Steam punk robots and the return of an old friend

For the second session of my D&D game I will need a fantasy steam punk robot.  Awhile back I purchased the C. Hoffman crew for Malifaux with the intention of painting the robots up to use with a Leviticus crew.  Instead it looks like the Guardian will finally be making it's debut in a D&D game.

The Guardian is an 8'-9' tall robot designed for basic combat and defence operations in Malifaux.  It will be something slightly different in my D&D game but we'll come back to that in a few weeks...

While I had the Guardian out I also decided to paint the Watcher which is a flying construct for the same crew.  To be honest I'm not sure if I'll ever use the Watcher in a game but it's a unique piece so I like having it in the collection.

I also need a wizard-looking figure and I decided to pull out the Vahn Oberen that I had painted when I was planning on playing through the Witchfire trilogy and touched it up a bit for what I need.

That's feels like a lot for one day.  I've got a few odds and ends that will probably end up getting touched up between now and New Years...stay tuned.

-Jay

Assault Marines make their debut!

After waiting forever to finish my first 5 Assault Marines I finally got them done yesterday AND they made their first appearance in a game last night.  I am still planning on going back and re-doing their squad markings as I feel they turned out fairly sloppy and inconsistent.

Trying out both the new edition of 40K and the New Blood Angels Codex for the first time I played a 1000 point game against Stan's forces of Chaos.

Since our last game I have added my Dreadnought and Assault Marines and Stan has added some sort of new tentacle-faced space pony......always with the Space Ponies.....

We played a very tight back-and-forth game but in the end I was able to squeak out a victory 5-to-4.  It was a fun game and the Assault Marines we're actually the deciding factor in the win, taking an objective and killing both the hated Space Pony and a squad of Chaos Marines.

I've got to say for anybody out there who plays 40K and hasn't tried playing Maelstrom Of War with the Tactical Objectives you are really missing out.  Moving from place to place and having both our goals changing constantly created a really fluid and fun game.

-Jay

Up On A Soap Box - Who are you playing games with anyway?

It's funny how some times the trolls on the internet will get all up in arms about something in gaming and it takes awhile to realize that it isn't the first time you're hearing a point being argued by a group of people who get all up in arms about feeling like someone is telling them what to do.

About two weeks ago decent quality preview images of the new Blood Angels tactical squad starting appearing on the net.  People could have talked about the terrific paint jobs, or the evocative imagery, or the fact that it was practically a bitz box you could use to customise dozens of generic marine kits you already had....but no....the main "discussion" was about the new 32mm round bases they were standing on.
Within seconds (literally) forums exploded with "they can't make me re-base all my old figures" and "I can't believe I have to re-base all my old figures", it was an unbelievably negative reaction to a minor product change.
Years ago I had collected Void and Warzone miniatures, and when Void got re-packaged and re-released as Urban War it transitioned from 25mm bases to 30mm Warmachine style bases, same thing for Warzone when it re-emerged this year.  My reaction was to carry on basing my models on 25mm bases to keep a consistent look with my existing painted models.  Other people (I'm sure) chose to go back and re-base their models to match the new look, either decision is fine....but it's YOUR decision.

Around the same time this tempest-in-a-teacup went off I was also spending a lot of my time on line getting ready for my D&D game.  As an aside I decided to re-watch a bunch of episodes of I Hit It With My Axe.  The thing I thought was funny was that in the comments section under one of the videos was a series of questions (polite mind you) about why the figures were based inconsistently to which the GM replied that he honestly didn't care about bases and he just used whatever was at hand.

I've also noticed a trend among "serious" Warmachine players to mark out their facings on their bases, not really an issue but seriously; can you and your opponent not agree which direction a model with eyes is facing?

So my question (it seems like it's always my question on these things) is; who are you playing games with that debates about base size being advantageous or facings being off by a mm or two inform your decision about how you enjoy your toys?

It's YOUR stuff, do what you will with it and your only real goal should be to enjoy what you do with it.  There is no "they" or "them" coming over to your house to police how you build, paint and collect models so do what works for you.  And if your opponents aren't cool with that find new people to play against.

Next year I'll be working on those new Robotech models, I'm sure they'll make an appearance in a Battletech game on their round bases at some point, hopefully that doesn't fry anybody's brain.

-Jay

Thatchertown - The Hall House In The Woods

The party's first expedition to Thatchertown and it's surrounding areas has been successful so far.

After being hired by Red Sheila the group made up of; Wrack (Human Fighter), Varek (Half-Elf Rogue) and Eternity (Tiefling Wizard) made their way through the forest to her ancestral home to rid it of any woodland creatures who had assumed occupancy.

Along the way they happened upon a fallen warrior who was in the process of losing a fight to an Owlbear.  They were too late to save the brave adventurer but they defeated the Owlbear and recovered a magical sword for their efforts.

Once they arrived at the former home of Philos The Red they found it had been overtaken by an unholy alliance of cultists and gnolls for an unknown purpose.

After defeating the evil cult leader they recovered the key to a magical lock that led them to a portal to either a land/world/or dimension of snow and ice....

We ended our adventure as our players stepped through the portal into the area beyond!

I had a great time running my first D&D Next adventure and GMing my first game on Roll20.net and want to send a big thanks out to my players; Darren, Darcy & Stan for rolling some dice and slaying some monsters with me.

The second instalment of The Hall House In The Woods should happen the last week of this year or the first week of next year.

-Jay

Housekeeping - another Cleric

Hi all,

I've been abstaining from posting a lot of what I've been working on lately to keep some surprises from my D&D players this Saturday.  In the meantime I thought I'd start finishing off some odds and ends that have been languishing on my painting desk.

My last blog entry was the Otherworld Cleric I painted for my Dungeon Crawl Classics session.  But before I decided on that figure I had started an entirely different Cleric model with the intention of using it.

I had chosen this model because he had a war hammer and no shield which was my character's basic equipment but when I got him about half-way done I started to get really hung up on the fact that he was way too heavily armoured and physically massive to represent a character wearing chain mail and having a strength of 10.

None-the-less I decided to finish him off this morning to keep him from become yet another half finished project.

I do still have to finish 2 figs for my game on Saturday but time permitting I will get my Blood Angels assault squad that's been "almost done" for 6ish months up here this weekend.

-Jay

A new cleric in an old style

Tonight I got to try Dungeon Crawl Classics (the game system, not the OGL modules) for the first time and I have to say I was super impressed.

To be perfectly honest I'm not generally a big fan of "retro" game systems because along with the nostalgia I can remember all the headaches with old school game mechanics.  But having said that Dungeon Crawl Classics does a great job of using a current modern framework for their game but just dropping a lot of extraneous nonsense that bogs the game down.

For tonight's game I was playing a cleric and I had the perfect figure from Otherworld miniatures to fit the mood of the game.  The figure has a retro aesthetic but is sculpted and cast to the standards we expect from our miniatures today.

Zenithar had a very bi-polar night.  He made a few important rolls and came through on a couple of big occasions for the party but he also bombed quite a few easy checks and had severely incurred the displeasure of his Deity before the session was over.

Lots of fun and I think I'd really like to play again!

-Jay

Zoe's World - Medusa

Zoe's back with another superheroine.

This is a great figure for her because it looks like it could be all kinds of different things; a sneaky ninja, a spider-girl type, or someone just starting to fly.  We've  got one more figure to paint and then Zoe will be ready for her first game of Supersystem!

This is another re-purposed Heroclix model.  At the time I got this figure she probably would have been considered a B-lister that I could count on people not to recognise but with the direction the Marvel Universe is going in she is now a fairly prominent character; Medusa Queen Of The Inhumans.  The funny thing is without knowing who the character was Zoe ended up almost painting her in Medusa's actual colour scheme.

-Jay