500th Post...

Wow it's been a long time since I started this blog. Over ten years. Most of that time has been spent writing about games and hobby activities, but occasionally I dive into event reviews, the odd rant and even gotten political a few times. All of that writing has resulted in over 75,000 page views. So I know some of you out there are reading this stuff, even if you're largely silent.

I always have several posts in-progress and had actually resisted posting anything, trying to find the right item to include in my 500th post. Today I decided that it would be Pulp City. The guys from Pulp Monsters are running a small campaign, Pulp City: Cold War, to expand the rich world of Pulp City with two new teams of awesome looking supremes.

I pledged on the new campaign because I think almost all of the new characters look amazing, and I want to support the game. I've been hard on them in the past because I'm still waiting for quite a few missing items from my Collector's Pledge from their last Kickstarter, but I'm confident that they'll take care of it.

I also know that their experience from that campaign has translated into simpler pledge levels and a faster delivery promise for Cold War. These guys love their game and it shows. If you like tabletop gaming and want to try out something fun and new, I highly recommend you get in on their campaign. Their models are high quality, relatively affordable and full of character. Another option would be to download a few character cards and their quick start rules from their website and proxy the game to try it out. I'm sure you'll have a blast.

The Cat and the Bat(woman)

I've been working towards getting more of the superhero figures painted from Knight Models range for the Batman Miniatures Game. Yesterday I finished the second of two that will give me two completely different Law Forces crews at 250 rep each

Batwoman is a character I don't know much about, but really like the costume of. The red on black is really striking, so I spent a lot of time getting some depth to the wide swathes of red on the cape. Highlighting large areas of black is not something I really enjoy, and I did have a bit of trouble getting her eyes right, but I'm happy with this one for tabletop.

Next up is Catwoman. So much BLACK. It's hard to paint, takes a long time and is difficult to get a result I'm happy with, especially when compared with the studio paint jobs. There was a lot of watered down black paint, black washes, varying shades of blue dry brush stages and finally a touch of metallic and white for a top highlighting.

Her face ended up a little dark, but it's fine for table top. The red lenses on the goggles adds a nice touch of colour to top it off. I'm looking forward to painting something a little more colourful, but first I have to finish Batgirl. Of course...I decided on a mostly black colour scheme for her too... why oh why do I punish myself so!?

Mid-October Recap - Go Vote Canada

I'm going to start this one with something I never thought I'd say...I've recently learned to play Pokemon. My oldest nephew had some cards with him when we all got together for family dinner over Thanksgiving. When I asked if he knew how to play he said "no." Thinking it a bit of a shame to have cards but not use them we downloaded the rules and gave it a go. I had to split the cards up into something resembling decks with almost no knowledge of the game, but we had a good time nonetheless.

On Friday Knight Models announced their new "Sons of Batman" program (yep, SOBs) for the Batman Miniatures Game. I've been working towards getting enough models and scenery together to start demoing the game around my area soon anyway, so the timing of this announcement was almost perfect. I just have to take a few photos of my painted crews and submit the paperwork, and hopefully will get accepted into the program.

Last weekend Lewis and I attended Fallcon 2015 to demo Star Trek: Attack Wing. During our four-hour demo time slot we ran 5 new players through games to generally favourable reviews. After almost two years of playing this one I hadn't realized just how much info there is packed into (what I thought was) a simple 100 point fleet. It was good to get the game on the table and send some folks away excited about playing.

While at the convention I picked up a copy of an old-but-new-again deck building game called Arctic Scavengers. I'm not sure who I'll get to play this with, or even when, but the artwork and subject of the game really seemed interesting. It's a theme I certainly don't have in my collection, and it's been a while since I added a deck-builder to my collection. I do hope it's worth the almost $70 it cost though (whew games are really getting expensive these days)!

I had to miss out on Ken's semi-regular evening of games that evening due to other commitments, but I hope to make the next one before the end of the year. They're always good fun and I wish I could attend them more frequently.

Finally, I finally got my first game of Pulp City: Supreme Edition on the table against a real, live opponent. We played a level 6 encounter and had a blast. In retrospect I was obviously having too much fun because I forgot to take any photos at all. We're already planning our next Pulp City battle, so I'll endeavour to get a few snaps of that game when it happens.

Oh yeah, today is election day in Canada. If there's still time when you read this, go vote! Make a positive change for your country by voicing your opinion. Everyone's vote counts!

How to Include All of DC in the Batman Miniature Game

If you have read my blog much in 2015 you'll know I've been spending a lot of time and money on the Batman Miniature Game by Knight Models. Over on the official forums there have been several discussions about whether the system would work for the larger DC Universe and accommodate games including characters like Superman and the Flash. Those conversations are usually split by folks who want more powerful characters joining in, and those who don't.

Over the past few months' releases from Knight Models, I have a strong feeling that they are indeed working towards scaling up the game. I am actually open to this, and think it could work. However, I don't think the entire DCU will simply get rolled in as characters to play in BMG.

The way I see KM introducing a DC Miniatures Game would be as its own rule set, but be entirely compatible with the Batman Miniature Game. Here's how I think that could work:

1. The stats on the DC characters cards will follow the same pattern as those from BMG. That means willpower, movement, endurance, reputation cost etc will all be there.

2. The abilities will be largely the same as those as in BMG, but will be expanded. We have already seen evidence of this will abilities like Fly and Beam being added on individual cards. Those two powers alone would make it possible to represent Superman in the game at a lower power level.

3. A new rule book for the DC game could be released and recommend a higher reputation limit for games, possibly something around 500 rep.

• We have already seen three new types of objectives added since the BMG rule book's release. I imagine objectives will still play a part in the DC game, and continue expand.
• The game restriction of it always being nighttime will be removed, making guns even more powerful, which would mitigate the power levels of some of the characters we would see in the game when facing them off against lowly henchmen.
• Sewers would remain in the game as a way to get around the board more quickly.
• All-new (or mostly new) scenarios would be in the DC rule book.
• Characters from the DC Miniature Game would be fully compatible with those from BMG and vice versa.

If Knight Models followed the suggestions above, folks who want to stick with the Batman universe alone could do so. Those who want to bring a little more DCU into Gotham can, and others who want to go whole hog into DC could do that too.

So those are my thoughts on it. Let me know if you think I'm crazy, spot on, or way off. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Early October Gaming Goodness

The past week and a half has been really good for some gaming! Rather than focus on each play individually I'll just rip through them all in brief.

During a quick trip to I had picked up a copy of a nifty little 1-2 player card game called Onirim. We both tried it a few times, ending up with the base game played as a 2-player affair. The game came with SEVEN expansions in the box, which we haven't tried any of yet. A lot of value in that little box though, and I am looking forward to trying a couple of variants soon.

I also had a chance to try out a nifty little dice game called Art of War. Ironically enough I had been looking at this game on the same evening I bought Onirim, and damned near bought it. I may still do, but we'll see. I'm not sure how much fun it will be with smaller groups, but it was great with 6 players!

Mid-week I got to play another 250 rep game of Batman Miniature Game. My opponent was gracious enough to let me try out my "Batman Beyond" character profile to give it a little more testing. I had a few changes in mind from previous runs, but this game really cemented them. I removed a special rule, changed another and added the full Fly and Hover rules text to my custom card. I'm basically calling him done at this point.

Additionally, I quite enjoy playing my basic cops lead by Commissioner Loeb at 250. Batwoman swaps out nicely for Batman Beyond in 'real' games and also complements the cops well. I have to get my Batgirl figure painted so that I can try some variants. Playing crews led by Gordon and Brandon will really help me get a good handle on the Law Forces. Adding in one or two Free Agents like Catwoman could prove interesting as well, but I can play lots of games with that group while I get my next batch of BMG figures painted up.

Sunday was a nice day for gaming as a friend dropped by to share some beer. We cranked through several games during the afternoon including:

• Hemloch by Smallbox Games - I lost by ONE point. Great little card game with a deceptive amount of depth.
• Project Pandora by Mantic Games - I won 2 games to 3. Not a bad game...need to paint it!
• Last Night on Earth by Flying Frog Productions - Dynamite FTW! Die zombie spawn zones, die!
• Dungeon Twister: Forces of Darkness - A bit more complex than the base game, but very thematic and quite a bit of fun. I lost this one handily.

Finally I want to chat about my newest acquisition in the plastic/metal/resin/whatever addiction space: Infinity N3. I picked up the core rule book w/ the exclusive bounty hunter miniature and the "Operation: Icestorm" starter box w/ CSU miniature.

I have long salivated over the lovely minis produced by Corvus Belli for their tabletop game Infinity. The purported complexity of the 2nd edition rules, and the miniatures, kept me away. Having garnered experience with more complicated metal miniature construction with the likes of BMG and Carnevale however, I felt like I was finally ready for the task. It will be a few weeks before I can get the figures onto the workbench for construction but I'm looking forward to it. A few feelers have been sent out amongst the community to see if I can find someone to help me learn the basics, but if not I can muddle through the Icestorm box on my own.

So much shiny stuff...I have no willpower.

September 2015 Progress Report

September didn't feel like a terribly productive month, but doing these progress reports serves as a nice reminder to me that I haven't been entirely idle. Let's have a quick recap!

Modeling / hobby:

- Fixed Copperhead broken during a demo of Batman Miniature Game. She also got a little more putty work done to really make sure the joins were looked after.
- I prepped and based the Hell Division trio and more police figures for Empire of the Dead. I've also decided to include the "Gentleman Bat" figure (created by some top-notch fellows over on LAF) in this batch. Total of 12 figures ready for paint.
- I applied basing materials to my 25mm Jaffa minis in hopes of someday getting my Stargate project further along. Total of 22 soldiers and the like.
- All of my MDF western buildings from August got a spray coat of black primer.
- Finished a bit of customization work to an o-scale train water tower model I bought a while back.
- Sculpted custom bases for a set of the ninja figures from the Rise of the Kage core game. These seven minis also got a brush-on coat of primer.
- Bought three PlastCraft western buildings to complete my town, but was only able to construct one of them in September.
- Added another half-dozen SuperFigs models to my collection, all of whom are now cleaned, assembled, based and ready for painting.

Painting:

- Painted up two Bones cowboys and a strumpet model for western gaming.
- Finally completed my "Alpha Flight" team of miniatures with addition of Vindicator.  Following this I have also finally sourced models for the rest of my Omega Flight team...which I do hope to complete before year's end.
- Completed five more SuperFigs: Kragg, Emerald Alien, The Wisp, Elasti-Woman and Perun. I was so happy with how these models turned out that I promptly bought more figures!

So what's next?

After some rather 'meh' games of Power Legion this year I decided to see what SuperSystem 4th Edition was all about and have ordered a printed copy of the rules from Lulu.com. I'm looking forward to getting a bunch of my superhero models on the table for some games.

My western town is really taking shape and I'm almost ready to start painting. I'm planning on using my airbrush to do a lot of the heavy lifting, but before I get to that I want to lay all the buildings out and decide what each of them is going to be (bank, hotel, mercantile, etc).

I've put together a list of small pieces I want to buy for other projects going forward, both figures and some scenery bits. There's so much great stuff out there nowadays that it is extremely challenging to restrict myself to just one or two projects at a time!

In terms of figures my immediate plan is to complete painting my Batwoman figure for BMG. The list of things I can tackle after that is long (big surprise), but will likely remain pretty fluid based on available free time, weather (winter is coming...) and my own mood on any given day. Of course I'm always up for suggestions about what you'd like to see. Post it in the comments below!