Thinking Outside the Box

Wow it's been a long time since I started this blog. Over ten years. Most of that time has been spent writing about games and hobby activities, but occasionally I dive into event reviews, the odd rant and even gotten political a few times. All of that writing has resulted in over 75,000 page views. So I know some of you out there are reading this stuff, even if you're largely silent. I always have several posts in-progress and had actually resisted posting anything, trying to find the right item to include in my 500th post. Today I decided that it would be Pulp City . The guys from Pulp Monsters  are running a small campaign,  Pulp City: Cold War , to expand the rich world of Pulp City with two new teams of awesome looking supremes. I pledged on the new campaign because I think almost all of the new characters look amazing, and I want to support the game. I've been hard on them in the past because I'm still waiting for quite a few missing items from my Collector...

I've been working towards getting more of the superhero figures painted from Knight Models range for the Batman Miniatures Game. Yesterday I finished the second of two that will give me two completely different Law Forces crews at 250 rep each Batwoman is a character I don't know much about, but really like the costume of. The red on black is really striking, so I spent a lot of time getting some depth to the wide swathes of red on the cape. Highlighting large areas of black is not something I really enjoy, and I did have a bit of trouble getting her eyes right, but I'm happy with this one for tabletop. Next up is Catwoman. So much BLACK. It's hard to paint, takes a long time and is difficult to get a result I'm happy with, especially when compared with the studio paint jobs. There was a lot of watered down black paint, black washes, varying shades of blue dry brush stages and finally a touch of metallic and white for a top highlighting. Her face e...

I'm going to start this one with something I never thought I'd say...I've recently learned to play Pokemon . My oldest nephew had some cards with him when we all got together for family dinner over Thanksgiving. When I asked if he knew how to play he said "no." Thinking it a bit of a shame to have cards but not use them we downloaded the rules and gave it a go. I had to split the cards up into something resembling decks with almost no knowledge of the game, but we had a good time nonetheless. On Friday Knight Models announced their new "Sons of Batman" program (yep, SOBs) for the Batman Miniatures Game . I've been working towards getting enough models and scenery together to start demoing the game around my area soon anyway, so the timing of this announcement was almost perfect. I just have to take a few photos of my painted crews and submit the paperwork, and hopefully will get accepted into the program. Last weekend Lewis and I attended Fallcon...

If you have read my blog much in 2015 you'll know I've been spending a lot of time and money on the Batman Miniature Game by Knight Models . Over on the official forums there have been several discussions about whether the system would work for the larger DC Universe and accommodate games including characters like Superman and the Flash. Those conversations are usually split by folks who want more powerful characters joining in, and those who don't. Over the past few months' releases from Knight Models, I have a strong feeling that they are indeed working towards scaling up the game. I am actually open to this, and think it could work. However, I don't think the entire DCU will simply get rolled in as characters to play in BMG. The way I see KM introducing a DC Miniatures Game would be as its own rule set, but be entirely compatible with the Batman Miniature Game. Here's how I think that could work: 1. The stats on the DC characters cards will follow ...

The past week and a half has been really good for some gaming! Rather than focus on each play individually I'll just rip through them all in brief. During a quick trip to I had picked up a copy of a nifty little 1-2 player card game called Onirim . We both tried it a few times, ending up with the base game played as a 2-player affair. The game came with SEVEN expansions in the box, which we haven't tried any of yet. A lot of value in that little box though, and I am looking forward to trying a couple of variants soon. I also had a chance to try out a nifty little dice game called Art of War . Ironically enough I had been looking at this game on the same evening I bought Onirim, and damned near bought it. I may still do, but we'll see. I'm not sure how much fun it will be with smaller groups, but it was great with 6 players! Mid-week I got to play another 250 rep game of Batman Miniature Game . My opponent was gracious enough to let me try out my "Batman Beyon...

September didn't feel like a terribly productive month, but doing these progress reports serves as a nice reminder to me that I haven't been entirely idle. Let's have a quick recap! Modeling / hobby: - Fixed Copperhead broken during a demo of Batman Miniature Game . She also got a little more putty work done to really make sure the joins were looked after. - I prepped and based the Hell Division trio and more police figures for Empire of the Dead . I've also decided to include the "Gentleman Bat" figure (created by some top-notch fellows over on LAF) in this batch. Total of 12 figures ready for paint. - I applied basing materials to my 25mm Jaffa minis in hopes of someday getting my  Stargate  project further along. Total of 22 soldiers and the like. - All of my MDF western buildings from August got a spray coat of black primer. - Finished a bit of customization work to an o-scale train water tower model I bought a while back. - Sculpted custom bases ...