End of July...WOW, what a month...

 Wow, July is gone already, and oddly enough we only have about 4 1/2 months left until Christmas!

The month was busy for me, and I hope you too, (in a good way). 

Earlier in the month, we had suddenly surprised by water in our basement, (per previous post), and a quick cleanup, allowed us to get things eventually back on track. The large rug found a new spot for my wife's sewing room up in the attic, but I am going to get y'all up to date on what is going on.

GAME ROOM BACK IN ORDER...

We did a thorough check for water damage. We found that there has been some in the past, and like I said previously, this isn't a rare thing, (our neighbors also get it). Fortunately we have a drainage system built in to handle it and do not need or require sump pumps, etc.  To keep things from the onset of mold and mildew, I went ahead and did the bleach spray thing to the areas around the bottom of the wall.

After that it was just a little light cleaning and then straightening up, (which mean putting all the "stuff" back), and the game room was back in order. And what was better was that the tables were clean, empty, and ready for the next big surprise.

From this:

Back to this: (minus the rug)...

REAPER BONES V KICKSTARTER ARRIVES!!!

Reaper in it's own form of evilness, went through the wringer for getting their shipments of Bones V Kickstarter out. I applaud Reaper tremendously as they did a wonderful and excellent job of providing up to date info on the locations and statuses of their containers. 

I was in Wave 7 so my time was "soon". As the initial release date of April was pushed back to late June and then early-mid July, I was patient.

But also impatient, once the waves started coming out...

So then I got the "email"....

(JOY!!!! So much goodness is on it's way!!!....)

And the day came and I kept track of the UPS truck, and then went outside and waited...

(Waaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiitttttt.....for it.....)

And then suddenly, like a brown bolt of quasi-lightning in a sorta clear, blue, sky; the familiar sight of the UPS truck as it comes into view! The all too familiar sound of the overheating, overworked, underpowered Cummings diesel engine grinding gears as it announces to the world that much joy will be had!

(I must admit I may have made some chortling sounds when I saw it...)

And then it stopped right across the street.....

The UPS guy came out with two massive boxes and I thanked him and shook his hand after he placed them on my front porch...

(Mission accomplished. Reaper Bones V Kickstarter Wave 7 for me has been fulfilled...)

I took the boxes and carried them into the house and put them on the dining room table and got something nice and cold to drink...

(These boxes are big!...)

Eventually they found their ways down to my game room and were opened and all of their precious contents taken out for me to examine, enjoy, and revel in.

The first box I opened up was the long one. This held the pirate ship "Sophie's Revenge"...

(Great Googly Moogly! This thing is huge!!!! Notice the Reaper figure "Sir Forscale" in front of the box to give you an idea of it's size...)

Make no mistake. This is a HUGE model that Reaper put out.

It's kind of daunting to see this thing, and I don't think that I am currently up to it to get it done.

And then it was time to check in the other box!

Let's see what we have here.....

(Looks like a lot of swag, just have to get the printed stuff out of the way...)

(Oooooohhhh....lots o' treasure here! Let's get it all on the table and see our loot haul!)

So I put it on the table...

Great Googly Moogly....

(This was the amount of figures added to my collection, courtesy of Reaper Bones V KS. TBH, it wasn't as large as some of the purchases by other people that I saw on FB, but still. BTW...the root beer didn't come with it, and in front of the bottle is "Sir Forscale" to give a scale in comparison...)

But that was not all....

So a day or so later, I get this message in my email....

(Huh???....)

Curious and confused, I now checked the order and pulled up the invoice...

Sure enough there was an invoice for the figures that I had ordered...

Problem was, was that I didn't remember ordering these...

So I went back and checked and *sigh*, indeed I did...

It's embarrassing to be getting orders for figures you don't remember making...

(Here is the invoice to the "Mystery Order")...

So the box showed up on time, and I opened it...

Man there was a LOT of wrapping.

(Such a big box and so much wrapping for small minis...)

I remembered that in order to rebuild my fantasy figure collection, I needed to start with some basic monsters and go from there. And there were some human figures I needed to get also.

So I laid it all out.

(Sigh...more figures for the paint pile...)

But I did get lucky and well....got a couple of pre-paints from WizKids...

(WizKids Rot Grubs)...

And a poorly painted Giant Weasel...

(Yeah I am gonna need to do some work on this one...)

And finally AFTER a bout of emails with WizKids Customer service, (a story which I won't go into here), I finally got the last figure of my order with them.

The figure was originally for my wife's cleric character in our D&D campaign.

(I won't lie. This is a nice package of figures...)

And then, suddenly it was time to game!

D&D SATURDAY!!!

So after a long absence, it was time for our D&D campaign to get back into full swing! 

We were short one player so he was on "guard" at the front door. And our party continued to explore the "haunted" house.

During the evening they had two major combats, (which they won), found a piece of jewelry, a liquid in a glass and corked vial, a mushroom circle growing out of the floor in a room, a nicely cut purple gemstone....

Oh...and they found a ring.

Silver with a small black stone set in it. The ring was then the subject of much discussion among the party members, and a small bit of mistrust has come about.

(Old school gaming...)

But then we had to stop for dinner...

So it was without further eloquence that some of us slipped off and took a walk 4 blocks up the street to the hotdog festival...

Yes...a wiener fest...

All the meet you could stick in your mouth...and then some!

(Mmmmm....bratwurst...)

So after getting some brats, we also picked up some good old Indiana Funnel Cake.

Happy is the DM with fresh funnel cake!

(Delicious!)

A WONDERFUL GIFT...

One of the members of our gaming group knows that I am sucker for minis and mini rules, (historical). Thus when he showed up on Saturday he gave me a spare copy of his "Black Powder" rules.

I was very honored and touched. I had wanted a copy of these for a while, but had never gotten around to getting them.

Without naming names, I say "Thank you good sir!"

(A wonderful gift for me from a wonderful person...)

There is so much more that I could be writing about right now, but I think that due to the amount of pics and size of this entry, I shall close it. Perhaps I will come back and add more to what has been going on. However, in closing I would like to thank my D&D group for all the wonderful times we are having, as well, as the friendship, fun, and the proof here that you and your gaming group can do a lot more together, and develop and build strong friendships that will endure the test of time.

More to come!

"Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall..."

To borrow the quote from the Steve Martin movie "My Blue Heaven"...

And in this case it did, literally...

We are in what is known as "Storm Season" here in Indiana, and last night about 2-3 AM, we had a weird series of high intensity storm cells rip through the area like Bo and Luke Duke running from Rosco P. Coletrain.

The storm cells were fast and dropped a lot of water very quickly and then moved out, only to be replaces with another one right behind it. 

So much happened, that at 4 AM, the NWS issued a "flash flood watch" for our county.

So this morning when we got up, imagine our surprise to find water in our basement!

Later on we discovered that we weren't the only ones, so we were relieved to know that it wasn't a "just us" house issue.

TBH, it wasn't "Massive Flood" stuff, (I've been there and never want to do that again), but it was more like "Someone had sprayed the floor with a water hose enough to put water on the floor and to make the tiles slick. The TV room carpet was soaked though, (a mixed blessing)...

On the bright side, it gave me the "excuse and reason" needed to hit the DIY store and get me a nice 6 gallon/3 HP shop vac with extra tools.

However the clean up was more "Mop and Towels". The majority of the water had gone quickly down the floor drains, and what was mostly left was soaked up in the TV room rug.  With the help of mops, towels, and four fans, we had everything drying out quicker than normal. 

Once this is all done, I have to put the game room, (aka: "The Murphy-Cave/Bunker, etc...), back into operational order with some possible furniture rearranging coming up, and then use the polyseal water barrier I have and brush it on the brick to prevent an repeat of this.

The issue put my painting for the day back, and reveals to us that "Even 104 year old houses need work".

There is no "real fix" for this issue as the water saturation came up through the old brick and base foundation. The only real fix is:

A: Tear down the house.

B: Tear up the foundation.

C: Pour in a new foundation. 

D: Build a new house.

So I will be polysealing the bricks thoroughly to help repel the water.

On the bright side, nothing was damaged, and the rug held the water and soaked up the majority of it so it didn't spread further out onto the floor.

By tomorrow evening hopefully it should all pretty much be dry except the rug.

My neighbors also got water in their basement so like I said, it just wasn't a "my house problem". Thank goodness!

Here are some pics of the current status of the gaming room....

Gaming table currently holding the rug to allow the fans to dry it out...

Most of the water drained into this floor drain. The rug was above it, and this was where most of the game room water was...You can see that it is already mostly dry. The new shop vac (under the table), makes his initial introductory appearance...

The floor drying out...

Another view showing the wet floor...

Hopefully if all goes well this well be fixed up by this weekend!

Oh and I also did some painting on some 28mm Pirates, but that is going to have to be for another post!!!

More to come!

Paints and projects and stuff coming in!

 So I had finished my June update a couple of days ago when I had enough news to get a new update out...so without further eloquence, here it is...

Painting and Projects: 

After finishing off the bank, I decided to take a quick break from my Western buildings and do some figure painting. With the buildings set aside for a bit, I decided to dive back into one of my other fun genres that gets me going and that is...PIRATES!!!!!

I've a lot of sea scum and scalawags that need to get their paint on. So I took approx. 20 of them and started to work. These guys are a mixture of OG, Foundry, Eureka, Dixon, and some others. Most of them have muskets, while some have musketoons, and short arms. 

I started with a standard block paint style....

Arrrr matey! Basic colors to get the lads going! None o' that "fancy stuff"!...

The block painting continues with the initial whiting of the eye areas and more detail added...

With the block painting pretty much done, it was now down to the eyes, faces, and details... These guys are on their way to being done!

INCOMING!!!!!

So a few months ago, I ordered some figures from Wizkids, (back in Feb-March), and due to the shipping fiasco, only part of my order has shown up, and that was yesterday...

YAY! Part of my WIZKIDS order came in! Let's see what's inside shall we?

A couple of nice goodies in this box....

This Wiz Kids deep cuts set looked interested so I went ahead and got it. Everyone needs to have a royal court full of intrigue and shenanigans...

And a monster....a primed Gelatinous Cube...How exactly do you prime one of those things anyway???...

I'll be waiting on the rest of the shipment to show up "sometime"...

As well as my Reaper Bones V KS....
Stay tuned as there is more to come!!!

June 2021 update...Middle of the Year already?!?!....

 It seems like the blink of an eye since May and suddenly we are at the high point of June. Solstice and the shortening of the days. So I guess it is time for me to get on with another update.

CLEAN UP THAT ROOM YOUNG MAN!!!!!

Okay, so in tried and true miniature gamer tradition, I trashed my work area. 

Projects came and went, repair jobs are waiting to be done. Old projects coming back to life, new projects trying to start, figures needing paint....AAAAAAHHH!!!! *runs screaming*....

Okay...*huff huff*...I am back now...*wheeze*

So the other day I came down into the paint room and realized just "what a mess" it had become.

YIKES! My mom would kill me!

So I sucked in a big ol' gulp of air, put on some music, and went to work cleaning up the area, and the paint/work table.

Trash was thrown away, old paint water drained, dropper bottles and paint pots, back into the rack, tools and brushes back into their respective containers, stuff picked up off the floor, etc.

Finally I got it looking decent once again....

Now I can sit down and start working without "Stuff" everywhere....

After getting all of this cleaned. I got to work.

Projects Galore...

So with my D&D game on hold for the month of June, I am currently on a "Western" kick. I've been busy getting back into building my old Western town of Rimfire, and with dogged determination, I am finally finishing up some of the TCL buildings I started back in Feb of 2016 and stopped working on in June of 2017. 

First up was to finished the TCL bank building.

This wasn't so hard as it was mostly just putting in the walls and trim, and adding "glass" to the windows and a door to the wall. 

The setup of the bank before I started the final assembly....

With the walls inserted, and a rubber band holding it together while it dries. 

The outer framework and golden filigree for the bank. I went with golden trimming to make it look "more attractive", (err..."robbable"), than normal. And the gold on green gives it a nice touch don't you think?

The interior walls of the bank. Installed and ready for tellers to smile at you as they take your money...

Another view of the inside of the bank.

A nice angular view of the bank, showing the interior...

With the front trimming on the building, the bank is essentially complete. 

A close up side view of the finished building. Here you can see the reflection of the clam shell blister plastic I used for "glass" for windows. 

A further away shot showing the size of the building... This is a standard TCL size long building...

With the building itself done, it was time to set up a couple of figures for scale and reference. They look pretty good next to it, if I do say so myself...

After this it was off to complete the Sheriff's Office and jail.

I finally got off my duff and started redoing that mess I created of making separate jail cells. I added some walls, and got more parts installed.  This one is about 95% done....

Aided by an ice cold Triple XXX Root Beer, I got to work on the Sheriff's Office and Jail, and started base-coating some Arnica Montana boardwalks.

A frontal comparison shot of a small store, the Sheriffs Office and Jail, and the bank.

Looking down you can see the size difference in buildings as well as two interiors.

ARNICA, MONTANA...

One of the other things I wanted to do while working on these buildings was to get onto to building my Arnica, Montana line of resin buildings that I had for a couple of years. 

The Arnica line was purchased a few years back by Hawgleg, and is currently in a semi-retired status as many of the molds are seriously worn. Due to the conditions of some of them, Hawgleg only produces kits per special request order at the moment. We are hoping to have this fixed soon...

So I decided to start off with the sidewalks/boardwalks.

For these (and other resin kits), it is HIGHLY SUGGESTED AND ENCOURAGED that you clean (wash), the resin pieces in warm (NOT HOT), water with a mild dish soap, (Ajax lemon or Dawn), and a scrub sponge. Once the pieces are washed, rinse them thoroughly in cold water, and set aside and let air dry for approx. 24 hours.

You can then prime them how you want them.

After doing this, I went with painting the boardwalks.

For a base coast, I am using Burnt Umber, and a darkened brown. 

For a little more variety, I did the middle one with a light coat of "Burnt Sienna".

After this I did a little adding additional colors....

"Lookin' a little worn there, Tex..."  The color mixture is nice....

After this I will use a drybrush of cinnamon and a lighter drybrush of off white for wear and tear on the wood and to show the middle being worn... 

More pics on this to come.

I've also started the wash and dry process with two Arnica buildings; (The Hotel and The Mercantile)...

I will be priming these in the next day or so, and getting them ready for assembly.

So I guess I am back to building my Western town...YEE-HAW!

And for Father's Day, my wonderful wife, (Gawd bless her!), fixed me a German Apple Pancake and Bratwurst!

Hence the obligatory food pictures!!!!

Mmmmmmm......

And that's it for now. 

Actually there's more, but I think I will need to make another entry into the blog to catch up.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

More to come!