Sunday, November 30, 2025

First meeting of the Jersey Girls

Last week we had the first meeting of the NJ Grim dark miniatures club, the Jersey Girls. We met at Sanctorium Games in Flemington. (Mike has been working hard to get this store up and running for the holiday season. Make sure to visit in your in the area for any of your gaming needs.) We agreed to meet up at noon and finish when we grow tired. 

I got to meet a number of new people who I've only chatted with through Discord. It was nice to be able to put a face to a name. To get started, we all showed off what he brought, from miniatures to terrain to what game we are excited to share with the group.

Our first game was a round of Cauldron. The new players were added to the round as invaders of our part of the swamp. I squared off with Tom to protect my territory of Bloodless Ruin. Beep and her battalion of Trolls, Goblins and Orcs were way to overpowered for it to be a fair fight. Tom was a great opponent and had many cleaver maneuvers to evade big rock. After the match completed, we tallied our XP and treasures. Through Tom's invasion of my territory, he found many of Beep's long lost treasures buried deep in the bogs. 

Tom's orc and Beep could not manage to hit each other for many rounds


Jake and Dellon face off

Tom's orcs


After we all finished our games, we split off to either play a one shot RPG or Kitbash. I decided to kitbash with Tom and Jake (IG). We chatted about our projects we are working on and shared bits we had brought. We sifted through my huge bits box to find the perfect pieces and offered interesting bits as we searched. I managed to finish my army general and another troll for my Dragon Rampant army.



After kitbashing, Jake and I teamed up to play a game of Lobster Pot 28. How I never heard of this game, I have zero idea. It has so many of my favorite things! Witch hunts, cosmic horror, and narrative story telling, sign me up! Jake brought his custom board which he built in the base of an old record player. It was the coolest way to transport a board I've seen. He also had his warband kitbashed with some of the coolest mutations including a dog with a tentacle tail. It took a few rounds to nail down the rules but we managed to stop the cultists from completing their ritual. Didn't mean we didn't lose some of the warband during the fight. 

Jake's awesome board for Lobster Pot

Meanwhile, Dellon and Tom played a game of Dragon Rampant. It was a battle of Chaos Dwarves VS Orcs, Goblins and a dreaded Hill Giant. So many goblin green bases faced offed. I didn't get a chance to catch the game, but it looked like it was a lot of fun! 



While we hung out, we ate alot of pizza and drank coffee to keep us going. We all enjoyed checking out the shop and picking up some treasures to add to our collections. I gladly picked up the Wargames Atlantic Goblin kit to make even more little guys for my Dragon Rampant army.

After our fill of pizza, we closed the night out with a huge game of Missile Toads. Chaos quickly ensued as toads farted, slapped and shot each other in the butt. At one point, a toad tank exploded causing a chain reaction of explosions. It was one of the biggest games of Missile Toads to date and provided a great amount of information for me to make some further changes to the rules and abilities in the game. The game ended in a tie between Jake and Alejandro. 




After 9+ hours of gaming, it was time to call it. Look forward to the next meeting where I will be starting to run a Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game narrative campaign. I have a million ideas of what I want to do. It's exciting to return to my first wargame and brain dump all my Tolkien knowledge.

If you are in NJ and want to join us for the next hang out, reach out!



Monday, November 17, 2025

Kitbashing a Titan Toad

With the rules written for the Titan Toad variant of Missile Toads, it was time to start bashing the first Titan. To get started, I cast up a copy of Trent from Miscast’s Garbo toad. I made this mold in late spring and had casted a few at this point, but not one for myself.  Lately, I have been casting Miniatures in Smooth on liquid plastic and it has really improved my casts. I highly recommend this material if you’re starting out with molding and casting with no equipment.

The main inspiration for my Titan Toad is Howl’s Moving Castle from the studio Ghibli film. I was looking to create a ramshackle random structure on the back of the toad that was lived in and rusted but also a tank.


The Foundation was built with some resign casts from Ramshackle Games. A while back I bought a tank kit and now I have an excuse to use the extra parts. Additionally, I added some random plastic bits that I assume are from Games Workshop. I also added this cheap pastic gas tank from a dollar store toy. Make sure to give it a good sanding to ensure parts will glue to it and paint won't flake off. 





Then like I always seem to do, I got into the grove of kitbashing and didn't document a huge amount of steps. But I will do my best to explain it. After building the base of the structure, I started to add to the sides of the toad. I was playing with the silhouette alot during this stage. The tank and toad needed to mesh together with one not out weighing the other. Luckily I had plenty of random sci-fi weapons to bulk out the build. The barrel of the large cannon is a pen with a cheap toys built on top to fill out the shape and add detail. Also added barrels for eyes since it felt silly to me and the toad had an extra eye anyway so it has no problem seeing.

After a few hours of kitbashing, it was done! Not only because I had a self imposed deadline to make sure it was ready for play testing or anything... But the rule set worked and it will end up in the final zine! 







Sunday, November 9, 2025

28 Mag international women’s Day issue


This year I had the privilege of illustrating the cover for 28 Mag’s International Women’s Day Issue. I feel fortunate to be trusted to illustrate for a pillar in the 28 community and be trusted to craft an image to represent all the women artists. While I had many ideas of what to illustrate, I ended up illustrating this goblin witch. The final illustration is a combination of ink and pencil on Bristol board. Ink was selected for this project as I am constantly inspired by old gaming art in manuals from the 70s-90s. The process was pretty straight forward with an under drawing in pencil, inked with pens of various sizes then cleaned up before adding the graphite to add further dimension. I am very pleased with the final result. 

More illustrations will be on their way as I draw a few new pieces for the Missile Toads Zine.

Make sure to check out all the fantastic artists in this year’s International Women’s Day Issue. Check it out using the link below!