I like the painted ones the best

Hmm... It's a good question. And really it needs a bit of refinement before I can answer it. There are two versions of the restic and one of the plastic.

Aesthetically there are the older warpath enforcers, which look a little different from the deadzone enforcers. Both are restic. The hard plastic enforcers look more like the deadzone variety but might be a tad bulkier.

I think some of the restic guys have sharper detail, at least in places.

I wanna say.... maybe the hard plastics? The original enforcers have a slightly blockier/more angular look to them that I do like, but the deadzone aesthetic (carried over into the hard plastics) works better for combat blades I think.

It kind of feels like the original enforcers were the prototypes or earlier marks of armor... and then they kind of streamlined the suits and smoothed them out a bit. Especially with the way I'm painting my guys moving forward.. feels almost like they're friendlier looking, or more I dunno... Kind of like robocop I guess, they want to bill them in a positive light to the citizenry.

So I guess the hard plastic ones


Slow going on my terrain piece... starting to doubt my faith in the materials but i'll reserve judgement for after I've had a chance to apply some kind of topcoat.

Hah, I prefer the Restic ones for pretty much the exact opposite of that! I like the very angular, blocky, take-no-prisoners look of the old ones. Luckily, I have about 40 of those guys between DZ and an Army Deal, so don't need to worry about grabbing them while they last. I'll probably grab one set of HP ones for easier conversions and DZ use, but for Warpath proper I'll stick with the older model, I think.

Peacekeepers, on the other hand, I think I'll need a ton of!

Depends on what they do with them. They're pretty expensive in both WP2.0 and DZ. Equivalent points to a terminator in 40k really. I don't think they're restricted in any way for WP so unless that changes I guess you could field quite a few

I'm kind of torn on the new/old enforcers thing. I'm definitely going to use both, in fairly even numbers, which I guess is appropriate for my wishy washy attitude!

Who said anything about gaming with them? I think I'd just grab bunch to paint and display, they are possibly the coolest heavy armoured sci fi mini out there, although the new Dreamforge Valkir could give them a run for their money.

Man I kind of hate the look of the eisenkern trooper guys, and the valkir just make me retch =/

Dunno why, but the aesthetic just gags me. 40k does scifantasy better... and really they're almost more of a steampunk thing, which I don't usually don't like so that's probably why...

Got my test enforcer almost ready for dip. Not sure how this is going to go, I can dip the main body and use the drill method for that, sure, but he has 5 separate parts that would likely go flying off in all directions and have to be handled separately. If I had gone with the predominantly black scheme, I probably wouldn't' even bother dipping for the extra headache. I guess I'm gonna get a dedicated oil/stain/dip brush and paint the dip on before wicking/wiping it off like usual. I'll report how it goes if I get around to it tonight.

I really like the enforcer theme you ended up going with! I think the extra pop of color is spot on.

I'm definitely looking forward to see him post dip!

Pulp Alley sounds super fun.

Good luck with your terrain piece! I've done a bunch of rough sketches for my piece for the LoER contest. I still don't think I've come up with something that is at my skill level...

Thanks

I've forgotten that contest entirely. I don't usually have the focus to work on something for weeks at a time... so I'll meander about until I have proper inspiration and then I'll knock it out. Hopefully


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There's where I am on the bridge/cliffs at the moment. Decided to add little access ladders to reach the more standable portions of the cliffs.

Still trying to decide if the flat part in the middle should be done up with some water effects or would a deep chasm look better? Water would offer more playable (if dangerous) surface area as the chasm would be necessarily impassible to all.

If I get this to a point that I like, I'm considering making 3 more matching tiles and using them for a wilderness/jungle deadzone/MA board. I'd have to work in some faint gridlines, possibly with various things like foliage, rocks, and other bits to avoid just hitting it up with a black marker lol. Still gotta see if it's gonna be solid enough. I can tell already that I should have used 3 boards instead of 2 for the base... and that perhaps I should investigate using a second layer of the plaster cloth instead of going over it with plaster/spackle stuff. The first thing seems to chip/flake much less. I could reserve the brush on spackling or whatever it is that I have... for spot fixes after the second layer of cloth is set. May have to try it on a smaller piece.


Whew.... 17th and still only 21 models done. Losing momentum pretty heavily lol. If it's for the sake of getting games in though, I don't think I'll care so much if I miss my goal in the end.

I'd really like to get a couple of plot point counters done for the game next week. I would like some kind of idol/statue, and maybe an NPC who looks like he belongs in the jungle. Craig, or possibly one of the male Novas Vira (both from mars attacks) may fit the bill.

Also still trying to decide the fate of Vasquez. I built her as a jack of all trades but she was constantly outgunned and having a little better of a fight skill didn't help her out much.

I'm wondering if I ought to take a distraction character instead... If I took another Ally character with the animal ability (no shooting, but good at two thing) I could get them up to 3 dice in both brawl and dodge (which is what I should have done with Coco-gorilla) which would make them good at krumping shooty characters (or tackling other brawlers really), and pretty hard to get rid of with 3 dice in their dodge pool... I don't necessarily want to use another animal though... maybe an acrobatic figure with no visible firearms though..

Alrighty I guess I'm technically at 22 minis done, just got that enforcer dipped. I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of brush dipping. The magnetized parts would have gone all over the place if I tried to use my drill like usual. I may do an edge highlight of straight white once he's done, just to add a little more definition to the plates, but I think I'm going to like this scheme.

About ready to start putting down paint on my terrain piece too. I'm gonna flock and dress the crap out of it, but still gotta have paint under that stuff. I hit it really hard with primer.. may have lost some definition but it's worth it if I can keep bits from falling off in the future. Probably gonna hit it with the floorstain too for that same reason.




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Did a little pre-shading with black over the white undercoat and then hit the entire piece with varying degrees of minitaire earth. I like the color well enough for the ground exposed but this is meant to be a jungle so I need to inject a lot of green. Considering using up my realistic water to put a small river/stream going between the cliffs and under the bridge. Not sure how that would tie in with other scenery bits though.

I still have no idea for the LoER.

A nice substitute for the realistic water is this http://www.homedepot.com/p/Rust-Oleum-Parks-1-qt-Gloss-Super-Glaze-Finish-and-Preservative-241352/202056337 for deep stuff. For adding turbulence, this http://www.liquitex.com/glosssuperheavygel/ and for surface distortions, like ripples, this http://www.michaels.com/golden-artist-colors-acrylic-glazing-liquid-gloss/10121242.html

All told this stuff is much less expensive in the long run than the Woodland scenics product. Plus the last two can be used in painting. So dual use.

22 for 18? That still puts you 4 ahead of schedule, no heavy loss of momentum yet

@Red cool thanks I've got some realistic water or whatever it's called from a kit I bought years ago. But I'm definitely bookmarking those links for the day I ever make a large (or several smaller) water feature.

@MT this is true. However I'm pretty anxious about Q2-4 for being any kind of productive. I'm usually thoroughly worn out after work and either don't want to paint, or I've got shaky hands from being tired. I could probably paint smurfs then, so those will get me through a month or two on their own lol. I was just hopping to establish some momentum in the first months of the year. I'm gonna stress less about it though so I can get the specific projects I want to work on most locked in early. I need to finish strike teams for deadzone, do some more mars attacks, and so on.

Back to the terrain though, about done adding metal in, then I think everything is getting a brushed-on coat of minwax tudor... I have a feeling this stuff is gonna try to flake off on me if I don't put a *lot* of protective overlays on it.

If it's dry enough tomorrow (and it may not be), I'll see about adding some flock and 'fixins. If I find the time, I may assemble and attach some old 40k scenery jungle trees. I think they came with the 3rd edition starter or some other thing like that.

If this turns out well, and I can get some kind of unobtrusive 'grid' pattern implied... I'd kind of like to make 3 more 1x1' sections to have a jungle deadzone board. This would more or less take the place of my desert outpost board (though I may still get around to that eventually).

Wonder what other features/themes the other 3 sections should have.


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Here's the build with airbrushing and then brush-dipped:






The dipped photos aren't as delicious as it is in person, but my god that tudor makes everything SING!

It'll probably take all night for this to dry although... Yeah i'll leave it alone overnight, but then I'll probably seal it. Once it's sealed I probably only have to leave it for a couple of hours since Krylon dries fairly quickly. Then I'm gonna inundate the piece with flock, I've got kind of a lighter and darker fine turf, and some funky stuff I got from the dollar store, looks like some kind of vines at 28mm 'scale'. May still look into adding trees, I'm technically ahead of schedule so I'll spend time as I can.

I think I"m also gonna try to get my MA survivor boy painted up in time to replace vasquez. 'Speedy' will be a follower with high dodge and finesse stats but no ability to shoot (and poor brawling). He's a wiry kid that Rico caught trying to pickpocket him and Buck recognized his skills. His job will be to run around the field being a nuisance, trying to pick up Plot Points and hoping the random challenge is finesse-based. He may also harry the enemy flanks and make use of superior dodge skills to keep active. May seem wrong to put a kid in the line of fire, but he's willing and able, and besides... he'd be in some kind of detention center by now if Buck hadn't taken him on...

And don't you guys think that I'm not gonna count that piece of scenery as a model, 'cause I damn sure am

Also, magnetized enforcer armor MKII:







The ball-joint magnets are such fun, you don't get a *lot* more mobility than with two disk magnets... but you do get some, and it's pretty fun to play around with it. Will make dynamic action shots even more fun in the future

I'm fairly happy with the scheme. I may clean some things up once I get a strike team's worth of enforcers and have had time to think about it. Gonna try to complete the spare arms for each enforcer as I go so I don't have to go back and do a batch of just arms, that never worked out well for my marines. Hmm.. maybe I could work a spare bit of scenery out of the storage mechanism for the extra arms... like a bunch of racks full of arms hanging down... lol.

Got some other stuff in progress painting wise but nothing worth mentioning. Tomorrow will probably be fairly unproductive as the wife and I are undertaking a toddler-rearing based project... but Tuesday... tuesday I may be able to get some stuff done.

Okay, that rock with steel bridge and ladders gives off the Fallout Vibe

Enforcer looking good taking down the zombies

Hmm fallout.. interesting

I'm gonna green it up quite a bit, the current earth/brown will only be showing in patches where I don't reckon plants will grow.

 GrimDork wrote:
Hmm fallout.. interesting

I'm gonna green it up quite a bit, the current earth/brown will only be showing in patches where I don't reckon plants will grow.

Hey, as far as I am concerned, that is a good thing!

Well, that would be also good as some green works for the Mojave zone, But yeah, that piece is looking very nice!

I had wanted to do a desert/dry lake/wasteland outpost DZ board. Maybe I can keep the same basic principles implemented/learned here and just keep the scrub/brush to a minimum with more building elements....

I'm putting a pin in that one for now

 GrimDork wrote:
I had wanted to do a desert/dry lake/wasteland outpost DZ board. Maybe I can keep the same basic principles implemented/learned here and just keep the scrub/brush to a minimum with more building elements....

I'm putting a pin in that one for now

Ah so a deep space colony Out Post feel for that one and well, who is to say how well vegetated a Corporate Colony will be? Not all of them can stake a claim on a Earth type Jewel of a world after all!

Right? Well, I figure a lot of the time you're gonna be there for minerals even if you gotta have a moon-base kind of dome going on. This would be a bit less extreme than that, just not particularly hospitable. Lots of rust and dust. I was thinking of doing something kind of like what Red Harvest does for his Bourak terrain, but I don't think I could make my stuff look as nice. And having done these rolling cliff-things... I wouldn't mind duplicating it and just installing some buildings. Put a small deadzone structure built into each side of the cliff there, for instance, and maybe square things up just a bit to be a tad more conducive to that game.

 GrimDork wrote:
Right? Well, I figure a lot of the time you're gonna be there for minerals even if you gotta have a moon-base kind of dome going on. This would be a bit less extreme than that, just not particularly hospitable. Lots of rust and dust. I was thinking of doing something kind of like what Red Harvest does for his Bourak terrain, but I don't think I could make my stuff look as nice. And having done these rolling cliff-things... I wouldn't mind duplicating it and just installing some buildings. Put a small deadzone structure built into each side of the cliff there, for instance, and maybe square things up just a bit to be a tad more conducive to that game.

Now that does sound like a plan!

I figure so many old sci-fi movies that used desert locations to represent less hospitable, yet habitable worlds you then can't go wrong making a habitat like that for Deadzone, Oh and they got the idea from 1977's Star Wars where they had to have Tunisia play the part of Tattoine, so hill side habitat blocks and vapor capture collectors sounds in order.

Vapor collectors? Sounds like a good candidate for roof and open field scatter

 GrimDork wrote:
Vapor collectors? Sounds like a good candidate for roof and open field scatter

Yep, and also important to use in a desert clime for water safe to drink.

That Enforcer looks great now! By the way, is that helmet with the crossways visor part of the plastic kit? It reminds me of the Defender ones, but I can't think if they ended up plastic, restic or hybrid.

Get those Space Marines painted up

Loving the terrain piece. Great job.

@Para, yeah it's one of the 2 visor helmets you get per 5 guys.

@AoV lolololol

@RB thanks

How will you imply the grid? Looks great by the way... and you should absolutely count that in your model count!

Terrain piece looks fantastic. Definitely put it in the painted mini box. I like to intersperse terrain pieces amongst painting actual models to keep things fresh. I find it helps to keep me motivated and they can often be a lot faster and easier than the great finished product would indicate.

@Eyeamrai Thanks, and I dunno. This piece wasn't specifically made or laid out with the deadzone terrain in mind. I'll have to figure something out later if I end up going with the grid. May end up having to do like corners in some form of marker. May not be worth it. With enough planning you could make the cubes out of scenery bits but everything would be really square. I may have to make a second piece with the grid in mind and then apply that backwards.

@Archer thanks kindly Looks like I'm at 23 then! Though the bridge and other metal bits could use some rust. I may include some smaller terrain pieces as I go, I don't want to do something this large every week as it kind of sucks up all of my time.

Holy gak Grim! That terrain piece looks awesome. Throw some Tyranid Lictors on that and some guardsmen. Awesome ambush diorama!

On another note: I got my Mantic Survey 3 stuff through yesterday: Plastic enforcers look amazing as do the Peacekeepers (Big buggers!). Also got a load of the shiny new scenery sprues (angle pieces and whatnot) so this weekend will be focusing on that I think.


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 Archer wrote:
Terrain piece looks fantastic. Definitely put it in the painted mini box. I like to intersperse terrain pieces amongst painting actual models to keep things fresh. I find it helps to keep me motivated and they can often be a lot faster and easier than the great finished product would indicate.

I may have to try this then. Not been doing much army painting of late as my enthusiasm has dimmed somewhat. Hopefully the new Necron codex will perk things up a bit!

At the risk of starting to overuse the phrase, 'that still only counts as one!'

But is has to be said, it's a very, very cool one!

Thanks for the compliments guys, it was fun to build and I'm fairly happy with it. Should be fun to play around, i hope.

@AoV grats on the shipment


Looks like this puts me at 23, weee.

I've been thinking about your question of whether to save the smurfs for when you're busy or to use them to get a jump on your numbers...

Can you do half the smurfs now so you can feel good about your numbers but still have some easy stuff for later?

Also maybe you could prep some stuff that would be easy and exciting to paint. That way you might be a little more motivated to work on stuff when you're tired?

Just my thoughts about it. Hopefully you can take them and make them into something useful for you.

@ER Definitely something to think about. I think I'm just gonna paint what I can now and leave the smurfs for later, hell maybe I'll maintain production and never even need them (eyeroll)

The prep-work now is a pretty solid idea too. I don't want to end up with a million primed models on nails taking up space that they wouldn't while safely tucked away in their bits boxen, but that's not a bad idea for the weekend/productive times in the summer, queue up a lot of easy targets that I wanna paint, and knock them out despite fatigue. Good thinking.


Here are some more pictures for all of my good readers, gotta give you something to keep you hanging about!

Buck and his hardy crew were deep in some gods-forsaken jungle hunting down clues as to the gorilla gansters' whereabouts. Coco started acting up and then the others felt it, the very earth itself began to tremble, imperceptibly at first...

The trees suddenly burst apart and one of Bucks old foes was upon them with abandon!







Gonna bring the skull and cargo container along as plot points for our next game. I wonder if we'll use the terrain piece or avoid it's potentially hazardous perimeter.

Ah, don't you just hate those days when you're on the trail of ruthless simian killers and a giant robot bursts from the undergrowth looking for revenge?

Darn tootin! The big stompy is just to cool not to use him every once in a while.

I think there's some rule expansion that lets you take a league of just one large thing instead of several smaller ones in Pulp Alley... if that ends up being the case... Big Stompy is liable to run his own show sometime in the future

Yeah, I was thinking that could be cool. Bunch of spies, agents and detectives increasingly wondering what the feth happened while a giant robot heat/freeze/shrink-rays them to death one by one!

I know I read a report that was a three way battle and they kept using the magic/psychic ability to shove enemies into the third player's giant crocodile

Those are great action shots!!

Terrain piece looks great, some nice action pics there

It's too big! Run!!!!!!! as the giant robot broke through the cover of the jungle

Thanks guys

Those action shots are stupendous. Really cool and very cinematic, my kind of photos. Ever thought of making a basic stop motion movie?

I probably did that a few times back when I was a kid and the computer was new and shiny. That could be a thing to do, even a semi-animated battle report as an extension... but what software would I use to minimize lameness?

Fantastic piece. Robots rust quickly in jungles, so the feckless adventurers can just wait it out. Yup.

But it's a Martian robot, it's made of space metals! It might not rust at all!

Chip Spencer AKA Speedy, and the flying saucer with ace pilot!

There's #24 and 25 folks, had to do a little something to keep the numbers up

Buck caught speedy attempting to pickpocket one of his crew, but saw the boy's potential. An official adoption was the only way to get the kid cleared but there's not a lot of father/son bonding going on. Speedy works as an informant, and sometimes a scout. He's not trained to use firearms but he's slippery as hell and good with his hands making him fairly useful at drawing fire and solving plot points (if they relate to finesse!). While Buck doesn't like to put him in direct danger any more than possible, the boy has grown up faster than most on the mean streets and doesn't mind the field work.

The saucer goes with mars attacks obviously, I've got 2 more. I could paint these for days, some simple airbrushing to get the basecoat and sorta glowy lights, then a couple of drybrushes like the big stompy. I think it works. The pilots are a little boring or I'd bust the other two out forthwith. I'll get to them eventually (and big stompy number two as well!).

Tomorrow I may be getting in a game of pulp alley, I'll try to remember to take photos this time. May or may not paint some other stuff if I get the chance.

Grim, have you played the MA game yet? Or just having fun painting the models? If you've played what do you think?

Yeah, I got to play it a few times. Just maybe 2-3 though I oversaw a couple more to let some other people see the game. It's fun. It's simpler than deadzone which makes it more accessible. It's pretty quick too. Things usually die when you shoot so you aren't quite taking handfuls of models from the table but you're removing casualties fairly often. The card deck is awesome. The abilities range from useful to devastating (if you queue up an artillery strike with 3 copies and drop it into an area densely packed with enemies...) and there are a bunch of random events that bring out all sorts of crazy. Maybe a mutant bug shows up and eats somebody's soldier, or makes a particular approach somewhat suicidal. Perhaps a car gets kicked onto the field from a distant giant stompy robot and bounces through a few squares pancaking things as it goes. Maybe one of those artillery shells I was talking about hits a random square! Could even be that both players are concentrating on getting their last couple of VP and suddenly a couple of scared citizens stumble onto the field and both players scramble to get them (worth VPs!).

It's fun and zany, I like it. Only played a few scenarios but it seems really fun.

I think I like the space ships even more than the big stompy robot! You have such fun models!!

Saucer and scenery are all looking good. I also really like how your Enforcer turned out. That little bit of flair really did the trick, I think.

Nice to see the saucer has glowy parts!

Nice Flying Saucer- what weapons did you give it?

Cool Saucer, I'm sure Buck can bring that in as some kind of 'experimental' close air support?

for what it's worth, i would have reversed the scheme on the should er pads--a white pad with red trim.

but hey, i'm not the guy painting 365 models in 365 days.

Thanks for popping by everyone The saucer has heat rays, but through the power of magnets, I could swap out some freeze rays. Just haven't painted stuff yet. I'm not sure Buck would be willing to deal with martians Para, kind of his sworn enemies

@GS, that probably would have worked too, but like you say, painting trim isn't as fun as filling in the middle!

Elevator surfing? Train surfing? Nah.....let's go UFO surfing.

I"m glad it's amusing as it was easier than trying to photograph another way

Trying to think of what to put on the other 3 1x1' sections of my deadzone jungle board. I'm thinking of putting a 4x4 structure in the center one one, although it may be a little too symmetrical as it would occupy the center 4 squares and have 12 squares surrounding it... Though, if I put it off-center.... Hmm what if I put it centered but with a bias to one side... and then I could do another board section with the same thing... Put them together to create a 2x4 cube (6x12") building, or put them diagonal across, or side-to side... could imply a single larger structure, or a small complex with some sections off the map. The sections of the buildings that sit on the edge of their cubes (or touch in the case of the combined building) would be open to the air with some damaged parts. This could imply the end of a larger structure when they're separate, and give more internal access to the realized larger structure when combined.

What to do for the fourth piece? I guess I could do another hill and or a watch tower. I was thinking that the two building pieces would be a bit flatter, the structures will sit flat on the board, probably with the ground as high as the buildings in some sections, and almost flat and level in others. The buildings could always have another level attached via connectors later as well. I may work a few flat DZ tiles into the ground or on top of hills to allow this on the third section as well. Still gotta do some figuring. Especially since they'll be dominated by buildings... I think these boards should be a lot easier to grid, either full-out or implied.

Thoughts? Any cool jungle things or easter eggs I should add in? I'm definitely going to have to include a hatch with a certain pattern of numbers on the outside... but I wonder if there are any other gems I'm forgetting.

One idea that might work is secret jungley caves. You could even house-rule them as movement routes, enter one turn, wait one and then pop out of another.

I kind of think something completely out-of-place could be a good one too, like a rocket/shuttle launch/landing pad, that was once all clean and shiny but is now overgrown.

And not strictly jungle-based, but if you'll be facing some Damn Dirty Apes, you can't go wrong with a part of the Statue of Liberty poking out somewhere. "You blew it up, god damn you! You blew it up!"

Haha, interesting points. I'm planning to do the jungle board more or less for deadzone though. The other guy will have most of the jungle terrain for this game I believe.

Might be tricky to hide a couple of raptors in there somewhere. 'Clever boys'

A cave mouth with a giant boulder rolling out of it? Maybe crushing a fedora.

A sacrificial pedestal with a woman tied to it. Giant footprints nearby.

A blue alien peering out of a bush?

Nice, I like those



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I'm gonna sneak my review of tonight's pulp alley game in here as well. Pretty fun, we did the Lost Keys scenario which is very similar to last week's Smash 'n Grab, but with one added condition that the major plot point could only be attempted by a character who had solved and was carrying a minor plot point. For this battle in the jungle, that generally amounted to finding one of three NPCs or a crate with gear to help you reach the Silver Skull hidden in my terrain feature in the center of the board (on the bridge!). Ok not really hidden, hidden in a more thematic way.

The pre-scenario events ended as one of his guys getting to start in stealth, and me getting a better die type for the initiative roll (which I lost anyway ).

There were three major points of conflict, with a couple of characters running around on the sidelines.

Rico and Coco had a brief battle with Da Boss and Experiment 7 (I think was his name, kind of a melty waxy bloody guy, failed experiment I think). Coco eventually defeated #7 in a 2-3 round melee and I used a fortune card to deny a recovery roll (which for a down character means they'll automatically go out!). Da Boss managed to secure the Missionary who knew the location of the Skull, however, and he pulled out before Coco could engage him. Rico exchanged fire with Da Boss but once he realized he was totally outgunned he fell back behind some obscuring jungle trees.

Natalya picked up the lost explorer and convinced him to help her team find the skull, and made her way for it rather early in the game. Unsure of himself (and I had no idea what to do with him either to be honest...) Speedy did nothing the entire game =/. He hid for a couple of rounds and then just kind of ran around a bit. He should have hidden and then shadowed Natalya to give me options for the late game of picking up a dropped objective but lesson learned for next time.

In a reasonably odd move, I deployed both Agent Falco and Buck in something of a flanking maneuver against Bananas, Mister Yellow, and Mister Purple. Falco proved himself in this battle taking out Mr. Purple early on and eventually dropping both Bananas *and* Anne (evil scientist's daughter) on the 5th and 6th (last) turns respectively, denying my opponent secondary plot points and resources for future games.

Anne basically spent 3 rounds securing a plot point and then tried to hide with it, but Falco's superior range took her out on the last turn.

In fact, the only plot point earned by either side was won and held by Da Boss. Natalya got to the Silver Skull first, but she failed to solve it on her first try and was forced to dodge away. I believe she took a hit around then as well, reducing her to d6's instead of d8s for her attacks and dodges. She ended up charging da boss but he knocked her down (costing her the lost explorer). She got up once or twice but being injured and fighting a higher level character put her at a severe disadvantage. Coco eventually engaged Da Boss and while he also won that fight (both of them at once *may* have been able to win a round with him...), it was on the last round and he didn't have time to make a grab for the Silver Skull before the game ended. So for all of our efforts, the grand total result was a point of reputation (and maybe a tip or something) for the gorilla gangsters, and squat for Buck and Co. We also figured out that you only get experience for having the experience reward (we checked half a dozen times because we could have sworn we read it differently last week) so my team has one point and his has none. I guess leveling up a character is something that will take weeks or possibly months of steady gaming!

We're planning to do X-Wing next week for a break, and in the mean time I think I'm gonna try to get myself to work on Mars Attacks scenery so we can have a fight in America, perhaps.

I've got pictures to upload, but I'll probably need to at least crop most of them a bit so they'll come later on... probably tonight.

Pulp Alley sounds like such a blast to play!

I'm glad your terrain piece got to see some action as well.

Pulp Alley sounds very Narrative driven, I like that.

I have this interesting game rule set


now I need to get this

Yeah, PA looks like great fun. I've downloaded the free quickstart rules (everything except character/mission creation, I believe) and a lack of D10s is the only thing stopping me playing.

By all accounts, the new Terminator game uses the same D6 D8 D10 mechanic, so if that's your thing you'd already be familliar with it.

Yep it was pretty fun overall. You've really got to think about some things. For instance... Coco and Da Boss were engaged in a brawl on that last turn. I had the initiative and could direct which player moved a guy (but not which one, in the case of my opponent). If I had Coco attack and she got knocked out i'd have both lost the Initiative *and* given Da Boss a stab at the major plot point. Since I had the init though, I played for time which eventually forced Da Boss to interact with Coco on his own which ate up his action and chance at the Skull. It gets pretty interesting with fatigue too, gotta weigh every fight action in the light that it will weaken your character unless you picked hardened veteran (sidekicks and leaders only).

Terminator seems... I dunno I'm not a huge terminator fan. There's not supposed to be a kickstarter for that one right? I'll just have to see what it looks like when it hits retail.


Not heard much about tomorrow's war actually.


May try to get some hobbying done today, got some other stuff that needs doing but at the same time... we'll see.

Initial set-up. My opponent wisely positioned Da Boss close to both a minor plot point and the main plot point, and with backup. Rico and Coco did tie them up a little, but were overall ineffectual at stopping Da Boss, after the first turn he basically ignored them. Natalya and speedy took up the center in a similar arrangement to Da Boss and Co, but proved to be a less effective force overall. Eyegore set up in the jungle near the hill of doom, in hiding as per the pre-scenario event. Buck and Falco attempted to outflank a couple of the gangsters but I played my hand a bit early and my opponent was able to deploy suitable numbers to tie them up for the whole scenario. While buck and Falco eventually did drop everyone on that side of the table (and Anne, bonus!), neither of them could get to the center stage or claim any objectives by the end of the game.


Here we are still at the point of deployment photos, you can see Natalya, Speedy, and Eyegore from left to right. Natalya ends up going for the objective in the jungle patch behind her and then rushing for the objective on turn two. Speedy basically runs around in circles and hides all game, I just couldn't figure out what to do with him. I may see if my opponent minds if I switch out my 6th person for the bastion of science/network of supporters perks.. but then again I don't know if Buck is really suited to taking advantage of those either. Maybe save it for another league.


Bananas is Da Boss's trusty Sidekick, with Mr Yellow and Mr Purple being valued allies. All of them are monkeys/gorillas with the brains of human criminals transplanted into them!


Even knowing he's outgunned, Rico boldly moves forward and attempts to cut the boss down before he can enact any cunning plans. Obviously... Rico barely made it out intact!


Here we see Natalya rushing the Silver Skull aided by a Lost Explorer, she quickly convinced him to help her out and was most of the way up to the objective by turn 3. Eyegore took a shot out of hiding at her, but she managed to spot him and was able to react (instead of eyegore getting a free attack). She then utilized her Intrepid ability to dodge in the direction of her choice (towards the Skull) as opposed to directly away from the attack. She failed her first attempt at the skull, however.

The entire Hill of Doom was considered an extremely perilous area meaning anyone moving into or activating within it's boundaries would automatically face a peril, however we house-ruled that having one of the minor plot points would reduce the area to merely perilous for the character who possessed one. With the additional restriction from the scenario (only someone with a minor plot point could even attempt to capture the Skull), and the extremely dangerous nature of the terrain, the fight inevitably came down to a one-one showdown to claim the skull. I will note that both Buck and Coco managed to successfully enter and survive the zone, but it was extremely dicey.


Coco berserk charged Experiment #7 earlier in the game, this was around turn 4-5 when she finally put him down and I was able to throw a fortune card "Stay Down" to prevent him from getting to make a test to recover. Da Boss simply moved away from Coco with the Talkative Missionary while she was fighting #7, however.


Earlier in the scenario, Buck bumrushed Mr. Yellow figuring he had better stats for it, but he made the charge from far enough away that Yellow could shoot in response. This basically caused a 3-round draw with Buck eventually clubbing Yellow down, and yellow failing the resulting health check. Falco had earlier put down Mr Purple, and in this shot Bananas had taken an injury as well.



Not to be shown up, Da Boss made his presence known as forced Natalya back from the Skull. I later had her foolishly charge in with some fatigue from the earlier dodge. I should have waited, or simply made a try for the skull. Yes... in retrospect I should have tried the skull! If I had... well if Natalya had managed to claim it, she probably could have successfully dodged Da Boss for the rest of the game, what with having an extra die than him, even if his shoot dice were d10s against her d8s. Curses! Glad I made this observation though!


Here Eyegore starts to make a move, with Rico hot on his trail.


Buck rushed the hill of doom in the next round and then was going to attempt to get into a fight with Da Boss, but a fortune card limited him to 3 inches and he was only able to crest the hill. He took an ineffectual shot at Anne, and narrowly dodged a shot from Eyegore.


Anne, the mad scientist's daughter and co conspirator, spent three rounds coercing a nervous native to help her team out. By the time she was done, there was nothing left to do but hide as the main battle played out. Unfortunately for Anne, Agent Falco takes no prisoners!


This is the state of the clinch on the Hill of Doom at the end of the game. Buck didn't make it in time to try and knock out Da Boss, but Coco managed to survive the extremely perilous hill in order to engage the leader of the Gorilla Gangsters. She just barely managed to keep him tied up (was knocked out in the final round actually) so nobody was able to claim the Crystal Skull.

My opponent seized victory with a measly single victory point, to my zero. A fun and hard-fought battle overall, with objective denial proving to be as important as actually claiming the things. I may have to reconfigure a couple of my heroes just a bit, as we're both still learning the nuances of the system. I think with Natalya I really should have made one last grab for that objective... may have been an entirely different result!

I think next time we play we'll be doing North America, so I'm gonna try to rush out some of my Mars Attacks stuff on the double.

Cool update, love seeing in game pictures. Keep them coming and stay on target for the painting challenge.

Yeah only two models ahead right now.. Laid some groundwork on another batch of zombies though so I may be able to finish them tonight or tomorrow...

Also made a neat discover regarding some terrain, but I'll elaborate when I have photos.

....aaaand I've just caught up.

New enforcer scheme looks great. I personally prefer it a lot over the older one for some reason. The scenery piece is also outstanding. Really well done there.

And 365 miniatures in a year? Where have I heard that before...?

Heyo. I'm likely doomed to fail... But I'll try by gosh!

Thanks, I'm kind of stoked to make some more terrain like that but I may see if I can grid it up for dead zone.

I like the new enforcers too, the grey wasn't... I dunno quite right.

Alright sorry guys, been playing a couple of games (Agarest and then Prophesy of Pendor which is mount and blade with some neat tweaks) and generally slacking off in the painting department. I've got several hours in which I could paint today but my damn hands are shaky.... I'm either nervous about something or it was the stupid coffee. Either way I'm still gonna try to paint but not right this moment sigh.

 Azazelx wrote:
....aaaand I've just caught up.

New enforcer scheme looks great. I personally prefer it a lot over the older one for some reason. The scenery piece is also outstanding. Really well done there.

And 365 miniatures in a year? Where have I heard that before...?

You should go to Paradigm's blog. He's rolling the painted models out like there's no tomorrow! Definitely going to hit the 365 mark soon!

Yeah, making me look bad without even trying

Ah you are progressing well. You have a solid plan (especially with the Smurfs hiding out back) so don't worry too much.


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Getting in gaming time is almost as important as painting time. Maybe next year I will aim for 365 games played?

That would be fantastic lol. Maybe almost too many... Unless they're quick games and like 3-4 out of a week at least fall on one day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I did get those 7 zombies done so I"m technically at 32 for the year/month. May take a few days to get them sealed and based though since I had to order my preferred sealer.

I'm at about 12 this year, so you guys have me beat!

Ehh I think 12 is pretty respectable, especially if you aren't rushing yourself on some kind of silly challenge.

Alright I asked way too much of my can of spray sealer yet it still delivered. Totally out of the good stuff now, just a bit of propellant left if anything, but It let me finish my latest 7 zombies!

Pictures:


3 more soldiers, 2 more scientists, and 2 more civilians.


Some of the poses didn't come out as I had wanted/expected (also note not every photo here has the blood that they all have now), but I'm happy overall.


The soldier in the front came out a bit awkward, I nkow better than to stick 100% to the 'natural' join of the torso, unless I want such a bend in the future.


The enforcers have been deployed to help corporation marines defeat a mysterious mutant/zombie outbreak on the mega-freighter N0X-17. The marine may be a bit unnerved at shooting his former comrades, but the Enforcer's training leaves him with no regrets as he skewers another infected soldier.


The enforcer finds a team of infected scientists and doesn't hesitate to open fire.


Though he knows the target is infected, he's wearing the tattered remnants of an officer's uniform and the marine's training forces him to confirm total loss of the asset. Unfortunately for him, a couple of off-duty crew were also infected in this area and have snuck up behind him!


The entire mutant/zombie horde! 13 to date, I think 7 was a not-unreasonable number to paint at one time so I'll probably make 7 more sooner or later for a nice even 20 with the next batch.


Even a mighty enforcer was no match for the massed hordes on the N0X-17, his fading life signal from his armor will alert his comrades to his fate, but whether they will continue their mission or the N0X-17 will be set on a course for the nearest sun... only GCPS officials light years away can decide.

I'll repost this one so I can talk about the builds/conversions...


So this was another fun batch of zombies I think I've probably used one of every part by now, or at least I'm getting close. The soldier in the front includes a mantic ghoul/zombie head and one of their claw-hand upgrade bits, which I used to cover up the fact that his right arm has no attached hand by default. I took one set of the rifle-over-head-as-a-club arms and gave this soldier zombie the ghoul claw to compensate, and the female soldier behind him snagged a ghoul dagger hand to make use of the other arm. The female zombie in the senter in what may have been a dress is using a set of zombie legs from the fantasy set (should have filled in the gap at the back better... and ignore that white bit, it's just a piece of trash that'll blow off, leftover from removing her from her integrated base). She's also got one of the zombie arms (obviously, the one holding a severed forearm ).

The science/hazmat is mostly new bits, but the right arm is also from the zombie kit. The soldier on the far right has new legs, a ghoul torso, and a scifi zombie head and right arm. The left arm is attached to the torso but I cut off the hand and used one of the rifle-as-club hand sets (that matches the arms I used earlier) after not-so-subtly removing one of the hands from the rifle butt. The guy in the back is new up top, and the fantasy kit legs on bottom. Kind of looks like a shirt and pants ripped to shreds... maybe?


Gonna have to get to work putting some more zombies together, and I still need to make more enforcers... Got some other stuff primed to paint though so I may squeeze in a couple more models before the end of the month, we'll see!

zombies are looking pretty good. seems like you're doing pretty well for 365 in 365...keep it up!

Zombies are suitably gribbly. Look awesome as a batch of the walking dead. What scenery are they standing on? Is it Deadzone stuff?

Thanks. I really meant to be at least in the 40-50 range by now, but at least I'm not behind.

Zombies are great!

Keep 'em coming!!

@Archer missed your post, that's the battle systems scifi terrain that was kickstarted last year. They're running through their surplus stock to backers and then may make a proper print run for retail. It's reasonably thick card, pretty nice stuff although during the campaign it sounded a hell of a lot more plug n play than it turned out to be. Still easier to put together than most scenery and you don't have to paint it.

@EyeamRai thanks

I keep forgetting about my zombies. Looking really good there, Grim.

Are those the deadzone zombies, Grim? I assume so, but I don't have any yet.

Thanks.

Yep they're the DZ zombies, with a few bits of the fantasy zombies/ghoul sprues mixed in for even more variance. I'm having a lot of fun working on them. I may break out some plague 1st gens and do some converting too while I'm at it.

Great to see you getting a few games in Grim. Love the work on the saucer on the previous page, so simple but very effective. I think 3 for under £30 is a very fair deal. Will we see a few in Necron armies?

Your zombies are great too, reminds me that I really need to complete the rest of my Deadzone stuff before the next KS/retail release hits.

Thanks I wanted my mars attacks stuff to be fairly simple without looking bad. Didn't want them to look so good nobody wants to handle them (as if I could ), and there's an awful lot of it to work through as well!

Is that what they're doing for retail? I think they're a bit small in profile compared to the flying croissants, but I'd play someone with the rules if they wanted to.

Even if I did the 365/365 challenge in *just* mantic stuff.... I'm not sure I'd have it all done, let alone before the next survey/KS/retail =/ Some of the DZ, MA, and especially DBX stuff is going to get chocked up to shiny model syndrome and may stay in the bits box for a long time/ever. I've come to accept this. What I *do* want to get done though, is a solid bit of everything for maximum game options and shelf candy.

A bit of everything sounds like a good idea if you don't have a particular favourite. Shelf candy is always a good goal too. i would probably aim for that if I had some shelves to put candy on.....

Lol yeah I don't have any shelves either really I wanna get one of those cool glass display cases but it would be a bear to move and I don't think we're really quite settled here.

Yeah, once I finally get my roots deep in the ground I plan on a crazy man shed with my tools and workspace on one side and my hobby and gaming area on the other. Then I will have shelves like no one else......promise.

Crazy manshed, woot


I'm not gonna get anything done by tonight so here's my results for January. 32/31, 32/365 for the year:


Everything with a little crappy paint editing Note that I'm counting the hill and vehicles as 1 because CHALLENGE!


Zombies backed by jungle terrain piece (as is everything).

The jungle bridge/hills was a fun terrain piece to build. I'd like to make 3 matching pieces and grid up all 4 to have a jungle outpost deadzone board. The zombies were quite fun to assemble and pretty simple to paint. I usually stick to tabletop quality and these are no exception, I figure having upwards of 100 of them means I can slack off a bit here and there. Expect more zombies through out the challenge/project.


Marauders!

I had one commando and the captain done from last year, so this batch bumps the total up to 7. I still need to paint 3 more for a full strike team but I can only do so much red/black combo in a row. I may keep the scheme moving forward after those 10, but it will have to come a model or two at a time. If anyone missed it, I'm going for a bit of an M. Bison/shadowlaw vibe with these in terms of color, and the mawbeasts below loosely resemble Blanka


Mars Attacks minis!

These minis are all from mars attacks, though I've been using them for Pulp Alley too. You've got from left to right: Tunga, Esteban, Agent Falco, Buck Spencer, Natalya, boy/civilian/whatever, Novas Vira Militia (Vasquez). All of the mars attacks stuff so far has been pretty fun to paint. The details are strong enough to get by on, though certainly not the same quality as top shelf resin or metal or what have you. The amount of detail is just right for me, enough to keep you interested but not so much you get tired of it.


Fantasy minis!

Left to right you've got the Astrologer/Heavens Wizard/Diviner or whatever, Sir Garrik the Bold/Sir Forscale, and a Nature priest/druid. I wanted to paint my own Sir Forscale for when I got my bones 2 shipment in, and the other two have just been knocking about for some time. The fantasy models will be getting rebased eventually, I'm still undecided as to how I want to go about it.


Martian Mayhem!

Big Stompy Robot and Martian Attack saucer. These were both painted in absurdly simple schemes but they're two of my favorite models from this batch. I really like how they've turned out especially considering the amount of work involved. Both have a little bit of airbrushing but the majority of the models have just been hit by a few waves of drybrushing. These didn't get dipped like everything else, just a double coat of flat sealer.

Boom, I'm on target for the year but I still need to gain some ground and get ahead before I'm satisfied. I've got a feeling work is gonna start back up early this year which will really put the pinch on me to keep things moving at a mini a day. We'll see!

Some fine progress there! You're on target, and I daresay ahead of a lot of gamers this year! Keep it up!

I'm almost positive this is better than I was last year. I think the original ToDoOrDIE was something like 60 models over several months and I got that done (and it was summer), so I'm hoping I can stay motivated and keep pushing.

Keep
Calm
and
Dakka
On

Your continuing support gets the things painted

So one mini ahead? Nice progress. The Jungle bridge looks like a fun piece of terrain for play too. Definitely make some companion pieces for it.

I had hoped to be twice this far along but its better than last year for sure.

I've got plans for two more of the sections and I'm sure the third will come to me. Just gotta get 'round to it.

Zombies are looking great - and yes, with your prolific nature, you should be able to get workable forces up for a bunch of games. Maybe rotate the units/games with some degree of order, and then just throw in additional models that you want to paint to keep everything even more interesting?

I may do that rotation thing...we'll see. I'm playing it loose right now. The zombies really bailed me out this time getting nearly half my monthly allotment in just 3 batches. I'm trying to save the smurfs for the busiest time in the summer where finishing two regiments of those (26 minis) and a few extras may be all I can hope to get done in a month.

I've loosely planned to get a strike team/force for all deadzone factions, steadily progress my mars attacks goodies, and put a significant chunk of time in on Infinity minis as well. I may go loopy and paint a bunch of DBX too, maybe if I get inspired by wave 2.

Bones 2 isn't liable to come in until closer to march from the sound of it...it's all in the states but still in customs, and though I'm in the first wave...it's not likely I'll be the first package. Probably gonna roll out mid-late February which means I'll barely have time to unpackage and sort that stuff let alone figure out which of it I want to paint.... Little bit disappointed there.. Oh well.

I'll probably be grabbing wee bones gribblies to fill in places in the list. Grab a few duplicates or same-kind batches (think there are several of these, deep dwarfs, goblins, gnolls, etc). I know there are a bunch of grey aliens too, those should paint up in minutes. Some of the bigger stuff though... we'll just see what I can do.

I may focus fire some bigger projects now too... like finishing the jungle deadzone board, some mars attacks terrain, and what not. I'll have less time to fool around with bigger projects in the summer.. likely.

Really like the group shot of January's progress. Really good idea to show it all off together.

One model ahead in the first month of the year is a good result. as you may have needed to throw off the post Christmas/New Years funk (that's my excuse).

I started well but lost a week or two in the middle it seems. Damn gaming and video games =\

 GrimDork wrote:
I started well but lost a week or two in the middle it seems. Damn gaming and video games =\

video games kill my hobby time, especially in winter when it's so cold the paints don't seem to want to work out of the pot...i admire your ability to get so much done. maybe i'm just a whiner...

The photo shoot is awesome!

1 day ahead is still ahead right? Once you knock out a couple more batches of zombies you'll be sitting pretty!

I really like your terrain piece. It makes for some great photos and looked pretty sweet in the middle of the board.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your Mars Attacks stuff!

Keep at it dude you are doing amazing, and not just quantity, but tidy quality also. Really inspiring.

Thanks ER

Thanks Cam!

Hmm... well MA stuff does paint up pretty quick, generally. Wonder what I should do though... Probably try to finish the main game then get back to random.

One of the attendees at the library game day asked after Mars Attacks, guess they liked playing it the last time, I'll have to bring it next time I suppose. Have half a mind to knock out DBX to bring too.. but I need my wave 2 stuff so as to have my missing bag from wave 1.

Trying to finish a few models that have been sitting on my desk for a number of weeks at the moment... then I'll see what the next mini project is.

I did get out the plague for my angry scientists strike force expansion, but it took so long to find the parts I was too tired to actually start cleaning the restic =/

That is some amazing work on the jungle hills and bridge and minis! Glad you are catching up!

Thanks

Seems like I may have to replace my series 7 #0 but i'm gonna stick to cheap brushes from hobby lobby for a while at least.

I managed to limp through finishing my 3rd, 4th, and 5th Moderators with that troublesome #0... Still gonna pick up a cheap extreme detail brush from hobby lobby soon.

Anyway PHOTOZ be sure to zoom if you like, they're fairly large shots.


The new guys, I haven't gotten them names yet, working on it. Red guy with black tattoos, sniper with terminator eye, bunny-girl with floppy ears and a cotton tail.


The whole Mod Squad.


Though you've probably seen them before, here are the rest of my Nomad models posing with the moderators.

Cool, those are very characterful. I can never decide if I like the Bakunin style or not, but these certainly push me in that direction!

Yeah, all of the Moderators have their own little things going on. Well except for the first one I painted, that's why he has extra tattoos and funky sneakers

Trying to decide if I want to jump right into working on the Sin Eater or if I want to do a few less-detailed minis first.

Pretty neat stuff there Grim

Your photos are always so great!

Awesome work.

Thanks guys

Keepin me motivated so thanks!

Much feels.

Since you guys are so cool here's a preview of what I'm thinking of for two of the jungle board tiles. The unpainted building is as it will be, although I'll probably add a few more pieces. I'll probably leave the roof alone by default but it will be expansible since battlezones. Just want to add some little walk-outs for observation or firing positions. The yellow is standing in for size only, the one I build will have damaged sections especially towards the part that sits against the edge of the tile, so when you put the two 'touching' there's a nice big mangled gap between them for ease of access.

The buildings will have jungle plants and what not encroaching on them too. One of these, at least, will need more height. Either from a tower on the building section or with a hill outside of that. I may build both of them up nearly to the height of the buildings (or higher) as well... get a lot of hills and valleys going on. The area closest to the buildings may be barren and scorched, the efforts of those in the structures to keep nature at bay.

That's cool, nice and modular! I like the pointed building design.

I've been seeing so many awesome deadzone buildings lately I've been itching to try some new stuff out. That's pretty tame, but I may come up with some neat stuff before it's over


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Got a bit of the infinity bug, I've got 5 more models up on nails that I'm looking to prime imminently.

I want to see the Sin Eater painted up. They are a sweet looking model with really unusual rules.

Modular terrain boards are cool. One day I will take all of the ideas and motivation and put it together myself. I have 32 one foot x one foot aluminium squares for just that purpose. Just have to sketch out what I will end up doing with them. At the risk of hijacking your thread any ideas?

How big of a board are you planning? A full sized wargaming table that's made with 1x1' tiles? I'm not quite that ambitious just yet, I'm only planning to make 4... so far. I guess I could go crazy and do a full 4x4' table eventually.

32 tiles thats...a full 8x4' that's pretty big

Are you looking to use it for a fantasy or scifi game, or do you want it to work for both? Fantasy mass battles do best with lots of flat stuff but of course skirmish and 40k like to see more terrain usually.

You've got soooo many armies going for you, probably best to do something generic like woods/fields, desert, or y'know...


I not only primed those models earlier, I did partial basecoats with the airbrush. I painted almost the entire Sputnik with the airbrush, though I'm gonna go in and touch it up by hand... too inconsistent of a coat, I think I need to thin my paint a little more to do it like I was.

The buildings are looking good!

Mucho niceness Grim! That pink haired girl is a contender for avatar imo. Looking forward to that jungle board. Good to see the deadzone terrain being put to good use! And the battle systems terrain is just perfect for those photo shoots isn't it ; ) Saucer, robot, zombies and Orx look great together like that. I envy your work ethic.

It is possible to get a decent detail brush in other kinds of sable. Look around for them. I have several that I have had for a long time. They are not Kolinsky sable quality, but they are a hell of a lot better than the taklon/nylon/whatever stuff you get at the arts and crafts store.

But, but... no lollipop moderator? Well, the ones you've painted look pretty good, so I'll overlook it.

Thanks guys

I really like the battle systems stuff for taking photos, but I need to get some more of it prepped so I can add a bit more variance in backdrop. I think the jungle hill will make a nice set-piece as well.

I'm just got a couple of Taklon brushes from hobby lobby, I've used the brand before and they do a good job, they just split and become useless fairly quickly. Both of them cost me a little over 3 dollars on sale so if they last a month, I won't be angry.

Lolipop Mod has two things against her IMO:
1.) The way she holds her gun is, frankly, ridiculous/impossible. I'm all for crazy OTT or silly anime themes, but c'mon, there's no way.
2.) She comes in a pack with skarkdude and I'm not sure what I'd do with him...

Besides not needing 7 Moderators, even if I could find a head to go with sharkdude that fit the scale.

It's not like I wouldn't paint her if I had one, just... not going to try too hard to find a solo at this point. Who knows, they could get a new box some time in the future too...


No promises, but I may paint some more Infinity soon, I got 5 primed and started yesterday. I'm totally counting the wee bomb-bots as models for the challenge so I'll see about getting them all done before I fall behind on the challenge.

What are the five you have primed?

Where is your sense of Mystery?

Uhh lets see...

Those Infinity models that I had left assembled but not mounted to paint... from the original wave of doing so. I believe they complete the starter box too.

Zero with E/mauler (last mini left from bakunin starter box)
Reverend Custodier
Lunokhod Sputnik with
Crazy Koala
Crazy Koala

So really just 3 profiles... but 5 models. It'll bring my total Nomads up to 10 playable profiles and 14 models.

The Koalas are already their base colors so they'll just need the dark grey and then highlights for both colors and some little bits here or there. The Sputnik is the right colors but I need to go over them as my airbrushing was a bit spotty. The two humans are a little above scratch but still have most of the work to do.

I'm more interested in the models than the profiles anyway. Sounds good though mate. Look forward to seeing them.

I should finish work on my DZ buildings, I have decided on a name for the bar though "Booty Buster, open from dusk til dawn"

Heh nice name there. I really want to make some characterful buildings for my board as well, beyond just posters. Maybe some neon or holo signs.

 GrimDork wrote:
Heh nice name there. I really want to make some characterful buildings for my board as well, beyond just posters. Maybe some neon or holo signs.

Yep, gotta stay characterful, and such a "frontier" town needs a good , well named and stocked watering hole.

Woo. I got some Mantic Orcs in the mail today from a trade. Pretty neat so far. I've noticed that the sprues of 2 orcs have 1 orcling (even smaller than snotlings!), and sprues of 3 orcs have 2! A couple of extra sprues also have orclings.

I think my smurf army just got some smurflings That's a thing right? Well... it is now! These are so tiny... I may have to actually use them to represent a swarm like they're meant to (and like snotlings are supposed to)... but we'll see...

Too much stuff to look through, I"ll get pictures sometime.

Smaller than snotlings?!!

Significantly!

Orclings are to snotlings as snotlings are to goblins. I think. I'll get some out to compare later.

I need to see this.

As requested:


As you can see... they're pretty small

I think it would be too much, even for me, to use them as single models. The snotlings I'm ok with.. but these guys? teeny.


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Also, for anyone keeping score.. I did manage to more or less finish the two crazy koalas tonight so I'm still technically on target. I'll probably fall a bit behind working on stuff like Infinity and terrain, but I just got a big batch of Orcs to make up for it (possibly). Elves too.

They're so CUTE!!!

What are they meant to be used game wise or are they just decorations to be used?


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The Orclings I mean.....

The Orclings look like fun to paint. If nothing else they'd make excellent base decor.

They're pretty adorable hehe.

I believe the two primary uses are to stick them on bases 'cause they're cute, and you can also take Orclings as a unit. They're a large infantry, though each base is made of of a swarm of orclings. I'd have to ask someone in the know as to hat they're good at, but if I had to guess it would be screening and speedbump duty. They get a reasonable number of attacks but they're bad at them, and are easy to hurt.

I'll probably make some 40mm swarms of them and count each swarm for the painting challenge. I'm not convinced I can call them a model a piece, the smurfs are already pushing it

I'm looking forward to see what you end up doing with these!

The micro-orcs? Probably be pretty lame and stick them on some bases. Not sure how many. Hmm quick math time...

Maybe 16-18 2-orc sprues, so about 16 there. And 19 or so 3-orc sprues so that's another 38... 4 more loose on extra sprues and 4 sprues with 2 more (command bits, I think) for 8 more. 12+38+16 so what 66? So even if I stuff 10 of them onto a 40mm base I can have a regiment of 6. And we all know how I like to spread things out and make models count... May sneak some in (especially the 'dead' ones) onto the bases for the orcs themselves.

I also got in my weedy mantic elves today upping my total to 5 sprues or 50 elves. I'm thinking I can spread those out to 7 troops of about 7 models each, and have one or two left for minor characters. I can maybe make a passable scouts troop, and then I was figuring to make 3 spear elf troops and 3 bowmen troops of 10, allowing for either 3 troops or a troop+regiment. Or possibly a regiment each of spear elfs, bowmen, and then mix the last two to represent seaguard.

The orcs are also parsed out pretty well, I think I can make two "krudgiments" (still 20...) of the shield/ax guys, two regiments of the morax, and maybe 3 regiments of greatax. I've also got 10 of the boar riders and the Krudger on a boar. I think I"ve got an old metal D&D black dragon that would make a great winged slasher too. Trying to get a pulse on how good chariots or fight wagons are, and if I should consider using those instead of the boar rider guys. I *guess* with my magnet fixation... it probably wouldn't be terribly hard to make the riders removable so I could appropriate the boars for the fronts or backs of chariots/fight-wagons.

Turning out to have a bucketload of KoW units lately And all it cost me was some imperial vehicles that were just putting me into the danger of relapsing into a GW binge Still got more I could stand to clear out but that'll come in time.

I've got 10 more models prepped, all for deadzone, ready to paint. 2 Infinity models done but they're just mobile accessories really, gonna see about working on the other 3-4 Infinity models I have ready tomorrow.. maybe. Then the plague will be on deck, probably to be followed by some orcs and elves. Those last three things should help me recoup some lost ground re:painting challenge.

Sounds like you've got a plan!

Looking forward to seeing the KoW orcs and elves.

Me too, however... got some other stuff done in the mean time:


10 more plague figures, woot!

I've been wanting to do a plague force centered around Dr. Simmonds (front center) for awhile now. In the DZ fluff she's a scientist on the planet where the plague-causing artifact is discovered, and she is eventually overcome by a 2nd gen, barely surviving. Then she mutates into a 3rd gen but retains all of her knowledge and memories, however she's kind of pissed off that she and her crew were left for dead. So now she bends her brilliant mind to bringing pain and destruction to those who failed her. MUAHAHAHHAHAAH. At least I think that's how it goes. Anyway, I figured the plague minis that came with long coats (found in the mortar team and on the grenade launcher guy) could be made to look like scientists. I also had two Dr Simmonds models because I'm silly and ordered too much deadzone I figured the Terraton was either a research assistant/scientist/doctor (I believe they're fairly advanced and intelligent) so she fits in, and the plague swarm makes sense as an attempt for Simmonds to spread the plague in new ways. The stray giant centiplague (tm!) was probably supposed to be mashed in on top of the rest of the plague swarm but it seemed like such a busy model anyway... so I just gave it a base to call it's own and will count it as a variant stage 3 D (or alt hellhound). I realize now you can barely see the dead plague figure on the crate behind the second female scientist model, whoops. I'm also missing from the picture one of my favorite conversions, d'oh... Had him drying on his base off to the side I'll take better photos in daylight soon.

These were pretty fun to work with. The restic was kind of tedious but it wasn't *too* many models so I got by. I also mixed in some scifi zombie parts, and did a little arm-swapping between the 3rd gen plague. I may or may not have all of the right arms and heads to finish every single plague model I have left, but zombie part swaps should see them through if/when I get back to them. I only successfully integrated one zombie head, the zombies are just a bit more heroic scale than the plague minis. Not so bad on arms, but the heads are too much.

Next up, we've got 3 more Infinity minis which all come in the Lunokhod Sputnik box:





As before, the crazy koalas were really easy to paint, and I still find them to be adorable little bomb-bots. I've got four of them now and I may eventually end up with 8 if I ever get some JSA as both Yojimbo and the Oyoroi (or however you spell it) T.A.G. come with them Long ways off though. Anyway... I'm doing a Powerpuff Girls theme for my three sputniks, though it's fairly toned down. This one is obviously Bubbles since it's blue and has 'stuffed animals' with it. The left koala is there to represent her stuffed teddy-squid, and the red one is from the time that the HIM villain disguised HIMself as one of her dolls and tried to get her to do bad stuff.. or something. I'm not really sure, I think it was just a few episodes in 'cause I never watched much of the show and my daughter hasn't shown any interest in that vintage of cartoon network shows yet. Anyway, the Tsyklons will be Buttercup and Blossom, I'm thinking the feurerbach would make a better buttercup whereas the spitfire would better suit the team leader. They'll be green and red obviously

I did the majority of the painting on these three with the airbrush, the primary color for the koalas and almost all of the blue and grey for Bubbles. It was nice to just get to do it differently, and it looks kind of interesting in person. I'm still not good enough with the airbrush to make things look good on purpose, but I didn't feel the need to go back in with the brush and block everything in till it was flat followed by traditional edge highlights. I think whatever the airbrush did combined well enough with the dip to get by. I did rush these three though which is why I switched to plague.


So state of the game address:

Well, I forgot to show one, but there you have 13 more models for February. Counting the three moderators that puts me at 16/28. And recall that I was ahead a mini last month too. So by the 9/28th day I'm over 50% done for the month, cool. Just gotta get 12 more done. May shift to fantasy... may not. I'm not sure yet. I'd like to do another quick batch like the plague and get the goal hit and then top it to bank some models for when work starts up full time. I'm usually wrecked by the time I get home for the first few weeks of returning back to intensive manual labor lol. I probably have enough models primed to clear February if I cleared out the queue entirely, but I'll probably get some new stuff worked in as well.

More news, Bones2 is shipping! I'm in the first wave, somewhere within that sea of 2001 packages. Just over 700 went out today but I haven't seen a ship notification so I'll expect to see one tomorrow or thursday. Depending on how far south Reaper is based in texas... well anyway it'll have to cross a few states but well under half the country to get to me here, and given that it's UPS I'm figuring a couple or possibly 3 days travel time. Probably early next week, just a bit too late for my birthday, but hey.. it's the thought that counts

I'll probably hit Bones 2 pretty hard, I'll probably pick out some favorites among the small stuff, maybe tackle one or two of the larger beasties I've got coming in... I'd like to get at least some of it sorted before march and it's looking like I may have a week or two to do so. Really early-season stuff is already starting to crop up though so work will be coming to me soon. Got a lot of ornamental grasses to cut back lol.

Nice work, homeboy. I do like that blue infinity robot-thing as well. How many figures are you up to now?

Thanks Lets see... 16 for this month and 32 last, so.. 48. Cool. Or well.. I painted one of those mantic-elf sabertooth pussycats... but it's pretty lame. Went with black and then tried some blue highlights but there wasn't a lot of definition on the fur to work with and it just looks kind of meh. I'll count it eventually, if I need to, may also repaint it down the road to a different, more manageable color.

The plague are looking good. How many plague do you have all up now?

I like the use of the powderpuff girls color schemes. The first one looks good and await the rest of the team.

Going really well with your goal. But you are very right that you need to get ahead whilst the going is good. Work will definitely slow the progress down.

Good stuff! Really looking forward to the Bones stuff, though, as I may end up buying a ton of those guys.

I had 8 plague before so I guess 17 now if we count the the solo centiplague in as a dog but not the dead figure.

@para I'll have to do a quick bones 2 unboxing. Got w lot of random minis I wanna try

Great work!

I'm looking forward to seeing the other Powerpuff girls inspired minis. The Bubbles-bot is my fav of the stuff you posted this round.

Cute koalas are cute!

How are those round/clear bases working out for you, in comparison to scenic bases?

If I ever get another good setup for mini photo shoots I'll take a batch of clear based minis and some of my custom scenic based models and do a side by side on 3 or more terrain types.

Did I see a plague swarm in there? If so, that's only the second painted one that I've ever seen. I had to give up on mine about 1/5 of the way through.

Yep. Its a really busy model and I'm not 100% sure I like it 100% . I left off the loose centiplague to use as a spare stage 3d (3i?), 'cause it was already so busy. Feel like I should have picked slightly more unified colors but idk. Good enough for now.

Having examined a close up of your photo (I really didn't know you could do that, please don't laugh) I think you made the right choice by leaving the centipede off the base, would have been too much.

I actually like the chaotic nature of the swarm, actually does a pretty good job of capturing the teeming hordes in a static model.

The colors are fine, as I understand it they are a ragtag bunch united by having contracted a horrible plague....

Something like that. I think anything that gets the plague and mutates kind of ends up in the give mind. I dunno if they're in constant wireless contact with it, but they all seem to toe the company line.

Plus I really wanted to do that bright acid green on the slugs

Zooming is cool. Sometimes I mention it for the exact reason you stated. Not much point in having and uploading 16-21megapixel images unless people are inclined to zoom them. On the downside... Usually you get just w bit *too* much detail... Can see the little mold line remnants and painting errors a lot more clearly


Finished cleaning one DBX baggie. I figured I'd just do them all in a couple - three batches. Some pretty cool stuff in there like the Warden and Blaine, plus some cool aliens. A tree monster, pig-lizard thats surely a nod to galaxy quest, and some other cool stuff.

Hoping to get a bones2 ship notice by morning. Did anyone have any requests they wanna see painted? I got the core, expansions 1 and 2, and a couple of the bigger beasties as add ons.

I say! Holy beans!

Bones 2 has arrived!

Forgot to take one of everything neatly packed in the box but what can you do?


Misc stuff before I opened it.


The core set box seemed pretty small but there was a *lot* in there, 3 bags of goodies!


Expansion 1 adds a bunch of small, medium, and a couple of reasonably substantial gribblies to work with.


I've only opened one of my expansion 2s. The IMEF guys are pretty large, they give space marines a run for their money in terms of the heroicness of their scale. Probably too chunky to look good in the same force as most of my mantic/infinity stuff. Still cool. The little grey spacemans aren't too bad, they're pretty small but they'll paint up really easily and make good lower-tier badguys, or civilians for space games and displays. The shipping container is excellent. The container, large crate, and dumpster next to it are actually in some kind of hard plastic as opposed to bones material. The police box is cool. The UFO is smaller than I expected, I guess it's because I thought the LGMs were bigger than they are. May still steal it for the Martians... just have to reclassify it as a scout or something. The bathalians, scifi door, and computer terminal are all find and dandy, just didn't wanna de-bag them and lose parts! The kulathi invaders are pretty neat, and you get NINE. The original graphic showed 3 I'll have to see if the second box also has 9. What am I gonna do with 18 of those? I was anticipating 6


This thing is COOL. I'm having a little trouble getting some of the bigger parts of these bones monsters to sit together properly... but I'm sure I can look up a tutorial for sorting out the joins on the bigger pieces.


Holy CRAP. Just as big as I was hoping, Khanjira is a freaking BEAST! I'm actually thinking about building him to stand more upright without the base. He's poised to be bending down to roar at someone with his arms back and all... But I think for a general use it may work out to put him on a different base that's flat, I'd just have to cut the tab off the foot that sits up on the rock. I may leave him stock too, we'll see. He's massive and chunky.


The only single set in this kit that has more mass than Khanjira is the Dragons don't share diorama. The dragon itself is smaller than Khanjira but a bit but the scenery makes up the bulk. Sprinkle in some greedy adventurers to taste I was considering getting 3x of these instead of the scifi sets I got, could have had a collapsed castle rather than just a collapsed tower, but yeah I dunno I think my current distribution is superior. Looking forward to the dragon, and the scenery should be fun to play with on the airbrush.

I've got a boatload of bags to crack open and divide up... gonna need some more containers for sure =/ I'll update as I find stuff. I've also got several more mantic minis on nails ready to be primed, and some bones stuff with be joining them shortly.

Holy gak snacks I am jealous right now.

Nice haul, Grim! Eagerly waiting on mine being sent out, now...

Yeah hopefully that works quickly and smoothly for the ROW packages.

So much stuff not sure *what* to start with. Gotta look up the cleaning and prepping information for the bones material.

I skipped the first two bones kickstarters, but if they do Bones III: boned harder , I'll probably jump in on it. Though I just went in on the Conan KS, so I'll be getting over 200 minis come October.

Containers and jersey blocks will be ordered when at retail

Oh, God, that means mine is on its way.

I'm hoping the containers are fairly cheap because I can tell I"d already like more.

Supposedly there isn't supposed to be a bonesIII per se, although I think they're open to running single lines in more focused kickstarters. Like chronoscope or dark heaven, but not all of their lines at once.


I looked at Conan briefly but are all of those duplicate minis the same single pose? I couldn't do that. And if they are multipose but they're just not that far along in show-off-ability yet, I'm still not 100% sold on the aesthetic. Looks like they had an *amazing* run though.

Damn, I haven't even gotten a shipping notice. Nice haul.

More focused KS would be nice. I'd love it if they did one focusing more on the modern terrain stuff.

In any case, I just really want my Tardis.

You have a ton of new stuff to keep busy with, and I look forward to seeing what you do with it

Thanks, the wheels are already turning as to what to do first. I'll probably start with some smaller stuff, but I really wanna tackle Khanjira and the dragon to see if I can use the airbrush to do the vast majority of the models. I mean.. I know I can use it for that, I just want to use it to make them look good without having to go in and fix too much with the brush.

I'd probably back a chronoscope kickstarter if I had the funds. Dark Heaven or the other fantasy one.. not as much.

wow. that is a ton of minis...probably take you more than a year to paint them all, one mini a day...at least you won't run out of things to paint!

That was kind of the idea I'm hoping the ridiculous amount of variety helps keep me interested between more cohesive projects.

By the power of Gray Skull!! Lotsa dollies

Holy Piles of Plastic Batman!

That is a lot of stuff.... quite a lot of which I may end up grabbing at retail. Is there any chance I could get a Dragons Don't Share scale shot with a 28mm figure or something? It might make a nice centrepiece for a LotR board.

The actual detachable hefty foundation has been a cute discomfort, yet I'm fairly pleased with how it seems unpainted, often will make it appear a bit far better together with pieces go as well as turf as well.

Para, which kind of 28 mm models? You want classic marines?

Any will do, Marines are probably the easiest reference but I'd just like to get a feel for how big it is, and whether the steps ect are suitable for 28mm bases.

Gotcha. Incoming.

This what you're after? Infinity dude and corp marine are pretty close to guardsmen, terraton is bigger than a terminator, not quite bigger than a dread. Plague are a bit taller than marines but similar. The rest of my stuff is in the cold garage

Cheers, that's great! Depending on the price, I may have to grab that.

Yeah it was a no brainer for 35. It may be twice or more that at retail though it's pretty chunky.

I'm so jelly.

Paint ALL THE THINGS GRIM! PAINT THEM ALL NOW!!!

Trying...failing...

I've never said this before in my life... but that may be too many minis, Grim.

May be....may....be.

=/

You don't have to paint them all at one time though. I should have clarified that...

You can't listen to squall. He's just jealous like me.

What a glorious undertaking you have before you. You can do this!

Grab one at random to start with and then follow your muse from there. You got this buddy!

Heh. We'll see.... No luck today, just got stuff put back into boxes with a semblance of organization.

Paint the Dragon Grim, paint the Dragon.

EyeamRai is correct, I am a little jealous.

If at any point you have trouble with having such a sheer number of miniatures unpainted Grim feel free to ship them to me where they will get taken out of the package, looked at, have colour schemes picked out for them in my head, have plans made for how they will be used in various games, then be placed in a box never to be seen again.

Dragon huh? I'll *think* about it Will need a chance to use the airbrush...

@Carlos heh. Ok, if I ever fall into the pits of despair, I'll be sure to send you the rest to drag you along with me


Started on some of those little grey aliens. It looks like they have kind of a form-fitting bodysuit so I'm painting the majority of them a solid color, there's a collar by the necks so I'm painting the head a 'skin' tone. Doing kind of classic star trek rank/department colors with orange-yellow commanders, red-orange tactical, and blue science staff. Really easy to paint. I'm having pretty good luck on these without even washing them first.. though I may give the second batch a wash, supposedly it gives incoming paint a better chance to stick.

Yeah!!! The Bones have seen some paint!!!




Pics or it didn't happen, sir.

SIgh lol. When I get enough time to finish them I"ll make the time to photo

Any time my kiddo sees me paint she wants to paint too... but I can't paint when she does cause she makes a helluva mess


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Hopefully the dip will give them some more definition and tone down the bright colors.

Holy Moley! The dragon is sweet.

Too many minis... Hmmm, I think somebody has been out in the sun too long But perhaps too many minis at the same time... yeah, better. So box up half and pretend that you got them sometime in the future.

Nah they're all staying pretty clearly visible. The bones stuff doesn't feel like work. They're more like treats. Can paint them right up, don't really need to prime, detail is soft in some places on some models so you don't feel like you have to do an amazing job, just something that's usually simple and easy to paint

Didn't feel like cleaning all of the little grey alien dudes. Since they're so quick/simple to paint I'm just gonna batch the lot of them, all 16 (or well... 13 remaining) in 3 color coded batches.

For fun today, I've gotten out a Gnoll and a uhh... Bugbear..I think? They're both pretty chunky, I think they're roughly the size of a mantic ogre, probably making them smaller than GW ogres but I've never owned any of those.

I went ahead and washed these so we'll see if that helps reduce the minimal beading of paint I've had so far.

Nice! (haven't posted here in a while, been a bit hectic in Chez Da Boss recently)

Let us know how you get on with painting the Bones stuff. I bought their massive undead dragon mini a while ago and I have been putting off painting it because I was unsure about how the paint would go onto the model.

Can you prime them even if you don't need to? I prefer to build up from black...

You're a damn productive painter Grim!

@Da Boss: Bones take primer fine, I too prefer building from black and so did just that and there was no issue.

Google it, there are 3 rather helpful posts on the reaper forums that give a good rundown on the material.

You can paint by brush out of the pot no problem, the paint may bead a bit, and it will do it a lot if you add any water. Subsequent coats are all find obviously, as there's a layer of paint for them to adhere to instead of the bonesium. Priming is supposed to work but check those posts for a soft list of known successful types and problem-prone types of paint. I think the airbrush should work fine, especially if you don't dilute the paint with water.

I've painted a few by hand with the brush and it's been pretty easy. I usually prime white so it kind of makes sense to do nothing, though I may still airbrush prime some of them white for an even easier first coat.


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I'm finding I don't really like cleaning bones...

Not as bad as restic, but basically the same process, it just happens that the material is easier to cut. Less finger fatigue but just as much annoyance. Not a huge deal, though with the volume of this stuff that I have and the rate at which I could potentially move through it...

Oh and the material makes it really hard to spot them unless I'm working under a strong lamp, which makes cleaning bones while watching TV less viable =/.


Still neat, glad I got what I did.

I'd have more done by now if it weren't for the effort involved cleaning stuff. I don't have to have amazingly prepared surfaces but blatant moldlines kill me. I"ve got to at least get rid of the nastiest pieces.

I did get a bugbear (I think) finished, got the gnoll left to work on... bugbear took a bit longer than I was hopping but still cleared it in an hour or so. Chipping away at the little grey aliens but the mold lines are irritating me

Got the remaining 13 Greys done as well as one Kulathi, which are pretty cool 4-armed aliens with weird guns and a carapace instead of clothes or armor. They're the guys I have upwards of 18 of. I think they're gonna be preeeety easy to paint, probably mostly 1 color for the body with a highlight, maybe a slightly different color around their big head/brains and another for their face tentacles. Guns will be simple too.

Not sure which colors though.



I could go with greens kind of similar to my Shasvastii but I'm not sure. I'm not sure green is what I'm feeling for these guys. But not purple either, maybe for the tentacles. Maybe that medium green I was doing for the Shasvastii with the spotted pink around the softer looking parts of the head, purplish tentacles? I want something I can basecoat and then quickly drybrush for the majority of the skin/carapace, a little extra work around the head is ok. I dunno if green is what I want but I don't want blue or red either. Hmm.


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Can't find any painted instances of the invaders, my hobby blog here is actually the 4th result that comes up when you google them and you *know* that means there isn't much material =/

I would say either green like chultulu a dark purple colour or a dark grey to black a bit like xenomorphs from alien

Hadn't considered grey/black... Good call.

Damn are you up this late or just really early?

Late

The four armed alien looks cool, What about a really horrible bright Orange? Kind of like the poison arrow frog sort of fluorescent color, kind of like a warning to everything else that I am dangerous stay away.

That is a lot of stuff there Grim, which pledge did you go for? Still it means that you have plenty more stuff to paint for this (and a few other) year(s).

Orange huh... I'd consider that but I've actually done a lot if orange lately. Hmm.

ToT, base pledge 3expansions and a few big monster add ons.


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Went with kind of a medium green for my first Kulathi, I think it'll work out. Got him and the 13 Greys mostly basecoated with the airbrush just now... The Greys will finish up pretty quick and the Kulathi probably won't take *much* longer.

What color do you think you'll do the tentacles?

Red would look pretty cool.

I ended up going with purple to match some of the skin details.

Kind of ended up 75% the same as my shasvastii scheme. Primarily the same colors, but unlike the shasvastii the skin-hide-chitin path goes from dark to light (backwards) with the most armory parts being a light gree and the skin being more medium-dark. The fleshiest parts are still pink with purple dots, and purple tentacles. Basic grey weapon. I changed my mind partway through while painting, but the only thing I'll do differently for future models is to basecoat the darker green first.

Much like the Shasvastii, I think the dip has been quite friendly to the Kulathi. Didn't treat the Greys as well, though the bugbear seemed to like it a lot.

I'll seal them and get them based tomorrow (probably a bit later in the day, but before evening I hope) and then there will be photoz! Still not going to count the cat until I *have* to... but this puts me up 18 models on a month I as already up to 16... so I guess that's 34 for february. I've got more in me too. Gonna aim to get some more Kulathi prepped soon, and I've still got probably a dozen or more minis on nails ready to go.

Way to go on the progress front. Must feel good to be so far ahead of February.

Any chance to get that clear base comparison on different terrain you were talking about? I am keen to see how it measures up.

Yeah glad to be ahead for sure!

I'ts probably gonna be too cold to take photos outside since it has snowed quite a bit and i don't really like the cold...

I'll see what I can do though.

Too much snow is right, I may have to cancel and reschedule my dr appointment for today. Hate this cold snap.

Yeah hopefully it's the last one. We only got 3 inches or so but I still don't want to stand in it to take photos...

Also... broke down and ordered the PanO Neoterra Capitalline defense force, a 6 mini Infinity starter. Whoops, but it was 50% off and Infinity minis for $4 a pop is just ridiculous

Damn, that's an insane deal! I'd buy one in a heartbeat at that price!

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah hopefully it's the last one. We only got 3 inches or so but I still don't want to stand in it to take photos...

Also... broke down and ordered the PanO Neoterra Capitalline defense force, a 6 mini Infinity starter. Whoops, but it was 50% off and Infinity minis for $4 a pop is just ridiculous

Good deals are hard to pass up if you got the cash

Yeah and I kind of have the cash just 'cause of a recent birthday. Guess it's cool to get some models on a distant wishlist as opposed to hanging onto it till it gets integrated with bill-paying funds lol. Acclimating those minis to warmer temperatures inside the house now, I'll spray them after breakfast and then an hour or so later I'll be basing them.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah hopefully it's the last one. We only got 3 inches or so but I still don't want to stand in it to take photos...

Also... broke down and ordered the PanO Neoterra Capitalline defense force, a 6 mini Infinity starter. Whoops, but it was 50% off and Infinity minis for $4 a pop is just ridiculous

that Theophony guy pushing crack in front of you like that

Oh I was up unusually early this morning so I thought to look and it was actually something I wanted for once. Seeing it listed again didn't help but for that price I pretty much had to

Sounds like a steal Grim. I would be tempted if they had that price in the UK even though I dont collect Pan o.

Yeah Infinity minis for $4 a pop is pretty awesome, even if I don't get to use them they'll be fun to paint!

Here's a bit of what I've gotten done lately. I'm running out of bases so there are 13 more Greys that don't have clear acrylics yet so I didn't bother shooting them. Still done for all intents and purposes so that kills February goal and puts me a fair way into March. Hopefully I'll get some more done tomorrow, gonna try to clean a few things tonight yet so I can have options.



Bugbear was kind of fun. Is that even what he is? It could be an ogre or something else but it looks like a big hairy orc which says bugbear to me. I'll search him out on reaper's site sometime as I have several of his kin. Whatever he is, it's roughly the same size as a mantic ogre and I have nearly 20 models of that size from bones 2. More like him, gnolls, a lizard dude... And a few bigger definitely troll things. I could make a pretty neat mixed monstrous horde for Kings of War.

The Greys didn't get a lot of painting love but they don't have a lot of innate detail either. The dip helps a bit with definition but also makes them look dirtier than I really wanted. Meh, they're done!

I really like how the Kulathi Invader turned out though. I inverted the greens from my Shasvastii color scheme and kept the pink/purple dots part intact. I think he looks pretty cool and I intend to do some more. I've got 18 of them I think. They're kind of a pain in the ass to clean though... so I may do one every so often and paint an batch of them sometime in the future.

Definitely a Bugbear in my book (yep love D&D as well as tabletop wargames). The Invader alien looks fantastic, good color choice.

The Greys although lacking a little detail they have come up really well, gives me alien abduction nightmares.

They all look great. The bugbear is especially sweet.

The greys are meh in my opinion. Not great models and minimal detail but will work great as cannon fodder. Plus they still count as one.

I like the invader a lot. Similar scheme to your shavasti right?

The bug bear looks gorgeous mate, fantastic model really well painted, chucking him on a scenic base would improve it even more.


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Like the idea of using him in a monstrous horde mate. As much as I like mantic ogres they really lack variety. Using these in their stead would work great.

Cool stuff! The tentacly alien looks good, would make a nice Shasvestii-something stand--if f you need another couple of models.

Nice work with the minis Grim, Like others have said, sad that they greys are so plain.

Bug bear looks scary

the one alien is also looking good with the scheme you used.

Thanks guys I'm happy with the Bugbear and Kulathi, I'll probably paint future similar minis in the same way. The Greys are all done so they are what they are.

Bit tired today, slept weird or something. I've got a fair bit of time to hobby but we'll see what happens, don't want to burn out so may play some video games too..

Got some dice!

Thanks to my sister, I've now got enough dice to get along with

I've arranged the 105 dice into their 15 colored sets and grouped them by 'similar' colors, which will be nice when playing games like pulp alley where I'll want 2-5 dX of a particular kind at a time, the blue/purple grouping and the orange/yellow batch will be best for this.

Got half a dozen more models base coated i'll work on painting them later today or tomorrow.

Never again will you be short of dice! Just don't leave them on the floor and tread on them, that would hurt!

What a great sister!

I couldn't have dice out like that long enough to take a pic. My cat is an a$$hole dice monster!

Yeah they're like dried peas or caltrops, useful to scatter behind you to trip up pursuers

My daughter wasn't here when I had them out. She'll probably try to eat them =/ They're tucked safely away in their bag now

But who is the manufacturer of those dice? Koplow? the 'nice dice' as they call them.

The d4's do make for nice caltrops, especially the metal ones-- yes, there are metal d4's -- except the Games Science ones, since they have blunted tips.
Collecting dice is a victimless crime my friends tell me. One of them has the dice from his Basic D&D set, circa 1978.

Excellent Bugbear BTW.

I have gotten the 'War Warning' that my Bones order has shipped.

I think I have a problem.

Thanks red. My dice are intended for rolling and not getaways... But good to have options

It'll be OK Brian, got some boxen for storage lined up?

...does one of those cardboard "Banker's Boxes" count? Because that's what's holding Bones 1, right now...

If you haven't got curious kids or cats, that'll probably work just fine

So I'm still working on my evil/undead cowboys and necromancers league...posse? Anyhoo. The 4 are pretty close, and I've done a bit of work on the necronun and zombies. I've also tentatively added a pair of robed cultists to the group, if I want to trade out shooters for melee. I've also got a ritual circle prepped for painting that would work well as a themed plot point for the group.

I think I've also decided on what may be a pretty sweet prize, or perhaps reward is more suitable, for me if I complete my 365/365 challenge.

I really want to do a Japanese Sectorial Army Aragoto biker themed Infinity army. I've made a list and checked it against the new profiles and I think it'll just fit in at 300 points. Probably cost around 130-150 monies buying at miniature market's discount. I'll worry about buying it until I'm *much* closer to finishing my challenge. I've been looking at:
Asuka Kisaragi
Aragoto (hacker)
Aragoto boarding shotgun
Aragoto boarding shotgun
Aragoto spitfire
Yojimbo
Ninja (multi sniper rifle)
Karakuri combi rifle
Karakuri MK 12 rifle
Karakuri Heavy Shotgun
I think it comes out to like 294/300 points and only 3 SWC (totally legal).

So yeah... I think that may be my reward for finishing my goal. Bit more expensive than some possible infinity forces, but less expensive than others..? Anyway.

It's got 6 bikers which I think are awesome models. 4 JSA aragotos from their two blisters/boxes, Yojimbo, and Aleph's Peneth...wahteveria. Anyway her bike looks almost just like an aragoto bike. I'm planning a head and possibly arm swap. And if the Aragotos don't come with a spitfire, then I'll use one of my hasslefree guns on that same conversion to get one!

I'm also looking at that same massive-pony-tail sniper ninja I painted last year for a headswap with one of the bikers. At least one of the Aragoto heads would look pretty cool on the ninja too. Or maybe ninja--penny, not sure.

If you aren't familiar with the Karakuri, they're a small team of 3 robots in one box. They're inspired by some kind of Japanese fancy doll I think? Ahh more like a puppet/automata , smaller sizes as well as larger theater-purposed devices. So yeah anyway, they're basically heavily armed and armored fembots with a bunch of concealed weaponry (think robocop gun storage?) and a self destruct device What's not to love? I like that they bring some heavier armor and the benefits of a small link team to my gang. I figure they can't really keep up with the bikes but they can soak some fire or hold an objective or whatever.

I think the Ninja and Hacker could handle objectives in objective-having missions, Yojimbo can drive around chopping dudes up (I think the bike movement value gives him pretty interesting charge potential), the Karakuris can stomp around guns blazing, and the rest of the bikers and zoom around catching people in rear shots and what have you. Yojimbo also comes with 2 crazy koalas which are basically ambulatory mines, which means the list not only has six bikers but FIVE suicide robots! Booyah!

So.. yeah got a lot of painting to do... cause I really want those minis

More figure projects eh Grim?

I like the sound of the sectorial army. A bad ass bikey gang would look awesome.

Plus, unless I find something better in the meantime, they're going to be Akira Capsule gang themed



With some degree of artistic license, basically I want them to be red/orange with the distinctive pill on their jackets.

Technically I think it's just Kaneda that looks like that... but still it's the coolest look.




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Just finished the cowboy/outlaw component of my current batch of models... Puts me at 70 for the year and I believe we're about 50 days in. Feels pretty good to be about 20 models ahead. Pretty easy to lose that ground though.

I've got 10 days left this month to do some more, I'd like to bank at least 30 going into next month, work will probably start to pick up as March goes on and once I'm back to full time hours of landscaping I'll be dead after work for at least a couple of weeks. Expecting a loss of productivity in the first month or two, which I can hopefully make up as time moves on.

I'd really like to get my goal done early so I can buy my victory models while I'm still working full time

An Akira-themed gang would be really cool to see. I also really liked what I saw of that Bugbear. Any chance of some more detailed/close up pics?

Look for pictures from Adepticon, it's coming up soonish and they have a Capsules Vs Clowns biker gang war event To get your fix sooner. I would still like to do it eventually though. It may be done too much by the time I get there, however, so we'll have to see!

Bugbear angles?

Remember you should be able to zoom in pretty far. My phone camera is kind of funny, it doesn't like to focus on things that are much within a foot of it, but it takes easier and faster pictures than my camera so often it's a viable tradeoff.

And more progress!


4 bones cowboys/girls, One is obviously undead, the other is gaunt... possibly undead, and the other two are definitely with the living.

I think I'm gonna use these four as a pulp alley league. I'm not sure who to use as the leader, what do you guys think? The nun may join them later but I think just the 4 cowfolk would be cool on their own too.

For pulp alley I could take them as a leader, sidekick, and 2 allies, or as a leader, sidekick, sidekick, and follower... but who would be who? If I take more followers I can get them a league wide perk to make them all better at something, whereas the second sidekick is significantly stronger than an ally. Something like leader+sidekick+follower+follower+eagle-eyed troopers, would give them all significantly longer range which seems pretty fitting for a shooty gang of cowboys

And here's all of the bones to date:

The Bugbear looks right at home on the spaceship! Some unsuspecting alien is about to get a fright!

The Cowboys/gals/zombies look cool to me, really nice leather look on the coats!

I like that bugbear's colors.

Time to steal yet another paint scheme from Grim...

Lol Para, I need to get another backdrop

I like the coats too, turns out it wasn't a waste getting that vallejo model air set, they have a lot of nice browns in it.


I was afraid the bugbear may have too human-like of skin, but I kind of like it. Sort of humanizes him and makes him both creepier and less easy to dismiss as some mindless inhuman thing to be slain. I may try to work in some different colors on the next one though, the leather loincloth is fine but the pouches don't stand out well.

So Kum biker unit will be fashioned like the "Bennies" then cool

You have lost me with your reference goodsir!

Also when was I getting Kum bikers? Are you guys buying me models now or something?

 GrimDork wrote:
You have lost me with your reference goodsir!

Also when was I getting Kum bikers? Are you guys buying me models now or something?

You were speaking of the Akira biker gang as the basis for the paint work for bikers you were gonna work on?
The gang that Kaneida and Tetsuo ran with in the movie were calling themselves "The Bennies" because that was their favorite drug of choice.

AHh it's been *years* since I last watched Akira. Been meaning to watch it again. Thanks for setting me straight.

I'll go find the scissors for my Nerd Card, hopefully the reapplication process isn't too long...

 GrimDork wrote:
AHh it's been *years* since I last watched Akira. Been meaning to watch it again. Thanks for setting me straight.

I'll go find the scissors for my Nerd Card, hopefully the reapplication process isn't too long...

It is quick and painless to reapply for the nerd card

Good, I swear my memory is going and I'd hate to be without one for too long at a time!

On the bright side I've planned out my next 10 models, 3 basecoated and 7 more trimmed, washed, repositioned and ready for a spray. I took the models I was going to include with the cowboys and made them into their own pulp ally league.

A shadowy figure, never seen in action, but always behind the scenes manipulating events like a grand puppeteer, the Necromancer enacts his vile plans. Representing him on the field is his apprentice, the Journeyman Necromancer Serine. Serine is accompanied by three of the Necromancer's acolytes, one of which masquerades as a Nun. She also commands a horrifying skeletal monstrosity a Golem of bones, as well as various animated skeletons and zombies. You never know what the Necromancer may be up to with his dark designs, but you can be sure it's for the detriment of all mankind!

Anyway, 10 more reaper minis on deck. The pistol-armed Nun got downgraded from leader to ally, and I'm gonna pop the ghoul hand back off and put her pistol back. Bit of a faceplam but I like the way things are headed now. This League uses the mastermind perk which trades your leader for a sidekick (the leader for all intents and purposes, just not as powerful) and gives you 6 more points to spend on minions. Rather than max out bodies I'm also planning to use the intrepid explorers league perk for these guys which allows you to dodge in any direction rather than directly away from harm. This makes shooting anything that likes to fight a risky proposition as you'll be moving them towards you It also allows characters heading towards objectives to stay the course rather than get driven off.

I'm not sure how the league may fair without the heavy duty support of a proper leader, I'm mostly hoping the Acolytes and Serine can nab some plot points while the expendable undead minions are tying up the enemy.

Interesting, very interesting
the groups sound all good

I kind of love Pulp Alley. Even if I never end up playing a league, being able to plan one out, and get it all painted in a relatively short time is great. It's alot better than running into analysis paralysis on a larger army and spinning my tires for days getting nothing done. Though, on the even brighter side, I do actually get to play Pulp Alley occasionally too

Being so open to random stuff means I can bind unlikely groups of models together and gain a motivation to paint them, it's really been helping keep me moving forward!

 GrimDork wrote:
I kind of love Pulp Alley. Even if I never end up playing a league, being able to plan one out, and get it all painted in a relatively short time is great. It's alot better than running into analysis paralysis on a larger army and spinning my tires for days getting nothing done. Though, on the even brighter side, I do actually get to play Pulp Alley occasionally too

Being so open to random stuff means I can bind unlikely groups of models together and gain a motivation to paint them, it's really been helping keep me moving forward!

That is how I have forged the Khadrovian forces together

Love the sounds of your Necromancer league group. Sounds like a really solid back story which is more than a lot of Hollywood villains get these days. Maybe you should make a model for the necromancer just in case he gets cornered and needs to make an appearance on the tabletop?

Maybe. But I'm thinking The Necromancer is more of a Sauron hasn't come back into a corporeal form...yet, kind of villain.

Speaking of terrifying things:



Indescribably horrible, or a horrible idea?

Not quite sure what you've done there, but it looks like it could make a pretty unique and gribbly nasty for various intrepid treasure hunters, dungeon delvers or even US Marines to run away from! Out of interest, assuming those are from 2 separate models, what did they look like originally? I'm guessing a dragon and a cthulu-esque monster, but I may be wrong.

The bluetacked head. That's it.



Basically just a dragon with a tentacle face. Cause a dragon wasn't horrible enough!


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I'll be cutting the neck nubs down so it sits better, it was just a thought but the bones 2 facebook group has assured me that i'll go insane if I don't complete it now...

Of course I'll proboably go more insane by successfully completing it... but y'know.

Yeah, that is pretty awesome!

Just got all of the bits cleaned, now I need to alter the head and neck to fit... and I guess start gluing things together and filling gaps.

What colors though... Maybe greens kind of like the shasvasti and kulathi?

I think green suits something like that, maybe blending to blue or yellow to add a kind of alien/unnatural feel to it?

Tentacles will be some kind of pink or purple, yes.

Hey... what about that pink with purple spotting patterns I did for the Shasvastii/Kulathi? Or well on the shasvasti it was pink with light green mottling.. but still. On the wing membranes?


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Some combination of greens like those. One for the hard scales another for the 'softer' /underbelly scales. Probably some kind of pink/purple blend for the tentacles, purple on top pink on bottom where the suckers are maybe? And then the pink and or pink/green mottled for the wing membranes, with purple spot patters in some places, probably around the wing 'fingers' the membranes are stretched over?

Sounds good. And I reckon using similar schemes for all of them would be a good idea, in case you ever find a game that requires a large armount of tentacled, slimy alien monsters!

Right?

Cthulhu-Dragon looks great - and I also agree that the pink-purple blotching would look great on the wings.

Sweet, I'll have to try it then

Got a bit of office cleaning done with the help of my lovely wife, I think she was technically here to clear our daughter's toys, but she hung around and helped me get some other stuff sorted. I've still got another desk, a bookshelf, and a stack of shelves against the wall to go through...

I think I'm gonna do that stuff tomorrow. Today, I'm gonna clear out the bare minimum space on my hobby desk and finish those necromancer cult minis I've been working on... Hopefully.


I took some pictures today to post to a couple of facebook groups, but no reason not to share them here too. I think none of it's new, but some of them may be better than previous shots:

New Plague minis





And the whole lot:

6 edits...woah there Grim. I have not seen your white plage miniatures before, I really like that scheme.

Plague teraton is still the best plague model in my eyes.

I like the plague dragon/turtle myself.

Lol ToT, i was linking from facebook and I must have been autopiloting or something, wasn't using the 'copy image location' option at first.. apparently. Then I had to go back and check it a couple of times

I think I did maybe one photo of them a couple of weeks back, it's been cold and I don't really like taking too many shots at my desk because they tend to be crap. The white coats are meant to be the lab coats and lab uniforms of Dr Simmonds and her research team, all of which were horribly savaged by marauding stage 2s.

Off to dip 10 more models, so technically at 80 for the year, woot.

They look great, I really like your Plague scheme! Nice progress numbers-wise as well, this and the next 10 must put you well ahead now?

Here are the next 10 drying. Mostly really simple stuff.

Being at 80 puts me 26 ahead of the number of days we've seen so far in 2015, yay.

Cool stuff, I see culty guys, skellies and a rather heavily armed (given her profession) nun.

Yep. The lady with the scythe is the boss, but she's still more of an underling, the true mastermind is working more of an incorporeal/sauron angle. The cultists and nun are her associates and fellow underlings, the cultists/acolytes/junior necromancers prepare the rights and rituals for their superiors as they learn the trade.

During an operation, they use their arcane knowledge and capable minds to run objectives, much like the apprentice necro and 'evil nun'.

The Nun, or Sister Sinister, as I like to call her... is the group's ranged support, probably the only model on the team that can shoot. She works behind the scenes to undermine the local churches to keep them from thwarting the Necromancer's plans.

The Apprentice Necromancer, Serine as she was named, runs the show, runs the operations angle of the outfit. She uses her potent charisma to finesse her way into extra allies, and can occasionally coerce enemy operatives to turncoat to her side. She doesn't have a ranged weapon but is fairly skilled with her scythe in melee. Use of the 'focused' perk (called animal in the book) allows her to have better-than-usual finesse and dodge abilities, and she also has the perk that adds more finesse, all to power the network of supporters perk.

The whole League has the perk Intrepid Explorers, or something like that, we'll call it Inexorable Advance for team Necromancer. Whenever they dodge, they can choose the direction they go (instead of jumping straight back), allowing the units to leap forward when attacked, which is great since it's a pretty melee centric team

Oooh whoops. I think I've been forgetting to include network of supporters into my budget! Oh well, that means I can't run all of my minions, too bad but they'll make good extras.

The necromancy team looks great. Where did the model with the scythe come from?

Reaper. She uhh... I'm not sure, can't track her down on the figure finder. Lemme look again...

Sheesh. Either she's new with bones2, or I just can't find her. If she's new, should be hitting the market soon enough I guess?



I've subdivided my various heroes and adventurers into parties. With between 4 and 6 members, averaging 5, I've managed to put together NINE parties of adventurers. That's just silly! A couple of them have pretty strong themes, the rest are slightly themed or just entirely haphazard. There are also little themed/parties/sets of baddies too, I'll probably do my painting around these sets for efficiency.

I've come up with:

Travelers, 6 adventurers that are actually all loaded down with gear and look more like they're inbetween adventures than in the middle of an epic encounter.

Brute Force, 4 adventurers who seem to rely on the direct approach, a barbarian, portly priest with a two handed studded staff/club, half-orc rogue with big daggers, and a wizard who's obviously conjuring some nasty fire magic, like I said.. direct approach.

The next one is kind of hard to define, got a dwarf and elf, few humans.. kind of a standard adventurer mix of 5...

Barbarians, 5 humans who are definitely barbarians, not as much of a division of classes, they're pretty much all fighters of some kind... almost more of an encounter really.

The holy rollers/holier than thou, 5 clean-cut adventurers including a paladin and priest, even the rogue has his dagger out of sight and looks like he's bargaining or goading enemies into the first offense. Kind of the other side of the coin the brute force team is on.

Another difficult to define party, mostly left overs, 4 models total, with two elves, a robed fighter (could even be an elf) and a monk with a funky unrealistically shaped sword... blame pathfinder =/ Interestingly enough they actually kind of work when placed together.

Fantasy/Magical Girl Power, 5 magical and/or dynamic heroines. Troll slayer sophie, the armored succubus, a faerie of some kind brings the arcane, though another woman with a pair of swords and a 'lady of the lake'/Arthurian lady/princess/queen look to her may be a caster too, a female elf who I'd swear was meant to be Drizzt if it wasn't for the boobs, and a funky little cracked out pathfinder...thing.. either some kind of sprite or a weird looking halfing... that I ...assume... is meant to be a druid. Neat party overall, a lot of individuals who didn't really fit in with other parties but work well together.

Another kind of generic 5-man party, the most obvious connection is that the models are all either short of slight, there's a dwarf, halfling, gnome, plus a human and elf and those last two are pretty slim. Hard to tell if the gnome or human is the wizard/cleric, but I figure that means the party has one of each even if it's not obvious who's what.

There's also the Dragon's Don't Share greedy adventurers rounding out the set.


I think I'm gonna paint the Travelers/Adventurers first, not sure if i'll do more parties or switch to something else after that.

I really like that Cthluhu headed dragon!

I can't wait to see what you do with it.

The cowboys also look fantastic. You did a great job with the jackets.

Thanks

Looking forward to painting the illithidragon/skinny cthulu. Stuff has come up for tomorrow which may cut into my hobbying time but we'll see, may get started.

Some really nice Plague you've got goin there Grim- nice work!

Bah! You'll have 365 done before March finishes at this rate. The DZ stuff is looking great, though, and Lab coats were my thought before I scrolled down and saw that was your intention - so job's a good'un there!

Woot, Idunno about March, but I'm trying to build some momentum and get well ahead before I get back to backbreaking labor full-time...

I've wanted to do simmonds and the lab team for awhile, and I'm glad they turned out well.

Yep, your Simmonds is great, really evocative of the fluff in the Contagion (is it?) rule book. That book is great for info on most of the Mercs.

I like your scatter gun approach too, especially as it is helping you get things done.

Scatter gun approach? Just knocking out groups or random targets? Yeah it's working pretty well for now, we'll see if I can keep it up!

I just noticed that you are now at 90 pages. Anything special planned for page 100? The Dragon all painted up perhaps?

Shoot, we don't back and forth that much, the dragon could be done within the week

Got in a game of Pulp Alley tonight.

Buck and company managed to score a solid victory against the Gorilla Gangsters. We were in a backwater North American town, something to the tune of Podunkville USA. Both leagues were trying to secure the support of a retired millionaire who likes to visit home and help out his old neighbors (or possibly just rub in his success). I'm guessing we were lobbying for his support or possibly trying to capture him for ransom in the case of the Gangsters. I started out with the initiative and kept it for most of the game which really put a damper on any plans my opponent may have had. I was able to use my characters to their strengths with Agent Falco continually sniping down targets and Natalya picking on a character with little to no brawling skill.

Natalya ended up continuing her grudge match with Da Boss, they traded blows for 2-3 rounds and she went down a couple of times but she stuck it out and kept him engaged, allowing the other characters to do their thing. I gave Rico gadget X which allowed him to solve a plot point he probably otherwise couldn't have, and Speedy managed to secure a minor plot point and follow up with the main plot point . Both Characters went into hiding to lock in my objectives.

Coco the gorilla spent time fighting Eyegore and then Bananas once that stopped beinga challenge. Although she eventually went down and out, she kept bananas tied up for most of the game in a similar fashion to Natalya.

Buck mostly picked on weaker characters, as is his strong suit, and did it pretty well.

Next time we're going to combine battle systems terrain and Mallifaux/terraclips sewers for a daring escape from a mad scientist's lair.. or something.


means I'm gonna have to finish my battlezones scenery up and get it to match with my opponent's sewer terrain. Gonna put up pictures later, maybe tomorrow.

Here's the Dark Tide, the Operations branch of the Necromancer's shadowy underground organization.

Beware the reach of the Necromancer!

Indeed!

Gonna update this post with photos from the last pulp alley scrap, about 30 total and i'll be doing captions, gonna do several and submit a few times.

I let my opponent choose my league and he went with the standby of Buck and Company. He continued to use his Gorilla Gangsters. My opponent wanted to play the Lost Keys scenario (must have a minor plot point in order to solve the primary plot point) in Podunk Ville USA, and provided most of the scenery with the exception of the on redbrick convenience store.

We rolled on our pre-scenario event chart and he got to deploy a vehicle after regular league deployment (it's the truck that Eyegore and Bananas are hiding behind), and I got to shift my die type up for the initiative roll by being familiar with the area. We each placed 7 secondary plot points (3 of which were red herrings and provided no benefit) and due to the Lost Keys deployment rules, we then placed one model each until we were through with our leagues.

I won the initial Initiative roll, and managed to keep it for much of the game. I attribute a large portion of my success to this fact. The game lasted 5 turns as I didn't need to use my plot point reward card to extend it.


Initial game Setup. We pretty much set up on our own sides with a unit or two each deployed somewhat to flank. Natalya for me, Eyegore and Bananas for my opponent. I placed the rest of my team relatively close to objectives (the deployment specifications make it impossible to make a move on an objective on the first turn).


The Primary plot point was a wheelchair bound millionaire and his aide, a nurse. We had to convince a local he was acquainted with (the minor plot points) to help us make contact before he would trust us. I'm guessing Buck planned to lobby for financial support, whereas Da Boss was just going to kidnap the poor guy and ransom him.


Bananas is a very slippery character, he's a good shot and has a phenomenal dodge roll, eyegore is a lower level objective solver without much ability to fight or shoot, though he can dodge a little.


Though I knew it could eventually cause her to run afoul of Da Boss, I like my initial placement of Natalya. She was able to be very mean to the Scientist's Daughter (can't remember the name) harassing her to the other side of the table, and eventually tying up Da Boss for most of the game.


Now, Rico is pretty much just a shooter. He can dodge a bit too if he's too worn out to shoot effectively but this game I had a plan. I used my single solitary point of gear I got in one of the last missions (first 1, second mission was basically scrubbed for my team) to buy a Gadget X which allowed Rico to solve a single plot point without rolling. I'm not sure if using it on the minor point and not having it for the primary point was the right way to go. Though given the limited nature of the turns I'm thinking I could have done worse. If he spent 3 turns trying to convince someone to help him with the primary plot point, its entirely possible he wouldn't have had time to get to it.


I figured Coco and Speedy would make a good team. Coco is punchy and dodgy enough to handle even some sidekicks, at least for a little while, and speedy is way better at solving plot points than Coco. That's speedy's new trick, solve a plot point, duck out of LoS, go into hiding.


I need to sort out the windows on my Mars Attacks building, but I don't consider it 100% done yet so I think it worked. I also like my opponent's classic cars, they really fit the Pulp Alley timeline/theme, and look fine without extra painting.


Falco *can* solve plot points, but any round he isn't violently assaulting the enemy with his bow is a round poorly spent! With 4 dice from one perk, and the ability to range-gap his opponents with another, leave him often throwing 5 dice at an opponent who has 3 at best to fight back with! If the opponent survives or another contender advances to the 6" normal short range, he may have to fall back on dodging, but falco can put the hurt downfield something fierce. He managed to put down Mr Yellow, wound Da Boss, and probably knock old Eygore over once or twice. I think he may have even dropped Bananas towards the end.


The Mad Scientist's Daughter (I think it's Anne?) operates much like Speedy. Da Boss, however, is pretty well good at everything. I'm still not sure what all 3 of his perks are but I know he has to have commander and hardened veteran. Maybe one of the perks is for finesse or cunning? This guy gives me fits, all I can do is tie him up, even Buck would be swinging or shooting at him with equal dice and Buck'd wear out when Da Boss wouldn't.


Mr Yellow and Mr Purple are much like rico, good shooters, but as allies they couldn't afford to buy much else in the way of skills.


More atmospheric shots, I took a lot of photos up front and then just a couple a round after that.


Now we get into the action. For my first turn, I had the initiative and I kept it the whole turn. Here you can see Falco advancing Into range of Mr Yellow. Buck will advance to a similar position later in the turn. Speedy and Rico have advanced towards some plot characters but they had to move too far to reach them and still have any actions left. Natalya Moved up to the fenceline and took some shots at Anne, though I'm not positive they were effective.


Coco Rushes into action in this photo, and you can see that Buck and Falco managed to put Mr Yellow and Mr Purple both down, and out as their end of round health checks were failed. Eyegore moved to be close to a plot point, and Da Boss and Bananas also took some actions, but the memory and pictures don't make exactly what they did terribly clear.


The aftermath of Buck and Falco's onslaught, I'm kind of surprised, as allies have a pretty high rate of recovering in our games so far. I guess it really is just 50/50 though.


Natalya harrasing Anne. I felt it best to keep his plot point solvers tied down as much as possible.




This is a bit further along as you can tell. Buck had to make the choice between nabbing a plot point unopposed, or running interference against Eyegore and Bananas. He chose the later, backed by Coco and Falco, and I like to think it paid off. Rico used the commotion across the way to make a dash and get close enough to attempt to coerce the Millionaire on the next turn, while Speedy continued to struggle with his plot point. Eyegore and Anne were also busily solving plot points during this round, while Da Boss bum rushed Natalya to continue their brutal grudge match from the last mission.


Coco cornered Bananas around turn 3, and they duked it out for the rest of the game. Bananas has a superior dodge score, but had very little room to go backwards, and we're pretty sure leaving the table means you've fled and can't come back. Both parties were injured at least a couple of times, Bananas recovering and Coco managing to get back up, until turn 4 when she couldn't pass her health check and had to stay down. I had a card to pass a health check, but at that point both Buck and Falco were already in place to deal with Bananas, and it was more important to use the card to get Natalya back into fighting shape. You can also see Buck harassing Eyegore to keep him from solving the plot point.


Natalya has a problem passing recovery checks. It's happened in all 3 games now. She's a complete badass at full power, but often bites off more than she can chew and gets injured. This drops all of her stronger d8 abilities down to d6's, and leaves her open to getting knocked down from subsequent injury. She has had very bad luck getting back up to full health on her own. She'll pass the recovery check to stand up from being down, but almost never passes a check to go to full health. I think she went down twice while fighting Da Boss this game, but managed to stick around. Da Boss actually took an injury twice, once from Falco's cross-table shooting, and once from Natalya at full power. Passing health checks on a d8 isn't too hard though, and he managed to heal up at the end of both of those rounds.


Close up of Rico trying to Solve the Primary plot point. My opponent threw a 2 success challenge at me and Rico only had one die for either of the viable abilities. He got one success right off, failed the next turn, and finally succeeded the turn after that. Rico's first solve got me the... tip?... reward card which also allows the player holding it to draw two fortune cards per turn, and those really helped me stay ahead combined with keeping the initiative alot.


I think this must have been close to the start of turn 4.


Agent Falco takes pot shots at Eygore while Buck tries to solve the plot point before Eyegore can. Coco and Bananas battle on.




Coco did a great Job of punching above her weightclass in this scenario, I highly recommend a dodgy fighty animal type character in any league.


Having finally Convinced the woman in the yellow suit to help him out, Speedy joins Rico at the Millionaire. Rico ultimately convinces the Millionaire to flee with him to have talks with Buck after the scenario, and both Rico and Speedy will hide and creep away on the last turn.


I swear Buck isn't threatening that poor man at gunpoint, honest! Anne solved her plot point towards the end of the game as well but it was a red herring! The point buck is currently at proved to be a red herring too.


Da Boss gloating over Natalya. This is the second time he's knocked her block off. Of course, he spent the whole game doing it and didn't get to shoot down any of my weaker allies (much like Buck was able to do). Natalya managed to stay in the fight for the whole game, but once she was injured she had no way of keeping Da Boss from winning their brawls.


I had three plot points, including the major one. We played out the last round, though I didn't get a photo then, but this was pretty much where we were at.


Falco managed to pick off Eyegore, allowing buck to make a second attempt at the objective, to no avail. Bananas managed to put Coco down and out in this round, and in the next round buck shot Bananas down. Falco ran around the fence and helped Buck pin the gangster down, and Buck solved the red herring plot point on round 5.



So, this was a very solid win for Buck and Company. I got my point of gear back, I got a point of tips, and I got the coveted XP card. I have two points now. I'm not sure if I'll try to get 3 and make Falco/Natalya even more deadly, or just save them up to make Buck more of a Dynamo. This was a lot like a game of make-it-take-it basketball. I had the Initiative for probably 70% of the game and for the entirety of the first turn, and most of the second. When Mr yellow and Mr Purple both went out from being down on the first turn, it was a bit of a downhill slope for my opponent then. I managed to get my guys do do exactly what they were good at, while Da Boss got stuck fighting a sidekick instead of challenging Buck or clearing out my allies. Having the Initiative means you can go first and get prime shots, and if your opponents survive to shoot back they're often winded from the multiple combats rule. It helps that I was careful to pick fights I knew I had good chances of winning (losing a fight shifts the Initiative to your opponent). It was a fun game although I'm sure my opponent would have liked a bad roll to stall my momentum and give him a better chance to react to my movements. I had pretty hot dice for that whole first turn, though they cooled quit a bit moving through rounds 2 and 3, especially involving plot points. My league's reputation as earned them a new perk/ability, now when my team rolls on the pre-scenario event chart, if I don't like the result, I can reroll it. The Gorilla Gansters are probably a solid victory away from getting that point of rep for themselves.

Or next game will involve a collaboration of Terraclips Malifaux Sewer card terrain, and battle systems scifi scenery, in hopes of creating a daring escape from a mad scientist's lair into the adjoining sewer system.

Just checked out the Necro gang - very cool looking. I'll come back and read the BR a little later and comment then.

Thanks

It's a lot to read, and isn't that interesting, but you're welcome to

Don't be daft Grim, I do not know anyone in the hobby that is not excited by a good old fashioned battle report. Thanks for going to the effort and all of the pictures, hope it did not slow the game too much.

Nah. The initiative didn't go back and forth this game as much as it can sometimes so it was a bit more IGOUGO than usual.

Battle report reads really well. You certainly know how to keep it concise but still interesting. Keeping the initiative certainly seems like something worth attempting to do.

Photos really added to the story as well. One day I will manage to do a full blown battle report. Maybe I can convince a photography friend to take happy snaps during a game so as to not slow it down?

Offer beer, make it a small party

Batreps always welcomed. Seriously, best way to see if a game is something I would like to play is to read a few batreps. With photos of course.

I'll try to make better sense of the turns next time, maybe take a blank or a photo of a sheet of paper after the turn before the next so I remember. Maybe try to take one shot at the beginning and end of each turn, only 5-6 turns or so.

Pulp Alley really lends itself towards a Narrative battle report what with the nature of the plot points and all.

That Pulp Alley just seems like so much fun!

Great reporting there, sir.

Nice battle report, Grim. Never head of pulp alley till you started mentioning it here. Looks like a neat game.

So Natalya will be seeking a chance to knock down Da Boss

I don't think Natalya is favored to knock him down... ever. She just doesn't have the same stats. Now.. if somebody like Falco managed to wing him first and he was stuck on d8's... she'd have a chance. His hardened veteran means that he hits just as hard in both rounds of combat per turn, whereas she would wear out a bit though.

OK, I've just gone back and read through - looks like a fun battle. Just a shame I'll never get to game with you guys. We could make up a pretty good group if only teleportation technology was available for safe casual use.

 GrimDork wrote:
I don't think Natalya is favored to knock him down... ever. She just doesn't have the same stats. Now.. if somebody like Falco managed to wing him first and he was stuck on d8's... she'd have a chance. His hardened veteran means that he hits just as hard in both rounds of combat per turn, whereas she would wear out a bit though.

Poor Nat6alya, the desire to knock down Da Boss, but not the power.

It is definitely a pity that teleporting is not available. It would make it so much easier to meet up with gamers that shared a similar attitude to the hobby as you rather than having to take your chances with games clubs and the like.

Yeah. But magical teleport. I'm still firmly convinced that the star trek transporters kill you and reassemble an exact duplicate (from everyone else's perspective) at the destination.. *shudder*.

Wheh... wheeze.. ok I guess I haven't been away for as long as I thought... sigh...wheeze... trying not to die here.

Papa Nurgle is after me I swear =/

Dunno what I did to deserve such favor. Started nigh unto a week ago or better... sore throat into what felt like it was trying to be strep throat, kind of eventually got over that, my voice is* almost* normal today, there were 2-3 days I couldn't even talk beyond a whisper. At some point I had a sinus thing going on, my ear hurt, and glorious mucous has been in and out of my presence...

And then after a relatively fitful night of sleep (the evening preceding which my wife was vomiting all over), today I find myself with what feels a lot like a stomach bug/flu. Not the real kick-your-ass flu... but the stomach kind that causes the rivers to run... well brown.. and often vomiting. No vomiting yet, I'm trying hard. I've been wheezing after just moving around a little bit...

Do not pity me, I think I'm almost done with this crap, I only poo...wait... popped in to comment on my own lack of updates

Got 11/13 of my Pan-O minis ready to paint, but I think I need to wait for my micro drill bits to come in so I can pin and mount the chest-crossing gun-having arms of these guys. Gonna try to make them fancier and it seems a lot easier to not paint around the rifle. And that's about it for the past week. I've put some mars attacks scenery together, I think I know what I want to paint for my first/complete board for that game, just gotta get to it now...

Watched Knights of Badassdom, it's pretty amusing and is further proof that Metal can slay Evil.

Hopefully something will be painted soon.

I"m about to take one of my space marines, greenstuff him to death, and honor papa nurgle so he'll maybe leave me alone...


Anyway this wasn't meant to be whiney, I don't need well-wishes, I just wanted to comment on my lack of progress.

Still around 82 models done for the year, I just need 7 more to be caught up for March (which it now is) and a total of 38 to have March finished ready for April. *Really* trying to stay a month ahead right now.

I've got some X-wing ships coming in I'll unbox and share, hell maybe I'll even do a video? And 4 more Infinity models... I was weak ok? Miniature market needs to stop selling them for $4 each or I'll run myself into credit card debt

Ah, the blessings of papa nurgle.....or maybe the horned rat with his clan pestilens have decided you need to paint more skaven .

Miniaturemarket.com has been killing me also, multiple infinity buys, the x-wing scum and villainy as well.

I haven't even had any sort of game and n over a month, or read passage 25 of the infinity book yet, so I am really jealous of your accomplishments with painting.

Theo is alive!

Ah the joys of mini painting

Feel better soon grim. I want to see your take on the fusliers.

Yeah I dunno... *somebody* got to me, this much is certain =/

As excited as I am to see great deals on stuff I want/like... they can stick to the malifaux/warmahordes/random boardgames for awhile as far as I'm concerned =/

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Theo is alive!

Don't start any rumors I'm alive, no motivation or time to get through all the threads. Plus finished my capstone class last Monday, two more till my B.S. Degree is done.

Excellent, may you put yours to better use than I have put my own degree =/


I want to paint... but I just don't feel like it. At all.

I think my PanO scheme is gonna suck to paint.... I think it'll look good if I pull it off, but it's mostly gonna be successive careful edge highlighting. For just a few models... I can probably manage... probably. To make it as hard as possible on myself, I'm gonna undercoat them white too, and then do the couple layers of black necessary to get it smooth and dark... rather than airbrush them black and paint everything else 4-7 times to get it sufficiently not-dark. Basically the entire time I'm painting the models I'm going to have to be careful, no herp derp quick basecoats or 'easy steps as far as I can tell. And once the base colors are in it'll be tricky edge highlighting...

But If it looks good, probably worth it.