Dracolich on a budget

So I picked up a 3-pack of dinosaur skeletons at some dollar store or other.  Turns out that they're made of the same type of PVC plastic as the Reaper Bones miniatures.  Thought I'd do some pinning just to test out the material.  Those are the pterosaur wings on the dimetrodon  body (yeah, I know, the upright knees aren't right for dimetrodon).  The neat thing about this stuff is that works sort of like the rubber in self-sealing tanks.  So when you pin it it tries to clamp back down around the hole  Which is a whole lot of words to say that you just need to sharpen the ends of a bit of florist wire and shove the whole thing together and you're done.

Saddle Cat

So, it's clearly a part of the zeitgeist.  Or at least was.  It probably still should be, what with YouTube being one giant shrine to Bastet.  So yes, it should be okay to have your character to tie a feathered mousy to the end of his lance and ride into battle upon a couch leaping, yarn chasing, cheezburger hazzin' giant kitty.

The Good:

•  Talk about riding a jumper.  Saddle cats are capable of leaping twice as high and twice as far as a light warhorse and can charge their regular move distance straight up a masonry wall or wooden palisade.
• Causes abject terror in ratmen
• No need to dismount to be sneaky

The Bad:

• They can only be ridden 2 hours a day - they choose which 2
• The fish bill.  Oh dear merciful Bastet, the fish bill.  Seems they'll go through a barrel of salted fish every couple of days, plus hard tack, jerky, and whatever the local farmers would prefer they not catch.
• Prone to dragging grooms around in their mouth without provocation.

The Ugly:

• Lock up the Familiars
• Occasionally fall through ceilings
• Dragging the groom around means it's *your* turn to clean the enormous litter box

In game terms, I'd just give them the same stats as a cavalry horse, but with twice the movement capability (jump or charge), twice the damage, no endurance, and enormous upkeep costs.  They should also be capable of stealth and very hard to surprise.

Column Tutorial

This is the lid from a bottle of Dole juice.  SWMBO is fond of the orange-peach-mango variety.

This is a 2-1/4" disk (I've got a circle stencil) of paper grocery bag.  Attach it using the old 19th century poster technique of saturating both sides in Elmer's glue.

Pretty self explanatory.  Gesso makes paint stick to plastic.

Gesso goes on pretty thick.  Don't dilute it.

It shrinks a lot as it dries.  This takes at least 24 hours.  They mean it - it'll peel if you try to paint before a 24-hour cure.

FolkArt Artist's Acrylics "wrought iron".  I like it better than black because it's plenty dark without being artificially sharp.  Real shadows are never black.

No need for a palette.  This thing's about the size of one anyway.

The FolkArt regular acrylic is slightly translucent.  This works in your favor.  Use a palette this time.  A medium gray would work just as well, I just like the slate blue effect.

The Dove Gray goes on as a drybrush coat.

Since you're going to game with them, sealing is recommended.  I like brush on sealers because they're thick, non-toxic, and can be used at my desk.

With The Lady in Red for scale.

What it looks like on the table.  For 2.5-d we usually let anything climbing the column like a squirrel on a tree just set on top and have cover.  It also obviously makes a good plinth for big statues.

Piercer