Java Fiend

The other week, my teenage daughter came home after shopping with her friends, and proudly started pulling out her purchases to show me: lacy bras, and boy-short panties, and thongs. I just about died.

Gotta have them greens. Didn't your mama ever tell you, you gotta have your greens or you'll never grow up big and strong!

Wereshark! Wereshark! Gotta have that toothy big guy.

True. Which is why I have never bought GW and never will. I'm not blaming Reaper for jacking their prices up; in fact they're great because they have kept their prices lower than most everyone else. But now even the low-price guys are becoming expensive. It's just disheartening.

At my FLGS today, I saw the new DHL Black Orcs blister - for $11.99. Eleven dollars and ninety-nine cents for two orcs. That's six bucks per figure. Eeesh. They're really nice, but there is no way I am paying six bucks for an orc. An ogre maybe, but not an orc. I understand the whole "tin prices are rising" argument, and I don't blame Reaper for setting their prices to keep up their revenue stream. But I won't be buying many new Reapers if these prices stay as high as they are. My money will be better spent trolling eBay for cheap old Ral Partha and Grenadier figures, instead.

At my FLGS, I saw a small packet of skull beads, in white or ivory colors. Those might do, if you filled in the holes on top. (A quick Froogle shows several types of skull beads available.)

Oh, all the time. It's because our group has got such nice painted figures, and all these terrain pieces and Master Maze sets... it seems a shame not to use them. And it looks terrible by comparison to have a figure on the table that's only primered! Right now, I'm delaying the start of my old-school AD&D G1-G2-G3 campaign because I don't have enough giants painted yet.

Yoshi: Don't forget the choreography! I was at a wedding reception once where the groom and his groomsmen danced this for the bride, complete with big lobster-pincer motions. (The bride and bridesmaids, in turn, did the Electric Slide.)

Thanks for the Official Lowdown, Ron!

I'm a big fan of integral bases, and I'm not a dilettante or a newbie. I've been playing and DMing since 1979. I am a hardcore RPG player, not a miniatures painter. I have scads of Grenadier, Ral Partha, Rafm, Heritage, Citadel, Superior, and other old lead figures - all integral-based. I have hundreds... no, at least a THOUSAND miniatures. I probably have a better inventory than most gaming stores in my area. I buy a heck of a lot of new miniatures too, and I never buy plastic-based pieces. I will reluctantly buy a piece with a separate metal base if it's absolutely necessary, but almost all my miniatures money goes to integral-based metal figures: Reaper Dark Heaven, Rafm, Grim Reaper, Iron Wind, Metal Magic, Old Glory, etc. To me, plastic bases are the ones that seem cheap and ugly. The whole idea of basing, in my view, started because GW switched to slotta bases and everyone tried to find a way to hide those damned ugly slots. When you have an integral base, all that flock and sand and gravel can be nice but is not necessary. When you have a slotta base, it's always essential because otherwise the piece looks godawful. And why should I want to create more work for myself all the time?

No no no no! Keep the broccoli bases, don't switch to slotta! Vary the texture all you like - the Pirates of the Dragonspine Sea set was a good example, nice planking! - but please don't switch to slotta. I can't stand plastic bases, I think they're ugly and clunky. I buy only integral, metal-based miniatures. Ignore these GW-brainwashed masses and stay the course!

Use a tripod. If you don't, your hands will imperceptibly and unavoidably shake and spoil the picture. Even the steeliest of nerves won't stop the shaking - unless, of course, you're dead.

Huh? What's so silly about it? I bought one, and will probably buy a few more? Maybe silly if you don't play D&D, but the Badger-wolf is the Reaper version of the D&D Leuctrotta (as found in Monsters of Faerun, as well as earlier editions). At first, I was puzzled by the badger-wolf, but when I realized it was supposed to be a leucrotta, I was floored with amazement and admiration. No one - not Ral Partha, not Citadel, not Grenadier - has ever done a leucrotta before! Way to go, you guys! Here's one old grognard who really appreciates your unstated (but obvious) commitment to release miniatures for all the D&D monsters. How about an ankheg next?

It depends on what software you're using. In general it sounds like you want to either (1) crop the image, (2) resize the image, or (3) do a little of both. Being a cheapskate, I use a nifty little freeware program called IrfanView for my cropping and resizing needs.

Ral Partha made a few rabbit warriors. I think they were originally Tom Meier goblins, but modified with rabbit heads and carrots emblazoned on their shields: RP 02-120 Thumper Command Group (6) RP 02-121 Thumper Stickers, Spears (6) RP 02-122 Thumper Choppers, Axes (6) RP 02-123 Thumper Thrashers, Swords (6) RP 02-124 Leaper Shooters, Bows (6) I wonder if Iron Wind Metals plans to re-release them?

If you're going to use unpainted figures, you should at least prime them. It actually makes a big difference on the table!

Rafm had a boxed set with a war triceratops, called "Hartha the Death Machine". The riders are orcs but with a little fiddling you could probably replace them with dwarves:

Ostriches? Hey, make 'em axebeaks. That way they can kick and bite!

Ha! They could be like those old Rafm Call of Cthulhu three-part figures that had the same character in three different poses: (1) calm and collected, (2) ready to go adventuring, and (3) insane and babbling.

Heh. Remember way back when Cerebus the Aardvark had a job as a tax collector? This guy must've been one of his coworkers.

Which reminds me of the Apocamon website. Lamb of the Apocalypse, I choose you!

What would I like to see? An ankheg! No one, and I mean no one, has ever done an ankheg miniature, and yet they're a fairly common D&D monster. Another D&D monster I'd love to see would be a salamander. Ral Partha did a really nice one, and the WotC Chainmail salamander was pretty good too, but they're both OOP now. And y'know, if your PCs are heading for the City of Brass, you really need a good-sized squad of salamanders.

There's a painted version here, as "Entry #91". Umm, either the painter modified this particular version, or the other photos I've seen have been very carefully positioned to avoid a particular angle. "Seductive" isn't quite the word I'm looking for...

Wow, that's a big web. But then again, if you think about it, a real-life garden spider has a leg-span of maybe a couple of inches, and its web might be as large as three or four feet across. So that's a leg-to-web ratio of, say, 1 to 20. So if you've got a huge spider with a leg-span of six feet, then its web might be 120 feet across...

My group played the old Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign recently and encountered Neferu as a resurrected Egyptian priestess. Boy, I hope I look that good when I'm 4000 years old.