Thinking Outside the Box

This afternoon I found out that the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, has passed away. Although I've been a fan since my early teens, I am surprised at how strong my reaction to the news has been. I had missed out on catching the Black Sabbath farewell show a few weeks back during live stream, so I've not yet seen it. A friend of mine told me about a few days after, and I'm looking forward to watching it when it becomes available. I've had the good fortune of seeing Ozzy perform twice; once at an outdoor stadium show with Zakk Wylde on guitar, and once with Black Sabbath several years later. I remember more about the experience of those shows than the specific details, and could not tell you set lists or anything like that. His impact on music and pop culture, both as a member of Black Sabbath and a solo artist simply cannot be understated. As impactful and important as that is, it also hits me that his children have lost their father, which happened to me at the end o...

Yesterday I set up another 2'x2' board to continue re-learning Pulp City . This time is was a 9-level villain vs. villain showdown. I had found my Warhammer cemetery scenery during my hobby cleanup this month and thought it would look good on one of the urban mats Mantic produced years back for Mars Attacks. After my first refresher game I have been collecting the various dice and tokens needed to play the game. While I do know another person in town who has some Pulp City figures, it's been ages since we played due to our schedules seldom aligning. Other than attack and suppress tokens, I think I'm pretty close to having what I need. I played both sides in the game as though it were a normal 2-player game, as a simple brawl with no plots or agendas. The blue team was almost pure "Shadow Axis" faction, comprised of Big Brain, Alpha Male & Mayhem, Immolator, Blackthorn and Twilight. The red team was a more varied group of villains with Gentleman, Anansi, Do...

Following on from my large build project, I picked 5 figures from the batch to paint. I ended up selecting enough to do an 8 Level team of "Shadow Axis" villains for Pulp City . Immolator, Big Brain, Blackthorn, Alpha Male and Mayhem. The casts required very minimal cleanup, with all of these being a single piece. Simply glue them down to the base and primed white. As with a lot of my painting lately they were done with a combination of Army Painter speedpaints and traditional paints and washes, depending on the figure and my mood while doing the model. Alpha Male, Immolator and Mayhem were particularly fun to do as they provided an opportunity to try out some really different skin tones. According to his game card, Blackthorn is able to create trees that get placed on the table. I found two spooky trees and a stump in my "Haunted Manor" box from Mantic Games. They were a touch too big to put on 30mm bases and I don't think they' have looked very good. Since...

I knew it had been quite some time since I posted anything here, but I didn’t realize it was pre-covid! I have been hobbying over the years, apparently just not posting about it. Perhaps I’ll remedy that and start posting regularly again. I’ve got quite the backlog I can discuss if not new things. Just this week I built and primed 40 new Supremes for Pulp City . These are all characters by Kitbash Games , from their season 1 Supers Unlimited Kickstarter that they ran back in 2019. It's been a long time since I got Pulp City on the table, gaming or hobby. I do have several original figures painted, and was just going to set up a few to refresh myself on the rules. However, it appears that all the cards for my figures (not to mention all my unbuilt/unpainted models are in an unlabelled box in one of the closets somewhere. So since I knew where this box of minis were, I made a little project of it. It took me two evenings to clean up and glue the figures together. The casts were ove...

Back in April a bunch of stuff arrived thanks to various Kickstarters being delivered. One of these deliveries was the massive Hellboy Boardgame  by Mantic Games . The box was massive, exceeding even my expectations with respect to the amount of stuff contained within. Once I cracked it open and set up the introductory scenario I decided I wanted some colour on the board. After rummaging through the copious amount of Heroclix that I've amassed over the years I surfaced with the Hellboy set. A few hours later I ended up with these. Johann Kraus, Rasputin, Hellbaby & Ben Daimio Lobster Johnson & Roger the Homunculus Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman and Hellboy "Hey, what's Rasputin doing hiding in the BPRD staff photo? Get him!" Rebasing and retouching works wonders on most Heroclix minis. A few of these only got a sepia wash applied and were called finished. I redid the skin on the humans, highlighted a few spots and added some flame markers from my bo...

Lately I finished a lot of models. Some of them were started and finished over a few days, but this batch has been languishing for anywhere from 6 months to 2 years in some state between primed and partially finished. As usual it's more comic-themed stuff from me. First up are some of the classic metal  SuperFigs . I know they're rather dated now compared to some of the new stuff coming out, but I still love this line and pick them up whenever I find a few I don't have somewhere. If memory serves, Artemis is a hero with GUARD and the other two characters are villains. (At one point I had created an arrow for her bow, but it got lost in one of the two moves I made in 2017.) Steel Razor reminded me of  Vera the cyborg from Superman III  and got some glossy white armour. The paint job on Serpent is not my most inspired, but it's serviceable. Artemis, Steel Razor, Serpent The next few are from Reaper Miniatures . The Black Mist is from the first Bones Kickstarte...

In December of last year I added a new range of models to my collection: Bot War . They're produced by Trader's Galaxy , an independent company in Australia. Most of the models I own are now discontinued samples, but the current range of figures is really worth looking at if you like the idea of robots battling it out over limited energy supplies. Enough rambling, here are my first painted bots!   Electroshock - Tyrant class Deceiver   Red Dot - air warrior   Wind - air warrior   Rain - air warrior Electroshock, Hail and Wind character cards are available in the 1st edition card download, but Red Dot is a custom character I designed. The game designer provided me with feedback to ensure that he's balanced within the 2nd Edition rules. If you want to try him out his rules are below. Together with the other three they make up a complete 60 point force. Red Dot 11 points Energy 2 SR 3, M 8, RA 3, CA 2, SH 3, D 6 Air Supp...

I don't remember the last time I posted, but I'm sure it's been ages. I'll keep this update brief, but chock-full of info. In March I graduated with honours from the 3D Modeling, Animation, Art & Design program at the Visual College of Art & Design. So naturally I'm looking for full time or freelance work in that field. You can find my demo reel here. I also together a very talented team of people and for the past 9+ months I've been working on launching a miniature line based on Charlie McElvy's super-cool WatchGuard  characters. The first wave of our miniatures debuted at the 2019 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. You can find the launch wave bundle on my online shop here. When time permits I still do some painting and occasional gaming. I'm currently working on some super-fun nostalgic robot minis from Traders Galaxy's BOT WAR game. Use your Google-fu and I'm sure you'll find it just fine.

I built TONS of models during August and September, and even applied some paint to a few figures. Most of them are Heroclix repaints / rebases, but there are a few actual paint jobs in the lot. First up is a little-known board game that I picked up on discount years ago. Herocard: Champion of New Olympia . It came with two figures, and the other two were single character expansions. The figures were a sticky plastic with low detail, but I rebased them and repainted them anyway. The game is actually pretty fun. To'a King, Ferrion, Deva, Talon Next up, for some reason I got on a roll doing Fantastic Four stuff. I'm not a huge fan of the team, but I had a great Thing figure built and primed from Knight Models , so I decided that he needed his pals. The other three figures are just rebased & touched up Heroclix from the "Fantastic Forces" set. Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Human Torch I've always been a sucker for She-Hulk, so when I fo...

I realized the other day that I have posted very little over the past year or even more. Why? Well the short answer is that my life has changed a lot in the last 2+ years. I've moved cities, am studying for a complete career change after 20 years, and have put a lot of time, money and focus into growing my business o2media . I won't bore the few of you who read this with the details. They're not that exciting. What I did want to share was that my company has been developing some gaming figures of our own. A few weeks ago I announced a license agreement with Xion Studios , which lets us play in their amazing "WatchGuard" universe. I'm  really excited to showcase our first two figure sculpts: The Scintillating Spider-Squirrel and his partner, Trash Panda! These 35-mm scale figures will be cast in resin and each model will include a profile card for use in the superhero skirmish game "Super Mission Force," by Four-Color Studios. Thanks to S...

On my last school break I picked up The Valiant Card Game - Ninjak vs The Valiant Universe . I ordered it on a whim, after hearing that it was based on a comic and live-action web-series of the same name. I confess it's been a couple of decades since I have read anything from Valiant , but I was aware that they had relaunched a few years back, and had picked up their RPG series and their card game last year, neither of which had yet to see the table. However if you've ever stopped by here before you'll know I'm a sucker for superhero comics, so none of these purchases should be a surprise. Deciding that I needed to see the web-series before trying out the game I fired up YouTube and spent an hour being mildly impressed. The writing and acting weren't anything amazing, but overall the costumes very well done, and FX were certainly better than I had expected. I would certainly watch more if it were produced. Anyway, back to the game at hand. It's a basic ...

Yet another successful tournament in the books! We had an excellent turnout and tons of fun for the day. Tournament Results 8th Place: Mike D Black Manta, Darkseid, Deadshot, Harley Quinn (Rebirth), Lex Luthor (Warsuit) 7th Place: Marcel Batmite, Green Lantern, Raven, Superman (Red Son), Zatanna 6th Place: Darkness Coming, Paul Darkseid, Parademon 1 x2, Parademon 2, Steppenwolf 5th Place:  Doom's Avengers, Josh Ares, Dr. Doom, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor 4th Place: Justice League, Talon Batgirl (Rebirth), Harley Quinn, Martian Manhunter, Raven, Supergirl, Zatanna 3rd Place: Black Adam & the Bat Attitude, Elton Black Adam, Clayface, Killer Croc, Lobo, Parademon 1, Solomon Grundy, 2nd Place:  Justice League, Tezlin Flash (Ezra), Green Lantern, John Constantine, Shazam, Wonder Woman 1st Place: Jet Lag, Mike H Black Adam, General Zod, LexCorp Heavy Trooper, Professor Zoom, Superwoman Fellowship Prize: Elton Best Painted Crew: Josh

On April 7th, 2018 I hosted my second tournament of the year at  Eastridge Sports Cards & Games  in Calgary, Alberta . We had 8 players registered to play, but weather conditions brought our numbers down to 6. We still had a great day of games, food and fun with the  Batman Miniatures Game  2nd Edition rules . Tournament Results & Crew Lists 6th Place:  Birds of Prey (346/$100), Mike D Black Canary - Boss, Batgirl, Catwoman (Modern Age), Huntress, Poison Ivy (Classic) 5th Place:  Joker (346/$1350), Brian Joker (Leto), Harley Quinn (SS), Pandaman w/ magazine), Deadshot (SS) 4th Place:  The Brave & the Bold (James) Batman (Rebirth), Robin (Damian), Swamp Thing 3rd Place:  Organized Crime (348/$1950), Mike H. Lex Luthor, Heavy Trooper w/ jet pack, Lexcorp Trooper 1 w/ Bribe, Lexcorp Trooper 2 w/ jet pack, Lexcorp Trooper 3 w/ grapple, Anatoly, Hugo, Troy 2nd Place:  Bane (350/$1500),...

WARNING: If you intend to play adventures from "These Are the Voyages Vol. 1" stop reading now! Back in the summer of 2017 preorders were announced for a new roleplaying game series called  Star Trek Adventures , to be published by Modiphius . At the time I'd been playing with a regular group in a Dresden Files  campaign and had just begun running my first Mutants and Masterminds 3E  campaign as well. So when the Star Trek game was announced I was all over it and placed my order. The materials showed up in early September but I didn't have a chance to actually play until a few weeks ago, shortly after the release of the free quickstart rules.  After some posting around on Meetup, I found a group willing to give things a go. I ran the quickstart scenario for a group of 5 players and we had a great time. The rules definitely need a few reads through by whoever will be running the game as the task resolution, combat and the various actions available to the cha...

On January 6th, 2018 several players from around Alberta gathered at Eastridge Sports Cards & Games to play in our very first DC Universe Miniatures Game  tournament. We had 8 players registered to play and had a great day of games, pizza and fun! Tournament Results & Crew Lists 8th Place: "Clipped Wings" (Charles) Classic Superman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Black Canary, Hawkman, Hawkgirl 7th Place:  "Earth 2" (Brad) Classic Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl, Batman (Ben Affleck) 6th Place:  "Cuddly Bunny" (Micheal Hooper) Doomsday, Superwoman, Power Ring, Johnny Quick, Ravager 5th Place:  "Magic FTW" (Mike Davis) Doctor Fate, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, BvS Superman 4th Place:  "Ane Justice For All..." (James) BvS Superman, Shazam, Doctor Fate, Wonder Woman 3rd Place: "Beastly and the Owl" (Marcel) Darkseid, Atrocitus, Sinestro, Owlman 2nd Place:  ...