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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Terminator Genisys: Looking Closer At Judgement Day

So a couple weeks ago I received an email from Warlord Games and I decided to see what was new and exciting.  I'm quite happy with my US Army force for Konflikt 47 for now so it was more out of curiosity than anything.  One of the first things that pops up is the Terminator Genisys miniature game.  Now, I was aware that this was a thing but I've never really given it any serious thought.  I enjoyed the first two movies but I haven't followed anything since then and I wasn't really interested in investing in another miniature game... and then I saw the price.  Only $16 for the normally $75 basic starter.

Here's the cover for the basic set
 
This piqued my interest but rather than blindly order some I decided to look at some reviews first.  After all it doesn't matter how cheap something is if its a pile of crap is, it's still a pile of crap.  I haven't heard anything about the game so I was surprised that the reviews that I found were quite positive and the mechanics sounded interesting too.  That combined with the ridiculously low price... well, I decided that I had to buy a couple to try it out.

Of course now I have to wait for it to arrive from Warlord so it might be a little bit (I've only ordered once before from them so I don't have a lot of experience with how long their shipping time is).  In the mean time I went ahead and started perusing the local Wally World for things to put into the post apocalyptic wasteland and stumbled on something that I think will work quite well.

In Terminator: Salvation they introduced moto-terminators.  I haven't seen the movie but I did find some images online.  This is something that has not been created for the miniature game but I found some Bat Pods from Hot Wheels and I'm going to use these as a stand in for them.  There are no official rules for them in the game but the system seems very straight forward so it should be easy to whip up some stats for them.

My moto-terminator proxies
Along the same vein I grabbed a few Hot Wheels Bats (apparently another of Bat-Man's many crazy vehicles) and I'm thinking of using these as proxies for Buzzer flying drones.  I've never seen the actual miniature but I'm thinking that these might be a bit on the large side.  Then again they only cost me a buck a piece so I'm okay with them not being quite to scale with the official miniature. (Since I ordered I've also heard that the game has been discontinued so I'm very happy to have my proxies to field).

Once I have the game I'm going to see if I can get my daughter to try it out with me.  She has been enjoying Frostgrave and she recently did an art project on a post-apocalyptic future where robots have "evolved" to the point that they have become a part of nature.  An interesting spin on the concept and who knows?  Maybe she'll enjoy playing this game as well.  Whether she's willing to be a guinea pig or not, I'll definitely share my thoughts on the game once I have given it a try.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Shadow War Armageddon: Send In The Clowns

Just like almost everyone my age that plays miniature games, one of the first games I played was Warhammer 40k.  Over the years its grown and changed but I've never really kept up with it, especially when they moved into the Apocalypse sized games.  I just don't have the time or money to invest in painting that many minis or playing a game that takes that long.  Smaller skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades and Heroes are much more my thing nowadays.  And then along comes Shadow War Armageddon.
 
A skirmish game set in the 40k universe?  Interesting.  And I already own minis for a few of the factions so it only makes sense to give it a try, right?  Sure... I'll keep telling myself that...
 
I have bits and pieces of a few different factions in my collection but the one that I decided to start with was the one that I fell in love with when it was released way back in White Dwarf 105... the Harlequins.  I bought the boxed set and its been laying around mostly untouched for all this time, so this was the perfect excuse to finally get some paint on these minis.


A Solitare plus a couple of troupe members
For their color scheme I even actually did a bit of planning.  Looking at my paints, I really love an old shade of purple that I've had for... well, longer than I'd like to admit.  Amazingly its one of a dozen of so of the original Citadel paints that I own that somehow are still usable.  Having this as my primary color, I decided to do something really extreme (at least for me anyway) and take a look at some color theory to see what combinations look the most striking.  Usually I just go with the contrasting color but I wanted more than one detail color on these so I went with a bright green and orange for the accents.  Really bright and gaudy which fits for them.  I'm also doing their face masks with a light blue and then picking out the accents with white to give them more of a porcelain look.  So far I'm liking with how they are turning out though I want to look for a purple shade to hit the base with to see if it gives them a little more depth.  Now to see what other minis I can scrounge up to make another kill team.  After all, it is good to have options.