And  the struggle for Mordheim began, in a quick confrontation between two warbands!

A fast moving river divided two ruined sections on the outskirts of Mordheim, the sides linked both by the original bridge and the more recent shanty constructions erected by looters and brigands.

In the shadow of a demonic tower, the unholy shell of some former tenement or hostel, a band of (Abominably  painted, as I did them before I knew how to paint. I'll fix them sometime.) Orcs and Goblins howl in primitive worship to a crude idol of Gork, an Orc deity. A small "stable" holds four 20 sided squigs, angry ovoid creatures who I do not a figure to represent them with. Suddenly, the Orc Warboss, Grimaxe the Wicked, hears something. "I smell 'umies, boys! Gorks' led us to a scrap already!"

Warriors of Kislev, an icy northern land, drink and laugh around a cookpot and bonfire. Captain Ivans' one man crusade has not brought them to any danger yet, and there seems to be much gold and glory available for both the young warriors and dower mercenaries who make up the company. "I tell you, Ivan, we should have hired a bear tamer!" Says Boris the old warrior, Ivans' trusted friend and stalwart companion. "We need something big for when our presence in detected, da? There are sure to be others here, and nasty ones at that." Even as the words leave his mouth, a howling noise comes from the strange and magically twisted structure across the river. Orc battle cries! Ivan barks out commands, sending his warriors into three flanks. These aren't the Chaos worshipping scum he had come to battle, but he will rout these beastly creatures none the less.

Captain Ivan and a tough Gospodar warriors scale the wall up to the burned-out husk of a bridge. The Cossack youth Yuri, the sniper Svetlana, and a Streltzi gunner head towards the spiral staircase of a wizards' tower, the owner either wisely sealed inside of even more wisely fled. Boris and another Streltzi rush towards some ruined structure, climbing up to the high towers above the soon to be battlefield.

Two bouncing Squigs rush up the stairway, and more follow suit. Some goblins fall behind and squabble over a petty dispute, slowing their mobilization. Grimaxe also follows his minions, anxious to keep order.

Syphax the Orc shaman, angry at the interruption of his prayers, leads two hulking greenskin warriors against a Gospodar swordsman, initiating combat!

The left flankers begin climbing the stairway.

And, as the climb, the Gospodar warriors falls under a flurry of Orc blows in the very next round of combat. "Gork smiles upon us!" Shouts Syphax. "We shall be victorious!"

with Boris guarding his back, a Streltsi rests his handgun upon his halberd, using it as a gunrest. Soon he shall be ready to shoot.

The Goblins continue pushing their Squig warbeasts forward, goading them to jump the gap and cross over to the enemy side of the river.

Suddenly, a shot rings out! Though not dead, an Orc warrior has just been attacked and stunned by a sniper! Syphax is now alone, as the other has long since climbed into a nearby tower.

Or is he? Syphax heads over to the tower himself, but as he does so the preoccupied Orc fails an animosity check, forcing it to charge the nearest enemy. Against all odds, the Orc is able to jump all the way over to Ivan, land upright, an immediately engage him in combat! Meanwhile, two Squigs have flanked the unfortunate Kislevite captain. Ivan falls, and his warriors rout. Disaster!

Ivan and the fallen Gospodar survive without lasting injury, but their pride is shaken. Luckily, they make a pretty penny searching for Warpstone later, and sell it to hire a brutal pit fighter. Zangief the bear wrestler has joined the Kislevites!

Anyway, although only one person came, I had lots of fun and we will probably play more soon. I will keep you all updated, and work to do better documentation.

Take care!

Here's a sneak peak of tomorrows' events in my upcoming Mordheim game:

The terrain is my facsimile of the eponymous ruined city itself, a collection of plastic towers salvaged from my basement, impromptu papercraft, (Bright pink alter of Chaos, anyone?), and purpose-manufactured cardstock terrain by Games Workshop themselves, which I received as a gift. This deployed in the most strategically stimulating and thematically appealing way me and my friends can devise, will be the battleground of tomorrow.

Of course, for a four by four foot space, I really should add a bit more scenery to get the feel of a ruined city, and not just a devastated farmers' market on the great plains. Luckily, I was able to get quite a bit of Balsa wood from Misty Hollow at a great price, seeing as one dowel was snapped and one sheet was scored. These will soon become the dilapidated husks of once-prosperous shops, the shanty impromptu shelters of looters and mad cultists, the spires of demonic structures bursting from the cobbles of a city claimed by unknowable and infinite evil even whilst engulfed in petty mortal warfare. I'm also making some ladders and bridges to link up buildings, which I think should be pretty cool.

Also, you all might be seeing some of Reapers' new minis in shops recently, advertised as not requiring primer. As it happens, they don't work that well. This here troll did not get any primer before I began painting him, just a toothbrush scrub and soapy washing. Even though that should have gotten the mold breaker off, the paint still doesn't want to cooperate. It was an honest nightmare to work with, (Which is why I never did more than a bit of basecoating), and I really recommend priming them regardless of fanciful promises.

Alright, that's all I have to share today. Best of luck with all your games and all your projects, and may you all enjoy tomorrows' update. I know I will!

Take care!

As I intended to do last week, I finally have painted up my Dwarf standard bearers' flag, complete with a step-by-step.

First, I finish putting enough paint on the make the horribly unprimed surface of the flag workable, if nothing else. It might rub later, but this is only a practice run anyway, and I have these photos if I get all nostalgic about my past failings in the far future.

Step two is to take a normal #2 pencil and sketch the shape I want to draw onto the flag. The graphite works sort of as a "wall", keeping the paint from running as badly. The shape is going to be a plump helmet, a crop from the computer simulation game "Dwarf Fortress"

♠

Above is a plump helmet from the game. I wanted the shape to be more onion than mushroom, however, hence my design.

First, a nice thin coat of dark purple.

And another, to ensure evenness of color.

Some slightly lighter purple makes lines, giving our purple cave onion some ridges.

And the lightest purple streaks make the darker ones stand out. I feel I may have overdone them, however. The plump helmet's pretty "shiny" now, looking more like a glossy seashell than a matte onion. 

The pencil was pretty rough around the edges, literally, so I trimmed the design down with white. While I was smoothing the edges I also adjusted the base to make it less of a shell, but the damage was already done. I also cleaned up the edge designs on the flag. (I'm not sure I like those designs, by the way. I think they're way too attention-getting.)

Alright, nice brown wash. These ARE miners, and they've been out campaigning. They have to be dirty, right? The wash should also bring out some detail in the flag, and do a bit to mask the flaws in the painting.

Dried and looking ratty! A success!

So yeah, not the best painting in the world, but I'm fairly pleased for a first attempt. I also set up a battle scene for your pleasure, as I have way too much time.

Hordes of Ors and Goblins close in on an abandoned wizards' tower! Who could be defending it? None other than a small force of heroic Dwarves making a final glorious stand.

Note the terrain, by the way. I should be starting Mordheim soon, and will be giving you updates on by adventures in the ruined city.

The Dwarf army has managed to hoist a cannon to the top of a burned-out building, but rabid Goblins are already swarming up the ladder in an attempt to destroy the warmachine before it can even fire!

Some smaller, even more insane Goblins ride a looted dwarf Gyrocopter through the air, while the Goblin commanders wisely cower behind a trained war troll. Goblin fanatics with huge metal flails madly swing at the base of the already half-collapsed building to try and undermine the cannons' crew.

Things aren't looking good on the other side, either. Orcs swarm past crude barricades in an attempt to get onto the towers' steps. Here, a dwarf captain with a steam drill fights alongside his stalwart companions and the rightmost chokepoint of the shanty bastion, steadfast in his resolve to fight and die with honor.

Left side boasts a mighty Dwarven paladin, who stands against the orc hordes with hammer in hand and his allies at his back.

The middle point of the structure is defended by the dwarf general Helga Hammersong and her elite guards, but they face the imminent impact of Orc heavy calvary forces, and the chariot of the Orc warlord himself, Grimaxe the brvtal!

At the top of the tower, a Dwarf trumpeter blasts military tunes as the standard bearer waves his flag to inspire the troops. Maybe a cave onion isn't the most heroic symbol these warriors can fight under. Oh well, if they don't like it they can just say its a seashell.

Take care!

Instead of a figure update, or whimsical game reviews, I

bring you all a cautionary tale and a recollection of the tragic events that

have halted my progress in the realm of miniature painting.

These are two cans of primer, side by side. The only difference is that one is covered in dust 

and empty, and the other one is immaculate. (But also empty.) The dusty leftmost one

is the can of primer that served me through last summer, priming regiment upon regiment, not to

mention the odd terrain piece. The one on the right, equally used up, lasted me barely through last month.

As it happens, the instructions on the labels are meant to be taken seriously. When it says to prime in

warm temperatures, you really should take that advice. Unfortunately, I live in a climate where

wooly mammoths are still occasionally sighted and the minions of Ithaqua hold their annual demon summoning/sledding party in the local park.

Actual, honest-to-God photo of the event.

In short, we have a pretty cold, long winter. My lack of any indoor location to prime means

I must don my anti-yeti snowgear and trot outside with as many minis as I can carry in one hand and

my primer in the other. The cold will instantly screw up the primer, and the can will spray tiny, pathetic amounts of white paint onto your minis at the slowest rate imaginable. I expended half of the whole can on three figures. I then left them to dry in the garage, as my Mom otherwise complains about the scent. As it happens, cold also seems to mess up the actual drying of the paint. The result is many poorly primed minis and a loss of both savings and dignity. My solution? Heat the primer a bit beforehand (But be super careful given that it WILL explode violently if you put it in front of a fire or something like an idiot), and then move to a warmer climate or just prime in the summer.

So why do you care? Well, I was going to give you all a step-by-step on the creation of a banner with a   nice icon, but my very badly primed standard bearer says otherwise.

I had to thicken the paints way beyond what anyone should be comfortable with just to get them to stick to the darn model, and the layers are very uneven and bad looking. The detail is pretty much gone (Though as a bare stretch of cloth that's not so pressing a concern), and the paint behaves about as well as an anarchist tomcat with ADHD. You see the little speckles on the un"painted" bits? Yeah, that's the only primer. Speckles. Needless to say it will take several more layers and quite a bit of remorse before I'm ready to do any sort of freehand on this abomination. With this in mind, and keeping loyal to my sense of obligation to my viewers, I present you an alternative tutorial.

STEP ONE: OPEN IMAGE EDITOR

STEP TWO: IMPORT PICTURE OF BANNER

STEP THREE: CREATE DESIRED LIVERY FOR

YOUR NOBLE WARRIORS' BATTLE STANDARD. BE SURE TO

MISSPELL "ELVES"

STEP FOUR: ALWAYS MAKE SURE THIS IS UP AND RUNNING BEFORE YOU

PRIME ANYTHING.

I hope to not to ruin everything as badly with the can of primer I picked up today at Misty Hollow. If I succeed in this endeavor, you all should see regular content back again nest week.

Take care!

Heres' a couple more of the mini-reviews:

Tsuro, the game of the path, is a clever little game with a neat aesthetic. Players place cards from their hands to create a "Path" of unbroken line that their pawn will follow. The conflict arises when players meet each other, and can misdirect opponents by placing paths in front of them. Yes, it starts out innocently enough, but the game gets  messy fast. The art style is cool, doing for traditional Chinese design what Laser (I'm not calling it Khet, everyone I know calls it Laser.) does for Egyptian historical art. Gameplay isn't the best balanced thing in the world, but gets to be good madcap fun by the end of the game, and reminds me of the cycle thing from Tron. Short playing time. Check it out if you think its  interesting, but don't go out of your way for it.

Most everyone has at least heard of Munchkin, Steve Jackson games' hit series of humorous games parodying everything from D&D to the webcomic Axe Cop. They're a whole lot of fun to play, but only if you know what they're referencing. Great to relax over with friends, falls apart if you try to be serious with it. Theme takes precedence over balance, as is to be expected in a Steve Jackson game. Still, it works, given what Munchkin is-a game that will make you laugh, nothing more, nothing less.

King of Tokyo is a game saturated with theme. Player control huge monsters (Totally not men in rubber suits), fighting to cause maximum destruction in a city filled with poorly dubbed civilians. This game was a birthday present to me, and I'm absolutely loving it. The power up cards are a barrel of laughs, the monsters are unique and well designed, the aesthetic is awesome, and the gameplay, while not very deep, is balanced well and delivers a very fun 30-minute game of monstrous king-of-the-hill. Great game for fans of Kaiju flicks, or curing kids from their lifetime of Snakes and Ladders.

Lastly, someone expressed interest in the rules of speed four. While there are some variants, here are the rules, as I remember them, that I used at Bearcon:

Players have a playing hand and an off hand. If you're right handed, your right hand is your playing hand and your left hand is your off hand and so vice versa. Players put the off hand, cupped, on the base of the playing board on their side. (The boards we used had a oval shaped base with little round "Feet" you could rest your hand on easily, but feel free to change that if you have a different board.) This is to anchor the board to the ground more effectively, and to make sure players off-hands are equidistant from the little drop-in slot up top. Players put as many of their tiles as they like in their cupped off-hand. Then players lock eyes and count down from four to g"Go!" After "Go!" you can place your tiles in with your playing hand as fast as you like. If you run out of tiles in your cupped off-hand, feel free to take them from wherever, but don't move your off-hand any more at all. the game ends when one player gets four tiles in a row, and then calls it. (Sometimes you might not notice you've won until a later or inconvenient time. If that happens, have an impartial referee decide how to deal with it.) It gets really frantic and silly, but thats' the fun part. Certainly a party game, and only requires a connect four board and at least one friend.

So I ended up not being able to take any pics of Bearcon, but I had a great time and played many boardgames. My insights on many of them, are below.

Tiki Mountain has a fun premise, the players controlling mask-wearing islanders competing for the honor of sacrificing themselves in a volcano. Its' a great time waster, but at the end of the day its' a random numbers game. Good for casual play, or something to do whilst killing time.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill is a cooperative game with a twist. Players start out as explorers searching through a spooky haunted house, but eventually one of the players is revealed as a traitor, attempting to kill the heros for one of many reasons. From then on, the "Good" players have to work together to try and defeat the traitor, who will often have some sort of supernatural aid to make him much stronger. Fun, tense, and able to take many players. Only played one game, but I loved it.

Khet: The Laser Game boasts an astoundingly creative premise, and executes it well indeed. Players move mirrored pawns around the field to direct the path of their laser-actual beams of light that emit from little plastic sphinxes. The laser dots will bounce off of mirrors, and can "Destroy" Enemy pieces (Or your own if you're not careful) by shining upon non-reflective surfaces. Your eventual goal is to destroy your opponents' pharaoh piece. The egyptian theme is cool and the game is fun. It is, however, a pain to wrap your head around at first, and has the same slow, strategic pace as chess, which may not appeal to some. Play a few rounds before you buy it, but be sure to check it out.

The Settlers of Catan is an all-time classic, one of my favorite strategic board games. Players compete to settle and dominate an uninhabited island by any means necessary. Victory can be achieved by many methods, and the difficulty in obtaining a balanced resource economy to build your infrastructure means that players must trade and compete to get what they need. Get this game, play this game, and get the many awesome expansions. I like it.

Now heres' a fun one. Remember Connect Four, the game you played in fifth grade study hall when it was raining and you couldn't go outside for recess? There exists a variant for it called Speed Four in which there are no turns, and players simply put in pieces as fast as they want, however they want. This is, of course, incredibly chaotic. It is also surprisingly fun. I entered a tournament for this game and it was the most fun I had in a long time. Over a few games, many entertaining things happened. One tense round, my opponent and I simultaneously dropped our first pieces into the cage thing that holds the tiles only to find the cage at the bottom was open. Both tiles fell out, and we laughed for about a minute straight. Another round, I ended up racing my opponent to build a tower of four. We completed our 4-circle high constructions at exactly the same time, creating the first tie in speed four the judge had ever seen. One time we inserted our circle tiles so forcefully that the board shook itself apart and requires post game repairs. I ended up winning the tournament, which also made me like the game. Obviously it requires integrity and calm not to panic or cheat, and the sprit of the game is very important to follow. Even with rules to ensure sportsmanlike behavior and fairness, it had the potential to turn nasty, and I was happily surprised when it didn't. A fun party game, which will make use of your old connect four set and give you something to do with friends in a casual setting.

So thats' it for this round. I'll soon upload my thoughts on a couple more games, and on Bearcon itself. For now suffice to say I had a great time, and am glad to have gone.

Take care!

Remember that big, angry boar rider? He's fully painted and ready for basing.

Our tribally painted rider is raring to go!

The boar also has warpaint. I didn't thin the warpaints much

to try and make it look like thick, hastily applied decoration-not a work of art.

The jawbone axe is the only part of the model I'm really pleased with, but I think it could use it bit more contrast. (It looks monochrome in the photo)

He rides away in search of a new foe.

There's one! Soupbeard McAwesome, human mercenary of The Empire, has left the ruined streets of Mordheim to go slay Orcs on my display shelf! You can see here that the drybrushing is really visible and feathery-my least favorite thing about the model. The wash also killed the contrast on the fur, which sucks. Regardless, he looks okay to me from tabletop distance, so into the army he goes!

See you all soon, I'll have some pictures from Bearcon to share with you all.

Take care!