We all see the golden demon and all the GW stuff, Warmachine stuff, etc. Lead Painter’s League has a painting competition that includes everything from just about every category– and it’s just great to see bare breasted amazons painted up next to non-Warmachine/40K mechs, plus all the glorious historicals. Check out round 2 here.
And the obligatory picture:
My buddy dave painted up his Dreadfleet set entire. Needless to say, it’s awesome and quite a feat with the merciless ebb of time and tide that family and kids imbue to your hobbies. Looking forward to a game with this stuff soon.
Part 1 of a 3 part series with each of the Epic rulesets (Epic40k, Epic Armageddon, NetEpic). This one is with the ‘failed’ version from 1997: Epic 40K. With reading, I think these are the best set of rules for Epic family, but we’ll see when we bust out the more recent rules which is the best on the table. This is the first time I’ve busted out my 6mm stuff in over 15 years!
Ugh. I felt like I painted a lot in December but I didn’t get much done in reality. I meant to get my Bestigor out the door but I only ended up completing three Gor, one Bestigor and my second Chariot (which has a bestigor on it). I couldn’t complete the riders in time for the new year but got close so finished those up last night. The bestigor is a bit messed up. He’s pinned to the floor of the chariot but his left foot is off the ground. Not really noticable but still not ideal. I had to put the driver quite a bit forward but I feel that worked out pretty well.
This January, now half way gone already, is all Bestigor– IF I can keep my dirty dirty paws off my old Epic 40K stuff. I started improving a couple of infantry stands here and there and it turned into fixing up 22 stands of infantry from their rather dismal 1992 paint jobs, and that took a lot of work.
As a high school/college lad (and an embarrassingly long time afterward) I was far too languishing poor to buy a lot of gaming stuff; but oh boy did we used to play. We would make boats for Man o’ War out of balsa wood, we played with pieces of paper representing units in Warhammer, made terrain from toilet paper tubes and furniture rubbish, wrote our own adventures for WFRP and Paranoia and so on. What we had rather than cash then was time– and quite a lot of it compared to at least my current count (hell 1 hour free from other stuff is a long time these days) . Granted we could have been working during this time to buy more stuff for the games, but you know, it was in between classes or those idle weekends right at the beginning of a college semester when all your homework was long done so why not throw down a 15 hour game of Adeptus Titanicus or two? Or play Talisman every single day (sometimes twice)?
These days I cannot wholly complain as I’ve gotten in a good 50 hours of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in the last year as well as a much smaller amount at the boardgame table, but the long swaths of time like back in the day just cannot be spent without planning months in advance. I think it’s because of this lack of actual play that makes those of us with heaving masses of other real life responsibilities buy stuff– sometimes lots of stuff–for games we know we may never even get a few games in.
Case in point for me personally was an Epic 40K fever over the Holiday, where I dropped 100$ or so on miniatures and terrain. I have one buddy that played it back in the day but no group to get into it– an certainly the game is dead as dead can be from the publisher so it’s a game with no real future at all (that said all of the incarnations of the game are pretty great). Yet, I see buying stuff for a game sort of like buying a lottery ticket– if you have the lottery ticket you can DREAM about winning and pressing random people onto your personal yacht that goes to your small country in Africa where you can hunt the most dangerous gameof all and drive ATV’s all over manicured English Gardens: if you have the gaming stuff you can DREAM about playing and in this stage of life as it were, I think that’s all you can be sure about doing– the play sometimes is just too much work to get to.
This does not just apply to miniature games– Starcraft 2 was a complete bust for me as I just didn’t have time to get involved in the game online early on nor get a group of friends to play with– and if you get on it later all you will do is get your ass kicked constantly and no one cares about it because the next big thing is already out. As for board games– I played Advanced Squad Leader (Starter Kit 1) last night and while it is a cracking great game I realized after checking ebay for the second starter kit (ouch that’s $$$) that I had only played three times in two years. Now ASL is a SUPER heavy, and it takes awhile to get back into the swing of the rules (it does play extremely smoothly once you get going and I still heap praise on it as an incredible design) but is it worth it to buy and expansion when you haven’t even gotten your plays worth out of the initial set? It may be if I can sit and think OK, I have X game expansion in the bank– I can think about setting up a game whenever, and can read forum posts about it, etc. because I have all the tools I need to possibly play it, it makes thinking about playing it just that more fun. Twilight Imperium 3, a game I still am on the fence about whether it’s a pile of shite or not, tempts me whenever I see it to pick up the new expansion, even though we’ve only played 3 times and some of my play group abhor it. Just like a lottery ticket, it may be the fantasizing about playing is worth the price of buying it and by buying it we may be scratching an itch for actually playing that we no longer can have at our stage of life. As pathtic as that is, that may be the long and short of the reasons for a random splurge on something that logically won’t hit the table more than once or twice, if ever.
That said, anyone up for a Necromunda campaign!?
We made it. Great to see everyone that was in town for the week between Xmas and New Years and we had a bit of a gaming deluge, though it cost a shocking amount of sleep to pull off. I’m hoping someday in the future the fruit of my loins learn how nice it is for them to sleep in. When you’re thanking your lucky stars that you don’t have to get up until 6:30AM on a day you have off, that’s pretty sad.
Yesterday was our first annual Cosmic Encounter tournament on New Year’s day. We had 9 players and split into two tables, the winners of which moved on to a final at the champions table. The first two games had two shared wins so the final was a four person instead of five.
The final was Tripler, Fungus, Bully, and the Mercenary. The Fungus won the day with an attack on the Bully with four huge stacks of fungaloided ships. Appropriately, Fungus was played by the notorious JP Duvall. He shared a win in the preliminary and then convinced everyone in the final that they should only try to win it alone and only he was able to pull it off. Hopefully everyone had fun and had good eats and got to talk a lot of trash. I thought we should have a best of the worst game for the losers, but we ended up playing Dragon Lairds instead.
Today was Warhammer madness. I got in a 3 man game with my beastmen vs the Vampire Counts and Lizardmen at 3000 points per side which meant I had to put every model I owned on the table (so many still sadly unpainted). We rolled ‘Battle for the Pass’ so the board was cramped like craze with no real flanks to speak of. My beastmen ambush was useless, but I managed to pull out a win due to a very very stubborn and extremely pissed off Gor unit that started 50 in number and ended the game with a mere nine after trashing a unit of Blood Knights, a Skink/Kroxigor mixed unit and some grave guard that were ineffective on the flank. The highlights of the game include both of my ‘flanks’ evaporating as beastmen ran away at the sight of Chaos Hounds being spanked in combat, the Stegadon getting sucked down into a Pit of Shades (after the dispell dice came up one short!) and Skinks taking out a razorgor and my Giant in the same turn (gahhh!). Lord Lobo may post a battle report so I don’t want to go into too much detail but it was quite a butchers bill. After 10 games or so with the Beasts, my tactical advice is to–no matter what–get stuck in as fast as possible– don’t mill about at all, and don’t let a few units of zombies get in the way– if you hit tarpits– HIT them and move on. The beasts insane close combat prowess will likely carry the day if you can get them into touch. If your opponent feels like they were randomly punched in the face on the bus when playing your beastmen, you’re doing it right.
As of last night I am officially on Xmas vacation. This means GAMING. I got in a game of Agricola and Dreamblade last night with my buddy JP who has the pleasure of having worked quite a large chunk of the last few years on that little game we call Skyrim. I pumped him for information which he was happy to give since the game was OUT– a far cry from last year when we couldn’t get him to say anything about this new ES game.
It looks like we’re going to get in on the most vicious of all games during the off week: Republic of Rome and try out the new fangled (not that it hasn’t been out for awhile) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition. What’s more, a big game of Cosmic Encounter is in the works as well. I promise to post something stupid every day about what ever sort of nerd crap we are all doing. I know I will be trying to plow through my beastmen army, but I started getting an interest again in EPIC 40K and pulled out all that old stuff to give it a painting improvement before hopefully getting in a game. If anyone wants to read a run down of the sad epic (pun intended) of this failed game: read here. It wasn’t because it was not a great design, it was because no one would give it a chance that played the old version.
As for useless and redundant blog posts, I also want to give a run down of 2011’s games that were great and those that were disappointments. We have had the greatest deluge of AAA class titles in human history this Fall, and there just won’t be a year like this for probably another decade.. but I digress. Vacation. Nerdery. Drinking. Yes!
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.
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.
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.
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!
I actually made it to the Con this year, family in tow just off a weekend+ of strep throat for me and the missus as well as my car getting totaled in a t-bone on the way to work. We were crossing our fingers up to the last minute that the one uninfected shorty in the family would stay healthy and she did: in her body at least. After 5-6 hours at Gencon, I will never be sure if she’ll be right again. As any attendee is well aware, some of the things viewed there can never, ever be unseen. There was one moment of almost-regret when, while being dragged through the morass in the dealer hall by her and her cousin, we essayed into a dank waft a malodor the likes of which neither of their young, unblanched olfactory organs had experienced before. While I winced and imagined the sort of lifestyle choices that accompanied such a reek, they just pushed on, dragging me to whatever corner of the dealer hall their fancy took them.
Saturday I was free from the burdens of unprotected sex and I while I missed the Shadowfist world championship by 23 minutes, it gave me ample time to wander around and get some demos and shop. Here are some of the results I can remember.
Ventura: new game by Fantasy Flight dealing with the Condotierre period in Italy. Interesting take on the whole ‘hexes make up the board’ mechanic that Nexus Ops, Kings and Things and Twilight Imperium use. You draw and lay the tiles nearest your own controlled area, so the board builds out form a conflicted center. All and all, an easy, fairly elegant area control game that I would have picked up immediately had the price point not been… drum roll please: 80$ ! That’s what I would expect to pay for a big box hobby game like Descent or Ikusa. While it seemed like a good game, the price point is going to crush it.
Blood Bowl League Manager: An insta-buy when it comes out, this was the belle of the ball for me. I was highly skeptical they would be able to pull this off, and they did! It’s a little deck building a bit of bluffing, some luck and the most important part: they integrated the block dice really well into the whole game mechanic. Essentially, you have a deck of your players and you play them on different games that make up a season. It’s abstracted but essentially represents you pulling out all the stops for a game with a player position for whatever effect in that game. If you have more strength than the opponent for each game, you win and get whatever benefits the game provides. This could be more player cards, some team special abilities or special coaches (or just fan factor). Whoever has the most fan factor at the end of the league wins. Looks like it can scale with players and really easy to play a short game or a really long campaign. Can’t wait to get my hands on this one. FF ran out of their 300 copies on Friday morning, or so I heard. Damn.
Rune Age: Another new one from Fantasy Flight. I half-heartedly tried to get into a demo of this but after looking over someone’s shoulder and seeing how Dominion-esque it was, I took a pass. Some will like this a lot. Unless someone says it’s not like Dominion at all, I’ll take a pass on this one.
Talisman Dragons: it was there, but after the 10 hours worth of games a few weeks back, I was just not ready to pick this up yet. Definite purchase, just later in the Fall.
Shopping. I was tentatively looking for some Dreamblade stuff and it was found only at one booth and fairly expensive. I missed last year’s con, but there was plenty around in 2009 to be had, mostly for a song. It’s a solid area-control miniatures game and with the figures super cheap, no reason not to pick up a bunch. As they ramp up in price; not so much.
AT-43 was also on my list, and I found one booth with a couple of very cheap items I needed, and another booth with a bunch that was half off retail, but still expensive for my tastes. Again in 2009 there was a ton to be had (mostly due to Fantasy Flight’s liquidation) but that well has very much dried up. AT-43 is an excellent game and I’m quite close to having a Therian and Red Block army of some size to meddle with. Along with AT-43 is the old 3.5 Confrontation stuff– amazing minatures for the most part and one booth had a bunch, but they just didn’t have anything I really needed. I may be kicking myself someday for not breaking the bank picking some of it up. The main issue is, I paint so slowly the stuff will sit in boxes for a decade before a brush hits it at all.
Warhammer: I found a booth that had TONS of bits and I will be hitting that every year that they make it. I would literally spend the whole con going through their shit. They didn’t have anything exceptionally old, but had a mess of stuff for any and all of the big box GW games (Necromunda, Blood Bowl, BFG, Man O War, etc).
Sadly, I didn’t buy a single ‘new’ game to say, like most years, “a ha! I got this at Gencon, we must play!” This is due to blood bowl league manager being sold out and Ventura– well 80$ was just too much to spend.
Shadowfist. Though I missed the nationals Saturday morning, I did make it to the invite-only tournament for past tournament winners, which started right after the morning tournament final concluded after a 4 hour final! I was able to pull out the win after getting a tie in my first game, winning my second game after a long slough (thank you petroglyphs!) and winning in short order the three man final. In the final against ascended and architects (least that’s what I saw), I started strong and got a High Noon face off using a foundation character (thank you Yellow Senshi Chamber!) and a ring of gates out (protecting from stuff going back into my hand which my deck hates). The Ascended player laid out bull market (5 power to all players) as a response to the end of my turn, allowing me the power to lay out a site and be at play and take for my next turn. Then he announced that he had gotten all Feng Shui in his draw. Now, getting all Feng Shui at a time like that really sucks, but to announce it in the final of a tournament–it basically said to both myself and the other player that he was pretty much out of denial cards and we needed to go for the win. The Architect player to my right brought out some little stuff, but couldn’t take a site (thank you Final Brawl!) and after gaining 4 power in addition to the 5 from the Bull Market, I was able to lay out a foundation character, a Big Brusier and have a power left for a confucian stability to stop the inevitable zzzzzap (which came in the form of an Op Killdeer). Going for the win, the brusier got redirected onto a 9 body site (he’s only 8 fighting) , but my foundation character’s damage was redirected onto that 9-body site via the yellow senshi chamber, reducing it to a feastable number for the big brusier, for which the table had no answer. All in all, I got real lucky with my draws and was able to capitalize on both the bad luck of the other players as well as some mistakes on their part.
My MVP cards:
Character: Big Bruiser
Event: Blue Meditation
Edge: Shield of Pure Soul
Feng Shui: Petroglyphs
State: none in deck
After winning this and the Wisconsin state championship this year after many years of tournaments of just barely not making it into the finals, I’m looking at a long decade or so of getting my ass handed to me in competitive play as I well deserve. Bring it!