A Little Painting

Not much to say today.  I was in kind of a bad mood, so I sat down to do a little painting.  That usually helps.  I grabbed one of the many, many models from my 'to do shelf' and threw some paint onto it.  I still need to do the base and a little more detail work, but it's generally pretty close.  I'll be painting his twin in a completely different scheme to represent that they come from different places.

I tried the paint chipping using a sponge technique.  I'm not convinced that I life it.  I do really like the way the after market heads turned out.

Star Wars Legion

One of the reasons that I haven't been posting much lately is that I have a serious case of the gamer blahs.  Star Wars Armada season is over.  Runewars isn't really catching on in my area.  40k has had a major resurgence, but it still feel like the same game with the same problems.  I can't ally anyone with my Necrons or Tau and hate that alpha strikes are still everywhere.  I've lost full units in every game I've played before being able to activate them.  That should never happen.

Right now, I feel like I'm in a holding pattern.  But...

There is light at the end of the tunnel.  That light is called Legion.

This game is basically the result of Warhammer 40k amd SW Armada making a beautiful baby wearing a Stormtrooper helmet.  I'm super excited.  The models look amazing.  The gameplay looks amazing.  Everything about this looks amazing.  It's what I've always wanted.

We will, of course, have epic showdowns between iconic heroes and villains.

Unlike 40k, Legion will have unit and upgrade cards as well as special dice, just like in X-Wing and Armada.

Can't wait.  The only bad thing about this game is that it's not out yet.

I Swear I'm Not Dead

...I've just been really aimless lately.  I'm going to try to start posting on a regular basis again.  I'm currently aiming for Monday, Wednesday and Friday updates with extra as needed.  I just don't have the free time that I used to.

To start with, here's a quick photo of some terrain I'm working on for the upcoming Star Wars Legion.  It looks like it's going to be a really fun game.  This thing took 23 hours to print.  

Kinda pissed about this next picture.  Both pieces look great on the pic below.  After I took the pic, I let the pieces sit outside for the glue to dry.  The right wing was parallel to the sunlight and caught even sun on both sides.  The left piece was parallel and got all the sun on one side.  It ended up warping.  Not terribly, but I'm sad that it happened.  I think I can play it off as battle damage if I hack at it a little.  Sigh.

Star Wars Armada Tournament Today

I'm posting this ahead of time.  I'll be playing in the Star Wars Armada North American Championship today.  I'm pretty psyched.  I'm flying the four Victory list I posted about a couple of days ago.  Stay tuned.  On Monday I'll be posting how the trip went.

Gen Con 50 Road Trip Starts Today!

Today is the day.  I'm headed out to Indianapolis to visit Gen Con 50.  I've never been to a large convention like this before.  I'm super exited abut it.  I'm bringing my laptop, so I should be able to post at the Con.

CORRECTION...  I'm excited.  I have not exited.  I'm also not bringing my laptop.  I really don't have the space and I don't want to have to worry about something happening to it.  I'll just post about the Con when I get back.

40k Reset

I'm not currently digging the Primaris Marines.  They're just part of an army.  You still need regular Marines to fill in the gaps.

I'm not currently digging my Tau.  Two other players are playing Tau right now.

I'm not currently digging my AdMech.  I'm just not.

I like the Necrons, but I'd need to really build and paint a ton of stuff to get it up to 8th Edition viability.

I decided to do a full reset.  I shelved everything.  I'm starting over.

I mentioned to my gaming group that I was looking for a reset switch.  After a couple of trades and barters, I ended up spending $30 and trading a bunch of old metal Kasrkin models for about 1,000 points of brand new Death Guard models.  I've never had a Chaos army before, so this will be a new phenomenon.  It's also going to be a crazy painting challenge.  Every model is basically a super detailed character.

So far I've built the Lord of Contagion and two 5-man Plague Marines squads.  The seven dudes in the Dark Imperium box plus the three dudes in the Easy to Build box make for a nice set of 5-man squads.  Almost like they planned that.

3D Printed Deck/Graveyard Holder

I play a lot of games that have relatively small decks.  The Arkham Horror and Star Wars LCGs are two that pop into mind.  I saw someone online did a laser cut acrylic deck thing and I decided to try to make something similar with the 3D printer.

First, I designed the thing in Sketchup and exported to an STL file.  Here it is in the 3D Builder app that comes with Windows.

The actual print took almost six hours, but resulted in exactly what I wanted...

The green deck in the pictures is a 30 card deck.  I think I'd have to make the posts a little taller to accommodate a 60 card deck.  That'll be Mk3.  Mk1 was a failure.  The above is Mk2.

Star Wars Armada Quad Victory List

I've been playing a little more Star Wars Armada lately.  It's the game that one of my regular gaming groups has more or less fixated on, so it behooves me to take it a little more seriously...  or to at least play it more.  My plan is to make lists that I like, but that aren't necessarily meta winning.

My first list is a four Victory Star Destroyer list.  Three of the Vics are II-class and the last is I-class.  The fleet is led my Admiral Konstantine, an upgrade that allows me to change opponent ship speeds up or down one at the start of each round if they're within long range of at least two of my ships...  which should be easy to achieve with four pretty chunky ships.

The three II-class ships are equipped as such...

The idea is to pop Disposable Capacitors as soon as possible for a long range, 6 die shot.  The Dual Turbolaser Turrets give me a little bit of a reroll.  The Veteran Captain is there to pad me out to 400 points and give me a nav or engineering token when I need it.  I'm counting on second player for this list, so I might as well go to 400 points.

The last ship is equipped as such...

The idea here is to have this ship swoop in late game and drop 9 dice out the front and maybe another 3 out the side.  Spinal Armament also allows me to threaten out the rear if I need to.  Konstantine will ride in this ship.

I did get to play a game with this list and did pretty well.  I played against my buddy Troy, who is generally a much better player than I am.  We played the Contested Outpost mission, which netted me 100 points.  I ended up winning 8-3.

I'll be going to the North American Championship at Gencon later this month.  I think this is the list that I'm going to be flying.  I'll be absolutely crushed by anything with a lot of bombers, but I think I'll do ok against everything else.  Time will tell.  In either case, I'll be flying a list that I like to fly.

FFG is making a Fallout game!!!

This is some totally exciting news.  I pretty much like everything that FFG does.  From a gaming standpoint, I feel like they poop gold.  I can't remember the last time I played an FFG game that I didn't like.

Enter this...

That's right, a Fallout game designed by FFG.  It's listed as a game for 1-4 players, so there is a solo mode.  I feel like solo modes are really important these days.  People buy these complex games and want to be able to play them without always having to coordinate with other people.  Sometimes it's nice to put on Netflix and play something more complicated than solitaire.
 

The game comes with five different heroes to choose from and is played on a series of hexagonal tiles.  The scenarios are drawn from Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.  I'm assuming that if this sells well that there will be a Fallout New Vegas expansion at some point.

I have no idea how the game plays yet, but I dig the 1950's scifi look.

I'm sure we'll get more details in the coming months.  This is supposed to be out sometime in Q4, so I'm assuming a Christmas release or so.

Life is hard...

Life has been generally kicking my butt lately.  I haven't been able to work up the motivation to do much of anything lately.

On the upside, I just got a 3D printer.  It's assembled and I've started knocking out small things.  I'll start posting pictures more regularly...  back to daily Monday through Friday as of this post.

First up, a few bits for Star Wars Armada.  First is a damage deck holder.  Second is a small tray with cutouts for all of the tokens that a ship might use.  I'm ridiculously happy with how everything turned out.