FarkonGnome’s blog

4th edition books are sitting on my doorstep as I type his out - they finally arrived according to UPS! Ahhh, I can't wait to read them and see what class I'll be in our next campaign. But thanks to the storm that rolled through Michigan yesterday I have to get my chainsaw out and cut a tree into bits and pieces tonight.

The high winds yesterday snapped a hickory tree in my backyard at the base of the tree, and luckily it fell into another one of my trees. It took me an hour to get the thing to finally fall down (with the help of a few of my neighbors one of which climbed the tree that the fallen one was resting on). Now I need to cut the tree up a bit so it's not sticking over my retaining wall, the rest of the tree below the retaining wall can stay there until the Poison Ivy is dead because there is no way in hell I'm going into that crap.

On a side note, I've been playing a lot of my 360 in the past week. Lego: Indiana Jones is a VERY fun game, so if you liked Lego: Star Wars you'll more than likely love this game as well. The story is rather fun, but there are a few frustrating scenes that will have you wanting to pull your hair out. I didn't buy the Prima guide, but so far I'm doing really well for not having it. I've only had to look up locations to 2 "treasure chests" since the developers were bastards and hid them in such obscure locations I didn't want to spend anymore time trying to find them on my own. Click my Gamer Card in the right column to see how far along I am with the game (or any of my other games for that matter)

Man, I really need to get back to painting - maybe this weekend I'll paint up some minis.

So our gang wound up getting to the end of our Ptolus/3.5 journey. Our mission was to get the second part of the Day King's sceptre from an Adult Red Dragon (which sounds worse then it turned out). After about 50 emails going back and forth between all of us players discussing strategy and whatnot, we get to the big day.

I've decided to take the leadership feat and bring along a 10th Level Paladin that I tweaked out to be a dragon slayer (he has the Dragonfriend feat so he has pledged his life to make sure my dragon character will live).

Cut to the fight, the dragon won't land to fight us. I've got an idea, I'll go over to his gold horde and start EATING some of his gold. Let's just say he wasn't happy about that and decided to land to stop me.

So the wizard in our group casts Ray of Dizzyness - the dragon fails, and only gets to take a move action or a partial action.

Basically that spell boned the dragon - hard. I managed to nick some HP off of him andI spent the next 2 rounds chasing the dragon around the cave since he was trying to get away from us. Now comes in our cleric with the Mace of Odo - Touch attack that does some nice damage. 3 hits from that mace dropped the dragon and ended our campaign.

I have to say, we had some serious cheese-weasling going on during that session, but overall it was fun. I"m looking forward to have a native dragon race in 4th edition.

Came into work this morning and was greeting to the weekly email from Paizo. Inside of the email was this little nugget:

Lonely D&D Minis Singles Looking for DM Match! Last week, Wizards of the Coast released the Dungeons of Dread Booster Packs for Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures. This set uses the new D&D minis rules based on 4th Edition D&D, in addition to having sneak peeks of the new 4th Edition monsters. We broke open 6 cases of Dungeons of Dread and loaded them into our singles bins for you to peruse and purchase as you wish. ... The Dungeons of Dread singles feature a wide array of characters and monsters.  D&D Singles

So I click the link to see how much the minis I bought are going for and the first thing I look for is the beholder. Holy crap, are they smoking crack??? FIFTY BUCKS for this piece of plastic? I'm wondering if the money I spent on these miniatures was worth it and all I can say is this: "Yes, yes it was".

In preparation of 4th edition, I spent some money on a case of Dungeons of Dread DnD minis. mostly I was searching for minis that Reaper doesn't make in metal form for use with our gaming group. Below are the minis I got from the case (which is 12 packages):

I finally finished the one minis I posted previously -- I decided that his based needed some rocks on it since one of his feet is atop a stone.

The paladin that I just finished has some freehand work on the cape - I decided to branch out a little and use a dual color pattern on his cape since I've seen someone else paint this guy up before like that. I think the overall product is quite nice. This guy by far took me the longest to paint of any of my minis - 3 days.I still need to finish his base but I couldn't resist posting up a picture tonight.

I saw "I Am Legend" last night, pretty good movie - although I wish it would have stayed true to the book. It's a movie I would recommend to anyone that likes Sci-Fi.

Watching Loren (Human Cleric) bicker with the dwarves about not taking their birth city from the Drow, and Karkov (Dwarf Thief) trying to diffuse the situation was kind of funny. Although my character Justis (Gold Dragon Wrymling) couldn't understand a word of anything they were talking about, having the visual of a human saying something to the dwarves who look pissed while Karkov is in the middle of them waving his hands in a "calm down calm down" motion is quite amusing.

Things that I need to remember:

Darkmantles are wimps
Troglodytes are wimps
Trolls have TEN feet of reach, not 5
Justis can't out-grapple a troll when you piss them off

And finally:

Justis needs to buy a Ring of Free Movement.

Why do I need to buy that ring? Let me tell you why:

The troll was on a roof and I flew up to blast him with my fire breath weapon. I forgot Large creature have 10 feet of reach. On troll boy's turn, he proceeded to smack me for 48 points of damage. In one round, he dropped me to 50% of my total hit points. Next turn turn and try to run to our healer, since I'm in flight I can't take a 5 foot step, so I chance him failing his AoO. He hits me, then proceeds to grapple me.

I'm flying at this point, so we both fall 15 feet. the next round of turns he grapples me more, and then drags me towards his bridge (twice). If it wasn't for Karkov skewering him, and Imhotep (Human Wizard polymorph'd into an Annis Hag)  giving him a beating I think I would be dead on his next turn.

I spent most of the weekend painting, and doing errands -- and I finally have time to take pictures. It's funny how my digital camera picks up the smallest things you can't see normally (for instance the flocking around the Drow woman's mace where it's next to her body). It also makes some of the armor look a little "rough" whereas in real life it's nice and smooth with slight shading differences. I wonder if the metallic paint I used caused the flash to create the "virtual" splotches - the world my never know.

I just finished watching "Stargate SG1: The Ark of Truth" -- it's a good mini-movie. A few parts I had to fast forward through (like Teal'c walking across the mountains) but overall it finished the series up quite nicely.

DnD tomorrow - hopefully these bad boys (and girl) will get some use!

This past week has been hell, I've been really busy with work and doing stuff around the house (not to mention I played DnD on Tuesday) - but I was able to paint up these 2 minis.

Yesterday was my 34th birthday, and generally I don't like celebrating it at all - I'd rather forgo the celebration and just skip right to the presents. I'm not so much a scrooge, it's just that I don't like surprises at all. I use to sneak into my parents room when I was little and open up my unwrapped Christmas gifts and play with them after they had gone to work. Now that I have kids, I need to learn to accept the celebration so they can grow up normal. Anyways, below are the phat lewts I got for my Bday:

Pictures of my most recent work