I'm really enjoying my new discovery. Michael's has a bewildering array of props for my game, and my imagination is pretty much the limit. I'm no crafts person, so when I went to the store looking for "modeling clay," I was expecting to find a large gray chunk at best. Michael's instead had three full lines of clay, each in a variety of colors, like we sell paint in the store. I was going to buy some old fashioned clay for my project and paint it black, but instead I found three brands of black clay. I went with black Sculpey III.
Below is a photo of the current prop I'm working on. It's still baking in the oven. It's a black throne for the
Cult of the Ebon Hand boss monster in the D&D adventure,
Night of Dissolution. This is for the final set piece battle with props I've been working on for about 8 months now. I'll take plenty of photos when it's done. It should be the end battle of my D&D 3.5 campaign.
LOL, I can't believe you didn't know about Michael's before now, but then I remember that you weren't a miniatures gamer until just recently. Just about anybody who's done any terrain building for miniatures wargaming in California knows about Michael's.
ReplyDeleteActually, we don't have one here, but we have other hobby stores that have the same kind of selection.
No, I'm a total D&D dork with very little experience in the other games we carry just a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteSince then I've played dozens of boardgames (easily 100+), built a Flames of War army, finished my Warhammer Ogre Kingdoms army, and expanded my RPG experiences by 3-4 additional games.
I'm still catching up on the finer points of well rounded gamer culture, like terrain and tournament play (both seem more trouble than they're worth). I've been cruising hardware stores and dollar stores for props for a while now, so you can imagine what a treasure trove Michael's is compared to those.
I'll agree with you on tournament play, but you've actually been doing the terrain thing for a while now, just focused on creating RPG sets instead of wargaming terrain.
ReplyDeleteIt can be a nice break from painting when you're into miniatures. The only reason I never got into it more was that I simply didn't have the space to keep it once I made it!
I'm pretty sure that Michael's has stores in other states, too.
ReplyDeleteI think I was introduced to Michael's when I was in North Carolina. Ex-wife did craft projects, but never really understood the miniatures obsession...
People who want to play miniatures games, but aren't willing to make/collect terrain are dependent on others (usually retailers) for tables.
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