I enjoy Mice & Mystics. I usually play board games that are solitaire compatible. And M&M is the first one that I have played as an adult that is both solitaire compatible and uses miniatures.

As a kid I used to beg my parents for miniatures, paints, and brushes for my D&D sessions. Andy and Bobby, brothers who were the neighbors' kids, had a few. But Kurt, the older brother Andy's friend, had these great cases filled with pluck foam and painted pewter miniatures for his characters. He took great care in all of it.

Oh, how I envied that. My parents around that time became aware of the perils of D&D. They took my game binders, player books, and dice (its not a cult, dad! you threw away my 14th level thief?).

In place of that they let me paint my green army men. I enjoyed doing that ... but I also felt that I had to create the wounded and the dead to make my battle-ground-pieces have realism. I mean ... I was 10. I used to watch war movies and TV constantly like the Big Red One, Combat!, Kelly's Heroes, The Dirty Dozen, The Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape, Patton. Guys loosing arms and being decapitated was part of what I imagined war was even at that age. I didn't understand the reality of it ... but I knew it was supposed to be there. So I mangled some of my green army men using nail clippers and lots of red paint.

So then when my parents saw my carnage ... they took the paints away for good.

Well, goddamn. I'm an adult now. So I bought some paints, brushes and decided that I would paint up the miniatures from a recent favorite game of mine. It helps that the publisher has a painting guide for this set of miniatures. That gave me a bit more motivation.

These rat warriors were cast in a super-light tan plastic. I primed them matte black, then dry-brushed into two sets of brown and grey. I'm almost finished adding details, and I have some touch up to do still (hands need cleaning and brought down a shade or two) but these are almost ready for clear coat.

Next, I do the large monsters, then the main characters. Then I have a draw to doing really small 1/600 miniatures from the modern war era.