Thinking Outside the Box

More Heroclix conversions here. While looking through the figures I'd already converted, I realized that my character selection to date pretty much amounted to Alpha Flight exclusively. I've painted a few Pulp City models (heroes and villains starter boxes) from scratch, but no villains from either the  Marvel or DC Comics universes. I decided that needed to be remedied. I dug through my copious amount of Heroclix figures to find some interesting characters, not necessarily the best models, just characters that I thought would be fun to play with in games using  SuperSystem  rules. The three I chose were Lightning Lord, Cosmic King and Saturn Queen, because I want to start on a Legion of Superheroes batch soon and they will need villains to battle. The sculpts on the figures are pretty good, and the paint work is actually decent, especially when you consider that they're mass produced. As usual I applied some washes to the figures, and this time also did so...

Last summer my gf ordered some Zuzzy mats for me for my birthday. The challenges I faced in actually getting them delivered to me have been well documented in various places on the internet already, so I'll simply reiterate: don't order from Zuzzy. They have awful customer service, which is a shame because their products are really quite nice. Ok on to the real stuff. When I did receive my items, also included in the package were several sample mats. They're not big enough to game on, but serve well as test pieces for trying out the techniques and colours for painting your large size game mats. I had tried doing a winter-themed test on one of the very small pieces I also received and had been unhappy with the results. So I decided to try out a desert kind of theme on one of the larger sample pieces. I've got two of these large mats and want to do one up for western or post-apocalyptic types of games. Yellows, browns, greys etc. Here's what I ended up with. ...

My space marine chapter The Obsidian Fists are getting close to a strength of 1000 points. Most of the figures in my army come from the 4th and 5th edition starter boxes. The only real addition to those I've made are a chaplain and a devastator squad for heavy support. I also have the 6th edition starter box, but rather than doing Dark Angels I'll probably add them into my Obsidian Fists. It seems silly to start another space marine army...I have plenty of other models for other armies that I could and should work on instead. Regardless of what I do with the Dark Angels, I just picked up two drop pods for less than 50% of retail. Those additions would push my roster up to 1500 points without too much trouble. I'm only interested in having forces of around 1500 points or less, because I find anything much bigger than that to be a) WAY too expensive to collect, especially with GW's current prices, and b) cause the game to be longer than I enjoy. Games of around 1500 ...

Recently we made the change from SVN to Git for source control in my software development team. We've all been using SVN for years and, while not without its own serious flaws, it works. Managing the archive and access to it is simple, and people can easily check out and contribute with a minimum or effort and training. Yes, they can screw things up, but that's what source control is for...to cover your ass when you've left it hanging out in the wind. While SVN does require you to pay for the Visual add-in for Visual Studio, that's not so bad. I can see which files I've changed within my dev environment at a glance. Git does not have this feature, but it's not a deal breaker. I can live without this nicety. Now we have Git in place and holy christ if it isn't the most convoluted and arcane piece of ... software I've ever had the misfortune of using. As someone who grew up with DOS and UNIX command line operating systems, that's saying something. ...

Needing a break from my painting table the past few weeks, I've been playing (and buying) more board and card games recently. These won't be in-depth reviews, just what I played and what I thought of it. There are plenty of reviews available online for all of these games. First up is Lords of Waterdeep . I'd looked at the game several times in Chapters/Indigo thinking that the box was unique, and pretty spiffy looking too. It's essentially a Eurogame with coloured cubes and meeples. The artwork, box insert and components (cards, tokens, etc...) are fantastic. The game looks great from the minute you open the box. I've only played it once, as a five player game and I thought it was simple, but excellent. The theme is sort of just there, and if you play with people who aren't interested in the DnD theme it can be largely ignored. That's how our game went, and personally, I'd rather try to embrace the theme a little more. I think the game would be a ...