What I got for Christmas

I know, I'm a little late but I wanted show off what the wife got me ;)

We have played Yahtzee once but the goblet and dice are now regulars at game night.

These came from Zuzzy Miniatures. 

This is a large flat hill.

And this is the rest of the assortment I received!

The pieces are very nice and the edges are crisp.  I only found a few places to trim up with my hobby knife and that was more a preference than a necessity.

The order was a little late due to Christmas so they included a free Mat sample to go with...

The 4'x4' Terrain Mat I got!

Here is a close up of the mat with all the lovely texture.  It feels a lot like the thin rubber masks at Halloween.

Next up, lots of soapy water and some base coating.

Garden Preperations from 2011

Last year, in 2011, we bought our first home.  I wanted a garden, especially after living in apartments for several years and I had read up on Square Foot Gardening.  I was going to review it this year and discovered I had never posted the pics!  Oh well, this is what I built.

I built 2 boxes, covering the bottom in weed-cloth.

Supplies, including weed-cloth and ceder.

Stapling in the weed-cloth

Thankfully, the screws did not require pre-drilling.

Finished box

Two finished boxes.

Unfortunately, you might notice that I did not clear the grass underneath the boxes.  I layered three layers of weed-cloth in the bottom of each box and I thought that would be enough.  Wrong!

I also mixed my own soil from these ingredients.

Different bags, different colors

Spread them on a tarp and fold them together

Perfect dirt!

Water it in and add pepper plants!

Drag it over and fill the boxes

We got bunches of peppers off of these two plants.  They grew to about waist high and produced lots of peppers, especially in the fall, when the temp's were not so high.  They also grew grass like crazy.  It was very disappointing and very frustrating. 

ONE YEAR LATER

I pulled the pepper plants from the box in the right. The left box grew grass.  However, this January, the seeds I planted for lettuce and spinach finally sprouted.  Along with more grass.

Garden for 2012

Reused plastic bins, weed cloth, & new premixed  soil.

Drilling out drainage with wood brace to prevent cracking.

I stacked them on top of cinder blocks.

Duct tape the weed cloth inside tub.

Lettuce Sprouts!

Spinach Sprouts

I have not had any weeds yet and I can use the full strength fire-ant killer on the ground below the containers.

A new Strawberry plant and the ever faithful, ever returning chives.

Hopefully, the growing season will be better for veggies and the grass will stay where it is supposed to.  We will see how it goes!

Gone Silent

I have been silent for a while so let me sum up...

• Our DnD group has fought through the seven-pillared hall and come out victoreous
• The hero's are taking time off to spend their gold and drink
• A new adventure has started in the modern day.  Monsters are real and the government doesn't want you to know about it.  But they pay well for the heads...
• For the new game, I took part of the World of Darkness Storytelling System and mixed it with DnD4e combat system.  The page is here.  I am pretty excited about the hybrid system.  We have only played it once but it worked out pretty good.
• We have 7 people at the gaming table plus one skyping in.  We are starting to look at different ways to get people around the game board, including webcam-ing the game board to the tv.  I am not sure how it will work yet but we will see. 
• Christmas brought a new gaming keyboard and mouse so World of Warcraft as taken up a great deal of my time.  I even managed to add another friend to my WoW addiction. 
• I, intern, was sucked into Castleville on Facebook.
• Christmas was also crazy busy working at a retail store.  I worked 10 hour days and never seemed to get down time.  I am happy the holidays are over!

Until next time!

Painting Notes for Cygnar Trenchers

These are the paints I used in painting my Cygnar Trencher unit.  I will eventually be painting a commando unit and I will want a similar effect.  Feel free to read along.  FA stands for Folk Art paints.

• Base coat black
• Overbrush base with FA Burnt Umber
• Drybrush model with FA Burnt Umber.  Avoid the chain mail and the gun barrel as possible
• Drybrush base and model with FA Honeycomb
• Drybrush base with FA Teddy Bear as needed.
• Block in the gun barrel and chain mail (and grenades if present) with black
• Drybrush the gun barrel with a 2:1 mix of FA Metallic Gunmetal Grey and FA Metallic Sequin Black
• Use the same mix of FA Metallic Gunmetal Grey and FA Metallic Sequin Black to paint the bracers, gun stock band, and details.
• Drybrush the chain mail with FA Metallic Gunmetal Grey
• Paint the shovel and the smoke grenades with FA Medium gray.  I am not entirely happy with this step, so feel free to find another level of shading on them.
• Block in the blue areas with FA Prussian Blue
• Dampen the shoulder pad with a wet brush, then highlight and blend with a mix of FA Cobalt Blue and FA Extender.
• Rank insignias were touched with a mix of FA Metallic Antique Gold and FA Metallic Sequin Black.
• Grenades were touched with FA Black Cherry, then tipped with FA Napthol Crimson
• Studs were tipped with FA Metallic Silver Sterling.
• The base was cleaned up with black around the ring.

I hate painting faces but I found a great tutorial for it.  Privateer Press' Escalation book uses the old MKI rules but the face painting tutorial makes it worth picking up.  Check out pages 120-121 whenever the need arises.  I also found that most Trenchers have no faces!  Woot!!!  They are covered up by a piece of cloth.  I only had to paint to faces of two officers and the Escalation guide was great.  It called for several basic colors like flesh, brown, and brown ink.  I used Delta Ceramcoat Dresden Flesh, FA Real Brown, and GW Citadel Brown Ink respectively.  When it called for red and brown mixed, I just used FA Black Cherry.