A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Kingdom Death – The Green Knight is a special expansion for Kingdom Death: Monster. It requires you to craft a ridiculous amount of gear from several expansions in order to create the “ulitmate” armor.
Read MoreRandom – Saturday mornings in the early 80’s were a great time to be a kid. From 1983-1985 the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was my favorite show.
Read MoreBoard Games – Vordt is another expansion for the Dark Souls board game. It’s an interesting model as it appears to be some type of mount but is most definitely humanoid.
Read MoreIf you can see the Lonely Tree for what it really is, it's probably too late. This carnivorous organism hypnotizes anything that comes near, luring prey with hallucinations of their innermost desires. Once they draw near, the hallucinations turn to ceaseless dreams, while the roots consume the victim in their sleep.
Read MoreBoard Games – AvP is an odd franchise similar to Star Wars it has a pretty rabid fanbase that is consistently let down by the latest film. Part of the problem is with 20-40 year old franchises is the nostalgia is strong and fans don’t like to embrace “new coke” …
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First pass at playing over Google Hangouts
Necromunda – Five members of my gaming group were able to meet up over Google Hangouts to have a pit fight. We used the rules I posted up the other day day and it was pretty successful. After three games we did have a few issues that need to be addressed before we play again.
First off being locked in a tiny fighting pit with a Corpse Grinder armed with Paired Heavy Chain Cleavers is bad news. Corpse Grinders are a very strong in close combat and many of the abilities they have seem to be an over correction to the weakness of close combat in Necromunda. If you don’t have a chance to shoot and pin them or stay out of charge range there’s little hope of beating them. Right now we’re considering limiting pit fights to the original six house only, it makes sense from a fluff perspective and puts everyone on a more even playing field. The downside is the non-house gangs are really cool and everyone wants to be able to play their favorite character. The compromise is to eliminate the “scary” part of the masks and remove any ability that flat out takes a model out of action. We’re going to try this next week and if it doesn’t work out better than we’ll go to just the original six gangs.
The other issue we had was a chess board isn’t big enough if you count squares as 1” the easy fix is to change them to 2” squares and count a diagonal move as 3”. Intially we opted to use a chess board because everyone could easily replicate the board state at home. In practice I use my laptop and phone to both join the call and suspended my phone above the board. So it wasn’t necessary for everyone to have a board at home. That being said we’re going to use the game mat that came with Dark Uprising next week. I’ll make a number and letter key for the grid so we can easily call out our moves.
We’ll also be tweaking a few things.
• Showboating: Models only get one action on turn one.
• We Want Blood: Ranged weapons aren’t allowed until turn three.
• From the Hip: Weapons with the Sidearm trait may be used on turn two.
• FIGHT CLUB: Fighter may purchase any items from theBook of Judgement Trading post up to Rare 9.
Apart from those minor snags we had a great time and played three games. We’ll try again next week with the tweaks detailed above.
Necromunda – Prior to all this COVID nonsense I was participating in two separate Necromunda campaigns. Neither of my gangs was doing particularly well, but I was having fun. Both campaigns were moving along and didn’t seem to be in danger of stalling out, then the world went to shit and getting together for games wasn’t going to happen.
After a few brainstorming sessions we decided that running Necromunda pit fights over video chat seemed to be the most feasible way of playing. Only having one model per player to keep track of and an easily translatable grid seemed to make sense. In the event that this goes well we can continue to have fights during lockdown and generate some credits for our gangs when we can meet back up face-to-face.
Here’s the rules I came up with, I’ll post a follow up later this month with some type of after battle report.
Board Games – Zombicide Black Plague seems to have more expansions than the “modern” version and I think I may have finished the last of the big boxes.
Read MoreRandom – We’re on the third week of Shelter in place here in Michigan. As a graphic designer I’m used to working from home occasionally. What I’m not used to is trying to keep the kids on a schedule that feels remotely normal while trying to work from home. Luckily my wife is also working from home so between the two of us we can juggle things.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Tau seem to be back on top, or at least my client thinks so …
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Warhammer 40,000 – Sometimes the various boxed games will provide a decent set of rules for the larger game. Sometimes the rules are really “fluffy” but to restrictive to play in a competitive format. A good example of this are the models from the Kill Team: Rogue Trader box, the rules for them make sense and feel right but the restrictions of detachments and keyword mixing make them unattractive in any matched play scenario.
Apparently this little guy is a cheap elite choice for Tau armies which helps them to fill out brigades. I don’t play against Tau enough to know if this is a solid decision for building a force but the logic seems sound.
Historical – I painted a few crews for Gun Fighters Ball earlier this year, my client needed to get another crew painted up for an event in May. Whether or not that event will happen given the current health crisis remains to be seen, but at least I met his deadline. These guys are from the OK coral shoot-out.
Star Wars – Battle Droids, General Grievous and Shoretroopers quite a mixed bagged of Legion forces this time around.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – One of my clients is pretty good at finding great deals and rescuing models from the used bins. Most recently he acquired a fully-painted Death Watch force to add to his own. It had a very different theme than what he has been using as well as some unique weapon load-outs. Of course the problem with picking up a “fully-painted” force is they rarely match your existing force. Often people use the GW painting guides and you get lucky that they are close-enough and other times the previous owner put their own twist on it.
This is one of those “Unique-Twist” situations. Luckily the paint wasn’t gobbed on and I was able to make some adjustments. Essentially this became a 3C+Wash job as I only needed to bring the black, gunmetal and red in line with what I’ve done on the rest of the force. It takes a little time but the end result is worth it.
Warhammer 40,000 – The Impulsor is an odd vehicle. As one of the only reasonable transport options for Primaris Marines it's becoming more popular. I suppose the open back makes sense for rapid deployment but not so much for protection, although the passengers being encased in power armor makes a solid argument for them not needing a roof I suppose.
Also in this batch of the boys in blue are a few more eliminators. This time around they are equipped with the las-fusiles. This are interesting choices, the models have a wire that connects to the scope which looks pretty cool. To make them different than the standard plasma glow I went with green on the exposed coil.
Board Games – I’ve painted quite a few sets for Mansions of madness over the years. It’s one of Fantasy Flights staple games. The models are always good and the expansions are well themed. This particular box has a bunch of snakes, snake people and adventurers.
Bolt Action – Historical games have neve been my thing but it seems that I’m getting more clients that are getting into them. The latest batch are some Japanese tanks. I don’t know a ton about the historical aspect of what camo they had etc so I just mimicked what was on the box. Painting camo takes a few steps since you have to mask off the various shades.
Board Games – Mythic Battles is a fairly large game. My client sent over just a small expansion featuring some of the monsters. These are pretty nice sculpts, the Basilisk and Manticore are exceptional, however the wolf is a bit lacking.
Star Wars – Sabine Wren is one of the cooler characters to come out of the Rebels cartoon series. A Mandolorian graffiti artist she has an interesting color scheme which seems to change often. Recreating this in 28mm scale was fun, I think the overall effect looks close enough to the cartoon.
Board Games – Blood Rage is a game about Vikings, this expansion introduces the Gods of Asgard. Sadly I don’t know much more than that. The sculpts are ok and feel similar to Zombicide with a different skin.
