Painting Mister Hyde

About a year ago, I came across a set of skirmish rules written for super-hero battles (Clobberin' Time). As the rules were written with HeroClix minis in mind, I decided at the time to purchase a bunch of HeroClix from ebay. I've only played these rules twice: the second time played solo and the first time very watered down for my daughter, 4 at the time, meaning it was pretty well a solo game too.

This year, I am interested in trying the Pulp Alley rule set. So I downloaded the starter rules and cards to try it out. Having printed out a bunch of pulp-style paper figures (there's a joke in there somewhere), I have most of what I would need to play sans sculpted minis. Assembling those paper stand-ups reminded me of a BGG user's collection of modified Clix. He modified sculpts make superheroes not in the HeroClix line-up or characters from other genres: pulp, sci-fi, and others.

"Start simple" is the advice I see over and over from the advanced Heroclix modders out there. However, most of the sculpts I had received in that initial ebay purchase are not easily converted to other things. So I bought some Heroclix I saw at the dollar store, taking packs with figures I felt would not require much modification to fit in with a pulpy theme.

Then I tried paint washes and dry brushing of a few of the sculpts I won't be changing. After the success of washes and dry-brushing, I took a Mister Hyde figure (I ended up with two) and started painting. Like all my painting so far, I'm using the el cheapo-brand craft acrylics.

I figure it'll be a relatively easy mod to go with a western theme for Hyde; make him a burly tough. The colours can be seen in the image below. I mixed some red into my brown for the coat and I think it turned out well, except that it is now the same colour as his hair, so I plan on adding yellow to it. I could even chop off the top of his head and glue a hat there. I'd like to put something in one of his hands, but I haven't decided yet. I thought about a couple of six-guns, but don't like that idea due to the lack of holsters on the sculpt and the hand positions (which I could change once I've done enough "simple" stuff). Might work to add a rifle held in one hand or a lasso held in both hands. Whips? Knives? That would work. We'll see how ambitious I get when I get time to work on this some more.

 Original Mister Hyde following black wash on the right. My painting (so far) on the left.

Looking at this image kinda makes me want to repaint that one lazy eye. It's all eye can see now.

Marrying Mr. Darcy

I am and will be exposed to Pride and Prejudice often in my lifetime, and that's okay. To date I have watched (always with Jenni) the BBC P&P five-and-a-half-hour miniseries, the Knightly P&P movie, and the P&P: Pink Bible Edition movie as well as film adaptations of P&P spin-offs like Lost in Austen (a favourite), Death Comes to Pemberly, and Austenland. I have not personally read the book, nor any of the fan spin-offs in book form, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (is there a film adaptation of that one?), nor do I plan to. But I'm alright to watch the movies.

So what better homage to Valentine's Day than a game of Marrying Mr. Darcy.

Jenni and I introduced some of her family to the card game this past weekend . Having already played 1.5 games with members of my family, this brings my total play-count to 2.5 games.

My wife and I enjoy strategy-rich games. Marrying Mr. Darcy is not a strategy-rich game. It is a story driven by a mix of random events and occasional player choices. While I knew the theme would be a hit with my wife, I read numerous reviews to see how well others enjoyed it before deciding to get this game as a gift for Jenni. And now I add a small one of my own.

In Marrying Mr. Darcy players take the roles of the female characters from the Pride and Prejudice story. Players build up their characters RPG-style by playing cards to improve their stats in six categories: friendliness, wit, beauty, reputation, cunning, and wealth (or dowry). Values of the first four stats translate into victory points at the end of the game (most points wins).

The main interest in the game, of course, is to get your character married off. But not just any guy will do. There are six available suitors and each player's character card lists them from most to least desirable for that character; additional victory points are awarded for the suitor your character manages to wed (Example: Elizabeth gets mega points for marrying Darcy but almost nothing if wed to Collins). The suitors too are a picky bunch, each one requiring a different combination of traits to be interested in your character; this is the reason you are trying to build up your stats. Even if your stats satisfy a suitor's requirements, you only have a chance for a proposal, decided by a dice roll that can be modified by certain conditions. Thus one, or indeed all of the ladies could end up old maids, again with varying degrees of happiness (victory points) decided by dice roll.

This game is heavily luck-based, but any disappointment that might have caused me is negated by the fact that (a) I know the story enough to get into the theme of the game and enjoy the alternate story being played out, (b) there is some player choice involved, and (c) I enjoy seeing the reactions of my wife (and others) to the alternate story being played out. Most enjoyable are exclamations about how the play that just happened actually happens in the story or, even better, how the event that just happened could have never happened for such-and-such a character because (insert reasons). Of course, there's always "the busty Scandal" card, which is especially funny if a guy draws it.

There is an expansion featuring the undead. It sounds fun and many of the reviewers I read recommended using it. Maybe I will, but we're fine for now.

So, there you have it. Probably the least manly game I've ever played and I enjoy it well enough. Real men wear pink? Maybe. Real men can admit to liking non-manly games!

Right?...

DIY Valentine's Day

In our current mode of trying to save money where we can, my wife, Jenni, told me she didn't think I should buy her any flowers for Valentine's Day. This isn't a big stretch as we don't normally place a lot of stock on the day. Usually I just but her some flowers and that's the extent of our spending. So, since she doesn't want me buying flowers, I'll make some instead.

It's very last minute, so I haven't much for materials (without buying some) or time. I made three Origami flowers. To guide my building, I used the flowers section of Origami-Instructions.com. I folded the Bell Flower, the Lily, and the easy 8-petal. I had downloaded and printed a bunch of Valentine "cards" on offer by the authors of one of the two web-comics I like well enough to follow, Girl Genius. I only wanted one card, but the printout is four. So my idea was to use the one card for its intended purpose and cut the other three into squares to fold into flowers (then thy have a little colour to them).


The results (8-petal on top, bell on the left, lily on the right):

The lily and the bell were quite fun to do. I think a cheap pad of origami paper could make a really nice bouquet. So, with that, I'll pair the flowers with chocolate and I'll be on my way!

My First Spaceships

Believe it or not, I'm a sucker for spaceships. Thus, it was only a matter of time before I carved some. So here are some pictures. First I made up some of my own designs. There was no drawings, just shaping as I carved. Despite such a disorderly, even haphazard construction method, I think my first group turned out pretty good.

The middle one came first. I thought it looked shark-like, so I continued on, adding the 'tail' to complete the look. This would be a cruiser to heavy cruiser in the Full Thrust scale. The one on the left would be a cruiser, trying to get a similar shaping, but not the same. The one on the right started as a blob that I didn't like and carved down to make a destroyer, or maybe it's corvette-sized.
 

Then I decided I wanted to see if there were some simple designs already out there that I could try. Turned over to that trusty the-blueprints.com site to check out the Science Fiction section. I discovered some good designs for a beginner like myself to tackle in a series I had never heard of before: Space Battleship Yamato!

The title spaceship was a little much for me to start with, so I went with the Bolar cruisers and heavy cruiser (yellow ones below). Moved on to the EDF destroyers (small grey and red) and started on the Yamato (which is still not finished as I would like). The latest addition in this series is a lone Gamilon destroyer (that faded green one).

 Of course, my models are not exact replicas. I'm going for playable, not show-room, and I haven't watched anything past the 5th episode so detailing on my versions of these ships may differ greatly from the cartoons.

With a bunch of odd-sized bits of wood left over from carving these ships and some WWI fighter planes (which I'll try to get to later), I started gluing and carving to come up with a couple more ships of my own design. The larger of the two is maybe not quite battleship size, I'm thinking battle cruiser or small carrier (if I get into the game enough to warrant putting together fighter groups). The smaller I might rate a cruiser or light cruiser


When I got to painting the these ones, Jenni had bought me some minis brushes for Christmas, so I tried them out, starting with some swirling designs. After that I moved on to adding some detail touches to these and the other ships you've already seen - those touches being small black and white dots (windows? gun-ports?) and some striping, even numbers on one of the EDF destroyers (the other I had already attempted a number with the not very mini brushes).

Then I averted a couple hours of boredom one night when I went to the-blueprints and started going crazy! I downloaded drawings of more SBY designs and a bunch of Star Trek designs, re-sized them all to roughly match Full Thrust scaling. Now I've started a Miranda-Class ship from Trek, also carved all the pieces for an Enterprise (Motion Picture version), but I have lost some of them. That's OK though, the gluing wasn't going well for it, so I am trying a different tack.

The Bolar ships and the Sharky ships have both already seen battle, with each other, trying out some solo-friendly space-battle rules. But that's a post for another day: I think I recorded my thoughts on that in my private blog and they will likely find their way over to this one, eventually.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Here's a couple more.

 

As ugly as it is, I do like that brown one!