Another map made with Hex Kit (and some further thoughts)

I started playing around with layers in Hex Kit, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.  I really love the art style used in the application.  It sort of reminds me of the board icons from the Avalon Hill version of Titan.  I'm a real sucker for hand drawn things.  So far, the beta of Hex Kit seems pretty darned stable.  A couple of minor bugs such as duplicate icons being placed in adjacent hexes, but that may be something that I'm doing wrong.  It seems to be able to handle maps up to 999 x999 hexes, which is way bigger than I would ever use, so it should cover the needs of most people.  In any case, based on what I'm seeing so far, the release version is going to be awesome.

A quick map made with the beta version of Hex Kit

I'm looking forward to playing with this more over the weekend, but so far, I'm really liking it.

Miniatures Monday

This is the stuff that nightmares are made of.  For this week's Miniatures Monday, we continue the recent monster theme with several photos of this giant spider.  I've always found giant spiders to be particularly horrific, and I honestly didn't expected to ever finish this figure.  It's 03049: Huge Spider from Reaper Miniatures and is still available for $17.99.  I bought this one years ago and it requires a bit of assembly.  Each pair of legs is separate, and it took a bit of trial and error to get them in the right order.  I love the end result, but it does have one drawback.  It has no base.  So, when used, the paint on the legs tips tends to chip off. :-(

To remedy that situation, I decided to make my own base for it.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but integrating a base with the figure does limit it a bit.  I guess now it's a desert spider.

So, what do all of you think?  Base or no base?  I'm really still on the fence about it.