Cazban's page

HEAVY METAL.

Which can only be fully appreciated if you were a 15-year-old boy in 1981.

Which, by very strange coincidence, I was. Even stranger is that Heavy Metal was my first thought, followed by Escape from New York.

Last post I'd mentioned falling for Dark Elves, so I think that's going to be my big winter project this year - a fully painted Dark Elves army.

The only hard part I have now is NOT painting them like either WoW Blood Elves or D&D/Pathfinder Drow ... I'm not entirely certain I can resist.

The new Dark Elf release looks fantastic. I'm planning on picking up a battalion box even if I never play them. They'll still be great for RPGs - you can never have too many dark elves.

since you mentioned Ray Bradbury,

Have you read Dandelion Wine? It is one of my favorite books of all time. I don't remember if it has anything to do with autumn, though....

Maybe not autumn specifically, but Dandelion Wine is a great read and has that wistful Bradbury quality to it. I really enjoyed this book too.

EDIT:
Wow! I had no idea it (Dragonfly) was an AH book (I'm a collector of AH 1st editions), and I just bought the last one in stock at Amazon. What a great afternoon. Thanks again, Cazban.

No problem! I always recommend Dragonfly for anyone who is looking for a great Halloween read. The fact that it is published by Arkham House is one of the things that prompted me to buy it in the first place. The author is a big fan of Lovecraft and Tolkien, and Dragonfly appears to have been influenced by both.

A quick question for those who play Fantasy. I've got three regiments of Chaos Warriors assembled, 12 models each. I also have two boxes left unassembled. Which would be more effective in the game; using those boxes to make my three regiments larger, up to 18 models each, or simply building two more 12 man regiments?

I play Chaos myself, and I recommend picking up the small boxes of three Chaos Warriors to make all of your CW units 15 models each - this will give you the bonus on resolution for having ranks of 5.

My favourite autumn novel is Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin - it is about a 10-year-old girl nicknamed "Dragonfly" who gets transported to the land of Harvest Moon, which is ruled by the evil despot Samuel Hain. This book has the very best opening paragraph I've ever read, and it hooked me immediately:

"Bad things were starting to happen again in Uncle Henry's basement. These were things that had happened before, when the wind swung round, when the trees all felt the blood rush to their leaves after the exertion of August and the idling of September; when the chuckle-dark harvest moon shaped pumpkins in its own image, brought its secret wine flush to the scarecrows' cheeks; when the rich bounties of the land lay plump for the taking and the light left them alone for longer and longer at a time. But when the trouble started before, I was too young to remember."

Another great seasonal read is the Diaries of the Family Dracul trilogy by Jean Kalogridis. This is a prequel trilogy to Bram Stoker's Dracula; the first book starts out a generation before the events of Stoker's novel and last book is contemporaneous with Dracula, but told from a different viewpoint. The trilogy answers many questions left open in Stoker's novel, including the origin of the enigmatic Dr. Van Helsing. This series is a "must-read" for any Dracula fan.