Thinking Outside the Box

I've been a season ticket holder to Vertigo Mystery Theatre  for several years now. Ironically, I found out about the theatre by attending a musical, and I generally hate musicals. However, that particular show was Evil Dead: The Musical , and truly...how can anyone hate a musical that has a number in it called "What the Fuck Was That?" You simply can't, that's how. Each season there are five different shows put on. Last week I attended a performance of this season's fourth play The Ends of the Earth . I was rather disappointed with the play itself, finding the story to be rather pointless, the end twist to be lacking in surprise and the script to be middling at best. I'm simply not a fan of a play that has more monologue than dialogue. To be fair though, this is probably the first time in years I've been truly disappointed by a show at Vertigo. However, while at the theatre I saw some posters for a show running the following week entitled William ...

Mar 25, 1923 From: Carl Selinger, Commanding Field Agent To: Director Silver, Calgary Field Office RE: Case File SA-130307-F Director, My fellows are growing impatient waiting for the arrival of Agent Monique, so once again we ventured out into the forest in hopes of collecting some useful information on our own. There were several more uniformed men patrolling the woods around our area of interest. It seems that they have expanded their radius and their numbers. Even though we were expecting more vigilance than previously, we were once again outmatched. We were set upon almost immediately and had to retreat. Quite frankly, luck is the only thing that saved our hides. These men are far better armed and trained than the average cultist or backwater shaman that we've encountered before. I fear that we have only brushed the surface of things. We've most assuredly aroused some suspicions. If Agent Monique doesn't arrive soon we will be forced to proceed without...

I started putting figures together a week ago Sunday. The material is a little odd; it's not quite the same as the Mantic resin-plastic, and quite a bit different from the GW plastic. It cleans up fairly nicely with the back edge of a hobby knife, and any bent or twisted parts bounce back into place if dunked in hot water. I dislike the injection points being on the shoulder joints on the male Samaritan troopers. They make it a bit of a bitch to get the right shoulder to line up with the arm piece. Most of mine are going to require a touch of green stuff to fill in. However, as mentioned with the hot water earlier, reposing figures is pretty easy. I've modified the arm positions on the scythe witches just by heating them and bending. It's not massive variety, but it helps a bit. I'm considering doing the same with some of the Samaritans and phase 1 revenants. Short of doing a bunch of knife work though, the Vanguard figures will not have a lot of variety when I'm...

Well we've finally completed all five rounds of our regular season Dreadball play and I have to say that it's been pretty interesting. It's also been a lot of fun! I've collected in all the game results from the players and I have to say that the top four is not at all what I'd expected it to be. I had done some private forecasting based on the early rounds, factoring in the performance and death tolls, and man was I ever wrong about who came out on top! Anyway, here are the standings at the close of regular play. Team Value Win Pct Points Wins Losses Played Avion Yellowhawks 134 80% 10 4 1 5 Funky Fathers 129 60% 6 3 2 5 Royal Eternian Rams 146 57% 12 4 3 7 Seb's Veer-myn 122 57% 10 4 3 7 Da Bombers 148 40% 5 2 3 5 Snake Mountain Smashers 145 14% 7 1 6 7 As you can se...

As I mentioned in my last post, I finished a whopping seventeen models last week. That's a personal best, and is likely one I won't be topping any time soon. However, I didn't show all of the models I painted in that article, simply because it didn't make thematic sense to do so. A few weeks ago I was looking around at Sentry Box, and happened upon a nice little box of figures from  Copplestone Castings . I'd heard positive things of the company but never seen any of their models in person. These were really nice, if a bit highly priced at 18-X (don't get me started on Sentry Box's ridiculous pricing scheme...), which on that day was about $19.25. I didn't really know what I was going to do with them at the time, but I couldn't pass on them even at nearly $4 per figure. Fast forward a few days and I had glued them to some bases; these ones are magnetic 25mm that bought a while ago and simply wanted to try them out. I had a window of pleasant weat...

Way way way back before Christmas I busted open two of the starter boxes I bought for Empire of the Dead . Seb, Brandon and I had already played through the free downloadable scenario that pits Holmes and Watson against the nefarious Jack the Ripper a few times. I really liked the mechanics of the game as it allows for some nice in-game story telling. Oh, and I think it's cool that it used d10s instead of d6s. Don't really know why, just something a little different I guess. I cleaned up all the lovely models from the Lycaon  and Vampire  starter boxes, glued them to their bases, primed them and wrote up starting faction lists for both. Then they simply sat around on or near my painting table for weeks at a time, looking up at me accusingly from time to time as if to say "paint us you lazy sod!" Admittedly I completely reorganized my painting area with new paint racks, paint, brushes and a new painting table in that time, but really I had no good excuse for not havi...

I was really pleased with my first use of the Plate Mail Army Painter  primer spray when I used it on my Forge Fathers team, the Royal Eternian Rams , for DreadBall . I ordered it knowing that it would also be a great time saver for the first batch of stuff I had in mind for my  Stargate  project.  I am very happy at how well it covers and how smooth it looks after application. I don't have a lot of use for coloured primer due to playing mainly skirmish games, but it is very good primer and I'll likely be switching to it even for black, white and grey. Shortly after I received the official Stargate figures I cleaned up and based all the Jaffa figures and prepped one of the two gates I bought. There are three 8-man squads of Jaffa, two heavy cannons with operators, and a First-Prime to ensure their loyalty and obedience. I'm still uncertain of the best way to construct and base the cannons, as they're two part models. I would like them to be separate from...

Well, well well...I actually got to play a few games yesterday. Uncle Mike and James dropped by Trilogy for a bit. I ran lurkers for both of my games. One against Sebastien who had a three-agent Threshold list pitted against a high priest. One of the agents is now suffering from poor health, which could prove devastating in future games. James' 24-point group of agents found themselves up against heavily armed and well trained Nazi soldiers. Two of the agents took fire while trying to navigate the cliffs of the dig site. Their leader was set upon with machine fire shortly after and was unfortunately killed. Uncle Mike praised the Lurker efforts, "That list needed to die..." Michael and Uncle Mike played a game as well. From the cursing at their table it sounds as though the zombie horde Mike's agents were up against were extremely hungry. Apparently a particularly powerful strain of serum was in play and succeeded in creating a Blasphemous construct AND two sp...