Progress

Not much progress, but progress. Total of 19 models painted with 4 more at the 75% stage. I'm very lucky that I'm doing a small amount of infantry. Now to be fair, I hadn't touch those last four models in like 2 weeks.

I'm getting a few hours on football sunday to paint (down from having like 10-12 hours the year prior) but I do okay when I'm diligent and paint 2 hours a night after little one goes down.

Still no idea what to do for bases. I didn't get the groundswell of ideas I'd hoped during my last post and Trent in particular was about as useful as a tampon at a senior center.

Anyway, that's where I stand at the moment.

Basing

I have no idea how to base my Martian SRO, so I'm throwing it out to my loyal readers. Any ideas?

So far I'm leaning towards a rocky/rubble type setting. I could do it then ink it red, like Mars. Or I could do more grey and black motiff. I simply don't have any idea.

Help...

Game of Battlestar last night

Tom, Jeff, and Wayne came over last night to play some Battlestar Galactica boardgame last night. Players were Helo, Tyrol, Starbuck (respectively) with me playing Roslin.

Pretty much a near perfect game for the humans. Tyrol (Jeff) was the Cylon from the start but got found out very early. Jeff and Wayne put in cards for a test, and out comes 3 negative cards. So sombody's a Cylon. During my next turn I use Roslin once-a-game skill to draw 4 Quorum cards, hoping to get the one that lets me look at a player's loyalty card. I do and look at Wayne's card. Not a Cylon.

So I know Jeff is the Cylon and I out him. The funny thing is that Wayne acts incredibly guilty, because both Tom and I thought he was the Cylon.

Anyway, its Jeff's turn next and he makes a critical error. Instead of revealing himself, he takes some actions, drawing a crisis card. Then Tom throws him in the brig. Jeff spends a couple of turns in the brig, trying to cause problems.

During that period, I convince Tom to take a -1 Morale that puts us in the red because I know the collaborator card is coming soon and if we're in the red then the collaborator stays human. At that point we were doing great with none of our dials in the red.

Sure enough, come the sleeper agent phase, Wayne is the Collaborator. Within a turn we get not one, but two Cylon battle cards. The first one places a bunch of civilian ships behind Galactica and the second one is an ambush with a basestar jumping in back of Galactica with all those civilians nearby. But, Starbuck uses her secret destiny to ditch that card and draw another one. Humans jump away.

From there it just goes in the human's favor. Jeff finally reveals himself, drops his super crisis card, putting two centurion tokens on Galactica, but Wayne and Tom take care of them. Our dials start going down with Morale, Food, and Population at 4 (Fuel never got into the red). A few more crisis later, with Jeff trying to cause problems but the humans containing them and manage to jump to Kobol, losing a population on the way.

So humans win. We pretty much had it wrapped up once I outed Jeff, but it still felt a little tense. We went from one dial in the red to three in the red in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Having only played two games it makes me wonder, if the humans winning handily is still having 3 of 4 dials in the red, then close ones have to be real nail biters.

Anyway, fun game. Hoping to make this a monthly or otherwise semi-regular thing.

Corey

Where the hell have you been?

From the Dictionary of Life's Ironies:

Plan: (n) 1) A list of things that don't happen. 2) Existential proof that God finds your frustrations funny. 3) Job security for psychiatrists.

So after three weeks of football (my prime painting season), I had a total of 3 models painted. My test models of the paint scheme. I mainly painted them during week 1. Why you ask? Well, for week 2, my wife had an event for her school, so I was with Jocelyn. It was okay, I passed the time teaching her the words "touchdown!!" (in a high cheering voice) and "football..." (in a low growl).

Week 3 was the local art 7 wine festival (my wife loves going every year). This time was miserable because I was hot and hadn't slept well at all. Followed by a visit to the in-laws for dinner in the evening. With my niece stopping by in between.

This is also compounded by the fact that the 49ers don't seem to made of suck this year, so I find myself watching the niners games. Which means I really only paint during two of the football games, with liberal stops for daughter-time, food, and shower (ranked in that order of importance).

"But Corey, there's Monday Night Football. Perfect painting time!"

Yeah, it would be. Except Mer has enrolled in a Masters program. Guess what night classes are. . .


So yeah, last weekend I was on a "screw it, I'm painting all day today" binge. I got five models about 75% done. This is a far cry from last year when I'd get 12 models done over a day and a half. I blame myself, because after I assembled the models I said "egh, this shouldn't be hard. it's like 60ish models."

God was listening. And he has a twisted sense of humor.


Anyway, pics in the sunlight of my test models:



So, I like them. I intentionally kept the paint scheme simple. Or again, that was the Plan. I guess when you're painting different shades of black, you're not being simple. But I'm not painting eyes on them. I'm going to go with "they're all squinting." Really, I just don't think it adds anything.

The black clothing is Reaper's master series Pure Black, which gave a nice matte black. I then highlighted some places with Vallejo's Black Grey from the model color line of paints to provide a little depth. The boots, belt, and gear (canteens, pouches, etc) were painted with P3 Greatcoat Grey. The boots and gear were then hit with a smoke wash.

The gun was done with Vallejo Game Color black, which is a glossy black. I picked out details and the stock with the P3 Greatcoat Grey. I wanted the gun to have a very artificial feel, since these guys are from Mars, so I labored over what to paint the gunstock to make it look like a synthetic substance. Finally, wayne suggested just doing it the grey.

The armor plates were done with Vallejo's Burnt Cadmium Red from the Model Color line. It's my absolute favorite red. The skin was Vallejo's Dwarf flesh with a smoke wash. Finally any metal bits were Vallejo's Gunmetal Grey.

Like I said, a minimal effort paint job. Hopefully it'll be somewhere between "able to sell for a decent price" and "not going to drive Corey crazy painting it."

K, hopefully more to come before too long.

First game of BSG boardgame

Yeah, I know, I've owned the game for like a month and only now playing my first complete game. Anyway, it was a blast with a lucky hit by the Cylon player destroying Galactica's last reserve of fuel.

Was a three person game. I played Tigh, one person was Kara, and another played Baltar. Baltar was a Cylon from the very beginning, but he played really well. I actually found him out early on, when he and I were the only ones putting cards in and we had 3 negative cards. There were accusations and counter-accusations all over the place. Then after the sleeper agent phase, he used his Baltar ability to look at my cards, at which point I figured he wasn't the Cylon player.

Oh but it was a double cross on his part. He "wasted" his action to allay fears. And it worked, because I basically cost us the game. See, for most of the game I was both president and admiral because of a forced resignation crisis card. I kept drawing quorum cards and gained arrest warrant, which I then used on Kara. I over-thought it and didn't go with instinct, and so Kara spent a couple turns in the brig.

Then Baltar revealed, and damaged the FTL (next jump was to Kobol but we only had 1 fuel left). I bailed Kara out with my presidential pardon, but a cylon fleet dropped right on top of us. Kara fixed the FTL, and we were two spots awya from jumping. We could afford to lose the population, as it'd win us the game. Then Baltar played his super crisis, which activated the whole fleet if we didn't come up with a 24 between the two of us. We both played our entire hand and won with a 36, meaning only the base ship could shoot.

Rolls a 4, damaging Galactica. And then flips -1 fuel, bringing us to zero. Done and done.

Baltar played it really well, with only one slip which was more luck of the draw than anything else. Sadly, I failed two chances to spot the cylon. Very early on, I had a Quorum card that let me look at one of his two loyalty cards. I was gonna choose the bottom one (the one showing he was a cylon) but I changed and picked the top one at the very last second. D'oh.

Still a fun, fun game. Can't wait to play it again, actually.

Progress

Got a few spare moments this week to do some assembly, so I figured I'd assemble some Cadians and the "Astropath" for my army. Got the Vet sergeants with powerfists and the Heavy Flamers done:

So, if you're curious, the laspistol from the cadian box is right handed. And so is the powerfist from the command sprue. Commence rant:

What the fuck!? I mean, GW, seriously, what the fuck? What moron thought it was a good idea to put everything on the Same. Fucking. Hand. Is it the same guy who thought that there shouldn't be any complete fucking left hands on the entire motherfucking sprue?

Seriously, the only complete left hand (that wasn't cut off at the wrist with the hand attached to a lasgun stock) was the sergeant chainsword hand. So because the vaunted GW planning and design system couldn't design a sprue with another sprue in mind? These guys could find a way to cram thirteen skulls on a carebears miniature ("I'm apostate bear, tee-hee!"), but couldn't think to put a couple of empty left fucking hands on a sprue?

Oh, and the heavy flamer? Yeah, the hose doesn't hook up with the hose on the backpack.


Right, moving on.


Since I have two Vendettas in the army, I figured it'd be worth the 30 pts for an Astropath. But this is the Martian SRO, so I figured it'd be cooler if the guy coordinating when reinforcements showed up would be a Lex-Magos. Also I promised Trent the Astropath in from Regimental Advisors blister. Since the Officer of the Fleet was going towards my Mordians than left me the Master of Ordnance to work with.

Without much of a plan, I sat and started snipping away. Here's a pic of him after the point of no return:


And here's a couple pics of the finished product:


I really like the way the robes flowed on the back. The front, not so much. It's been warm here the last couple days and some of the green stuff dried a little quicker than I thought it would so when I to sculpt folds the greenstuff tore. I tried smoothing it out, but it was too late. But it's okay because the mechadendrites draw attention away.

Do people think I should elongate the right sleeve to cover more of the dendrites or just leave it? I'm reticent to go back, because its usually when I try to fix things that I make them worse.

More Malifaux

So it seems Malifaux is the new hotness in the gaming world. At Game Kastle, they literally can't keep the starter boxes on the shelves.

Anyway Here's a batrep to the game I played last night. The summary: my faction was a crew of Mercs, where each model is really good at what it does but is specialized. Her faction was all about dirty tricks (think Cryx).

Also, if you want an in-depth review of the game, it's Here. Scroll down to the post by Fallen Heretic if it doesn't take you there directly.

So I have to say, despite being very Warmachine-ish (a game I simply couldn't get into), I like it. The alternating activations does make it harder to set up the combos. The skill of the game isn't the tactical skill, its about keeping your head. You have six cards in your hand that let you "cheat" results (imagine in a dice game that you had some pre-rolled results that you could use once per turn, but only a finite number of pre-rolls and some of them suck).

Anyway, those six cards generally come to 2-3 actions. That's because you have to wound after you hit and so on. So you can guarantee pulling off 1 action every turn how you want. You can probably pull of 2 actions. In a perfect world you could do 3, but remember he's got a deck of cards too so you end up using some of your cheats defensively (not being hit, saving throws vs magic, etc)

So the trick is to keep your head through the alternating activations and the bad stuff he throws at you. You sometimes have to let the little demon in the form of a toddler stab your guy in the back because if you burn your cards you won't have them for the nasty trick you have up your sleeve. It's essentially a mental discipline game, trying to not obsess over things with an alternating activation game, which is hard to do. It's basically the same idea behind Wargods where you sometimes have to take your lumps and try to win the fight you can win instead of getting caught up in playing tit-for-tat.

One downside: the models piss me off. Wyrd minis are purrty, but I HATE how the models are assembled. More than one model has these fiddly little bits. Big giant weapons that attach to the main model at the wrist. Come on! Give the weapon the whole forearm or the whole frakking arm so at least there's a lot of surface area to pin. But no, it joins at the wrist, leaving you to try and pin a surface area not much wider than a paperclip or else the lever principle works against you the first time that katana catches on something when you pick up.

But other than that, the minis are nice. The fluff on the game is over the top, one of those things were it goes so far over the line its funny:

Mad hatter serial killer? Lame.

Fat, bald undead dominatrix? A Fail at shock value.

Undead whores who can distract models by gettin' nekkid? Okay, now that's just hilarious!