Goblyn Head Press News

   You may or may not know this, but I own a very small game publishing company. How small? Well... so far we have produced exactly three items for sale, and all of those have been released in the past month.

   To date, Goblyn Head has produced a supplement for D&D 5e, and adventure for 5e, and a generic map of a barrow mound that is free to download ("Pay What You Want"). All are available from DriveThruRPG here.

  Come check it out! Zeebs (our mischievous but friendly goblyn mascot) will show you how to go. And if you do pick up something, please leave a review!

MAPS!

   I've been drawing maps. Several maps. Mainly for a couple of products my game company (Goblyn Head Press) is selling or is going to sell via DriveThruRPG.

Recent Painting/Basing

Just some recently finished bits and pieces.

3x Panzer IVs with various gun options.

Plastic, Battlefront Miniatures

Fiat Cr.32 "Chirri" for the Nationalists in Spanish Civil War

1:100 by Minairons

It's a cool piece but a little fiddly to put together.

Goblin Pyros for Pathfinder

Reaper Bones

So far behind...

   I haven't talked about so many gaming things happening in my life the last few weeks.

  First, I went to DesotoCon, in Kansas, back at the end of July. I started a blog post about it and will finish it, I promise. It's even going to be back dated so it will appear before this one. Not many (any?) photos from it though. Well, a few, I think.

  The next week I went to Indianapolis for GenCon. Met a lot of great people, hung out with some friends from Thread Raiders, Saving Throw Show, and Dragons and Things (best Pathfinder liveplay stream, Fridays at 6:00 Pacific on Twitch). Bought a bunch of stuff. Again, it deserves it's own post and I will work on that. A few more photos there.

   I've also released the first product from Goblyn Head Press on DriveThruRPG. It's a supplement designed for D&D 5e called Sacred Sites. It was written by Eli Arndt, who you ugys have seen me mention before around here. Nine different places you can encounter the sacred or profane. It has sold a few copies already and it's only been up about a week. Very excited about that. Probably deserves it's own post, too.

  And we've gotten a few more sessions of Starfinder in. Kicked one guy out of our group, got another new player. Still sitting at three players so if anyone wants to join us in Santa Fe, TX (in Galveston County, on the mainland)...

   And I painted a few minis. Not much. I really need to get to work on the Pledge or I am screwed.

   Oh, two new display cases came in and I got one put together. Detolf from IKEA.

   And I have been drawing more maps on my Wacom tablet. So that's getting me closer to done with another Goblyn Head project.

   All in all, I guess I have been busy. Just not very good at reporting. I'll try to get caught up on all of that the next few days.

Back from DesotoCon

   Over the weekend I went to DeSoto, Kansas, to the home of a friend of mine who was transferred away from his post here in Galveston County. He grew up there, and has a lot of friends still in the area with whom he gamed for years. These guys go back to high school (Class of 1991). Anyway, he invited me to come up for the weekend of gaming that he holds every year at his house there and I accepted.

   There were about 20 guys there. We had four six-hour sessions, Friday night, two on Saturday, and Sunday morning. A variety of games, from Nintendo Switch to boardgames to minis games to TTRPGs were played.

   On Friday, I played Star Wars Miniatures. I managed one photo, and it's not a good one. I took the Dark Side and played a band of bounty hunters acting as mercenary bodyguards for the Emperor. Boba Fett, IG-88, LOM-4, Bossk, and Greedo. We lost to the Light Side, but killed Padme, Leia, Luke, and Obi Wan Kenobi, plus a couple of rebel troopers. Chewbacca killed the Emperor and Mara Jade. I left the scene with three of my five (Bossk and Greedo did not survive).

   Saturday morning was a game of Age of Conan the Boardgame. It's a long game, and I managed to win as Aquilonia, more by luck than strategy. Fun, but one of the guys wasn't into it and kept saying that.

   Saturday evening was a high level Pathfinder game. The five players took the parts of classic D&D characters: Mordenkainen, Bigby (me), Rigby, Yrag, and Melf. We went to collect a crystal from a temple sucked down into the Nine Hells, and ended up killing a pair of pit fiends. We then raised the temple out of the Hells and back to the Material Plane. I almost died from Strength loss but got restored just in time.

   Sunday morning was D&D 5e. I don't recall much about it now (I'm writing this a month later), but I do recall a green dragon who fled the battlefield just before we could put it down. And my dwarf cleric fell off a cliff. Survived, but it put me out of the fight for the most part.

AAR: The Scarab Plague of Mars!

   As usual, this AAR is short on photos because I was too busy playing to take pictures. However, I did grab a few of the setup. Game was played on 28 JUN 2019 in my gameroom with Zach, his son Nathaniel, and myself participating.

SCENARIO:

   Two rival companies of adventurers, the British Lord Curr's Incorrigibles and the German Empire's Society of Thule have traveled to Mars via aethership. Their goal: seize ancient Martian relics of occult power. Unfortunately, they were discovered and Martian priests have awakened a terrible curse: a massive swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. The scarabs will eat only Earthling flesh, though. So now, the two companies must flee for their lives. Safety lies on the canal running through the nearest village, Golah. The Earthlings want to get on the boats; the Martians want to stop them long enough for the scarabs to catch them and devour them all.

RULES AND FIGURES:

   The rules used were In Her Majesty's Name, my favorite for small skirmish Victorian Science Fiction. The figures are a mixture of North Star (the Society of Thule and Lord Curr's Incorrigibles), Parroom Station (The Masked One, Martian leader and mystic), and RAFM (High Martians, Shield Gunners, and Archers).

An overview of the battlefield.

The mat is from Cigar Box. First time used!

The Village of Golah

Buildings are Plastruct COLORed buildings for SAGA

Custom made canals, ordered a decade ago, only second time used in a game.

Boats are all scratchbuilt and older, too.

British Start point. The Society of Thule is on the other side of the ridge.

The small dots at table edge are the scarabs, advancing as a line.

A Martian Shield Gunner stands guard outside the canal master's office.

The Masked One, a Martian Mystic

High Martian warrior. Savage flying primitives.

   The two companies moved up as quickly as possible but got held up in and around the village. If the random rolls for the scarabs' advance hadn't been very low, all would have been devoured! As it is, the two European teams ganged up on the outgunned Martians and killed all but two of them (the Masked One, who used his Mystic powers to slow up the British advance, and one shield gunner, saved by his heavy armour).

   In the end, the British reached the boats first. Rather than allow the Germans to escape, the British took all of the boats. End result: British victory (44 points, almost all of his company escaped), followed by the Martians (28 points, all because of devoured Europeans) and then the Germans (19 points, for killing Martians). But we all had fun, and that was the main point after all.

   Notes for next time we run this scenario: 

• Martians need more points to offset European gangup.
• Scarabs need to move a flat d10", not d10-2. For four turns in a row, the scarabs did not move at all. This cuts the pressure on the Europeans to get moving!

Trees and Terrain

   I actually finished all of these in the last week of June, but scheduled this post to come up later for some reason. Anyway, one of the things I have been pushing out lately is a good bit of terrain. Mostly adding to existing stocks because I don't have enough trees and such.

A tray full of trees!

I use this cheap plastic tray to carry minis and spray them with clear coat. Then I can move them back into the air conditioned spaces in the house to keep the clear coat from getting all cloudy as happens in humid conditions. Like Houston is, eight days a week.

Bamboo stands. Need a lot more of these, not as tall mostly.

Primarily for 15mm jungles, Flames of War Pacific, etc.

Regular old deciduous trees. Just some cheap Chinese

model railroad trees and basing.

Same as above, but palm trees in the desert.

Again, need to do more for jungles too.

Flowering model railroad trees.

These are a bit different to my usual. Wire trunks.

I like them. Mostly I like a bit of variety.

Runestones from Fenris Games. Unlike the earlier ones painted for Frostgrave, these are two in

a temperate/verdant scheme and one in a desert.

A third Team Yankee minefield and emergence tunnels for the giant worms I shared a few days ago.

More Reaper Bones 4 Minis

   More Reaper Bones 4 minis...

Thunderfoot Defender

Rear of same

Pack of Velociraptors.

Mouslings!

   These are some Reaper Bones figures I bought just because I like them. The paint jobs aren't really anything fancy, but they work.

Happy 4th of July

Trying out New Contrast Paints

   I usually use Vallejo paints, but I thought I would give the new contrast paints a try. I am using the Goliath gangers from the Necromunda Underhive boxed set as my test subjects.I went with flesh, because they have a good deal of it showing.

Guilliman Flesh over Flat White base

White spray, Strong Tone wash, Guilliman Flesh Contrast paint

Did this based on a Twitter post

Rear view of above.

Guilliman Flesh Contrast over flat white base

   I was skeptical but it seems to work fairly well. I usually use a black basecoat, though, so I guess the next step is to try it over with that.

Some Work from Zach

A collection of Zach's works

The Great White Ape of Barsoom

He did a good job on the white fur

Woola, the Calot

I forget which Barsoomian critter this is... 

A Chaos Warrior

Also, the flank of a Banth (Barsoomian lion)

 Chaos Beastman Army Centaur Banner

Another Chaos Beastman. Zach has an entire army of these fellows

A Rare Victory at Glucken Ridge

   I played a game of Team Yankee a few weeks ago with my friends at this local club called Board and Brew. I say "local" but it's a good 30 miles from my house, forty five minutes with traffic on a good day. Anyway, it's a pretty good place with plenty of tables and they have beer. So its good.

   I played a fellow I have known for several years but rarely get to see, named Anthony. I was his first opponent ever in Flames of War. He plays Italians, I play Indian Army British. Anyway, in this game, I played a Czech Force with Soviet allies and he ran an American force.

Soviet T-64s advance on the left flank - daring the Yankees in their flashy M1s to attempt to do something about it. One Hero of the Soviet Union is made.

Minefields slow the Czech armoured advance, but a few turns of rocket artillery have softened up the American infantry defenders and the T-72M assault drives them from their foxholes.

All of my scouts are killed. Because I stupided. And my infantry never disembarked.

Beyond the trees in the background to the left, T-64s keep reinforcing M1s occupied.

Burning platoon of M1 Abrams. A sight sure to please any Warsaw Pact player.

In fact, I got very lucky and took them all out in one turn.

   In the end, I won by pushing the American infantry off the objective. The Americans did destroy enough of my units to make it a 5-2 victory rather than a 6-1 overwhelming victory. But I will take it! Anthony was a great sport about it all and a lot of fun to take on as an opponent.

Some Big Boys

Hello friends!

Here are the images of the larger monster-type miniatures I mentioned previously. I finally got around to loading the photos up on the computer and now sharing them with you all. All of these figures are Reaper Bones. The giants came with the Kickstarter; the worms I bought at MillenniumCon in November 2017.

Female Stone Giant

Rear view, Female Stone Giant

Male Stone Giant

Closeup of ivory plaque and boulder

Rear of Male Stone Giant

Classic Purple Worm

Rear of Purple Worm

Same worm, painted for Frostgrave as an Ice Worm

Rear of Ice Worm

Hill Giant

I am particularly happy with his skin tones.

Heck, I even painted in his eyes.