Thinking Outside the Box

It feels like I haven't accomplished much hobby-wise lately. It's not entirely true, but that's how it feels. I have been able to play a few games recently, mainly SuperSystem and Lords of Waterdeep . I've also been in comic book mode lately, largely due to the my games of SuperSystem. After our games last week, I dug through my copious amounts of Heroclix figures, as well as putting together some lists of teams or characters that I'd like to work on. Other than big lists of crap though, I've accomplished nothing there in terms of building or painting stuff. I think some of my malaise is also caused by some of the disappointments on Kickstarter . The folks in charge of SuperSystem  cancelled their campaign for 4th Edition with about two days left to go. I already discussed this a bit last week, but it was disheartening because the cancellation seemed so strangely timed, and the reasons for it were pretty lame. On the plus side of that cancellation, it le...

While the Kickstarter campaign for SuperSystem 4th Edition  was still running earlier this week we got together to play a game of 3rd Ed. I stat-ed up some characters to play with and we set up the table. I chose to play the  Legion of Super-Villains : Saturn Queen, Cosmic King and Lightning Lord. William was playing Exiles : Blink, Nocturne and Sasquatch. Starting off the game Lightning Lord grabbed Cosmic King and flew up over a building to keep an eye on the Exiles. Sasquatch moved up and Nocturne ran towards another building and hid in the shadows. Saturn Queen and Cosmic King moved over towards a lower building to avoid Blink's cowardly hit-and-run maneuvers. The following round Saturn Queen lands a mental attack against Sasquatch but isn't able to slow her down. Nocturne stays in the shadows and fires some hex-bolts at Lightning Lord with no success. Cosmic King moves towards the source of the hex-bolts but is unable to determine their exact origin. Sasquatch char...

The recently-released set of expansions brings us the USS Voyager, as well as the first ships for the Borg, Kazon and Species 8472. With my preference for playing pure fleets, I thought I'd take a quick look at what this means for players like me. I'll focus on the 90-point build suggested for "The Collective" organized play events. The Borg Let's start with the Borg, as I feel they'll likely be the new favourite of a lot of players. The named sphere clocks in at 40 points. If you add all of the goodies that come in the box with it you end up with the following 80 point list: Borg Sphere 4270 w/ - Tactical Drone - Borg Ablative Hull Armor - Borg Tractor Beam - Seven of Nine - Feedback Pulse - Cutting Beam If you add a flagship or another 10-point resource you have a very maneuverable monster to add your 30-point booster contents to. If your venue is still allowing Admiral's Orders (which I hope it isn't) you have even more options. You ...

Had some time yesterday work to with Uncle Mike on more 2nd Ed stuff for Strange Aeons . Mike and I played through the "Treasure Hunt" scenario. I love the deep one model from Uncle Mike's Worldwide  but haven't painted mine yet so I provided the mat, Mike provided the scenery and models. We both agreed that the table looked awesome. The Threshold deployed first, meaning the deep one had to start farther away that I would have liked. That river looked refreshing however, so he jumped right in on his way to a Lovecrafty snack. Footsteps on the bridge echoed through the river waters, distracting the deep one from his easy meal. Unfortunately for the scaly beast, the agent on the bridge hates deep ones, and won the combat...allowing him to retreat from the dripping claws. Blinded by hunger, the deep one foolishly pursued the agent. In the ensuing combat he was unable to catch the slippery agent and cold blood was spilled. Capitalizing on th...

Every game world should be inhabited by people. A lot of games simply ignore the fact that anyone (alien or otherwise) other than the combatants exist. In some games it simply makes sense. For example, in Warhammer 40k would either army care about harming innocent bystanders? More often than not the answer would probably be, "No." In other games civilians are not only present, but important.  SuperSystem  or combatants in  Pulp City  need citizens to serve and protect, or enslave and destroy. With that in mind I needed me some collateral to damage. I found these figures from the SuperFigs  line last fall. The batch of ten figures was a very reasonable $15 and I'd very much like to find the other two packs that were produced. The sculpts are simple, and in some cases not that great, but have enough style that they look good on the table. Painting them took longer than I'd like. The faces and hands on some of them look rather muppet-ish, especially th...

I was able to play in two Month 6 events of the "Dominion War" organized play series for Star Trek: Attack Wing  last month. I was a distant second for a DS9 model at the venue I host at, and had no chance of winning at the other. I simply hadn't been able to go to enough tournaments at the second event to garner enough points. All that is in the past however, as the Borg are coming! Oddly enough, the preview for the first Borg expansion didn't show up on Wizkids  website like all the previous ones, but rather on startrek.com. If you want to read the whole preview for the expansion click here . The sphere is a pricey ship points-wise, and seems pretty powerful, but I think the Borg should be powerful. They're the f-ing Borg ! Yeah, still sounds Swedish, but these are nasty cybernetic swedes that you don't want to hang out with! Anyway, I wasn't I regular watcher of "Voyager" so I don't think I ever saw the sphere on TV, just the litt...

I painted these for the girlfriend a few weeks ago and put together a little shadow box display for her birthday. They went over extremely  well and she said I should post a picture of them. They're on 25mm magnetic round bases and are removable from the display. Before you ask...no I can't tell you where I got them, it's a secret! Yellow...such a great looking colour, such a huge pain in the arse to make look good!

What seems like a long, long time ago...I received some of these 6'x4' mats for my birthday (nope, not last year's). They're really good looking but the size makes them difficult to paint in my house. The only way I can do that is to put both of my large folding tables out together, push most of the living room furniture out of the way and try not to get paint on the floor. I've got my Broken Blacktop mat about halfway done...but that's not what I'm here to talk about today. A few days ago I stopped in at Trilogy  with the intent of picking up a  Gale Force 9 mat for playing Star Trek: Attack Wing  on. They were supposed to have gotten some in stock, and I was happy to find that the rumours were true. Looking around the shop a little more I saw that they had a "Scourged Forest" 2'x3' Zuzzy  mat. I have a 6'x4' one, but since I've been playing a lot of Strange Aeons  lately and all of my home-built scenery is of the grass-and-...