Its a Blog Birthday! 4 years old.

Happy Birthday Blog!

I always intend to write a state of the blog every year but never manage to pull it off, but I hit a lot of milestones this year so I'm pulling out all the stops.

Overall the blog has done what I intended, helping me stay on track with projects. Its certainly not foolproof. You can see a lot of projects started in this space that haven't reached completion yet and some of them may never get that far. I think the two longest term projects that are likely to see completion are Calamity and my WWI AEF Marines. I'm easily distracted by shiny stuff and there are a lot of periods that I would like to be involved with that I have stuck my toe into and just haven't proceeded farther. Calamity serves a double purpose as it helps me stay abreast of what is happening in my model railroad hobby and my gaming/painting hobby. Its the only project that I have that combines both. The third project that will reach completion, at some point, is the LA Warehouse District project. Many of the weathering techniques I have worked on for Calamity will translate directly over to that project. Right now its mainly suffering from neglect due to space more than anything else.

I'm not sure what will be up for 2016. My goal is to actually get the town of Calamity finished so that will probably be the bulk of the posts during the year but I'm not sure I can sustain the level of effort that's going to require to get there. Genghis Con is fast approaching but that effort will be a lot lighter than usual, the group that is running it contacted us so late that we don't really have time to get the support we need or even to find instructors. After that there is nothing on the schedule till October when ReaperCon opens on its new dates. That should be an interesting show. I also intend to participate in the Lead Painters League in the LAF forum. I have never participated in this before because its always come right in the middle of getting ready for both the Genghis Con and ReaperCon painting competitions. But I'm going all in this year. It guarantees that I will paint at least 55 minis this year.

2013 – 83639 Page Views, averaging 6969 views per month and crossed the magical 100,000 page view mark. More than doubled the number of page views from 2012, quite a jump.

2014 – 91876 Page Views, averaging 7656 views per month and I crossed the 200,000 page view mark.

2015 – 89955 Page Views, averaging 7497 views per month and crossed another mark; 300,000.

Four Year total 304223

2012 – 19.67 posts per month (there were 43 in January which kin of skews the numbers).

2013 – 14 posts per month

2014 – 12 posts per month

2015 – 13.5 posts per month

My monthly goal is to write 12 posts. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don’t, sometimes I blow it away.

It is a bit harder to translate all of this into people but based on my stat counter (not google's!) the blog has had hits from 65,339 unique IP addresses from 135 countries. That same stat collector also shows flags from the various regions that make up any given country. Being a bit obsessive I like to keep track of those flags. I have a few countries that are "complete" in that respect; US, England (the UK was divided into four sections by the provider in 2015; England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic (There are a bunch of countries that aren't partitioned off that would fit here, but that feels like cheating). There are 7 countries that I just need one more flag from; Spain (Melilla), Belgium (Luxembourg), Austria (Burgenland), South Africa (Limpopo), Israel (North District) and Slovakia (Trencin). There are three countries that I need two flags from; Canada (I'm not sure there are even computers in the two provinces that are missing), Finland (this one is odd, because on one screen it says I'm missing one flag and on another it says I'm missing two) and Italy. The number of regions or states that some countries are divided up into is nuts. Malta, as an example, has 68 "regions" listed.

Perhaps the most important number is 196, the number of people that willingly follow my blog! A salute to you, the hardy few!

A bit of a reward! On to 2016!

What this blog is really about though

Southbound UP train south of Ft Collins CO. UP5123 is an SD70M

All the stuff I get to sell at auction at one of the local convention game auctions. Yes, I am an amateur auctioneer and yes I can talk faster than you can keep up.

Rolls Royce Armored Car, Bronze medal at ReaperCon 2015 in vehicles. (Trenchworx model)

WWI French FT-17 (Trenchworx model)

On30 Stock Car (Bachmann)

On30 Mogul C&S #22 (Bachmann)

WWI US Marines, mixed uniform. Mostly Brigade Games Miniatures with a few Great War Miniatures mixed in.

WWI US Marines forest green uniform

A few citizens of Calamity

Ellen Stone by Reaper Miniatures

I'm not sure about this one. He could be from Wargames Foundry, or he might be from Battle Flag.

Male Huckster, Reaper Miniatures
An interesting fact; other than the actual production, packaging and shipping of the miniature at Reaper (and I may know those folks as well), every person involved with this miniature is a friend of mine. The "concept" art for this is a painting by my friend Dan Frazier that appeared on the Huckster book for the Deadlands RPG. The "model" for that cover is my friend Dave Mac. The mini was sculpted by my friend Bob Ridolfi.

Wichita Witch, Reaper Miniatures

Back two are from Black Scorpion, the front two are from Reaper

Shopping II; Best Hasslefree Miniatures entry at ReaperCon 2015

Ambush; Gold Medal in Dioramas at ReaperCon 2015

Calamity's Newspaper Office

"McKenzie" Silver Medal at ReaperCon 2015 (Hasslefree)

Last Care Package of 2015

Lon at Brigade Games came through really fast and managed to get my order to me today! Excellent service as always from Lon. This box contains Artizan Designs WWII Germans for the Kampgruppe Von Luck pint sized campaign from Too Fat Lardies. I'll set these aside for now, I want to finish the British Paras first. But with these in hand I won't have any excuses not to continue on!

Just what I wanted a box full of newspaper

Is this the filler?

Building Calamity 19 - The "Hardware" Store - Cutting it apart

After a bit of hesitation and measuring and re-measuring everything I took a knife to the walls. I decided to make the entire second floor removable so I had to cut the walls into two pieces. This actually went off without a hitch and I'm happy with that result. I also resolved to get all the plastic components into place and prime them before I started putting things together. It takes a lot of patience on my part to do this because the painting and weathering are the best part! One of the things that should be finished before applying primer are the windows and doors. While for the row houses I decided to go with manufactured doors and windows but for the Hardware store I decided to see if I could make these pieces myself. 

With this thought in mind I didn't bother to adjust the measurements for doors and windows to fit commercial castings. Well, I may have changed my mind. I cut all the door and window openings out and managed to build one window. I'm thinking that it really did prove that while the effect is really nice its just not worth the time. What I'm thinking now is to get some components just for this building and modifying them to fit. That might be worth the time. 

Looks good so far, just need to file down the bottom of the door cut out to match the top of the floor

I should have thrown in the interior wall but I forgot. Top floor is looking good

There is a lot more going on down here on the ground floor.

A small building, to small to be a hero  building but I think its quite playable.

I took the pieces and used the the cutouts to map out the doors and windows, Here I'm working on the upper front window. 

Here I have cut the window frame out, cut it into two pieces and glued it into place. Hard to see here but the two pieces are sitting on top of each other.

 I framed and added some decorative detail.

From the inside. You can see where the roof line is going to be.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Merry Christmas to All!

My family is mostly Norwegian and Swedish so our big celebration is tonight so I'm off to help with the lefse! May you and your's have a joyous holiday.

Companies Going the Extra Mile - 2015

I have purchased a lot of stuff this year, a lot more than I expected, from a number of different game and miniature companies. Some through online purchases some through Kickstarters and as much as I could from local brick and mortar stores. I haven't received bad service from anybody, in fact I would even say that levels of service have been increasing. When you know that your customers can literally buy from almost anyone you have to find a way to make your business stand out. For me a number of companies have really stood out in 2015. I'm listing these in alphabetical order, just to try and be fair.

1) Fife and Drum (US)
Once again I had to stick my toe into another period, this time AWI. I had been attracted to the Fife and Drum miniatures for some time but I didn't pull the trigger until "Der Alte Fritz" mentioned that he was running a special for some Minden Miniatures that would be a good fit for the AWI. In my order I mentioned that I was curious about his line in general for the AWI and he promptly sent me samples to check out, and not just a couple of samples, but 1/2 a dozen or so plus a couple mounted generals. Now that's really stepping up to the plate in my book. And while I haven't really haven't done much with the AWI stuff this year you can be sure that a couple of orders for minis will be going to Fife and Drum.

2) Hasslefree Miniatures (UK)
I may have a bias here, but if you have ever meet any of the folks from Hasslefree in person you would be biased too. Kevin and Sally White are just terrific people and Arty keeps that website and the orders flowing out the door. If there ever is a problem you will be told about it, they don't keep their customers in the dark and you might think they use a Tardis for their shipping.

3) Reaper Miniatures (US)
This is another instance where I'm probably a bit biased (I have some pretty good friends that work for Reaper) but if you have ever dealt with Reaper Miniatures then you will quickly find out that these are seriously good people. Their customer service is just phenomenal, if you receive a bad mini or a bad paint or something is mispacked (a rare thing) then it will be taken care of, in many cases that same day. Orders go out of their warehouse at lightning speed. I made on order last Sunday during the height of their 12 days of Christmas promotion and had it in my hands on Wednesday. Its a shame they don't do historicals!

4) Too Fat Lardies (UK)
I know from their forums that Rich, personally, hasn't had a particularly good year. Yet the two couple of times that I emailed him because I forgot to download something he has been on top of it and re-activated the download for me, usually within an hour or so of my request. I already liked Chain of Command better than Bolt Action but when you do this kind of thing you really help create loyalty from your customers.

5) Total Escape Games (US, brick and mortar store)
The Colorado Miniature Painting Alliance (CMPA) has had a tough time finding a new home since Attactix closed down. I think we have finally found a permanent home at Total Escape Games. They have welcomed us into the store to sling paint around once a month and worked with me to find a set of consistent dates (third Saturday of the month now) that was going to work for both the CMPA and the store. They really came though for us and the group makes an extra effort to always buy something there.

6) Warlord Games (UK)
If you are a regular reader of my blog then you know that I have just started working on an armor conversion for the Kampfgruppe Von Luck pint sized campaign from Too Fat Lardies. I'm actually doing a couple of conversions using their armor kits. The first one required obtaining a German 15cm howitzer gun barrel. I sent an email to Warlord asking if I could purchase just the barrel and recoil mechanism Harry responded saying that he would just throw it in with my next order. When that didn't happen he was going to personally put it in the next order. Well the next order came when they were swamped with orders from their Tanksgiving sale. When the order team said there was no way to find my order Harry grabbed a box and sent it off himself. Now this is truly going the extra mile. It really adds incentive to getting the conversion done too and I'll be bundling all of that material up to send to Harry.

While I received a lot of stuff over the the year from a lot of companies these five really stand out for me. Keep the minis flowing guys!