How to spend a lot of money at an NBA game...

...stop in at craft and hardware stores on the way home. After avoiding $10 beer and $7 hot dogs, I stopped in at another Michael's to look for that drat sphinx 3D puzzle - and found it. I also picked up snake #2 (decided there was another way to do snake #3), a dragon puzzle (another statue project), and a cog.

Or, as the packaging says, a kogg. This looks like it will do nicely for the Splintered Lands setting, I think I may want another as it may look a bit silly having a boarding action with only one ship. I was doing rapid scale calculations while standing in the aisle...at about 15" long, at 25mm (1"=6' more or less) that would put it at 90', which is about the size of a real cog, if memory serves. Not sure about deck space yet for fighting on, will try to build it this week.

The sphinx is going to take a bit of work, it looks like layers of wood stacked on top of each other...which is what it is. I think some polyfill or plaster of paris or something will be needed, I'll have to do some reading to find a good material. I wil probably leave some of the wood exposed as it could be painted up as the blocks that form the core of the sphinx. I might even put in the doors that are rumoured to be there (or maybe are there, my sphinxology is a bit behind). Maybe need a second one of these too, one painted up more strangely than the other.

Also sorted out my tile plans, which you'll recall from a previous post. I decided to use a different (way cheaper) tile type for anything I'm going to paint over, like a savannah skirmish board set, or red Mars, or urban areas, or the moon (etc.). I got 45 12"x12" tiles for $15. I may use these for 6'x4' tables as well, but it starts to eat up spray paint and at a certain point I might as well buy a professionally done game mat.

The nice, quintupally (sp?) expensive brown tiles will be for the desert and Mars skirmishing, and I picked up enough of those today for 3'x3'.

So my terrain basing set-up so far looks like:
Europe-esque (inc. beaches) - Terrainguy mat with beach and water OR pale green bed sheet from remainder bin
Savannah skirmish - Yellow and green painted tiles
Savannah big battles - pale green bed sheet (for now)
Mars/Desert skirmish - brown tiles
Open seas - blue bristol board

Getting a hex map for air wargaming is my next objective, but not an urgent one.