Pre-Painted Arkham Horror Minis

My life just got a little more expensive:

Pre-Painted Arkham Horror Minis


Complete Set of the First Wave of Monsters

Complete Monstrous Manual Online

OK, this is useful, but who knows how long it will stay online.

Complete Monstrous Manual Online

Mold Making and Casting

I have decided I'm going to try my hand (when I get home) at making some clear resin casts of various walls (ice, fire, force) and clouds (stinking, smoke, vapor).

Here's some of the preliminary research:

Resin Casting techniques: EZ Clear Resin

How to make a two-part mold

Mold Making: 2 piece mold

Mold Making and Resin Casting Your Own Sculpted Miniatures - Part 1

Casting Custom Scenery For a Model Railroad

Fifth Edition?

New York Times Article about a new edition of D&D with "gamer input".

I'll believe it when I see it.

Hasbro killed this hobby.

The D&D Room

My D&D room will never be as splendid as this one, but I can dream (and be envious)!

The Burntwire Brothers.

D&D Historical Reference and Resource

Tome of Treasures is truly a treasure trove of information about collectible gaming and the history of Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons and Digressions

Another great D&D blog I've stumbled upon is Dungeons and Digressions.

Check it out, you'll be glad you did.

Jeff's Game Blog

Jeff's Game Blog is pretty awesome. You should check it out if you haven't already.

I'm still in Minot, ND for a family medical emergency, so it will be another couple of weeks before I can get to that New Year's resolution. Meantime, during the long periods of waiting that come with this particular situation, I'm passing time by using my Google Fu on all things mini related. It keeps my mind off the worrying.

DnD Lead

DnD Lead is a web archive of a wide range of out of print miniatures, as well as some current lines. It is not intended to be as comprehensive as The Stuff of Legends but is very nicely laid out and has a ton of really high quality photos of many miniature lines from yesteryear.

They also have a pretty nice section on the history of fantasy miniatures. It is told in a "colorful" character voice, but there is a side bar with a more straightforward historical thumbnail and then each individual page for different mini companies has some historical background too.

For those who like archival material, they also have a section of links to PDFs of catalogs from several miniature companies.

Check them out, and tell them Shandar sent ye!

Reaper's Craft Corner

Reaper Miniatures is such a great company. And their website really reflects that. Not only is the website a great place to buy their great stuff, it is also home to a great community forum for their customers.

They post their own spoilers, and by looking at the Greens link you can see what products are coming long before they appear in the catalog. There is a great wish list feature where you can window shop and keep a running tally of what your metal dreams will cost you when your lottery ticket pays out.

Perhaps best of all, they have a section of their website devoted to helping you learn how to paint, sculpt, build terrain--in essence, how to get the most out of the products you buy from them and therefore the hobby you are addicted to.

The Craft is a treasure trove of articles and tips and I really recommend you check it out: http://www.reapermini.com/TheCraft

New Year's Resolution

Well, I may not be able to hold myself to it, but some of my New Year's Resolutions involved D&D.

I have resolved to clean and organize the Dungeon, and to have played a session down there before April Fool's Day. (Selection of the date was intentional, though partially because I'm in a play in February and have a conference to go to in March.)

We bought our house four years ago, and this has been a hope for me since a year before we moved. I can't believe it has been five years from the last session. Players probably don't even know where their character sheets are anymore and I may have to start from scratch, possibly with new players.

I will not, however, start over again with Doom of Daggerdale. Starting that module for the fifth time since 1993 and never finishing it ONCE means that even though it is a pretty cool adventure, I just need to move on.

Everytime the players get to that underground area and are faced with the choice of getting through the exploding tangle of vines or down the unobstructed staircase to the raging underground river and right out of the module, they always choose the latter and we never get back on track.

I think what I'll do is convert all those PCs into NPCs and start over with a small group of players and instead of planning for formal modules linked together into an ongoing campaign, we'll just do single shot side treks and maybe those will turn into a campaign organically.

Anyway, that's the plan.

I'll post pictures of the progress.

Also, I am got a great Christmas Present, three full boxes of minis from Reaper to examine and review here and that is going to mean fully reorganizing the minis closet, which will also provide a nice context to get back to my Monstrology Project of creating 2E monstrous compendium sheets for each creature in my beastiary.

I think I may have to move to having no more than 12 representative minis of each monster type on the shelf, though and putting the remaining ones in storage or a different room because the walk-in closet is rapidly running out of shelf space.

I'd also like to get my painting/sculpting/assembling station up and running, too.

All these D&D aspirations seem so possible when I'm spending a couple of weeks at my In-laws up in North Dakota. IRL often gets in the way, but siting here this morning, I'd love to be down in my own basement again.