Basing Experiment

A number of miniatures enthusiasts advocate keeping one's eyes open for everyday items that can be incorporated in miniatures building. One reason is to exercise creative muscle. A second reason might be to instill uniqueness into a piece. The third reason, less fancy and artistic-sounding in nature, is to save money.

As I have recently been customizing Hreoclix for other games, I have been removing them from their dials. Some have an adequate little plastic base already for standing, others do not. But I'd like something better looking. This summer, before I really had things like my Epic Duels project in mind, I came across a number of discarded solar LED garden lights. Obviously thrown out because they didn't work any more and I just started collecting them for different ideas I started having. I'll probably get to some of those in the future, but I'll talk about one I'm in the midst of trying out right now.

One of those discarded lights contained an acrylic rod with bubbles trapped in the middle of it, like this one:

Image from buyeparts.com

The rod, 1-1/8" (29 mm) in diameter, seemed just right for basing miniatures in the Heroclix scale.

I was thinking about how to cut the thing such that I would come out with reasonably straight and level faces on the discs. By had was maybe out of the question. My father-in-law suggested his lathe and I jumped at it. I just eyeballed a thickness I liked, which turned out to be around 3/8" (4 mm). At the thickness I chose, we got 22 discs, and one that was thicker (the piece that was in the lathe chuck).

The cutting did generate heat, enough of it that the discs ended up with rough faces. But, hey, I'm just going to be covering that with paint and maybe some green stuff, so no big deal there. I filed off the roughest parts, but the surface will just look like ground, I think. The only hitch is that I think the best way to attach the minis to the bases I made will be to keep them on the small, almost adequate bases they are on. 

So my first experiment is to dig the smaller base shape into the top surface using my Dremel and a couple of different wood bits. After fitting them in, I have realized that I will want to fill in gaps and such using green stuff (or some other filler) then painting them. But I'm thinking I'd rather do this in batches, so it will happen after I have a few more figures ready to finish in this way. 

Here's the four Star Wars characters mounted and ready for ground work:

Not too bad even as they are, but adding ground effects will look better.

A belated Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all!

Falling girl: a Heroclix conversion

When I prepped some green stuff for the clone trooper helmet, there was still a little left over. It was still quite a lump and I couldn't stand to toss it so I quickly  sorted through that Heroclix box to see if there was a hero I could convert with a bit of green stuff. What came to me was an idea for a DC hero called fire. The sculpt, as you can see in the pics, is a semi-transparent green. I assume she's supposed to be hovering or something, definitely not standing or running. But the pose and the way the hair sticks mostly straight up from the head, she could also be falling. Not like an accidental fall, mind you, but like she's jumping off a cliff or something. What kind of girl might be jumping from a cliff? Perhaps a girl like Lara Croft. So I decided to make Fire into a rugged adventure girl.

So with no specific game in mind or any plans for future use of what I was about to create, I got under way.

First thing's first, of course, gotta trim all those tendril things that are probably supposed to be flames or something. Quickly shaved them off, because I gotta have time to shape the green stuff before it sets. Well, then she looks all naked, so a pair of adventurey shorts are in order, I can just paint a shirt over her as she is. Well, maybe not...

her breasts just seem too...

unrestrained-looking...

to be under a shirt...

Okay, so one breast reduction surgery later, I figured all adventurers need a backpack, so I made her a backpack. Made sure to make the backpack strain away from her body a bit to keep the impression of her falling through the air. Put on a belt and a sidearm, because adventure girls have those, right? Finally, because I still had some epoxy left, I gave her some nice heavy hiking boots.

Some painting and a layer of Pledge acrylic floor finish to seal it up and hey, presto!

I think the conversion went rather well for having to make up a plan after mixing the epoxy!

Still thinking on how to base her.

The pics:

This girl is tough! See, she has a bandage around her left hand!

"I'm falling into the unknown, but on purpose!"

Kind of looks like she's going for the Crane Kick a la Karate Kid.

I really like how the backpack turned out. I even put a little canteen on the left side.

SW:ED Project - Ahsoka Tano

Now to introduce my second completed Epic Duels team made from Heroclix: Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex.

Ahsoka and Captain Rex ready for battle!

Ahsoka Tano
I used this sculpt of the X-Woman Quake. The biggest reason I chose it was that her pose seemed to be exactly the kind of stance Ahsoka might take in a fight, specifically with the positioning of her light sabers.

Quake (photo from HC Realms)

While this is my second completed team, this was actually the first conversion I had attempted to add sculpted material to. In fact, I hadn't even acquired any green stuff yet. I tried using JB Weld instead. I'll tell you now that I don't recommend using JB Weld after having used green stuff, it's much harder to work with. Despite the troubles I had with the JB Weld, I think I got lucky and the sculpt actually came out looking pretty good for what it was, good enough to try painting it instead of doing it all over again with green stuff.

 

 

 

 

So yes, I used JB Weld for Ahsoka's head-piece and her skirt, for which I am especially amazed that it worked. Her belt, pouch on her back, and neck-tie shaped thingy on the front were done with green stuff. For her light sabers, I clipped some bits off of a paperclip. Then for each I heated one end and pressed it into one of the fists so that the plastic melted around the paperclip. After cooling, I added some Krazy Glue to further strengthen her hold on her sabers.

Painting her face was a struggle, I think it came out too busy-looking with the white markings at this small scale, but I don't know how else I would do it. As for the rest, I went for her dress from later in the Clone Wars series.

Captain Rex
...sort of. In my researching of Captain Rex and from watching the Clone Wars series, I took note that the dual blaster pistols (DC-17 hand blasters, apparently) are the signature weapon for Rex. Thus, I want to do a sculpt with 2 pistols, I just haven't decided on one from the figures I have yet. However, I do have 4 Punisher sculpts that would make a good squad of clone troops: one sniper, two with rifles, and one with a mini-gun. So I did up one of the rifle-wielders to stand in for Rex until I get a sculpt I like for the role. Maybe there's an Epic Duels team featuring Commander Cody and some other troopers.

Punisher (photo from HC Realms)

The Clone Trooper came out pretty well. It started with a decapitation. Yes, after trying to model a clone helmet onto the Punisher's head, I took it off and stuck it on a spike to ease the molding process. After the helmet dried, I used it to make a mold so that I have an easier time with future clone conversions. Thus finished with the head, I glued it back on.

Actually, while waiting for green stuff to set, I did some body work. You can see the original sculpt is quite filled out with muscles, something clone armour wouldn't actually fit, so I shaved them down to approximate clone armour. I also cut the rifle down to more closely resemble a clone blaster rifle. While I intend him to be a regular clone, he can stand in for Captain Rex for now.

Painting was pretty straight-forward. Three coats of white to cover up the Punisher's original black clothing. Then the black areas at the armour joints and for the visor. I managed to paint around the gun, so no changes (besides the cutting) to that. Then some really watered-down black to to give a tarnished or battle-worn look. and that is that!

So I now have two teams (with cards too), meaning I could actually play the game using minis! Exciting, is it not?

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Hello hello.

I had a birthday recently. My parents got me a gift card to Chapters (and a used scroll saw!). I had to go in to town to pick up a part for our dryer (which now seems to be functioning as required) and to renew my driver's license. So I thought I'd pop in to ye olde Chapters store and see if anything caught my eye.

I went straight for the games table. There was a lot of Risk and Game of Thrones Risk, a few Ticket to Ride boxes, and some other stuff. I was about to turn around when I saw Dominion on sale. I picked it up, looked it over and wondered if I should buy it. Then I remembered having played it on my computer (against the AI) and somewhat enjoying it, but it wasn't an earth-shattering experience. I know it's rated quite high on the BGG, but I had to admit I wasn't all that interested in the game.

Dominion is a deck builder. This means that you, as a player, have a small deck of cards at the start. Some of your cards act as some form of currency that is used to purchase cards from a certain pool. These cards are added to your deck ad you get to use them as the game moves forward. You will go through the deck over and over, buying new cards that either help you buy more and better cards, let you attack an opposing player or defend the opposition's attacks, for example.

Dominion against the computer is not the only deck builder I've played. I've tried a couple of others out that friends own. There's a thematic one called Thunderstone Advance, which is almost a semi-cooperative game in that it's players vs. monsters, but feels more like a race since you can't collectively lose and the game just goes until someone can kill the big baddie. Of course, there may be other ways to play where you can all lose to the monster, but I've only played it with a friend who owns it, so I only know from my experience. I also played 7 Wonders at this friend's place, and that was pretty good, too.

Despite my experiences with these games, I've still kind of been on the fence about how much I really like deck-builders.

As I returned Dominion to its place, I saw Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, a cooperative deck builder. Yes, another deck builder. For some reason it was catching my eye, much more than Dominion ever did. So I whipped out ye olde smart phone and looked up Mr. Potter's game on the BGG webs. It was still rated over 7/10. So I dove in further, looking at a couple of written reviews. One was titled "This might be the co-op deck builder you've been looking for". There was also the likelihood that this game would see a table often enough as a number of people in my life, some of them fellow gamers, are very into Potterverse (is that a thing?). Mostly, though, was the thought that my 8 year-old daughter, who just finished book 3 of the Potter series, would be interested in this game.

I decided to take the chance.

Hogwarts Battle is a straight-on cooperative game with a recognized theme that is well-matched to its mechanics. 2 - 4 players can be Harry, Ron, Hermione, and/or Neville, each with different in-game strengths. You can collectively lose to the game if the Death Eaters take full control of Hogwarts, which is represented by a number of important locations from the book. The interesting bit is that it's kind of like these legacy games that are all the rage these days, where you have stuff that's hidden from you until you beat the game up to a certain point. With Hogwarts Battle, the new stuff is split into books. Book 1 is super easy and the game gets harder as you add more books, but it also gets more interesting as you go and more rules are added.

Today I broke the game open and played Book 1 solo using Harry and Ron. Then I played Book 1 with Jeanette (Ron and Hermione) to see if she'd go for it.

Well, now I am in the middle of playing Book 3 with Jeanette, who really wanted to play Neville this time (I'm Harry). We'll see how we fare tomorrow. I haven't looked at the Book 2 and 3 villain cards or Dark Arts cards, so I don't know who else might be coming or what other tricks there might be to foil us.

Middle of a Book 3 game with my daughter. So far we've defeated Prof. Quirrell, a Dementor, Tom Riddle, and Peter Pettigrew. There's, I think, four more villains to go and they've taken control of the Hogwarts Express. We are now facing what could be a rather difficult father and son duo: Lucius and Draco.

Another cool thing is that I saw pnp files that people have put together for players to take the roles of other characters from the books, like Luna or Ginny.

And a zoomed-out shot to behold the gloriousness of this game on my game table.

Painting: SWED Project - Grand Admiral Thrawn

Yeah, SWED Project. I just thought of that very original title for my project to make the Epic Duels game. That is how I will refer to it as I go.

Anyway, the reason for the post is the completion of a couple of Heroclix mods to make my first completed Epic Duels team: Grand Admiral Thrawn and his personal bodyguard/assassin, Rukh.

To start, I currently have somewhere around 150 miniatures: 100 from my recent CSI purchase, a bunch from an Ebay purchase years ago and a few from a number of Dollarama purchases. I've decided to keep some of the more well-know heroes and villains to play the actual Heroclix game with my 5yo son, who has shown interest in the game. The ones I keep are decided mainly by his ability to identify them. I'm likely limited by such a small collection of figures, but we'll see. As I get better at sculpting with green stuff, the limitations should lessen.

Grand Admiral Thrawn

Thrawn was easy to do, I found the perfect figure to use among my CSI purchase:

Meet Psion, a superhero or villain I've never heard of. Now say goodbye!

Mr. Psion here required very little sculpt modding before painting. I shaved the pant legs down to form boots. Then it was on to painting.

For the uninitiated, Thrawn is a humanoid alien with blue skin, black hair and red eyes. He is a Grand Admiral of the Empire. In the Timothy Zahn novels that introduced him, Thrawn is a patient and calculating individual. His rank is high enough that he need not fight anyone directly, he has a whole fleet of ships to do that, and Rukh. I think the Psion sculpt works well as a template as it is unlikely that one will see Thrawn getting himself into a one-on-one fight with anyone, so who needs an action pose? Almost all images of the good admiral depict him wearing a white uniform, usually with minimal adornment beyond his rank insignia.

Meet Grand Admiral Thrawn! I just couldn't get the lighting to work.

I mentioned his ysalamiri in my last post. The ysalamiri are brought up in the Zahn novels as a creature with the ability to dispel the Force from an area around itself. This attribute is always "on", so no Force user, Jedi or Sith, can exercise their powers on it or anything within its sphere of influence. Thrawn often keeps the animal very close, probably originally as a kind of insurance against Vader and Palpatine. I still think I'd like to add an ysalamiri, but later, when I've had some more practice with green stuff.

Rukh

Rukh is of an alien race called the Noghri. In the Zahn books, his planet is tricked into servitude by Lord Vader. The Noghri are all skilled assassins and are used by the Empire to take out tough targets. In Rukh's case, he is personally attached to Thrawn as a bodyguard.

Since the split of Star Wars stories into Legends and Canon, Rukh is depicted as either a rather large (Legends), or as a slimmer (Canon) reptilian being. I liked the look of one illustration in particular and I based my work on it.

Meet Turtle, a super-villain I've never heard of. Now say bye-bye!

Starting with the Turtle figure, I did a lot of cutting to slim the body a bit. After that, I broke out some green stuff to make a sort of poncho and added a shoulder bag, wrist guards, and side pouch (as the illustration I liked had). I didn't have the image available for a little bit and I added a feature to the ankles that I found later looks different in the picture I was following, but it still kinda works. I shaved of Turtle's hair. Then, using green stuff, I added a ridge around his crown and built up the lower part of the face, sculpting in a new mouth and nose to get a more reptilian look.

Another image I came across shows Rukh holding some kind of double-bladed dagger things. To make those, I snipped a pin and heated the pieces to melt them into his hands, adding a dab of super glue to help hold them there.

I did a lot more with washes and dry-brushing to get the skin tones where I wanted them. The image turned out looking darker than he actually is.

Say hello to Rukh. No sudden movements, though.

Showing off the back. Oops, I forgot to clean up the base.

So that's my first Epic Duels team sculpts completed! I just need to cut out the player deck and they are ready to go!

Happy Friday everyone!

Let's take down some rebel scum!

My tale of thrift shopping regret

In my previous post, I mentioned a regret I had of not buying a certain game I came across while perusing a thrift store. Here's my story about that.

At the time I was working on the edge of downtown Lethbridge and my workplace was within walking distance of three thrift stores. One or two days a week I would walk to one of them during my lunch hour and peruse the games and tools. One day I went to the Salvation Army. I was looking through the games section and came across one called Star Wars: Epic Duels. Just the fact that it was Star Wars was enough to draw my attention. I picked it up and saw that it was a Milton Bradley creation. This immediately became a point against buying the game as I felt like this box I was holding contained one of those terrible games with almost no fun factor that come rushing out of the big game-makers and toy companies at the release of the movies they are merchandising. And I've seen Star Wars related titles that easily fall into this category.

Image gleaned from boardgamegeek.com.

Of course, one shouldn't judge a book (game) by the cover and the reputation of the publisher, so I opened it to get a better sense of the game. It was like opening a big bag of chips; full of air. There were a few miniatures that were done just well enough to be recognizable as the characters they portrayed. There were a bunch of cards and some smallish-looking battle maps as well. I don't know if it was so, but I had the distinct impression that the game was incomplete and that was strike two.

I thought about how nice it would have been to check on BGG to see if the game was generally liked. I might have decided to look it up when I got back to work, but probably forgot to do so. On the other hand, I had recently purchased some other games while thrifting. One was Kriegspiel (a low-rated game and one I could never get myself excited about trying). Another was Colosseum (a highly-rated game, and for good reason). I was feeling that I needed to slow down my thrift-store game buying because of a growing collection of games versus and the space restrictions at home. With the first two strikes considered, I didn't want to add another possibly un-fun or unplayable game to the mix. So that made strike three.

Thus, I did not buy the game. A gamble that would only have cost me $1.50.

The thing about regrets is that you can't have them unless you know what you are missing as a result of the regretted action. So the rest of the story is how I came to that knowledge that turned that one decision into a regretted one.

Some years later, Jenni and I took the kids out to see Jenni's relations in Victoria. During the visit, we went to her cousin's house. They are gamers (he even develops game apps) and after eating, we settled in to play a few. One they pulled out was Star Wars: Epic Duels. Their kids were excited to play and we had no problem filling out a 6-player game.

If I remember right, the make-up of the game was a fight on the Geonosis battle map. The light side combatants were Anakin and Padme, Windu and clones, and Luke and Leia against the dark side forces of Palpatine and guards, Vader and storm troopers, and Boba Fett and Greedo (played by me).

I was a cruel opponent, shamed for claiming the first kill of the battle which also happened to put the youngest player at the table out of the game. I choked back the emotions continued a strategy consisting mainly of hit and run maneuvers and rocket attacks that whittled down the light side who could only direct their retaliations against my team mates.

I really enjoyed the game. I liked the balance of luck and strategy and thought they worked well for a skirmish situation. I liked the way the battle decks were customized to their respective characters, with special actions that reflected the fighting styles of the movie characters. I liked how easy the rules were and how quickly it played, as the youngest of the kids playing was 6 or so, rules were easily grasped and attention was easily kept.

Talking with Jenni's cousin afterward, we found out that his wife had purchased the game for him as a gift and that she didn't want to say what she spent on it. Looking at Ebay just a couple of days ago ('cause I'm curious again, maybe hopeful even), the least expensive option of a complete game was $95 plus shipping.

So that's the regretful part: what I might have had had I taken that lowly chance those years ago.

I no longer work in Lethbridge, so my thrift store shopping visits have been drastically cut. And the times I do go, there is nothing interesting to me, just a lot of Trivial Pursuits, Scene Its, and the other usual thrift store fodder. The chances of seeing this game, or anything else I'd be interested in, are practically nil. Therefore, I have somewhat shifted my gaming acquisitions to games I can build and since my interests have been gravitating toward skirmish games, I decided to make some figures to help in that regard. Then, thinking about introducing the kids to such games, I thought again about Epic Duels.

Twenty-one years ago my brother went to a friend's house and played Axis and Allies and told me all about it when he came home. After that, I drew my own map and made my own units and filled in what he couldn't remember about the rules to make a homebrew A&A. No sense in deviating from that kind of creativity now. There is a website devoted to Epic Duels and its contributors have developed many alternate duelist teams and duel locations and made them available to print. So that's what I've decided to do. Make my own version of the game. Currently, I'm staying away from the original pairings, in case I somehow can acquire the original game for less than $120, and focusing on other characters from shows and books, like Ahsoka and Grand Admiral Thrawn.

I mention Ahsoka and Thrawn because those are the first two characters that I have now modified some Heroclix to represent. Thrawn is currently all painted, though I've been thinking of adding an ysalamiri to the sculpt. Ahsoka has a base coat. I think I've got a simple enough idea to do Rukh (Thrawn's personal bodyguard and minor character match-up in the unofficial Epic Duels line-up).  Of course, Heroclix scale are much bigger than the figure scale in Epic Duels, so I would want to have different figures if I did acquire the original game anyway. I'll cross that bridge if I get there.

Of course, I have ideas for other characters from outside the Star Wars franchise.

My only issue is whether I can stay on target long enough to make something fun and playable within a reasonable amount of time.

Pictures of mods to come with a later post.

Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter

This week I accompanied Jenni to Calgary where she attended the 2017 National Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Conference for her work. Realizing that I would have quite a bit of time on my own, I packed a thick book and some copies of the (condensed) game sheets for Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter to help keep me occupied. I am glad I did.

Art by the game designer: Nick Hayes.

Before we get to the game(s), I also was on the hunt for some kneadatite (aka green stuff or GS). After having done some repaints of a few toys and game pieces, some of which I have featured here, I decided to give a crack at modifying some sculpts to make them useful for other games; I bought some 100 Heroclix for this purpose. Mainly I'm thinking figures for Pulp Alley and another game that I regret not buying at a thrift store some time ago (I'll write about that one later). Looking at the modding community online, many of them use green stuff to make their modifications or even to model figures from scratch. There are other putties out there, but the green stuff seems to be the most popular.

So, pricing out green stuff online, it was looking like an expensive proposition. On Amazon.ca (not known for very competitive pricing in the first place, never mind any kind of selection, but slightly easier for me on the receiving end than ordering from a U.S. company) I found a few suppliers asking over $30 for a couple of ounces of green stuff, if they disclosed an amount at all. Researching further, I discovered a post mentioning a FLGS in Calgary that they would recommend checking. Claiming the title of "largest game store in the world", The Sentry Box was certainly expansive and even a bit overwhelming. But I got the green stuff, for less than advertised on amazon.com even, and a pack of card sleeves. It was a lot of fun looking at all the miniatures, which seemed to be priced on par with anything I've seen online.

While the shopping and browsing were great, the food I ate that day (not at the Sentry Box) did me in. I spent most of the next day in the hotel room alternately reading, visiting the bathroom, catching up on the sleeping I didn't do over night, watching back-to-back episodes of Storage Wars, and playing Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter.

The Game

Now, I've played the first offering, simply titled Utopia Engine, in which the player is attempting to build the title device. In Beast Hunter, the player is someone on the run who wants to hide in a village, but must defeat the three terrible beasts that are harassing it in order to gain the villagers' trust and remain in the village.

In brief, either version of the game is basically described as a selection of mini-games. Each mini-game is an exercise in some method of dice roll management. It all comes together into an engaging story as the game is played out. Beast Hunter continues a few of the same mechanics from the original, adding some new ones to the mix. According to comments by other players, there's some pattern one may follow that allows them to win most of the time, but I haven't found it yet. After umpteen total plays of the original (a few years ago, which I never won) and Beast Hunter during my stay in Calgary, I only managed to finally beat Beast Hunter as I waited on Jenni to finish her last session. The game got me really annoyed at it as it killed me off over and over and over again during those days of playing. Being sick and sleep-deprived may have been a contributing factor as well. Ah, but finally winning was such a momentous occasion, I took a picture of the finished sheet. I was so close to losing this one, too.

The game is divided into days, and one chooses one action to do each day: build a tower, search one of the areas that surround the village, attempt to craft a special item, or rest to recover health points.

How the win went down

Day 1: An early find of the lair of the Giant of the Peaks and the rare material silver allowed me the opportunity to craft Silver Plate, which permanently reduced beast attack ranges by one. Also found some stone and encountered blood wolves which were defeated to gain me a beast pelt.
Day 2: I attempted crafting the Silver Plate armour, just barely succeeding.
Day 3: Terrible beast attack (don't remember which one attacked). Lost one hut. Went to confront the Giant before I lost the Sudden Clarity (+1 to attack range) in the Halebeard Peak Region. Luckily, the beast was cowed (which reduces its attack range) and I was able to defeat it handily. Defeating a Terrible Beast wins the favour of one of the village elders, I chose Epiphoros, gaining me two HP.
Day 4: Searched the coastal caverns and found the lair of the Dweller in the Tides. I didn't dare confront it with the Madness modifier in place there (+2 beast health). Also found some cord and fought a shell-cracker troll and took its oily meat.
Day 5: Built the southwest tower.
Day 6: Terrible beast attack - rolled the Giant's number, but he's dead, so no attack. I searched the Scar, tracking the Burning Man, but not finding its lair. Got some tar and encountered hollow birds, collecting some of their blood after taking them out.
Day 7: Rested
Day 8: Sudden Clarity was now active in the Scar, so I went back to search. Found a random encounter, which turned out to be an ash troll, I ended up with wounds and troll ash, which I used to make the reviving dose. Then I found the lair and with the Ambush bonus, I had to take it. The Burning man also came up cowed, but between it and the ash troll, I took a bunch of damage, including grievous wounds (reduce max HP). I chose the favour of Nikandros to recharge the balancing blade item I had used.

At this point I decided to take a chance and go after the Dweller as well. I think my four remaining HP coupled with the reviving dose and all the available re-rolls and free attack (recharged balance blade item) still available bolstered my feelings of invulnerability. The Dweller turned out to be cruel, meaning it did grievous damage on rolling ones. You can see the end result in the image (though all the determination points should be marked out). I fought the Dweller of the Tides while it was in a state of madness (giving it 2 extra HP).  I used up every every re-roll available to me, the balancing blade, and the reviving dose to bring down the beast, barely surviving with one HP left.

How he managed to crawl his way back to the village, no-one ever figured out, but two of the village children found Mason slumped against the wall, unconscious under the tower he had helped build only days before. 

His wounds should have killed him, but he still breathed. The elders had Mason carried into town and he was cared for by their wives. The wife of Sipporos was a grudging help, as this stranger had not proven himself in her mind, nor in her husband's. But as she sat up to watch Mason on the second night of his unconsciousness, cursing the council for forcing her to do this thing, he started to mutter and ramble about killing the last of the Terrible Beasts that had plagued their village. At first light, men were sent to confirm this unbelievable news. They brought back one of the beast's tentacles to show it was truly dead.

One day, the Blazing Star Regiment arrived at the village. The captain explained they were searching for a fugitive called Mason. The villagers denied any knowledge of a fugitive. The captain ordered his men search the village anyway, but they failed to search the wreckage of the hut most recently destroyed by the terrible beasts almost two weeks prior. Hidden under the remains, the wrongly accused fugitive named Mason quietly lay, listening to the activity around him, still too weak to stand on his own.

After the regiment moved on and Mason was moved to quarters more suitable to recovery. In time, he would recover from his wounds, except for a slight limp. Mason took a different name, in case the Blazing Stars should come again. He also took a wife, the sweet daughter of Halandros, the blacksmith. Mason, now called Dosarros, went on to raise his family of three boys and two girls and to benefit the village with the draughts and items he crafted from the local flora and fauna and the remains of the occasional dangerous beast brought down from the once forbidden valleys. 

Painting: X-Wing Fighter

As I was finishing of my ARC-170 fighters, I started an undercoat on a SW:TFA X-Wing. It stayed in base coat condition until this week when I noticed the maple bugs (or more commonly, box elder bugs) coming out. These bugs always show up in the fall, or are at least most noticeable in the fall as they tend to congregate in warm areas, like the sun-drenched side of a house. They eat boxelder leaves, flowers and seed pods, as well as the leaves of maple and ash trees.

A boxelder bug. Not harmful and kind of pretty. But they will try to get in the house and just hang out a little too long. (Image: GardenGreenAngels.blogspot.ca)

I was looking at their markings and thought that the colour scheme would work well on that X-Wing. So I mixed up some dark grey and started applying, then a slightly mottled look was taking shape, which I thought looked pretty, for a star fighter. While I had originally started with the intention of copying the bug's striping design onto the X-Wing, I didn't end up doing it. Instead I went with colouring certain components the red-orange colour. The markings are still kind of similar. I finished with a little white Rebellion symbol on one wing.

And here it is (against the background of my new neoprene game table surface):

The newly painted X-Wing. I think the grey seems darker than the image portrays, though it isn't as dark as the boxelder bug grey. I didn't want it too dark, though. Image was taken before applying any clear coat.

 Have fun!

Full Sail

For a few years now I've talked about, thought about, even prepared to play the miniatures space battle game called Full Thrust. I even carved my own spaceships out of sticks and painted them up.

To be honest, I did try playing it using the box-style ship markers from Leviathan. I had tried to decipher some conversion tables I found and used them to edit some partially completed Ship Status Displays (SSDs) I found for the same conversion which included huge (by FT standards) amounts of armour on different sides of each ship. I realized part-way through my attempt to play that it was going to take forever to do any significant damage to any of the ships I used. I gave up.

This time I am going to try the fighting sail rule set adapted from the Full Thrust rules called Full Sail. I didn't find any kind of points system to make up roughly even battle groups like Full Thrust ships get assigned, so I decided to use the crew sizes found on the SSDs I downloaded and printed as the points. Each fleet equals 82 crew. We'll see if that is a good way to build a fleet.

Yeah! Five minute MSPaint photo editing FTW!

The Scenario is thus:

The Spanish ship-of-the-line, Argonauta, has left port after repairs and is sailing with the schooner, El Cervantes to meet with three other ships: the Vospero, the Leon, and the Santos Romanos.

However, pirate spies have sent word of this movement to the dreaded pirate trio of "Calico Jack" Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. These infamous pirates have been waiting to get the jump on a ship-of-the-line. To capture the Argonauta would be a grand feather in their caps as well as a grand flagship for the fleet they have been amassing. They set out in the Revenge, with six other ships split into two groups, to find the Argonauta and capture it.

Unknown to this pirate armada closing on the Argonauta's position is the fact that the the other three Spanish ships are very close.

All four groups are on a collision course.

The Set-Up
The Argonauta is the only 5-mast ship in the scenario. She and her escort, the three-masted schooner El Cervantes, enter from the west.

The Vospero (4 mast), Leon (3 mast), and Santos Romanos (2 mast schooner) enter from the north-east corner.

The pirate ships Revenge (4 mast), Cachas (1 mast), and Sceptor (1 mast) enter from the south. Pirate ships Cassandra (4 mast), Silverback (3 mast), Raven (2 mast schooner), and Jamaica (2 mast) come in from the north.

Set up and ready to go.

Being a solo play, I had to decide on some kind of turn order method and chose slowest speed first with ties broken by heading (i.e. thrust potential due to wind).

Of course I figured I should have some kind of win conditions for each side. The pirates were easy, they win if they capture Argonauta. I decided on two win conditions for the Spanish. A minor win if they reduce the pirates' total crew by half (forcing them to flee). A major win if they capture or sink both the pirate 4-mast ships (Revenge and Cassandra).

After placing the ships, I rolled a d12 to randomly set wind direction, rolling a 4, so I set the indicator arrow to the 4 o'clock position (12 o'clock = north). There are optional rules for changing the wind direction and speed, but I decided to keep wind direction and speed constant throughout the game. In retrospect, I think the wind direction put the pirates at a major disadvantage.


Turn 1
Vospero and company, the northeast group, turned westward to bypass the island in front of them.
Revenge, Calchas, and Sceptor move between the islands in front of them in order to possibly cut off Vospero and to have room to turn toward the main prize of Argonauta.

Revenge et al. split up to cover the two routes through the island chain immediately available to Argonauta.

Argonauta and El Cervantes head for the north route.

Some shot are fired from various stern chasers on both sides, very minor damage dealt.

Pirates (left group) split to cover possible routes Argonauta might take. Three Spanish ships coming in from the northeast.

Argonata chooses the north route.

Turn 2
The Argonauta mis-judges her turning ability and runs aground! There are no rules to cover this situation so I decided it meant a roll for collision damage, ship speed reduced to 0, ship must turn in place (limited to one point per turn) until it is freed of the sand and can start speeding up again. Argonauta and Cassandra are within 10 mu (movement units) of each other and both fire broadsides at each other. Argonauta deals major damage to Cassandra (23 points) triggering a threshold check. Cassandra loses some guns and 1/6th sail rating. Cassandra doesn't even return half the damage Argonauta inflicted. Their escorts fire on each other, each doing minor damage to the other.

Despite running aground, Argonauta deals a devastating broadside into Cassandra!

These Spaniards must have been keeping up on their gunnery drills! The Vospero deals a whopping 24 damage to Revenge, triggering a threshold check! It was raking fire to boot, so the threshold check damage possibility was increased as well.

Are these really Spanish crews? They are exceeding their reputation.

Turn 3
Not much going on for Turn 3 but maneuvering. Revenge does get a raking broadside in on Vospero, but doesn't trigger a threshold check.

Revenge fires on Vospero. Should I add a rule that any misses be re-rolled against other ships in the line of fire?

Argonauta is still turning, but fires bow chasers into Cassandra, inflicting minor damage.

Action around the islands.

End of turn 3: Silverback takes a long shot at Vospero to support Revenge's raking fire. Scepter joins in with her bow chaser, too. Overall, not too much excitement.

Turn 4
Turn 4 sees the action turn up again. Scepter and Santos Romanos fling broadsides at each other.

Scepter has to make a threshold check and loses a cannon and some rigging.

Calchas fires on Leon, minor damage is exchanged. I think Vospero did not follow the rules of gentlemanly conduct earlier and fired at Calchas. Oh well.

El Cervantes successfully grapples with Jamaica. Both ships loose their broadsides and the boarding begins. Jamaica is captured and the prize crew makes preparations for sailing to the nearest friendly port.

I think Turn 4 is when I decided that the ships' top speed should not exceed wind speed (except when reaching, as indicated on the wind rose).

I had seen others make comments about this rule set that the ships move too fast. The other comments raised concern over slowing the ship movement perhaps transferring too much power to the guns. I don't think I really saw that, but that may be due to my marking which sides had fired and using a

Turn 5
Argonauta is mobile again and slowly starts to pick up speed. Cassandra takes more damage from Spanish ships.

Argonauta continues on its ponderous way, pirate closing in from the south.

Leon and Vospero (out of frame to the south) fire broadsides into Cassandra, causing two threshold checks. It's only a matter of time for her.

Turn 6
Some close calls as maneuvering ships in the middle of the action narrowly avoid colliding with each other. Pirates lose two more ships as Calchas is sunk and Cassandra is captured. Pirate crew losses exceed one half their start levels, so according to my win conditions, I end the game.

Leon finishes off Calchas with a broadside.

The very weakened Cassandra is boarded by the Santos Romanos. Cassandra's disheartened crew puts up very little fight and she is captured and taken as a prize. But with so much damage and the Revenge bearing down, it might be better to leave her adrift or scuttle...

Raven misjudged her speed and turning ability, ending up run aground in the same spot as Argonauta. She fired a raking broadside at the bigger ship, but the sudden jarring against the sand bar must have thrown off her gunners as only four balls hit the Argonauta. Meanwhile, in the background, the prize crew from the El Cervantes takes the Jamaica away from the fighting.

Ship positions at end of game.

It's a minor win for the Spaniards, though they did manage to capture one of the large pirate ships.

Post-Game Thoughts

Lawrence decided a treasure island was needed.

I am liking the Full Sail rule set. It's detailed enough to feel the loss of each cannon or sail or the frustration of not having the wind on your side, but not so much that the game is slowed down by record-keeping. It was easy to get a handle on movement (the wind rose is very handy). And rolling lots of dice is always a good time. Translated well enough to a solo mode for me.

I think, with this play under my belt, I may be more motivated in the near future to try the Full Thrust rules with my carved space ships. I'll try to find the solo scenarios that I had run across some time ago.

There is one other rule set I want to try, quite different, basically the PotSM rules but applied to a sand-box sort of fleet builder treasure race. I don't know if it can work so well in solo mode.

P.S.

Immediately following clean-up of this adventure, I cut and installed a neoprene layer. Still debating in my mind about the necessity of a microfiber sheet to go over that. The purchase of the neoprene puts my total amount of money spent on this table to roughly $60. I like that.

I have been having saving and formatting issues with this post in Blogger. I've edited a few times now. Hopefully this latest one worked!

DIY: Game Table (Part III)

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid."

With the clear coat finished, my table is, as one might say, "fully armed and operational". And like the Death Star II, it's incomplete in aesthetics department.

Table all set up in it's new home in our basement. A bench underneath to seat some gamers.

So it will rest in the corner until such a time as more than two people are playing.

I made this table so that it can easily come apart. The playing surface (a sheet of MDF cut to fit) can be removed as follows:

The table sans playing surface.

The legs assembly and the table top are held together with nails which are easily removed to separate the two for easier moving (as in through the house and such).

The crucial nail. Pull out all four and the top can be lifted off.

So, some day, maybe, when I get more stain, I can finish the legs. I'd like to get a covering for the surface as well. I don't know what I want to use though, so it's research time. Currently deciding what to play first on it.