Return of the Painter

Hello! I’ve been gone from WordPress for about seven years now when I decided to stop painting miniatures to go do other things, but the itch to paint and play with little plastic dudes has returned. *

Our miniature battle. The three gentlemen are the Not-Tyranid players plotting the demise of the Not-Tau aliens. We used The Laser and the Flame one-page rules.
Came for fun and friends. Stayed for the salad and expensive bourbon. **

The gentlemen above, particularly the guy in the middle, were the catalyst that caused me to rekindle my interest. I got invited to play in a huge game using a one-page rule set called The Laser and the Flame, which uses a deck of cards for resolving combat and was simple and a lot of fun.

There were six of us and for some odd reason I was made the Commander of the “Not-Tau” against the “Not-Tyranids” on a planet full of resources and terrain built cunningly from aquarium pieces. ***

My command style was to mentally divide the board into three sections with me taking the center, and when we got activations, I’d suggest a unit to my sub-commander and say, “Go kill something.” I might make a suggestion but usually in the spirit of the highly trained Not-Tau I depended mainly upon individual initiative. We were professionals after all.

The battle from the point of view of the Not-Tau aliens against the Not-Tyranid aliens. We used The Laser and the Flame one-page rules.
I’m told these were models from 3rd Edition 40K. They are just the right size!

It was a great day, and I decided to get back into the hobby post-haste and go back to what I enjoyed: painting Nurgle-based dudes. ***

So for now I’m going to post something new that is hobby related when I have something to report and maybe comb through my old blog and refresh and repost some of the old tutorials and such that I think are still useful.

And the great thing about this new start is this time I actually spelled my name correctly before I paid for the new domain, so there’s that.

* A lot to tweak on this blog from stuff to get it back into shape.

** Also, stayed on my ever-present diet!

** Though I’m favoring some Nurgle-debased Death Korps of Kreig too if I’m being honest.

Ann's avatar

By Ann

Greetings, traveler, from Ann Wycoff, who lives near Santa Cruz, California where feline eyes glitter in dark places between monstrous red trees, where occult apes lurk with unseen tread and unclean purpose, where sacrifices to forgotten devils lie drowned, profaned, forgotten in stygian waters. Do you like me pine for steaming jungles within the island kingdom of the imagination, where where beats the heart of savage drums, and there live philosophic yet murderous crustaceans, shattered robots, buried sacrifices to forgotten devils, and dark countries yet unfounded? If so then hail and well met, fellow traveler!

8 comments

    1. Thank you, John! It was a very fun game and we had a lot of laughs. I think my friend, who put on the game, is planning on doing a Khartoum game next, which he seems to do about every 4 or 5 years.

      As for me, I’m assembling some Death Guard and looking for a couple of stray plaguebearers to replace my musician and standard bearer from my old unit, which I still have, that went missing. 😦

      No mountain of gray plastic for me this time though. Years ago I sold off or gave away almost everything, so I’m starting with a nearly clean slate.

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  3. Great to see a post from you Ann, and sounds like you had fun, and well done on the diet, are you still Refing ? Hope you have a great holidays

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    1. Hi Dave, thank you. It was a very fun game and a simple one too. My friend runs his “Bug Game” every few years and we end up pretty much making a day of it.

      I did do well on the diet as it turns out though I’m not quite done yet. I went from 286 pounds to 180 lbs. over the last 4 years or so. I’d like to get to about 160, which I think would be a good weight for me, but that is an arbitrary number. Really, I’m shooting for 18% body fat. Still have a ways to go, but I’m having fun now with running, boxing fitness, tumbling around in a wrestling ring from time to time, and hikes with my husband.

      No, I’m not a ref in pro wrestling anymore. I tried it for about a year and found I didn’t care for it. Did a lot of managing and a little wrestling, which I’m still open to doing, but I’m not really prioritizing it either. I’m finding with that, having been an indy pro wrestler throughout the 90s up until about 2010 or so, I’m finding the indy scene kind of stale in that I don’t feel like I’m achieving anything. The main fun I have still in wrestling is bouncing around in training rings being able to still do that in my 60s. Losing all of that weight really was a big thing for that. I actually move better now than I did back when I was occasionally on television, though of course I’m older now so I don’t really have the look that is needed anymore and that is ok. Life is great. 🙂

      I hope you have a very nice holiday too. Things are shaping up nicely here. Going to go to a nice seafood restaurant for Christmas. The same one we went to for Thanksgiving, which made for a fun day.

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    1. Thank you! It is good to be back. I’ve missed painting and being part of the community for a couple of years now. It took me a while to actually do something about it. My gaming club friends finally got me to do something about it. 🙂

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