Miniatures have long been a nice enhancement option for D&D campaigns. You head down to the local hobby shop, pick out the figures that catch your eye or that you need to fill up the monster slots for your weekly campaign and voila, you have instantly clarified combat, movement, and scale. Miniatures generally are made from pewter and part of the fun is to paint your miniature however you wish. So, you want a green fire elemental or a fuchsia troll? Anything you wanted to experiment with was fine. And you can always throw your miniatures into a bucket of Pine Sol overnight and in the morning ninety percent of the paint would be stripped off giving you the opportunity to repaint particularly poorly finished or hideously ugly figs.

Last summer I had a revelation. I suffer from a sort of lazy perfectionism I think I often see in gamers. I had plenty of ideas but often wouldn't act on them. If they couldn't be done right, they wouldn't be done at all - which usually boiled down to just the latter.

On to outfitting a tiny little crossbow, as promised last time. In this case, I was lucky enough to have a nicely-sculpted hand crossbow to work with. However, an empty bow doesn't look quite as menacing as a loaded one, so I decided to give the little guy some ammo.

I've been planning (and promising Morbus) to review Cranium for weeks. I was excited about playing the award-winning board game, which came highly recommended by friends and has celebrity endorsements from the likes of Julia Roberts and Naomi Judd. So, then, why no review? To play Cranium, you need at least two 2-player teams. Despite my best efforts at luring friends over with promises of spirits and baked goods, it took several weeks to round up four willing participants.

In Part 2 of our miniature painting series, we touch on forests and other exotic bases that can make your miniatures more vibrant. I've covered several dry outdoor terrains, but not some of the more important ones: muck and water. Muck adds appeal to any adventure, and the same handy rule of thumb applies to miniatures. We'll cover these and more in Part 2...

The Visions in Color show (ViC) is an online show originated by Dominic Heutelbeck (a German miniatures painter of no small talent) and hosted on his painting website. I recently interviewed Bob Lippman, a long-time participant, Jason Moses, who's only been able to join in once, and Dominic via email to see what they had to say about this unique show.

They say that being married changes you. One of the little changes that I have experienced since marriage is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My wife is a fanatic for the show. I had never watched it, but now she has me absolutely hooked. She is still much more the addict than I could ever be, but I have to admit that I look forward to every new episode. It was her intense love for everything Sunnydale that led me to buy the new Buffy boardgame for her.