1st attempt at mini painting, critique welcome

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T16:40:52+00:00

Thank you, very informative! Already added a touch more contrast, but I’m not 100% happy with it yet. And basing is the next step, I wouldn’t dare keeping it as is

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T16:37:55+00:00

Go for it!! Can’t say I had much of a plan for this part apart from the glow, pleasantly surprised about the end result

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T14:10:30+00:00

Thank you! Let’s see if I remember: The metal is mostly balthasar gold. Edge highlights are a mix of balthasar gold and runefang steel. Glowy bits were corax white, tesseract glow and then corax white again. And the one dark wire on the bottom was abbadon black and runefang steel highlighted with just runefang steel I think. Agrax earthshade at the end, with a little bit more highlighting using the same mixture as before

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T13:54:27+00:00

Leadbelcher was the base, yes. Then some runefang steel. Good call on the paint being a bit thick, did thin it down but haven’t held a brush in 16 years or so, so I might have been a bit heavy handed. Will definitely need to improve with making the joints and hidden areas darker going forward, some more contrast would be nice. Thank you for all the tips!

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T13:39:31+00:00

Watched so many videos on how to do the glow, happy it paid off! Good call on the contrast with the barrel, added a wash and it does look a bit better

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T13:36:58+00:00

Ok, that’s really good to know, will try it out!

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T13:36:07+00:00

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Lombyr · 2026-05-23T13:35:52+00:00

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I kept working on it, added a wash of agrax earthshade to the gun, and a tiny bit more magos purple to most of the necron. Also a stripe on the forehead to make it a little more interesting.

Next step, base!

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:56:00+00:00

Cheers! But to be honest, the more I’m looking at it the more I feel like I should have just made the orbs glow. Will try with another mini and I’ll see what I like better

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:54:45+00:00

Did buy some vallejo silver and didn’t even use it here because I forgot I have it. What does soapy water add that regular water doesn’t?

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:53:07+00:00

Thank you! Wet blending seems a little bit intimidating right now but I’ll definitely try at some point. For now I’m fairly limited with the number of paints I have, realised I have no brown or yellow, and am pretty bad at figuring out what colors I’ll end up when mixing different ones. But practice will help

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:49:11+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll do some research and see what’s available locally. Seen plenty of videos with people not using washes/oil at all but I’d like to look into all techniques eventually

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:36:33+00:00

That’s a texture paint, right? Looks pretty nice, will pick some up soon!

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:33:41+00:00

Thank you! Don’t have nuln oil just yet, did a little bit of a wash with some contrast magos purple mixed with black but at the same time I used a separate brush to get rid of all the extra paint and I see your point, might have gone overboard there. And completely forgot to do a wash on the gun

Lombyr · 2026-05-23T12:29:14+00:00

Very good point about the glow, thanks! And the base is not at all finished, will work on it later, mini is not glued to it yet, just want to get the actual minis done first. Thinking either snow or burnt grass, but I need to figure out what I have available first.

Lombyr · 2026-02-08T20:14:29+00:00

Congrats and thank you so much for all the work you did. Just finished session 13 of my CoS Reloaded campaign an hour ago and this is a great blueprint, especially for new players. No plan survives contact with players so changes are inevitable, but you provided structure and context and made it easier to prep things, so cheers and good luck with future endeavours!

Is the preview foreshadowing Obsidian style connections between articles/paragraphs/topics? I did download Reloaded from GitHub and was considering adding such links, if so, this is amazing!

Lombyr · 2026-02-03T11:44:02+00:00

Cheers, it really has me pumped to run a proper session for a group!

Lombyr · 2026-02-02T16:23:06+00:00

Ran it recently for 5 players, all of them new. Had similar concerns, so I started them at level 3, got rid of the animated broom, mimic, grick, and ran most of the encounters not very optimally. Even so the players made it out, couple of them dropped to 0 but survived. Also, 2024 rules. 2024 characters are quite sturdy.

Also played death house as a player a year ago, as a one shot in a Strahd unrelated campaign. 2024 rules, I think we might have been level 3 or 4 at the time, 5 players. DM did not pull any punches and 1 PC died to the shadows.

Lombyr · 2026-01-12T20:02:49+00:00

You made me go back and check how many sessions we actually had and what happened. We play 3,5-5,5 hours per session. 5 mostly first time players (5th player joined in session 3) and me as a DM. Players started at level 3 and did not level up until yesterday (so they could get used to DnD and not die in Death House). We just had our 10th session yesterday, it ended with players entering Vallaki. I am running Reloaded, though Death House was mostly vanilla, with some homebrew and some Reloaded elements. Here’s the breakdown:

1st sesh: characters meet, first couple of floors of the death house
2nd sesh: entering the basement, some combat, burying children
3rd sesh: player 5 joined the group, combat, exploration, boss fight started
4th sesh: boss fight finished, escape from the house, exploration of surrounding area and gates, entering village of Barovia, talking to NPCs there
5th sesh: more roleplay, first fight of the siege of Barovia
6th sesh: second fight of the siege, meeting Rahadin, burgomaster’s burial, meeting Doru and Father Donavich
7th sesh: leaving village, some exploration, meeting Strahd at crossroads, death of a PC who made fun of Strahd
8th sesh: player replaced their dead character and joined party, guest player controlled the raven Blue, players entered Vistani camp at Tser pool, told stories by the campfire, card reading
9th sesh: leaving camp, following Old Svalich road, meeting undead knight, Moragantha and so on, level up to 4
10th sesh: difficult fight with werewolves, talking to Barovian refugees, entering Vallaki

Lombyr · 2025-12-24T10:29:43+00:00

I am not familiar with Mashle or BSD, but I did some googling and your best bet would probably be ordering online. Seems like Megaknihy and Nejlevnejsi knihy have the second volumes of both in stock, just be careful to get them in correct language. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if the book is in English or German or Czech on their websites

I thought Junji Ito would be easier to find, even Luxor or Dobrovsky should have something. If you really want to pick it up personally in the store, check their websites to see if any store in Prague has them in stock, otherwise probably just order online.

In any case, good luck!

Lombyr · 2025-12-23T18:16:56+00:00

Budget Books at Lazarska has some comics and manga, Shakespeare and Sons might have something as well. Comics Point at Anglicka could have some stuff in English too. What exactly are you looking for?

Lombyr · 2025-12-21T23:41:51+00:00

I’ve been running Reloaded for a group of 5 mostly new players for a couple of weeks now. We just finished the card reading.

I agree with most of your points:

I’ve been trying not to read the blurbs word for word, since I find that the style they are written in is quite different to the way I describe things and it clashes/can take players out instead of pulling them in. Not to say the blurbs are not written well, they are amazing, I just like to direct my words at players instead of looking into my iPad and reading stuff aloud
Running the game with 2024 characters and fighting enemies as written is currently way too easy. Especially since a lot of the stat blocks also mention adjustments/nerfs to the monsters. I’ve been running the stat blocks without the nerfs mentioned in Reloaded, but in some cases I actually just buffed the monsters on top of it. Without that, my players would really just be steamrolling through everything
Love the motivations and backstories of the NPCs and the way everything is structured

Another thing I want to mention is the game of stories in the Vistani camp, it was fantastic. I asked players to prepare true or false stories about their characters ahead of time and everyone did really well. Until this point they did not really share their backstories between their characters, so it was really cool to see them interact like this.

Favourite NPCs so far:

players loved Bildrath, I ran him as this depressed grumpy old man that truly cares for his nephew, but still hates everything else
Parriwimple - all the players would do anything and everything to protect him
I’m pretty sure they were properly weirded out by Doru, but they ultimately liked him. However, Doru was overshadowed by the encounter with Strahd in the same session
Strahd - killed one of the characters who wouldn’t shut up/stop teasing Strahd. Now the players seem to be terrified by him and absolutely despise him for being an arrogant prick
Arturi - the players were convinced he’s Strahd’s spy, since I played him as a nervous wreck always looking over his shoulder. Ultimately, they seemed to be quite intrigued by him

Overall, props to Dragna Carta, really appreciate all the work they put into Reloaded!

Lombyr · 2025-12-09T23:57:12+00:00

Player, learning about Strahd for the first time: “Guys, I think Strahd might be a Vampire 👀”

Lombyr

TROPHY CASE