A Little Prehistory

Spinosaurus, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Here's the latest state of Number One Son's Spinosaurus. Last night we glued it down on a plasticard base and covered that with Liquitex Ceramic Stucco. That basically an untinted "flocking gel." I use it a lot on my bases. He's pretty exited about it and kept want to make fancy bases, but dour Daddy dissuaded him from anything too advanced. Although, it's not too late to put some interesting stuff on there.

Infinity PanOceaniac Fusiliers

Infinity PanO Fusiliers, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

A couple of guys in the game group were talking about starting Infinity up. What the hey, I already have plenty of the figures, so after seven some-odd years, I have started painting them up. Here is a photo of the first three. I see now that I didn't finish highlighting the blues on the two men. Naturally. They are based temporarily on the regular bases. I'd like to do something more interesting, although I'm not sure what. I also think I'd like something more hefty, as many of the figures will be quite fragile and I'd like the base to strike the floor first when I drop them!

More Saga

Playing Saga, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Last Friday, we broke out Saga again. I was hoping to run the Escort scenario, but the player with all the wagons canceled at the last minute. We fell back on killing each other's Warlords. We set up with six points each this time, and one army of each faction. It wound up going a little long, though, and I think it probably would have been better to have stuck with either four point armies or a different scenario. Still, everybody seemed to have fun. I was reminded to take stop motion video of this game, click More to view it.

Playing Saga

Like most of you, probably, I've been hearing about the Dark Ages skirmish rules Saga lately. I played it at Historicon and was intrigued. It has something of a board game mechanic added to it, which reminded me a lot of Alien Frontiers. It's not strictly historical, outright attempting to recreate the tall tales of the Viking Sagas. The leaders stand head and shoulders above the rest of the field, although we're not really talking the excesses of 40k here.

Blogging from Historicon

It will be done here, on Twitter. With mercifully little typing.

Workbench of a Madman

2012-06-25 22.26.35, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

It has been a whirlwind summer so far. The wife and kids left for Germany even before school was out-- but no rest for the wicked, as days later, I was off to Las Vegas for a work-related convention.

He triggered the rear guns once more. A direct hit!

Car Wars, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Today is the last day for Steve Jackon's phenomenal Ogre Designer's Edition Kickstarter. It currently at almost $900k-- or 20% of SJG's 2011 gross income. I'm tempted, although I've never played Ogre before. What I have played is Car Wars, though. Through the process of this kickstarter, Steve Jackson has promised to do a kickstarter for Car Wars in 2013. Pretty cool! The whole thing really got me itching for some Car Wars, with fond memories of creating taped together graph paper areas and running down pedestrians even up into college-- twenty years ago!-- so I headed over to e23 and bought the latest rules and a counter sheet. That's not quite a complete game-- you still need a turning key and dropped weapon counters, which can be grabbed here. I actually found a scan of the original pocket box counters and have been using them, which includes another necessity-- squishy pedestrian markers! That will do as I task my poor mother to root through whatever old stuff I have left at home to see if she can find my old pocket boxes.

Check Your 6! Bombers!

063, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Here are the photos from a recent Check Your Six! game by Bob Bryant. There aren't even all the B-17's he has, but they were a lot of them. The scenario was weighted a little more heavily to the Germans to try out some bomber simplification rules Bob had cooked up, and once those big gunned German fighters got in among the American bombers, it got real ugly real quick...

Stoumont Flames of War

Battle of Stoumont, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

I haven't been posting, but I haven't quite been idle, either, fortunately. Here are the photos of us trying out the 3rd edition Flames of War with the Battle of Stoumont scenario from WWPD. I personally didn't notice any huge change in 3rd edition. It's more of an evolution than a revolution, fortunately. And it's not like we play it enough to hit the weird edge cases which we're probably playing wrong anyway!

Guest Star: Dragon

DSCN0261, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

I went with Reaper's Young Swamp Dragon for Black Fang. He was about the right size and shape. I didn't really try to follow the module concept art for this, I just painted him black.

Supporting Cast: Reefclaw

DSCN0251, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

As I've mentioned before, I had to custom convert a miniature for the adventure's Reefclaw. I started with a Reaper moray eel familiar, and added claws from the Creature Components pack, bulked out with a little sculpting putty. If I'd had more time and energy, I might have added the antennae and such, but as it, it's an acceptable figure, I think.

Supporting Cast: Spider

DSCN0259, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Here's the Reaper figure I painted up for the spider in the Beginner Box adventure. He's just a little guy for a giant spider, so I went with a realistic paint scheme on him based on some stock picture I found on the Internet. I was pleased with how he turned out.