Grab Bag of Miscellaneous Miniatures

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Board Games - So many board games have miniatures sometimes I really don’t have a ton to say about the games of mini so I figured doing a Miscellaneous post with a bunch of random stuff I recently painted would make sense.

First up is Caral, This is a game about building pyramids that has nice meoples and really had no need for acutal miniatures other than to milk stretch goals.

Next up is another Journeys in Middle Earth Expansion, I posted about how I feel regarding app based games previously so nothing new to say here.

Maximum Apocalypse has a few expansions this one adds a few new survivors.

Finally Taelmoor is another app based game that needed to have a single miniature to represent the party? I don’t know the model is ok? But probably unnecessary.

Oh yeah if your haven’t heard 10th Edition Warhammer 40,000 comes out this summer so get your armies painted and ready while you wait.







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

Skyrim Adventure Game

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Board Games - Video Games turned into tabletop games seems to be a theme with my board game projects. I mean it makes sense with Television Shows and Movies pulling from Video Game content why wouldn’t board game manufacturers.

This is Skyrim.

Deep in the Forest - Forest of Radgost Painted

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Board Games - Some days I feel like there might be two many games, I mean how many different ways can you tell folk tales or stories of an apocalypse? Do we really need more zombie games? How many games do you own that are still in shrink wrap? Do you feel a strange need to have every game with miniatures painted? I mean honestly no, there’s never enough games and the creativity board games spark in their players lends itself to a constant churn of new content.

So times I start a project and think, “Didn’t I already paint this?” Forest of Radgost is one of those games. The setting is Slavic Mythology which is slightly different yet similar to many of the traditional myths I’m familiar with yet this if a bit different.

The miniatures are nice, not amazing but pretty nice and the description from the publisher is interesting. (Not having played yet I can’t say much beyond this):

Detailed miniatures, immersive storytelling, and rich mythology await you in Forest of Radgost, a cooperative storytelling tabletop game that brings Slavic mythology to life.

When a boy and a girl disappear from their village somewhere in IX century Europe, the village druid dispatches a search party to find the children and escort them back to safety. As one of the members of that search party, you will need to trespass into the sacred forest and cross the boundary that separates the realm of humans from the realm of the Slavic deity Radgost.

Inhabiting the forest are strange beings such as the Psoglav, Lesnik, or Todorci, none of which take kindly to human intruders.

You'll need to use all your skills, wisdom, and instincts to survive the numerous encounters with these strange creatures.

Along the way you will develop your character, collect items, gain skills, separate and rejoin with other members of the search party, and, possibly, discover the secret reason why the druid chose you to join the search party.

Forest of Radgost is a role-playing game where each player controls a character with a fleshed-out backstory, motivation, and skill-set. Players navigate the web of interconnected forest footpaths with a pair of dice that determine the distance and direction of their movement, evoking the feeling of being lost in the woods, with creatures lurking at each crossroad.
At each encounter, players must decide whether to run, hide, flee, or communicate, without knowing which creature they are about to face. Depending on their choices, the encounters are resolved according to the numerous scenarios provided in the accompanying book of encounters.

I'm Super, Thanks For Asking - Hour of Need Painted

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Board Games - The super hero gene is one that is ripe for making “generic” versions of existing properties to build “unique” worlds. I mean The Boys does it marvelously so why not do something similar with a board game?

These minis are similar in scale to Zombicide and don’t have a ton of details so they’re ideal for the slap-chop dry brush and contrast paint style of painting. I really like this style for board games that have a bunch of miniatures. It gets them painted quickly and they look good on the board. Sure this style isn’t going to win any awards and I wouldn’t use it on more deatiled figure but when you need to get color on stuff quickly it’s amazing.

Hour of Need is just that, here’s what the publisher has to say about it:

The pages of Modern-day Saga Comics are filled with heroes and villains doing battle across both reality and the shared inter-dimensional space of the Astrallacy. While nefarious villains seek power and material wealth, valiant heroes fight to defend those that are caught in the middle of these epic conflicts—it is these everyday people that make reality worth fighting for, and now is their hour of need!

Hour of Need is a cooperative game of comic book action for 1–4 players (or up to 6 players with available expansions). Designed by Adam and Brady Sadler, Hour of Need is the latest installment in their line of Modular Deck System (MDS) games. Set in an original world inspired by modern comic books, Hour of Need puts players in the roles of diverse heroes attempting to thwart dangerous villains from carrying out nefarious deeds!

In each game of Hour of Need, players will need to use their chosen hero decks to tactically solve problems and thwart their chosen villain's schemes, as presented by the chosen issue deck and board. Utilizing simultaneous turns that provides the framework for collaborative strategy, players have to work together to reveal the villain and prepare for the final showdown!

Featuring fast gameplay, highly-detailed miniatures, and a variety of modular fixed decks for heroes, villains, and issues, Hour of Need lets players create their own comic book stories in the MDS Comics world!

Getting Ready for 10th - Chaos Marines and Thousand Suns

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Warhammer 40,000 - I’m really hoping that some version of soup makes it to the new edition of Warhammer 40,000. There are some armies that just love to be mixed with others like CSM and Daemons. It’s fluffy and I miss the days of old where you could summon a unit of daemons with an Icon or Spell.

I’m sure everyone has a bulk of new unpainted chaos stuff sitting around since many of the most recent updates made some unconsidered options viable. Sure it’s a little late in the game to be jumping on the new hotness but I’m guessing the revised unit cards are going to be similar to the Indexes of 8th edition where everything was pretty playable early on.

Getting Ready for 10th - Orks

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Warhammer 40,000 - A new edition of Warhammer 40K is due out this summer which means it’s the perfect time to get your armies in shape and painted up so you can start the new edition with a fully painted force. Now knowing that EVERYTHING is going to change you can’t really focus on exactly what you plan on playing but you can take the time to get that grey plastic pile of shame up to snuff.

This is the first of several batches of Orks that I’m painting up, ultimately it will be an entire collections worth of stuff but I’m batching it out to avoid getting burned out. Most of these are newer kits so it’s unlikely they’ll be invalidated by the upcoming rules changes.

Battles in a World of Darkness - Sheol Fully Painted

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Board Games - Weird painting techniques can be tricky to pull off. This is a game where light is used as a weapon and the art style is very monochromatic with glowing effects. It took me a bit to sort out how I was going to pull that off but I ultimately settled on a mono chromatic scheme with glow in the dark and blacklight reactive paint. That way the models match the art style in normal light but if you put in a blacklight bulb or two you get a really cool look.

The description on the game sounds interesting:

The shadows arrived on the moon. From that day on, a mass of shadows (called Sheol) similar to a black tide began to form until it shrouded the moon completely and the moon "cried" the shadows down to Earth. Although technologically advanced, people had no means to stop the shadows, which slowly filled the Earth and exterminated almost all of mankind. The planet was fully enveloped in layer of clouds so dark that sunlight could not filter through and the survivors took refuge on the Isle of Light, also called the Citadel, the last outpost of mankind. In fact, Lux, a type of light radiation capable of destroying shadows, was discovered too late.

Enclosed between the immense walls that surround the many square kilometers in which the intricate levels of the citadel arise, humans have slowly forgotten the external world shrouded in darkness and exhausted themselves in a series of internal political, cultural and economic struggles. In fact, over the decades, the citadel has become a collection of decadent people, mixing nanotechnology with superstition, millenary beliefs with cyber-empowerments, chaos and the emergence of new castes.

Only the Scouts, explorers of the unknown and raiders of the outside world, have not forgotten that the world belongs to mankind and that mankind shall reclaim it one day. In this game, you are one of them.is set in a not-too-distant future. After the Moon's Weeping, Earth has turned from being the realm of man to a place reigned by shadows. The only bastion of salvation is the Citadel, where the last survivors of humanity found shelter to survive. It is from here that the Scouts head out to explore the desolate lands of Sheol in search of resources.

Sheol is a cooperative game, playable solo or up to 4 people, with an emphasis on storytelling and strategy. Sheol is set in a coherent universe where game mechanics and setting are deeply interconnected. It is organized in campaigns, in turn, subdivided into missions. In each mission, players will have to coordinate their efforts tactically to complete the objectives and defend the central game area (the Citadel) from the enemy invasion. The story will progress, mission after mission, allowing characters to discover the secrets of the Sheol’s world and unlock more items and skills.

—description from the publisher

Feeling Frosty - Frost Punk Fully Painted

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Board Games - I’m really behind on posting here, but will work on getting back to a regular schedule. My most recent project is a bit out of season now that spring is finally here, but what if spring never came? Frost Punk explores the idea of a perpetual winter set during the age of steam a what if post apocalypse game in which Victorian era technology needs to deal with a forever winter.

The game seems very cool according to this description:

In Frostpunk: The Board Game, up to four players will take on the role of leaders of a small colony of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world that was hit by a severe ice age. Their duty is to effectively manage both its infrastructure and citizens. The core gameplay will be brutal, challenging, and complex, but easy to learn. The citizens won’t just be speechless pieces on the board. Society members will issue demands and react accordingly to the current mood, so every decision and action bears consequences.

The players will decide the fate of their people. Will you treat them like another resource? Are you going to be an inspiring builder, a fearless explorer, or a bright scientist? Is your rule going to be a sting of tyranny or an era of law and equality?

The game is based on a bestseller video game by 11bit studios, the creators of This War Of Mine. The original (digital) edition of Frostpunk is a highly successful strategy-survival-city-builder, a BAFTA-nominee that originally launched in 2018.

Foundations of Rome - Fully Painted

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Arks of Omen - Boarding Actions

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Warhammer 40,000 - Boarding Actions are really fun small scale games that take most of the rules bloat out of Warhammer 40,000. Rules as written you have to use a very specific set of terrain with fixed layouts and your force is extremely limited in what you can take.

Our group has been playing Crusade for a little over a year now and were excited to incorporate Boarding Actions into our weekly games. Of course because there was not a specific supplement printed to address Boarding Actions and Crusade we had to make things up on the fly.

What we decided was to allow any of our existing units from the crusade roster with their upgrades so long as they were “legal” in boarding actions. Using the Crusade Points give your opponents extra CP to start has been pretty good in balancing the forces. We also set the game limit at 25PL with a +/- of 2PL to allow for some flexibility with the roster so you can easily pivot between boarding actions and normal games each week.

Since many of our games are 3-4 players I set up the table with two decks. The decks are connected by ladders and stairs that function using the “Open Hatch” Action. With the ladders the action results in you “Embarking” on the ladder and you can disembark at the end of your next movement phase. So far it has worked really well keeping everyone involved in the fight.

The other change we made is that instead of buying a new terrain set we’re using the Deadbolt’s Derelict from Death Ray Designs. As long as the layouts are balanced it seems to work out making unique layouts for each game.

Wardogs for Change

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Warhammer 40000 - I think the best use of Knights (either Chaos or Imperial) is as a supplement to another force. It gives you some really tough models and heavy firepower without the drawback of a small model count force.

The Second Thousand

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Warhammer 40000 - The other Thousand Sons army I’ve been working on also continues to have more models added to it. I particularly love the spawn model.

A Cast of Thousands

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Warhammer 40,000 - Sometimes it seems like an army is never finished. This batch of Thousands Sons is the latest addition to one of the two different forces I’ve been painting for the last year or so.

Chasing the Meta - Tzeetch

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Warhammer 40,000 - Unfortunately in a game with an ever changing ruleset sometimes you get behind the changes and an idea you had just isn’t as good as it was before. Flamers while still good just aren’t as brokenly amazing as they were before the balance dataslate, hooefully these guys will still get to see the table.