Where I am at with the This is not a Test (TNT) demo for Poldercon 2017

Over a little less then 6 months Poldercon is up, and I have not made the progress I wanted to. I´ve noticed, and this is nothing new, that I prefer to start and finish something in one night (excluding varnishing) as in my current state of mind I have a lot of trouble focussing. This works fine with smaller scale stuff, not so well with larher items unless I do just one thing.

Call me bad, lazy or anything like that, I just lose interest really quickly in one particular item of the bigger plot (not all the time though).

So, TNT. I've decided to move away (for now) from making a full ruined city and make something more manageable on a 90x90 table, that can also double as a table for Modhails zombies, Supernatural stuff like Big Trouble in Little China or Chtullu. I've been working a lot recently with lasercut products, be it MDF or Cardboard, and I like it, and I have sold a lot of stuff (wouter, including some of your old stuff, thanks again!), so I have some funds.

I've decided to go for a trailer park. I've painted a 15mm trailer before and that turned out ok. I've been spending the last few weeks looking at options (resin, MDF, thick card) and availability, put some hard thought into what I wanted to spend etc, and settled for the following map.

Since the aim here is to spike a pre-War water heater, I've given that centre stage. I've made a conceptual design of a 4 booth and 8 booth shower, with room for the water heater in the middle. C = car, T = trailer. The red lines are fences. The trailers I picked up from Sarissa Precision Ltd, they have an offer for a bundle of 6 trailers for a reduced price and 2,50 Pounds flat free shipping worldwide, and they come reccomended by friends. I've added some park benches as scatter to the order, as well as a Children's Playground. There goes 80 Pounds. The other parts come from TT Combat. Initially I had my focus on them, to make 2 rows of Brownstones and a centre street, but (for now) that costs too much. Through Trolltrader on Ebay I purchased the Bus Stop, the Construction Office as a stand in for my reception desk, and the Subway Entrance (not for this game) so goodbye another 20 Pounds. Cars I have plenty, just need to finish a few more. Fences won't be a problem as I have my mighty The Chopper and plenty of basing material, so I just need to measure stuff for a bit and get cutting. The Pool I'd like to have cut by a Evin, custom size, 3 layers of MDF (2mm Base, 2x 2mm thickness walk area, 2 pool stairs, maybe a springboard, with the baseplate painted glossy black/brown for the water with plenty of fixed (newspapers, leaves) and non fixed (skeleton on a air cushion, bike handle, both based on 1mm plasticcard) debris. The rest of the MDF used can be filled with more bases, 2 birds with one stone. All of this based on my Concrete floor mat.

The Sign.....I can't decide on a name yet. Shady Acres being the standard one, but Heavenly Haven is nice (for you Dredd fans). Shape wise there are tons of options to choose from, but I see no problems there ordering this from Patrick/Evin. Anyone have any nice name ideas?

Final detailing will most likely be a mixed order from Black Cat Bases (I have a substantial gift coupon from them that I want to cash in) and bits and pieces from Delta Dog. He's a gifted sculpter who does a lot of 28mm Fallout stuff, and a Aspie like myself, and after a brainstorming session earlier this week we decided we must have plastic flamingoes. He'll do the printing and moulding, I'll do the buying of quite a few of those as well as other items like a Nuka Cola machine and smaller items. I'll need a bunch of letterboxes too, now that I think of it.

While those items arrive (just the MDF bits I mean) I can spend all of my attention to the 3mm Berlin/Stalingrad table, and tomorrow I should receive a medium sized box full of corner pieces and city block bases, so I can glue down what I have and get cracking with the rest of them.

Also, I need to sell more stuff :) And clean this hellhole. Other then that, just dandy. Shrink next week, can't wait :)

Go out and look at trees!

No, I have not gone hippie on you.

Right now, here in Europe, it is time to collect the following:

• Birch seeds....by now the whole pods will be dry yet still clinging to the tree. Grab em, dry them, and sort them, then use as dead leaves on your scenery
• Black Alder pods.....dry them and paint them green to use as 3-6mm trees or potted plants for 15-28mm. Add green flock to them for a different look.

Microwaving your collected stuff kills any bugs, and soak them in a glycerine/water mix for a few days to preserve them.

If you have purchased a leaf punch (available at various locations) now is the time to collect dark green leaves and preserve those too with the same method, then use the punch to make in scale leaves.

If you can't be bothered you can always buy the stuff in hobby shops. That works too :)

Wonderful world of Frostgrave and how it feels to be understood.

It has been a funny week sofar. On monday we took the kids for a 2 hour drive to the sea, for their very first ever dip in the sea. Nikki took to it like the proverbial fish in the water, Emma....not so much :D (but eventually she too stepped in the surf). In the pictures I look like a mule with 1 backpack, 2 pairs of shoes and a extra bag full of beach toys :) Very fun day, nice to see the girls so happy, but utterly exhausting keeping my eyes on both of them, and the soft sand and the long drive was hell for my knee. We got back pretty late, put the kids to sleep and crashed 30 minutes after that. Sadly, my alarm clock was set at 6 as I had a appointment with the Autism team in Den Bosch at 8 in the morning, and since they had not specified for how long (or even what the meeting was about) and I don't want to spend a fortune in parking fees, I took the train and took a 30 minute walking to their office. My legs were literally killing me as they were very sore from the beachwalk yesterday so by the time I got there I was limping a bit. And then their coffee machine turned out to be broken!

The meeting itself was very good. We discussed the questions I have about my Aspergers (now grouped under Autism Spectrum Disorder) and they put forth many examples of how my brain works. For example, he drew a couple of trees together on the board. Most people will say that they see trees, period, or even specify the types of trees. I see trees but my mind sees 6 trees (3 pine and 3 deciduous) and a proverb, "door de bomen het bos niet meer zien" (Can't see the wood for the trees) all at once. If we then add a tree in the back without you knowing it, and ask the next day to look at the picture if anything has changed, 98% of the people will not see it. But I will., and I felt myself agreeing with almost everything. You have no idea how good it feels to have someone in front of you, who is "normal", yet still knows the ins and outs of my problem, and condense that in simple, thought triggering examples. In the end I was asked what I really wanted from them. As there is no cure for my problem, all I want is a handle to get to grips with my problem, work withing the confines of it and improve my quality of life, and to make it easier to find and hold a job again. He surprised me in that he had properly read my file and noted I had already done research on a local company (Werkmans) that helps Aspergers with high IQ's find fitting jobs. I said that I had mentioned this to the doctor at the UWV (they pay my sicknes benefit each week) but had received no further news sofar, and the company had mentioned that the UWV needed to approach them to set thing in motion (and pay for their services). Low and behold, he tells me that they have the power to inform and motivate Werkmans to contact the UWV directly to plead my case, and that with my level of intelligence I would be a prime candidate. That made me so elated, to hear such potential good news really cheered up my mood by 100%. I never limped home with more enthusiasm. I have another meeting next week. So tuesday was another good day.

The problem with feeling great and happy for a while is that it is, eventually, followed by a low, which in this case was the start of wednesday. I had trouble getting out of bed and getting started, I did a few chores but a major headache and muscle ache from the beachwalk combined to make me feel really miserable. No problem if you can just shake it off, but I could not, so slept some more. 2 hours later I wake up refreshed, do some more chores, feel a bit better and take the car out for a round of local plant nurseries for a paerticular plant (African Lilly) my mum wants for her birthday this saturday. After visiting 3 nurseries i just started calling the other ones in the area first cause they were either sold out or they never had them in the first place. Noone has it. Drat. Since I was near a goodwill store I decided to see if they had anything useful for the kids or me, and I picked up another Cars car for the TNT table, and a box full of rubber stamps (disney figures) for the kids. Jay happy :). Then shopping for dinner, back home again and off to Fysio (nothing to report, things are going well, she wants me to go to the gym 3 days a week to do cardio 3 times, and then split  to legs 2 days a week and upper body 1 day a week to help me with my back and to better lift my girls.....they weigh 13 kilos now and I'm having problems carrying them for more then 3 minutes at a time.

So I come back home, all happy, Kim just got home, I showed her what I had bought, including stuff from the dicsount bin from the supermarket which I knew she used and I thought she was running low of, only to be turned down, that she did not need it right now, and she even asked me to take the stamps back to the goodwill store and get my money back as she felt it wasn't a very good toy for our girls.

And I was right back where I started that morning, so I withdrew to my hobby room only to be greeted by this:

Yes, I have been cleaning my room, but dumped all the hobby stuff on my painting desk while sorting out everything else and then I did not get round to clearing that mess up, and now it made me feel even more useless and miserable.

Kim then came to check on me and I told her how I felt. How I wasn't happy with the state of the room, that my great plan to clean it once a week and keep everyting shelved and sorted just wasn't happening. Because I get distraced by everything every single moment, and I want to work on it. Kim said I just have too much stuff and I need to let more go so I have more space to store the things I do want to keep. She not only has a point, but she is right too. So, starting friday, I will begin a new round of cleaning and sorting and put up more stuff for sale. I thanked her for her insight, took the box of stamps and brought them to a mother of 4 that we get a lot of support from and gave it to her as a gift.

But wait......wasn't this Blogpost about Frostgrave?

Well, yes. Rikh, who I met online 6 months or so ago, had informed me he would be back this week (and a bit of the next) and was looking forward in a few games. I had to admit that since the last time he was here i had not gamed Frostgrave and the gaming group had fallen apart again (1 quit wargaming alltogether (so he said, but he bought a new army 2 weeks ago), the other shifted his focus to Age of Sigmar and Erik (Modhail) is having his own demons to deal with atm so I don't want to ask too much from him. I also had not painted anymore Frostgrave stuff, neither scenery or figures, and I don't even know in which box most of my Frostgrave scenery is!

Quite shameful really.

But I grabbed my case of figures, the 2 boxes of 20mm desert scenery that I have, the Urbanmatz cobblestone mat and books and dice and went, grudgingly, on my way. I took the drive there to just relax, feel a bit better and to enjoy the moment, as I did feel very nervous about gaming again.

Rikh was there to greet me, and after a friendly chat and writing down my warband for the umpteenth time (I keep losing my roster sheets) we placed the mat and scenery. We decided to play the solo (actually duo) campaign from Dark Alchemy, so we teamed up to get ourself through the harrowing ordeal.

For future reference, this is the list I'm working from for this campaign and will be my gaming list for the future:

• Necromancer
• Captain 
• Archer 2x
• War Hound
• Ranger
• Knight
• Infantryman
• Thief 2x

Built around the assumption that I will recruit a apprentice after the campaign is over (if I survive that long)

My wizard has the following spells:

• Bone Dart (8)
• Control Undead (12)
• Bones of the Earth (10)
• Fog (10)
• Crumble (12)
• Enchant Weapon (12)
• Leap (10)
• Push (12)

My Captain has:

• Leather Armour
• Hand Weapon
• Bow

Game 1 is about a Alchemical monstrosity in the middle of the table, rats coming out of a hole and 2 doors, one of which is the exit. I took my Wizard, my Captain and my Knight.

First thing I noticed is that my Middle Eastern 20mm scenery works really well with 28mm. It did not feel small at all!

We start by avoiding the middle of the board like the plague, and when we roll to scatter the Monstrosity the arrow points straight to the door leading to the stairs of the big archway building, so the monster wobbles up to the top of the building. In my turn I exit from the archway in the back of the table and Push the monster off the edge. The resulting fall took off half of his health in one go. We were slightly more confident now :) Next turn sees a dazed monster getting up and climbing back up the (garages) building and spotting Rikh's wizard, who promplty cast Wall to block the monster (as we did not have a wall ready we just put up s folded sheet of stickers from his daughter....whatever works!). I cast Enchanted Weapon on my Captains Bow, giving it a +1 to shoot, and he killed a rat with that ( I killed 7 rats all game).

Rikh's band sneaking up behind the Wall (the folded sticker sheet) with the monster on top of the garages. I'm sneaking up on the left, making sure I stay out of line of sight, and grabbing treasures along the way. A rat has spotted my Captain (who is hiding behind the Minaret) and is moving to intercept.

The next turn I Enchanted my Knights weapon just in case, my Captain killed another rat and we kept hiding. Rikh tried to do the same.....sort of.

Rikh cast another Wall to block the line of sight and sneak past the Monster. That kinda worked.

Rikhs wall worked well, and he was sneaking up next to it, when the random move made the Monster drop off the roof beside the wall....right next to his team. To add insult to injury he was attacked by a rat as well. Things did not look well.

I found out that the door on my part of the board was not the correct door. Bugger. I then killed more rats and moved to the cover of the garages, with the monster on the opposite side, about to maul Rikh's team. It didn't go well for him, within 2 turns the monster killed them all (which makes me to blame in a way as I rolled for the monster.....oops). In the next turn the random move made the monster climb the roof again and he ended up right next to us, looking down on us, unable to move to attack us this turn.

My team quickly moved away towards the building in the middle, trying to increase the range on the Monster and to pepper it with (magic) arrows. Sadly we hit it for just 2 or 3 points, so the Monster dropped down, and moved in to attack, fighting with my Knight ( we both rolled the same number, both not being able to puncture each others armour. In the next turn I got to go first, and my Knight slay the beast in one go, ending the game and leaving me in possession of 6 treasures, a dead Monster and a pile of dead rats.

My wizard gained 2 levels, gained 100 Gold, 1 Grimore (Elemental Hammer), 1 Scroll (Summon Demon) and 4 Potions (Explosive Cocktail, Elixer of the Chameleon 2x and Potion of the Eye and Mind. My Captain gained 60 XP for his efforts and took the Exploding Cocktail for himself. My Wizard decreased the Bone Dart and Push spells to 7 and 11 respectively and took the scroll and the Elixer of the Chameleon.

I'm not sure what Rikh did, but he rolled a 1 for his Wizard, which he got to reroll for a 20, and another 20 for his Captain as well. I can't remember what his 3rd chap was but her survived too.

Quite a succesful first round I think. It took us a bit less then 2 hours from startup to finish, and it waqs only 22:00, so we deciced to do the next game as well.

Scenario 2. On a 2x3 table, we would be fighting flaming skeletons and zombies, in a across the table run to safety.

We had to move from lower right to upper left.

 We both started in the middle of the starting area, and splitting up almost immediately :D I cast Enchant Weapon on my Captains bow again, giving it a +1. I went left, Rikh went right. Next up, my Captain killed my first of 7 Skeletons in the game, and we moved up to the first treasure. A sneaky zombie moved in behind us. They moan so loud....

Rikh's team went right and through the middle and the Skeletons randomly moved all towards his area. In the turn before this picture was taken, he was surrounded by 3 Skeletons and I had just cast Fog between him and the Skeltons so he could climb to the top of the building, with my Captain working around the back of said building to nab the treasure next to it. His wizard then cast one of his many Grenades and blew up 3 Skeletons in one swoop.  Nice shot Sir!

My wizard then Bone Darted every skeleton in sight and we nabbed 4 out of the 6 treasures before ending the game.

My wizard leveled twice again, and my Captain moved to 90XP, so in theory next game will cause him to level up (if he lives and/or kills stuff). I found 90 Gold, 4 potions (2x Healing Potion, Elemental Absorption and Filter of Fury) as well as a Magic Item, a Faith Stone. My Wizard and Captain both took a Healing Potion, and the Faith Stone was taken by the Wizard as well. He then used his levelling to decrease the casting level of Bone Dart and Fog down to 6 and 9 respectively.

Rikh had his Captain taken out of the fight, ending up with a wound that decresed his Fight stat by -1. He did find a nice Magic Weapon and some Gold and potions, so it wasn't all bad.

We just had 2 fun games, and like clockwork, his wife and mother-in-law came home and that was my cue to leave. If Kim agrees, I will game again on Friday, either here or there, and we will play the third and final game of the series. If all goes well I should be able to reach level 6 with my Wizard and my Captain level 2.


The day ended on a high, I'm tired but happy and really feel like I need to paint my Frostgrave stuff and game more with it. Let's see if Erik is up for that every couple of weeks.

3mm ruins - Block 4 and 5. And a midnight 6.

Lazy sundayevening.

Block 4

Block 4 from the other side

Block 5. When based, this will get some walls with a doorway to fence the alley off

1,2,3,4,5. We are getting there!

I REALLY need more corner pieces. At least 15 alone for this set if I don't want to be staring at blank walls all the time. As soon as Patrick is back from his trip I'll have a word.

Edit: Could not sleep. Built nr 6

Nr 6

3mm ruins - well, not all of them

When I made the design it was actually to make Cold War Kaserne for a German board. It needed no modification for the ruins. Also nice as a Hopsital or Government building.

In my infinite wisdom, cause I was just going to make ruins, I decided I did not need roofs.....well, do I have egg on my face :) Well, I need bases anyway, and due to a communication mishap with Pat I have hardly any corner buildings and those are pretty essential tbh for my ruins. Can't have a ton of blank walls in the city. Speaking of which, 2 more blocks done.

We are getting there.

3mm ruins - Block 1 basics done

Well, the basic part of Block 1 is done now.

I might add some side supports on the inside, very thin ones, to improve the look a bit, but these are wargames buildings, not museum pieces. Besides, I need to be able to easily fit a 20mm square base in there if I need to.

Simple field test to see if my fingers can reach in there, and I have no problems doing so, so success.

I did see one thing while building them. Look at the following picture to see what I mean.

1. 4 walls
2. 3 walls
3. 3 walls
4. 2 walls
5. 2 walls
6. 2 walls

I noticed I can leave out walls because I will be glueing it all together to make solid blocks anyway, so I'm ending up with a lot more spare parts then anticipated, which in turn means more buildings. I just need to keep cutting down scrap cardboard to fill in the holes, but that is a 2 second job. I also noticed that the top parts that I cut off to trim the size of the building can be easily converted into shopwindows by trimming off the bit inbetween (not in this picture, just in my head right now). I did notice I'll end up short on corner pieces, so some of the blocks will have just blank walls facing the street....but I think I have a nice plan for that as well....we will see, some simple cuts here and there should transform the pieces anyway.

Just dandy really, it is coming along as planned, with some minor alterations to make, and the cardboard is pretty damn tough to cut which is good for the final strength. Patrick will cut bases to fit the various blocks next week or the week after, so I have to wait with glueing them toghether till then. Still, doing one or 2 blocks per evening should not be an impossible task, so in theory I could have them all made up by next weekend-ish.


With that sorted, a bit of a rant from me.

I go through my stuff on a regular basis to find stuff to sell to fund things like this. I take good pictures, properly describe it and ask a fair price (or so I hope). I've noticed a trend for a while now that people ask me "to cut them a deal on postage" which for most EU locations is 12-15 euros. In my kindness (and I really want that deal to put money in the bank) I take off 3-5 euros and make the offer. Only to have people agree with me there and then and then tell me straight away or a day later that they think that another 5-10 euros off or completely free shipping is more fair. I find myself getting more and more annoyed by people doing this over 10-20 euros worth of miniatures....are people just getting more greedy or what is going on here? Even tonight I had 2 people contact me over a lot of lasercut stuff worth 35 euros that I was asking 15 euro for just to get rid of it, only to have one chap make me an offer of 7,50 euros, and then contact me a few hours later saying that he made a shitty offer, and what was my REAL askingprice? When I told him I already had offered it to another chap including shipping, he kept asking me what price I was selling the lot for. When the other guy accepted the offer I told this chap it had sold, and told me that he would not make a higher offer. Which made me look puzzled, as he wasn't in the position to make an offer anyway! Also, I offered up a larger lot of Epic40K stuff on various FB groups that hadn't sold 3 months ago, although I had plenty of interested parties then. Again, some of the same interested parties from last time contacted me with offers that were much, much lower. These were the same persons I had given a previous deal including shipping, and not a single one of them had bothered to reply to that offer. Not even a simple No (common cuortesy seems to have died?). One of those persons was particularly brazen, made the lowest offer of them all, telling me he was being generous and this was the best offer I would get online, and that I had to include free shipping! When I pointed out that he had failed to reply the last time around and because of that I would not deal with him (well, that and the lowball bid), he replied annoyed and abusive. Fortunately for me, a couple of new interested parties did reply to offer including postage that I sent them, most with a request to think about it and one person who accepted the offer almost straight away, and even paid within the hour. I informed everybody else and that was it for me. Don't get me wrong, I offer stuff after checking prices from other sellers and ebay Sold listings, and I don't mind taking lower offers, but don't go telling me what I need to do. It just pisses me off and I will do no more business with you, period.

Maybe it is me and my Aspergers, but I try very hard to be sociable (while I'm not really that good at it), say "thank you" and "you are welcome" a lot, outside to cashiers and people I meet on the street, even online, and for some stupid reason I think normal people should respond the same way. Like this:

The meme should add: "....or a wargamer"

Sometimes it makes me wonder why people call me different or unsociable, while I think they should take a hard look in the mirror cause they are not exactly poster children of proper human interaction (if there even is such a thing as that....considering all the wars, terrorism and crime you'd think there are too many people with a few screws loose now a day).

There, I feel better now.

3mm ruins - the start

This afternoon, I was greeted by the postman who gave me a sturdy little box. Upon opening, I was greeted by the smell of burnt stuff :)

I grabbed the bag of bases and started fiddling about. In my head I have 2x2, 2x3 and 3x3 as base shapes, and I had been playing with paper cut outs, but now I have the real stuff, so after some quick sorting and printing off some sheets of graph paper, I ended up with the following which was more or less what I had in my head, with some additions:

The grey speck is a 20x20mm base with a tank on it. Well, I always knew 3mm would not be as glamorous picture wise as 20mm, and 3mm will be a top down and close up shots for battlereports.  I have enough spare bases to make a 4th row of ruins, plus enough spare bits to make a 5th row of ruins, if I wanted to, but for now, I won't.  The bit above is 55cm x 35cm , but with what is left in the bags I have more than enough to cover half a square metre of table (my basic table is 80x80 cm) so I could do a complete cityfight on it. I'll make the buildings in such a manner that there is plenty of space to put the 20x20mm bases in, though some will be more extensively modelled then others. Bombcraters will be easy too, just some milliput surrounded by scatter. God I love 3mm scale, I can finally put all my dreams to reality without costing me another house in storage, another fortune and my marriage. When I say fortune, I mean it....the money I have spent on wargaming over a lifetime is scary! Fortunately, all this stuff cost me 32,50 euros and a book in trade, so total cost for half a square metre (and then some) in scenery is 45 euros. In 20mm that would buy me maybe 2 houses, in 28mm maybe a single farmhouse (unless I went MDF, then maybe a bit more).

What is the plan? Taking the above picture and gridpaper as a base, I will cut out, round off and sand down 12 bases and feg, there goes my plan. Just checked my stash and I  have only 1 sheet of 2mm plasticcard left, which is only sufficient for the bottom 2 rows, and there are no more local sellers of the stuff so this means back to the lasercutter. Which costs more money. Feg. (my buddy lasercutter is unavailable for the next 3 weeks and he's not the most accurate measuring wise so I won't risk that).

Not a problem. Cause Pat cut all of these with bases I can just assemble them ahead of time and glue them together in the correct shapes so they are ready when the blockbases arrive. See, problem solved. Pffeww.. now this won't happen again when I do the next part, the factories, so lesson learned.


Right, back to the normal routine of cleaning and clearing out all the stuff I don't need anymore from the hobbyroom and selling it. The income for this week alone has been phenomenal, more then a years budget in just 2 sales, but I've put most of it back into my bank account to make it greener as I have been skirting the thin red line and I want to stay out of debt. I have enough left over though for a small 3mm force though :)

Enough for today. Tomorrow, the world! :)