the safe hΘle

spent the last few weeks building miniatures and setting time aside to begin painting. i am kind of excited about what i have planned to get painted and finished. a few wild west buildings, a handful of fantasy figures, and most certainly the ever lasting MotU collection i have been cracking at for the past year or so. in between working and messing around with this and that, i have been looking at some agnostic tabletop games so of course i built some miniatures for those games. one game i am looking forward to is Forbidden Psalm. i know it's been out for a while and i know of it but never looked into it until now. recently a former group member got in touch with me and we chatted, one thing led to another and we chatted about Dungeons and Dragons and the old campaign sessions. he told me about some life changes and a light bulb went off. i asked about his character he was running in our old campaign and was curious if he wanted to rejoin with the group we had running right now. a...

 i spent all of the month of June not doing anything. i hardly painted anything maybe a few D&D miniatures but nothing excited to post about. despite a few D&D sessions, i didn't do any gaming of any type. about a month or so ago i was given a new work schedule and now have been working morning/daytime shifts and when i come home i don't want to move. so any aspirations of wargaming were non-existent in the last 30+ days. but during this "time off" from the hobby i did do some reading and watching videos on Youtube of other tabletop games and such. was reading some MotU comics online and got some inspiration to create another faction for my Masters of the Universe collection. i looked around and did some reading and got myself a few sets of the MotU Battleground board game from Archon Studio to build me a Preternia heroic faction. with some reading and looking around the internet i mapped out what i want to do. with what i have on hand at the moment the Preter...

this past week our D&D group went on their first quest to find a magic item to relinquish a threat that has a hold on the local town.  i didn't want to throw them a hefty encounter, but i did make it interesting and odd at the same time. taking a short cut through some ruins they come to find out the ruins are covered in spider webs which made the players uneasy. cutting through some ruins, the group takes a shortcut to the manor to save some time before the sun goes down. getting ambushed by several giant spiders. through the trees, Wynze hears some bellowing... an overweight gluttonous troll makes its way to see what's happening.  rolling for the troll's claw attacks, once again another amazing dice roll on my part. Thorgrimm summons some thunder and lightning and connects his warhammer underneath the troll's chin. i got a plastic "hour glass" from the last convention i was at, as a joke to Rita because i always say she takes too long deciding what to do...

another year in the books and ever so close to the five year anniversary next year. just thinking of spending four years playing with the same folks (mostly) and running with the same characters that we all made and love, is amazing. i cannot wait for our group's fifth anniversary i will have to plan some kind of remarkable campaign or even an incredible encounter that brings everything together. but for now our fourth year is written and we have come a long way in our short time together. a year later felt like only a short time because we had fun and had a great time together. we created a whole new group for them as we do for new players but yet as time went on, we had an idea for even more characters so another group of PC's were created. and yes i ended up making more PC's and NPC's of my own. i've expressed in the past that i enjoy writing up these yearly reports, because it documents our growth and the changes we have gone through over time. i originally star...

about a week or so ago i finished up several fantasy miniatures before i begin my Paint What You Got challenge with my MotU Evil Horde and Great Rebellion figures. hopefully with weather permitting next month i can get all of them if not the majority of them done before Feb. 26th deadline. continuing painting up more miniatures from the Wildspire plastic miniature set i bought off of Amazon. i picked out some of the more interesting and well noticeable figures i could use in my D&D games and also other fantasy based table-top games i have. female dwarf cleric female human druid and a monk who is blind. i didn't realize until i painted him that he had a blindfold on his face. i thought that was kinda cool and surprising. a male elf bard. female dragonborn spellcaster and a female tiefling rogue.

 recently my D&D group was able to squeeze in a session on thanksgiving weekend and this past weekend. and through all the action and mischief that was taking place, i noticed one thing that has been a occurrence for sometime now and it's how much little i need to create an encounter for them to enjoy themselves. over time especially this year with our group we have been more role-playing than playing the game with large table set-ups.  with all the papers, books, and the DM area there isn't much room on the table to create an elaborate table display to game on. certainly if an encounter is created randomly out of the blue. like several weeks ago a group was sent to take down a raised skeletal dragon. and i wasn't even sure if we were going to get to that particular fight so i didn't make room for it, but somehow we got to it so i just put the essentials down on the table for that encounter, which was a crashed sky-boat, the adventure party, and a dragon.  and in th...

 it was bound to happen with our new members of our D&D group. they were curious if they were able to make higher leveled characters to match others in the group. several weeks ago i bought a plastic set of miniatures off of Amazon. the figures are from Wildspire Miniatures and i for the most part i like these. durable plastic and nicely sculpted. so i gave the group members a list of the class/combo's that are in this box set and told them to create a character sheet but not tell them what is going to happen afterwards, Rita already had a character in mind and miniature done awhile back but we had to redo a back story and stuff to match what was going to take place. this new group consists of level 10 characters with the exception of the leader who is level 11. the new group is basically hired swords/mercenaries, giving the players the freedom to go in any direction without becoming totally evil. just need Rita to think of a badass name for this group since she's the leade...

  here as of late I really have not done any painting or even gaming for several weeks now. my work schedule drains me of any energy i have to do anything. it does suck and when i do have any time like on my days off i relax and don't do much. i have several projects lined up but i just don't have the inspiration or aspiration to get any of it done and completed for the game table. but when time comes around to play Dungeons and Dragons i find time and energy to create some fun adventures and continue our epic story. the party fights off a giant sewer alligator zombie, only to be saved by the one person they were sent out to find. gave the player characters some downtime before an adventure, and of course they get into a barroom brawl with some necromancer cultists. i am hoping when i go on vacation in a few weeks i will get some quality time in and get several things done and also go to Historicon 2025 this year. and maybe get in a game or two. i will have nine days to get stu...

to be honest i like doing these yearly D&D recaps of what our group has done in the past year but unfortunately with some ill feelings the group broke up back in November. and with my work schedule going the way it has been didn't help much either, the remaining group members were ok taking a break until things could get back on track. with a good portion of player characters gone, the three of us who remained together agreed once we find more players to start at level one with fresh new characters. Rita had a co-worker who was interested in joining our group who also attended one of our game sessions once before. they were excited in joining and already had character ideas so we never got to use the random character dice. days leading up to our first day of the brand new campaign i was told they were bringing an elf wizard and an aarakocra monk. which at this point i knew this was going to be a funny campaign. the new adventuring party. Senka - male human rogue, Mah'cho - ...

lately i have been gearing up some more figures for either a wild west game or D&D. painting ones i already have, buying new ones for future games/ideas, or coming across some that i totally forgot i had. all miniatures are from Wizkids unless noted in their captions. gargoyles from Next Level Miniatures. black base and gray/white dry brush. i wanted to keep the whole stone-skin look but didn't want to over do it. a halfling ranger. i have to admit the miniatures from the Critical Role unpainted miniatures line from Wizkids seem to be smaller and less detailed. i've been looking for a halfling ranger for some time and this little fellow was not a joy to paint at all.  found a half-orc fighter figure in a small box the other day. i was curious where she came from because i don't remember buying any half-orcs for sometime but anyways i painted her and added her to my red cloaked cult i created. i wanted to create an elf rogue that reminds me of my night elf rogue from Wor...