Thinking Outside the Box

August 30th, 1922 ATTN: Carl Selinger, Commanding Field Operative RE: Request for team member Agent, It's truly a shame to hear about Agent Montrose, my condolences to you and your team. Events are looking dire however, so your brief respite must come to an end. I'm granting your request for a replacement agent for your field team. Agent Trisha Kellington has recently completed her training and been assigned to the Calgary Field Office. I'm placing her under your command effective immediately. I'm told she's a proficient marksman and has proven steadfast throughout her initial training. I trust she'll be a solid addition to your crew. You'll find the details of your next assignment contained within. Good luck. Director Silver PS: Here's something that your team might find helpful to keep in mind on your next mission. Feel free to share it with them. “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a mons...

DC Final Crisis: Frequently Asked Questions by Captain Spud (from  http://www.captainspud.com/dfc/faq.php) GENERAL MECHANICS 1. Charge Some cards in this set have the keyword  Charge . A card with Charge has the text, "At the start of the combat phase, put a charge counter on this card." The word Charge will be followed by a number or variable in brackets. A card with "Charge X: (charge text)" always has "(charge text)", and the text's effect with scale with the current value of X.   For example, Two-Face, Protector of Gotham City has the text, " Charge X:  At the start of your attack step, you may flip X coins. Each time you win a flip, choose an opposing character. Characters chosen this way can't attack this turn." This text is always active, and the value of X will increase as Two-Face accumulates charge counters. A card with "Charge [number]: (charge text)" has "(charge text)" while it has [number] ...

I was able to pick up our latest set last week: DFC ! They look really good, and some of the cards have some great abilities on them. Unfortunately after prepping the images, then taking the day off from work to pick them up, and finally spending hours sorting them all out for the people who supported the set...I don't really want to look at them any more. At least not for a few more days anyway. The designers of the set have also added some cool text for Bizarro World . You can view all of the historical Bizarro World text here . I'll be posting up the FAQ for the set shortly as well. A few people have already picked their sets up, but there are still three folks left to do so. I imagine that will occur on Thursday's regular gaming night. As this is the third set we've done, I thought it might be worth letting people know that there are extras available from each of them. Here's a list with descriptions and costs, should you want to augment your collections: ...

As I paint more and more of my lead and plastic toys, I continue to be amazed at the great skill I see all over the various boards and blogs dedicated to the hobby. Recently I was trying to put together my Immortals starter box for  Hell Dorado . The main character of the faction has a really unique design and as such, has proven a huge pain in the ass to even just put together. It's a lot finer detailed and has smaller parts than I'm used to. But wow what awesome sculpting details! I'm nearly finished, but am quite honestly afraid that he'll break should I even look at it wrong, let alone when I try to pick it up. I really, really should learn to pin things better. However, I do think it'll look great when it's painted... Here's an excellent example I found on James Wappel's blog . I have no illusions; my figure will look nowhere near that good. But back to the topic at hand. Long ago when all I owned were copious amounts of 40k miniatures the gf as...

August 16th., 1922 Western Canadian Threshold Agency Calgary Field Office ATTN: Director Silver RE: Case File SA-120816-RtA The operation was a complete failure. The resistance we encountered was far better trained than we've encountered to date. We were outnumbered and outgunned, and were unable to recover any artifacts. I was able to destroy one of the crates before taking heavy fire myself, but the other three items items in question were lost. Consider them to be in use by evil forces and brief other field teams appropriately. Additionally, it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you of the loss of Agent Elizabeth Montrose while on assignment pursuant to case file SA-120816-RtA. I respectfully request that you forward the enclosed personal effects to her family. Also, if possible to do so without revealing too much, please relay my utmost respect and admiration to them. She served heroically in her first two assignments, even saving my own life on one of those...

I've been meaning to post on these two games for a while, but my desire to upload and link pictures and full reports is rather low. Hence, I'll make this post pretty short. A few weeks back Brandon, Sebastien and I played a three-player game using one of the search scenarios.  Seb played a 43-point Lurker list Brandon and I put together for him, and we teamed up against it. If I recall there were two mummies, a few cultists, two maniacs and a big scary monster. I want to say Winged Nightmare, but it was a less terrifying winged creature. We set up a really large board, which in retrospect was to the Threshold's disadvantage. They were to search each of the six areas of the board in order to find some kind of treasure, with the possibility of it being a trap. The first two areas searched by Brandon's team availed us nothing, whereas the second area searched by my team resulted in a nasty poison bite taking the searcher off the table. Brandon valiantly drew the atte...

I thought I'd post up some thoughts on some other skirmish or boutique miniature games that strike me as interesting. It could prove quite boring, so feel free to skip this one if you already have enough unpainted lead and plastic on your workbench. Bushido I've found Japanese history interesting since seventh grade social studies. There's something very interesting about it being the lone country in Asia to develop a feudal system resembling that of Europe in near total isolation. Bushido is not a historically accurate game, but rather a game inspired by Japanese history with a lot of fantastic elements from legend and mythology mixed in. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to look into the game very deeply, but the rule book and character cards are available for download from their website. I really dig when companies do that. It gives me (or you) a chance to proxy up some models and give the thing a few test drives before laying out any cash. From what I've...

Well not really, although that is certainly a comic book I would pay to read. Over the weekend I finished several more 'clix conversions and thought I'd share them here. I'll start with the new Alpha Flight guys. Puck Shaman Guardian Shaman and Puck were very easy conversions. After removing them from the 'clix bases and gluing them on the 30mm ones I added an ink wash over their existing paint work. Puck required a little bit of touching up of the black on his uniform but that was it. Guardian required a lot more work. I applied a very dilute grey wash over the white parts of his uniform, followed by a red wash over the rest. The skin on his face required repainting, as did the black lining around his eyes. Finally I touched up the outline of the red on his uniform and transplanted his flight base to a new 30mm size. I decided that the flight bases are worth keeping, as they both raise the figures up more dynamically, and allows indicating fligh...

I'm not the most experienced painter of miniatures in the world.  Hell I'm not even the most experienced amongst my friends.  Most if not all the people I know who do paint minis are as good as, or better at it than I am.  However, I'm not concerned with that too much.  I simply want to paint my figures to a level of quality that I'm proud to put on the table for a game with.  Also, I'm lazy and don't want to spend hours or even days painting up a single unit that might not even make it across the table intact! In order to do that one requires paint, brushes, time and patience. I have the first two, the third and fourth tend to come and go over time. Recently I've focused more time into my miniature gaming, and have expanded both my skill and tool sets.  The latest thing I've decided to add is a starter set of War Paints by Army Painter .  These are new to me because they're different from my Games Workshop and P3 paints in one simple but substanti...

For a little over a year I've slowly been renovating my place.  I started by repainting the closets in the master bedroom and then went on to the two bathrooms.  In September I tore out the bedroom carpet and replaced it with laminate flooring, as well as putting up new paint there too.  I'd hoped to get the same done to the living room before Halloween, and was able to do so with a little help from a friend but didn't get the room back together in time to have a party like I had hoped. Now it's August and I'm still not quite done, although after months of messing about and procrastinating, I finally finished the kitchen and hallway painting in May.  I've only got one room left to paint, but it'll likely be a while until I get to that particular mess. One of the troubles with being a collector-of-nerdities and practitioner-of-many-hobbies is storage space.  Even though my place is more than big enough for a single person, it's not big enough for said...

Remember back when you were a kid, and you read comic books?  And all the other kids thought you were a nerd, because you read those comic books?  Yeah, me too.  What makes me laugh about that whole thing now is that our current state of affairs in the media amounts to what is essentially a celebration of geek culture.  People are walking about sporting Green Lantern t-shirts, Batman logos on their ball caps, and lining up in droves to see movies based on characters they used to make fun of other people for liking. My my how the world has changed. When I was a kid I didn't get picked on much, even though I was a pretty big nerd.  I was of a size that was intimidating enough that I generally got left alone, or made those who attempted the picking on generally regret having done so.  Sadly I know that wasn't the case for others.  But hey, growing up is painful and all that.  And people generally suck, even when they're grownups so, whether you w...