Dippin' Minis - How to paint a horde of gobs

Sometimes you've just got to get through a backlog of minis. Get them painted, get them done. Well, I finally opened up my Games Workshop Hobbit Strategy Battle game starter set box.

(Americans can probably find this guy in the "50% off bargain bin" of your FLGS like I did, since no one actually plays the Hobbit in the U.S.)

I opened it up and found myself faced with thirty-six little goblins to paint. 

Oh for the love of... GANDALF!

The hobbit and wizard minis were cool, but I didn't really want to paint a bunch of goblins, I don't really have an idea for where to use them for any upcoming games, or any reason to have them done, but it always behooves a dungeon master to be ready for anything. Especially ready to field a horde of monsters at a moment's notice. But how do you get them done in a short amount of time?

Why, you DIP 'EM, of course!

Dipping minis is perfect for giving a horde of models a decent tabletop-ready look without using up a lot of your precious painting time.

I took pictures at each step of my painting process I did for these guys this morning and am posting up a quick-n-dirty tutorial, to help others get their hordes of goblins or skeletons or whatever done and off the painting table.

If you've never heard of the "dipping" technique to speed up your mini painting, then this post is for you!

Frostgrave Friday in Middle Earth

 Finally got an official game lined up to play Frostgrave for the first time at my FLGS (Pegasus Games!). We would both be learning the rule-set to see if we liked it, so I put together two equal-sized warbands for us to choose from (represented by some minis I already had painted -- mostly Lord of the Rings) and we'd pick spells before we started. Having never really played before I just built warbands based on the minis I had opposite-army representatives for from my Mordheim and LotR range.

500 gold coin Warband: Wizard (free), Apprentice (200 gc), 2 Archers (50 gc each), 4 Thugs (20 gc each), Thief (20 gc), Ranger (100 gc)

Hollow Earth Expedition PDF free for 24 hours!

UPDATE: 24 hours is up. Hope you got it! If you didn't or even if you did, I still recommend the Hardcover Rulebook, its a gosh darn thing of beauty! Also make sure to check out any HEX games at upcoming conventions!

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Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX), one of my absolute favorite RPG rulesets, is celebrating its 10th anniversary today! In honor of that, they're releasing the pdf of their main (extremely fun-to-read) rulebook for free for the next 24 hours! Get it! Get it quick!

If you've never checked out HEX before, you are in for a real treat!

Starship Troopers: Miniatures Resurrected

The other day I bemoaned about missing the excellent Starship Troopers miniatures game that left us far too soon due to licensing disputes. The game was only in production from 2005 to barely into 2007, but had one of the best wargaming rulesets I'd ever played. The initial models were based mostly on the CGI Starship Troopers cartoon from the early 2000s (yeah, unfortunately that CGI has NOT aged well). But the minis held up pretty good!

Come on you Apes, you want to live forever?!

So I decided to dig out any old Starship Troopers minis I still had and see what kind of shape they were in (after being in a box for ten years and three apartment/house moves). Figured I'd show a few pics of the resurrected minis below.