Monster Hunter - Fully Painted

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Board Games - Monster Hunter is a franchise know mostly for the Capcom video game series, there is also a film set in the universe. Now there is also a board game that allows you to battle giant monsters in a Co-Op style board game.

After you successfully hunt down a monster you’re able to craft gear and improve your stuff before you head out to track down bigger game. It sounds like a pretty faithful translation of the core game concepts and the monster miniatures are really nice. The details on the hunters are a little soft but my kids have played several of the video games and were impressed with the armor sets so I guess they’re pretty accurate.

Vampire The Masquerade

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Board Games - Vampire The Masquerade is typically associated with LARPing however they recently came out with a narrative board game. Check it out here.

Masters of the Universe - Battle for Eternia

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Board Games - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe were a huge influence on my childhood. I had opted to pass on backing this kickstarter just because I’m trying to be more selective due to limited space to store these big box games. Honestly I was a little sad about missing it. Luckily it’s back for a second printing and available on Gamefound.

I was happy to get a chance to paint these for someone else and they brought back fond memories of the Master of the Universe from my childhood.

Titans - 17th Century Area Control

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Board Games - Titans is another area control game that has unique figures for each player. The sculpts are well done and fit the theme nicely.

From the Publisher:

Titans is a territory control miniatures game for 1-4 players (up to 5 with an expansion).

The game is set in a historical fantasy setting of 17th century Europe. Endless wars are taking their toll as the people fall into despair. There is no hope for an end, no prospects for a peaceful order. The faith of the people slowly burns out. Dorment Spirits of the Nations wake up from centuries-long rest, rekindling the hearts of the people and raising ancient warriors called the Titans. People, filled with extraordinary powers, standing hand-by-hand with mighty Titans, fight to reclaim Europe. That war will end it all, and a King of Kings will be chosen.

In Titans players take roles of a king that leads an Army with a mythical Titan into Battle. There are 4 Nations to choose from, one of the European empires of that time - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire.

The game revolves around a unique, yet simple Order Card Mechanics. Players will use a shared deck of Order Cards that will allow them to recruit Units, awake the Nation’s Power and move their Armies across the Game Board. Players draw a specific number of Order Cards and place them face-up for all players to see. Players also see the upcoming Order Cards so they can plan their long=term strategy. In his turn, the active player chooses 1 of the available Order Cards and uses it's available Actions. Players will try to gain strategic positions, move their front line and attack their opponents where they are the weakest. The next player uses the same Pool of Order Cards so the active player may try to anticipate opponents movement and use that to their advantage. When there is only 1 Order Card available it's discarded, the "upcoming Order Cards" become the available pool and new Order Cards are drawn. That allows for dynamic gameplay with a lot of planning, both tactical and strategical.

The game is divided into Rounds and the Round ends after the Order Deck is empty. After each Round players collect Victory Points for the Regions they control, so players constantly want to expand their domain. Winning Battles also bring players Victory Points so deciding when, where and how to attack is crucial as well. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the game is the winner.

City of the Great Machine - Steampunk Boardgaming

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Board Games - Years ago when I first started this site I was introduced to Steam Punk, it’s an interesting genre that goes in a sci-fi tilt at the turn of the century. Personally I’ve don’t have a huge amount of interest in it any longer but it’s a unique thing you see at Ren-Fest. City of the Great Machine is a Co-op game in when you play against … The Great Machine a form of AI.

From the Publisher:

City of the Great Machine is a strategy game set in a grim universe of technocratic Victorian steampunk. The game features the conflict between the Great Machine, an artificial intelligence network, and an alliance of Heroes. The Great Machine is either controlled by a player or is automated, which completely changes the gameplay.

The Great Machine controls the City built on mobile platforms in the sky. As the Great Machine, the player (or game AI) commands a force of perfected Servants and mechanical Guards. The Great Machine's ultimate goal is to suppress social unrest and complete its grandiose Master Plan to perfect the mankind.

The other players are Heroes working together against the Great Machine to start a revolution. They encourage discontent in the City, enlist the support of famous citizens, and inflame riots. They also attempt to prevent the Great Machine from completing the Master Plan, as it leads to the enslavement of the mankind.

Game features:

  • City of the Great Machine may be played as One-vs-Many (2-4 players) or cooperatively/solo (1-3 players).

  • Modular board allows for infinite City layouts. The players may reposition the City Districts during the game.

  • Hidden movement. Each round, the Heroes secretly choose the Districts they will go to.

  • Resource management. Both sides of the conflict have multiple actions to take and pay for them in Trust (Heroes) or Bonds (the Great Machine). The same is true for movement and other tasks.

  • Asymmetric gameplay and unique victory conditions. The Heroes need 3 Riots to win, while the Great Machine strives to complete the Master Plan.

  • Secrecy. The Heroes need to conceal their plans from the Great Machine, however, they may discuss their intentions only in the presence of the Great Machine.


Zerywia - Painted and Ready to Play

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Board Games - Zerywia is an interesting looking adventure game that links together adventures into an overarching story. It feels a little generic fantasy but the minis has a different look about them.

From the Publisher:

Zerywia is a cooperative adventure board game set in the primeval world of Slavic myths. It includes a campaign mode composed of individual adventures for 1 to 4 players, linked together by an overarching storyline. Each adventure can also be played separately, as standalone episodes. This enables the players to experience each story in different ways and allows to lead their Heroes on a different path during each playthrough.

Each Hero has their own Saga, a tale waiting to be uncovered and told. Progressing through it grants powerful, new relicts, rituals or allies. As they roam the lands, the Heroes will be able to acquire new Sagas, which shall give them more power and unlock new, hitherto hidden parts of the story. This is why our Heroes are a work in progress, so to speak, and it falls upon the players to shape them and lead them to noble (or not quite so) deeds.

Uluk - Painted Up

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Board Games - I love big chunky miniatures. Uluk has some really nice idols that are simple to paint up and look great on the board.

From the publisher:

Elders say that our world is a fruit of the sacred uluk tree. No humans have ever stepped on this magical land, and you are the leaders of its hunter-gatherer tribes of sentient animals, collecting food, developing inventions, and erecting monuments in honor of the ancient gods to fulfill their spiritual needs. The winner in this competition will ensure happiness and well-being for their tribe members, and he or she will be praised as the arch leader of all the tribes!

The goal of the game is to have the most Happiness Points at the end of the sixth round (season). There are several different ways to score points, but the most important activity in the game is to send your tribe members (called here "tribers") to various spaces on the main board and take actions corresponding to them.

Uluk mostly makes use of the classic worker placement mechanics. The players send their tribers to spaces on the main board to build monuments and gather raw resources. The resources gathered are stored on each player's tribe board and may then be processed into food. Feeding your tribers brings you HPs and lets you win the game after the sixth season. A single season is divided into six phases in which the players take their actions in a clockwise order:

Errand phase - place your tribers on the main board
Harvest phase - gather resources from the main board
Processing phase - process raw resources from your tribe board into food
Feeding phase - spend food on feeding your tribers
Ecology phase - adjust the harvest levels (quantity of resources available) on the main board
Clean-up phase - build monuments and prepare for the next season

Developing inventions (in the form of invention cards with different symbols) enhances the effectiveness of your food processing, and collecting sets of different symbols brings extra points at the end of the game.

The Great Wall - Fully Painted

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Board Games - I love when a game has unique miniatures for the workers of each faction. It make a huge difference in being able to identify your pieces and makes worker placement feel more realistic.

From the publisher:

The Great Wall is a new asymmetric worker/soldier placement game with engine building themes and a twist in form of a constantly attacking AI (Mongolian Horde) that requires players to sometimes cooperate in order to defeat it. This is a new major board game from Awaken Realms.

Players will control ancient clans in China trying to defend against invading Mongolian hordes and build a Great Wall. While every player will want to win (by earning VP = Honor) they also need to sometimes cooperate to defend against the hordes. Each clan will be asymmetric through its chosen Leader (resource production/starting resources/starting workers and units) and this asymmetry will increase as the game progresses (players will hire Advisors with unique skills, often creating unique engines).

In The Great Wall, the players take the role of Generals defending the Wall against the Mongol Horde. The game is played over a series of turns called Years, each divided into 4 parts called Seasons.

During Spring, new barbaric hordes invade the fields in front of the Great Wall and prepare to launch their assault. Summer is the time when generals prepare for the assault and mobilize their forces. During Fall, players take their turns, playing Command cards, resolving their effects and Activating Locations to gain various benefits. In Winter, the last layer of Defense is activated, then, the hordes try to assault the Walls.

During the course of the game, players will create their own unique engines based on their clan strength as well as interact with other players during all phases of the game, trying to get the most Honor points, which can be gained in a lot of different ways.

At the end of the game, the player with the most Honor wins.

Nightmare Cathedral - Painted

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Board Games - This games features some incredible art and the minis are very creepy. I only painted the enemy figures because the player pieces looked fine in their base color and it didn’t seem worth the extra effort to shade them.

From the publisher:

Nightmare Cathedral prominently features the haunting artwork by the late polish surrealist painter and sculptor Zdzisław Beksiński.

Nightmare Cathedral is a strategy game for 1–4 players, where victory is gained by controlling the map, managing resources, following objectives and selecting when to engage in fast and furious conflicts to gain strategic advantage. Over the course of the game, you will perform actions — and follow the actions of other players — to produce units, build fortifications, maneuver around the map, and spend your followers to climb the ritual track. Throughout the game, a haunting Cathedral will grow in the center of the board, and once it is completed, you will face — and gain the ability to control! — the physical manifestations of nightmares that are released upon the world. Nightmare Cathedral is a game of both strategy and tactics, where finding clever ways to follow your objectives and combining different strategies is the ultimate route to victory.

The Last Kingdom

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Board Games - Games based on popular TV shows can be iffy, sometimes all the money is spent on the licensing and not enough is spent on actual design and development. Based on the Board Game Geek scores that’s not the case with The Last Kingdom.

Description from publisher:

The Last Kingdom Board Game is game of war and politics for 2-5 players by renowned designer John D Clair that's based on the Netflix series The Last Kingdom.

In this world, the kingdoms of Britain are at war. Many have already fallen to the invading Danes, leaving the great kingdom of Wessex standing alone and defiant under the command of King Alfred. You are one of the great commanders and politicians in this war-torn land known today as England. Both Saxon and Dane armies openly battle for dominance, and it is up to you to title the scales of power. To claim these lands, you will need to tread a dangerous path between both sides of the conflict. Will you betray your allies for power? What part will you play in the birth of a new nation, and will you ultimately rule it all?

The Last Kingdom Board Game plays over the course of two rounds during which players will perform actions to command armies to shape the course of the war. Your allegiance to the Saxons or the Danes can be firm or fickle, and your score will reflect not just your prowess in battle, but your political skill in maneuvering the competing forces of Britain.

Each of the ten leaders offers unique benefits to your strategy and provides special cards to start your hand. At the start of each round, players complete their hand by drafting cards from a deck specific to that round, then the war begins in one of the five regions. Players take turns playing cards to command Saxon or Dane armies, gaining affinity with the different factions, or positioning their heroes and leaders to shift the tides of war. Players also have access to a rotating market of actions that are available to everyone.

Alternatively, players may choose to not act on their turn and instead pass to see what moves their opponents make.

Once all players have passed consecutively, the war in the current region will be decided by the strengths of the Saxon and Dane armies battling there. Players gain victory points if they are aligned with the winning faction and based on their level of affinity. The focus of the war then moves to the next region, and the battle continues.

After the fate of each of the five regions has been decided, the round ends. After two rounds of play, the player who has accrued the most points wins.

Castles of Burgundy - Deluxe Edition

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Board Games - Castles of Burgundy released a super premium deluxe version of the classic game with some updated components. These are the miniatures from that release.

Final Girl Season 2 - Fully Painted

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Board Games - It’s rare for a game to come out as purely solo play. Probably rarer still for it to be as successful as Final Girl by Van Ryder Game. Right now they’re wrapping up the Kickstarter for Season 3 so it made sense for me to try and finish painting the second season ASAP.

Most of this was painted with contrast paint over a dry-brushed base layer.

Much like the first season these miniatures are pretty small, but they have a decent amount of detail. I’m really happy with how everything turned out.


Shogun no Katana - Fully Painted

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Board Games - Shogun no Katana is a worker placement game that focuses on gathering supplies to make swords. It’s one of those games that could easily get away with using just meoples, but the miniatures add flavor to the game and make it feel more immersive.

In addition to the player worker families there are several characters that will visit the village and provide more options in game play. The miniatures aren’t super detailed but they do a good job representing the various jobs of the family.

The description from the manufacturer sounds promising:

Shogun no Katana is a strategic Eurogame that will transport you to the magical atmosphere of feudal Japan. Use your workers to choose which swords to make, among those requested by the powerful local Daimyo. Collect resources to improve your craft, and request your artists to create breathtaking decorations. Have your family members admitted to the most strategic rooms of the Shogun’s palace to obtain the privileges of their rank. And finally, create the most beautiful SHOGUN NO KATANA!

You will have to manage your Forge wisely, as crafting Katanas will be the real beating heart of the game. The original and innovative sword-making mechanism allows you to activate an entire row or column to work on different Katanas at the same time. Each player has its own forge where all the katana crafting will take place.

During the game you will obtain resources, either by visiting the market, the palace among other places. By activating a row or column you can add resources to all matching Katanas, moving them accordingly on the grid. But be careful! Having a lot of Katanas on the grid means that you can accomplish more with fewer actions, but it also increases the risk of them hindering each other. You will have to build your engine cleverly to maximize your turns.

Knight Tales - Fully Painted

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Board Games - Knight Tales has some pretty nice miniatures.

In Knight Tales, 1-4 players stand against hordes of monsters and must cooperatively or semi-cooperatively defend a remote village for three days and three nights.

Knight Tales is a great mix of genres; character-building, set-collection, a tower defence mechanism with a puzzly twist, as well as the possibility to fulfill daily quests and gain renown make each game a truly unique experience.

A wide diversity of interacting monster effects, a clever system of spending fatigue, losing health and unleashing wrath as well as a doom mechanism that empowers the bosses triggering their own deck of tactic cards unfolds into a challenging puzzle that you will need to solve in order to be victorious.

Europa Universalis - Painted

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Board Games - To be honest 4X games are not my favorite. Europa Universalis is a monster of a 4X game that lets six players play through 300 years of history.

If that sounds interesting to you these miniatures are of decent quality and painted up quickly with contrast paints.

Hunters AD 2114 - Painted

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Board Games - Hunters AD 2114 seems very much like a take-off on the Terminator. You’re hunting the machines that have taken over the world after the apocalypse.

The miniatures are decent. I’m not a fan of square bases but I suppose they work for this style of game. This is another game that I used the white drybrush of grey to create depth before finishing with contrast paints. The technique is great for board games, but for more detailed figures I’d need to add some layering and additional shading to be happy with the results.

Here’s the description from the publisher:
The Hunters is a cooperative miniatures board game for 1-4 players. Become a machine hunter and face the enemies in a brutal post-apocalyptic world.

Players become the Hunters of machines that wander between human settlements and together hunt dangerous enemies. Each mission, taking from 30 to 90 minutes, requires an adequate choice of gear and tactics. The players can also lay deadly traps and prepare ambushes. A day and night system is used in the game which has a significant impact on the choice of equipment and enemies' action abilities.

At the end of each mission players gain experience points, allowing them to reach new levels of training and be better prepared for survival in the hostile world. The most precious prize, though, is the remains of the defeated machines used to construct the hunters' gear.

All the missions combine into an outstanding campaign during which the players will have to make tough choices influencing their future fate. Each time they will be able to make different decisions, allowing every mission to be an exceptional experience full of new emotions.

Dungeonology Expansions - Painted

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Board Games - Dungeonology is a really nice game with beautiful components. This project is for a few expansions that were recently released that add some new monsters and scholars to the game.

Definance - Infinity as a Board Game?

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Board Games - Defiance is a dungeon crawler set in the Infinity Universe. It’s a little strange because metal miniatures don’t typically go over well with the board game crowd, but these are really nice.

Description:

A Dungeon Crawler game by CORVUS BELLI based on the Infinity Universe.
A group of heroes has been commissioned up by the human nations to stop an imminent offensive by the Combined Army. Embarked in the Defiance, the heroes of the Human Sphere must fight against an alien invader in a suicide mission with the sole objective of saving humanity. Infinity Defiance is a dungeon crawler with high quality metal miniatures that are compatible with Infinity.

At the beginning of the Round, you build the Initiative deck which will determine the order in which the enemy units will be activated. Each enemy Unit will draw a card from the AI deck and every Enemy in that Unit will attempt to perform, in order, the actions the card indicates - up to a maximum of 2 actions.

Each time you make a roll, you will obtain a series of symbols from the dice. Equipment cards, Software cards, Specialty cards, and enemies, may spend those symbols to apply Effects via Switches.

As the Campaign advances, Characters may improve their combat skills through Specialty cards, which will allow you to choose the specialty best suited to your playing style or personal preferences.

—description from the publisher