Star Wars X Wing: Highjacked Decimator

Sometimes you paint the engine glow on a new ship just in time to see your 10 year old son get inspired by that, take your new ship, run it against you and proceed to destroy you with it.

WIP: Bushido Koi Pond

Just a fast update on a Koi pond I am making for Bushido (& Strange Aeons I guess). This started as a CD, which I loved thrashing up with steel wool to give adhesion a better surface. The hole had a piece of painters tape over it then texture on top. I textured it inside and out then painted it all. The blocks are Hirst Arts castings from molds I own. The reeds were cut and trimmed and attached with clear caulk which has dried in the pic above. That is a better way to anchor these things for the resin pours. It won't show up visually or react to the resin, kills some areas where bubbles may form in the undercuts and stays flexible even as the resin heats up and then contracts. The reeds were from some aquarium plants I picked up.

I sculpted fish and a turtle out of green stuff. I cut out lily pads from paper napkins, using the embosed details to give them some texture. I then soaked them in green paint/water wash and set to dry on cardboard. The plan is to do one initial deeper tinted pour with some fish in that layer, then a clearer pour at the top with one or two more fish at that layer. Lilly pads go on top and the turtle will ride a rock, chilling.

I'll post up more as I go.

Hardened Valhallan Vets: Kitbash (and Forge World scanner and GW Objectives)

Here are some Hardened Vets I recently made for an event I couldn't attend. Awesome.

These guys are a kitbash of GW Cadian arms, lasguns and metal SM meltas plus some Maxmini torsos that I built backwards so they became what looks like chest rigs facing forward. I had to trim the collars off to make room for the Pig Iron Colony Militia heads and greenstuff neck/cloth.

All models needed neck sculpting to give the new head purchase and blend cosmetically

Of the chest pouches and weapons there was much trimming and filing where weapons met the chest as well filling voids with sculpted greentstuff. Torsos were positioned first and either pinned or just gap filled with greenstuff.  The legs are Maxmini Greatcoat legs as well.

The heavy flamer is part AM unit from sprue married to SM flamer with brass rods and a tank/rebreather on the side as a pump/primer. Most of the packs are Pig Iron, as are some pouches.

The Sgt. is an older GW tank commander with the head removed and replaced with a Pig Iron head. His left hand was removed and replaced with a gripped fist from the side of a flamer on the AM Cadian sprue. I fit a las pistol on there from the older IG tank sprue, I think.

Overall, I really like how they came out though the casts on the legs were probably the worst I've seen on models, maybe ever. Had I noticed that  I may have even chucked them but as it was I put in time and made them passable thanks to a round rasp and Led Zepp on Spotify. These vets scale well with my Valhallans though they trend the slightest bit smaller (hence the extra kit to bulk them up).

The auspex/master VOX or whatever is Forge World, thrown together at the last minute on a whim, thinking it's be an asset in the game, objective or just nice scenery.

Finally, I mounted the GW objective markers that hold dice onto bases and painted them up.  I boiled the programming outta these servo skulls to soften the plastic and re-bend them to actually grip dice.

That's all the 40k I got for now. Up next some Star Wars X Wing miniatures repaints and some Bushido Ito clan!

Bushido: Completed Objective Markers

I made these for Bushido. The Tourny Pack calls for a series of objective circles as well as 6 small based and 2 large based markers. The small markers are craft store wooden bits on magnets, attached to a small base. At one point I was under the impression that I needed to make these rotate to show the status of who controls them. Watching a game, I saw players simply turn the front of the marker to face the controlling player's board edge. Doh. Oh well.

The large based markers are 2 Feng Shui dogs I picked up off of Amazon for US$10 and mounted on large bases. All told, a few nights of work here from undercoat, some drybrushing layers, sponge painting, washes then a custom moss recipe of moss made out of basing flock, water, Mod Podge glue and a dab of green paint. The kanji are just technical pen and a lousy Westerner's hand. Sorry Japan!

Bushido: WIP Temple Bushi and Finished Objective Stones

Just a fast WIP on the Ito Clan I am painting now, a Temple Bushi.

Chiyo is on the table right now and she's underway, even as I wrap up some details on him. I am toying with the idea of cobra skin on his lapels. We'll see.

Also, I finished 3 of the 6 small objective markers recommended by the Tournament Pack. These are wood, magnets, paint, technical pen and a homemade moss (which dries rock hard but looks soft).

Robotech RPG Tactics, Bushido, Strange Aeons and Forge World

Seriously, you can't tell how big the box is. It would hold a tomcat.

I am supposed to be getting ready for a 40k Apocalypse game in January but... but... Kickstarter! My copy of Robotech RPG Tactics landed with what seems to be 400 eleventeen sprues of Wave 1 mecha plus cards, rulebook, dice, counters, decals and Gloval knows what else. My buddy Pete describes this as a slow-grow effort at his house. I'd have to agree. Totally going transparent bases with these, a first for me... looking at you, Litko. First impressions are good though the ruleset really does seem to be a child of litigation, where the parents (Harmony Gold and Palladium) settled on making this game but not making it a "miniature" game even though that's exactly what it is (it's detailed game pieces, NOT miniatures). That aside, the ruleset is interesting in mechanic, a hybrid of a few systems. I'm giving the stink eye towards it's army building guidelines and that some sprues were damaged in transit. That said, I've seen a lot worse. Big ups to my buddy Pete for fronting this until I could sign the adoption papers, this will be fun. For the record, the first game I ever made on my own, with written rules and playtesting, was a Robotech game using Matchbox, Orgus and Revell models plus wooden blocks for buildings. Yup, the buildings took damage. So this is a Homecoming of sorts.

At the same damn time as this large box invading my house, I jumped into Bushido, with some insanely beautiful miniatures. Actually, maybe too beautiful? I am not sure that everyone will go in for the intricate and beautifully delicate figs despite the just-as-beautifully elegant low model count rules. I went Ito Clan and I'm painting them now, eschewing all other obligations, including some Top-Secret Lurker stuff I started for Strange Aeons. Seriously, check out Bushido if you like movies like Ninja Scroll, the Avatar cartoon or almost anything Jet Lee flew through sideways.

Here's a few objective counters I made for Bushido as a warm up. I needed to work out a mossy vine recipe and stone paint scheme. Nailed it!

Finally, I'm waiting for some jeweler's saw blades that hopefully will make it through the impending Nor' Easter/Thanksgiving Slingshot Catapult/Clothesline. We'll see but I know Philly ain't Buffalo so we should be fine. Once they get here I'll be building a Forge World Avenger for my buddy Lovell.

Speaking of full plates...

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US peeps and peace to everyone else.

Strange Days

It has been pretty quiet on the blog but not so much in real life. I guess that meant that I did see a real division between blog and life, as this space here is supposed to be representative of the escape that games were for me. Not so now.

Reality makes updates (or lack thereof) as real as it gets and any division fades.

More than a week ago my mother went in for a life-saving lung transplant in New York. She was critically ill with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Despite a less than 7% chance of finding a donor matching her rare antibody profile, she did or I should say, the poor donor passed, and the life the donor lost gave mom a fighting chance at her own, so it found her. Relief at the news of a donor match can feel very transactional at first but the emotion sets in fast; it is humbling when a donor tries to save a life with their passing. It is a very real sacrifice. Well played, whoever you are.

Today, mom is still in critical care and has had every setback possible short of dying on the table during surgery. Before that surgery, she basically slept for 2 weeks running up to the donor's death as her O2 diffusion was so poor that breathing was only a clinical truth. Graft dysfunction, ECMO, kidney damage, organ efficacy, bypass, dialysis, hundreds of gallons of meds and blood infusions, neurological complications, MERSA... hell, even one of the doctors at the hospital where mom is residing in tested positive for Ebola but mercifully things are going well both for the doc and everybody else. See also: Give everyone a break already.

All of the above elicits feelings that range from, "what can I do to help" to "why bother?" The former isn't really a question. We're all there to support her and each other which we do. The latter takes more gumption both to ask to begin with and then, to answer. But the answer is simply that this was the only shot that she had. With less than a month or so left alive on her own, a transplant was what she wanted, it was her only hope. I remind everyone that she wanted this; technically, she could have just skipped it and passed on. But she chose to fight and did not want to just fade. She doesn't want to keep missing out on the kids growing up. She loves people and wants more time. She was an ER nurse for 30 years... she urged so many to never give up for so long, it is ingrained. So the answer to the former and the latter is the same, "she's fighting and so, we are too".

If you've read this far, I guess you get that this is the sort of free therapy that the internet is good for. Thanks. But more importantly beyond that, you are human and have a family. Given the games & hobby this blog orbits, you are probably the same-ish demographic as me in age, income and responsibilities: you are seeing how kids become the parents of the family as your family ages. When my kids were born, advice rained on our house like hail. But in the cool quiet of your elder parent's late years, that advice only patters on the pane when the wind seems to blow and the prevailing opinion changes direction like Fall gusts. So, we play the same game on many levels and it is easy to only see it as player one.

To close out this post, I just feel compelled to say that I don't want to escape too much from reality since we are what we do, but that was where it clicked. If you are blessed in life, you will have tough choices to make that almost always affect people. Games aren't really an escape, I realized, since they recharge me by the intrinsic interaction required to play or discuss them. The shared experiences games create is a nexus for interacting with just about everyone I know. Sure the settings are daydream fuel... and I daydream a lot, an escape of sorts. But my escape is really about joining others in reality. Hell, I'm taking Memoir '44 to the hospital with me so my dad and I can play and unwind. And that is my point, even in games high on "fighty" it is always a test on resolving people conflict, finishing the fight together. Games are great at empowering people to feel what closing out a conflict feels like probably when they need it most, like during a too-long lung transplant procedure. Or losing a loved one who is an organ donor. And at last, this is the reason I didn't really sweat the lack of updates as we fight for a reality that includes mom.

Life is a game and the goal is to play it. You only win when you play, when you fight. You only lose when you don't take your turn. Mom knows losing doesn't matter, only living to take a shot at the win.

Good luck on your turn.