Thinking Outside the Box

A few weeks ago I placed an order with an online game shop based in Eastern Canada: Meeplemart . They have a much wider selection than a lot of other Canadian stores when it comes to miniatures games and accessories. Their prices are nothing special, but are comparable to other online retailers, and I prefer buying from Canadian folks when at all possible. They do add shipping to their fees, so they're not as highly ranked by me as a shop like Starlit Citadel . However, opinions aside, here's what showed up at my door from Steve at Meeplemart! This box contained starter sets for games I've been interested in for a while, and may or may not have actually played. First up is Dark Age: Apocalypse . I've played this game once, and it was a lot of fun. D20-based rolling-low-is-better might seem like an odd way to go, but I enjoyed it very much. So I wanted to pick up the core rule book and a few starters of my own. I wasn't able to get the Skarrd  starter as it wa...

The first season of  Dreadball  started last Sunday at Trilogy Gaming Club. Two of our three 1st round games have already been played: a Forge Fathers mirror-match and an Orx / Veer-myn dustup. A rather unique set of pairings. The Forge Fathers game was a slow moving, low scoring affair, with only three strikes being scored in the game during regulation time. We did forget about the 'steady' ability for the first few rushes, but remembered shortly after most of the guards had been knocked down. The low speed of the Forge Fathers is definitely going to require some finesse-coaching to develop a viable and adaptive game strategy. In the other game the Orks under Coach Eisnor opted for blood, and man-oh-man did they get it! Three of the furry Veer-myn strikers left the pitch in body bags by game end. It was a very costly victory for the Veer-myn team, but a win nonetheless. Interestingly enough the Veer-myn guards tried to lay down the pain in return but had no success agains...

With all the new stuff arriving over the past few weeks, one might think I haven't painted anything. One might be almost correct. I've been painting, I just hadn't finished anything until today. So here's what I've got to share! First up, three more members of Alpha Flight have been added to the roster. Diamond Lil Marrina Aurora As with all the other figures I've done so far, these are all simple Heroclix conversions. For the most part it's simply paint touch-ups, a quick re-basing and some washes and/or highlights. I'm nearly done with my Alpha Flight squad; and am only planning on adding four more: Vindicator (Heather), Box, Northstar and Talisman. The last two will require some converting or searching for the appropriate models. I also completed a few more markers and terrain bits for horror gaming, most likely Strange Aeons with this batch. With all the cultists running around in my collection I thought that they ne...

Shortly after Christmas I took the plunge and ordered some products from a Polish hobby company HobbyZone . They had some great looking pieces for organizing ones painting and modelling areas, all of which were highly recommended across the internet. After doing some measurements of my existing workspace I counted up my assorted paints, inks, brushes and tools. Armed with this information I started looking over the various painting tables and paint racks available, then placed an order for the following items: Paint rack (w/ 25mm slots) Paint rack (w/ 30mm slots) Large Paint Table (w/ 30mm slots) A day or so after I placed my order I received a shipping confirmation with a tracking number. I checked the status of this package, nearly every day in fact, impatiently awaiting its arrival. Thursday night I received a parcel notice. I was able to liberate it from the clutches of a Canada Post clerk early Saturday morning. Upon arriving home I tore open my package. My fi...

It was a Dredd-ful weekend. Ooh, bad pun. Sorry about that folks, but I just couldn't resist. On my way home from a nice brunch on Saturday morning I stopped to pick up a copy of Dredd on 3D Blu-Ray. I quite enjoyed it in the theatre and was very much looking forward to a second viewing in comfort of my own home. I also had to stop in to pick up some mail at the post office and was pleasantly surprised to find a second parcel waiting (in addition to my stuff from HobbyZone , which I'll talk more about in my next post). The box was small, but very weighty, so I headed home eager to crack it open and dive into the goodies sure to be inside. Not certain what to expect, I split the tape and opened it up...to find bag upon bag of metal Mega-City One goodness! There was a lot of stuff jammed into that box, and it took me the better part of an hour to go through each, identify the contents and verify that they had all the bits they should. That might seem lengthy, but in...

Since I made my last post I've had a few snippets of exciting news pop up. I'll start with the most recent and go backwards... Not to long ago the Studio McVey  folks posted another update on Sedition Wars . Sounds like things are finally starting to ship, which is pretty spiffy information. I'm sure it'll be a while yet before anything lands in my mailbox, but at least I know that things are starting to happen. Yesterday, the surveys finally went out for the Blackwater Gulch  campaign too. I had long since planned out what I wanted for my pledge dollars, so it didn't take me very long to fill it out. Or so I had thought would be the case. There was a brief moment of indecision when I tried to decide if I wanted more custom bases, or a copy of the rulebook...I opted for extra bases; two sets of rocky bluffs, one set of desert mesa. The rule book is available for free from Gangfight Games  and is really nice; I hope they continue to keep it freely available to do...

This post may not be of great interest to you, but I wanted to collect all my thoughts together about several items I've ordered, pledged for or am planning to do this year. Not really a resolution list, but more of an...itemized accounting I suppose. I supported a lot of crowd-funding efforts in 2012. Sadly the first one that I supported I've not yet seen anything from and they seem to be suffering delay upon delay: Sedition Wars . As of early this week though, it does sound like they're finally getting on track. This was the first time I really jumped in and pledged for stretch goals or extras, and the amount of stuff I will (eventually) receive for my money was pretty astounding. While I am looking forward to the game itself, I'm also looking at using the Vanguard figures for other things, more likely as Colonial Marines for some Aliens-related gaming. The next thing I jumped on was the now-ubiquitous DreadBall . I went way overboard throwing cash at this beast...

Plans for the DreadBall league are underway. We had three people come out to play some pre-season games and sign up yesterday. We'll play another round of preliminary games next week, and then get started on the 20th for the first full 'season' of play. Brett and Cindy played a game of Forge Fathers vs. Humans, with the humans scoring a blowout win of 7-0.  Good passing turned out to be the key to victory for Cindy. William and I played a hard-fought game between Orx and Humans. We both scored a single-point strike on our initial rushes, and then the Orx proceeded to physically kick the snot out of my half-painted, as-of-yet-unnamed team. Ok admittedly one of the players that was out of the game was my own fault...I attempted a poorly timed stomp and paid dearly for it. However, by my last rush of the game I had two players in the sin-bin, two players out (one dead) and four players on the board The score was sitting at 0 and the ball was lying loose deep in my zone....

Holy crap, I can't believe that it's the year 2013. What the hell happened to time? I remember being a kid and watching movies like Transformers  and thinking "2005, that's so far away!" Maybe I'm just getting old(er) and starting to wondering what I've been doing with my life. Regardless, 2012 was mostly good, with some unpleasantness occasionally thrown in to mess it up. Not unlike most everyone else's I'd imagine. Overall I can't complain too loudly. It's a New Year full of promise, just like every new day should be. I won't be doing a full recap of the year, because well...that'll probably be boring for me and you. All the hobby stuff I did last year is available right here on the blog, so you can go through it at your leisure. I'd rather fill you in on all the stuff that's happened over my winter break! We'll just skip the parts about the exorbitant traffic ticket I got from less-than-honorable traffic cop, and ...