Majestic 13: Operation Acidwash

It's American Thanksgiving today, and I'm off work though not spending the day with family. Gina's been overworking herself at her job and has been experiencing some side effects to a new medication, so I prioritized us having some real down-time for a change. I do like taking the day to play a solo game; in 2023, Thanksgiving Day was when I played my very first game of Majestic 13, so it feels appropriate to do another M13 game today.

The Last Liners, led by the enigmatic "Lieutenant," are back for their second mission, this time on a densely-packed urban table; I rolled very high for the number of buildings that would be on the table, and groaned internally a little when I rolled "Terrain Reporting" as my secondary mission - I had to put my team in contact with every building and cluster of trees on the table! 

The pieces of terrain marked with a blood splatter (the Shoe Store, the OTB, the Container Office) are Dangerous Terrain (dealing 1D6 damage on a 5+ roll of a D6), while those marked with footprint markers (Both clusters of trees, the pizza parlor, the ramen restaurant) are Difficult Terrain (speed reduced by 1/2 while moving through). 

The threat this mission is an Ichor Spitter - a flying monstrosity that sprays blinding acid. It deals retributive acid damage to anyone within 6" of it when it takes damage, and gains an additional activation once per turn when someone shoots at it and misses, allowing it to shoot back. 

It's the galaxy's angriest prolapse!

Fortunately, the Last Liners are "Dispersed," meaning I can deploy them anywhere on the table, which I used to score "touches" on five pieces of terrain right off the bat. The Lieutenant and Sarah-Jane had high enough Dexterity attributes to negate Dangerous Terrain; she started out deployed on the shoe store, while the Lieutenant began the game taking a shot (successfully) at the Ichor Spitter before running across the roof and jumping down on to the Container Office.

The Ichor-Spitter, floating like a sickening balloon, drifted across the table, coming to rest in the midst of a car accident; Maria, Becky and Sarah-Jane were all successfully able to shoot at it and move towards other terrain pieces, but Hank missed and got blasted with acid in response, blinding him temporarily.

Unfortunately, turn 2 opened with me failing my FUBAR roll, resulting in Civilians appearing on the table, compromising OPSEC. While the game doesn't mandate having figures on the table for this, I find that putting the TV News Crew I painted earlier this year is a nice reminder.

On Turn 3, Maria successfully called down a Drone Strike on the Ichor Spitter, which continued to move from cover point to cover point around the board, with the agents continuing to "touch" buildings and fire at the alien horror. 

Fortunately, the agents mostly rolled well despite the penalties for their target being in cover, and the Ichor Spitter rolled phenomenally low for a lot of its attacks, missing with multiple Acid Spit attacks. Everyone took some damage, and at one point the Ichor Spitter rolled a critical hit against the Lieutenant, dealing 27 points of damage and leaving him with just three hit points; thankfully, Sarah-Jane was close by with her med-kit and was able to patch him up.

On Turn 4, the Ichor Spitter landed on the Off-Track Betting, the poorly-maintained roof partially collapsing under the creature's weight, impaling it on a piece of loose rebar (Rolled a 5+ to see if it took damage from Dangerous Terrain, and took 6 damage). This was enough to overwhelm the wounded monster's biology, sending it into its "Extremis" state, giving it an extra activation per turn but it would take damage every time it activated.

Hank climbed on to the roof of the Off-Track Betting, avoiding the broken roof, and opened fire on the monster. The Spitter's acidic reaction sizzled on his fireman's coat, but didn't injure him. Hoisting herself on to the roof of the pizza parlor, Becky took a pot shot at the creature with her pistol, injuring it further. 

At death's door, the Ichor Spitter activated, taking Extremis damage and collapsing, its air sacs deflating as its internal acid stores melted the dying creature's body.

The Last Liners have once again defeated the monster in Turn 4 (out of a maximum possible of 5)! They also managed to fulfill their secondary mission, with figures touching every piece of terrain on the table, and nobody was put "Out of Action" - though the Lieutenant and Maria were both close calls. 

Going into the post-game process, everyone earned enough XP to improve an attribute by one point; the Lieutenant boosted his Fortitude, Hank his Dexterity, Becky and Sarah-Jane their Fortitude, and Maria her Dexterity. 

Unfortunately, I failed all three of my Requisition rolls - my efforts to get a Weapon Stabilization Tripod for Hank, a set of body armor for the Lieutenant and to add an Internet Monitoring Station (second request!) all disappeared into the bureaucratic labyrinth. So no new goodies, but that's the life of the Dispersed...

The Lieutenant and his crew are doing well, but he'll be the first to caution them against getting cocky. FORCE is watching, and it won't be long before they deploy another monster...

State of the Orc Army, November 2025

 So looking back...I haven't gotten my entire Oldhammer orc and goblin army out on the table since May 2024. I have added a couple of units and big figures to the army since then, and some discussion around Warhammer: The Old World and One Page Rules Regiments with the guys I've been playing Dracula's America with got me inspired to carry everything up from the basement, array it out on the dining room table, and take stock of where I'm at.

This is my midlife crisis, by the way. No sports cars, or giant tattoos, or peroxide-blonde mistresses half my age. No, my midlife crisis is building an all-metal Warhammer army that weighs 30 lbs. The mistress might be less expensive...

First up, the goblins - 39 (plus shaman) with hand weapons, and 20 (plus shaman) with bows, two small units of 5 wolf riders with bows, and a wolf chariot, plus a character riding a wolf. I need to dig out and paint some shields for the hand weapons unit. I've got figures here from Warmonger, Knightmare, Black Tree Design, Midlam Miniatures and Games Workshop; I have another unit of wolf riders from Satyr Art Studios, as well as a couple of frankensteined chariots (including one being ridden by a shaman) in my project box still.

Next up, "Da Red Bastids" - 25 Orcs with hand weapons and shields from Warmonger Miniatures. Behind them are four Bog Trolls sculpted by Drew Williams of Satyr Art Studios years ago; I bought them from him before he sold the molds to the now-defunct Troll Soup Miniatures. I have another four Bog Trolls (purchased from Troll Soup) in my project box.

I better look at the trolls. I would run these as River Trolls in Warhammer, I think. The little runt is from Warmonger Miniatures, and the Empire casualty is a Landsknecht casualty from Warlord Games.

Up next are the Old Guard - this unit is made up almost entirely of eBay rescues, and are all sculpts initially released between 1985 and 1996. Figures here are from Games Workshop, Marauder Miniatures, Alternative Armies and Heartbreaker Miniatures.

Behind them are some artillery pieces - an eBay rescue "Doom Diver" from Games Workshop (I have another, new in box, that a friend found in their attic 20+ years after buying it), and an "Orcquebus" from Warmonger Miniatures that I proxy as a Rock Lobber. 

Up next are the "Kingbreakers" - another unit of Warmonger Orcs. I had two figures on a 25x50 base in the back row that the spaced out movement tray didn't allow me to use, so I've subbed in two orcs I painted for a baggage train. 

Behind them you can see my giant, from Old School Miniatures - I've named him Simon, after the friend who gifted him to me. The runt on the base came with the Doom Diver. 

"The Blackfire Boyz" are "Mercenary Orcs" from Warmonger Miniatures and in some of my favorite orcs that Kev Adams ever sculpted; they're encrusted with detail that brings them to life without bogging down the painting. I've painted them in the colors of Averland, the Imperial Province bordering on the Black Fire Pass and frequent defenders against orc raids in the lore of Warhammer Fantasy. The idea being, they've begun imitating the tactics of their imperial foes, and dressing in uniforms stripped off the dead. This was my first big paper banner (and first time drilling a hand for a 100mm steel flagpole) and I'm still really pleased with how it turned out.

Behind them are kind of an odd unit. These 10 "Barnorsk Great Orcs" I got from Black Tree Design in 2018, and were what initially sparked my desire to build an all-metal orc and goblin army. The paintwork is not up to my current standards and I was never happy with the old Citadel shields I put on them, so I'm not sure I'd put them on the gaming table these days; I have quite a few more (obtained with no small degree of frustration given the issues one has these days trying to buy figures from BTD!) primed and awaiting painting, so the thought is always in the back of my mind to retire these fellows and honor them as the progenitors of the entire project. 

I'm really proud of my Boar Boyz. These are from Knightmare Miniatures, and I did a fair amount of converting on these with weapon swaps, creating a standard bearer, and a musician who has a lute on his back. I'm proud of how many pig jokes I worked in - "Sum Pig," "Pork Chop," "Hog Wild," etc., and the banner is a flying pig. I think the supersized banner didn't work out quite as well this time.

"Harboth's Orc Archers," from 1987. I feel a special affinity to these guys - they first released right around the time I was born. I managed to score a phenomenally good deal on a full box set, plus some extra figures, back in 2020, and doing a full unit of 20 with freehanded face shields and a paper banner felt so satisfying. I think I can honestly say this is my favorite unit in the whole army. They're on a split movement tray so I can readily deploy them in two ranks of 10, or four ranks of 5. 

And then the characters:

I'm still really pleased with the Shaman on Wyvern figure I painted earlier this year. Still have to paint some banners for him though. 

So what's next? I have a half-finished unit of orc boyz with a shaman accompanying them, and two more units primed and waiting their turn, plus a couple chariots primed and awaiting painting/final assembly. Then there's a unit of night goblins that could be primed, more goblin archers, more trolls...I have a lot in the back log. 

I think I got demoralized for a while with this project between not having a nice display cabinet for them and realizing I just wasn't enjoying Warhammer: The Old World. The guys I played with during the summer were nice enough, but having to stop every turn and consult three rulebooks plus an errata document wasn't my idea of a good time and the other guys at the game store were quickly leaning into tournament mindsets, and that's just not me. 

Talking about One Page Rules with the guys I play Dracula's America with felt reinvigorating; I've always treated this project as some blend of actual gameable army and art project, a means of saying "Hey, 14 year old me, we finally have a really cool Warhammer army! We did it!" and I think right now I feel like gaming with them again for the first time in months. And maybe that means I'll finish painting another regiment, maybe some more chariots. Maybe I'll finally get my second orc on wyvern out and assembled in 2026. 

Reaper Miniatures' "Crazy Cat Lady"

 So this is a miniature that my wife Gina requested I paint for her, because she feels like this is a good representation of where she's going with her life (though so far at least, we've been able to keep things to a manageable one cat at a time). And it's...been a bit since she made that request. To the point where she's probably forgotten that she requested it. 

I found the blister pack while tidying and organizing the other week and said to myself, "self, you need to get this painted tout suite." So I got her cleaned up, based, and added two cats (off a sprue of six provided) to the base at her feet. I got her primed on a warm day last week and got to work.

None of the cats were painted to match any current or deceased cat that we've had in our lives; instead, we've got a Russian Blue, a Tuxedo, and an Orange. 

Just gluing her inside an acrylic case to protect her, and she'll be done. I'm going to surprise Gina with this figure as one of her Christmas gifts.

Figures Acquired in 2025: 246

Figures Painted in 2025: 170

Moving Forward on the Maya

I received a package today from Gringo 40s containing a small assortment of their Maya figures - shamans, a chieftain, princess, a few peasants carrying packs of maize and some casualty figures. Ged at Gringo 40s went well above and beyond in my interactions with him - detailed communication throughout (some of the figures I'd ordered had had their mold blow out, necessitating substitutions), a bonus figure as a thank you for ordering, and some hints about a planned expansion to the Gringo40s Mesoamerican line.

Naturally, I couldn't wait to get them on the workbench, cleaned up and glued to bases. The weather should be clear and well above freezing the rest of the week, so priming them is going to be possible. The chieftain, princess, casualties and peasants went on 40mm round bases - to serve as Warlords, Panicked markers and "People" objective tokens under Tribal's rules. The princess, with her extravagant headgear, could easily be either a Warlord or an objective to be rescued, kidnapped, or even sacrificed in game. 

This cleared out the last of my stock of 40mm round bases from Renedra, so I will need more at some point in the not too distant future. 

I also finished some painting for the Maya tonight!

I was anxious to get a good handle on painting Mesoamerican skin tones, so I grabbed the five figures showing the most collective skin from my pile of Lucid Eye "Jaguar Tribes" ersatz Maya. These five absolute madmen, dressed in naught but a cotton belt, are carrying hornets' nests to throw at their enemies. 

While there is some questionable historical support for hornets being weaponized by the Maya in the Popul Vuh, the idea of picking up a hornets' nest, carrying it to the battlefield and throwing it at someone hoping they get stung more than you do seems to originate in the video game "Medieval II: Total War." Still, the legend is good enough to warrant a place on my table. 

I like the way the skin tone came out - over black primer, this is two coats of Reaper "Bronzed Shadow," washed liberally with GW "Reikland Flesh Shade" before getting re-highlighted with more Bronzed Shadow. Hair is Reaper "Coal Black," which has a bit of blue-green to it; I really like it for any sort of organic black like hair, and use it quite a bit for black leather as well. It's a color Reaper only offers in December - I've got about half a bottle left but I'll probably pick some more up next month just to ensure I don't run out! The cotton cloth is base coated in Reaper "Yellowed Bone," washed with GW "Seraphim Sepia" and highlighted along the edges with "Creamy Ivory."

I should probably go in with a micron pigma pen or a fine-tipped brush and apply some tattoos to these guys; I was reminded of the 2006 Mel Gibson movie "Apocalypto" tonight, so I'll probably try to rewatch it soon for inspiration. 

Tomorrow night I should really get my new recruits started for Dracula's America - can't play my next game with unpainted figures! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 246

Figures Painted in 2025: 169

Anniversary Acquisitions

 So because my wife Gina and I dated for so long before getting married, we've opted to celebrate two anniversaries a year - our wedding anniversary, on July 28th, and our dating anniversary, on November 18th. This year marks 15 years since we first met, and we've given each other our gifts early.

We both have hobbies that we've been in for a long time, so to take any guess work out of giving each other hobby supplies we both maintain wishlists that the other can pick from for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc. 

This year, she got me a few Old West releases from Brigade Games - a chuck wagon, and a set of figures including a cook and two cowboys eating dinner. Perfect for recreating *that* iconic scene from Blazing Saddles!

I'll have to sort out a large enough base to put the wagon, mules, cook and dining cowboys on, and maybe a campfire as well. Then figure out how to assemble the wagon! 

She also picked me up a physical copy of "Wars of Insurgency," the modern conflict ruleset from the man, the myth, the legend, Mike Demana over at Lead Legionaries. I've got the PDF already, but I can only grasp a ruleset so much from reading a PDF. I really do need a physical copy in front of me, and Mike is such a great guy that it's a pleasure to support his game design endeavors. I do have most of a 200-point force for Wars of Insurgency already painted, with only maybe 13 figures left to go. Whether that ever sees the tabletop (I'll probably need to paint an opposition force as well for that!) or not remains to be seen. 

2026 Goals #1: 6th Century "Star Wars"

 

That's a heck of a title, isn't it?

Let me explain.

Looking ahead to 2026 and planning my hobby goals, one thing I want to do is a project centered on pre-European Contact Maya culture. This stems from my friend Chris gifting me copies of some Maya miniatures he'd had sculpted and cast, which got me reading about these fascinating people of Central America for the first time since the Mesoamerican history class I took in college almost 20 years ago. 

The figures Chris gave me. They're based and primed now.

In reading "A Forest of Kings," by Linda Schele and David Freidel, I came across the concept of Maya "Star Wars." The Maya of the first millennium CE were every bit as into astronomy/astrology as the Ancient Egyptians, and they had a specific type of warfare in which city-states would attack and even overthrow one another in conjunction with certain appearances of the planet Venus (known as Chak ek', the "Great Star") in the night sky. Linda Schele named these Venus-driven conflicts "Star Wars."

Well who could resist?

To go with these figures from Chris, I've bought about 30 figures from Lucid Eye's "Savage Core" range - their "Jaguar Tribes" figures are passable Maya/generically Mesoamerican - as well as a few Maya character figures from Paymaster Games (with an eye towards getting more) and a few days ago ordered another 10 Maya figures from Gringo 40s. 

I've also bought some terrain: two MDF temples and two pairs of engraved columns from Things From The Basement, and so far two Aztec-style houses and a pair of Olmec heads from Acheson Creations. I even got a Lemax cobblestone-stamped vinyl mat from my local craft store, designed for use with Christmas village displays, to form a city square. There will be more houses, grain storage, etc., ordered from Acheson in the coming months, and probably more columns (and maybe some walls/lookout towers) from Things From The Basement. 

So what's the plan?

I want to put on a game of Maya warfare at the June 2026 Wargames Among the Warplanes show that's able to seat four players, in which one side (ideally, two players each taking one "wing" of an invading army) attacks a Maya city-state being defended by the other side (again, ideally two players each taking one "wing" of a defending army). Each army has specific goals (capture slaves/sacrifices, loot a treasury, protect the King's daughter, etc) so that victory isn't simply a matter of "we move all armies to the middle of the table and roll dice until one side's all dead."

Ruleset: Right now I'm looking at Mana Press' "Tribal, 2nd Edition" rules for this. Each warband will be about 16-18 figures (three units of five, a warlord, and a hero, maybe two heroes), which feels very doable painting-wise. And it's a ruleset that's already designed to handle ceremonial warfare among pre-gunpowder peoples, where how much Honor (or, since the game is written by non-Americans, Honour) one gains and loses is as important if not more so than actual victory in the field. 

I haven't played Tribal, but I've got 7 months to practice and get enough of a handle on it to confidently teach the game at an event. I think Chris has played it so maybe I can talk him into giving me a hand. 

The figures I have right now are enough to yield two warbands. So I'm already off to a great start in terms of purchasing, I just have to start slinging paint at them. I've got four figures I need to paint for my Dracula's America posse ahead of them, but once those are taken care of I plan to jump on painting my Maya. The sooner they're painted the sooner they're on the gaming table. 

I might grab another eight or nine packs of Lucid Eye Jaguar Tribes to make up the second two warbands, or I might order a bunch of Maya from Gringo 40s; the only thing I'm maybe worried about there is I've heard their alloy is softer, so spears and atlatls tend to be on the bendy side. Ged at Gringo 40s has also let me know in the email exchange following my order that he's planning on expanding their Mesoamerican offerings in the coming year. So either way I'm anticipating another Gringo 40s order or two or three in the coming months. 

As mentioned above, I've made a start on terrain collecting. For a lot of my terrain I'm taking beaucoup inspiration from Mark Morin's 2022 Mesoamerican project; reading his blog posts reminded me of Acheson's offerings (which fortuitously came back into production exactly when I started considering this project). Things From The Basement also ran a 20% off sale on their Mesoamerican-inspired "Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago" line of buildings a few months ago, allowing me to get both temples and a pair of column sets at a discount. 

I'm still so damn proud of how these turned out.

I also have my jungle terrain that I scratchbuilt; it surprisingly does not provide that much coverage on a 3x3 table, much less the 4x4 I'd want to use for an event game. So producing more bases of jungle terrain will be a necessity; fortunately, they're pretty fast and easy to make all things considered! Maybe do another 20 terrain bases? 

I've got a pair of Olmec stone heads from Acheson, one intact and one ruined; I'll incorporate these into terrain bases for variety and because the Maya were aware of the Olmec people and saw them as their ancestors, so having Olmec ruins on the table is not anachronistic or anything like that. Less anachronistic than having "Aztec" branded architecture, though from what I've seen in my readings so far there was probably a lot of overlap between cultures in that regard. I'm not expecting any tenured Maya studies scholars showing up at my wargaming table! 

So let's start breaking this down into steps:

1. Paint 34 figures that I already have cleaned, based and primed.
2. Begin practicing Tribal, using the solo rules provided in the rulebook and Chris' help if he's amenable.
3. Buy and paint an additional 34 figures (plus additional figures for objective markers).
4. Assemble and paint the terrain I already have.
5. DETERMINE HOW MANY MORE BUILDINGS I WANT TO HAVE ON THE TABLE. This is a project I can easily see growing dangerously, to the point where I end up with a village filling half the table and that's probably not necessary. I just need to evoke the feel of a Maya city on the tabletop, not build an accurate recreation. My love of cluttered urban table setups does not need to come into play here! It helps that the Maya didn't have wheeled vehicles or carts, domesticated animals, crates, barrels, garbage cans or any of my usual street scatter. 
6. Buy, assemble and paint the remaining buildings I want/need.
7. Produce another 20 bases of jungle terrain. 
8. Make sure I can pack it all securely and ensure it fits in my car. Another vitally important step in the process! 

This feels like a big project but one that breaks down into manageable chunks; one eats an elephant a bite at a time, and I feel like this divides neatly into phases or sub-projects that I can hopefully rotate between to keep things feeling fresh. Having an outlined plan will also hopefully help me stay motivated and moving forward. 

I do also want to make sure I'm allowing myself grace to paint other things along the way; if I need to paint new posse members for Dracula's America, or if I want to paint aliens for Majestic 13, I should feel free to do so and not let my anxiety convince me that I'm meaningfully taking away from the larger Maya project by doing so. 

I think that sums up the project outline, at least for now. As we wargamers know all too well, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so we'll see what needs to change as I work my way through it. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 244

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

How Have I Done? A Look Back At My 2025 Goals

 Last year, I wrote a blog post laying out 2025 goals for myself for the hobby - "an actionable plan for responsible hobbying," I called it. And while it's not been quite a year since writing that, I think it's a good time to look back over what I've accomplished towards that set of goals. Also, I've wrenched my knee good and hard and hobbling downstairs to my work bench is more hassle than I'm eager to engage in right now. 

I set three goals for myself:

• Focus my efforts on one era and locale - modern urban skirmishes.
• Play at least two games a month, solo or otherwise.
• Paint more figures than I buy. 

So how'd I do?

1) Focus my efforts on one era and locale: I did really well with this for the first six months of the year. And I think part of that came down to me having a specific goal I was painting towards - the Spring Wargames Among the Warplanes show, where I put on a modern urban skirmish using Fistful of Lead. After that is where I started to drift and flail about, picking up new games, new eras (ECW with Devilry Afoot, Mayans, Modern Africa, Dracula's America) and falling off the wagon of discipline. I had initially intended to demo Devilry Afoot at the fall Wargames Among the Warplanes, but I didn't feel confident enough in my grasp of the game, and defaulted back to a modern urban skirmish using Perilous Tales. 

2) Play at least two games a month: This one I aced, because if I did have a month where I only played one game, I made up for it with three games the next month. And I don't see myself falling off the wagon with this one in the last month and a half of 2025. No notes, I'm great at this.

3) Paint more figures than I buy: So as of right now I'm 80 figures in the red. And a lot of that is directly attributable to the post-June flailing I mentioned in point 1 above; picking up new eras meant picking up new figures. Some of these purchases are more forgivable than others, in my eyes. Getting invited to join a group of guys playing Dracula's America and consequently buying 15 or so Wild West figures and getting half of them painted up to start playing with immediately is one thing; adding 20-30 figures to my "Back of Beyond" leadpile because I'm interested in the period and I've got a pipe dream of running a game (that I would have to paint 2-4 separate armies for!) at an event with them is something different. 

So what can I learn from all this?

I think going forward I want to set some more specific goals for myself, in the form of "I am painting these figures because I want to play X game with them on Y date." Having Wargames Among the Warplanes in June kept me pretty well focused from January on, with a few small side forays along the way. 

I also think I've done pretty well overall with not impulse buying (at least not too severely). Any time I made a purchase it was "I have a project in mind for this," even if that project (*cough* Back of Beyond *cough*) was a bit nebulous. Dracula's America is where I've done the best at that - I bought my initial posse, and only ordered 7 additional figures, of which only one was really an "impulse" figure (I couldn't resist throwing a Rooster Cogburn-lookalike into an order from Brigade Games!). Again, I think the more tightly focused and detailed my gaming plan is, the better I do with the shopping aspect of things. 

For 2026, I am looking at running games at both the spring and fall Wargames Among the Warplanes again, so maybe this means I set a "first six months" goal of prepping for the spring show, then a "next three months" goal of prepping for the fall show, and then after September I begin planning for 2027. I am thinking about attending "Fall-In!" convention in Pennsylvania next November (I've got a couple people tugging on my sleeve to attend, and the pictures on Facebook were enticing to say the least) if I can swing it financially; our driveway really needs to be redone and that is going to be a hefty chunk of cash. 

It's all going to take more thought; I'll get a blog post up in the coming weeks outlining specific hobby goals for 2026. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 244

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Nickel City Smoke Shop (As Finished As It's Gonna Get in 2025!)

 Last night it began to snow here in Buffalo, NY. And it's been snowing all day today so far. Which means my window for priming and varnishing outdoors has closed until next spring.

The view from my WFH desk today.

Which means I can't get a coat of spray varnish on to the Nickel City Smoke Shop, and consequently can't glue the window panes into place (since I need to varnish first so the glass doesn't "frost"). It also means any furniture I order for this building likely won't get primed and painted until spring. 

So that means that, with the signs, posters and ads I glued on over the weekend, the Nickel City Smoke Shop is as done as it's going to get this year.

I'm really proud of the sign over the window. I eyeballed sizing on the sign itself when I was making it in MSPaint, cut it out and put it up against a 20x40mm base I'd sprayed black - and barely had to do any trimming to make it fit right. 

"Anaconda Malt Liquor" is a reference to the 2009 Blaxploitation spoof "Black Dynamite," in which the drink is a major plot point. I won't spoil it, but the scene of Black Dynamite and his companions decoding the hidden message in the label is a side-splitter. 

While doing Google Image Searches for posters and ideas for signs and, admittedly, with an eye towards emphasizing a run-down seediness to the terrain, I stumbled across an ad that ran on Facebook for a strip club in California offering "Welfare Wednesdays," offering discounts to patrons who could show proof they were receiving government assistance. It was so low-brow, so tacky, I immediately saved the picture to my terrain folder.  

And on the inside of the Smoke Shop, posters for "Up in Smoke" and "Nice Dreams" from Cheech and Chong.

I do still need to figure out something to put over the pegs from the awning that stick out on the inside. 

WIP: Nickel City Smoke Shop and Community Center

With the weather getting colder, I jumped back into an MDF kit I started a few weeks back - cold and wet means no taking stuff outside to prime or varnish! This is a two story "Mean Streets" brownstone from Atomic Laser Cut Designs, the manufacturer of many of my recent modern buildings. In fact, I think ALL of the MDF buildings I've built in 2025 have been ALCD kits - the pawn shop, ramen restaurant and Off-Track Betting buildings I've built have all been Atomic Laser Cut Designs kits. This is my first two-story building, the beginnings of an effort to add more verticality to my modern terrain layouts. 

There's a street about five minutes from my house, Webster Street, which is all older two and three story buildings with a shop at ground level and apartments above, all looking very much like this kit. So Webster Street is going to be my point of reference in collecting a few more of these taller buildings from Atomic Laser Cut Designs. Incidentally, while we're still very much a Rust Belt town, Webster Street has gotten significant sprucing up in recent years thanks to efforts from our phenomenal mayor and is now a great place to go and eat or shop; my models might end up a bit more of a blend of Webster Street of today and 10-15 years ago. 

I still need to hit my local Office Max and do some color printing for signs, bill boards and interior art, but otherwise the building itself is pretty much complete. Gluing acetate into the windows will probably have to wait until spring, because I'm not sure the weather will cooperate for spray varnishing the building, and I'd like to do that before I glue the windows in so the "glass" doesn't frost. 

There's graffiti decals from both Green Stuff World and Dave's Decals on the walls, most notably the XL "pinup" graffiti next to the back door. I threw a sheet of these supersized decals in an order with Dave a while back on a whim, and this is the first one I've used; I'll leave it to the viewer to guess if the full word behind her is "SWANK" or "SPANK"! Hopefully not "STANK"...

Part of why I chose to use the XL decal is because I decided to make the ground floor shop a cannabis dispensary/head shop. A lot of these have cropped up around here since New York State legalized marijuana, ranging from high end dispensaries that look like Apple stores to grubby spots that look like they should have Cheech & Chong versions of the venerable cigar store Indian out front. There's one right on Webster Street that has a huge, lavish mural covering one side of the building done in the style of an EC Comics' scifi cover from the 1950s, so I knew I wanted some more color for mine. A detailed graffiti mural centered around a buxom blonde pinup felt right for my seedier, more run-down tabletop town. 

While my terrain is fairly generic as to location (other than America's Rust Belt), this one actually will have a reference to location; Buffalo, NY is nicknamed the "Nickel City" due to the American Bison (also called a Buffalo) on the back of the old "Indian Head" nickel, and the sign I've made for over the front window identifies the dispensary as "Nickel City Smoke Shop."

The most challenging part of the build was actually the awning over the front door - It hooks into the wall instead of just slotting in, so I had to spray each piece individually with beige spray paint and then assemble it in the wall - slotting the sides in, letting the glue dry, then fitting the top and front pieces in. 

Inside, each level has a paper floor pattern from Sarissa Precision glued down into place:

The black and white tile floor is, for me at least, a bit dizzying to look at for too long - which might be either great or terrible for a shop catering to stoners! As far as interior furnishings go, I'm thinking about grabbing the "Spice Shop Interior" from Miniature Building Authority and repurposing it. I scaled down some Cheech & Chong movie posters and some counter-culture art from the 1960s and 70s - the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Mr. Natural, etc. - to decorate the walls with as well. 

The second story, with the wooden floor, is going to be a community center of sorts, an open space for people to congregate with like-minded sorts. Of course, I love hiding things in my builds that reward taking the time to look at them, so it's probably not going to be quite so straight forward as that! I won't say any more until I can show off the completed, furnished room. 

I am debating what to do with the roof; it's a lot of wide open space. I could put a 3D printed air conditioning unit up there, maybe some teeny tiny little pigeons; I have some picnic-themed bits from a Mantic Terrain Crate box, maybe someone got up there for a private party. Just something to break up the expanse of gray and add some visual interest while keeping it largely playable. 

I did do some test-fitting on an Atomic Laser Cut Designs billboard set and placed it on the roof to see how it would look; once completed it'd be something I'd keep separate so I could place it on different roofs or next to roads to maximize it's usefulness on the table.

And the only other big thing to do with this kit is going to be some advertising posted on the side walls of the second floor. A big "Camel Cigarettes" ad or maybe a billboard for a local restaurant kind of deal. Otherwise, the walls are a bit bland! I thought about some "Ghost Ads" decals from Dave's Decals, with the faded remnants of decades-old ads still lingering on the walls; I absolutely see some of those walking down Webster Street! I'm iffy though because the decals tend to have the brick pattern printed on them which won't match up with the incised brick patterning on the MDF. It might look fine, it might not. 

With the OTB next door for height comparison.

I'll probably head to Office Max tomorrow morning to do my printing, so I can finish pasting things on to this building in the afternoon. I've also got my internal furnishings for the Off-Track Betting finally primed so I can start painting those and gluing them into the building as well. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 234

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Support Indie Miniature Companies!

 I impulse bought some miniatures yesterday. I've had my eye on some of Mortal Arrow's supersized arachnids for a while now, but there was a stretch where they were just out of stock. I saw on Facebook that Mortal Arrow was running a Kickstarter for some new fantasy monsters, and I checked the website...and bought some bugs and fungus.

I've always had a fascination with the natural world, and I'm perfectly comfortable with most invertebrates - spiders, wasps, slugs, scorpions, none of them bother me (Exception: I have a knee-jerk reaction to centipedes where I just get hit with an overwhelming urge to flee from them. I blame it on one falling off my bedroom ceiling onto my face when I was a kid). One of my favorites are a lesser-known family of arachnids known as Tailless or False Whip-Scorpions. Non-venomous and pretty much entirely harmless to humans, these flattened creatures have "arms" similar to a mantis and a pair of limbs lengthened into sensory "whips" that function like antennae. Mortal Arrow first caught my eye because they produce a couple different miniatures of oversized Tailless Whip-Scorpions to menace your D&D players with when giant spiders get boring. A vivid green one is visible on the cover of the classic AD&D module "Queen of the Demonweb Pits," so they certainly have a respectable pedigree in that regard! 

Naturally, I ordered a pair of them, along with a "Corrupted Myconid Rasper" - a fungal centipede monster with a marvelously dour and alien face, which I'm eager to put into my games of Majestic 13 as an extraterrestrial threat. 

Well, it turns out Mortal Arrow is pretty much local to me, because the miniatures arrived today, about 35 hours after I placed the order. This must be how wargamers around Nottingham feel. 

Mike at Mortal Arrow was generous enough to throw in a resin 60mm base crusted with sculpted mushrooms and a nice note. And this right here is why I'm so fantastically loyal to indie miniatures companies. I don't buy from Games Workshop, and if I did, I wouldn't get extras and a nice note. But when I buy from someone working out of their garage or basement - someone like Mortal Arrow, or Forge of Ice, Crocodile Games, Wargames Foundry (on the bigger end of things for me but still fundamentally a family business), Bad Squiddo, Brigade Games - I know I matter as a customer, that my purchase makes a difference to them. There's no shareholders, no payola to influencers on social media to keep them shilling product, just one, two or maybe at most five or six people who are passionate about the hobby and eager to share that passion. 

The figures I got from Mortal Arrow are all beautifully crisp casts with minimal clean-up necessary; it'll probably be ten minutes total with an X-acto and file for all three figures, at most. The assembly for each figure is straightforward, with well defined pegs and sockets to guide placement of pieces. The Rasper in particular is really well designed in how the pieces fit together; I was able to put the pieces together on my desk and the pegs and gravity held everything together. When I'm ready to go in with file and glue, it's going to be a snap to complete. And that's something I think deserves to be shouted out because not every company, big or small, does the same (I'm having flashbacks to gluing hands to wrists on too many figures over the years as I type that!)

Mortal Arrow is running a Kickstarter currently as previously mentioned, for those interested in such things, all themed around brain monsters - drawing inspiration from the Elder Brains, Mind Flayers and Intellect Devourers of D&D, but also spinning off in several new and exciting directions from that wellspring.

I've placed a small pledge which may get enlarged in the pledge manager when the time comes. I definitely want the "Intellect Constrictor" giant brain snake, but the flying brain octopus also tickles the Basil Wolverton comic fan in me. 

On the topic of Kickstarters, my friend Joshua Slater is also running one at the moment, for a small set of Paul Muller-sculpted grotesqueries themed around the idea of "twins." I've backed this as well; Josh is one of the nicest and most generous people I've met in this hobby, and that's saying something given how eager so many hobbyists I've met are to help each other succeed with their projects. I have a (woefully half-painted) regiment of mid-90s Orcs, half of which Josh surprised me with just because he found them in his stash and thought of me. I've made a modest pledge to this one as well that again, may expand in the pledge manager. That two-faced creature with the tail is the sort of thing that I'll find plenty of uses for in my games. 

So yeah, I expect I'm preaching to the choir to some degree here on my blog, but support small companies and passionate hobbyists working to bring their vision to life in resin and metal for the world to see. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 234

Figures Painted in 2025: 164