Gardening for Fun and Profit – Tang Garden

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Board Games – I know many people have taking up gardening during lockdown and that’s admirable. However if you want to keep your hands dirt free and create something beautiful you might want to check out Tang Garden.

This is a unique game that has you creating a garden for the emperor during the Tang Dynasty. The tile laying game has unique 3D elements including trees, bridges, gazebos and of course miniatures. From what I understand you score your game by looking at what the miniatures can actually see and score accordingly. It seems like a cool concept that I’d love to play one day.

For now I’m happy painting up the models. These character pawns aren’t super detailed and are a little on the small side, but they serve their purpose. Once they’re painted to match the cards they blend in nicely with the other components to create a beautiful garden scene without getting dirt under your nails.

The Others Seven Sins - One More Box

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Board Games – Sadly although I’ve painted every model for this game and watched a ton of play throughs I still haven’t had a chance to play The Others: Seven Sins. The game looks super fun and I loved the dark theme, however the game is a little mature to play with the kids so until I can get a group together to play I’ll just enjoy the models.

This “final” box has Delta Team and a variety of corrupted citizens.

Super Dungeon Explore - Is it coming back?

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Super Dungeon Explore - Is it coming back?

Board Games – Ninja Division (formerly Soda Pop Miniatures) has been posting up a new chibi game based in the Super Dungeon Explore universe: Super Dungeon: Conquest. Supposedly this game will give you a new way to play with the Master Class Miniatures they’ve been releasing as well as your existing collection. Oddly enough the rules they’ve released for free seem to be a variation on the Super Dungeon: Arena Rules that is a tabletop game. The units of measurement are in inches so I guess you’ll play with a ruler and dice. I don’t know that this is what fans of the property are looking for and the skirmish market seems to be flooded with properties with stronger rulesets.

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Blood Rage - Mystics of Midgard

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Board Games – Blood Rage is a viking game. I’ve painted several expansions for the game but not the core game. Much like many other CMON games it has decent quality sculpts for the various characters.

These are really similar to the miniatures from The Others and Zombicide, pretty decent for board game pieces but not quite the detail you get from a mulitpart plastic kit. I painted these up to match the cover art in simple reds, browns and blacks.

As I haven’t had a chance to play this game here’s a description from the manufacturer:

Known by many names (Seiðmenn, Völva, Vísendakona, etc.) and possessed of different powers granted by their connection to the gods, these warrior-shamans will be a boon to any clan able to recruit them!

Mystics are special units (neither Warrior nor Monster) that players can only employ once they've given their clan one of the Mystic Clan Upgrades. Each of these Clan upgrades adds 1 Mystic figure to your clan's reserves, which you can then use to Invade and battle normally. All Mystics have STR 2 and the special ability that allows them to Invade at no Rage cost. Clans are only able to recruit a maximum of 2 Mystics.

Besides adding Mystics to your reserves, each of these Clan Upgrades grants your Mystics a special ability. If you collect several different upgrades, each of your Mystics will posses all the abilities you accumulated, making them incredibly resourceful and strategic additions to your clan!

Back in the Hobbit Again

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Back in the Hobbit Again

Board Games – It’s been a minute since I posted, but I haven’t been idle. I just wrapped up Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth. This is one of those hybrid board games that requires you to use an app in order to play it. The potential for this type of game is great, however the fear that an app becomes out-of-date fairly quickly makes some people scared of picking up an app dependent board game.

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Hellenica: Story of Greece

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Hellenica: Story of Greece

“…An explosion of creativity and violence erupted in the Aegean Basin in 800 B.C. that defined ancient Greece. This combination of science, mythology, development, and war was led by powerful city-states like Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Troy, Byzantium, Corcyra, and Thebes. These states vied for control over their rivals and dominated the lesser states around them. In time, some of them became so well known that they are remembered even today…”

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Western Legends - A Sandbox Game?

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Board Games – Western Legends is billed as an open-world, sandbox game set in the American West, which to me sort of screams Red Dead Redemption the table top game. I’m not exactly sure how a board game can be an open-world sandbox, since that is typically RPG territory but that’s what this game claims to be. Board Game geek has it rated as a 7.7 as of this posting and it was nominated for several awards in 2018 so I assume the game lives up to its promise.

If you couldn’t tell by that vague description, I haven’t actually played this game. Much like many of the commissions that come across my desk I’m primarily concerned with how the models look and getting them painted to fit the theme and be functional.

For what they are these are decent cowboy miniatures, not a ton of detail and a little on the small side but they painted up nice enough.

Building a Fiefdom

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Board Games – Fife is a board game that sounds pretty similar to other kingdom building games. The core game comes with cardboard chits to represent the structures in the game. With the upgrade expansion you get replacement miniatures for all the chits.

Looking at the images on Boardgame Geek of the board the plastic pieces will look amazing on the detailed board. I’m not sure if they have miniatures for the cardboard standees but if they do I imagine they’ll find their way to my table soon enough.

Descent - Major Project Part One

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Descent - Major Project Part One

Board Games – So far this year I’ve tackled several major board game projects, Descent brings 60 models to my table. A classic dungeon crawl Descent was a big deal when Fantasy Flight released it. I remember listening to the D6 Generation podcast and the opening bumper always had a reference to this game.

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Mythic Battles – Atlas

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Board Games – Atlas bears the weight of the world on his shoulders. Which might explain why he’s so grouchy looking. This model is an expansion set for Mythic Battles that adds another character.

I really like this take on the Giant, four-arms with a saddle on his back just adds character.

This War of Mine – Expansion

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Board Games – Tabletop adaptations of video games seem to be all the rage these days. This War of Mine is an Award wining adaptation of the video game which follows the exploits of citizens trapped in a war-torn city. I’ve painted several batches of models for this game and this latest set is for the Days of the Siege expansion.

Zombicide - Character Pack

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Board Games - Zombicide Black Plague has several “Artist Editions” much like the other versions of the game they invite a guest artist to do character designs. This is one of those sets.

Incursion – Weird War II

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Incursion – Weird War II

Board Games – Wolfenstein 3D was a big deal when I was a kid, as I’m sure it was for anyone reading this. The first real First Person Shooter it was pretty amazing at the time. Of course then came Doom and Quake and the plethora of of FPS games and now you have millions of people screaming at each other online about some kid sniping them. Ok so maybe I want to rethink that nostalgia train

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Crusader Kings - The New World

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Board Games – Earlier this year I painted up some knights and fighters for the Crusader Kings board game based on the popular video game. The latest batch of models to cross my table is the Councilors and Inventions expansion.

Unlike the other pieces I’ve painted these aren’t force specific so they needed to be a bit more generic in color. As with the other models these are on the smaller scale so not as much detail as a 28mm figures I typically paint the people seem to be closer to 20mm scale.