Presenting ... Bob Moss

When I saw this Classic Treant from the Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures line by WizKids, I couldn't resist buying it. It looks like it came straight out of the first edition Monster Manual.

Whether I end up using it for Shadowdark, I figured the sculpt, with all that texture, would be easy to paint, and I was right.

I sprayed it with a dark brown basecoat (Rustoleum's Espresso paint+primer) and drybrushed the trunk in lighter shades of brown craft paint, then a golden yellow, then a light gray.

I did the leaves the same way, starting with a dark hunter's green, adding successively brighter shades, and finishing with a light drybrush of bright yellow.

The eyes were ivory, then an antique maroon for the colored part, then a dot of bright yellow for a highlight. I then added grass and plants to the base, and Bob's your treant!

An old obsession ...

 ... Ogre!

I had the urge to play the venerable hex-and-counter sci-fi tank wargame at game night last week, so I brought my Classic Counters and two maps from the Designer's Edition: The original orange from the basic Ogre game, and the green from the GEV expansion. I also brought plenty of terrain overlays for when attacks accidentally or intentionally damage forest or town hexes.

Since it had been awhile since we'd played, I thought we would warm up with a destroy the command post game using the original rules. With three of us there for game night, I played the defender against two Mark IIIs attacking. Long story short, I could not slow them down enough to prevent them from obliterating most of my army (and the CP), and the cybertanks dodged out of range of my artillery to escape. 

We then set up the green map for a game of raid, with a Mark IV and six GEVs attacking, and a lone Mark V defending (but with two rolls on the reinforcements table). Two of us ran the defense, and the third split his hovercraft away from his Ogre to tear up some real estate. Unfortunately for the GEVs, I had some reinforcements come in nearby and take out most of his armor. The rest tried to close in on my CP, but were driven off (they did kill one of the Mobile Command Posts, however).

Over on the west side of the map (we were at the north end looking south), the attacking cybertank took out the other MCP and some unfortunate reinforcements in that area--until my partner used all six of the Mark V's missiles to destroy the Mark IV's missile racks. A turn or two later, the watchdog took out the attacker's main and secondary batteries, so the Mark IV turned tail.

The fleeing Ogre still had plenty of movement even after losing 39 tread units (two hexes, three on the road). Therefore, we defenders were unable to slow it down enough to capture or kill, but it was still a victory for the locals! 

It was enjoyable playing this classic wargame, and we are playing again this week. Should be fun.

My latest obsession ...

 Shadowdark!

After hearing good things about it on the you-tubes, I picked up a hardbound copy of the Shadowdark RPG from its publisher, The Arcane Library. 

Shadowdark uses modern mechanics (such as d20 difficulty checks and advantage/disadvantage) to provide an old-school experience (dungeon crawls and emergent narrative). Part of that OSR vibe is that characters don't get experience for defeating bad guys, just for finding treasure. This mechanic inspires out-of-the-box thinking instead of just trying to kill everything that moves.

The writing is concise and reminds me of the Holmes Basic rulebook--sections are one or two pages, and concepts explained in a few paragraphs. Part of that is character creation: Roll 3d6 in order for each stat, pick an ancestry and class, roll for starting money, and you have a PC in under 10 minutes.

My gaming group is mostly wargamers, but they've expressed willingness to try out this D&D-type experience, so I hope to have a scenario prepped for them soon. I'd like to eventually turn it into a West Marches-style sandbox campaign, but for now I just want to run a dungeon crawl.

Has anyone played this RPG? Does it sound like something you would be willing to try? If my description of Shadowdark sparks your interest, you can get the Quickstart Set for free. Let me know what you think!

Behold!

Presenting: The Eye Tyrant; a.k.a. The Sphere of Many Eyes, a.k.a. The Beholder!

This figure depicting the classic D&D monster is from the Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures line by WizKids.

My wife purchased this casting and asked me to paint it for her to take to the office, where it will sit next to the giant I painted for her last year.

I was again very flattered that she asked me to paint a mini for her. Although she's not the gamer I am, she does appreciate my creativity and encourage me to pursue my hobby.

For this minature, I primed it black, then did a lot of drybrushing various shades of color-shifting paint from the craft store (mainly Blue Flash and Purple Flash, using Red Flash, White Flash, and Yellow Flash for the eyeballs. I also used some Army Painter Speed Paints around the mouth and tongue.

This model does come with six of its eyes sculpted onto the main body, and you have the option of adding plain eyestalks or eyestalks shooting magical beams (my spouse chose the former).

Here's a top-down view in case you're curious.

And the figure is very large when compared to human-sized minis; making for a terrifying opponent in the dark lower levels of the dungeon.

Or, in this case, menacing the other miniature next to my wife's work computer. Either way, I enjoyed painting it!

Clanmech binary

Some more battlemechs, this time from the Clan era. As an old-school Battletech player, I'm not much of a fan of the Clan Invasion storyline, but between the Alpha Strike boxed set, some Salvage Box purchases, and a couple of donations, I have amassed 10 of these miniatures. First is the Clan star that was included in the AS box (l-r): Nova, Pouncer, Fire Moth, Warhawk, Timberwolf/Madcat.

Painting was straightforward, if a little messy. I painted the base color with a light tan Krylon spray paint + primer, then used an old toothbrush to spatter various maroon, orange and yellow craft paints onto all of these at once. I then brushed over some Army painter strong tone, picked out the cockpit windows with pearlescent white, painted the bases, varnished them, and called it a day.

The second star came from two blind purchases, a gift of two extra mechs, and the Blood Asp salvage box (l-r): Nova, Huntsman, Linebacker, Warhawk, Blood Asp.

For this unit, I hit them all with a light blue paint + primer, splattered various greens and yellow with the toothbrush, and covered them with green tone before covering the bases in gray and detailing the cockpits, then finishing the bases and clearcoating.

I like this painting technique, although it does take a while to notice whether any paint is actually landing on the minis, and it isn't as fast as you might think. But combine the haphazard drops of color to emulate a random camouflage pattern with the way the wash picks out the details on these castings, and it has an overall pleasing effect. Has anyone else tried something like this on their wargaming minis?

More battlemechs

Here's a trio of mech miniatures I recently completed. Since these came from the blind-purchase Salvage Boxes, they each have a different paint scheme. 

For the Enforcer (left) and Stinger (right), I used Army Painter speed paints. I like how the former came out, but the color scheme on the latter makes it look like a toddler in an outfit —so I gave it the callsign "1-Z".

I'm pleased with how the Atlas (center) came out as well. Another easy task: I hit the bottom and top haves with two different hues of spray primer, then applied green and blue tone to each. I picked out some weapons in gold, applied decals, and sealed with matte spray varnish.

So, that's three more battlemechs ready for our Alpha Strike games, for close to 40 total. Only about two dozen left for me to paint!

Corpsefire

Playing one of the military expedition mini-campaigns in Oathbreakers, I needed a corpsefire mini. I decided to use this Reaper Bones miniature.

In a simultaneous attempt at zenithal highlighting and color gradient, I hit this with red Krylon primer from below, some orange straight from the side, and yellow from above. I then drybrushed and picked out details using color shifting and regular craft paints for an undead mini without any black. 

Quite the change, but I like how it came out, even though it suffered the new-figure curse and died on the first turn. 

Grunhilda says hello

 A little late for St. Patrick's Day, but please allow me to introduce Grunhilda Vert, part of a project I'm working on for my gaming group. The figure came from an Arena of the Planeswalkers game I picked up cheap a few years back.

I painted this mini by basecoating with some brush-on craft paint (I learned the hard way that Rustoleum spray primer on other models from this box remained tacky for more than a year; it took covering them with regular acrylics to get rid of the stickiness), overbrushing gray, and drybrushing white. 

The casting's details showed up easily under the drybrush, and I then used various shades of speed paints and some craft metallics with a wash to apply the color scheme. The banner is paper covered with craft paint and wrapped around a coffee stirrer straw that fits over the wand she's holding. 

It was a quick task for a tabletop standard, and I'm happy with the result. Now, who wants to guess what I'm gonna use her for?

Don't wake the dragon!

We tried a new scenario recently for Oathmark. It was basically a meeting engagement, but when you arrive at the battlefield, you find a dragon slumbering between the opposing armies.

The drake would awaken if any unit moved or cast a spell too close to it, or if anyone attacked the sleeping beast. Once conscious, it would attack the closest unit in its line-of-sight or make a random move. This had us both literally tiptoeing around the middle of the battlefield.

Eventually we moved into combat with one another, and I had my archers shoot at the dragon to wake it up. This backfired eventually when the wyrm randomly turned and started focusing on my units.

One non-dragon highlight of the battle was when our heavy cavalry--mine led by a champion, his by a prince--met in combat, and we both rolled 10s on the Champion die, our leaders dying at each other's hand.

Even though the dragon decided to snack on my units, tipping the battle to my opponent, it was a fun time and a nice way to get such a creature on the board without unbalancing either side.

Some toasters

Another batch of battlemechs, which my wife christened "toasters" because of their resemblance to the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

These guys were simple and quick to paint: Gloss black spray primer, and sucessive drybrushes of metallic black, metallic gunmetal gray, metallic silver, and metallic white (all craft paints).

I applied some color-shifting black to the cockpit canopies, then picked out a few weapon muzzles in metallic red to give that Terminator vibe, and I was done.

From left: Commando, Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, and Locust.

Some UrbanMechs

As you may have noticed, I recently got back into Battletech--or more accurately, Alpha Strike. The game plays extremely quick, and I really like the look and sizes of the plastic minis from Catalyst Game Labs. 

I've got nearly four dozen battlemech figures, but not enough of the light 'mechs, so I decided to pick up an UrbanMech lance to supplement the more substantial combat walkers in my collection. 

Painting was super-simple, thanks to my set of speed paints: One solid color for everything but the weapons (black) and windows (just craft paint pearlescent white with a blue wash). Now I have another quartet of units for Alpha Strike!

6mm civilian vehicles

Having recently returned to Battletech via the more streamlined Alpha Strike rules, I find myself in need of some 1/285 scale terrain suitable for the battlefields of the future. But even the 31st century has a need for construction equipment and delivery vehicles.

 

These castings were originally player tokens for Monopoly City that I had acquired in the process of building my Monopolis. For some reason, likely to resell them on eBay, I put them aside years ago. They came to light a couple of weeks ago as I was cleaning out my game room, and I noticed they fit in perfectly with the new battlemechs from Catalyst Game Labs. 

Some spray paint and a few details later, here we are! Anyone else using these minis?

Still around

 I know it's been awhile--OK, a year since my last post. I have fallen out of the blogging habit, with no real motivation to post more regularly.

Don't worry, though! I am still gaming and still painting miniatures. As proof, here is some sort of giant model I picked up at a flea market last year. I think it's from a Vikings boardgame.

This figure was very easy to paint, thanks to the sculpting and to the Army Painter speed paints I was using.

I was planning on using him in Oathmark, D&D, or Frostgrave, but instead my wife took him to put on her desk at work. I'm flattered she likes my work that much!

Who knows, maybe I will start blogging more soon. Meanwhile, happy gaming.

A different kind of convention (for me anyway)

Earlier this month, my wife and I went to our first ever science fiction convention: ArmadilloCon here in the Austin area. 

My wife did confess that at first she thought I had talked her into attending a game convention, and wasn't sure about going. However, once we got there and she realized that it was more of a book fans' event than a comicon or wargames show, she got into it.

While the con did have open gaming (which we did not take advantage of)--and a dealer room and an art room, both of which sucked away some of our money--the main attraction was all the authors who participated in readings, discussion, panels and book signings.

My favorite panel was the first one we attended, "Spotlight on Southwest-Themed Sci Fi and Fantasy," which had four Texas authors talking about (mainly) the Lone Star State and its influence on speculative fiction. 

I enjoyed that all the panel members were from or currently living in parts of the state where I had resided at one time or another. I also got a kick out of the fact that two of them were originally from my old stomping ground in West Texas, and their discussions about that region took me back there. They also name-checked several Texas writers, including Robert E. Howard and Elizabeth Moon.

Other panels were just as interesting (like the one on "What have Texas Infrastructure Failures Taught Us About the Coming Apocalypse?") and had may authors from around Austin as well as other parts of the state. We also heard from local horror author Gabino Iglesias, and went home with a couple of his books as well as his autograph.

The highlight for us was special guest Cory Doctorow reading an exceprt from one of his upcoming books, The Lost Cause. His writing captivated my spouse and I, and his take on the future, which can be described as "hopepunk" is one I enjoy.

So that was our first science fiction convention. I think we'll be going again next year.

Back and there again: Battle of Five Armies with Oathmark

Some time ago, I discussed gaming the Battle of Five Armies using Hordes of the Things. I want to return to that theorizing, but since my friends and I have been playing Oathmark for the past year or so, let's talk about using that ruleset to recreate the scenario from the book version of The Hobbit.

For convenience, we'll go with a figure scale of 1:20, meaning one miniature represents around one score of participants in the battle. Single figures represent certain leaders or other characters along with their bodyguards/companions/retinue.

BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES

  

Dwarfs

Dwarf King (Thorin & Company)

Dwarf Prince (Dáin Ironfoot) with 9 Dwarf Linebreakers

15 Dwarf Soldiers

Men of Laketown

Human Captain (Bard) with 9 Human Soldiers

Elves

Elf King (Thranduil) with 19 Elf Warriors

20 Elf Spearmen

10 Elf Archers

Others

Human Spellcaster 5 (Gandalf)

Indrik (Beorn)

5 Gargoyles (Giant Eagles)

5 Gargoyles (Giant Eagles)

Goblins

Orc King (Bolg) with 4 Orc Warriors (huge goblin bodyguards)

20 Goblin Soldiers

20 Goblin Soldiers

20 Goblin Soldiers

20 Goblin Archers

10 Goblin Wolf Riders

10 Goblin Wolf Rider Scouts

10 Wolves

5 Gargoyles (giant bats)

Set-Up

Use hills to make a L shape, with each leg about 36" long with the apex to the north. Put some rough ground about 8" across in between the two legs of the L (about 15" from the apex) to represent the ruins of Dale. Place the elves and Gandalf on the left (western) leg of the L. Thorin and co. are at the apex, behind a defensive fortification. The rest of the dwarves are on the right (eastern) leg closest to the middle, and the men of Laketown on the outer end of that hill. All units are facing inward, and the ground behind them is considered impassable except as noted below. Beorn and the Eagles are not placed at this time.

Goblins deploy in the valley within 12" of the south edge of the map and at least 12" away from any elevation.

Special Rules

To represent the vast hordes beseiging the Lonely Mountain, any Goblin unit (except Bolg and his bodyguards) that is destroyed may attempt to come back the following turn. If the destroyed unit activates, it uses one action and may take one action after placement. Units may not be placed within 3" of an enemy unit. Roll to determine location:  

1        no placement this turn

2-4      south edge of map

5        left half of western hill

6        right half of western hill

7        left third of eastern hill

8        middle third of eastern hill

9        right third of eastern hill

10       player's choice

Beginning on turn 5, any unit of Giant Eagles may be placed on the western edge of the map with a successful activation roll and may then take two actions.

Beginning on turn 7, Beorn may be placed on the western edge of the map south of the hill with a successful activation roll and may then take two actions.

Outcome

The game lasts until either all characters on one side are destroyed or until the Goblins move at least two non-flying units into the fortification where Thorin is initially located.

***

I think that pretty much covers everything except Gandalf's spells. I don't see him using fireball, so I wonder what magic I should give him for this battle. Any suggestions?

Solo wargaming

After watching a number of videos discussing this book on the Joy of Wargaming Youtube channel, I decided to pick up The Solo Wargaming Guide by William Sylvester.

While I'm fortunate to have a regular gaming group, I found some of this publication's ideas about creating solo campaigns intriguing. Although the book mainly focuses on historical wargaming, he has some suggestions for more modern and fantasy settings as well.

And the ideas around the solo campaign (create a map, dice for each side's plans, and see where they end up) can also help create scenarios that aren't your usual matching points, line 'em up on opposide sides of the table and have at it.

In addition to the traditional historicals or imagin-nations, this book will prove useful for campaigns of Oathmark, Ogre, and even Full Thrust.

Has anyone else read this book?

Mounted Bretonnian Sorceress

One of my painting accomplishments last year was this Mounted Bretonnian Sorceress from fifth edition Warhammer Fantasy.

I haven't played that game; however, she worked great as a mounted human spellcaster for my first Oathmark army.

I enjoyed painting up the Lady Monique de Ville, and I used her in many Oathmark battles, where her Sieze the Initiative spell helped my kingdom triumph against their foes.

I accquired this figure a few years back secondhand, from a vendor at MillenniumCon. 

I could have kept her in the blister pack as a collectible or for resale, but where's the fun in that?

She belongs on the tabletop, as do all the miniatures I've bought over the years--and these days, some of them are actually seeing action!

I know it's not perfect close-up, but on the tabletop against my oponents, this casting looks great!