Yet more and different Pig-Men

In addition to a possible Wonderland themed D&D game I've also started prep on another more classic or 'regular' style fantasy game.  I've collected up a bunch of pig-faced-orcs by my friend Ash also recently hooked me up with some actual Pig-Men for the Relic Blade skirmish game.  These are absolutely fantastic figures and fit me current vibe of 'old-school but new'.

Pig-Man #1 is armed with a sword and shield.  I feel like unless another piggy miniature comes across my path I'm guessing this guy will be the chief/boss/bully for this encounter.

Pig-Man #2 is equipped for two-weapon fighting.  As an aside I've always found it odd that two-weapon fighting is a popular option for PCs but few humanoid monsters come equipped that way.

Pig-Man #3 is carry a mighty two-handed battle-axe.  In addition to his axe he has a really well-textured belly plate.

I'm not quite sure how pig-men became my thing but looking at two other projects on my desk, apparently they are in fact my thing.

-Jay

Reinforcements for Black Squadron Security

Following on my last post as an add-on to my Broken Contract game I did get a few of the Ash Walker figures.

Ash's background is that he's a member of Black Squadron Security (hence the gear and armour) but is sympathetic to the Breakers and may take their side (hence the absence of Black Squadron Security logo on his armour.

This is a great figure on multiple levels.  First up the sculpting is great with some great depth and texture.  The gear is not only suitable for Broken Contract but potentially many other near future games as well (he'll be the latest addition to my Peacekeepers for This Is Not A Test).  And he comes with multiple arms and heads so he can be assembled in various configurations.  In addition to the 'basic' model I assembled one with the riot helmet and taser-rifle.

A funny thought occurred to me while taking pictures tonight.  My friend Darren asked me a few posts ago to start including pictures of the backs of some of my miniatures.  For the most part I've never thought that was really necessary but this time out I'm including one.  For some reason the only scene that really sticks with me from Iron Man 3 is when Tony Stark is tied to a bed frame in a basement/dungeon and while insulting his captors he refers to one of them as "Pony-tail-express".  Painted my Ash Walker figure and it all came flooding back....

Alright, now maybe I'm painting cowboys...or maybe I'm not.

-Jay

Review - Broken Contract

A while back I was posting some content for a miniature line by Breaker Press for their proposed future game Broken Contract.  That game then went to Kickstarter where it was successfully funded and has just recently shipped out.  I received my copy this weekend and decided to play a little show and tell.

First up Broken Contract is set in a dystopian future where a significant portion of humanity lives under "contract" (read as; legal slavery) to a number of mega-corporations using them in the most cost-effective manner possible.  The game universe is really well realised through it's art and fiction that has previously been shared through documents on Breaker Press' Facebook page and web store.  To give you a taste here are the front and back of the box my game rules and supplemental components shipped in:

In the basic scenarios for Broken Contract the miners (or Breakers) are basically trying to escape their life of enslavement to the FerrumSky corporation and obtain their freedom.  FerrumSky has employed the private security company Black Squadron Security to keep the miners in check.

The game mechanics themselves are very straightforward but allow for a variety of tactical choices once you start playing.  Attacks are actively resisted so you may choose to attack a specific way based on either your own strengths or your perception of your enemies weaknesses.

The rulebook is attractive and really well laid out.  Personally I really like some of the choices in the design of the book as it makes it feel like a real document in a lived in world somewhat reminiscent of some of the older better quality Top Secret modules.

Lastly on the component-side Broken Contract also shares some conventions with some of the current design of popular miniatures-based board games.  Each character has a dashboard that can be loaded with cards representing various equipment and abilities which is handy because during play some gear can be stolen or handed off.

If you're an old-timey gamer like me the game also includes roster sheets for recording your warband in the more 'traditional' style.

From a game-play point of view the game hits a similar sweet-spot for me that This Is Not A Test hit.  The core mechanics are actually extremely straight forward and simple but some of the options for different attacks and defence as well as scenario specific objectives make the game very fluid without actually becoming overly complicated.  

If you like small scale miniature skirmish games that add-in some RPG and board-game elements Broken Contract is well worth it.  And it should be noted that even though they are a separate purchase from the game itself the miniature line that accompanies the game is full of terrific sci-fi figures that somehow manage to feel unique and familiar at the same time.  I highly recommend this game!

-Jay

Jaqar Thief of Vornheim and Space Pirate

Following the 5th season of the Dungeon Crawl Classics game I'm playing in it was definitely time for an update to my character model.

Jaqar started out as a Thief on the mean streets of Vornheim cutting purses and generally living the hard scrabble life of a downtrodden medieval peasant but after joining with a group of adventurers found himself magically transported to the distant Purple Planet where he fought an assortment of weird aliens and alien/human hybrids.

Our last season ended with the group finding a spaceship that due to a few lucky rolls and the addition of a skull-mask/cap Jaqar was able to figure out how to pilot.  As part of their change in scenery and circumstance the group adopted the uniforms of the former ship crew which were basically colour-coded boiler suits.  Jaqar took to wear an orange uniform but after some reflection on my part I realised he's been too consistently squishy to stop wearing his armour so he's thrown his studded leather on over top of his crew uniform (and added a shield) for the group's new journey to the stars.

Jaqar is made up of a bunch of different plastic components.  I started with the same bretonian body as the original model to represent his armour.  He's got the head from a Frostgrave Cultist so I could get a neat looking helm/mask, and a Frostgrave soldier sprue provided his new shield.  For his arms and legs I cut them off a Heroclix Arkham Inmate model.  To finish off he has a sword from the bretonian men-at-arms sprue and a backpack from the Warlord British Infantry for Bolt Action.  A lot of chopping and swapping....

And here's the original for comparison.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.

It might be cowboy time now.......

-Jay

Another weird monster

This morning I finished another older weird D&D monster, although not nearly as iconic as my last couple; the Abyssal Maw.

In the somewhat long-ago time (roughly 2000) the folks at Wizards Of The Coast decided to put out a miniatures skirmish game based off their then current and new D20 D&D system, that game was Chainmail and it featured some Monster Manual creatures as well as a pile of potential player character models.  Chainmail was an interesting fun game but was largely a victim of bad-timing in the game industry as the game launched roughly a month or two before Games Workshop announced they were producing a Lord Of The Rings miniature game, which then became the go-to fantasy miniature game for new and casual players.

In addition to some classic D&D critters the design team also used the game to create and launch some newer monsters.  One of those newer monsters was the Abyssal Maw.

The Abyssal Maw was neat in that it added a low level 'demon' miniature to the games and brought some of that Cthulhu flavour back that old-school gamers tend to like.  One of the things I liked about the Maw is that it's totally asymmetrical (it has 3 eyes and 5 arms) which gives it a distinctly unnatural feel without working to hard on creating something visibly strange.

While working through a few odds and ends I also cranked out the bat familiar from the WizKids Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures line.

I actually have a couple of upcoming games that I'll need some small animals for and one specifically which will require some bats so getting this into my collection will be useful.

-Jay

YOU are the hero!

Another foray into the distant past.....

In the long-ago time before Warhammer and its various iterations the founders of Games Workshop started building their fantasy empire with a series of 'choose your own adventure' style books called Fighting Fantasy.  These books were set in different worlds than the Warhammer games would eventually find themselves in but felt like early GW products in their art-style and combination of high-fantasy mixed with humour.  The first book in the series was The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain and it basically played like an old-school early 80s Dungeons & Dragons adventure that the reader could play by themselves.

In 1986 Games Workshop released a board game version of The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain that basically works like a cross between Talisman and Clue.  At the time of release the game was well above board game standards in terms of component quality and the artwork holds up really well to this day.  In the game each player plays an adventurer trying to explore Firetop Mountain while also deciphering which keys they will need once they make it to the end.  Each character is represented statistically in the same way as a Fighting Fantasy game book character and they will encounter similar challenges and treasures along the way.

Aside from some luck of the dice allowing for slight statistical differences all characters are effectively the same (no race, class, etc) but rather than just some sort of meeples Games Workshop included 6 unique character models in the game.  I only recently acquired my copy of the game but I have to say if I'd had this in 1986 I could have use these pieces to represent every D&D character I played through my first few years in the game.

For 31 year old models they hold up surprisingly well and other than some giant hands (which seemed common among GW 1 piece plastics of the era) they are well executed figures.  The only thing some players might be disappointed by is the lack of a female figure but again the pieces are effectively just meeples so you can add any figures you want.  In my case I'm actually going to paint up a female halfling rogue for Zoe to use in a game.

I'm excited to have these done and they will make it to the tabletop this coming Thursday so after languishing in their box for 3 decades at least the time from paint to game will be relatively short for them.

-Jay

Some classic gaming monsters

Like a lot of gamers I bounce back and forth between systems and genres fairly frequently but I think its safe to say that right now I'm on a nostalgia kick.  I've painted newer models and I've painted older models but it seems by and large everything is somehow a throwback to my earlier days of gaming.

Today's additions are living at opposite ends of the spectrum in that one model was just released a few months ago while the other has been living (unpainted and unloved) in the bottom of a box for nearly 30 years.  But the thing they both have in common is that they are creatures I was introduced to in my first few years in the hobby many, many moons ago.

First up; the Displacer Beast!

This is a new model by WizKids from their unpainted Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures line and I've got to say not only did I like it but it is (in my opinion) a huge improvement over the metal figure that came out with the Chainmail line years ago.  A lot of hobbyists don't like soft plastic or vinyl because it has a tendency to have softer details but this is a great example of where the material is an improvement.  The musculature of the creature is fairly pronounced so there aren't many shallow or narrow cuts and in addition the problem with my older pewter Displacer Beast was always that the tendrils on the back would bend and then the paint would chip.  I REALLY hope WizKids does a bunch more of the medium sized monsters in their next wave of models.

Next up; the Ambull!

The Ambull is an old 40k (Rogue Trader era) monster that hasn't appeared in anything since 2nd edition.  This model is in fact so old that it's lead rather than pewter.  The Ambull has a funny place in my heart because although it is/was a sci-fi monster for a game set in the far future my first exposure to it was as a final encounter in an old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay scenario from White Dwarf #108.
I have no immediate plans for this guy but I really wanted to finally paint him.  At this point I may use him as an Umber Hulk-like creature for D&D or he may just sit on shelf alongside my Dungeon Master figure waiting for his time.

That's it for today.  I'm off to the depths of the internet to look for more old-school D&D miniatures!

-Jay