Thinking Outside the Box

Yup more stuff from Mantic Games . I might as well be on their payroll for the amount that I talk about their stuff here on my blog. Heck I sorta wish I was. Maybe at least I'd get a discount or they could pay me instead of the other way around. Ah well, I digress. I'm not much of a fantasy gamer, but with all those Reaper Bones figures sitting around from their first campaign, I felt like I needed to do something with them. The only rules I have for fantasy gaming is  Song of Blades and Heroes , but I wanted something a little more structured, mainly because otherwise I'd take months just figuring out what figures to use in my war bands! With that in mind I was browsing over on Beasts of War  and I found a game play video of Dwarf King's Hold: Dead Rising . Sadly for me the game seemed to be out of print only year or so after it's release. The second core game,  Dwarf King's Hold:  Green Menace , is still available from Mantic but I wanted to start at the ...

In the final few weeks of the year my work and personal schedule generally get overloaded. I'm sure that's no different than most of you folks out there. I was smart enough to get my shopping done earlier than usual, which meant everything was wrapped and under the tree by the 15th, which I believe is a new record for me! I generally don't get a lot of gifts at Christmas time, which isn't a bad thing because usually what I do get is pretty awesome. I also tend to buy myself a few things that I know won't show up in my stocking. So here's a recap of the things that showed up as the year rolled to a close. Deadzone A massive box of plastic showed up a few weeks before Christmas. I honestly wasn't expecting something of this magnitude, and when it showed up and was opened I shook my head and wondered why I had thought I needed so much extra scenery. It took quite a while to sort through everything, and I'm pretty sure the only items I'm missing ar...

Yup, more zombies. I painted most of this set at the same time as the RAFM zombies box I posted earlier. The only additional figures here were the zombie judge and zombie mistress, which I'll talk about at the end of the article. As I mentioned in my review of this set , the contents consist of two sprues of Mantic zombies with some custom metal bits mixed in, plus original sculpts for the zombie mistress and zombie judge in metal. I've already discussed the construction of the figures and components in that post. Overall the figures turned out very well and were quite a lot of fun to paint. I do have another JDMG Zombie Horde set but when I build my next batch of zombies I think I'll add in some parts from my box of Wargames Factory male zombies too. There are plenty of parts to go around, and mixing them all together should provide me with some really unique figures. Since all the metal torsos in the set were the same I didn't want to use them for ever...

Sitting around on a quiet Sunday evening is one of the few times of the week that I actually have to myself. Often I'll just sit and watch some TV and try to decompress a bit before Monday morning responsibility thunders back into view. Last Sunday I didn't even watch what was on the TV, I merely listened while I put together some more models from my ever-growing mountain of lead and plastic! The Zombie Horde  pack is, to my knowledge, the only Judge Dredd set that comes with plastic components. Interestingly enough, the plastic parts in this kit are zombie sprues by Mantic Games . The pack contains a zombie mistress, a zombie judge, a sprue of metal heads and two sprues of metal shoulder/elbow/knee pads, a few pouches, six identical metal torsos, eight bases and two sprues of Mantic zombies. I received this pack as part of my Council of Judges  pledge on Kickstarter from before Christmas, so they arrived without retail packaging. That said, I'm uncertain if this is ex...

It was a Dredd-ful weekend. Ooh, bad pun. Sorry about that folks, but I just couldn't resist. On my way home from a nice brunch on Saturday morning I stopped to pick up a copy of Dredd on 3D Blu-Ray. I quite enjoyed it in the theatre and was very much looking forward to a second viewing in comfort of my own home. I also had to stop in to pick up some mail at the post office and was pleasantly surprised to find a second parcel waiting (in addition to my stuff from HobbyZone , which I'll talk more about in my next post). The box was small, but very weighty, so I headed home eager to crack it open and dive into the goodies sure to be inside. Not certain what to expect, I split the tape and opened it up...to find bag upon bag of metal Mega-City One goodness! There was a lot of stuff jammed into that box, and it took me the better part of an hour to go through each, identify the contents and verify that they had all the bits they should. That might seem lengthy, but in...

Since I made my last post I've had a few snippets of exciting news pop up. I'll start with the most recent and go backwards... Not to long ago the Studio McVey  folks posted another update on Sedition Wars . Sounds like things are finally starting to ship, which is pretty spiffy information. I'm sure it'll be a while yet before anything lands in my mailbox, but at least I know that things are starting to happen. Yesterday, the surveys finally went out for the Blackwater Gulch  campaign too. I had long since planned out what I wanted for my pledge dollars, so it didn't take me very long to fill it out. Or so I had thought would be the case. There was a brief moment of indecision when I tried to decide if I wanted more custom bases, or a copy of the rulebook...I opted for extra bases; two sets of rocky bluffs, one set of desert mesa. The rule book is available for free from Gangfight Games  and is really nice; I hope they continue to keep it freely available to do...

This post may not be of great interest to you, but I wanted to collect all my thoughts together about several items I've ordered, pledged for or am planning to do this year. Not really a resolution list, but more of an...itemized accounting I suppose. I supported a lot of crowd-funding efforts in 2012. Sadly the first one that I supported I've not yet seen anything from and they seem to be suffering delay upon delay: Sedition Wars . As of early this week though, it does sound like they're finally getting on track. This was the first time I really jumped in and pledged for stretch goals or extras, and the amount of stuff I will (eventually) receive for my money was pretty astounding. While I am looking forward to the game itself, I'm also looking at using the Vanguard figures for other things, more likely as Colonial Marines for some Aliens-related gaming. The next thing I jumped on was the now-ubiquitous DreadBall . I went way overboard throwing cash at this beast...

So things have been pretty exciting on the miniature gaming front for me recently. First off the DreadBall campaign recently finished and the survey was sent out by Mantic shortly afterward. I had already pledged for all the extras I thought I'd need and filled my survey out quickly. I did end up adding a few more things but missed two of the MVP figures because I didn't realize they weren't included in the Striker package. I'm sure I can pick them up at a later time easily enough should I desperately decide I need them. There have been some preliminary conversations between myself and the folks of my gaming shop of choice (Trilogy Gaming Club) about DreadBall as well. We've made some plans for demoing the game at an upcoming Blood Bowl tournament; to be followed up by two different league nights. Originally I had thought there would just be one event weekly. After talking about it however, it looks like we'll try doing two events per week. The one I'll be...