One hundred of ‘em! As Nick Hawkins has noted, rubber cockroaches look surprisingly effective on the table, and are extremely cheap. I finally got around to ordering 100 of them off eBay, I really have no idea what I’ll do with them, maybe 5150 with Nick’s modifications. They just looked too cool not to have.

Coming out of playing an FNG game at Fall-In! and not having anything planned for gaming this week, I threw together a quick 5150 game using 40k figures last night. I found some QRSs online that looked reasonable, and had about 65 Tau infantry of various stripes up against 10 Space Marines. The Marines were all Rep 5. The Tau squad leaders were all Rep 5 and the troopers Rep 4. About halfway through the game, we decided that was too high given the odds I was going for, and dropped everybody on the Tau side by 1. Otherwise, I thought it played well. I thought the table looked pretty good, too. My trees are falling apart, though. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with them…

I’ve been painting a fair bit with the kids lately. Here is a bunch of long out-of-print Harlequin Nightlings we’ve been painting. Once they’re done, it’s hard for me to tell which ones I’ve painted and which they have. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve used what I call the Velas Technique: stain painting over white primer, followed by a dip. It’s very forgiving to beginning painters, and the GW Devlin Mud wash makes a non-toxic, water clean up dip that even the kids can apply. We still have several Nightlings to paint, although right now my son and I are painting Primaeval Designs Woolly Mammoths and Neanderthals. He’s very much into prehistory, which is largely why I purchased them, and has repeatedly begged to paint for free, but I force him to take wages! “Son, if somebody offers you money to do something you really want to do, you say YES!”

The original LittleLeadHeroes.com gallery has been out of commission for a while. I finally got around to getting it back online. Ignore the errors and such; I’m not really looking to make it functional, just available. I’ve found myself trying to reference a few older blog posts, only to see that the pictures I needed weren’t up. I just got tired of that.

Back before Fall-In!, I painted a little with the kids again. We haven’t done it in a while and it was nice to get back into it. We’ve been painting up a bunch of old Harlequin Nightlings I got on closeout somewhere along the ages. We’ve painted 27 foot and 4 mounted now, and they really look great. I need to run a game with them for the kids. We choose a painting style really great for inexperienced painters (what I’ve dubbed the Velas technique after the Velas brothers who used it to great effect as a speed painting technique)– I prime white, then the kids stain paint with thinned paint. I go back and wash the figures with Games Workshop’s Devlin Mud (an easier to clean, non-toxic version of the Miracle Dip) and then flock the bases. I’ve seen worse looking figures at conventions! I’d be proud to run a game with the figures my kids have painted.

Still working on my Flames of War stuff. I’ve got the rest of the jeeps for my Cavalry recon platoon primed and ready to paint. That’s everything except the M2 60mm mortar stands, and with a clear distinction between the MG and transport jeeps. Thanks to Joe for showing me that the third jeep crewman could fit in back! I also have three M1 57mm guns, although when I picked them up second hand, I didn’t realize there was a standard variant and an airborne variant, and now I have a mix of both. You learn a new thing every unit you paint! It’s nothing I can’t live with, and I’ve been filling out units further for Field of Battle WW2, so I might pick up at least one more down the road.

I picked up these dental plaster dinosaur bones/fossils terrain pieces at Fall-In. The packaging was labeled “WindSword Accessories,” which I had never heard of. However, they were quite nicely priced, 3.50-4.00 for everything except the big piece, and I thought they would provide a lot of atmosphere to my new prehistoric big game hunt board. My son was very excited to see them and can’t wait to paint them for me. I’m starting to think this was a very good idea…

Mik and I are back from Fall-In! I had some concerns that, after having been to Historicons and Cold Wars, the smaller Fall-In! might not be worth the time and cost to get up to. We drove almost 600 miles to get there. Despite being somewhat smaller, it was definitely worth it, though. I can’t go to more than one a year, and that one would tend to be Historicon, but Fall-In! was fun.

I went content in my hobbiness and not really looking for anything new, just hoping to pick up some bargains. Yet I started two new periods! Actually, I have been on the verge of “big game hunting” for prehistoric mammals or dinosaurs since Historicon 2009 when I picked up the Tooth and Claw rules. My nine year old son is a big prehistoric animal fan– much more so than the WW2 games I’ve subjected him to. Plus Mik bought some Primaeval Designs Neanderthals and other figures. So, what the heck, I bought two packs of Neanderthal hunters and two woolly mammoths. Only on the drive home did I realize I now had just about everything I needed for Tusk!

My son has also been reading a lot about Romans. Plus, he and his older sister have been painting a bit for me. So I was already thinking about getting some plastic Romans for him to paint. However, in the flea market, I picked up something like 150 Wargames Factory ancient Germans and 40 or so Warlord Games Romans. I have no clue what I’m going to do with that many figures. Ah well. He will not run out of things to paint anytime soon, and hopefully it will be great practice for him.

One of the coolest things I saw at the con was the use of flickering LEDs for fire markers. They would be tucked away inside a rather traditional puff of cotton smoke, and really looked good. I ordered 12 from Amazon, determined to make my own. Only later did I realize how cool they would look as fire markers in a 25mm Tusk game!

I now have my Neanderthals glued and based, and my Woolly Mammoths assembled, waiting for time with the kids to get painting on them. Prehistoric big game hunting and ancient Romans will largely be “with kids” painting. This will allow me to continue to focus on 15mm WW2, while also giving me incentive to spend more time painting with the kids. At their current rate of $2.00/hr, it’s cheaper than having Sri Lankan children paint!

Got a Cavalry recon platoon started for my Airborne. I’ll be glad to finally be able to use the Flames of War recon rules! I still need to pick up three stands of 60mm mortars to finish it off, and paint another three jeeps to carry them in. And decals. I did decals on the 88 vehicles and they turned out alright. I’m just not in any hurry for that.