My first experiences in hobby shops (specifically, but not exclusively, a Warhammer store) were not great. And yet some of my best experiences in the hobby have happened in a Warhammer store. I think there's a secret to turning a geeky hobby, like building and paintng 28mm toy soldiers so you can pl...
After you paint a hundred miniatures or so, you might find that you start to get a sense that some miniatures are fun to paint, while others are less fun. It might seem strange that there would be a difference. It's tempting to assume that one hunk of plastic is the same as any other hunk of plastic...
The Contrast line of paints by Citadel are designed to provide instant highlighting and shading with just one coat of paint from just one pot. When it works, it's the stuff of science fiction. To this day, I sit and marvel at my painted Ur-Ghul miniatures, and all I did was slap some Pylar Glacier...
If you use miniatures in your tabletop games, it's easy to get spoiled when you start buying Citadel miniatures. Games Workshop miniatures tend to be high-quality, highly detailed, and super imaginative. In fact, if anything, Games Workshop is too imaginative. Really. Some of their sculpts are bizar...
My partner and I love a good "couch co-op" game, a video game where you and a friend can play together on the same computer rather than over a network. We recently played through Quest Hunter and its Strangewood DLC, and this my review of it. This review contains minor spoilers.
Cutting to the...
I've been painting exclusively with Citadel Contrast and Vallejo Xpress Color paints lately. The idea of a high contrast black is a little strange, though. There's no contrast to black, it's just all black. If there's something blacker than black, then the first black wasn't true black. And yet ther...
The D&D 5e book Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft includes an adventure called House of Lament. Last year, I ran House of Lament as a side quest in an Expedition to Castle Ravenloft game. This is my review of the House of Lament module as a Game Master. It mirrors my review as a player.
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The D&D 5e book Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft includes an adventure called House of Lament. Last year, I ran House of Lament for a group of players, and later that year I played in House of Lament with a different group of players. This is my review of the module as a player.
Before I b...
I've been painting lots of Pathfinder and Cursed City miniatures lately, using my Citadel Contrast and Vallejo Xpress Color paints. Because I've been using them a lot, I thought it might be useful to provide a review of each Xpress Color paint based on how I've been using it, and what I thin...
I like re-playing RPG adventures and I don't let my knowledge of the module interfere with the way my character follows clues. Should you re-play an adventure, though, there are some important things to keep in mind.
1. Yarn wall
My primary rule is pretty simple. If I can't trace a decision my...
As a newcomer to miniature painting, I'm, er, fortunate to have made lots of stupid mistakes early in my hobby journey. In my own defence, I did a lot of research before starting to paint. That saved me from some really egregious errors. But I managed to make a mess of a few things. Here's what they...
Player characters in an RPG can be tricky. A player character is an imaginary person who you're meant to speak for and control. The character is meant to be distinct from you (in reality), and you're also supposed to be mindful of fellow gamers at your table (in reality) which obviously your fiction...
I love pre-built characters. That might seem strange, because I also love building characters. On a week when I don't have an RPG to play, I'll often sit down with a rulebook and build a character that will probably never get used. And yet, I love a system that provides a good array of pre-built cha...
A few months ago, I tried Vallejo Xpress Color paints. Aside from the bottles they come in, I like them a lot. They're a great way to get started painting with auto-shading paints for a relatively small investment. It's got a limited colour range, but when you're just starting out, less can be mor...
The problem with colour is that there's a lot of it, and it's never the same to two different people. It's not even the same to one person under different lighting conditions. I love the topic of colour theory, but when you're just starting out as a miniatures painter, it can be overwhelming to see...
Sometimes, after you've painted a miniature you need to go back and fix a mistake you hadn't caught the first time around. When you revise your paint job, though, you're usually filling in something that's missing or concealing something that isn't meant to be there. That means you have to match the...