In Which The Warlock Gains a New Form of Geekdom...

In all my years of gaming--since about 6th grade, all be told--I've never been that high on using miniatures. Truth be told, I never really had the money for it. Out of all the friends that I played table-top D&D with, my family was the poorest. As such, I couldn't exactly just ask my parents to plop down much needed cash for little plastic or lead-based army men.

So, we improvised. We used our imaginations. We fudged things. Who cared if you were 5 feet away, if it meant laying the smackdown on the big nasty?! The focus was on the drama, the action, the combat.

However, I couldn't help but feel like I was missing something. Minis were the unknown territory for me...and while I suppose I feigned disinterest, I've always been intregued by them, whether ogling the massive battle set-ups at Origins or watching the Warhammer 40k battles at WittCon II. And now with 4e out there? It was time to make a switch in perspective.

So, I finally gave in. The PlatinumChick has always liked minis-painting, and I had even gotten her a quality set of paints for her birthday this past August. As such, when this past Wittenberg Game Day arrived, and there were few takers for most of the games, I decided to give the painting gig a go.

Now, mind you, I'm horrible at art. Completely. My stick figures come out lopsided. But, for whatever reason, I was actually able to put together a few satisfactory efforts.

I started with an elven archer--Jathalain, for those of you that read the Saltmarsh Diaries, and then moved onto a massive skeleton, and then rounded out my evening by working on a blackguard fig I had picked up more recently.

Overall, things didn't turn out too badly. Our brushes weren't always cooperative--particularly the fine detail brush, which was bent to at least a 60 degree angle--and the number of times I had to re-do certain sections was incalculable, but the end results were more than satisfactory.

The level of strain and the like, though, is massive, and it makes me all the more impressed with the wargaming-minis crowd, who put together massive armies in no time at all. I got a headache partway through painting the giant skeleton, and decided to stop and play a quick game of Yetisburg (yes, that's spelled right, and don't try to tell me there weren't Yetis and War Mammoths at Pickett's Charge).

Pics will be forthcoming, once the PlatinumChick fixes my now-broken camera. Grrr...