Random comics...

...found over my lunch hour at a used book store for a buck apiece.

Every time I see Neptune in a DC comic he's going on about someone swiping his stuff. He's worse than that leprechaun with the cereal.

Until today I had no idea that the X-Men had their own reprint title.

Everything I know about the Titans I learned from the cartoon. When I first glanced at this cover I thought the grey dude was the Changeling.

Demogorgon is awesome

Orcus gets a lot a play these days but my favorite canonical demon prince is definitely Demogorgon. Just look at this guy! A two-headed baboon with tentacles!

As part of their licensed AD&D line Minifigs, now long gone, did a figure very closely based upon this picture from the original Monster Manual.

Grenadier later produced this Demogorgon look-alike but called him Orcus for some unfathomable reason. The head is reptilian instead of baboonish, but it's still pretty neat-o. I have one of these I bought off the eBay, thinking I was getting the Minifig version. Here's a link to a nicely painted version of this figure.

The Aspect of Demogorgon from Wizard's plastic figure line. I like the concept of buying a prepainted Prince of Demons, but the sculpt is too thin and spindly, lacking the look of raw power in the earlier versions.

Reaper's Dark Heaven Legends line has a lot of great figures designed for D&D play. This fantastic fella is called the Demonic Lasher in their catalog. They like to file the serial numbers off, don't you know. On this page you can find a great painted version of this figure.

Rethinking the Favored Class

With all the zillions of new base classes floating around it seems to me that it would make sense to re-examine the core PC races and see if they a different base class would work better for them. My ideas off the top of my head are to reassign the dwarves to the Warmain class from Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved and use the Duskblade (PHB II) for elves to recapture that old school charm of casting spells in armor. The Artificer from Eberron could work for gnomes. Gnome bards leave me cold and illusionist spells never did anything for me. The halfling could be left as is, but I would seriously consider reassign them to rangers in my own campaign world. Half-orc barbarians have been a staple of the hobby for almost a decade now, but back in the day the half-orc was most associated with the assassin class. If halflings are re-imagined as rangers, I could see using the rogue for sneakier, back-stabbier orcs.

I haven't seen this flick in forever

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Miscellaneous Winter War pics

My brother-in-law Jim and another player (is that Greg?) examine one of the maps in the Blind Sniper room. In the foreground is Jim's son Ian. As I mentioned before he and I crippled each other on round 2 of the game. The fella in the red plaid shirt is Alfred, who won the all-new, all-crazy Board Gamer Agonistes award. Each boardgame ran at the convention was worth a number of points based on total players at the table. The winner got a bunch of those points and other people got some points at the ref's discretion. Al came out with the highest total, though my sister apparently did pretty darn good as well.



My Encounter Critical players. From the left that's Josh, Kathleen, and Doug. They've played in several con games of mine over the years. Our tastes intersect enough to create some magnificently fun one-shots, but I sometimes suspect that we'd drive each other crazy in a lengthy campaign. They'd be busy telling some sort of anime-based storyline and I'd be trying to fight every NPC encountered. Across the table from this terrific trio is Marc, Dave Hoover's son. We all had a lot of fun together.

After buying a bulletproof vest and shield, Josh modified his character illo. Not pictured: the rollerskates he swiped off of a one-eyed mutant midget.

Here's my ten-player D&D freak-out. Josh, Kathleen, and Doug are a little more crowded together in this shot! Everyone is working on characters here. For most events I love making my own pregens, but a nostalgia powered game like this demands random chargen at the event.


One of the vendors, Thompson Productions, had a painting demo table. They had a selection of Reaper brand figures and paints. I painted these two guys. Even with the limited time and selection of colors I thought they turned out better than I expected. This really gave me the boost of confidence I've needed to take minis painting more seriously. And working on the archer's chainmail made me a believer in drybrushing. The pic is terrible, that actual figures don't look very good (the sculpts are nifty, the paint job is terrible), but up close that chainmail looks awesome. All thanks to a simple drybrush of silvery steel over a black base. I'm definitely going to paint some more figures after this experience.

Finally, here's some links to pictures of the monsters I made for the Friday night Clay-O-Rama game.

Klaggor, the Thing from Beyond the Stars!
Mr. Maw
The Stinging Vampiric Two-Faced Snake-Weasel
Little Arty, the Littlest Artillery Piece

Hey kids!

I used Heromachine to put together some black & white illos of various members of Darth Viraxis's Mutant Legion. I brought along a bag of crayons so the players and I could color them. This first one was done by Marc.

Kathleen colored in this one. Unfortunately the sparkly effect of the metallic crayons did not scan well. Trust me, those boots are very shiny. My daughter helped me design this mutant, by the way. She insisted on both the butterfly wings and the hair that is fire.

Kathleen's husband Josh coloered this dude. I like how he emphasized the tradeable limbs.

This bearded lady, colored by Doug, was the first victim of Hansel Manho's charms.

By yours truly.

I am totally going to repeat this ecperiment. A little dose of Encounter Critical brought out the fun-lovin' kid in everyone at the table.