Today's petstore aquarium terrain find

Picked up these two at the local Petsmart today. Both were on sale, from the National Geographic line of aquarium decor. The ruined colosseum wall was about seven bucks, and the statue head was about four. The 28mm fig for scale comparison is from the Mage Knight line, and is on a 28mm base. Perfect for Otherworld, Frostgrave, pulp gaming, fantasy gaming, and more.

(I also picked up more cat litter while I was there, but y'all don't care about that.)

Dumpster diving* and catching up

Not the hero we deserved but the hero we needed. 

Be warned: this is a bit rambling. Feel free to scroll down to the pictures of dumpsters, if that's what brought you to the door.

At some point in the past couple months I have started feeling bad about writing up yet another battle report with unpainted figures. Yes, I know it's not a big deal, but I'm just envisioning reading my blog with all these black-and-white pics and how that'd only point out the other flaws in my work, like how I have become real shoddy about taking good notes about how games go.

But! This will past. I am painting up new Pulp City, and am one breakthrough away from getting a good color scheme down for my Wrath of Kings Hadross. Wrath of Kings has been the game of the spring so far (in fact the gents from my group are about to head to Origins to the big dance there.) While I will sing the praises of the assembly side of the Wrath of Kings figs, I confess they're a bit intimidating for a mediocre painter like myself to get done swiftly. But anyways.

(Somewhere on the backburner there's a post brewing about learning Hadross tactics. They're rock hard, but surprisingly tricky to get rolling.)

Enough about my shortcomings. I've also been busy this spring getting lots and lots of Kickstarter pledges arriving. It's beautiful. Many Zombicide figs waiting in the queue, many Wolsung figs getting assembled, and just this week, my pledge for urban terrain from Impudent Mortal arrived on the doorstep.

One of the pieces I picked up to enhance Pulp City and Batman games are the dumpsters. And being a gamer for... a long while now, I have picked up many odds and ends over the years for uses both theoretical and practical. It's only in the past couple years that I took stock of the various terrain bits I had picked up hither and yon, and formulating plans for actual terrain layouts (we typically play at the local store, or someone else's house. I don't have a dedicated gaming room here.)

So I realized I had a bunch of these things from various manufacturers over the years, and decided to toss up a couple comparison shots for scale, so people know what they're looking for.

(The models were chosen because they were [mostly] painted, and representative of their lines. I had other painted Batman figs, but I figured most players would own the Arkham henchmen, due to their usefulness.)

Checkmate Agent (Crossover), Heroclix Dumpster, Arkham escapee (Knight Models)

A blast from the past, the tried and true Heroclix had a lot of useful pieces over the years, and my only regret with the ancient terrain packs was that I did not pick up more. It's the smallest of my lot, but also the only one that came fully painted. Looks to me like something outside a restaurant, more of a trashcan with dreams of grandeur.

Reaper Bones zombie, large Armorcast bin, Supreme Zed (Pulp City)

Mr. Hyde (Heroclix Hulk), smaller Armorcast bin, Reaper Bones zombie

These two are, I believe, out-of-production Armorcast bins. Searching online tells me they might be out-of-production Ainsty, but there's some confusion. Regardless. They are solid chunks of resin, and look great. perfect for near the construction site.

Checkmate Agent, Reaper Bones Dumpster, Supreme Zed

I nabbed one of the Bones dumpsters on a whim, and was not disappointed. Unlike the rubbery material of the other figs, this is hard smooth plastic. Which is BRIGHT WHITE and a pain to photograph. The lid opens up (shown farther down) and while maybe a little big, not really noticeably so, and IMHO would definitely work with the Knight Model figs. 

Checkmate Agent, small Impudent Mortal dumpster, Zombicide zombie

When I signed on for the Impudent Mortal kickstarter, I was looking forward to their stuff, but I have to admit, it's more impressive in person. Please note none of the dumpsters from them are fully assembled. They were put together right out of the bag, no instructions, no trimming. A breeze.

The small dumpster above even has a couple details I didn't put on yet, like the door for the side hatch. 

Arkham escapee, Impudent Mortal bin rear view

A little less in scale for the Knight Models figs, but really, not a big deal.

Supreme Zed, large Impudent Mortal dumpster, Checkmate Agent

And here's the large Impudent Mortal bin. The doors in front can be put open or closed. Hefty! It's the extra bits like the vertical supports that really make them shine. Also notice the slats on the bottom.

And the ridiculous group shot. The Checkmate Agent just barely doesn't fit inside the small Impudent Mortal bin, whereas the larger one fits even 30mm bases comfortably. The Bones product is rather roomy as well.

So, hope that was useful-ish. Any tips for later comparison shot entries?

Drax, not Drax, Drax

And finally, an in-joke for a handful of people.


* Full credit to Maurice for coming up with the 'dumpster diving' title, which I really should have thought of first.

Cold Wars 2015 report

We're going to need a bigger... everything.

For Cold Wars this year, I figured I would be flying solo, so I opted to make it a one-day affair. Drive up early, sell things at the Wally's Basement flea market, play a couple games, then head home late. I was able to pull it off, but man, I might be getting a little old to do that much more. Was wiped by the end of then night, and the drive home was a challenge. So back to springing for the hotel room next time, methinks.

The con itself was a mixed bag. Well, that's not really true. For me, the con was great. I sold a bunch of toys, which paid for not only my attendance but with some leftover to buy yet more minis. I played in two great games that were a lot of fun and pretty much exactly what I am looking for in a convention game. I chatted with a bunch of cool folks. I bought a bunch of things I wanted. All winners.

But the con itself was, well, suffering. Fresh off the heels of what looks like the last snowstorm of the year here out east, the parking lot was a hell of ice and slush and cars at all angles and the like. Wally's basement was run in a more haphazard fashion. I noticed a distinct lack of a lot of the huge eye candy showcase games, which are always popular. There were empty tables in the game halls, the dealers room, and even in Wally's, which is always packed. I overheard one of the major dealers saying their sales were down by half, and that was towards the end of the day on Saturday. Ouch. I don't think Historicon will suffer as a result, but I wonder what Fall In will look like come later this year.

Anyways. I come to praise Cold Wars, not to bury it. Let's get on with the it.

My first game of the day:

S-334 - Monster Madness: Hydras, Harpies, & Hellhounds, Oh My!

Sat. 3:00 PM, 2 hrs, 8 players

GM: Katherine Rockstroh

Fantasy 28mm, Rules: Homebrew
You the citizens have demanded it, so the king has decreed it: the THIRD royal monster hunt! The goal: to slay the mightiest monsters ever to terrorize the kingdom. The prize: a new estate & the princess’s hand in marriage. All are welcome to attend; friendly rivalry is encouraged in this fast-paced challenge.
Young aspiring monster hunters welcome with an accompanying grizzled veteran hunter.

You'll notice that last line above. I entirely missed it when I was signing up. Not a big deal, mind you. As with the Hunger Games event from last Fall In, I am a-OK gaming with the younger set. I just didn't expect to be sitting down to this one, and, for the most part, being older than any other two or three gamers put together. Even the GMs were in their late teens. (This was a definite rarity at the HMGS events; I feel like I am on the younger side of the average age of attendees, and I am not young. At all.) No shade though, the GMs ran things wonderfully.

Seated around the table, our teammates were the players opposite us. This allowed the GMs to have each of us activate at the same time, which was pretty ingenious. Essentially, when a model touched a terrain piece, it spawned a monster, which you would get victory points for eliminating. And everyone had a vested interest in either winning the princess's hand in marriage or claiming the monster-infested grounds for their own.

I played Sir Bret, the handsome knight. My teammate was my twin brother, a knight in his own regard. In addition to my footmen, I also had some adoring peasants following me around, who I regularly sent to investigate and root out monsters, which invariably had an appetite for serfs.

Each player had a main character, a second-in-command sort, and a handful of other figs to... not worry about too much. The rules were simple and easy, with color-coded dice (red, blue, and gold) that were easy for even those math-challenged among us to count swiftly.

The game actually played like a Gauntlet-style video game, in a good way. Monsters were spawned. Easier beasts were quickly dispatched, while more fearsome creatures went on to rampage on their own. You'll notice I said above that you got victory points for eliminating the monsters. This, invariably, lead to rampant killstealing and similar shenanigans. It was glorious. The winner was a young druid who had her army of beasts (all of which she personally named) romping around the board swooping in for the kills.

The monster decks for each of the spawning area types. Made for smooth an easy management.

 A fearless footman finds a fearsome bulette hiding in the woods.

The majority of the figs were from Warhammer, the Dungeons & Dragons collectible minis line, Reaper Bones, and other iconic high fantasy sorts.

Not challenged enough, my serfs also spawn a purple worm behind us. Target-rich environment. 

The captain of the guard uncovers an umber hulk (or as she deemed it, 'an ugly cockroach..') 

Ways to challenge my humble cameraphone: photographing a jabberwock in the fronds.

Again, let me reiterate this game was a lot of fun. I would love to recreate it for the locals, and in a couple years can even get our kids involved. The GMs kept the pace moving, so turns moved along promptly. The victory point count definitely lead to some energetic rivalry. Great times.


Random games I passed while wandering the halls:

I mentioned above there weren't many large showpiece games, but this one definitely caught a lot of attention, recreating a World War II raid on a German airstrip. Apparently Doctor Jones was spotted escorting a mysterious crate off the field midway through the game.

I didn't get any details on this game, but the terrain was definitely evocative.

Another large game spotted was a Wild West game set on the three decks of a paddleboat. A homebrew construction of balsa, dollhouse parts, and other odds and ends the decks could even sit on top of each other for the full effect. Very keen.

My second game of the day:

S-278 - Just Another Wasteland Mystery 

Sat. 8:00 PM, 3 hrs, 6 players
GM: Joseph McGuire
Sponsor: World's End Publishing
SciFi 28mm, Rules: This Is Not a Test
The small shantytown of Pernicious Hope has gone quiet. Scouts report no movement from within. The town could have been sacked by an unknown attacker or abandoned by its occupants. Rumor suggest that the town’s leader found something interesting out in the wastes, but what is was is unknown. Perhaps this item's presence is tied to the town's fate? Can your warband solve the mystery?

I had been looking forward to trying out these rules since I first heard about them a while back, and they were the first thing I went for during registration. The rules are due out soon, but I always learn best by trying a game out, and everyone who played in our group was suitably impressed.

 Many handmade shanties and wrecks of vehicles past.

The rules were pretty straightforward. Activation is a little funny, but once everyone got the hang of it, it was no sweat, even with six of us roughing it out.

(And of course I botched my initial activation, but I just pretended I meant to do that so I could stay back and watch who does what first. Heh.)

There's a lot of great detail packed into the board, here. 

I grabbed the Fairfax Tribe, who happen to be featured in this batrep. Amusingly, I found myself sitting next to Joe C. from Dragonbait Miniatures, who I'd met at another con before. (Side note: they're prepping their next offerings, so keep your eyes open.) He was running Mad Max and some of his cronies.

Sneaking into the ruins near the inimitable Johnny Atomic!

Large Oak covers the rest of the tribe as they cautiously advance. 

An interesting twist turned up on the second round: in addition to investigating the abandoned township, Tall Hat decided the fearsome Rock Worms would be a mighty prize to bring home, if their corpses could be harvested. It was of course perfectly fine to let the other survivors do the dirty work of killing them first, naturally. Tall Hat's no dope.

(The book will include a bestiary of awful post-apocalyptic creatures to flesh out the world, just the thing to add to scenarios to take them from good to great.)

Max and his troubleshooters have a worm problem. 

Not pictured: on the far end of the board, the Peacekeepers unleashed the grenade launcher to impressive effect, causing everyone else to subtly start spreading out their models, heh.

In the campaign rules, you can loot the corpses of the fallen. Every gamer's dream. 

Did I mention how spiff the terrain was? 

One fo the things I liked about the rules was how they lent themselves to a natural role-playing angle. For example: shooting. You determine which models are shot by your characters for an activation, and only after that do you resolve the shots themselves. So there's no 'take out one guy, move to the next.' If you want to make sure someone stays down, you end up pouring some extra lead into them, just in case they get lucky. But you don't really know if it works until it's too late to do anything else about it. 

Along those lines: you declare your actions before resolving them, so if something goes south, you'll be left trying to cover for it.

Showdown. 

Preparing flanking fire. 

Actual quote: "Who vomits first?" Rock worms are not pleasant dinner company.

After the game, we all received a prize of a filthy mutant. Which lead to a brief discussion over the merits of the various filthy mutants. Big win.

If you're interested in the game, you can follow the news on the Facebook group, and read up more on the website.

After that was saying goodbyes, packing up, and hauling myself back to Maryland.

For more Cold Wars reports, check out Mr. Surdu, Mr. Nizz, and the fine folks at HAWKs, who always had a nice crowd in there playing.

Fall-In 2014: day two: Zombie Apocalypse!

Saturday morning rolls around, and for whatever reason we all wake up early. Good news because that means a leisurely breakfast at IHOP with a surprise appearance by a hostess with the magical gift of oversharing early in the a.m.

As noted in the Friday report, I did pretty well at Wally's Basement, so let's talk shopping at the con. I never know how much my dozens of readers really care about what someone else is buying. I mean, maybe? So let's hit the big topics instead.

Definitely fewer booths in the dealer's hall than before. I mean, I still found things to spend money on (thanks Brigade and Recreational Conflict!) but there wasn't a lot of competition.

Perfect!

I have a few big Kickstarter rewards showing up in the next few months, so as for strategies for spending my money I stuck mostly to things to supplement games/genres I already have. Better to add more terrain or figs or whatever, to keep me focused. So more Victorian scifi (Wolsung, IHMN) and modern (Pulp City, Gotham.) Was happy to see Brigade had some of the Midnight Workshop figs from Artizan, in addition to their Empire of the Dead offerings.

I didn't pick these up, but it's an inspirational concept.

I should also note that the one big purchase I made at Wally's was a handful of Skaard figs for Dark Age. Older models, but lovely, and priced so I couldn't refuse. Second army started!

And now my big Saturday event. I'd seen them run  games like this before, but this was the first time I was able to reserve a seat at the table.

From the description:

S160 Hold the Line - Z+60 Days
Sat 3:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 6 players
GM: Henry Kyle
Period: Modern, Scale: 25mm, Rules: Zombie Apocalypse (Home Brew)
"Sixty days after the dead began to rise, your small Texas town is in danger of being overrun by the walking dead. Luckily, word has reached you of a safe zone a few counties over. As the non- combatants are loaded into a convoy to be taken to safety, it is up to the town's ragtag defenders to hold back the undead horde long enough for them to flee."

Yes, those are all 28mm figs.

Arriving at the table, it's a hell of an impressive layout.

The plotline is: we're some of the remaining citizens of Arlen, TX. The city is surrounded by a massive horde of the undead, and we're the defenders gathered on the south side of town, trying to hold off the zombies until a convoy of non-combatants can get moving (in eight turns.)

(They specified the southside of town, as previous runnings of this scenario have been the one of the other three sides of town. Clever!)

Suffice it to say, our work is cut out for us.

The rough outline. The deck of cards was massive, with many options played in different phases of the turn.

The rules are straightforward and fast. Within a turn, we had all the basics down, and we only had to ask for specific rules or 'creative' ideas. Initiative was by cards, worked wonderfully for the ten or so players they had. Victory points were earned for killing zombies (and other things) and points were lost when zombies began attacking the convoy (and a couple other things, I think.) Yes, this means we're encouraged to screw over the other players. Each turn each player got a random event card. Which helped them out or hurt opponents.

No, they don't have these rules available yet. Yes, when they do, I will be picking them up without hesitation.

My crew of ne'er-do-wells.

When I arrived, I had my choice of which themed crew I wanted to play. I went with the Dirty 1/3rd of a Dozen, four hardened criminals who didn't care so much about saving the town as saving our own hides. We didn't lose points for walkers getting to the convoy; this was instrumental to my strategy.

Other factions included: the local donut-eating cops, the local gun club, the A Team, the Sons of Arlen Motorcycle Club, the heavily-armed strippers, some Blackwater mercenaries, and many more. Each had their own little advantages and characteristics. Great to sit down to that kind of variety.

See that light blue police car in the middle of the barricades?

Turn one starts, we start taking shots into the undead crowd, and a few zombies get over the cars. The local cops, who have found some dynamite (via their random event card,) toss it into the horde. It bounces back a bit, and takes out... the police car in the middle of the barricades. This is bad.

My crew spots an ambulance nearby. Curiously enough, we have the rules on our card for how to hotwire a vehicle. We're stationed next to the A Team, so we take some shots at the zombies with them while falling back to our new ride.

Couple turns pass, and the barricade is now more of a speed bump. Zombies are streaming through the breach. Thanks to those random event cards, other zombies have popped up from buildings in town, from the sewers, and from one of the table edges. Eek.

My posse has jacked the ambulance and is heading to the road west. We can't get offboard until turn five, at which point we get VPs for saving our own necks. I did mention we weren't nice guys, right?

I should say most of my posse. Jefferson was tied up in hand to hand combat with one of the walkers that got through, and when he was able to break free, thanks to some help from the A Team... his buddies had driven off. No honor among thieves!

Seriously, it was a firefight!

My ride makes it to the edge of town, but needs to wait a couple turns until we can slip off. We pick off any walkers that are near us. Other townies are suspicious of my motives, but don't know what exactly I am up to. Other than, you know, running away. Snee hee hee.

LOOK AT THAT. So cinematic.

Thanks to someone else's random event card, a zombie breaks into the ambulance, and attacks us. After a turn or two, I go from three criminals fighting one zombie to one criminal fighting two other zombies, including the driver.

Remember Jefferson? Inexplicably still breathing, he sees the writing on the wall, and is sticking like glue to the other survivors, falling back to the convoy.  

I could write three more blog posts about everything else that happened in this game. Walkers ambushing survivors, one-in-a-million shots, terrible turns of the tide. One of the things that went really well for a con game is that each player had their own characters, and thusly their own story in this larger event, enhanced by their own cards and cards others played on or around them. Highly effective, and a real plus for the folks behind this game.

Posey, the lone surviving criminal from the ambulance, gets out, gets in another ambulance they randomly ended up packing next to, and uses that to secure his escape and me a fair number of victory points. (As bad guys, we didn't care about fallen comrades.)

Oh, and Jefferson, the luckiest bad boy in town, makes it out to the convoy at the end and off the table. Victory points are tallied. I come in second, after... another bad guy player who didn't care about the convoy getting attacked. Having zeds pop up so early, before we could muster a rearguard to keep them off the civilians cost a lot of points from the good guys, which really gave us criminal types an advantage. But I speak without fear of contradiction when I say that everyone had fun.

Huge game. Great times.

After that epic battle, we headed out of town early. Swung by Games and Stuff in Glen Burnie, since it was on the way and I'd never been before. Believe the hype, it's pretty close to the ideal game store. Clean, well-lit, well-stocked. Plenty of space for gaming. The downside is... that's it's too far from my house. Ah well.