Episode 6 Return of the Fly Guy

In my spare time, when I'm not doing the things that I really enjoy doing, I mold young minds. No, I don't use clay. I'm talking actual minds. As crazy as it seems, I am a teacher and one of the stories that my students read is a series about a fly name Fly Guy. 

All the ladies love me

4 Corners of 30k - Week 10

Week 10 - Balance

What is the biggest complaint that you hear about most tabletop games?

You hear the words: "OP", "broken", "unbalanced" and more.

Games Workshop is one of the biggest culprits of being unbalanced; mainly do to it's release schedule for army updates.

I dare say that the Horus Heresy line offers something big to Warhammer 40k fans: balance.

Off Duty Gamer: Skull Island X, the stories so far

Yesterday marked the release of the 7^th story coming out of Privateer Press’ Skull Island eXpeditions digital

imprint. As a huge fan of the Iron Kingdoms fiction I’ve been buying every story as soon as I can but I know others who aren’t sure which ones are worth picking up, so today I’m going to go over each novella and novel in some detail so as to help our readers decide where to dive in. I’ve decided to do this in reverse order of release, since the older the novella is the more likely you’ve already read it anyway.

Twyg's Thursday Thoughts - Digital gaming and your hobby

Thanks wikipedia for this icon of video gamin'

As consummate gamers and hobbyists there's a lot of distractions out there for us to indulge in. I've noticed within the table top gaming community it seems as though the hobby can be all consuming for some, with painting, playing, and theory crafting (list building) taking a large chunk of the remaining time. As someone with limited time and only one foot in the hobby I find myself playing a lot of single player games that may or may not bump into the multiplayer realm. But is that a detractor to hobby for me (or anyone else) I don't believe so, in fact quite the opposite.

Lemme share with you what I'm playing and why I feel it helps my tabletop and war gaming skills. 

On PC I'm playing a lot of War Thunder, an exceptional WW II flight sim game where everything from your starting bi-planes to the end war jet fighters make an appearance. There's an excellent leveling up experience model, well done micro transactions and a lot of good old fashioned dog fights. So why would this help my table top game? In my opinion: it gets me thinking outside the box. Here I am in a three dimensional fight with many different planes (models) with different strengths and weaknesses. Sound familiar? 

All too often I'd leave the crons' doomsday ark in the corner sniping away with a 72" range gun, but now, what if I've got it lined up with terrain where someone will assume its line of sight isn't a threat? Suddenly a trap appears. What about that p39? It can't climb well, but woe to the person on the other end of its dive... Then there's the BF109, the exact opposite with exceptional climbing characteristics. Now, what happens of you turn around and do something unexpected? Use the P 39 to climb and just lurk high up... Never dropping. Will I get many kills? No, but have I made the opponents wonder what the hell, just to swoop down in the last few minutes and clean up. So now apply that to the doomsday ark. Let my opponent wonder why it's collecting dust, just to have them blunder into a kill zone... Nice! Think outside the box, make the opponent guess and more importantly worry...

Talisman prologue on the PC as well. We're all fairly familiar with talisman, and if you're not, you should get acquainted... If. You know it, then check and yourself what it'd be like to have objectives with just one player and class. By going through what's normally a full board game but focusing on one objective you learn a lot about how to figure out one of your favorite characters. For example, the Warrior can roll two six sided die in combat and take the highest one. But what happens when you land on a spot with three bad guys all rolling a d6 themselves? How do you manage him? Fully random, or are there things you can do?

Pulling it into tabletop you find your mind ready to be flexible and able to cope with specific situations, it's muscle memory now. You'll have a given character on the field who has a specific "trick", is now the time to use it, or later? Flexing those muscles will certainly help keep you thinking of the options available to you outside of just the random rolls.

Then there's a ton of iOS games, Magic The Gathering, Plague Inc, Star Command, Warhammer Quest, even Puzzle Quest...

So what games do you have that are flexing your brain muscles on your computer or device? How do they stretch your thought process with them? Hopefully it'll give you some new insight on your games and your tabletop... Good luck!

Twyg out

Episode 5 The Paintbrush Strikes Back

A long time ago, in an LGS far, far away a gamer was rolling dice and moving tiny metal elves around a table. It was a joyous time. The the dark forces that been changed the rules for the elves and the gamer some eff this crap, put the models in their foam, and placed them on a shelf in the basement. As tragic and rage filled as this ending was, it proved to be the beginning of something else. Later, as I walked around the store wondering what to do I saw . . .

Sick 'em boys

Skaven WIP update: Plague Monks!!

Working on the skittering horde, I promise paint will be flowing next week on these guys. The last unit of plague monks are being assembled!

4 Corners of 30k - Week 9

Week 9 - Melting Point

Well, there has been a lot of building and priming going on at the Swonkob Bo stronghold but waiting for product from the UK; is like watching paint dry. For an impatient buyer like myself, it makes getting things from Forge World a lackluster experience. Three and a half weeks of waiting and the Royal Mail finally showed up at my house. Ok, it was lackluster for 3.5 weeks but I was pretty excited when I saw the box in the driveway!

Initial thought when I saw the box: "AWESOME!"

Second thought: "CRAP!"

Are those my models?

You see, it broke 100 degrees on my car's thermometer that day; all I could imagine was the box in the middle of the oven of asphalt and a puddle of resin at the bottom of the box!

After a DEEP breath, I examined the contents of the box and, not only was everything below the melting point, it was all accounted for!

After looking over each item; the "wow" moment for me was the shear size of the Cerberus Tank Destroyer bag! It is HUGE!

Here it is next to an Ironclad box!

The instructions were elaborate and covered the ins and outs of the 35+ pieces of resin. I'm looking forward to putting it all together! But I promised myself that I won't build it until my painting table is clean; so clean it will be!

After drooling over the Cerberus Tank Destroyer, my attention quickly jumped to the Alpha Legion dread body. Oh yeah!

This is how it looked when I opened the box (less the arms):

I proceeded to remove the chaos iconography with a razor....well, except for those amazing hydras on the chest!

Within an hour of its arrival from the land of tea and crumpets, the dread looked like this:

It'll be easier to see once there's paint but the points on the edging came off clean and the chaos arrows are all gone!

Next week: Recon Marines and....wait for it...my Praetor!

Time to clean house!

Swonkob Bo - OUT!

[Images acquired from http://warhammer40k.wikia.com and http://forgeworld.com; images were used for reference purpose only, not for monetary gain]

Twyg's Thursday Thoughts - Campin'? No board games for you? Baloney...

Da woods, so pretty!

'Tis the season for summer activities, BBQs, the beach, sitting on your couch in the AC. For some of us though camping and outdoors are where it's at. Mind you this isn't the ounce by ounce counting of hitting the AT for a 150 mile stretch, rather the drive my car up to the cabin and unload (in my miata none the less.) When you're doing that kind of camping gaming can most certainly continue.

One of our fellow bloggers and I were out and about in New Lebanon, NY for the past week nestled in the super humid lush cleavage of the Berkshire foothills. There were three square meals, exceptional overnight fires and good community. Of course after eating there's a lull where everyone's got "happy baby tummy" and just wants to chill, and that's where the gaming came in.

I decided on a few game types and feels which were small, easy to carry and were quick to teach and play. The two that I brought were the ever amusing Zombie Dice, and Guilds of Cadwallon (sold by our buddies at Cool Mini or Not.) Both were quick games with no more than ten minutes per round, and had their different feels. They were also easy enough to carry in a day pack and be played on a picnic table or ground if need be.

My companion brought in my copy of Zombicide which while a lot of fun didn't fare as well on the camping scene, even on a picnic table. We'll figure out a better way to carry it (battlefoam?) and from there I'm sure it'll work a bit better... Though for camping it may be best to save the world from zombies another day. ;)

If you're not familiar with Zombie Dice it's a simple, quick game based on a push your luck model of gameplay. Keep trying to collect 13 brains before your fellow zombies do. First to 13 wins, just watch out for the humans carrying shotguns, collect three of those and you're down for the round.

On a longer, more strategic note you've got Guilds of Cadwallon. It's a relatively new offering to the board game community with a lot of strategic potential. In Guilds you're attempting to collect district cards before your fellow "competition" gets them for themselves. As with any game that's turn based the attempts to block and otherwise terrorize your "friends" becomes all too tempting and effective. A lot of good natured ribbing.

For those who are counting ounces for the AT hike stick with Zombie Dice. If you're doing an overnight you can afford to carry the 1/2 pound Guilds for a more immersive and diabolical game, especially with four players.

So next time you're camping be sure to pack these simple games, they'll work easily in the woods and will keep those ten to twenty minutes a bit different than the normal camping. Then again, you are in the woods and should be meditating... And yet then again the RV next to you just turned on their 60" flatscreen... meh, it's your call. ;)

Episode 4 A New Hopelessness

Who wants to come here for vacation?

I thought I was living in New England, but it feels more like North Carolina. Seriously, this morning was 72 degrees F at 7am with a dew point at 70 degrees. I felt like I was back in Jacksonville, NC. It's been like this for days and it doesn't look like it's going to let up. I used the weather as a lame excuse for not painting last week and I'm going to use it again this week. However, I have set up a makeshift spraying box in my kitchen. I am going to prime the succubus it there, but with the humidity being what it is I'm not going to open any windows. I don't want to fumigate my house or get my daughter high with the fumes. I will have her primed today and maybe get some paint on her tonight when my daughter goes to sleep. 

So to fill the gap I'll walk you through my Nephilim Protector conversion. This one was much easier to do the the Soldier.

4 Corners of 30k - Week 8

Week 8 - WIP Up A Conversion or Two!

This week we'll be focusing in on some conversion work! I wish I had the conversion skills of our DuskTillDawn compadre, Darth Murphy but I'll have to make do! We'll cover the final inventory update (that's right, i said FINAL!) and you'll, also, see my first attempt at the pre-heresy color scheme!

The main conversion work is around the Alpha Legion iconography, as seen here:
 

Off Duty Gamer: I’m excited about Privateer Press Interactive and you should be too

WhiteMoon Dreams

This week, after years of hearing almost nothing out of the licensed Warmachine action-adventure videogame, Privateer Press launched Privateer Press Interactive, a cooperative group with WhiteMoon Dreams to create videogames for the Iron Kingdoms setting. They also launched the Kickstarter campaign for their first game, Warmachine: Tactics, which as of this writing has reached nearly $500k in 24 hours. Now, there are a few really cool things to come out this partnership besides this first game, and many of
them may not be completely obvious at first glance but could have some potentially huge impact in the next few years.

Twyg's Thursday Thought - Airbrushin' Ain't Easy

Airbrushin!

All-free-download.com had this airbrush image. No, I don't paint my thumbnail pink.

Back for another Thursday, this time talking about Airbrushing. It makes painting minis an absolute pleasure, however there's a lot to consider. There's tons of tutorials out there, so I won't go into much of the how-to, more so what I go through when I airbrush.

First and foremost know that there's a cost of entry for airbrushing.

Episode 3 Revenge of the Nyss

New England . . . if you don't know is a collection of states in the northeast corner of the United States. If you don't know there are six of them. It is cold in the winter, warm in the spring and fall, and can be downright disgusting in the summer. Currently we are in what we consider a heatwave. The temperature has been 85+ for more than a week, which wouldn't be all that bad if the humidity didn't make the air feel like a wet sponge. These are not ideal conditions for spray priming or seal models. So painting has had to take a backseat to other endeavors. 

What does all this mean for today's episode? We get to take a look at the Nephilim that I have been converting. 

Bo Knows: Converting for Horus Heresy

How to convert for Horus Heresy

This is an impromptu post on converting 40k models into pre-heresy armies. I cover some of this in my weekly blog called 4 Corners of 30k but Lycane suggested that I do a 1 stop shop all about making a pre-heresy army from stuff you can get at your favorite local game store!

So there are 2 reasons that you would build this army: 1. Because pre-heresy stuff looks REALLY cool or 2. Because you want to play the rules from the Forge World Horus Heresy rulebook along with answer number 1!

Either answer works and even if you aren't playing the Horus Heresy rules, it's an incredible reference guide.

Let's get started, shall we....

Let's take a look at some Forge World stuff and compare it to stock GW stuff.

Here is a Forge World MKIV Space Marine in Maximus armor:

Here is a Forge World MKV Space Marine in Heresy era armor:

And here are some items found on a standard tactical Space Marine sprue from Games Workshop that you can pick up locally:

Now you'll notice the chests are virtually the same. The MKIV plain shoulder pads are the same as the contemporary pads and the MKV studded shoulder pad is the same as the studded contemporary. The suit pictured above is a full MKVI Corvus pattern suit. The "beakie" helmet is a key factor to that pattern of armor.

Mean Jean Mondays: Dark Elves!

I picked up Dark Elves for our Fantasy Endeavor. I chose them for their fantastic looking models and great fluff.

Below are my chariot, dread lord, and Hydra at the moment.



Side View

4 Corners of 30k - Week 7

Week 7 - Assemble Your Army!

Well, I am in official "Work In Progress" mode! My hope was to get some detail in to a model for this week but I have been distracted by building and priming! It's looking like details won't come for a few more weeks yet.

Here is what I hope to detail up first:

Legion Praetors are hawght!

Episode 2 Attack of the Clippers

A long time ago (a really long time ago), I bought my first album. Yes, I said album. It was large, black vinyl disc by the band Kiss. Who is Kiss? Who is Kiss? Oh, let me educate you.

Who stole my pajamas?

This was also in the time before iTunes and the world of music was ruled by the all powerful Columbia House Music Club. look it up. Why do I bring up such an archaic band. The base player for the band (the pretty one on the far right) was a man named Gene Simmons. He had a habit of sticking out his tongue and dressing in leather with bat like wings under his arms. He is a very ugly man, rich, but butt ugly.

Which brings me to this weeks topic . . . the Legion of Everblight Succubus.

Skaven WIP 2

Still assembling the skittering horde.

I have the magnets in the screaming bell/plague furnace. 

I have 2 filler units assembled. 

A regiment base done. 

A custom plague monk, banner standard, and 2 assassins or gutter runners. 

Progress is going well. My next group will be the storm vermin and plague monks. 

That's the group shot, like the 3 headed rat?