Thinking Outside the Box

Whew it's been a while since I've cracked open my box of Sedition Wars . I think the last time I set it up to play was in September back at Fallcon 2013. That's not to say it's a bad game, but I'll admit that I experienced some frustration with the original rules and the rapid number of "no this is the last and latest rules update" coming out of Studio McVey . In fact, the folks over at the Esoteric Order of Gamers  have provided a set of cards and rules summary that, in my opinion, is far superior in layout and brevity than the actual rules from the publisher. However I digress, I'm here to talk about the second wave of models sent to backers of the original Kickstarter campaign. I've had these mostly constructed for a while now (you'll have to forgive the lack of photos today, sorry). So just what did I receive? Firebrand: - Vokker Dargu - Jade Lily - Dead Space dude and strain version The Strain: - bone crabs Vanguard: - Rami...

The box that I received containing my first shipment of Deadzone items was second in size only to my Zombicide   Kickstarter  package. What I mean by that is simply...holy crap more stuff. As I've mentioned previously I'm a fan of Mantic Games , even if their resin-plastic model material isn't fabulous to clean up. After spending several hours (far too long really), sorting out all the contents for Deadzone I was able to get all of the items into the base game box barring the scenery sprues. Those I sorted, labeled with sticky notes and wrapped with an elastic band each. I clipped all the connectors from the sprues and dropped those into a bag for later use. I know that I could have primed the connectors on the sprues first, but it didn't seem to be worth the effort. The shipping box barely survived mailing so I cracked it down and threw it out. Less wasted space, but the scenery will need to be stored in something eventually. Out of curiosity I clipped all the ...

For some strange reason I got it into my head that I was going to build as many figures as I could from my awaiting lead and plastic pile in February. I still haven't had a chance to set them up for photos but it's finally on my to-do list tonight. Anyway here's a quick run down of what I was actually able to put together. I was pretty happy with the total! - Deadzone : Enforcer starter pack (12 figures) - Deadzone : Plague starter pack + bonus models (17 figures) - Project Pandora : Veer-myn squad (10 figures) - Project Pandora : Corporation squad (10 figures) - Dwarf King's Hold - Ancient Grudge : Ghouls x7, Dwarfs x2 and Elves x2 (11 figures) - Sedition Wars : Keegan, Dekker?, Jade Lily, Akosha, Vade and Dead Space dude (7 figures) So in total it looks like 67 models put together in February. I've also primed the Deadzone figures, so I'm actually doing pretty well with getting that game on the table to some 'figure out the rules' games. I...

Whew now sorting through the massive box of Deadzone stuff...that was a lot of work. I had gone through the package shortly after I received it in December and organized the various bags into their appropriate factions, but beyond that I hadn't actually checked all the figures and parts. The pictures in this post are largely collected from Mantic 's promotional materials, as I haven't constructed any of my own toys yet. I really wish they've just labeled the damn bags. It would have made things a lots easier for all the Kickstarter supporters. I started off trying to figure out what was default to the core box game, then the extra items I ordered, and finally all of the stuff I got as bonus items for supporting the Kickstarter campaign. After going through the base game I counted up all the parts for my "Enforcers" faction bag. I really like the look of these figures, although the image from Mantic's website shows some expertly painted samples....

So far I've only had time to put together a few of the wave 2 items. The Hurley drones are very nice. I'm not sure why they're the only ones done in that blue plastic, but they are excellent. There was almost no clean up needed on them. They're a little large compared to the Hurley model itself...I don't see any way he could store more than one of them! I've also cleaned up and put together all of the bone crabs. These things have pretty prevalent mould lines, made worse by the fact that they have lots of legs. After being cleaned up they look good. Over the top disgusting, but good. I do wish the tails were a little heavier, because they're quite fragile to bending and having stress marks. I might prime these using gesso instead of spray primer just to give them a little extra protection. The last items I tackled were Ramirez and her necroform model. My casting of the necroform was almost flash-free and has good detail. I'm not thrilled with the nec...

I've been around a lot of gaming in the past few weeks, but not actually done much myself. Let's get started with last weekend. Fallcon 26 ran Friday thru Sunday and I was lined up to help host three events on the first two days. Friday night's event was Dreadball . Unfortunately we only had one person registered for Dreadball, which I found to be quite disappointing, not in that the fellow was there, but in that none of the local players who've bought into the game bothered to come out to support it. It's really hard to build a gaming community when the players don't help out. On the plus side we did end up running three full games and everyone seemed to enjoy them. Saturday morning was Hordes / Warmachine . There were two guys from out of town in with their armies to play and Sebastien and I ran a demo game for another attendee. Well received, but lightly attended. Part of the trouble might be that it's a miniature game at a board game heavy conv...

Well it's taken me a while to get to this point but I'm almost finished constructing all the figures from my Biohazard level pledge for Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster . This is pretty much double the amount of figures (discounting the character heroes) that you would get in the packaged game. I'll put up a picture of each of the different sculpts and give you my quick thoughts on the models. I won't be going into the game play or rules for each, as I've only had a chance to play the game once. That game was played using the first edition rules, not the new rules that were released by Studio McVey some time last week. The Strain The fat hunchbacked phase 1 revenants are decent looking figures and were simple to put together. Due to the way they're posed however, there wasn't much opportunity to repose them without significant effort. Effort I wasn't interested in putting in. More fat phase 1 revenants. I prefer this more upr...

I started putting figures together a week ago Sunday. The material is a little odd; it's not quite the same as the Mantic resin-plastic, and quite a bit different from the GW plastic. It cleans up fairly nicely with the back edge of a hobby knife, and any bent or twisted parts bounce back into place if dunked in hot water. I dislike the injection points being on the shoulder joints on the male Samaritan troopers. They make it a bit of a bitch to get the right shoulder to line up with the arm piece. Most of mine are going to require a touch of green stuff to fill in. However, as mentioned with the hot water earlier, reposing figures is pretty easy. I've modified the arm positions on the scythe witches just by heating them and bending. It's not massive variety, but it helps a bit. I'm considering doing the same with some of the Samaritans and phase 1 revenants. Short of doing a bunch of knife work though, the Vanguard figures will not have a lot of variety when I'm...

I received my first package a little over a week ago, and was finally able to spend some time going through all the stuff that came in the sizeable and nicely packed box! I won't be posting up any photos for this article, because dozens of other folks online already have. First off, there's a lot of stuff in the base game box: a full-color rule book, 2 token sheets, 5 doubled-sided board tiles, 50 profile cards, 50 figure bases, 8 dice, clear green counters, red and blue base inserts and of course figures. Lots and lots of figures. I pledged for the Biohazard level on the Kickstarter campaign, so I also received an extra box with even more figures in it. The base game has 50 figures, and the additional figures totaled another 30+, including the special resin Kara Black sculpt. Lots of monsters and troopers to provide support and cause trouble for our character models! I also received the Vanguard patch (which I have no idea what to do with), a signed print and some custom di...

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...

Canada Day this year fell on a Sunday, which meant that I got Monday off in lieu.  In order to make the best of things I added the Friday to it and was able to enjoy a nice four-day weekend.  The weather here was particularly nice as well, which we sort of deserved after the rain-filled monstrosity that was June. Strange Aeons / VUK Starting things off on Thursday evening was a quick, as in almost light-speed, game of Uncle Mike's WIP Kulten rules. We played his 60 point ghoul cult against my 23 point Arcanists. Due to the massive point differential I gained some sorely needed resource points to help bolster my ranks.  I was able to add four new cultists to the sad and lonely three that had survived from the last game.  I also gained two favour points, and a dirty trick. I used the dirty trick to alert the authorities and one of my favour points to modify Mike's roll from a 1 to a 6.  This meant that he could only field three models total, so he chose a g...