Heroclix: Painted Chun Li

Finished painting a Chun Li from the Street Fighter Heroclix set. Pleased that her face is now symmetrical. Looking at the pictures on the computer screen, I wish I had pulled a cleaner job on the effects for her lightning kick.

Some Heroclix Paint Jobs

So I recently got into Heroclix. Ironically, the thing that appealed to me about the game was the fact that I would require no build and paint time whatsoever. Alas, the bug hit me and I decided to do some quick paint jobs on some Clix. I believe that because of how they come, I don't feel any pressure to try and paint these things to a high standard since anything I do would be an improvement to the assembly line paint jobs from some factory in China. But that reasoning is flawed since my metal minis don't have any paint on them, so wouldn't that mean anything I do to them is an improvement too? Regardless here they are!
Happy gaming!!!

Great, Just What I Need...Another Game

I'll be honest, for the longest time I viewed the bad to mediocre pre-paints and the gamble of buying blind boosters rather unappealing when it came to buying plastic minis such as D&D (under the old format), Heroclix, Mage Knight, etc. Top it off, I'm sure there was also a partial snobbish attitude pointed at it. "What? You play with those crappy looking things?" and then feel bad cuz a mini is leaning over funny or has bendy weapons.
Can't say that anymore because I've bought into Heroclix due to the recent release of Street Fighter. Heroclix has also been the easiest and quickest game for me to round up friends to play. Much lower price point to get into it and they don't have to paint or put anything together. Toss in some neat licenses and you can usually tickle someone's fancy.
I do have some gamer OCD kicking in and have already started doing some simple repaints but oh well, nice to know that I don't have to until I get around to doing it.
Happy gaming folks!

Khador Juggernaut

Hey folks! I drew up and colored a Khador Juggernaut from Warmachine hovering over it's new favorite toy, a Cygnar Ironclad. Lemme know what you think.

Thriller Killer!

Okay here's attempt #2! I posted my thoughts on Thriller Killer last Sunday but it was just so scattered and long that I felt tired just looking at how wordy it was.

So here's the just of it. Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of sitting around a coffee table with some great friends playing the part of three single-dimensional characters adhering to stereotypes that one might find on a college campus. I played the parts of:
-The campus-drug dealer
-The super sheltered, super religious freshman who basically labels anything secular as being of the devil
-The pretend student that everyone sees on campus grounds playing ultimate frisbee and flag football that gets invited to all of the keggers.

Now let me get this out in the open, I am not a fan of the horror-slasher genre and all that I can recall off the top of my head involved a bit of the first "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". So aside from a couple of things like racial tropes, I'm pretty oblivious to the whole thing.

Your characters are pretty much dagger fodder until you get to your last surviving character. Rules are simple and quick and what I loved about my experience is that it was all role-play and when you're rolling D6's, there's weight to it as someone is probably going to get effed up...or dead. "Character sheets had six lines.
1. Name
2. Stereotype
3. Unwise (how likely he/she will end up doing something stupid)
4. Unlucky
5. Undone (how easy it is for the character to freak out at the sign of danger)
6. Unharm (basically your hit points and a cool mechanic that involves your killed character transfering their starting score over to another surviving character with bonus Unharm points given out at the GM's discretion for creative descriptions of their death, resulting in your last survivor being pretty epic on the Unharm charts)

On topic with the Unharm points transferring to other characters, until someone is on their last character, the GM doesn't have to roll any dice and all rolls are made by PC's to avoid the cruel fate of stupidity, luck and lack of nerves. Once a player is down to his/her last character, only then will the GM have to roll on his abilities, that I believe are also the same "stats" types that the players have.

The biggest thing that I got out of the experience was that it truly felt like a group collaboration. And while having a character die prematurely might've been frustrating, there were many instances where you just want to set your guys up for trouble. What did I learn about B-rated slasher horror movies from this? It doesn't matter how far you run or drive off, the bad guy will follow you there, you can't win by shooting the murderer with a gun and that female characters always look sexy regardless of the circumstances that they're in.

Zero prep time on the players' parts as the longest part seemed to be for us to come up with names for our victims. Matt our GM, had three lines of notes for his prep. Easy as pie and if you're out for quick and twisted fun, I highly recommend Thriller Killer.

Mini Gaga Seals the Deal

So last Sunday, I swung by my local comics and games store to play a long overdue game of Hordes. As we moved our toy monsters and soldiers around, shot the breeze, I began talking to my buddy Jason about the game Anima Tactics. Showed him the rulebook and he began looking at the gorgeous art but was still on the fence about jumping in but he did want to pick up something new. Then I pointed out a character and made the comparison to her looking a lot like Lady Gaga. "SOLD!" He bought a Dark Faction starter set then and there. The next day, we both pooled an online order to split the freight cost and he's also brought his brother on board. I'm looking forward to throwing down soon as this game is the closest I've seen to make me think that I'd be playing Final Fantasy on the tabletop.

The funny thing is, this excitement for Anima Tactics has put a huge surge on my time spent working on miniatures. You'd think I'd be prepping my Anima Tactics: Wissenchaft models but nooooo,I've been painting up my Hordes: Legion of Eveblight models and giving them all the love. This week has seen the most time spent at the hobby table than the last two-three months combined. :S

My gaming this weekend brings a one-shot Call of Cthulhu game and then a Hordes beat down. I'll let you know how it goes.

Mothers Day Won...Oh And Thor

So we had originally planned to have our next Mouse Guard session take place today. Got the Facebook event set up, people clicking that they would attend and then TING, Matt recalled that it would be Mother's Day. Not wanting anyone at my table to potentially lose the running for son or daughter of the year, I called the session off. I took care of my Mothers Day "festivities" on Friday as my mom, flew out to my sister's place for her vacation yesterday.
Happy Mothers day to any moms who might read this post.
I saw Thor yesterday. Let me say that I enjoyed it. There were many lines that had the theater laughing without turning the movie into an all out comedy, the costumes and visuals of Asgard were absolutely gorgeous, Natalie Portman is hot and while the story didn't have a ton of layers to it, it just works. One thing I couldn't help but notice was whenever Thor, Sif and the Warriors three were all on the screen at the same time, I imagined to myself that this would be what D&D might look like as a film. Particularly in Paragon and Epic Tier.

Take care my friends.