Workbench Wednesday - 4/23/14

So the post is a couple days late, one of the side effects of having a 6 week old daughter! Haven't made a ton of progress in the past week, as I'm pretty uninspired by the Heldrake. It's nearly finished, I just have to go back over all the black another time and do the metals, maybe touch up the OSL around the eyes. Really just need to get it finished before moving on to the sorcerer's cart, which should prove much more inspiring!!

I have a finished Heldrake on the left, WIP on the right. Could have done a better job with the shading but it's good enough. They'll looking intimidating screaming on from reserves, so that's a plus! Also really looking forward to getting going on the bases. My FLGS (Game Kastle in Santa Clara, CA) finally got my Secret Weapon Miniatures Scrap Yard bases for me, so I'll do sort of a review and painting tutorial for them when I get to them. With about a month until Kublacon I'm not sure if I'll finish everything, but will certainly get the core of the force done, barring any setbacks. 

The Heldrake WIP. 

I'd like to take an opportunity to plug a Kickstarter campaign as well. It's the first campaign I've ever backed, and am really excited to see what the rest of the campaign has in store and get my minis around November: Jeremy Glen's Creature Caster

They're huge, beautiful sculpts of daemons, and I'm a sucker for daemons of all kinds, especially big scary ones. I'm going to finish the Heldrake in the next couple of days and hopefully the cart before the next update! Until then, Happy Hobbying!

Workbench Wednesday - 4/16/14

Greetings! Another week has gone by and I'm pretty happy with the progress I've been making. I've finished painting the Helbrutes and the Sorcerer! They are awaiting weathering, which I'll do after I finish the Sorcerer's cart and finish painting their bases. The paint jobs are necessarily a little quick and dirty as the weathering is the real focus. 

I wish I had the ability to upload pictures taken with a better camera. Working with just a phone and a tablet has its limitations! More pictures after the jump.

Workbench Wednesday - 4/9/14

I've managed to get a decent amount done this week, the helbrutes are progressing nicely!!! Armor, metals, and flesh are done; basically all the big jobs. As they say, the devil is in the details. Still need to do hoses, horns, creepy chaos eyes, missiles, etc. I'm working on the sorcerer at the same time as he's in the same color scheme, though some robes, nurglings, skulls, etc will need to be done separately.

More pictures after the jump.

Golden Gargant 2014 Info, Rules, and Regulations!

UPDATE: THERE HAVE BEEN TWO SMALL CHANGES TO THE TOURNAMENT RULES! THEY ARE MARKED IN RED TEXT TO MAKE THEM MORE VISIBLE!

UPDATE #2 (5/1/14): FINAL UPDATE BEFORE KUBLACON! THE RULES HAVE BEEN ALTERED TO REFLECT THAT WE WILL BE PLAYING UNDER 6TH EDITION THIS YEAR, REGARDLESS OF NEW EDITION RELEASES. ROUNDS ARE 2 HOURS & 20 MINUTES LONG. SCENARIOS CHANGED TO USE DAWN OF WAR DEPLOYMENT FOR LOGISTICAL REASONS. CHANGES MARKED IN RED.

Hey, all! This marks my second year running the Golden Gargant tournament at KublaCon! This year instead of having a grotesquely long and complicated event listing on the KublaCon event search I'll be posting it here! Now you won't have to bounce all over the place looking at different sources for all the rules just to figure out what's going on! Before I go on I want to thank and give credit to the crew over at Frontline Gaming for providing an awesome tournament format that lets other tournament organizers have an easy base to work from and tweak for their needs. They also have some cool gaming mats that will be adoring a few of the tables this year (they're beer proof to boot...but let's avoid testing that for the sake of the terrain and minis).

Here's the basic rundown:
Sunday, May 25th.
Tournament Registration starts at 8:00 AM.
First Round starts at 9:00 AM.
1,750 Points. Standard Force Organization.
Three, Two-Hour & Twenty-Minute Rounds (Meal-Break After Round Two)
Hyatt Regency SFO

Full weekend passes go up to full price on April 15th, so get yours now if you plan on being at the con for more then one day! KublaCon Registration.

Click here to find the official event listing, though anything you need is likely in the rest of this post.

Tournament rules and more info after the jump.

Seriously?

I got invited to a game recently.  I'm not sure about it, but I"m pretty certain that the game isn't for me.  It's a superheroes game, which isn't a genre I have a problem with, but the guy wants to play Fifth Edition Hero System.  Further, he asked everyone what their favorite type of character to make is:  Brick, Martial Artist, Energy Projector, Psychic, or Speedster?  The last bit, was that we've been told nothing about the setting or game, though after repeated pleadings, found out that we'll be "saving the world" because we're "nice guys" and that there have apparently been superheroes since WWII, and giant monsters have attacked Japan, but that hasn't changed the world notably.  Oh, and since being invited, the game has changed from being a couple of times a month to weekly.

I know there are people out there who think that sounds fun.  Hell, I know there was a point in my life when I was one of them.  I guess I've just changed.  But, at this point in my life, that game sounds miserable.  Let me unpack the reasons why:

Conflict not Combat

Think about your favorite movie that isn't a documentary.  I don't care what genre it is, whether it's an action movie or a romantic comedy, I am about to tell you what it's about with 100% accuracy.  Your favorite move is about conflict.  If it's an action movie, it's about physical conflict.  If it's a romantic comedy, it's either about conflict between people (the love triangle) or about a conflict of values (the will they-won't they).  Movies and role-playing games have a common thread, there has to be a conflict or there's no peg to hang the story on.

My issue is that most game's take the term "conflict" too literally.  The conflicts are always physical, and resolution of those conflicts is always synonymous with violence.  That's unfortunate, because movies, television, and books, (all important inspirations to gaming genres) all see resolution as possible in different ways.

Workbench Wednesday - 4/2/14

This Wednesday I've made some progress on the inspiration for my Kublacon list - Helbrutes!! As you can see, they're magnetized to have multiple weapon options, though for Kublacon they'll be sporting a bunch of power fists as they'll be deepstriking as close to the enemy as possible for backfield disruption. The kits are awesome, and very easily magnetized. I used 1/4" magnets and any of the Helbrutes can carry any weapon (yay for me for not messing up the polarization).

They're painted in my 40k Death Guard theme, to go with my existing marines and terminators. Ironically they'll be the only models in my list that are painted in this theme unless rumors of a new plastic obliterator kit are true. As I'm using cultists and not Plague Marines, they'll stand out a bit, but I'll try to find a way to incorporate the scheme in the cultist units. They're going to be heavily weathered, and should look pretty decayed and menacing when all is said and done.