Tim's Bits and Pieces: Games

Linkage

TimP — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 01:45:36 +0200

Some links that I thought where worth sharing.

First up we have John C. Wright's Point Deer, Make Horse about the leftist response to the San Bernardino shooting:

[F]or the Left, their God is Caesar, that is to say, the State, that is to say, themselves.

After every crime-spree or disaster or terrorist attack by persons who never turn out to be white rightwingers, the Left says that it is the punishment rightfully delivered for not being faithful enough to Caesar, not giving him what he demanded for our good: not giving Caesar enough power, property and control over our minds and souls to solve the problem.

Also on the San Bernardino shooting Anonymous Conservative posted this:

One of the San Bernardino shooting victims was a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms.

He knew the threat, he had the skills and ability to deal with it, but he was killed ... by the political machinations of weak and pathetic rabbits who managed to use ... cops and his own respect for the law, to kill him and help the terrorists.

Next up Dalrock on the Fantasy Land that many Christians seem to live in regarding the push to get women into the military:

[T]he CBMW’s [Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood; a group of Christian complementarians] response to the generations long push by feminists to insert women into all parts of our armed forces is to pretend that something else entirely is going on. To avoid confronting the very open feminist rebellion, the CBMW pretends that men are insisting that women be forced into combat in their place. No one else believes this, and I have to believe that deep down even the complementarians themselves know this is a farce. However, confronting a generation of women demanding to usurp men’s roles is difficult, and to a complementarian downright terrifying. Changing the subject from reality to a fantasy world allows complementarians to avoid what is difficult and instead focus on posturing.

And finally, and just for fun: Cataclysm DDA; a rather addicting rogue-like about the zombie apocalypse.

Speaking of the Street Cleanup ...

TimP — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 23:03:54 +0200

After I wrote yesterday's blog post/open letter I took a look around at the Street Cleanup. I found one of the best finds I've ever had:

That's most of the old "Assault on Black Reach" Warhammer 40K starter set. It's missing one of the rule books, some of the rulers and templates, two of the Ork Deffkoptas, and several of the Boyz, but it has 15 extra Space Wolves (plus a few extra Space Marines), and some (somewhat dry) paints, and a tub of Games Workshop "sand", which I hope no one spent too much on, but this is Games Workshop we're talking about so they probably did.

Even with the missing parts and in it's currently used and semi-painted state this is probably around $100 worth of stuff (or more since GW products are pretty overpriced here in Australia).

I never would have bought them myself (like I said GW is overpriced), and I'm short one of the rule books (which I assume is the one that tells you the point costs of the included models, since the main rule book doesn't include that), but the main rule book is still there, and that should be enough to play the Kill Team from Heralds of Ruin, so that's what I'll probably do with these miniatures.

eM-4 Plastic Troopers and Gangers

TimP — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 23:03:53 +0200

I've finally got around to posting some pictures of the eM-4 plastic Troopers and Gangers.

Note that there is an extra female ganger on the end since each pack of five comes with three sets of female arms, but only two sets of female bodies, so I've added in an extra female from one of the other packs.

First Painted Miniature

TimP — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:03:53 +0200

Last month I finished my first painted miniature (one of the eM-4 plastic Orcs), but forgot to post pictures of it:

There's some work in progress shots in my ImageShack gallery.

I think the washes I did didn't work very well unfortunately. They mostly just made the whole thing look dirty. I'm going to have to think about the shading some more.

Post-Apoc/Near-Future Gaming Terrain (Pic-Heavy)

TimP — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:03:54 +0200

I decided to try making a batch of terrain for Combat Zone, but it's also useful for generic 28mm Post-Apoc/Near Future gaming. I based the buildings on Craig Hardt's Cardboard Ruins tutorial on TerraGenesis with a few tweaks, and I also made some rubble piles and a corrugated iron [cardboard] lean-to.

The walls are obviously made from corrugated cardboard, only single thickness rather than the double-layer recommended in the tutorial. I just used Craft Paste or PVA Glue (see below) and sand to texture the walls as well.

The rubble piles are just screwed up butcher's paper with offcuts of cardboard and bits of plastic sprue hot-glued on, and the corrugated cardboard is made by peeling off one side of a piece of cardboard.

Here they are unpainted (the miniatures are all eM-4 28mm Plastics for scale):

While I painted them:

Later in the Painting Process:

Finished painting:

In Action:

Random Notes:

Initially I used Craft Paste instead of PVA glue since it was what I already had available; that was a mistake (I now own a half-litre of PVA glue, so I won't do that again). I base coated some of them with cheap black poster paint, before realising that both the paste and the poster paint are not water-proof when dry, so my next paint layer was pealing up the first layer of paint and the texture. Fortunately I had already realised after painting up the first few that poster paint is too slow, and I'd based coated the rest with black spray paint, which held together a lot better. I did a layer of PVA glue over the top of the ones that I had base-coated with poster paint which held them together after that.

For the first few I didn't bother putting masking tape around the base edges, or cutting slits in the masking tape when I put it over curved bits of the walls, so those ones are significantly rougher at the edges of the concrete (which works for certain types of buildings), and you can see the corrugations on the base.

I'm not sure how visible it is in the pictures, but several of the walls are crooked as well, which is a bit annoying.

Unfortunately I made most of it a bit high for 28mm as well, though it's not super noticeable at the table.

I also don't really like the scrunched up paper for rubble piles. It's probably the easiest and quickest technique, but I don't think it looks that great.

I'm thinking I should add some graffiti and some sort of plants or flocking as well.

I painted the walls by dry-brushing on medium grey, and then light grey. The ground by putting on Raw Umber, and then sort of dry-brushed yellowy-brown (Yellow and Burnt Sienna). The corrugated iron was painted silver and then sort of dry-brushed Burnt Sienna. (A lot of the time I probably had too much paint on the brush to really call it dry-brushing though)

Lessons learnt:

Craft Paste isn't the same thing as PVA glue, and generally shouldn't be used as a substitute.
Put the effort into putting the masking tape on properly.
Put a bit of effort into putting the walls on just right.
Putting the hot glue on the thing you're gluing down rather than to the base makes it easier to line up.
Lightly brushing gold onto black makes a nice brushed brass effect.
An easy way to put sand onto terrain is to put the terrain into a bucket and then scoop sand onto it with a small container.
Spray paint makes a better base coat than cheap poster paint, and it's quicker.
Double check the size of your walls and the like against a mini as you go along.

eM-4 Plastic Orcs and Dwarfs

TimP — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:03:53 +0200

eM-4 is a company in the UK that owns some of the old Grenadier molds; among them are a few plastic orcs and dwarfs for 22p each (about $0.30). Since I was purchasing the Combat Zone boxed set* I added in some orcs and dwarfs as well.

First the Orcs:

I rather like these; they aren't covered in spikes, and their weapons are generally not overly silly. Obviously they are rather small even for 25mm, but that's OK for me, since I'm using the more old school orcs style where they should be noticeably shorter than humans. You can see though that they have round sprue bits sticking out of their backs unfortunately, so those will need cleaning off.

Now the dwarfs:

I only got two of the dwarfs (getting the crossbow dwarf as well would have put me up into the next weight category for my parcel). Again they seem a bit more realistic in their armor and weapons than is popular with some miniature companies, which I like. On the other hand these guys are actually about as tall if not slightly taller than the orcs. Also on the axeman there is a small air-bubble beside the triangular bit of armour on his back (from what I've read about 10% of these figures have some sort of casting problem).

I was actually surprised how much I like these figures; I wasn't expecting much from them. On the other hand I don't own any miniatures from other makers (yet), so maybe they aren't that good in comparison. The price is very good regardless, and I can live with the occasional casting error, and otherwise quite like these miniatures, so I think I'll order a bunch more orcs and a few more dwarfs for my Estgair games.

Also eM-4 gave me pretty good service. Postage time was reasonable; I ordered in the evening on Monday the fourth, and it was here (Australia) on Friday the 15th, so less than 10 business days. But more noticeably I ordered 20 each of their square and round Card Stands to try out, and they where out of stock of the colour that I ordered in square, so they gave me a full refund for them, and sent me ten of a different colour free. I'm pretty sure that the extra stands are actually part of the Combat Zone boxed set for standing up the included card stock terrain; regardless I'm still happy with my purchase, and I intend to purchase from eM-4 again.

*. I've only played a couple of games and I've enjoyed it so far, but I'll do a review and take some pictures of the included plastic Sci-Fi miniatures in a few days after I've played at least a few more solo games.

Wil Wheaton's Tabletop

TimP — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:03:54 +0200

Just a shout out to Wil Wheaton's Tabletop Web Series, which is pretty cool. If you are interested in geeky board/card/role-playing games you should check it out. It's helpful to see the game actually being played instead of just hearing descriptions of it. I've only watched a few episodes so far, and I've already noticed a couple of games I'd like to play.

Public Domain Paper RPG Miniatures

TimP — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:03:54 +0200

I've been using Paper A-Frame type miniatures for my OSRIC games so far. I've made up a few sheets with Public Domain images from Clker.com, Reusable Art, A Clipart History, and the Open Clip Art Library, which I thought other people might be interested in. You can download them from here: Free Public Domain RPG Miniatures. They're scaled so that 30mm equals approximately 180cm (5'11").

To make them up just cut along the solid lines, and fold along the dotted lines. You can then glue the base tabs together, and attach them to some form of base, or you can do what I do which is just stick a paper clip on to hold them together and weigh them down. If you just go with a paper clip you can easily unfold them to pack them down flat.

I use a mixture of these and similar sized figures I make up with non-public domain sources (which fill in some of the holes with this set; like the lack of armed females), but obviously I can't share them since someone else owns the copyright on them.

For what it's worth the trivial little bit of work I did in putting these images into a document is also released into the public domain.

Estgair RPG Map

TimP — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 23:03:53 +0200

The RPG setting I've been putting together is centred on a region called Estgair, which I've been working on mapping in Inkscape.

Click for larger version

I'm intending for most of the game to revolve around Farancitta and the Salmarisko. As such most of the other areas, while marked on the map aren't really defined. Note that this is in the Southern Hemisphere, so North is closer to the Equator.

Progress Quest

TimP — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:03:54 +0200

You might have noticed that I haven't posted for a while. I blame Progress Quest, a truly exceptional MMORPG. It's got an engrossing plot, phenomenal graphics, truly zen sound, and is generally all round great. I've spent over 10 hours playing it Today alone.

Truthfully it's not for everyone, but it's a very small, free download, so I strongly suggest you try it out.