buglips*the*goblin

I forgot to mention that there is at least one case of monster substitution. I have Reaper's very excellent Mountain Troll: https://www.reapermini.com/search/troll/latest/02877 And I already have the normal regenerating trolls slot filled with two of these guys: https://www.reapermini.com/search/troll/latest/02609 And since the illustration of the Mountain Giant isn't far off that of a Hill Giant, I decided to simply make the Mountain Troll be the mini for the Mountain Giant to allow me to add the MT to the shelf. In many cases (Xaren, for example) where different monster entries are visually similar, the same mini can just stand in for both cases. My Reaper Hill Giant would have done it for the Mountain Giant if I didn;t have the Mountain Troll to swap in instead.

Oh, it was never my intention to match the illustration, only the type. I have no pig-faced orcs, just Reaper Garrity/Olley ones. In fact most of the figures are Reaper, at least 70% of them. I'm not picky enough about orcs for them to be the pig-faced ones, only that they be orcs and look aesthetic. If I were that picky, I'd just load up on Otherworld minis since those are based off the original illustrations. Types I didn't have any examples of are things like when I went through making the list, I had not a single troglodyte. Or if I didn't have any stirges. No examples of the monster type at all. Now for certain creatures I will go out of my way to source certain examples. I would not personally care for the PFO, nor the Otherworld hobgoblins, so I chose different orcs and hobgoblins (both Reaper). But I don't like Reaper's owlbears (any of them), or the otyugh, so those I would source as Otherworld or Partha. Same with the bulette. I'm most particular about my Xorn. I have some Nolzur's that might do in a pinch, I don't like the Partha one based on the Tony D art and it's a bloody fortune anyway, but the Otherworld one is primo - so eventually I'll have to get four of those. But Reaper makes lots of good demons/devils - the most splendid Erinyes ever cast, IMO. I have a multitude of Jalinrix, and would happily buy another dozen.

That's an effective way to do it. My gaming groups from 1989-2015 almost never used modules, but from what I've read in them the encounters generally divide monsters into relatively small groups. So a group of 3 bugbears here, or a single ogre there. This breaks the job down into reasonable chunks. The thing that I'm doing would also dovetail neatly into using the rendom dungeon generator from the 1e monster manual, the monsters appearing there also generally being small groups. Where I'd run into difficulty would be in cases where a unique high-level creature would also possess a horde of minions (or be able to summon them). The only substantial part of the terraclips to survive where the floor plates, and there are a lot of them in assorted shapes. Using the generative dungeon rules with slight modification, I could simply generate and populate a random dungeon. This is the basis for my thinking along the lines of a "sort of heroquest" kind of boardgame. Outside of the sample adventuring party, I'm leaving all character types and other neat oddities until the main project is done. Doing the main project is not only a goal in itself, but once done then I'm free to paint whatever with no "I gotta do X" pressure. I have a large assortment of neat things. I may also choose to embark on a second large project (though not nearly as large as the monster manual project) and paint all of my Ral Partha. There's still a lot of them, but not nearly as many. I'm not sure most people realize the scale of monster assortment, it's a ridiculous amount of types. Even with these reduced numbers I'm working on it's hundreds of them. Most of what I purged were redundant excess numbers, neat minis outside the realm of practical use (mainly chronoscope), or freebies. I accumulated most of those on the basis that all minis are good minis, but there was never going to be a circumstance where I needed to keep 40 copies of the 25th Anniversary Reaper Wizard. In fact, unless something interesting pops up that I have a need to test (the siocast figures, the 3D printed orc freebie) I uncheck all of the free figures now when I make an order. I will probably also have additional purges down the line, the first purge was just everything I could be absolutely certain of (like 39 identical wizards). Given that I had so many figures, I was actually surprised at how many things I didn't have any examples of at all. So while on the one hand I was purging a bunch, I also had to buy more. This is a peculiar hobby like that. But if my calculations are right, I think about 18 more SKUs will finish it off. Also, I should note that monsters that do not have a level rating because their level is "variable" - such as drow, or githyanki, I have assigned as "Level V". My reasoning is that in most cases you don't run into them before then, and as it is the middle between I and X it seems a fair place to stick them in where they would first appear. There are a small number of monsters that do not appear on the level list, but anything not in MMI has a level assigned I can look up (Aaracockra are not on the list, but are level II in the entry from the FF) and if I run into any from MMI not on the list there's a handy calculator to work it out based on their XP.

Vallejo Green Grey, which is rather more grey than green. That sounds like a worthy endeavour for a project. I wound up doing it this way because I realized I already had 90%+ of the figures and what I didn't have I wanted but hadn't got around to getting yet. Leading up to 2018 I had decided to just start grinding out minis from the mountain of metal and got just over 300 done when the fire disrupted it all and basically reset to zero. Demoralized from that, I instead went and made a pile of stuff for Bolt Action. Eventually I had to make a decision about metal mountain. By that point I hadn't played D&D for 10 years and I'm not likely to ever do so again, so the game was no longer part of the equation. But that had also been the original purpose. So my first step was to sort through all of them and weed out absolutely everything I was sure I would never get to. This purged out some 1200+ figures, and still left boxes and boxes and boxes. So then the decision was basically: find a reason to paint em, or find a reason to give em away. I figured if I could organize them into some sort of purpose worth doing, I'd start in and decide on the remainder later. Once I realized MM2 basically had every monster listed by level, I only had a few monsters not in 1st Edition I could skip until later, that this made a useful categorization, and that I had exactly 6 kobolds, 6 goblins, and 6 fire beetles that had survived the fire - well, I could cap smalls at 6 and not have to buy anymore. Then I decided to size cap the others to save on large numbers of big figs. And also extra work, since I didn't have to paint for game use anymore. All of this worked out quite neatly so I started in a few weeks back and I've been very satisfied. I am also doing a sample adventuring party consisting of Male Human Fighter, Female Human Cleric, Female Human Wizard, Male Elf F/M/T, Male Dwarf Fighter/Thief, and Female Halfling Fighter/Thief. These are all Parthas, and they also happen to be the party composition i had when I played through the Gold Box games. At any rate, there are enough monsters in this project and enough scattered bits of terraclips made it, that with the sample adventurers I will at least at the end of all this have all the fixins for a real ripping Heroquest-type game.

No, not quite. It's like a more refined version of that with an emphasis on vibrancy. It's definitely an old-school way of painting, very 90's, and I'm taking many shortcuts where I can. Like with straps or small bits I just paint them a solid colour and rely on the blacklining to give it depth. Where possible, as in the paintjob mostly survived the trauma of the house fire and water damage, I just touch it up and send it to the shelf. There are fewer of these than I'd prefer, but every little bit helps. But perhaps worthy of note is that this time all of my goblins are green. This is on account of both the kobolds and the hobgoblins (and of course the fire beetles) coming out very reddish so tangerine orange goblins would look too much the same, but green does the trick nicely. Overall I expect relatively few figures from the entire lot will wind up green. Lizardmen, swamp shamblers, green slime, green dragon, bullywugs, the goblins... not sure what else, but not a lot of green going on across the lot. So all of that makes green for the gobbers a logical choice. If you should happen to be curious what green, it's just Coat d'Arms Goblin Green.

Giant Rats. They were the lowest. I'm using the AD&D 1st Edition Monster Manual, with selections from the Fiend Folio and MM II. This is mostly because they are easily divided by level. This project started as a way to organize my gigantic hoard into an achievable amount in a realistic time, and once the first pass is done then I can go back and add additional numbers, or creatures from later editions, or start in on my gazillion PC types. So the basic organizational plan is to divide by level and size. Size is used as a number cap. Since 1st Edition only goes up to L, I use the 2nd Edition sizes for anything G/H+. So here's how it works: Level I - select monsters Rats, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Fire Beetles, Bullywugs, Skeletons, Zombies Sizes caps: S = 6 M = 4 L = 2 G/H+ = 1 If any monsters have a # appearing of less than this cap, then the cap is whatever that is (an iron cobra, for example, would only appear 1 at a time no matter its size) As there are no Level I L/G/H+ and as all monsters have a base # appearing of more than their size limit, then to complete all my level I monsters I must paint: 6 Giant Rats (done) 6 Kobolds* (done) 6 Goblins* (almost done) 6 Fire Beetles (done) 4 Skeletons (done) 4 Zombies (done) 4 Orcs* (done) 4 Hobgoblins (done) 4 Bullywugs (not yet started) *Where I have leader types available for these, I also do them at the same time. But no tribal sorcerers this pass, since 1st Edition didn't use them in the monster listings. This is a total of ~46 figures Once level I is complete, on to level II. Continue until level X is finished. The two levels with the most figures in them seem to be I and X. X is HUGE, it's basically where everything winds up that didn't appear earlier. Dragons appear at the first level where they are listed as Adult, therafter that model would serve for additional age/size categories. This means that some monsters, like giants, will only get one model each - where hill giants have a range of 1-10. This is acceptable because the purpose is to complete a representative sampling of monsters, where smaller monsters are shown with more and larger monsters fewer. Once this stage is complete, and therefore everyone has at least one figure, additional passes would take less time to complete. I estimate that this first stage can be completed in approximately two years and I don't have a full head count (some creatures I actually have yet to buy) but I estimate between 500-600 monsters. So that's why the individual numbers are capped, it's the only way to keep it realistic and not thousands of models to do. But it wil be a complete range of all the monsters I like, so that is itself worthwhile.

Kwindylarue (aka Guindyloo) told me that while she was at Reapercon she mentioned I was working on a project to paint my way through the Monster Manual*, and this generated some questions she could not answer. So if anyone reading this was one of the peeps curious about it, ask and I'll tell you what's up with it. *It is not every monster, just the ones I like - which is still an enormous number of them.

After playing with it some, I decided to give the guitar a new name that better suits its character.

Yeah. There was a Joker figure with one foot who would show up in the mix, get taken, and then show up again the next year. He got around. Now he's either found a home or been melted down. I was building a Ral Partha Limited Edition Takhisis piece by piece from the melt table over time. I'm going to miss not being able to hunt for Takhisis Pieces.

Oh, and I suppose I should also clarify that I'm not playing my left-handed guitar upside-down (i.e. right-handed). I'm playing it left-handed. I figured that since I'll suck for a while anyway, there's value in practicing things that will easily switch to their mirrored form. Finding out where all the notes and power chords are and messing about. I also tuned it to Drop D and found this fun exercise. I'd expect most of this would switch over when I have enough pennies saved up for a Mustang. In the meantime, I'm training my right hand by writing with it, maybe some adult coloring books, just basic exercises to build dexterity. Since I have to mentally mirror things like tabs already, then I ought to be able to mentally mirror whatever I learn to do on the lefty Demoncaster, and then it's mostly a matter of building right hand dexterity and coordination. It won't be immediate, but it should work out okay. https://youtu.be/iC7jgOOxxck?t=389

Misirlou is actually an old middle-eastern song. Anyway, yeah you can restring but it can take some doing and you'll hit your knobs with your picking arm. Jimi Hendrix used some restrung guitars, so did Kurt Cobain. If I were to remain a left-handed player I could get by without having to do that - selection today is still much better than it used to be. It's just a pain in the snothole. Like I want a Squier Bullet (or Sonic) HH Mustang. It's cheap, it's grungy, it's exactly what I need. All right-handed. Now can I find a Mustang in HH configuration? Yes. For $200? Nooooo. It's stuff like that. Or the Dave Mustaine Signature V's. I mean, I'm not presently looking to plunk down a few grand on a Dave Mustaine V in neon alien green - but I'd like to be able to if I wanted. And of course, switching lets me go visit my cousin Boglips and his collection of like 40 guitars (all RH) and we could play. There's a lot of versatility. Since I can do it, I figure I will. It would have been easier if I'd known beforehand that I could, I'd just have bought a right-handed one. It is what it is. Chungus Khan is still pretty trash even fixed, so it's not like I was going to use it forever anyway.

Hey, I thought you were supposed to be the nice one. Also, I suppose that I should note that since I am completely unable to do things like a normal person, the astute among you will have noticed the Demoncaster is left-handed. This is because. naturally, I am left-handed (though I prefer to think of myself as sinister). Now so far this makes sense, right? You're left-handed, you play left-handed. Except the problem with that is that your choices become very limited. Basically every time I look at a nice new guitar it's almost always right-handed. This is the same problem every other lefty runs into. Now to solve this, there are three paths: 1. Play lefty and just deal with it 2. Learn to play right-handed 3. Just play a right-handed guitar, only upside-down (a surprisingly large number do just this). The complications of 2 and 3 should be obvious, but the complications of 1 are not. See, left-handed people are some 10% or so of the general population - but left-handed players are not 10% of the population of guitar players. This is because even if we assume that within the population of guitar players, 10% of them are left-handed - we must then deduct the ones who decided to play righty and the ones who play upside-down. This is why selection sucks, because the small population is in fact even smaller, so it's not moving lots of units. Now, it turns out that many years of making stoopid memes and photoshops has made my right-hand pretty precise. I can even write and draw with my right hand, which is slow (being that I don't do it often) but reasonably accurate. Realizing this, I flipped my left-handed guitar around to see if I could pick with any accuracy. I can. So, having already bought a left-handed guitar, and only having a left-handed guitar to practice with, and being left-handed, I am therefore making the clearly sensible choice to learn to play right-handed. This makes perfect sense to me, even if it makes no sense to anybody else. Got it? I hope so, there's a quiz later. It's multiple choice, but all the answers are wrong.

Ugh... I have to give it my socks? See, this is why I hate having guests over. But okay, maybe socks will do as a last resort. But really what I need is to... find... some way... to make it... ...want to leave. Hmm. So it's at times like this where I like to seek out the inspiration of someone much wiser than me. So I shall consult The Book of Tina Turner. Okay, so I opened it up at random and it sez here... What's love got to do, got to do with it? What's love but a secondhand emotion Now I'm not really sure what that means, but I bet there's an answer to be found in it. Lessee... love... emotion... secondhand... hmm. Oh! But you know, secondhand is the old translation, and goblin scholars have since given an update translation that reads What's love but the sickliest emotion. Which, as I'm sure is plain, makes way more sense because love is pretty gross. So... this old Log-Narl... I bet it doesn't like love either. And all the suggestions have been like tea cozies and dish towels and socks... stuff that covers it. STUFF THAT SMOTHERS IT. Aha! I've had a breakdown! Breakthrough! Breakout! I'm gonna go over and hug it, and give it compliments, and make it so sickly and smothered in gross love yuck that it will want to flee immediately! Maybe I'll even kiss it, which will either finish it off or melt my face. But in either case, if you don't hear back from me then remember that all my stuff is still trapped with the deadliest, squishiest, most mangliest traps I could devise. In case any of you start thinking I'm dead and begin to covet my Box of Make Noise More Gooder that I stole fair and honestly.

I mean... I did ask for help and I don't want to seem ungrateful, buuuuuuut Do I really strike you as the kind to possess either a tea cozy or a dish rag? We have to work within my immediate limitations, which are both many and quite weird. I will need a different option.

So about 9 months ago I got pregnant, see, and... Wait, no I didn't. I bought one of these things: Anyway, it turned out to be a giant piece of crap and so I've spent the last 8 months figuring out the hard way how one of these things works so I can fix it and get it to make noise. I have been calling it the Lemoncaster. Anyway, I have finally succeeded and managed to get it to make the dirtiest, meanest tone I've ever heard come out of something with strings. Which was pretty impressive, given all I did was plug it into an equally craptacular amp. But it can make weird devil noises, so that's a start. But it needed something more. Knowing I needed a magic item to properly summon abyssal sounds, I quested and stole this from an electro-wizard. Legend has it that this is the Box of Make Noise More Gooder. I don't generally go in for things that make things More Gooder, but I wanted to master this dark art so I suppose some kind of sacrifice was necessary. I am pleased to report that the Box of Make Noise More Gooder did, in fact, make noise More Gooder. Well, sort of. What it did was unleash the power of demonic screeching from the Lemoncaster, which was enough to promote it - at least for now - to Demoncaster. If that gives it an attitude or it gets a will of its own then we'll fight to the death. Or I'll throw it off a cliff into the ocean. Whichever is more lazy at the time. Except now I have a different problem I need some advice on. See, after working out the secret of the Box of Make Noise More Gooder then I found myself compelled to make a lot of More Gooder Noise, and it seems I made enough More Gooder Noise that this thing showed up: And now all it wants to do is tell me about all kinds of creepy things it did to other people in other places and times, and I'm not really sure I believe any of them because they seem a bit disjointed and also I think the glowy orb is prolly drunk or high on goofballs or something. Anyway, I REALLY just want to go to bed but this thing just won't shut up or take the hint. I even tried showing it The Star Wars Holiday Special and it still didn't leave. So, anybody who has ever had a... uh... hang on a minnut... Okay, it says that it's name is Lack-Nor or whatever. Anyway, any of you who have ever had a Look-Nob thingy show up and knows how to get rid of it then I'd appreciate knowing how. And also how I might keep it from coming back when I make more More Gooder Noise out of my Demoncaster (which I have now named Chungus Khan). You're never getting the time back you wasted on reading that. I'm taking it and adding it to my own lifespan like an internet lich.

I thought that guitar was the one buried with Dimebag Darrell, but I was wrong. The "Bumblebee" was the one buried with him as a parting gift.

If it helps make the decision, the Aoshima kit is a new tooling and not just the old AMT one in a new box.

Spring is upon us, and announced itself with rain. I was outside policing up stray bits of twine left over from tarping the snowblower (so they don't get found by the mower later) and I looked at the shrinking piles of snowbank built up from all the winter snowclearing. And I suddenly realized that what I was looking at was months of hard work literally washing away. All glory is fleeting.

But the important thing is that you won, which proves that elves are no match for dedicated Chaos Wolves. This could be a promising money-making opportunity, by which I mean that we should team up and become highwaymen. Or highwaycreatures. But not freewaycreatures, way too many cars and in any case few elves to rob. And I don't know what the hell a turnpike is, but I know what it would be if goblins made something and called it that so I'm not going anywhere near it. Everything can always be better, but if you had a good time and made somebody happy then you're doing it right and should do more of it.

No, it works whether they believe in me or not. All those after-school specials in the 80s were wrong all along - the power was always in the magic shoes and not within. Some of you might not believe this, but then some of you don't think I can manipulate youtube yard sale videos with the power of my mind. But I made a guy I never met in a yard sale I've never been to buy a zebra figurine I never saw and so basically I can do anything. I'll tell you what else I can do, too - I can turn silver into candy. I just bring it to the girl at the store. BEHOLD THE POWER OF MY NUMISMATIC TRANSMUTATIONALISM

You can't tell me how to prevent scurvy.