October - Act One

 After finishing up my September Painting-From-the-Masters Challenge, I took a few days off to figure out what the hell I was going to do next... and... I still don't know what I'm doing. One thing I know I'm NOT doing is painting any miniatures.... 

I was really hoping to carry on with Art-Making in October and add in some more regular bike-riding. 

I didn't do much of anything on the first... 

Friday, 2 October 2020

I did get out for a ride with this guy. We popped by the Dragon's Den and I picked up Century: Golem Edition - Eastern Mountains. 

Saturday, 3 October 2020

Got this one to her tap class - and went for a bit of a ride while she was in class. 

IN the evening, I ran a one-shot of Fate Accelerated - just to try it out. The adventure was called: Dude, Where's my WARHORSE!? Only two of the regular Saturday crew were able to make it out, so Finnegan joined in. It was a riot. Mistakes were made, but I'm really looking forward to trying this system again. 

Sunday, 4 October 2020 

I didn't go for a ride. 

I didn't draw or paint anything.

Amanda and I DID try out Century: Golem Edition - Eastern Mountains. I know I tried out the original non-Golem version a while back and wasn't overwhelmed by it... but it was fun and different enough from the original Century: Golem... but had some of the same ideas... 

I just trashed Amanda - she just couldn't wrap her head around it. I think I had 88 to her 60...? 

Monday, 5 October 2020 

I did draw a self-portrait on Monday. Self-Portraits are hard. Especially when tryiing to do it in front of the bathroom mirror. I wasn't happy at all with it. There is no way I'm sharing that hot mess here. 

I did get out for a bike ride though. There's a whole post about that over on the Bike Blog:

Monday Afternoon Ride

Tuesday, 6 October 2020 

Had another couple of goes at self-portraiture. Man, self-portraits are hard. Portraits in general are hard. Well... y'know.... portraits that actually LOOK like the person you're trying to draw. The portraits weren't  really for any vanity reasons, more because I wanted to try a portrait of an actual person and it's always disappointing for all involved when you try to draw someone else and it looks NOTHING like them... or... only looks slightly more like them than a potato. 

This one I was the least disappointed with - as it was the one where I least looked like a potato. Well, a regular potato. I do kind of look like a mutant potato. But maybe I should think of this as a success as I kind of look like a mutant potato in real life...

In the late afternoon/early evening I went out for a ride. 

When I got back, Amanda and I played another game of Century: Golem Edition - Eastern Mountains. I think she's kind of caught on. Despite a slow start and doing some wildly inefficient moves and going on about how she has no idea what she's doing, SHE's the one that ended the game by collecting a fourth victory toke (one turn before I would have!). I still won, but the margin was much narrower - 77-71. I think my days of winning this game are limited. Probably to two. The two we've already played.

Afterwards, I kind of stayed up CrAzY late and did this... back to the 40K theme... sort of... 

Wednesday, 7 October 2020 

I did get out for an hour or riding... but no pics

So... like... six months ago when all the COOL kids were doing this "Six Fan Arts" thingie (drawing six pictures of characters you are a fan of), I thought I'd jump in on that action and asked friends and followers on a few different social media platforms for suggestions, and my friend Orion suggested I draw Leman Russ - Primarch of the Space Wolves.... or... at least I HOPE he meant the Primarch and NOT the Astra Miliatrum tank named after him... boy will I feel silly if he meant the latter... Anyway, I never got around to doing ANY of the suggestions... until now...

Thursday, 8 October 2020 

I got out for two rides on Thursday. One was in the morning, to get to an appointment, and the second was in the afternoon... just for fun... and to do some sketching. 

Watercolour pnecils and Pentel brush pens, mostly. I did't eh wet brush work when I got home, as I'd not taken a brush when I went out with me. 

Friday, 9 October 2020 

Still all over the place. Back to portraits. This one was for my good friend Woody. He'd asked that I do a picture of Roy Batty from Bladerunner (back when I was asking for suggestions for the #sixfanarts thing... that I never did...) 

In the evening, Amanda and I walked over to our friend Kurtis' and played a few of the Century games from Plan B Games. 

First we tried out Century: The New World - the third installation in the original series. 

There were some familar bits - managing and trading resources - though this time the yellow, red green and brown cubes represented corn, meat, tobacco and furs, respectively! There are a lot of new elements - some worker placement and set collection - so many moving parts!? It was a bit overwhleming!? 

I dominated the first game by getting ALL THE WORKERS out as fast as I could. 

In the second game, Kurtis and Amanda tried to emulate the strategy I'd played in teh first, somewhat, while I concentrated on other things... the scores were almost identical!? 

Next we played Century: Golem Edition - Eastern Mountains - the second in the Golem series of games. 

I don't know what THEY Were doing with their turns, but when I ended the game, taking my fourth victory tile, I think they, collectively, had three between them (one had one, the other two...?) 

For the fourth game of the evening, we went all the way back to the original Century - Spice Road. Amanda won this one - proving that I do not ALWAYS win! Kurtis and I were about 10 points behind her...? She had 80-something and Kurtis had 73 and i had 72 - there, I wasn't even in SECOND place! 

Saturday, 10 October 2020 

I got out for a quick ride in the afternoon. I had started a drawing - a MAP for the adventure I was planning to run in the evening... but I didn't quite get it done in time... as it turns out, it wasn't really NECESSARY?! Maybe I'll finish it up for next week, though, as the one-shot I'd planned turned into a bit of a 1+1 shot... 

Originally, Woody was supposed to kick off his Traveller game this week, but had apparently forgotten he was on parent duty as his wife was heading out somewhere. Jon and Randy also couldn't make it so Finnegan Joined Chris and Christian for another game of Fate Accelerated. 

This one took place about 100 years or so in the future. Humans have spread out throughout the Solar System and have far more efficient drives - so it doesn't take years to get from planet to planet. The players were members of the United Nations Space Security Directorate - part of a Special Operations Recovery Team (SORT). A Manned mining station on one of Saturns moons went offline and as they were the nearest SORT, they were tasked with investigating. 

Hijinks ensued. 

As we spent MUCH of the time going over the rules again and trying to figure out character generation, we totally called it a night after 4.5 hours (which was midnight in Christian's time-zone, 10pm for the rest of us) and said we'd finish it off next week - or maybe some other week Woody isn't available. 

Anyway, that's it for the first third of October. I've taken to posting on the Art Blog and Bike Blog again, so I may just post THAT sort of stuff there and just go back to posting games and minsituare here... which, will likely be few enough in these strange and troubled times of RENOVATING DURING A PANDEMIC!? 

Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

October - ACT TWO - just the games... maybe...