On the painting table ... A Dragon and his Spawn

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Super Dungeon Explore – The last three models of this commission are just about done. Starfire and two Rex. The models are pretty straightforward. With the Rex needed some gap filling around every join. It's nice that the models come pre-assembled, however this can lead to issues with the joins that might have been avoidable if you could put it together yourself.

For the paint I started with a Mephistion Red base followed by a earthshade wash. The purple is a hormaguant foundation with a purple wash and genestealer purple highlight. I then went in with the red and highlighted after the wash to bring out some of the details.

EDH(Commander) - How much can you bear?

Magic the Gathering – As you probably know if you're a regular reader of the blog, I'm a big fan of EDH (Commander). My play group has embraced this and Cube as THE way we play magic. Both formats are fun and I had a blast sorting through cards to build the Cube. 

With different resonsibilites and availabilities the turn out for each weeks game night can be pretty varied. Which is cool because we get different dynamics from week to week and thing don't get to stale. 

Recently we ended our game night on a bit of a sour note. The night started off well enough with everyone playing their favorite decks and control of the table swinging back and forth between all the players. The first two games were a ton of fun. Even though the second game got to be a bit oppressive due to Rise of the Dark Realms, Recover and Eternal Witness doing the dosie do drawing out all the mass removal spells and then going to town killing everyone slowly.

The third game we played was when things got awkward. Everything was going smooth with the guy that won the last game taking earlier beats per the norm. Right up until he was able to set up an Avacyn + Nevineral's Disk hard lock. We let him do his thing of killing everything on the board for a little while to see if anyone could draw into some form of exile, permanent theft or -x/-x. When it became obvious that wasn't going to happen I asked the table if anyone had anything in their deck that could remove his lock. When the answer came back no, I suggested we all scoop and play another game, since the result was inevitable at that point.

The result of that suggestion was some mumbling about not putting that on the table again and watch checking to just call it a night early. Overall it was an uncomfortable way to end our weeky game night.

Now don't get me wrong I love combos and crazy board states and some of the super powerful thing you can do in Commander as a format. A quick combo that kills the table means we can play another game right away. A hard lock that makes it so nobody else can play while you slowly plink away at each opponent drags the game on and honestly nobody likes to watch their opponent play magic by them self.

Have you ever had this happen during one of your games and if so how'd you deal with it?

On the Painting Table ... The Tyrant's Legion Returns

Warhammer 40,000 – My client the previously had me paint up a Tyrant's Legion Army in his own custom color scheme has recently come across a great deal on a Catchatan Jungle Fighter army. This included not only a boatload of troops but several tanks, sentinels and a Baneblade. The amount he paid for them is pretty ridiculously low (let's just say only double digits).

So he has asked me to paint these up to match his existing force so he can mix and match the models creating a very ramshackle look and feel to his army when he needs to. It also will give his two unique forces that can be paired together for Apocalypse games.

The first batch he's given me is a unit of Ogrun and command elements. These are pretty fun models to paint. I'm happy with how I've worked his existing color scheme into the jungle fighter uniform. I think if he mixes these models in with the great coat models he'll have a force that looks uniform enough to be a cohesive force but varied enough to play up the chaotic bent that the Tyrants Legion has.

Once these are finished I have several tanks that need to get a fresh coat of paint.

Water, Water Everywhere ...

Random – If you've ever had a water heater fail on you then you know my pain. Recently I came home to find my daughter complaining about no hot water in the house. Thinking the pilot light went out I made a trip down to the basement to check things out. 

Much to my dismay I heard a gushing sound and noticed a large pool of water creeping under my entertainment center and gaming table. I quickly turned off the water and began the tedious task of shop-vaccing the and toweling up the mess. 

Luckily several of my friends are handy and own trucks and tools. (Something I should probably invest in at some point, pin vices, exacto blades and dremels don't get you far with real work) After a few frantic texts and calls I was able to recruit my buddy Dan to help me out. 

After two trips to Home Depot and several trips up and down the stairs with a dolly. My home once again has hot water. The resulting mess has however caused a delay on several of the commissions I'm working on and has necessitated a reimagining of the layout in the basement to get the electronics away from the drains.