More Progress on the Children of Gomb Entry

Lessons Learned: Cavalry Sucks

I played Normans and learned that horses suck in Pillage. They’re too expensive—you only get extra movement speed, and they don’t make you more lethal. You get one attack, might kill one guy who doesn’t attack back, but then everything else in their army smacks you. I sent three cavalry into five infantry and all the horses died.

First time I played too many, cut them down, cut them again, still had three. Next time I’m playing zero horses. I can have almost three infantry for the price of one horse, and that’s just better. Pillage as a game though—10 out of 10.

New Miniatures

Picked up 48 generic unarmored dudes with swords, shields, and spears using the last of my birthday money. I want to try the Celts faction—tons of unarmored models in hordes. That’s really what I want to play. They’d be easy and fun to paint with contrast paints too.

The D&D Card Rabbit Hole

Going through all these Dungeons and Dragons cards makes me want to check out Second Edition AD&D. I have the collector’s edition leatherette Hyperborea book—thick pages, amazing Conan-inspired art. It’s based on advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I’m also very interested in Dark Sun and have the digital Fourth Edition Ashes of Athas campaign that I got by emailing the creators.

Painting the Chain

Tonight’s mission: paint the chain on the Children of Gomb entry. Keeping the cartoony style—leaving black in the deep recesses, painting everything in burnt umber first, then yellow rust, with silver as the final highlight.

The challenge is matching the scratchy style of the model while not getting paint on the finished skin. Using Secret Weapon yellow rust—love this paint, but I don’t think you can get it anymore. As it dries, it gets this powdery matte texture. Building up the rust, then dry brushing silver where chains would wear against each other, then taking it back down with more rust.

Quick and dirty chain—not rocket science. The orange plays well with our purple. Added scratchy silver highlights to tie it into the overall style. Tomorrow we tackle the marble crystal.