Before I plucked up the courage to try painting miniatures, I basically thought it was just too hard. I have bad eyes, not terribly steady hands, and I'd never done anything with paint since watercolours in elementary school. Eventually, I gave it a go and while I don't claim to be good at it, the r...
Having just read Leman Russ: The Great Wolf of The Primarchs books from the Horus Heresy series, I thought it appropriate to continue on to the next in the series. Graham McNeill's Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero is something of an ironic title, I think, because Magnus spends some time i...
I use Contrast and Vallejo Xpress Color paints almost exclusively, and I can't think of one I'd toss aside. I've noticed, though, that there's one Contrast paint I find myself using over and over again, and for sometimes very different textures. If, for some reason, you want to buy just one Contrast...
Before I started painting miniatures, I literally thought it would be beyond my ability. I have bad eyesight, a relatively short attention span (except when I'm obsessed and have hyper-focused attention), an abundance of energy, and unsteady hands. I couldn't imagine these traits being compatible wi...
Last month, I started reading Gate of Bones, and only realised after I finished that it was book 2 in the Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of Fire series. That says a lot for how modular Warhammer books are, and I really love that about them, and because I found Gate of Bones so satisfying, I didn't inte...
I don't want to hate the Space Wolves, but The Wolftime does the faction no favours. As a novel, it's got awkward pacing, a strangely anticlimactic story, and several unlikable characters. It left me disinterested in a faction that's pretty interesting on paper. I like the idea of space vikings,...
From 2017 until 2023, I was an editor for a blog site that got 2 million unique visitors a month. Whether I liked it or not, I had to learn something about the "ideal" blog post. As with all media, blogging is received in a specific way by most of its audience. People tend to read blogs differently...
Tabletop gamers have come up with three ways to measure distance in games that feature movement as a mechanic. There's the grid of 1-inch squares, there's the grid of hexagons, and there's the ruler or measuring tape. Over the past few decades, it's emerged that square grids are used for roleplaying...
I've been playing historical wargaming, or at least I've been playing wargames set in a historical time on Earth. The more I played with my Roman and Egyptian armies, the more I got curious about the actual histories of these fascinating historic empires. To quench my thirst for the "lore" of these...
Continuing my effort to develop one new game a month during 2024, this month I present Camp Pain, a post-apocalyptic wasteland campaign simulator. It's a dice rolling game in which you venture out into the badlands in search of weapons and food and meds. When you find something, you gain dice you...