A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Age of Sigmar – Stormcast Bowmen, Grifhounds and Aetherwings must be a really decent warband. This is the second warband I’ve painted this year with the same list. While I’m not an Age of Sigmar fan the more I paint these models the more I like them. Who know maybe I’ll make myself a small force in the future.
Board Games – Resource management games typically use plastic or wooden cubes in various colors because they’re cheap and easy to produce. This is fine however when a game includes sculpted versions of these resources it takes the game to a new level. Cosmic Colonies is one such game.
From the manufacturer:
Asteroids blast through the cosmos, each one packed with possibilities. One may be your perfect new home, but it takes a stellar team to build a cosmic colony...
Cosmic Colonies is an orbit-drafting game of building a home in the stars. Players must leverage their workers' unique abilities to gather resources and construct new buildings while cleverly expanding their colonies. Each round brings new opportunities — and new talent. Your old workers will blast off to other players, while their workers orbit around to join your team!
Also in this group I painted up the various resource tokens for Alien Frontiers Factions. Three little power plants and a rover look much better with a little paint.
Age of Sigmar – The alter of blood is a cool terrain piece that looks great with any of the Blood Gods followers. I believe my client will be using this for War Cry.
Also for War Cry or Age of Sigmar is the meanest toughest little person to stalk the Old World. Gotrek Gurrnison the Troll Slayer and star of numerous novels graced my table with this batch as well.
Warhammer 40,000 – Earlier this year I painted up the Ork half of the Aeronautical Imperialis starter set. This time around I painted the Imperial half. These planes are so detailed they were fun to paint.
In that same small scale vein I painted up a force of Epic Squats these were the exact opposite of the navy planes. Not very detailed and super annoying to paint. While epic was a great game the models were pretty garbage. The nostalgia factor of these isn’t as strong as some other older models I’ve painted.
Board Games – Everybody loves a huge dragon model. It’s a staple of any successful fantasy property to have at least one giant dragon for the heroes to battle against.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Due to the current situation I haven’t had as many opportunities to play Ninth Edition Warhammer 40,000 as I’d like. Which is a bummer because the few games I have had a chance to play have been really fun.
Read MoreBoard Games – Arcadia Quest is another chibi-style board game that has a ridiculous amount of expansions. When it first came out I assumed it was just CMON’s response to breaking ties with Sodapop Miniatures after the Relic Knights fiasco, and dismissed it because I didn’t think I needed another game with a similar theme. Sadly I was wrong Arcadia quest is much different than Super Dungeon Explore and if you’re a fan of the style you should probably make room for both games on your shelf.
Read MoreBoard Games – Shadows of Brimstone reminds me an awful lot of RIFTS or GURPS, as a kid going into the comic shop/game store I’d see entire shelves dedicated to the myriad of expansions these open ended games systems offered up. Shadows of Brimstone has the same feel, in the course of painting the various sets I’ve painted cowboys, astronauts, mutant snakes, Native Americans, aliens, robots, and a variety of other monsters.
Read MoreBoard 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.
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.
Warhammer 40,000 – This batch is just a few characters for Warhammer 40k. The special edition Custodes and the special character for the Salamanders chapter.
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.
Read MoreBoard 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!
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.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – As many of my clients prep for 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000, I’ve been getting quite a few random units on my painting table. This latest batch is a unit of Terminators for the Ultramarines along with a Terminator Captain.
Read More“…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…”
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – With a new edition of 40K on the horizon some of my clients have switched focus to some of the 40k-adjacent games that are available. Aeronautical Imperiallis was a game Forgeworld supported sometime ago, it’s been rereleased in plastic with some revised rules and what I think are slightly larger planes.
Read MoreHistorical Games – Lately I’ve had quite a few more tanks and historical models come across my table. This latest set pits two Sherman tanks against a Panther.
Board Games – Part of what makes a great game are great components. I know many people who will buy a game for no other reason than the stuff that comes with it looks cool. For some games this pays off huge for others, well at least you got all that cool stuff right?
Read More
Warhammer 40,000 – Ninth edition is on it’s way. Everyday more previews and leaks are being released as the newest edition of 40K prepares to launch. Overall 8th Edition was good, the abundance of errata and changes due to the competitive meta was a bit much to keep up with at times. I know in my group some of the guys that only got to play once a month or less often felt lost or frustrated when the army list they’d been working on for months suddenly was over/under costed or just not legal. My hope is the new edition will have less of that “constant tweaking” and the loop-holes of the previous edition will be sorted out. I think making vehicles viable and making command points more standard across game sizes rather than having to min/max to get the most points to spend on tricks will also be a huge help. I haven’t played 40K proper since Christmas time (Necromunda and Kill Team are easier to fit in), so after updating Battlescribe I started looking at the lists I made for 8th Edition and the trend was definitely towards getting the most CP possible (2) minimal battalions with a special formation seemed to be the sweet spot, my “Nightlords” force was a Spikey 17 Red Corsairs Battalion with a Nightlords Outrider of Raptors and another Battalion of cultists, and Terminators. While the force was ok, it was clear I was forced to diverge from my all flying Raptors, Daemon Princes and teleporting Terminators that I began building at the start of 8th.
In previous editions, your force was valid until it received a new codex or the edition changed. There may have been external reasons to change your army such as meta shifts or power creep, but for the most part if you built a 2k force it’d stay a 2k force until a new book came out, giving you a shelf life of several years. In 8th you knew for sure that at a minimum of annually points would be adjusted so that investment in a new force could require reworking in a year. However in addition to the annual points adjustments, core rule of the game would change every six months or two weeks after the release of a new book. Which was happening at least every two months if not more frequently. While the attention and finessing to make things a better experience for everyone is appreciated it got to the point that if you took your finger off the pulse for a fe weeks the game could be drastically different.
That tangent brings me to the latest project to cross my table, more Ultramarines. This time around Sargent Chronos, some Terminators, another Landspeeder and two Landraiders. All of these units will benefit from the changes that have been announced so far. Chronos and the Landraiders won’t be hitting on 4’s or locked in combat any longer, Terminators won’t be over-watched to death and the Landspeeder can zoom around and shoot without penalty.
