Who Ya Gonna Call?

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Board Games – The Ghostbusters board game by Cryptozoic doesn’t have a tone of miniatures that require paint. Most of the ghosts are cast in transparent plastic so painting them would loose the ghostly effect. I previously had painted my own Kickstarter version of this game which has significantly more models than the retail version. The game feels a bit like Zombicide with a different skin on it so you’re level of enjoyment may vary, however playing through missions that feel like the movie, old cartoon and comic mixed together is pretty fun.

Bloodbourne

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Board Games - Bloodbourne Mergo’s Loft.

Deep in the Nightmare of Mensis sits the towering structure known as Mergo’s Loft, and at its apex resides its namesake master. Who, or what, exactly is Mergo is beyond mortal minds to comprehend, but his host of deadly attendants will strike down any who would approach their master. In this new Campaign, players will first need to discover a way to access this otherworldly place and, once there, discover the means to slay the unslayable. —description from the publisher

Shadows of Brimstone - Cthulu and Gold

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Board Games – Shadows of Brimstone is one of those games that keeps pumping out additional content. Some of the extra stuff are simple model or character boxes that add miniatures and some simple rules while others are big box expansions with a significant amount of extra content.

This batch of models include some prospector characters as well as a larger eldar being you might encounter in a cave.

Tall Tales - Fearsome Wilderness

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Board Games – I never thought I’d be painting an anthropomormic Babe the Blue Ox, but here we are. Fearsome Wilderness is a weird game. These are the five miniatures that came in the core box, but I guess the game came with STL files to be able to print all the monsters and components so you’re not putting these nice looking models on a fairly empty board with wood blocks representing all the adventures detailed in the hardcover rulebook.

Summary from BGG:

Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed and friends have 12 weeks to prepare for winter in the epic struggle of human versus nature. In this cooperative, dice-rolling campaign game for 1-4 players, the heroes work together to battle fearsome critters and the oncoming cold to gather and build everything they'll need to survive. Roll dice to plant and chop trees, gather food and water, and fend off critters and nightmares. Move your figures within the wilderness, gather and haul wood and stone to build your log cabin and other amenities. Gain and manage both good and bad conditions to your mind and body. Complete your goals and explore the mystery of the fearsome wilderness.

Core Space - Fully Painted

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Board Games – I vaguely remember seeing the campaign for Core Space and thinking, wow that’s some pretty amazing terrain, then seeing was cardboard and moving on. Well now that I’ve painted all the miniatures for the game and had a chance to see the terrain in person I’m pretty impressed.

Here’s a basic summary:

Core Space is a science fiction miniatures board game. Each player takes control of a band of Traders trying to make a living in a dangerous galaxy, all the while hunted by the Purge, a semi-sentient race of humanoid machines whose sole task is to harvest worlds.

A game of Core Space takes place on a detailed 3D board. Your Traders must explore the area, fulfil their objectives, salvage what they can and then escape back to their ship, spending their earnings on desperately-needed repairs. The exciting campaign system will track your crew from game to game, developing their skills, upgrading their equipment and telling their story.

Company of Heroes - WWII Board Game

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Board Games – WWII is such a popular topic for gamers of all types. This latest batch of minis are a few expansions for the board game from Bad Crow Games based on a video game by Relic/Sega.

Here’s a summary from the manufacturer:

"Company of Heroes", the World War 2 board wargame, is based on the video game from Relic/Sega. It closely captures the choices, tactics and mission strategies of the videogame. In teams, or as individuals, players will maneuver units and battle for control points to collect manpower, munitions and fuel. Players spend these resources to construct new buildings, purchase units and upgrade abilities, eventually unlocking the powerful end-game units of their nation. To win, players will either attempt to collect enough victory points before their opponent does or totally annihilate the enemy's base.

-user summary

A board-wargame 'port' that attempts to capture the strategy, choices and fun of the beloved video games. Players maneuver units from one of four factions to secure resource points, grow their economy, unlock buildings and purchase and upgrade new units. Player's eventually unleash their team's powerful end game forces to help secure enough victory points or annihilate the enemy base buildings to win.

From fog of war, utilizing cover and buildings, flanking armor, spotting, combining multi-unit tactics, veteran upgrades, deciding what units to purchase and what buildings to unlock; this project distills many elements we fans love about Company of Heroes into a streamlined board wargame experience.

This game involves squad level tactical movement but also focuses heavily on securing, collecting and spending resources to purchase new buildings, units and upgrades.

-description from publisher

Cthulu: Death May Die Core Set Painted

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Board Games – I feel like I paint a significant amount of Cthulu miniatures. It seems like most every Kickstarter has some variation of everyone’s favorite sleeping god. In this latest batch, I’ve painted up the core set and one expansion for CMON’s Cthulu Death May Die.

This is one of CMON’s massive Kickstarter projects that has multiple expansions as well a gigantic Cthulu statue that will all be crossing my table at some point in the future.

Here’s a summary of the game, which you should be able to track down on Amazon for about $200:

In Cthulhu: Death May Die, inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, you and your fellow players represent investigators in the 1920s who instead of trying to stop the coming of Elder Gods, want to summon those otherworldly beings so that you can put a stop to them permanently. You start the game insane, and while your long-term goal is to shoot Cthulhu in the face, so to speak, at some point during the game you'll probably fail to mitigate your dice rolls properly and your insanity will cause you to do something terrible — or maybe advantageous. Hard to know for sure.

The game has multiple episodes, and each of them has a similar structure of two acts, those being before and after you summon whatever it is you happen to be summoning. If any character dies prior to the summoning, then the game ends and you lose; once the Elder One is on the board, as long as one of you is still alive, you still have a chance to win.

The episodes are all standalone and not contingent on being played in a certain order or with the same players.

Pandemic - Mythos Style

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Board Games – Pandemic is a classic board game that most serious gamers already have in their collection. Having lived through one for the last few years makes the game a little to real for most people to want to bust out for game night. Pandemic: Cthulu helps to solve that problem by porting over the gameplay to a Mythos Theme. Now rather than trying to control the spread of diseases you’re trying to stop the spread of cults to prevent the rise of a terrible evil entity (Hmmm … maybe it still hits close to home for some). As far as I know this is also the first game to feature miniatures, which I painted up in this latest batch.

Vengeance - The Sabatuers

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Board Games – Vengeance is a revenge movie themed board game. I’ve already painted a few sets for this game which you can see here. This latest expansion is The Saboteurs which adds some new mechanics and models to the already extensive game.

You want to see those that wronged you dead, but there's no satisfaction in it unless it's your hand that does the deed. The problem is you're not the only one these rats have messed with. Sometimes you have to resort to a bit of shady back-stabbing to ensure others don't rob you of Vengeance's sweet satisfaction.

Saboteurs allows players to hire Saboteurs as part of their pre-fight preparations, and can then plant them in a gang den when other players attempt to assault it.

Vengeance: Saboteurs comes with 16 highly detailed Saboteur miniatures and 16 Saboteur cards. The Vengeance base game is needed to use Vengeance: Saboteurs.

Batman: Gotham City Chronicles

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Board Games – Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is a board games from Monolith. This is the first batch of miniatures I’ve painted for the game. It looks like a pretty complete representation of the Caped Crusaders mythos. This set is the League of Assassins expansion.

Here’s a summary of the game from the manufacturer:

In Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, one villain faces off against a team of heroes in one of multiple scenarios. Each hero has their own character, and they control this character by spending energy to perform actions (such as Melee and Ranged attacks, defusing bombs...) recovering more or less energy at the beginning of their turn depending on their stance. If the hero gets damaged, energy moves to a wound area, and if they lose all of their energy, then they're out of action for a while to recover their strength. Each hero has differing strengths for their abilities, and these strengths are represented by colored dice with different values; the more energy a hero spends on an ability, the more dice of that color they can roll.

The villain controls a team of henchmen and iconic villains of the Batman universe, and these characters are represented by tiles on their command board, with the characters costing 1, 2, 3, etc. energy to activate as you move left to right down the line. Once a character is activated, they move to the end of the line, boosting their cost to the maximum value should you want to use them again immediately, and decreasing the cost of the other tiles.

The game-play in Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is based on that of Conan, with revisions to character abilities, the addition of two different types of dice (w/ five types total), and a modified two-player set-up, the Versus Mode, in which each player has a command board and their own team of tiles that they can draft, with heroes facing off against villains.

Floating Worlds

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Board Games – Set in Edo Japan this deck builder is a sequel to Philosophia. While primarily a card based game this has minis to represent the six characters as well as the pagodas you can build.

Rurik: Stone and Blade

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Board Games: This expansion for Rurik allows you to build epic structures and has three additional modules for the game.

Dune Imperium - Miniature Upgrades

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Board Games – Dune should have been a bigger hit than it was, coming out on HBO Max and in Theaters at the same time was nice for viewers during the Pandemic, but unfortunately it probably hurt the chances of finishing off a series. But fear not you can live out the experience in the Dune Imperium Board game.

Here’s the description from the manufacturer:

Dune: Imperium is a game that finds inspiration in elements and characters from the Dune legacy, both the new film from Legendary Pictures and the seminal literary series from Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson.

As a leader of one of the Great Houses of the Landsraad, raise your banner and marshal your forces and spies. War is coming, and at the center of the conflict is Arrakis – Dune, the desert planet.

Dune: Imperium uses deck-building to add a hidden-information angle to traditional worker placement.

You start with a unique leader card, as well as deck identical to those of your opponents. As you acquire cards and build your deck, your choices will define your strengths and weaknesses. Cards allow you to send your Agents to certain spaces on the game board, so how your deck evolves affects your strategy. You might become more powerful militarily, able to deploy more troops than your opponents. Or you might acquire cards that give you an edge with the four political factions represented in the game: the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Fremen.

Unlike many deck-building games, you don’t play your entire hand in one turn. Instead, you draw a hand of cards at the start of every round and alternate with other players, taking one Agent turn at a time (playing one card to send one of your Agents to the game board). When it’s your turn and you have no more Agents to place, you’ll take a Reveal turn, revealing the rest of your cards, which will provide Persuasion and Swords. Persuasion is used to acquire more cards, and Swords help your troops fight for the current round’s rewards as shown on the revealed Conflict card.

Defeat your rivals in combat, shrewdly navigate the political factions, and acquire precious cards. The Spice Must Flow to lead your House to victory!

Board with a Vengeance

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Board Games – Kill Bill was a great homage to the classic revenge flicks of the 70’s and 80’s. Vengeance is a board game that takes you through a similar homage. With a ton of unique plastic miniatures and a giant box of board locations you can play through a variety of story lines to see if your character can get revenge against the criminals that wronged them.

Final Girl Season One - Fully Painted

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Board Games – Final Girl is a unique Solo Only board game inspired by cult horror classics. The system utilizes a unique VHS case that has each “Story” you can mix and match components of each story to create a unique scenario. The game has been reviewed very highly and currently is running a Kickstarter for a second season, if you like horror movies or solo games this is probably worth backing.

The miniatures are on the small scale but it doesn’t take much effort to add some contrast paint over a base coat and have some decent looking models.

Mad Max Inspired - Hybrid Board Game

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Board Games – Waste Knights is a unique game set in a Mad Max style apocalypse. The minis are pretty detailed for a boardgame and about the same size as Zombicide or other similar games.

To paint these up I started with a basic Khaki basecoat followed up with contrast colors to match the minis to the character sheets.


From the Publisher:

Waste Knights: Second Edition is a post-apocalyptic game of adventure and survival for 1-4 players inspired by cult classics of the post-apo movies and set in dystopian Australia destroyed by experiments of a powerful corporation. Each player becomes a rugged hero, travelling through the wasteland, facing unnatural weather and enemies forged in long-forgotten laboratories as well as experiencing adventures full of dramatic choices and disturbing characters.

The game is adventure-based, with each Adventure branching out into a number of Plots revealed depending on the players’ narrative choices. Each plot offers unique game mechanics and stories that can be found in the Book of Tales – some of them are keyed to a particular adventure, some are generic, but all enable the players to immerse themselves in the setting and make decisions that change the world around them.

Each knight (player) has 2 actions at their disposal, which basically enable them to travel around the continent in their Vehicle, explore the area for ever-dwindling Resources (Fuel, Ammo, Meds), or camp in order to repair their Gear and heal Wounds or Radiation. Each adventure additionally offers a number of unique Plot Actions that let the players affect the story and fulfill their goals.

However, the heart of the game are stories. Each playthrough is based on an adventure found in the Guide. Some of them are co-op, others competitive, others still may end with the players grouping around different factions and forced to fight their former friends. The construction of each adventure offers lots of narrative choices guaranteeing high replayability and encompasses unique setup elements so that the basic game can be prepared quickly and the players can focus on the plot, not the rules.