And so it begins, Part Tres....

I may have missed out on Salute this year, but at least I'm not missing out on my wife's annual spring party for her Women Dental students.  We're expecting a bumper crop  of the young ladies this year and I'm hoping the food holds out.

 Here are some of the early arrivals getting trained by the caterers.  The theme this year is provincial French.  I'm hoping there are some scraps left for me and the boy.

And lastly, here's the Doc, herself, in a rare jovial pre-festivitity mode.  Perhaps she has stumbled upon yet another menial errand for me to perform.

These are trying times in the Geek's Lair - surrounded by a horde of twenty something young ladies and mounds of french cuisine.

What could go wrong?

Pray for me....

Even More Perry 28mm Confederates on the Day of Salute!

 What a surprise - a 10th Confederate regiment made up of 28mm Perry Plastic miniatures.  That means 240 of the fine gentlemen have marched across my paint desk.  I think it's time for a change of pace for a few weeks....

 OK, these guys aren't really finished - the bases aren't done, there's no flag and the shading is still drying but there good enough to post.  I needed a break after milling out some spare parts for Sean's Robot to bring along with us later this week.

The confederates will be used as part of a linked set of games at Historicon.  The first game will be Friday evening and will be a skirmish game using the new ACW skirmish ruleset from Architects of War "Uncivil War".  Friday's game will feature a 28mm scale ironclad (complete with interior!).  I can't show any pictures of the ironclad but lets just say its a sweet objective.

The outcome of Friday's game will have a direct impact on Saturday's game which will be a large ACW battle for 4 players per side.  Check them out when the PEL comes out.

For all of you who are across the pond and going to Salute have a great time and post lots of pictures of what you see there!

Yet More Robotics: A Second Team Invited to Worlds!

Yes I realize this is supposed to be a miniatures blog, but this is the high point of the FIRST robotics season and a lot is going on.  The big news is that my son's FRC robotics team (4067 - the frisbee shooter from the last post) has also now received an at-large invitation to compete in the Robotics World Championships.  That means he'll be leading teams in two different categories (FRC and FTC) to compete at Worlds.  This is a rather rare occurrence and we're al a bit overwhelmed with prep for for next weeks competitions.  Worlds are held in St Louis this year and run from April 23-27th.

An at-large bid is similar to being one of the last teams added the NCAA college basketball tournament.  We didn't win a regional event to qualify but performed well enough to impress the judges and earn a spot which is really exciting as this is just the second year we've competed at the FRC level.

So between now and April 28th there will be no miniature painting or gaming as I'll be coaching two teams at Worlds and,more importantly, focusing on the logistics of transporting two robots and a few thousand pounds of tools/equipment to and back from St Louis.  It's all very exciting but a bit daunting at the same time.

The event will be broadcast over the Web on NASA TV - just go to the NASA Robotics Alliance web site and look up the Robotic Alliance.  Our teams are:

FTC Team # 3113 "Some Disassembly Required"

FRC Team # 4067 "River Hill Hawks"

FRC Robot Video - Match play

Above is a video taken from a camera mounted on my son's FRC robot during last weekends FRC event - the Cheasapeake Regional/  The robot scored an event high score and the team added the point count and dings when a frisbee scores to help the viewer keep track.

This year's game involved an ultimate frisbee concept and we built a "sniper-bot" that would shoot the full length of the field.  There are three robots per side on the field and each weighs in at 120 lbs so these are fairly large pieces of equipment.  You'll notice both a buzzing sound and a bit of a camera shake when the shooter powers up - it's built from two spinning wheels (one at 6,000 rpm and the other at 12,500 rpm which are used to shoot the frisbee's through a rail system.  We can vary the speed of the second wheel to impact spin and arc.

Robotics is a lot of fun!

Loki's Great Hall 2nd Anniversary Give Away

As all marketers know, avarice is a powerful motivating tool.  It's perhaps the second most effective way one attempt to manipulate - oops, I mean to say "motivate" human behavior.  It seems that Mr Saunders over at Loki's Great Hall has mastered this technique with his newest give away promotion.

Please use the link below and go check out Loki's Great Hall.  It's a fantastic blog that features great painting and gaming articles.  Also you'll be warmed by thought that visiting the blog will enhance my ability to win stuff and, really, isn't that what we are all here for?

Here's the link:

Loki's Great Hall

Yes I know the link and the blog name are a bit different, but I'm sure that's part of Mr Saunders very sophisticated internet security protocols.  Who know what he does in real life that requires such clever obfuscation.

Seriously, it's a great blog and worth your time to take a look.

Ok back to painting Perry Confederates....

Confederate Regiment #9

 Here's the 9th completed regiment of Perry Plastic Confederates.  This regiment was painted wearing captured Union trousers - hence the blue pants.  This was done for both some variety in painting but also to help distinguish these guys on the table with all the other confederate units.

 I've found slight variations in unit uniforms really helps players keep the various units separate in their minds as they play.  I really do need to go about getting some flags for these units.

Next up, well you guessed it - even more Confederate infantry!

Robotics Update FRC: Washington DC Regional

 My son's other robotics team, FRC team 4067, had a 3 day competition in DC this weekend.  His FTC team has qualified for the World Championship and we're now focus on his FRC team to see if we can there also.  The first shot is a picture of the drive team queueing for a match and my son has his back to the camera.

 The next shot is a picture of the field and shows the team setting up the robot.  There are 6 robots on the field (3 per side) and the game is a version of "ultimate Frisbee" where the 'bots shoot frisbees into the goal (see the blue outlined areas) and then can gain extra points by climbing the red and blue towers.  These robots can weigh up to 120 pounds, so they're significant pieces of equipment.

 This is a shot of the pit while the team is doing some emergency repairs in between matches.  Our shooter system was loosing power so the team had to rebuild it in less than 30 minutes - they were still tightening bolts as the bot was being placed on the field.

Here's a shot of the team.  One of our sponsors is Sony, so we donned Sony T-Shirts for the team picture (which I took).  The team did well for the event and had 4 wins and 4 losses, which is very respectable for a second year team.  Our next events are in two weeks for the this team and in 4 weeks for Sean's FTC team at Worlds.

Confederate Regiment #8

 Some in-progress shots of Confederate Regiment #8 (sorry for the disorganized workbench in the background).  No surprises here as these are yet more 28mm Perry Plastic Confederates.  These figures have 5 of a planed 10 colors applied

I decided to paint this regiment wearing some captured Union pants (light blue) just to break up the color pattern of the Confederates.  I used the light blue that was in the painting stock so these aren't "accurate" from a button counting perspective but it will look fine on the tabletop.

Repetition does tend to increase efficiency and so it is with miniature painting.  The cycle time from sprue to finished 24 figure regiment is now down to about 9-10 hours over the course of a few days.

The timing consists of:
- 60 minutes to assemble and glue the figs on their metal bases
- 20 minutes to prime (with 1 hour to dry)
- 8 hours elapsed time to paint (roughly 20 minutes a fig using approximately 10 or so colors and scenic the base

I've done it quicker just to see if I could but the above is a enjoyable pace.

Spring Snow!

 It seems that "Old Man Winter" is trying to make up for lost time.  This year's winter has been very mild (perhaps one of the few positives of global warming?) but March has not cooperated.  Snow in the Spring?  Yee-gads, I thought only Yankees deserve such treatment, which, of course, they deserve.

Only my son is happy 'cause his school has been cancelled for the day.  At least it's pretty but I'm really ready for Spring - you know - the spring with sunshine, warming temperatures and flowers.

Ahhh, the good old days.

The Challenge comes to a close and yet even more Confederates

 Regiment #6 was recently completed and was one of my last submissions for Curt's Painting Challenge.  No surprise as these are "yet more" Perry plastics confederates in 28mm.  I still have enough unpainted figures for another 5 regiments but will likely switch to something else for a bit.  As for the "Challenge" it was a blast and has replaced cons as my favorite annual war-gaming event.  I placed 10th out of 48 competitors and am very pleased with my production for the event - please go take a look as there are some amazing submissions

 These figures continue to be a joy to build and paint and I really can't recommend them enough.  This project is being built for a linked game series at Historicon over a two day time frame.  The first day will feature some skirmish battles using Architects of War new ACW skirmish rules "Uncivil War".  The outcomes of the day 1 games will impact the large battle the following day and that's what I'm building these confederates for.

I'm not supposed to say a lot about the games yet but I can divulge that one of the objectives for the day1 skirmish game will be to blow up a Confederate ironclad, which will, of course, be fully modeled - with interiors - and is just under 36 inches long.  Once we nail down the details the games will be going up on the Historicon PEL.

This last unit brings my painted confederates to 7 regiments and 4 batteries so I'm just at the hallway point with the confederates.  For the Union, I'm cheating a bit as I've commissioned a good number of them to be done by the recently re-opened MMPS painting service.  Fons has done splendid work for me in the past and I'm looking forward to the next set of reinforcements from him.

Ok, painting to the workbench...