Yearly Archives: 2014

Deadzone – Rebs

Reb Starter 2

Deadzone!  Rebs! Fully painted! (Part I.)

These dudes have actually been done for about a month; most of the ones pictured here have been done even longer.  Wrapping up the last few models had been tough due to being way, way too busy and then finding time to actually photograph them was even tougher.

I hadn’t even planned on painting them; or at least not hot on the heels of the Plague models.  I wanted to assemble them and play with them, but the “flight stands” that accompanied the Drones and that weird floating sphere thing that comes with N32-19 are garbage, so I wanted to use GW flight stands and bases for them.  With priming and varnishing and such complicating any plans to assemble them now, paint them later, I just decided heck with it: paint them now.  Once they were done, pushing on seemed the most natural thing to do.

Reb Starter 1

For the most part, I’m quite pleased with them.  The brown and grey is a neutral base that’ll go with anything, allowing me to do each alien species differently while maintaining a unified, coherent look.  The red spot color also pulls everything together.

Unusual, for me: the grey is all craft-store paint.  I used it on the Drones because I felt like it, was happy with the results, and after the black-armored studio scheme felt like a disaster, I switched back to the Charcoal -> Rain Grey -> Quaker Grey scheme I normally use on terrain.

I did the humans first.  For the most part, I’m very pleased with them, but something about the way the Commander’s face came together doesn’t sit well with me.  It’s actually one of the better minis to come out of the Kickstarter, so that’s a bit of a shame.

Humans 1

Humans 2  

Given that I have less than no interest in Dreadball, I’m pretty uninformed about all of these different Mantic Warpath/Dreadball alien species.  Unhelpfully, where GW drowns you in potential color schemes, it can be really, really difficult to find studio paint schemes for some of these guys.

I think the Yndij are supposed to be orange? Well, I decided they were feline enough and would look painted like lions.  I think I was right.

Yndij 1

Yndij 2

 

The Grogan are kind of forgettable, but they’re not bad.  I think the orange here photographed better than it looks in person.

Grogan

Fuck the Teraton.  This would be a great, distinctive mini, except some jackhole decided it needed stupid looking and, even worse, ultra-fragile blades coming off of its arms.  Three of those four blades have broken off, and one of them has broken off more times than I can count.

All of my hate.

Teraton 1

Teraton Back 

The Sorak’s characterful.  I like him.  I put another one in the Second Wave survey.

 

 

 

Sorak 1

Sorak 2 

Drones.  Nothing special, but it’s their fault I painted the rest of the Rebs.

 

Drones 1

Drones 2

 

I’ve also finished the Booster, as well as a couple of Mercs.  Since this post is pic-heavy enough, I’ll be splitting up the photodump across a couple of posts.

Wednesday Workbench

Wednesday Workbench 20140226

 

This is what I’m working on right now.

We finally got our Christmas presents to ourselves over the weekend: a couch to better fill our upstairs den/office space and a new desk (to accommodate and compliment the couch).  We’re still moving in around the new furniture; I’ve got a TON of work to do on my desk.

Needing to sort out my workspace is definitely jamming up my hobby.  Worse yet, work is keeping so busy, it’s definitely jamming up sorting out my workspace.

jammed

 

On the bright side, I did finish my rebs before the other shoe dropped; I just need to find time to photograph them.

Frank Underwood: WAAC

Frank Underwood Paints Minis

If you’re not watching the US, Netflix-produced House of Cards, you probably should be.

It’s not a spoiler to mention that, in Season 2, the protagonist picks up painting minis.

I, of course, find this hilarious.  If I had more time, I’d spam the internet with the above screengrab (in higher resolution) tagged with stuff like:

  • PROBABLY USES CLUB DICE
  • DAVE TAYLOR FOUND MURDERED TWO WEEKS BEFORE GOLDEN DAEMON
  • RUNS FOUR RIPTIDES
  • HAS SPECIAL LEADERSHIP TEST DICE

and, of course:

  • WAAC PLAYER

(because dang, bro).

I’m sure there are more.  But, like I said, time.

Wednesday Workbench

20140212 Wednesday Workbench

Not much on the table just the moment: I started and finished a batch of Rebs (Grogan x2, Judawan x1, Sorak x1, Zee x2) over the weekend, which is pretty fast for me, and all I’ve got left is the Teraton and the Kraaw from the Rebs starter/booster.  If I can steal some time I don’t have, I might actually make progress on them this week.  I feel like I’ve been making very good, very fast progress on these: especially considering how much work travel I’ve been doing.

Anyway, once the Rebs are done, I might try to start on the few Mercs I have… or I might do the terrain.  I really want to knock out the terrain, but feel like I need to make heads or tails of how I plan to arrange it, first.

I really need to put these dudes in a lightbox and get some decent pictures, too.

White Dwarf & Visions

So, White Dwarf and Visions…

I just got back from travelling, and have been playing catchup: both in actually flipping through mags and in shoveling the quicksand that is my RSS feeds.  

 

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White Dwarf

It’s trimmed some fat, which is nice I guess. That it’s weekly is, for me, terrible.

For me, White Dwarf died when they made it punitively difficult for folks to subscribe to, effectively requiring people to go into the store to buy it. Hell, I still have a coupon for White Dwarf left in my wallet; I’ve missed the past 5 or six. That they’ve got this expectation I’m going to screw up my commute every week to pick this is up is very much wrong.

It’s also more expensive.  $4/week gets us to $12 (with the occasional $16) / month, up from $10.

I, like many folks, will probably pick it up when it looks interesting, and not bother 80% of the time. I’ll also probably buy it digitally when I do.

 

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Warhammer: Visions

YES.  This is what I want.  200 pages of glossy miniporn.

That’s basically all I can say.  A smallish, thick volume of high-quality pictures of gorgeous minis that I can turn to for inspiration and ideas.

If I have one complaint (and it’s only one, and trifling): what little text is there is awful.  Because it’s translated into three languages, it’s simplistic to the point of being useless.

Actual, complete text:

  • Gandalf the Grey is a wise and powerful old wizard.”
  • “Exocrines are artillery beasts that unleash blasts of deadly bio-plasma.”
  • “Trygons can launch attacks from beneath the ground.”

You don’t say?

Look, if that’s all you’re going to say: don’t bother.  Make the pictures bigger.

Anyway, I’m hot for Visions.  I’m subscribing.

(Also, I’m really surprised how many people are wrong about disagree about Visions.)

Wednesday Workbench

Wednesday Workbench 20140205

This is a bit deceptive: I’m TDY at the moment, so this snapshot’s from Sunday evening, not [sometime on] Wednesday.  I’m happy enough with these guys; they’re almost done; I just have some highlighting on black to do and metallic bits before I hit ’em with varnish.

Again, not bad. I could do a better job here, but I’m painting pretty quickly for me and it’s better to be Done than Bogged Down with these Deadzone minis.

Once they’re wrapped, I figure I’ll tackle the last of the remaining Rebs: the Teraton (the last starter figure), the Kraaw, Judwan, Zees, and Heavy Weapons Team (seven figures).

Rogue Trader – Random NPC Crew Generator

Rogue-Trader-Crew

I had a little downtime on a flight last week, and was rereading some of the “Vornheiming Middenheim” posts I’d shoved into Evernote before taking off and started thinking about what I could steal modify from them in anticipation of the Rogue Trader game I’m (finally) kicking off later this week.

(Speaking of which: I’m not sure I’ve done a clear job of mentioning that I’ve been planning to, and am finally kicking off a Rogue Trader game.  I’ve put up an Appendix N for it here.)

The first thing I pulled together was an adaptation of Jeff Russell’s Middenheim NPC Generator.  40K being, in many way ways (some of which are about as literal as they come) basically Warhammer in Spaaaaace, this should look remarkably like the Middenheim one… just a little more 40Kish.

I started with the d4-d20 spread, but the d4 “Race” chart didn’t provide value and was quickly replaced with a “Department” chart that couldn’t be contained by less than a d20.  So, instead, it’s a d6, d8, d10, d12, 2d20 jam.  Also, this is really a first-pass.  I don’t doubt that there’s room for revision here.

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d6 – Age/Gender d8 – Demeanor d10 – Appearance d12 – Motivation
1 Old Man Aggressively Bored Comfort
2 Man Cravenly Corpulent Curiosity
3 Young Man Drunkenly Drenched in Fluids Decency
4 Old Woman Earnestly Exhausted Faith
5 Woman Eloquently Fastidious Gelt
6 Young Woman Haughtily Over-stimmed Hatred (good kind)
7 Rudely Proper Hatred (bad kind)
8 Sarcastically Shabby Power
9 Spacesick Rank
10 Starving Safety
11 Shit-stirring
12 Viciousness

Can I just point out that I’m extremely satisfied with myself over having separate “Hatred (good kind)” and “Hatred (bad kind)” entries? I mean: “Hate! Hate! Hate! / An emotion as pure as it is deep! / Hate! Hate! Hate! / Let it flow, let it run free!” – Inspirational Verse, Imperial Hymnal Vol. IV

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I gave the departments 40Kish (ie: gutteral pseudo-Latin) names where an established 40K term didn’t already exist.  I’ll likely scan back through them to see if Greek doesn’t offer up more interesting bullshit nonsense names.

And, really, I strongly suspect that only 20 entries isn’t enough.  This ship has a facility for maintaining its servitors… but doesn’t have a Medicae, for example.  (Though I suppose that says a lot about how well it values its crew…)

d20 – Quirk d20 – Department
1 Augmetics Anima Facilitatus (Life Support)
2 Believes a trivial heresy Augury
3 Chem-junkie Cogitator Maintenance
4 Corrupted by Chaos Constructorum Team
5 Deserter Cubiculum (Cargo Hold)
6 Dutiful Gellar Fields
7 Failed Mechanicus initiate Janitosi (Custodial)
8 Family has worked this duty for generations Macro-Saggitarium (Gunnery)
9 Involved in Black Market Munitorium
10 Normal… too normal Naviculus (Small Craft) Maintenance
11 No teeth Naviculus (Small Craft) Pilot
12 Only speaks in High Gothic (poorly) Plasma Organus (Engines)
13 Overly religious Praestes (Ship’s Security)
14 Reports everything to commissars Servicius (Ship’s Service)
15 Secret mutation Servitor Maintenance
16 Terrified of everything Shrine
17 Unaware psyker Teleportarium
18 Void-born features Void Shields
19 Wanted in-system Vox
20 Xenos-pervert Warp Engines

And, because such is prudent, a few sample rolls:

  • [5, 3, 4, 10, 12, 10] – [5] Woman, [3] Drunkenly, [4] Exhausted, [10] Safety, [12] Only speaks High Gothic (poorly), [10] Munitorium
  • [3, 5, 2, 11, 19, 14] – [3] Young Man, [5] Eloquently, [2] Corpulent, [11] Shit-stirring, [19] wanted in-system, [14] Servicius (Ship’s service)
  • [2, 8, 10, 7, 18, 20] – [2] Man, [8] Sarcastically, [10] Starving, [7] Hatred (bad), [18] Void-born features, [20] Warp Engines
  • [6, 7, 1, 10, 14, 8] – [6] Young Woman, [7] Rudely, [1] Bored, [10] Safety, [14] Reports everything to commissars, [8] Macro-Saggitarium (Gunnery)
  • [4, 5, 8, 2, 7, 15] – [4] Old Woman, [5] Eloquently, [8] Shabby, [2] Curiosity, [7] Dutiful, [15] Servitor Maintenance

That’ll do okay.

Wednesday Workbench

Wednesday Workbench 20140129

 

As it turns out, there is a direct correlation between not being able to do hobby stuff and not doing hobby stuff.

They’re just about done, at least.

Wednesday Workbench

Wednesday Workbench 20140122

 

Just a quick snapshot of what I’m mid-stride on: some Deadzone Rebs (the humans).

I’ve actually gotten a couple of other things done; I just need to photograph them:

Dr. Simmonds got painted up quickly, since I still had my Plague scheme on my mind, and Blaine got started with this bunch (brown coat, see), and ended up getting knocked out along the way.  

I also did the two Rebs Drones, as well as Recon N32-19’s weird little floating thing (despite the fact that I don’t even have the Enforcer models to run Recon N32-19 with). I’m using GW flight stands for them (the stands they come with are garbage), so if I wanted to paint them and their base and not fog up the clear flight stand with Dullcote, it was just easier to hurry up and do them than to partially assemble them and remember to swap this out for that, etc, before varnishing them.

Hopefully, I’ll have these humans done by this time next week, and I’ll start in on a batch of the Yndij, Sorak, and Grogans.  (With the remaining figures going into probably two batches.)

After that, I think I’ll return to working on Saga for a unit or two, as well as endlessly deliberating on what Hell Dorado models to start on.

 

Hell Dorado’s Here!

Hell_Dorado_logo

Just a quick note: my Hell Dorado Kickstarter finally showed up!

I’ve been really pumped about this: I got super-excited about the game back in mid-2007 when a friend and I had to buy the minis from Fantization, who wasn’t so much Asmodee’s distributor as they were the only people who were just importing the damn things from France.   When Asmodee dropped the game, I was sad; then happy when, in 2009, Cipher picked up the license; then sad when they did nothing with it, while games I don’t particularly like (:cough: Malifaux :cough:) that fill a similar niche caught on; then back to happy when the Kickstarter was finally announced.

Digging through the box, everything’s here, which is unusual for a Kickstarter that’s so add-on finicky.  Bravo.  This cannot be overstated: when a company like Mantic (which isn’t GW big, but’s bigger than Cipher big) can’t get the fairly straightforward Deadzone pledges right, it’s both notable and laudable that Cipher got theirs right when there are so many freaking variations.

My book’s mangled to shit, though, so I’ll have to see if I can get a replacement.

Really pumped about the game: I’ve had the full run of Demons and Lost (er Démon and Égarés) up until Asmodee dropped the game (though, to be honest, several of them are still in their boxes in the hobby closet. With this, I’ve caught up the two factions, and picked up a respectable number of Westerners (which I hope to also use in some Baroque-era tabletop games).