Thinking Outside the Box

The past seven days have been jam-packed with nerdy goodness. Let me break it down for youz... First thing's first, last Wednesday I got to meet Richard Comely, the creator of Canada's very own Captain Canuck . Yeah anyone who lives outside of Canada probably has no idea what I'm talking about and that's fine. Basically, Captain Canuck was the first independently created and published Canadian  superhero. Some of the first comics I remember reading were issues of the original Captain Canuck series published in the late 70s. I actually don't know where they came from, but I read most of those issues dozens of times. Last year I had a chance to meet the main colourist for the series Claude St. Aubin, who was a tremendously nice fellow. I'm pleased to say that Richard was equally so. Truly a pleasant fellow, and it was quite a thrill to get to meet him in person and have some of my long-cherished books signed. Keeping on the comic-book theme, I finally ...

I mentioned acquiring some old 28mm Masters of the Universe figures (produced by Grenadier in the 80s) several months ago, and I've finally gotten a start on them. While working on my Etherian Horde and Avion Warriors for Dreadball  I was thinking about the coach models for my teams. Since I have no Hordak figure at the moment my thoughts immediately turned to Skeletor. My Orx/Goblin team the Snake Mountain Smashers  are going to be Skeletor's, even though thematically it would make more sense for them to be Caligars coached by Whiplash. Perhaps later on I'll do another team for that. The Smashers aren't ready for prime time yet, but their coach is all set for his debut appearance. The paint work was pretty simple. Army Painter Crystal Blue for the skin, a little GW Liche Purple mixed with AP Uniform Grey for the cloth on his armour, and P3 Greatcoat Grey for the leather armour bits. Matte black for the spear shaft and fuzzy shorts, gloss black for his claws. GW ...

Ah the travesty of a game that was Horrorclix . Bastard cousin to the juggernaut superhero game Heroclix . Is it any wonder that no one laments your demise? Alright, perhaps that's a little bit unfair. However, I just couldn't get into Horrorclix, no matter how much I liked Heroclix at the time. The horror theme just didn't come through for me. On the positive side though Horrorclix did leave people like me with dozens of great figures for kit-bashing and converting. I bought both box sets for Aliens and Predators, as well as the Alien Queen set that came with an additional warrior for each side. The models were pretty nicely produced, even if their 'cross-compatible' dials were mostly useless in both games. Aliens These figures are a simple rebasing job, with no repainting done to them at all. I stripped them off the clix bases, and removed a human figure from one of them. Actually I lied, there was a very minor touch up to that figure to hide the spot where ...

I own a few of the actual packaged Bones figures by Reaper , this one being my first purchase. While awaiting my Vampire pledge box I thought I'd actually tackle a few of the other Bones miniatures I already have. So here we go with a werewolf figure. I bought this model long ago for use in Strange Aeons , probably a few months before Reaper's kickstarter campaign was announced. If I remember correctly it cost me $2.99 plus tax, which I thought was ridiculously cheap. I'd never seen the Bones figures before, and all the metals and plastics this size were way more money! I based and primed it shortly after purchasing it, and finally got around to painting it a few weeks ago. With the flood evacuation a while back he sat around on my painting table awaiting some finishing until now. Over the black primer I dry brushed it with two levels of grey (GW Fortress Grey and Codex Grey), and a final white just on the highest spots. P3 Ember Orange on the eyes, with a dot of AP Da...

Yesterday I had a chance to pit my newly-minted Etherian Horde  robot team up against the Snake Mountain Smashers  Orx/Goblin team in a game of Dreadball . William was coaching the Smashers, who were sitting at a whopping 145mc team value from their experience in the Trilogy league this spring. My Horde were at their starting 100mc, which gave them four rolls on the free agent table netting them two human strikers, an Orx guard and a Forge Father guard. The Smashers started the game with home advantage and the punishment followed quick and painfully. My robots went from new and shiny to dented and decapitated in short order. They couldn't transform, or when they were successful simply got hammered back to the pitch, or knocked into the sin bin. Whoa it's getting crowded in here! At one point near the 3/4 mark of the game I had two dead robots, and only two players on the pitch...neither of whom were robot players. Without my human striker (lucky #7) in there scorin...

You know what's really sad? I've got all four season 1 Dreadball  teams in varying states of painted-ness, but none of them are actually  finished . My corporation team was pretty much finished until I messed them up, but I'll be posting more about them soon enough. Anyway, after over two weeks of being displaced from my home I was finally given the go ahead to return Sunday. With hot water and electricity restored I had to begin cleaning unspeakable organisms from my fridge and freezer, start vacuuming, do dishes that had long languished in the sink, and of course...laundry. All the stuff people love to do right?! With most of that complete or in progress I sat down to some (in my opinion) much-deserved personal time. I flipped the TV on and broke out some figures that I thought would be relatively quick and easy to work my way through: Season 2's robot team! These things look a lot like the robotic Horde trooper minions that work for Hordak (from Masters o...