Fun Friday # 13 – Displaying The Goods

Hi all!

Today, I wanted to talk about how to best display your favorite hobby pieces. When it comes to a nice model you painted, a rare comic book, or even a collection of Pop!s, you want to display what you have.

So for today, I wanted to share what I have, and what I have in mind... if money was no issue. Dreaming can happen!

My current display case I use mainly for my painted models. It is a 6 tiered wooden display, with glass facing on 3 sides, and a sliding door. There is a nice light that shines down from the top, and illuminates the models. The shelves are a bit small, but because my painted collection is not huge yet, that is not a problem. For some perspective, my full 1500 point imperial Fist force will only just fit on a shelf.

Now... if I was to talk about my dream cabinet...

Massive shelves, built into the wall, with a nice sliding glass door to keep it compact. I am thinking some drawers, or opening cabinets beneath, so I can store terrain, unfinished models, board games, the like. I am thinking probably wooden shelves, with downlights built into them so the models are well illuminated. I would also want varying sizes, so I can put the large models in safely, but also have ample space for multiple armies.

What would you want in your display cabinet?

-Rob-

Wednesday Weekly # 12 – Bring on the Paint

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Hope the week is going well for all of you!

This has been a fairly productive week! I was at a stoppage point for painting because I was having issues with the airbrush... but I finally sat down and set to work cleaning all the gunk out of it. Once I finished that, I was feeling inspired... so I pulled some paint out, and get some models done! Am I going to show them to you? Not till Sunday, but yes. The biggest thing was that it showed me how quickly I can get paint on some models... so I think I will do some more. Next up on the paint table, I have a contemptor, my librarian, and my apothecary. The airbrush work for them all is done, just time to take a brush to them. Paint on!

However... I may have a problem.... War Thunder. I have been recaptured by the game. The gameplay is so addicting, yet so frustrating. There are times when I want to punch my computer screen in the face, and others when I am beyond ecstatic at a particular series of events. The biggest problem is that it is taking up hobby time... I am a busy guy, with a busy schedule. So the trick is juggling an awesome wife, and beautiful little boy, and work with hobby time, which of course is a pretty far step down the line. I need to prioritize. So I am working on how to divvy up my hobby time. Do I want to spend two hours painting, or shooting tanks and airplanes with my buddies.

Maybe that is the trick. If I don’t have people to play with on War Thunder, I pick up the brush instead.

Things to think about... What do you guys think?

Have a great rest of the week!

-Rob-

Showcase Sunday # 12 – Corporate Security Unit

Happy Sunday Everyone! Today... we are going to show something a little different.

This is my Corporate Security Unit, that came in the Operation Icestorm box, from Corvus Belli. That, of course, means Infinity.

The Infinity models are so much smaller than the warhammer models, more realistic. Not only that, but the details are so much clearer. The flip side to that is that the models are all metal, which means they can be a bit tough to work with. But the result speaks for itself.

This is the first of hopefully quite a few Infinity models. Time will tell!

Thanks for looking!

-Rob-

Showcase Sunday # 11 – Imperial Fist Captain

Happy Sunday everyone!

Hope the weekend was fulfilling and relaxing!

For this week's Showcase, I decided I would continue with my Fists, and show off my Captain.

This is the model I use for my Legion Preator. I really like the model, just because he looks like he is commanding rather than fighting himself. I like the resting menace of this guy. He just looking like he ready to slash you up.

This is one of the latest yellow attempts, pre-airbrush. I did layers of Averland Sunset, followed by some highlighting of Uriel Yellow. I like how clean this looks, but am not totally happy with the shading/highlighting on the model, so the quest for a better yellow continues.

What do you think?

-Rob-

Wednesday Weekly # 10 – Pathfinder on the Brain

Hump Daaaay!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Hope the Week is going well so far for all of you!

So, this week in the hobby was fairly productive. It was also quite varied. Pathfinder, Warhammer 40k, painting, and Magic! Needless to say, it has been a good week.

 

As for Pathfinder, Humble Bundle is doing a bundle for pathfinder books... 350$ worth of books for under 20$. So many people picked it up that they crashed the site. Awesome opportunity to pick up a whole lot of PDFs on the cheap, and support the charity of your choice. So, as a result of this... I have decided I want to run a pathfinder campaign with my RPG group. Included in the bundle was a whole lot of modules to play though, so we have campaigns and encounters that will last for years, even if we play every week. It may be cool if we did a rotating DM thing, but we will see where we go!

As for painting, I did get some basecoat for my Imperial fists finished, my Tactical Support Squad, and my Heavy Support Squad. No pictures today, because I am not totally happy with the results yet, but they will be coming eventually.

Speaking of Warhammer 40K, I was able to introduce the game itself to a friend of mine. It was a pretty fun game, me doing my best to remember all the rules as I explained to him.

Lastly, got some magic in. I do love me some commander. Good game all around, luckily my deck managed to pull through right at the end.

Thank you for reading!

Have a great rest of your week!

-Rob-

Showcase Sunday # 10 – Imperial Fist Assault Squad

Hey there, everyone!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

For this Showcase, I am going to follow what I started last week, and showcase my Imperial Fists.

Today will be my Assault Squad. This is meant for a Heresy squad, but the minimum squad size is 10, so not quite there yet. I really had a ton of fun with the posing on these marines, and was very happy with the painting itself.

I also made a point with these guys to weather them a bit heavier, which I think made them stand out better.

The squad sergeant may be one of my favorite models I have finished to date. I really like to posing and threat that comes from him.

Thank you for checking it out!

Have a great week.

-Rob-

Fun Friday # 9 – The Merc With a Mouth

Happy Friday Everyone!

It is time. Time to discuss an amazing movie. A movie I have seen not once, but twice in theaters. A movie I would be happy to see again. I went with a group of friends, then I had to take my wife. Had to.

 

Deadpool.

Dead – Mothereffing- Pool

This movie is absolutely incredible. If you have gentler sensibilities (Language, Violence, Blood, Masturbation Jokes), This is not the movie for you. But If you like all of that fun stuff, you will love this movie.

There was a whole lot that this movie did so right, and a few things it did not do so well on. Here are a few of my personal views.

The absolute best part of this movie, without a shadow of a doubt, is Ryan Reynolds. He was … perfectly cast for this movie. Honestly, Deadpool must have been written, as a comic book character, nearly 20 years ago, for Ryan Reynolds. He absolutely fulfills the role of the Merc with a Mouth. In nearly every aspect of the movie, he personifies the idea of deadpool.

The fourth wall breaking for this movie was awesome. It worked really well, pulling in tons of references that worked really well for the 1990s-2000s kid in me. Over and over again, there was little things that kept popping up, that were not story driving, but great little references.

OK, a few things that were not so great... the first being Mr. Reynold's supporting cast. They were fairly two dimensional... The ladies were pretty, but that was about the extent of it. It would have been nice to see even more exploration of their characters, though I fear they may not be returning.

The next thing that I found not so great was the real lack of footprint for another movie. It is one of those things like... where can it really go after this? It just seemed like the development for the future movies was week.

Thank you for reading,

Have a great Weekend,

-Rob-

Showcase Sunday # 9 – Imperial Fist Tactical Squad

Happy Sunday Everyone!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

For this week's Sunday Showcase, I thought I would start the showcasing of my Imperial fist army. I will only be going piece by piece, because I am really not sure how far I will be able to showcase... seeing as I need to try to get through 52 of these. We will see!

Just to get things started, I will show off my first completed squad, my Imperial Fist Tactical Squad. I will usually run them as a Veteran Tactical Squad in Age of Darkness games, or a standard Tactical Squad in regular 40k.

The pieces are all Forgeworld, which of course are a joy to work with. I tried to add as much variety as I could to the posing.

The scheme I used for these were very basic, I started with a coat or three of Lydan Darksun, then basically just highlighted it with some extreme highlights with bone. I then just blacked out the black parts, and did some subtle highlighting to that.

I also tried to do some subtle weathering, there will definitely be more in the next squads. 

Let me know what you think!

Thank you,

-Rob-

Wednesday Weekly # 8 – Getting Some Pigment!

Happy Wednesday all!

This has been a productive hobby week!

I got to play some more 13th Age on Friday, and the more I play this system, the more I like it. If feel so streamlined, so build for adaptation. I love how in depth you can get with your characters... how much connection you can develop. In this latest adventure, I met a scary dragon man (PC), was pushed through a magical sigil teleportation system, and nearly choked to death on smoke. I took part in a bloody bar fight that left a huge dude dead, and myself and dragon man covered in blood. Overall, I think it was a great session.

Now, on to the model related side of things. I was feeling inspired yesterday, so I sat down and base coated my librarian and apothecary. I also got some good paint on my Emperor's Children Contemptor. I struggled with not be fully happy with the way the paint sat on the models, but I kept at it, and think I found a way I like. My trick is a light white point right where the light would hit the model, and hit it with a lighter pigment to make it pop. I have posted up my Contemptor, and my Apothecary, because they showcase the effect pretty well for what i was going for. 

The last thing I got completed was I got the Plasma support squad and Cataphractii teams primed, and ready for paint. This project continues forward!

Thank you!

Have a great rest of your week!

-Rob-

Showcase Sunday # 8 – Emperor's Children Contemptor

Happy Sunday everyone! 

Today I will be showing off a contemptor model I finished several years ago, as a part of a DIY chapter of space marines I made up. I have since let that group fall to the wayside, but noticed that the scheme for the most part works for my Emperor's Children force I am working on. Am I going to update the scheme at all for this model? Probably not. I am happy with how it looks, and don’t want to mess anything up. So.... for now, this is how it stands.  

This model is equipped with a Khares Assault Cannon, and an inbuilt Plasma Blaster. It is also built on a scenic base with a bloody dire avenger helm on it... because, you know. Blasted Xenos. 

The purple for future models will, of course, be updated.  

What do you think?

Thank you for checking it out! 

-Rob-

Showcase Sunday # 7 - Necrons

Happy Sunday Everyone! Hope you had a great weekend! 

Today, I will be showcasing a small part of my wife's Necron Army.  

When we first started with this army, we were going bog standard Games Workshop scheme for painting. But.... neither of us had any attachment to that scheme. It was just... some paint on a model. So we switched it up, and moved to a blue/teal, rather than green. I would show a boatload of warriors, but I still have a whole lot to finish the conversion process with.  

So today, I will be showcasing a Necron Spyder, and the accompanying scarabs. 

The Spyder was done completely with an airbrush, metallic followed by a bit of zenial lighting in the torso and under the abdomen. Sadly, the picture that we got does not show the lighting as well as I would perhaps hope, though it is a cool shot. So far, in game, this thing is a beast, tossing out scarab bases left and right.  

Moving on to the Scarabs themselves, we have seven bases to use. Each warrior box comes with 12 scarabs, and enough bases to make 3 swarms, but I had a few extra 40mm bases floating around so I expanded a bit. I tried to make each base unique in it's own way. I wanted to make a story with each base. You will notice a smattering of bits across the bases, An imperial fist helmet, a Dire Avenger Shuriken Catapult, and some ruins with Imperial graffiti.  

Thank you for looking! 

Have a great week! 

-Rob-

Fun Friday # 6 - 13th Age - D&D for the new age

Happy Friday Everyone! 

Today, I am going to have a discussion about 13th Age. 13th Age is an RPG that was recently released from Pelgrane Press. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most want to play with your group. Created by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, 13th  Age gives you all the tools you need to make unique characters who are immediately embedded in the setting in important ways; quickly prepare adventures based on the PCs’ backgrounds and goals; create your own monsters; fight exciting battles; and focus on what’s always been cool and fun about fantasy adventure gaming. 

 

13th Age has so many great things going for it. I am going to go through a few of them.  

First up is the Icon Relationships. The Icons are the movers and the shakers within the world itself. They include people like the Dragon Emperor, and Elf Queen, and the Golden Drake. When you build your character, you get to choose your relationships with the Icons, building a backstory for your character. For example, I could say that I have a minor relationship with the Dragon emperor, because I was a minor member of his court. Then I could also say I have a major relationship with the Prince of Shadows, because I was a member of a secret society of thieves within the capital. Really interesting, because it gives players a place within the world.  

The next thing I want to talk about is the One Unique Thing. This ties back into the backstory of the character. The One Unique Thing is the one thing that makes your character different from every other PC. For example, my character can see a ghostly representation of his twin brother who died in the birth. This one unique thing never has an effect on game play, just on story itself. Usually a really good vehicle for moving the story, which is awesome. It also really helps bring your character to life.  

In terms of gameplay, 13th Age does skill checks completely different. Each character has a certain number of background points that they get to assign, based on their background. These backgrounds are what players use to make skill checks! For example, if my character has 5 points in a thieving background, when he decides to make a lockpick check, he would add his 5 points of background  to his check, and that would be the result. No more looking for relevant skill check. Use that backgrounds! Really make the game more streamlined.  

Now, in terms of combat, 13th age offers a mechanic called the Escalation Die. This escalation die is a d6 that, as combat goes on, goes up, and when you make attack rolls and damage rolls, you add the escalation die to the result. For example, say it is round 5 of combat. I get to make an attack roll, add the escalation die, which shows 4, plus my modifier. Bam! Needless to say, combat is much much quicker, getting back to the narrative part of the story.  

Now, the last thing I wanted to touch on was how awesomely quirky the book itself is written. There are tons of silly little things that stick out to you as you read it. Just to post an example, look at the monster reference for an owlbear, and the attacks it can make.  

 

Rip and peck: +9 vs. AC—15 damage, and until the end of the owlbear’s next turn, the target is hampered (makes only basic attacks) while engaged with the owlbear 

Vicious hybrid: If the escalation die is even, make another rip and peck attack. 

 

 

Feed the cubs: An owlbear that scores a critical hit against a hampered enemy tears a piece of the creature off (GM chooses a limb) and will subsequently attempt to retreat with the prize to feed its cubs. The torn-up enemy is stunned until the end of its next turn. 

 

I mean... come on. Tearing your arm off to feed the young? Awesome! 

Take a chance to play this game! It is awesome! 

Have a great weekend!  

-Rob-