high quality rollerblades. These things were amazing, and we got what we paid for: sleek, fast death.

High quality rollerblades (clicky for picture) are synonymous with assisted suicide in the hands of noobs. I look back to the year 2003 and try to imagine how I was not outright killed in a rollerblading accident. At speed, it took only a tiny pebble to wipe me out. Rollerblade wrecks are the worst thing outside of car crashes. In 2004 I decided to hang up the skates. My dad and I got bikes instead. Our bike rides were a joy compared to the hell of rollerblading.

Apparently the correct term for rollerblading is inline skating. Rollerblade is a brand. Sort of like Q-tips for cotton swabs, or refering to adhesive bandages as Band-Aids. What did I do before there was wikipedia?

Master of Jobs!

Okay, so the title may be a slight exaggeration, but I been applying for a lot of jobs lately that all sound pretty cool. There's a sense of euphoria I've been getting every time I send in an application because I know I'm well qualified for these positions. Being able to afford to pay rent and buy groceries are exciting prospects as well.

Come to think of it, did you know that my initials form an anagram of the word JOB? That's right. Evil beware, because BOJ is on the JOB! Gainful employment is nigh!

Onto another topic, I pose the question: "Is simulated evil still evil?" This question came up when we were recently discussing the fact that Games Workshop recently released a new Chaos Demons army for its popular Warhammer 40k tabletop game. Demons are nothing new to Warhammer, but this is the most they've ever been pushed to the forefront in the game. Is it troubling that teenagers can construct armies of demonic forces aligned to the evil chaos gods? These are some of the most amazingly-detailed miniatures that GW has produced to date, but is there a subtext we should be concerned about?

It is important to stress the fact that there aren't really any good guys in the Warhammer 40k storyline. It's a game that is a hodgepodge of every "bad dude" in space, including mutants, witches, alien bugs, killer robots, pirate raiders, inquisitors, space marines, monsters, rebels, and yes, demons. All of this is set in a gothic future where the prospects for survival are grim, and each of the aforementioned armies has its own agenda.

Personally, I think it's an epic marketing ploy by GW to get people to buy as many of their products as possible. The biggest danger may be to your checking account.

Entrenchment, part 1

Day Four of my self-imposed vacation away from normality sees me at home with some kind of stomach bug. Since my plans for the day are canceled, I thought I'd take the time to update the look of the blog. I added a sidebar with some extra info. It's bare-bones at the moment, but I plan to add more links in the future.

 

I've started a new project, and as you can see, it's another diorama piece. It's a series of two-inch deep trenches on a piece of insulation foam. I've spent a lot of time researching tabletop war-games in the past couple of years, mainly by adopting the hobby as my own and spending many an evening at The Guard Tower, a local gaming store.

This new piece,"Entrenchment" draws heavy inspiration from the terrain tables on which we play our miniatures games. I'm waiting to decide the next step to take with it. I have need of an adhesive that bonds well to foam.

The Philosophy: My current goal for this work, as well as the Sludgetown project, is to see what types of conversations can happen between the tabletop gaming hobby and the art world. At present, I am finding it difficult to integrate these worlds due to the fact that tabletop games involve a complicated system of rules and accurate measurements, while art threatens to dash that system against the rocks at every turn. It is not my wish to cause my good friends in the gaming hobby a discourtesy by destroying their system. Rather, I want to make something that will celebrate the beauty I see in this complex hobby. To do this to the best of my ability, however, I must rely on my own systems, comprising rules and measurements that I alone will make.

This is a terrain table you can find at the Guard Tower. I don't know who made it. I think it is very, very beautiful. I want to make something that can reach out, talk to this piece, and acknowledge its presence.

     

Lastly, I wanted to share a couple more work-in-progress pictures from "Entrenchment." More to come. Thanks for looking.

Model Citizen

Save me from myself. I paint models day in and day out.

I paint them until there is a army of unblinking plastic soldiers arrayed on my tabletop.

I paint and paint, and then buy more, assemble, and paint.

Oh, how the time flies. See! Now I am an old man whose fingers are too gnarled to hold a brush. I stand up on rickety legs, stiff from decades of painting, and hobble out into the light. Perhaps it is time for a walk.

The Thunder of Toy Guns

The endless struggle that has plagued mankind since its earliest days, chronic "Mine's Bigger!" syndrome, finds new irony in the arena of miniature tabletop games. A squad of two-inch-tall model soldiers move across the battlefield, keeping their heads down while running from cover to cover. Their leader hunkers down behind the wreckage of a vehicle, pauses to catch his breath, and then peeks out to assess the situation. He is vaporized by the guns of a treading behemoth on the other side of the table.

Towering a whopping ten-inches-tall, the giant casts a long shadow. The fluorescent lighting of the game shop gleams off its armor as it marches forward, launching its weapons and killing off scores of intricately hand-painted model soldiers. The fight is one-sided, but there is still a chance for the survivors to muster a final blow.

A blast template is produced from someone's backpack under the table. It is nothing more than a transparent plastic disk- and yet, it is quite large. Everyone falls silent, save for hushed whispers as the template passes reverently from hand to hand. Perspiration breaks out on foreheads as the disk is placed over the head of the treading behemoth. A single white die, the size of a person's tooth, is rolled across the table. The die stops rolling. A series of gasps. A space ship the size of earth's moon locks its weapons-systems onto the template and unleashes a hellish orbital bombardment that wipes out all life on the planet.

And then... an argument erupts. It seems that a protocol in the extensive rulebook has been overlooked. The space ship maneuver is illegal. Tempers are lost. Cain slays Abel. Everyone packs up and goes home.

When I step through the door, my wife asks how the game went, and who won.

"Nobody."