SW:ED - Tusken Raiders

The first two sets of cards I printed off for playing Epic Duels were for team Ahsoka/Rex and for Tusken Raiders. I've got minis for Ahsoka and Captain Rex done. But at roughly the same time that I was finishing Ahsoka, I was starting on some Tusken Raiders. They've been a work in progress for this long. And since I seem to have misplaced one of the sculpts I had going, I guess they still are!

The Heroclix Candidates

So, the team consists of two raiders on foot and one riding a bantha. I chose three minis to convert: two Nova Corps Centurions and a really ugly looking Cyclops, as follows.

Nova Corps Centurion (hcrealms.com)

Cyclops (hcrealms.com)

I started with removing the arms from all three models. Cyclops' arms were attached to one of the Nova Corps Centurion in order to create the iconic "sandperson holding a gaffi stick over his head" pose made famous by our first introduction to sand people in A New Hope. Two arms were modified and reattached to the second Centurion to give the look of holding a rifle, which I assembled from a paper clip and a piece carved from a popsicle stick. I also took off and reattached #2's head to be looking at where he is aiming.

This is probably the most green stuff I've ever used on a single figure modification. It's the sniper on the left that, along with being a WIP, is now MIA.

The bantha was part of the issue that kept these guys in limbo for so long. I just didn't know what I wanted to do to create one. I didn't want to make it entirely out of green stuff, too many $$$. I kept my eyes open for a toy hippo or elephant I might modify, but they were always too small, with a couple of exceptions, which were too big. At one point I even searched the Interwebs for a bantha I could just buy.

One day I was playing with our three year old and she got out some playdough. It only took about five minutes of playing with her for the light bulb in my head to turn on. Could I make a somewhat reasonably convincing sculpt of a bantha out of playdough? Challenge accepted!

There was a bit of reasoning to go through first.

1) I wanted a convincing sculpt, but I had chosen playdough as my medium. Could I make something that looked hairy despite the limitations of playdough? How much would it shrink as it dries? Would it be crumbly when dry? All these questions! Well, you won't know until you try...

2) I wanted a playable sculpt. When compared to the sand people, a bantha is rather large. I learned that Ol' George cast elephants as the banthas, so we're looking at that kind of scale. So while the scale might be good for other miniatures rules, I felt like that was too big for Epic Duels, my primary motive for all of this. I decided to forgo proper scaling for the sake of playability.

Then I dug in, sculpted a bantha and planted a rider.

Then I put it up to dry. After three weeks, I checked on it, and it still seemed soft. Maybe my imagination, but I put it back up for a while longer just in case. A few weeks later, it looked ready! I glued some arms to the rider and added a cloak, head covering, and rifle with green stuff and other items. That was two, maybe three months ago.

Yesterday, our oldest daughter wanted to try repainting a miniature, so I decided to paint the two Tusken Raiders alongside her. So here they are!

Here comes the rider!

No licking the camera please!

Good day, all!

A Mobile Reworking

So just a small posting today. I reworked a broken mobile.

We the mobile used when our eldest child was a baby. It was already broken at that time; the support arm that curves over the crib to hold the mobile up had been snapped and taped together with packing tape. It held up for her, as well as the next two kids. Jenni took it out again to set up for our 5(ish) month old little one.

It's one of the cross types with little dangling plush thingies on the ends. Well, one of the crossing parts got broken.

This little one really likes the mobile. We didn't want to buy another one, so we set out to make a new one using the pieces from the old. We bought a roll of wire and I was away.

This is what I built:

Instead of a four arm thing, I went with a ring. Three wires act as spokes to provide a hanging point in the middle and the three stuffed animals hang from the spoke ends. The stuffed flower hangs from the middle. The pink fluffy stuff around the ring is three of the four sleeves that covered the plastic arms of the previous mobile.

I was having trouble getting the spokes to sit still so I could wrap them with wire, so I broke out the spot welder for my first use and made them stay put. What fun!

While I was at it, I also took the time to super glue the support arm, add wire to it for more support, and wrap it all up with hockey tape to keep everything together.

Oh, and here's a random picture of the two oldest in the middle of a game of Klondike we played on Sunday. Jeanette totally won, having found the mother lode and the rich claim ($150,000 total) and both the $40,000 finds. Lawrence and I just kept pulling up all the bad cards and fool's gold.

Hard to get a good picture when the kids are moving and you are holding a squirmy baby!

SW:ED - Han and Chewie

I couldn't hold out any longer! I had to add some original trilogy characters to my little collection. And who better than everyone's favourite smuggler and his walking carpet sidekick?

Han Solo
Han starts out as Heroclix sculpt Human Target.

Human Target (pic from HeroMinis.com)

Pre-paint prep work was to shave down the pants to make the almost knee-high boots and to shorten the bottom hem of the jacket. I liked the Empire Strikes Back clothing ensemble as depicted on a display figure I came across on Google images, so that's what I used for my colour scheme. I left the original paint on face and hands. 

The finished product! Well, except for filling in and painting over the basing.

Chewbacca

Now, Chewie was a little more work. There were a couple of notably taller sculpts in my available selection. I chose the S.H.I.E.L.D. Bodyguard.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Bodyguard (pic from PopularCollections.com)

The transformation began with the removal of his folded arms. Then came the full-body layer of green stuff that I pushed, prodded, poked and otherwise pestered into a hairy humanoid...without arms.

I didn't remedy the missing limbs for a few weeks, trying to decide on how I wanted him to look. In the end I went for a casual stance holding his bowcaster. The new forearms consist of toothpick 'bones' glued to the figure and covered in green stuff. For my first foray into sculpting a mass of hair, I think he turned out rather well. The bowcaster is a shaved-down piece of bamboo skewer and bits of a paperclip with green stuff accents.

Painting consisted of a black primer, a dark brown base coat, two to three lighter brown highlighting layers to try and match the way the dominant hair colour changes in certain locations of his body. It almost worked, though the pictures here don't see it.

Han's most trusted friend.

In the end, there were two things I felt I couldn't do at my current skill level: sculpt their faces right. I did try to make a more pronounced "floof" of hair for Han, but that didn't really work. I think the point at which I could change Chewie's face to more resemble the face we all know is not too far off and I may put in another attempt.

Han Solo and Chewie: wary in the Arena of the Planeswalkers.

Side note: Yes, I purchased MtG: Arena of the Planeswalkers. I figured for $15, if I don't like the game, I got a bunch of minis for cheap. I'm already thinking of painting them up.

SW:ED - Captain Rex

Yep, I'm still here. Just being busy with things that are not hobby-related lately.

I've had my Captain Rex figure primed and ready to paint for a month or more now. I finally painted it a couple of days ago and put a clear coat on today. So, yay!

Captain Rex with his Epic Duels partner, Ahsoka Tano.

Not much to say except that I decided to go for the next gen clone helmet this time.

More pics:

Apologies for the horrible dark background that completely swallows up his darker features. I'll do better next time! Can't even show you which Heroclix figure Rex started out as; can't remember the name, can't find an empty clix base that I can't account for.

Hogwarts Battle (Game 4)

We've been on vacation for a few days and I brought a couple of games. So far we've played Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle twice. Both times was Game 4, which we hadn't tried yet.

The first game was me and Jenni playing with our two oldest kids. We put up quite a desperate-feeling fight. We lost the first location quite quickly. Then with the requirement to pick two Dark Arts cards per turn, the harder villains coming up early in the game, and all the characters getting stunned at least once each, those skull tokens just kept piling up! We ended the game defeated with five villains still in play or in the queue.

The second game was a complete opposite. It was kind of funny actually. With three of us playing Ron, Hermione, and Neville, we fell into much better luck!

We turned up Crab and Goyle right off the bat and the strategy became one of keeping them alive and keep defeating the stronger villains only, thus avoiding some of the tougher villain combos that can come up. The strategy worked as we only lost the first area about three rounds from the end. We finished the game with the defeat of the death eater, which boosted everyone's health back up to 10! So we were very happy to win and feeling like we can take on Game 5.

Maybe.

Snippets

Hi all!

Lately I'm only getting snippets of time to hobby here and there, and I'm not always taking them each time either. So, I've just a few random pics to show. Maybe interesting to you, maybe not...

Imperial Settlers

A friend left this game with me to learn for the next time we get together for games. It has a solo variant, which is what I tried. Did I play it right? I dunno. I did well enough with a score just over 50, which is a middling score, based on the ranking system found in the rule book. With a middling score, I'm reasonably convinced that I didn't cheat!

The game is a resource management card game with 4 factions: Barbarians, Romans, Egyptians, and Japanese. I played Romans. I like the solo scoring system to try and better your score when competing with yourself, but I really get the feeling that playing with human opponents will give a better gaming experience.

This game reminds me of a computer game my brothers used to play (I couldn't get into it for some reason). There are a number of similarities between the two. For one, the titles: Imperial Settlers vs. The Settlers. Second, the factions available to play in both games included Romans and Egyptians. Third, the guy on the box cover (see above), but the people depicted on the cards even more so, just look like the little guys who run around building and fighting in the computer game.

My final layout. The attacker deck just couldn't get the combinations needed to raze any of my buildings until the very end.

Oh! Not Zombies!

The next day, I tried out playing the zombie game with my son. His attention span couldn't hold out against the zombie onslaught and he quit during turn 2, which was shortly after I took this picture.

Early on, Mr. Eager Beaver there in the lead has already acquired 2 out of the three hits I assigned to player troops.

I changed a few things from the last time we did this, and my changes might make the game a little harder. The changes reflected how I remember the game Zombies! going when I played it that one time 12 years ago: adding tiles drawn from a stack as players move into those areas and adding zombies x d8 to the new tile laid. I also decreed that immobilized undead remained in the square they died in and the living can't pass through or land on them without risking infection. Maybe I'll try this again solo to see how well it works. I might make up new rules for zombie movement as well.

For anyone feeling down about their workspace:

I just wanted to take a random picture of my miniatures building/painting area. Yes, this is my entire workspace. It's portable (around the house anyway), has walls so it catches shavings and I don't lose bits from it. It's not bad. And yes, that's pretty much all the tools I use too.

My box of fun.

The knife I cut down from a dull, old paring knife. I found the dental pick on the road. The metal thing to the right of the dental pick is the remainder of a sawzall blade that I cut a chunk out of for a knife I built a while ago. Some green stuff and a bottle of super glue (happens to be Gorilla brand). I've got an Xacto set that I'll use as well and my brushes aren't pictured either.

For motivation purposes, I just thought people might be interested to know how little one actually needs to get started with modding Heroclix.

Oh, and the work in progress, the red figure laying on the Jenga block? Hopefully I will be revealing his altered state soonish!

SW:ED Project - Asajj Ventress and more clones

I first saw Asajj Ventress in some Clone Wars episodes. I wanted to get a Sith figure in and I thought she'd make a good addition, especially since she is often fighting against Ahsoka Tano, whom I have already modded a figure for.

Looking through my box of candidates, I came across a sculpt of Elektra.

Image from hcrealms.com

I find this sculpt to be rather ugly. So many things just look so wrong with it. One thing that's good about it is that it is a good pose for someone holding a lightsaber or two!

Looking for images of the character, there are a number of different interpretations of what Ventress looks like. Of all the ones I scrolled through, I liked this one the best: Link to Asajj. I based the look and much of the colour scheme on this image. And the result:

Still debating how much I want to her face in the way of coloured lines.

One might notice that the base is black. That's because I broke down and bought a primer. How glad I am that I did. Paint goes on so much smoother and stays on better. I primed the bases with the models.

The Epic Duels deck I downloaded combines Ventress with a couple of battle droids. However, I'm not yet sure how I want to model battle droids with their skinny legs and arms, thus the posting of just the main character.

Bring in the clones

I also got the three other Punisher sculpts turned into clones. I'm not as happy with how the minigun-wielding one turned out, mainly because he was a little larger scale than the others, but it'll work for the table top and that's all I need!

Here they are:

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis

She's all like, "Seriously?"