Temple Complete!

 There's still varnishing left to be done (pending a low humidity day!) but I'm happy to report that I've finished the Temple kit from Things From The Basement. In truth, I got it to a basically playable state on Saturday - over the course of about 10 hours I got everything piece spray painted with its base colors and assembled, including coating the base with homemade texture paint (eyeballed mixture of PVA glue, paint and sand), plus outlining a path with some gravel, and priming, base coating and drybrushing it. Once the drybrushing was finished on the base, I could glue the Temple down, paint the rocks, and apply fine model railroad ballast between the two lines of rocks to create a gravel pathway. 

 The slow part was flocking the base! First (once the gravel was totally dry and had had PVA layered over top to seal it), I applied some patches of Woodland Scenics green "blended turf" fine flock, as well as some small bushes on either side of the stairs. I let that dry for probably about 12 hours. Once totally dry, I went over the flock and bushes with thinned-down PVA to seal it in, and let that dry for 24 hours. 

 Once totally dry, I applied some tufts in a couple dry, brown and pale green colors. I like the way these stick out above the snow, and also applying just a tiny bit of PVA to the tips of the strands so glue adheres to them looks really good to me. 

With the tufts set in place, I splodged on some irregular patches of PVA, making sure not to completely cover any of the green patches, and applied Army Painter snow. 

 Thinking about what a pain in the ass it is to completely clear snow off my own porch, I added some snow to the rear corners around the railings. I think it's a good touch. 

Part of me wants to add some icicles to the roof, but those are in danger of breaking when I take the roof off to play inside; maybe attach them to the overhang of the porch? Something to think about. 

 Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out and look forward to seeing it on the gaming table. 

In other hobby news...

I was finally able to pick up the bags of Wargames Factory zombies from my friend Dave. It's actually less than I'd been expected; there were a bunch of old Bolt Action Wehrmacht sprues mixed in and some of the Zombie Vixens are really worse for wear. I did assemble and prime a dozen male zombies, so I can start painting those tomorrow. As such, I'm only going to add 12 to my "Miniatures Acquired" tally for now.

 

Miniatures Acquired: 204

Miniatures Painted: 198

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 9

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 12

 

Lion Clan Samurai and the Start of a Temple

 One of my local gaming stores has quite a bit of old stock left over from a previous owner; some of the Reaper miniatures and paints on the rack are very old, some of the paint colors having been retired more than a decade ago. The current owners have some of them marked down to get them cleared out, and I grabbed probably 8 or so blister packs of "Clan Wars" miniatures from the period circa 2003 when Reaper Miniatures had the license. 

"Clan Wars" was a rank and flank miniatures game of fantasy samurai, set in the world of Rokugan, made popular by the "Legend of the Five Rings" collectible card game, roleplaying game and associated novels. The Reaper figures in 2003 were my first introduction to the setting, though I never had any at the time. I fumbled through playing the card game a bit in college and have enjoyed some of the novels, though I still haven't made my way into playing any edition of the RPG. 

Here are the first couple I've painted. On the left, with the two swords, is "Lion's Pride female samurai" while on the right with the naginata is "Lion Clan Heavy Elite Infantry." Both members of Rokugan's Lion Clan, the most militant and valor-minded of the seven clans. The middle figure is an unaligned "Samurai with Polearm" but painted in Lion colors.

 I've also begun work on the last piece of samurai terrain I currently have, the Temple kit from Things From the Basement. I've got it built up into sub-assemblies for spray painting, hopefully tomorrow. I also opened up a pack of 12" MDF squares I'd bought a while back with an eye towards seeing if I could cut a base for the temple. 

Well, when I opened it up, I discovered that it's not MDF like I'm used to, these squares are more like really dense, 1/8th inch thick cardboard. I marked out the size of the base I wanted with a pencil and used a saw to cut it, though next time I might be able to just score my way through it with a box cutter. Then I used a file to chamfer the edges. It's not a perfect rectangle but it's good enough for my purposes and I'm pleased that I put the work into it myself.

 The second pictures gives you a bit of an idea of what it's going to look like, minus the roof tiles, railings and the timber frames on the building. I think I might make a gravel path leading up to the front steps, plus add some bushes and the like during the flocking process. 

In other news, I still haven't been able to pick up the Wargames Factory zombies my friend Dave found in his pile of shame and set aside for me - he got a case of Con Crud from going to Gen-Con, and so the usual Monday night get togethers he usually hosts have been on hold. I'm hoping for this coming Monday - I'd like to be able to get some assembled and painted in time for Wargames Among the Warplanes! 

I did add some more figures to the leadpile, but I'm still in the green - some figures I'd ordered a while ago from Heresy Miniatures finally arrived, along with a Reaper "Bones USA" ogre mage I intend to paint up as a second oni for more fantastical samurai gaming. 

I've also placed a small order for some Japanese terrain from Oshiro Models. I've decided I'm going to go with James' resin-cast pieces for as much as I can going forward - it's a bit pricier but I think it's worthwhile. 

 

So let's get the tracker updated:

 

Miniatures Acquired: 191

Miniatures Painted: 198

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 8

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 12

 

Starting the Samurai Terrain Collection

 If I'm going to play games set in Feudal Japan, I should have some terrain that looks the part. Six or eight months ago I bought a few MDF kits from Things From The Basement here in the US, and today I've got two of them - if not "finished," at least in playable shape.

 

 

First up, a truly towering torii gate; these gates are placed at the entrance of Shinto (and some Buddhist) shrines to mark where the mundane world and the sacred space of the shrine meet. This one's a full 6" tall.

Next to it is a kit that Things From The Basement lists as "Prayer Wheels" and while prayer wheels are a thing that exists in Japanese Buddhism, they don't really look like this. This arrangement looks more akin to how offerings of sake are placed at Shinto sites as an offering to the spirits, or kami.  

The red was all done with spray paint, while the bases were sprayed black and sponged with browns and grays for stone work. The roof tiles are corrugated paper painted black and drybrushed with gray. 

Nothing fancy, but off to a good start! My initial plan with these was to incorporate them, along with a temple kit, into a single 12" square terrain tile, maybe with some trees, but I think this particular torii is simply too big - it towers almost 2 full inches over the roof of the temple!  So let's treat these as scatter instead. 

 

Miniatures Acquired: 186

Miniatures Painted: 195

Terrain Acquired: 2

Terrain Painted: 8

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 12

The Hounds of...Maybe Not War, Exactly, But...

 Two more figures off the workbench - a pair of Pugs from Dunkeldorf, sculpted by the Pugmeister himself, Jason Wiebe. These were fast, easy and amusing to paint. I could see using these in a scenario where a VIP must not only be protected/captured, but their precious dogs as well. Having these move randomly across the board with player characters in pursuit...sounds like fun to me. 

 I've got a baker's dozen of other figures - samurai, bandits, the oni - moving along towards completion, slowly but surely. I'm only getting about an hour's time per night to work and I'm at the stage where I'm doing more of the detail work versus broad brush strokes. 

I've also had some terrain come in to work on: Three sets of Feudal Japanese terrain from Things From The Basement here in the USA, which will be combined into a single terrain tile. I've got a Buddhist temple, a Torii gate, and a set of prayer wheels that will all be attached to a 12" square MDF tile that will be textured and painted and flocked and probably have a copse of trees as well.

 

 Base colors for these will all be laid down with spray paint on sub-assemblies before weathering, and it should go pretty quickly and look decent on the table. I've never done a terrain tile before, always just had loose buildings so I can arrange them as I please. But I think it makes sense to combine these into one tile, since they'll always been fielded as a group on the tabletop. And since they're going to be combined, I'm treating them as a single terrain piece for the purposes of my tracker (already counted below).

 

 

Miniatures Acquired: 135

Miniatures Painted: 98

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Hot Dog!

 A little bit of terrain today - not totally done, but as done as it's going to get until the guy I get 3D printed stuff from comes home from vacation. 

This is a "Whataburger" stand from Things From The Basement, part of their new "Americana" range of 20th century American buildings. It's a beautifully engineered kit, everything fit perfectly with minimal sanding, and frankly it's got the best door hinge I've yet encountered on any MDF kit. Joerg at TFTB really designs wonderful kits. 

I went with a dark brown exterior with red trim, based on the aesthetic of a hot dog place I worked at when I was 17-18 years old. We've got a local chain and I still go in pretty regularly for a dog and a milkshake. The sign over the front window is one that Joerg provided for the kit. 

On the inside, I glued down some printed paper with a tile floor design I got from Sarissa Precision.

I printed handwashing and exit signs and glued those to the wall, and painted a 3D printed fire extinguisher I had left over from another kit before gluing it to the wall. 

The windows are plastic acetate sheet, cut to fit and glued to the walls with PVA glue prior to varnishing. The varnish gives it a cloudy, dirty look, which helps show off that I cut it to leave the window people would pay and receive their food through open. 

The kit does come with two picnic tables, which I have yet to paint.

Once Dave gets back from vacation, I've got STLs of a grill, fryer, industrial refrigerator and outdoor trash can to print. I think that'll give me the perfect balance between a detailed and a playable interior. 

And that gives me another piece of terrain for the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 52

Miniatures Painted: 74

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

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

More Modern Terrain and Some Early Modern Monsters

 I made my way to the print shop tonight after work, and printed our some floors and a sheet of posters I'd made by resizing images off the web, which means this weekend I can make some serious progress on terrain. To begin with, tonight I finished off a piece that's been sitting *mostly* done for a few weeks.

This is a construction office made from a shipping container, produced by Things From The Basement, who I highly recommend checking out if you're in the United States. This is my first kit from them, though I have my eyes on a few more; they use a thinner sheet of MDF than I'm used to from companies like Sarissa or Atomic Laser Cut Designs, but everything was really cleanly cut and fit beautifully. Each side of the shipping container is built up in layers to allow more depth to the detailing. 

I sprayed everything but the roof with "Sahara Beige" from Montana Gold spray paints, and did the roof in a flat red paint and primer combo I got at the hardware store. The door was picked out in "Deep Red" from Reaper Miniatures' paint line; I'm not sure why it cracked like that but I think it ended up looking good. 

I tried using some Green Stuff World weathering pigments my wife got me as a gift along the bottom of the container, but it just went on like paint and didn't dry to the texture the packaging promised. I tried to salvage it with a heavy drybrushing of tan craft paint, which I think will remain my default method of weathering model buildings.

Inside, I've glued a table stacked with cash and a money-counting machine that I got from Miniature Building Authority; could it be that there's something illicit going on in here? Money laundering? Drug dealing? Or is this just the payroll office for a junkyard or chop shop? I'm really pleased with how perfectly the table fit. 

Finally, I added a pinup of Tanya Roberts from her time on the TV show Charlie's Angels; I like having my "Modern" games seem to be a blend of everything over the past 40-odd years, with smart phones, CRT TVs, classic TV shows and the like all appearing side by side. I'm planning to put some old "Joe Camel" cigarette ads on some model billboards in the not too distant future. 

In other news...

I'll be returning to Wargames Among the Warplanes for their fall show next month, bringing Devilry Afoot with me; I've planned my gaming around having to paint as few figures between now and the day of the event as possible. I've finished off the last couple figures I wanted to use as monsters in games on that day.

On the left is a Black Dog/Hellhound/Dire Wolf type, intended as Dracula's wolf form, from Crooked Dice's relatively recently released Dracula set of figures, and accompanying it are a pair of animated scarecrows from Crooked Dice's Folk Horror line. These will be appearing as a Barghest and a pair of Bogeymen in the games I'll be running in about 4 weeks' time. All that's left to do for these three is a good coat of varnish, and all that's left to paint for Wargames Among the Warplanes are a pair of Innocents for the Bogeymen to menace. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 127

Figures Painted in 2025: 127

Street Scatter - Car Accident

 Nothing too special today, readers, but I did finish a bit of Mantic "Street Scatter" I'd picked up at my local game store a few weeks ago. Realizing how well the crashed car and truck fit into each other, I made up my mind to put them on a base together; a quick purchase for irregular terrain bases from Things From The Basement later, I had my base. I coated it in fine model railroad flock and primed over it to give myself a rough texture to paint.

Except it wasn't that easy! Once primed, I discovered I needed to flood the coated base again with thinned PVA to try and prevent the flocking from coming up with each brush stroke. Then I hit it with a heavy coat of spray varnish, then spray primed it again. Now I had a solid surface to paint over! 

I did a couple of passes with drybrushing a medium gray craft paint until I had the cement tone I wanted, and then gave it a very light drybrush of a lighter gray. 

Each vehicle was primed black and given four or five coats of TurboDork metallic - specifically "Redrum" for the car and "Multipass" for the truck - and then details picked out. Windows were just repainted flat black. 

Overall I'm happy with how it turned out; it's not going to pass close scrutiny but it's good enough for the terrain collection. I think it'll be a nice playable piece too; plenty of space for figures to duck behind cars or even stand up in the bed of the pickup. 

I have one more of each of these cars primed and awaiting attention, though they might be left separate or even unbased for more flexibility. Alternatively, they might get incorporated into a permanent "junkyard" piece of terrain...decisions decisions...

Figures Purchased in 2025: 66

Figures Painted in 2025: 85

New Acquisitions

 A couple more odds and ends have arrived at Casa de Adcock over the past few days.

Miniature Building Authority had a spring sale going, so I ordered some more scatter bits, including a pair of end-pieces for oil-drum-and-tire barricade walls, of which I've got a few painted up already. I'm waiting for their wall pieces to come back in stock so I can buy more - I'd like to ultimately be able to enclose a building or two in barricade "fences" if I can.

I also placed an order with Things From The Basement - I needed a couple large, irregular terrain bases, as well as some large MDF rounds that will be turned into markers for smoke grenades. These A) aren't very exciting to look at, and B) aren't enough to justify the shipping costs, so a set of brick stacks and a shipping container-turned-office slipped into my cart. 

I think the shipping container office I want to eventually incorporate into a larger build - I'm envisioning a fenced-in junkyard or mechanic's yard, maybe with a garage, with the shipping container as the yard's "business office." Something a bit shady and sketchy, like they're dealing in stolen cars or something like that. I think that would be a fun project to add to my terrain collection. Things From The Basement has a garage kit in their "Industrial" line that might be perfect - something to think about for my next purchase. 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 58

Figures Painted in 2025: 75