I’ve had to read the snow white golden book probably 50 times in the last few months. Here’s the GenX revision:
It’s ironic to see all the movies around fairy tales get gruesome and scary while any book (re)written for kids will be 100% politically correct and won’t even have threats of torture or death or being eaten– even though almost EVERY children’s story from the ancient times (and not so ancient) is all about the threat of kids being eaten as that’s the point of the lesson! “Childe–don’t act this way or you will be EATEN.” What else would they bother to remember or consider using their 3 second attention spans to ponder?
Fantasy Flight is going berserk with new game announcements this fall– and this is an absolute shocker, first because it’s so obscure and second because it’s not the best old game out there by far:
I played this once in 10th grade and I have to say, aside from the ridiculous 80’s setting, that was plenty for me. There’s apocryphal and there’s “apocryphal”… However, it’s good to see the MB big box (Game Master Series) games getting some love. Shogun/Samurai Swords came out again as IKUSA and both Axis and Allies and Conquest of the Empire are still in print. With this game FF can really do no wrong with the development of the game– they’re not going to have a legion of fans complaining about how it deviated from the original with Fortress America as it wasn’t all that great. You can really see FF’s Petersen reliving his childhood via these old rehashed games though, and since I’m just a few years younger, I can get behind it!
Races for sure in: Gorgon, Schizoid, Animal (new), Cyborg (I think new too). I’m going to dig out my Mayfair version tonight to review the aliens I think will be in this new expansion. I’m hoping for SILENCER above all as that is a doozy of a power. While it has pieces for another player, what’s best about this expansion is what it does not have in it: LUCRE. Lucre is essentially Cosmic Encounters version of money/trade goods and it made playing with ‘everything’ in the Mayfair expansion a tower of suck. By this time with the FF version we have tech, we have hazards– so the designers were probably reaching for new stuff to put in (obviously they have tons of aliens to choose from) and lucre was undoubtedly on the list of considerations. Here’s to the designers for not putting that in the game!
What’s sad is we have only played four times this year…
Leinies hasn’t been on my list of beers to go out and get for awhile. The Red is good, the nutbrown is solid, but the Sunset wheat is far too sweet and I am not a fan of the honey/berry wiesse’s at all. We drink a few cases of their regular lager in cans while camping each summer and I have no complaints about that one for a sessionable beer, but Tuesday I had what is easily the best brew they have brewed to date (at least that you could drink and buy) and that’s their ‘Big Eddy’ line Russian Imperial Stout. I guess it’s going to be only around for a limited time, so grab it where you can. It’s an extremely well put together stout, with some real earthy richness at first blush that gets fruity and a little sour at the end. I was at a place where it was free and I drank a LOT of it, I had no desire to switch to anything else, and usually I’ll hit the ports/stouts and then switch to a weisse for the rest of the night. Great stuff.
Oh yeah– bad weather and back to painting is in full swing (albeit Skyrim and Saints Row 3). I did a paint test model for my bestigor unit and here it is. Mostly this post is to list out all the colors so I don’t forget what I used. I’m going to do 3 metal treatments and probably another skin treatment to mix up the look of the unit. I want especially to do the bestigor’s snouts black like the cover of the book, but didn’t do it on the test model. Note, I got ripped off by a guy on ebay selling bestigor bits and so his body is actually from the new Gor kit. Except for a couple places on the upper body, it looks totally fine– though the normal bestigor have armored (and sweet lovin’) thighs.
in Progress
Horns: deneb stone washed with delvan mud and highlighted with deneb stone and skull white. This is from WD and worked out really well.
Skin: same as always: Dark Flesh, Vermin brown, Vermin brown + bronzed flesh (a discontinued color at this point)
Metal: Tin bitz, drybrush boltgun metal generously, drybrush silver a bit and wash with Vallejo Smoke with a lot of water – this gave a great weathering
Fur: not happy with it on this guy but here it is: beastial brown washed with delvan mud, highlighted with Snakebite leather and then snakebite + a bit of bronzed flesh.
Axe handle: scorched brown washed with black ink + delvan mud, highlighted a tiny bit with bleached bone
Leather: black as a base color, highlighted with snakebite leather and edge highlighted with deneb stone with a final wash of delvan mud. This is another WD recipe– on paper that should look like shit but it works out awesome on some parts.
Base: absolute key to every miniature looking good. If you’re going to be anal about something, the base is it. Bestial brown over black (important as black forms the lowest highlight, drybrushed heavily with snakebite leather, then again pretty heavy with bleached bone with a wee bit of static grass glued on here or there. Make sure to do the flat sides of the base in at least 2 coats of bestial brown to get a good finish.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with it– it’s not awesomely great, and while the Bestigor are the best heavy infantry in Warhammer 8th edition, he’s still just a rank and file. What you can’t see here is that his left arm is poorly attached to the axe hand and looks atrocious if you look up close on that side. However in a unit ranked up, this will be totally invisible.
completed angry beast with his buddies in the back waiting for their turn
Well the weather has turned to pure shite and so instead of going outside and getting fresh air and exercise, it’s the season for sitting in a dank basement doing stuff, and I have no more excuses for not working on the hairy beasts (well except for kids, work and Skyrim). Last night I completed my first unit for Warhammer Fantasy Battle ever by actually painting up my first unit base–and it was a big one– 50 gor with a hero, champion and standard bearer on 25mm bases. As you can see, I have a couple extra musicians in there so I have to paint up a few more rank and file to replace them, but it doesn’t change the fact that I can slap this giant unit of beastmen on the table complete with a painted and flocked unit base.
very very angry and rapinesque are they
The base itself is from Gale Force 9 that I picked up this summer at Gencon. While solid in construction, it is slightly warped (nothing you can notice without looking really close, and I chalk that up to this being probably the biggest unit base they have, though Skaven players run slave units of 80-100 so this is not all that big of a unit). Hopefully having this weight of lead on it will flatten it out a bit because as you can see, this unit spans the history of GW’s beastmen with some of the mid 80’s models interspersed with the 5th edition “these guys look too small to have 2 wounds” to the excellent 6th edition kit. In the front rank is an old Minotaur from the 80’s. You can see how small he was compared to the new kit.
As much of a triumph as this is, it’s still just the beginning. Behind these lads is a unit of 30 bestigor (the big boys!) and I’ve got a spawn, a giant, 65 ungor, another Razorgor and a chariot to paint up in addition to building a herdstone to rape the Magic phase. As slow as I paint, it’s going to take years to get it all done…but at least I have this in the can!
from the top (and yes I see the flagrant mold line--ugh)
Baurice!Mastard and I got in on some co-op Saints Row 3 last night with ridiculous results. I laughed so hard from the basement region that I woke the kids and the wife was afraid I would stumble into the bedroom at midnight babbling about how great shooting people out of a cannon attached to a car was. After playing a bit of 2, I’m shocked at the overall quality of 3– great graphics, good sound, a much better driving/crashing/damage engine and it turns the entire gameworld into one big pro wrestling match with the fighting system. Forget the guns, the DDT’s and clotheslines are where it’s at! If you like the genre (which I’m hot and cold on in general), this is a must buy as it is completely over the top insanity. This is just a tiny taste of the mayhem of co-op.
If you already have the Avalon Hill version of the game, like the glow in the dark figures and don’t think the gameplay needs to change at all, other than hoping for a steep drop in price for the old version to pick up a copy, what would entice you to buy the new version? New variants and components to support those variants is a likely answer. In FF’s preview post, they detail the Vortex variant that moves around the map (a bit like the storm in Dune) and can pick up units and place them around the board, incinerate some and give energize cards to players who have stuff nearby where it lands that survive. Not a bad little random chaos thrown in– the key is if you can score VP’s somehow by using the vortex to your advantage.
