Random Updates: The Gloomy Core of Space Comrade!

This weekend I was able to get Core Space to the table for the first time!  I went over to my friend's house and we ran through the Salvage Run mission so we could see how the game played.

It's been weeks since I went over the rules or watched any playthroughs so it was a little rough to start, but once we got going it all clicked into place and we were able to dive into the action.  If you've played a miniatures game before then most of the rules just made sense, and the terrain really pulls it all together.

The highlight of the game?  Gak, Roykirk, and Butler (a new volunteer for my crew) all being taken out by Beck and Jace, while Kaori and Gaa'nek ran around like lunatics and randomly shot at people.

Meanwhile Arianna tried to get payback by taking shooting Jace and company with an incinerator.  Absolutely hilarious amounts of fail!  In fact, we were racking up some many of our own "kills" that the Purge barely felt the need to show shiny metal faces!

All and all, I feel like it was a hit and I'm looking forward to playing it again in the future!

After that, we dove back into Gloomhaven with his son as we tried to find out what our "patron" was really up to.  I switched from the scoundrel to the brute so we could have some heavy hitting action, but even so it was really close!

The end bosses were two bodyguards with a ton of hit points, but we were able to take them down right at the last minute and even find out some clues about what is really going on.

I have also been able to make more headway with my painting, finishing up Lars, Faye, and MAC.

I really like how MAC came out with his weathered paint scheme.  Lars and Faye turned out pretty good as well though I'm tempted to go back and paint their tool boxes.  Dewalt black and yellow for one, and Ryobi green for the other... just because I find it amusing.  I also like how the black edging looks on these minis so I'm going to go back and do the same on the rest of them.

This just leaves me with four more minis and then all of the Core Space I own will be painted, so of course it's time to start looking at what I'm going to buy next.  I've been really torn on this as the late pledge is still open for Core Space: First Born and it's quite the deal.  On the other hand, it doesn't deliver until later this year and it sounds like it shifts the focus more towards solo play.  Rather than wait, I could just use those funds to get more of the existing expansions.

It's tough to pass up the late pledge but I'm thinking that my best bet is going to be to pick up the Shootout at Zed's expansion.  This set introduces gangers to the mix (in the form of Zed and his minions) and it comes with a couple more civilians as well.  Maybe it's silly but it's the extra civilians that are what seal the deal for me here.  I love that the base game comes with three but I really like the idea of even more random people wandering around the board.  You can also use Zed and his crew literally as another crew, so it really seems like this set gives the most bang for the buck as far as versatility.

And last but not least, I picked up a new game on Kindle.  Zona Alfa, published by Osprey Games.

I remember when this one first came out and I'll admit that I was kind of "meh" about it, but having read some battle reports and play throughs I decided I want to give it a try.  I don't have many minis that fit the Soviet post-apocalyptic flavor but I figure that is something that I can work on remedying.  My main interest with this one is solo play so it'll give me some time to hunt around for the right minis, not to mention build some terrain for it.  I love the Battlesystems stuff and they do have modern post-apoc terrain, but I've got a bunch of black foamcore lying around so I might as well make some use of it.  Until next time...

Antares: New Colors for the Concord

I had "finished" painting my Concord troops months ago but I was never really that thrilled with them.  The Strike Troopers were okay but once the paint scheme was scaled up to my light support drones and especially the T7 transport... it was just kinda blah.

Then this past weekend I had a bolt of inspiration and so far I'm really liking the change.  Introducing the new colors for the Concord shard of Bastion!

The changes were pretty simple really but I think that they make the model pop more.  The black detailing offsets the light grey nicely and I'm quite happy with how the suspensors turned out.  I might have been aggressive with what I painted up as a suspensor as well but my thoughts are the smaller ones on the fins are for finer control.  Don't know if that was the intention when Warlord designed the model but I like how it looks so I'm gonna run with that.

I've also updated the scheme on the light drones as well.  Again, a very simple change but I think it is much more effective as it makes them more interesting visually.

I still need to go over the grey on these to match it up with the T7 but that should be a quick fix.  Then it's on to the Strike Troopers and weapon crews!  I still need to figure out how exactly I'm going to bring the new scheme across to them but I've got some ideas floating around already, and I'm excited to see how they look!  Until next time...

Workbench: Painting the Concord for Beyond the Gates of Antares

One of the good but challenging things about Gates of Antares is how wide open the paint scheme can be.  There are the studio paint schemes for the various factions but they commonly encourage you to paint them how you want.  Its great to have all of the options available but I've got to admit that for me it tends to lead to the "Well, crap" moment from too many options.

I decided to try digging into the fluff to see if I could glean some direction from that but for the most part that is wide open as well, but while looking on the FB group I stumbled on a reply from Nick Gardiner about how he was inspired by Clone Troopers.  He did a great job with them and it inspired me to do something similar with mine.

I initially was going to go for Stormtrooper look as well but after doing some layered dry brushing I decided to only go up to a light grey instead of white.  I went back over their weapons, joints, and some other details with a black wash, and then picked out some details with red.  I also marked my leaders with red shoulder pads to make them a little easier to pick out while playing the game.

Front view of the strike squad...

...and the back view.

This is a pretty basic scheme but it will make it easy to knock out more figures when I expand my Concord force, plus it fits in with the story that I developed for them.  While this definitely isn't something that you need to do, I've always enjoyed adding something more to my forces so that they aren't just generic army x.  I find it personalizes the army and lets me feel more invested in the story of the game.

In the Antaren universe, the Concord are one of the two major powers with their territory containing a vast number of worlds.  Since I'm also collecting Algoryn and Ghar armies, I decided that I wanted to create a shard that would face these two opponents on a regular basis.  Both the Algoryn and Ghar are very militant and potentially hostile races, so I imagine that a Concord world bordering their space would be similar as they would have to be ready to deal with incursions on a regular basis.  In these harsh conditions the IMTel would be focused on maintaining and regulating order so the military would be able to respond as quickly as possible to any outside threats, hence the no nonsense aesthetic that of my troops.  I'm going to try to write up a little bit of a back story for them as well, but first I want to get some paint on my Algoryn troops as well.

Malifaux: Bounty Hunting Done Family Style!

I have finally gotten around to working on my Ortegas boxed set for Malifaux and I have to say that they are really looking sharp!  So far I've mostly finished painting Perdita, Francisco, and Santiago.  This actually gives me a respectable little crew I could run on their own but I definitely want to get Papa Loco, Nino, and Abuela to the table as well.  Of course also I have to get off my butt and contact Wyrd about getting replacement for Nino since half of him is missing but the blame for that falls more on me than them since I've heard great things about their customer service.  But enough about what is still to be done, let's take a look at what's already (mostly) finished.

Unlike my Witch Hunter minis which kept a similar palette throughout, I really wanted to mix things up a little with the Ortegas.  Since they are a family rather than an official branch of the Guild, I really felt like it gave me some room to play around with the colors and I like how they are turning out.  Rather than going with the more muted style of the Hunters, my Ortegas are much brighter which creates a nice visual contrast when they are on the board together.

 Of the family, Perdita was the one that I had the hardest time deciding on and it was actually my wife's suggestion that was the inspiration for her paint scheme.  After taking one look at the mini she was instantly struck with the image of a flamenco dancer; the flared trousers, the sevillano hat... which made the choice of colors easy.

Black overall with a bright red top.  I also plan on picking out the buttons along the pant legs with red just to add another bit of pop to the figure and then she will be complete!

I decided to paint up Francisco next since I was already thinking about using him to support my Witchhunters for larger games.

His paint scheme with the bright green ruffled shirt and jeans was largely inspired by the artwork in the book as I just liked the look of it though I did paint his sombrero black with red piping inside.

Finally (so far at least...) is Santiago, the brute of the family.

Unlike the others which had been cleaner looking overall, I really wanted to make him look rough around the edges.  To do this I went with a beige for his shirt to make it look like it been lived in along with his jeans.  Finally I did his bandana in a bright red to add in a real pop of color.  As with Perdita I still need to finish him off (the guns are going to be metal plus I need to finish the base...) but you get the idea.

For the remaining models I've got a pretty good idea how I want to handle them, I just need to get Papa started, Nino replaced, and Abuela based, not to mention all the other Guild goodness that I've picked up lately.  Then there's also Bete Noire but I have something special in mind of her.  Until next time...

Random Updates: The Black Plague Ain't Got Nothing On Us!

Hey everyone,

In case you hadn't guessed from the title, the update that I'd planned is going to be delayed a little bit. Cold/flu/seasonable creeping crud is working its way through the household so I haven't been able to get anything done lately except for some painting. Definitely still a good thing in its own way but not quite what I'd planned.

So far I've managed to paint most of a 15mm sci-fi platoon...

...finish one of my genestealer cult conversions and start three others...

...and re-paint three Star Wars minis...

...along with re-basing a bunch of Heroscape minis.

Oh yeah, and also a summoning circle terrain piece.

Still need to do some basing and a few details but I'm really happy with how they are looking so far. So what are all these things for? Is there some vast evil plan that I have brewing in the back of my mind, preparing to unleash it on an unsuspecting world? Nah, just saw the stuff and felt like doing some hobby though I do have an itch for some sci-fi mini games right now. Still trying to decide what to do about it but I'll be sure to share once I figure it out.

Anyway, that's all for now but be sure to come back for you weekly dose of motivation on Monday and more Audio Noise next week. Until next time...

Enter the Witch Hunters

Hey everyone and welcome to more Dispatch goodness!

As I mentioned before, I got the Malifaux rule book a short time ago and after doing a little bit of research, I decided to start out with Sonnia Criid and her Witch Hunters. From what I'd heard, the Guild is the most straightforward of the factions and Sonnia just sounded like she would be fun with all of her flaming attacks. I went ahead, placed the order, and waited for my crew to arrive. Having never seen any of the Wyrd minis first hand, I was very interested to see how they look in the "flesh". Let me tell you that I was not disappointed in the slightest.

In the Witch Hunters crew box, you get Sonnia Criid (Master of the Witch Hunters), Samael Hopkins (Sonnia's right hand man), and three Witchling Stalkers. All of the figure were had very crisp details and virtually no flash and only a few mold lines to be filed. Needless to say, prepping these miniatures was an absolute breeze! In fact, the worst thing about them was adding the pins to their feet. Wait, pins in their feet? Let me explain.

The figures all come with their appropriate size bases in the box but I decided that I was going to jazz them up a little with some of the custom bases you can find online. To this end, I ordered the Broken Wasteland 30mm bases from Dragon Forge. There are other companies that make various different types of bases (including Wyrd themselves) but for the Witch Hunters I wanted something a little different. Ultimately it was actually the skulls and bones that are sculpted into this set that made me decide to buy it. Just seemed fitting for the Witchlings if nothing else. What makes using these bases different from regular bases is the fact that you have to attached the mini directly to the base; no tabs are involved here! And of course the best way to make sure that your minis are attached is by pinning it to the bases. Sounds easy, but this is where things got tricky.

The minis from the Witch Hunters set all have pretty thin ankles. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal but since I am pinning it makes things a bit more complicated. If you go this route, make sure that you are careful, otherwise you might end up with figures with some serious disabilities!

Once the pins were in place, I went ahead and primed the miniatures using black Duplicolor sandable primer. If you don't use this stuff, go and get some! It works great and it's cheaper than P3, Armory, or Citadel Primers. Having given the figures a couple of nice, even coats, it was time to start painting!

As I went through the paints that I owned, I realized that a good number of them were very old and had dried out. I had also heard some great things about the P3 range of paints so I bit the bullet and bought a bunch of new paints for these minis. Since the model count is very low in Malifaux, I really wanted to make sure I did a good job on them. I mean think about it, five minis makes up a respectable sized crew. How could I not want to give them the attention they deserve?

One of the other great things about the Wryd line is the full color pictures of all their miniatures. This gives you lots of inspiration when you sit down to paint them, but I decided to take a slightly different route. Instead of using the painted mini for inspiration, I decided to use the drawing of Sonnia. This picture has her in darker clothing, with very pale skin, and red hair. As I said, kind of different but I really liked the look of her.

For the Witchlings, I wanted to go with just a basic brown color scheme, basically having them dressed in tattered, dirty rags. Very basic but these are grunts so I don't want to spend a lot of time on them anyway.

Last but not least is Samael and I can honestly say that I like his pictured paint scheme the least of the five minis. I think it is just something about the highlights on his clothing that just doesn't look right to me, almost seeming too pronounced in my opinion. This is not to say the painting was poorly done, just not the way that I would do it. Instead I decided to paint him closer to Sonnia's paint scheme, using dark brown for most of his clothing and dark green for the armor on his calves and poncho. I think this makes it look more like they are wearing some kind of a standard uniform which fits since they are both members of the Guild and also gives me a theme I can carry forward in to any minions I add to their crew.

So what are my overall thoughts on Sonnia and her crew?

From a hobby point of view, I definitely recommend picking up any of the Wyrd miniatures. The castings were beautifully done with very nice detail and they were a lot of fun to paint. They do stand a couple of millimeters taller than most other minis out there but given the depth of there range, there's probably something out there that you'd be interested in.

As for game play, I haven't had a chance to try her out yet but I think she looks pretty interesting. With a lot of abilities and triggers that are geared toward being anti-magic, I can see where she would be a tough customer for anyone that specializes in spell casting. Complimenting this is are a number of fire based spells that add to her offensive strength, not to mention her sword and pistol, both of which can pack a pretty serious punch. Overall, she is a very well rounded looking character that should be a lot of fun to get to the table. Her crew also nicely augment her abilities, continuing the anti-magic theme and also being pretty nasty in their own right. Samael and the Witchlings are all scouts so they can ignore severe terrain penalties and they are also all hunters which lets them ignore cover. This makes the whole crew very flexible and maneuverable so it should be a lot of fun to bring them to the table.

Well, that's it for this time but be sure to come back soon for more goodness here at the Dispatch.