Can't See the Forest for the Trees (Part 2)

Like, what was I thinking with that title? It's terrible.

Anyway.

Had a spot of warmer weather this weekend, so I managed to make a little progress on my "green" terrain.

After cutting out all of the filter pieces and pulling the fibers apart to make them work, let me offer a few words of advice: 1) The little blue specs that come off during this process really start to add up and make a mess, so either do this outside or somewhere you can easily sweep (garage, porch, etc.) and 2) you need to wear gloves, because it will start to tear the skin on your hands to pieces.

So after getting it all ready, I hit them with a quick brown spray paint, then used some spray adhesive to apply the flock.

Clumpy fluffs of foliage sprayed brown

After adding the first bits of flocking (it will get more later once assembled into a tree proper)

Needing to let these bits dry but not wanting to waste the good weather, I decided to go ahead and test putting together and flocking the fluff on one of the smaller armature trees.

Bit of spray adhesive to the armature and then just sticking the small leftover chunks of fluff from the bigger trees

All flocked up! 

All that's left for the mock up is to paint the trunks, and I have to say, I'm quite excited about how it turned out! I'm not as excited to do this 11 more times... but still, excited.

Hopefully Part 3 will finish this series out, with a final picture of all the trees together! Maybe if this decent weather will hold through this upcoming weekend...

Can't See the Forest for the Trees (Part 1)

It's been something of a joke for a while now that desert settings for my table is just my "thang." Whether it's an arid, alien world or simply a trash-filled wasteland, it's just what I've always gravitated towards in my terrain building and my paint schemes.

Deciding that I needed to branch out a bit (and because I didn't want all of my fantasy terrain to be in the desert, too) I tried to break it down into the most crucial elements for each/any setting.

For example, in a desert, I would say that big rocky crags, like you would find on a canyon wall, are the most striking and obvious element to use for non-specific terrain.

So, I began work on two tables:

 - A "green" table, with trees and plant-life
 - A "cyberpunk" table, devoid of typical landscapes tropes in favor of concrete/rust with neon accents

This is the first post in a series about working on the primary element of the "green" table: Some big, badass trees.

---------------

For starters, I went out on Pinterest (which is a fantastic resource for examples) and began a search for cool looking trees on tables. The problem, as I saw it, was that trees in miniature gaming terrain are either too small/dinky, they're unsightly plastic looking things, or they're awesome fixtures of a permanent table. I need something that hits a comfortable middle ground; trees that are big enough to feel important and substantial, and still have a good model-train-feel to them, but that I can move around and set up differently on a gaming surface.

And as luck would have it, I came across this promising tutorial:  https://www.beastsofwar.com/terrain/terrainscaping-awesome-tabletop-trees/

The example picture I originally found on Pinterest

There would be a few changes here and there, but overall I really liked how durable this would be and yet still create a substantial table presence.  A quick trip to Home Depot and HobbyTownUSA later, and it was off to the races.

(I'm not going to re-list everything from the article out here except where there are notable exceptions)

 Having never used spray glue myself, let me first say that I've discovered cheaper = better in this instance. I started out with this expensive, super adhesive blah blah blah... but it sprays very thick and clumpy, and is not ideal for this purpose. I went back and picked up the cheapest can of aerosol adhesive and have been much happier with it!

No! No gloopy jazzm sprayer! No!

 I also decided to pick up some Woodland Scenic armatures along with the flocking material, so I could make some smaller trees with less foliage for variety. (I did get the biggest armatures I could find, though)

These things are sharp on the edges of the plastic when you bend them up! Death by a thousand cuts...

And then, the best discovery of all for regular use of these materials:

So gud.

Seriously, this wood filler is really thick and easy to work with straight from the carton, and it dries very hard even before applying a coat of watered-down-wood-glue to everything. This should be in every terrain builder's inventory.

So here are some progress shots of the first steps, which was mainly just attaching the dowels/armatures to the washers (though I used hot glue rather than the foam padding in the article) and then building up the trunks. I'll save the rest for next time.

Gon' be a big treeeeee...

Don't forget the wood glue over all of the built up trunk when it's finally dry a couple days later!

The next step will involve spraying everything brown, getting the trunks painted up, and then adding some foliage! 

Step 42: Spread thinly and unevenly for mixed results

It's only been a month!  That's not so bad.  Right?  Time goes by so quickly for me that it doesn't feel long at all, at least.

So accurate.

That said, I've mired myself deep in new projects (because the incomplete projects I was already mired in weren't enough), both in an effort to complete some things I should have wrapped up a long ass time ago and because buying new toys is fun.  I'm also in somewhat of a mad dash to finish a handful of the bigger, terrain-based projects so that I can store them appropriately during the impending construction in our basement at home coming up all-too-swiftly.

So... where to start?

GORKAMORKA

Nope, I haven't forgotten or abandoned my Diggas, I've just been focused on other projects.  GorkaMorka is a game that I play with people who have a passion for it that isn't "flavor of the week", so I know that I can easily play with any member the dedicated handful of players so long as we plan on it a few days ahead.  That said, my only model painted so far is my Digganob, but I've made a couple of acquisitions to accompany my mob.  I'll also be switching out the ork driving Cassandra to a digga; I intend to focus on them completely.

My diggas will have a van-themed fleet (as much as I can maintain, anyway... van models aren't common, surprisingly).  I managed to snag this sweet model made sometime back in the late 70's for my main trukk, and may just have to search for more of this exact one because it's a good size:

Stickers are optional... but I'm leaning towards keeping them.

I also picked up some cool cardstock terrain on the cheap in order to get working on a more custom fort for the diggas.  I'm not sure what the final shape of it will be, as I tend to incorporate ideas as I build rather than make a strict plan and stick to it, but I'm excited to get working on it.

ARENA REX

Arena Rex is a 32mm gladiator combat game.  Literally 1 to 5 models, maximum, per side.  And it has probably the most intriguing hand-to-hand combat system I've ever seen in a game... This game has the potential to be my favorite tabletop game, ever, if it pans out like it appears it will.

Now, that said, go look at this shit:  http://arenarex.com/

Did you go look?  No?  Well, you're crazy.

Arena Rex has the best resin models I've ever seen produced for a game (so discounting strictly display-quality statues).  And by that I mean both the best sculpts AND the best quality of miniatures.

More traditional style gladiators of the Ludus Magnus, with my favorite model in the game Micon the brawler on the right.

The Legio XIII, a military sponsored group of combatants.

Essentially Arena Rex is an alternate history type of setting, where Rome never lost.  Like, ever.  At anything.  Also, mythical creatures are a thing.  This allows for multiple "factions" of models, like those shown above as well as the Morituri (Egyptians, more or less) and the Zephyri (Native/Viking-esque), plus monsters like a wendigo or the gorgons.  There are no points when building forces, simply number of models.  

I've made a bit more progress since these pictures, but you'll see these again along with more when I do a whole post about this, but... without further ado, I present Ludus Bellicosorum Pugnax.

Yup, those are Playmobile toys.  Wait for it...

It has begun!

Look forward to much more about this; it's going to be my best piece of terrain to date, I'm confident.  The board is 4' on the long side, so it's a very usable piece.

INFINITY

Our local club, the 423rd OverMountain Guard. 

Man oh man, prepare for some pictures.

Infinity has taken a hold on the local group, and it's been interesting to be a part of overall.  Infinity is one of those games I eyeballed  and picked up a few things on the cheap for years, and then when I first met up with Hoss in the local group sometime over a year ago, I actually got to start playing it.  It's one of those games that can be obscenely complicated, yet is built around a simple framework, and works best if played out with each player having objectives and scenarios they need to complete that are different than "kill moar dudes".  We managed to bring in a few others (though I'll give all the credit to Hoss, being the local fanboy for the game, as I often am whoring myself out to a different game system week to week if I'm able), and learned that some folks like Da Masta Cheef had already had forces in the past and might be convinced to dust them off and play.  Fast forward to present and we're currently in the middle of a "grow league", which is a league designed around bringing in new people and having them build up to a typical-sized 300 point army over the course of 5 rounds.  In theory (and mostly in practice) this is a great idea.  It's gotten a lot of people playing, and it will hopefully mean that a game of Infinity will be easy to schedule for the immediate future.

That said, there are elements that wear on me.

I'm not an overtly competitive guy.  My wife would contend otherwise, and she honestly wouldn't be wrong when it comes to real-life applications, but when I'm gaming I'm playing to have a good time and create cool stories.  I'm playing toys.  I mean sure, it's fun to win, but it's only fun to win if both players had a good time.  Building a ridiculous army list and stomping someone who doesn't have a chance to win isn't fun, for instance.

Now, like I said, the Infinity league has 5 rounds.  The first 4 of those rounds, however, are the mission type "Annihilation", where the only goals are to kill as much of the enemy as possible while keeping as much of your force alive as you can.  Sure, starting in round 3 you get to start using Classified Objective cards (basically 2 randomly selected side objectives your specialist troops can complete), but the main point of the game is still the same.  And frankly I'm bored of it.  Infinity is setting up crazy terrain and making interesting objectives involving hackers and engineers and dropships and d-charge explosives and... well it's a lot more than just setting up in a fortified position and rolling dice, hoping your rolls are better than the other player's.  And because of that, I'm not feeling excited to go play as much because it's lacking in unexpected elements.

I'm also not as excited because the league is somewhat competitive.  What I mean by that is there are points allotted to each player based on the events of a game, and those points are tallied in a spreadsheet, and certain players in the league like to bring it up constantly.  "I scored this many, and now I'm in contention for the lead, and I got these achievements, blah blah blah."  And no, to stop your train of thought, I'm not losing and thus don't like it because I'm whining.  I'm actually very close to the top and could really have a chance to win if I gamed for it... but ugh.  That's exactly my problem with it.  Instead of everyone building cool armies around a theme or aesthetic that they like, some people are trying hard to game the system in order to get points.  I know most people don't care, but to me that shit is annoying.  We're not playing in a tournament, we're playing in a league designed to get interested gamers more invested in the game and to get the interest of completely new players.

ANYWAY!  Minor rant aside, I've been playing a lot of Infinity lately.  Lol.

Typical game table set up at the group.

Fear the Fiday!  Perspective shot from the enemy Nomads' POV, where the Fiday had been laying down some shotgun blasts.  The Nomads got him back, though, giving him probably the most glorious death of any of the league games so far!

The majority of my Haqqislam stuff... I need to get painting.

I think this is all of the rest of it, minus a couple of Nomad Alguaciles that I can use in one of my sectorial forces.

Work-in-progress on my Janissary Fireteam, based on a pretty obvious theme.  ;)  The green one is actually a Nomad Mobile Brigada that can be included in the sectorial, so it made sense that he be the green "outsider" to the main team, but is still basically equivalent in capability.

My first finish Haqqislam model... the sneaky hassassin Fiday.

  


Infinity is a game that requires a veritable shitload of terrain, as well, so I've been trying to get pieces together to make the game boards a little more interesting.  Primarily, though, I've been working on a set of corridors to allow for the interiors of spaceships or bases that will work well for more interesting games.

The corridors I picked up from a company named Fantasy Arc originally through their kickstarter, though they now have everything for sale on their website here: Fantasy Arc - Bug Hunt Corridors

When you put the different pieces together, you can make a pretty good variety of shapes depending on what you're trying to achieve.  This is a stock photo from the website.

Here is one of the regular corridor sections I just painted this past weekend.

A more up-close view of some work in progress.

These should also work nicely in my next topic...

GRUNTZ

So after great effort and much convincing (or, you know, like passively mentioning its existence in conversation) Da Masta Cheef has gotten me into 15mm gaming.  15mm has always been something I've looked at and found interesting because of just how many cool vehicles there are for it (being so small, the little dudes need vehicles to get around the table), and now that I have a friend to play it with it seemed as good a time as any to jump in.

Also, dropships.

Because they're the coolest.

My centerpiece.

My main troopers, decked out with exo-armor very similar to that cool Tom Cruise movie from last year "Live. Die. Repeat."

OKAY!

With all of that, I guess I'll call it closed, even though I actually have a few more pictures of various things I've been working on.  Enjoy!

A cool archway that was really fun to paint.  A typical 28mm model is about as tall as the brick course running around the bottoms of the columns.

My character in an ongoing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign, Karyle the Pit Fighter (now Veteran).

This SICK temple from Antimatter Games that I picked up on clearance a few years ago (seriously this thing is normally like $200, I snagged it for around $40).  Those Dark Age models are on 50mm bases, for reference.

A Dark Age Outcasts (Salt Nomads, specifically) army!  I'm a crazy person!

My OCD spreadsheet that I designed in order to track my painted models as well as schedule deadlines for myself to finish them so I can keep all of my projects balanced and get things completed.

Yup.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar ...let's talk about it!

I mean shit, why not talk about it right away?  Second blog post, let's piss some people off! 

Very first thing, I want to start with this image:

This artwork is incredible.  Hate all you want.

That image was the first thing I saw in relation to Age of Sigmar (AoS hereafter). 

That image is fucking phenomenal.  And frankly, I feel like it sets the tone for how I feel about AoS in general.

But let's back up a minute.  "Who's this yay-hoo [because you'd probably use that term] actually liking a GW release, and what point of reference does he have for doing so?" is just the sort of question you might be asking yourself.  Well, I'll tell you!

I'm somewhat of an anomaly in the field of "seasoned gamers" because I didn't actually start playing games with GW stuff.  Now we could go off on a tangent here about how gamers like to wave their metaphorical dicks around about how many years they've been gaming, typically doing so by stating what edition of Warhammer Fantasy/40K they started with, and then spouting at least one reason why that edition was better than anything GW has released since then.  But I won't.  ;)  I started in on the miniatures hobby somewhere around 1995 with the X-Men board game "Under Siege", which came with these little 2" tall plastic figures that I decided would be fun to paint. 

Quality was surprisingly decent.  I need to find this game again...

Alas, I never got anyone to play the game with me (so why did they buy it for me?  So weird...) but I DID enjoy painting the figures so much that I continued on that trend.  And I did that by purchasing this box from the local comic shop:

Dat halfling!

I wish I could find my painted barbarian (he was my favorite) just to have it as a point of reference, but oh well.  Fast-forward a bit to high school, where I picked up the 3rd edition starter box for 40k (the Black Templar vs. Dark Eldar one) and promptly proceeded to get nowhere with it.  I assembled a few things, painted a few others, but never played a game.  No one else I knew was interested!  Go figure.

Cut to 2004.  Working part time at Toys R Us while in college, my good friend Kevin brings a new game to my attention, and alters the course of history.

We're *almost* to the Age of Sigmar stuff, believe it or not.

We played this game every chance we could get.  Many waaaaaay late weekend nights were spent with a case of Natural Ice, bags of homemade crazy spicy beef jerky, and rolling dice while laughing maniacally at games of Warmachine.  This was where the obsession began, for me.

That said, we were an insular group.  We didn't branch out to find new players (other than the couple we adopted into the hobby from work) so we didn't experience the shift in playstyle and the typical type of gamers this particular game brought in.  We weren't competitive, so much, and we played the game to have a good time.  No models were allowed on the table without having been painted first, even.  But eventually, as time moved on and situations changed, our scope had to broaden in order to play.  And while Kevin managed okay in the more competitive environment at large (because he plays Cryx and seriously fuck those undead cheaters) I stopped having fun playing the game.

During the next couple of years, I picked up quite a few different games, all of which I'll detail at a later time.  Because seriously, this post is still about Age of Sigmar.  I'm getting there.  It's all about the build up.  Or something.

So, while I've played a multitude of skirmish games in the interim, and actually collected decent armies for both 40k and Fantasy (and actually even played TWO games of Fantasy!... though no 40k...), I'm a bit OCD about my consumption of information.  I've kept up on the fluff/narrative of GW's systems, I've read some of the books, I've played some of the video games.  While I'm not a person who played WHFB and only WHFB, which would make AoS a reeeeeally big deal to me, the impact of what's happened isn't lost on me.  This is some serious shit.  The line has been drawn in the sand, and there appears to be no turning back.

And now, we're back to this:

Look at it again.  It's so pretty.

The Age of Sigmar, for a nostalgic-yet-skirmish-system-gamer like me, is kind of the coolest thing GW has ever done.  They've taken a product that carried 30+ years of baggage, with a fucking library of tomes of rules, and they've condensed it down in this new game system that allows for people to play with all of their old toys, bases don't matter, use whatever you want, and designed in a way for you to create fun stories and scenarios and battles with your friends.  There's no system in the way with the intent to set up a "balanced" game, because the hordes of Khorne aren't going to set up a meeting with the Lord Celestant of the Sigmarites before the battle and make sure it's a fair contest!  Because heroes are to be born on the tabletop, rolling that 6 eight times in a row and cutting a swath through the enemy forces, blocking their path to the objective at hand!  Because dammit, play toys!

I'll digress for a moment, here, and step down from my soapbox of excitement to clarify some things.  Yes, I fully understand that with this "system" in place, it's possible for folks to horrifically abuse it.  The guy who has buckets of disposable income can show up with 10 greater daemons and just win win win, while the average Joe can't compete in the arms race to match it.  It makes random games tougher, to a degree, because you can't just find Random Gamer X at the store and say, "35 points?  Okay go." and play out a game.  HOWEVER!  I fully believe those are arguments of laziness.  I'm sorry, but I do.  Let's take the horrifically outmatched forces example: Did you, as a kid, ever play action figures with a friend?  Did that friend maybe have a favorite character, like Wolverine or something, that would just never die or lose?  This example isn't that far removed, but hopefully we've grown into adults who have learned to compromise.  When I played toys with friends like that as a child, usually I didn't play toys with that friend again if it was too annoying.  Things haven't changed.  If I show up to play and my opponent sets down an annoyingly unstoppable force (that isn't part of a story we're trying to play out on the tabletop, because overwhelming-odds-last-stand-style stories are fun sometimes) but remains unwilling to compromise so that we can both have fun... I'm not playing toys with that person.  Simple!  And as for the other example, of being able to meet and play Random Gamer X... it's still profoundly doable with AoS.  It's just more of a conversation.  It requires me to talk to that gamer, make legitimate friends with that gamer, decide on what story to tell on the table with that gamer.  I will remember that gamer's name, probably friend them on Facebook, and in all likelihood play more games with that gamer for the foreseeable future.  If Random Gamer X is a douche who is uncompromising and anti-social... well damn, we're not going to play! I don't want to be friends with that guy.

Back on point.   

Age of Sigmar is rad, yo.  It's brought in a borderline GW gamer like me, and it's gotten me really excited.  The game is designed around making awesome models and having fun with your friends... not a win/loss ratio.

I know people have been upset about the state of the world and the story for it, but quite honestly, this is some well-written shit.

Well.  Written.  Shit.

The story picks up close to 1000 years after "The End Times" and the destruction of the Old World.  When the destruction took place, multiple deity-level entities survived, hurtled through time-and-space to what appear to be lands existing in the realms of magic (where the winds of magic actually came from in the Old World).  It's unclear, as of yet, whether that means this is essentially a new planet that exists in eight different dimensions (where the Gates allow travel through the dimensions), or if it is eight literal realms side-by-side and blocked off from each other.  But anyway, once cast into these realms, the deities and the handful of survivors they were able to save rebuilt civilization, more or less.  It was small, but they did it.  Chaos, bored as all hell in its respective 9th realm, saw the people having a good time in the other 8 and invaded, with all of the Chaos gods united in the endeavor.  The realms fought bravely, but ultimately lost, with Sigmar himself retreating to the Realm of Heavens, aka Azyr, and sealing off the Gates to it.  He stole away the best surviving warriors from the other realms as he did so, and in Azyr he "re-forged" them into the superior beings that are the Sigmarites.  (Yes, you're right, they are totally Space Marines.  They look similar, they act similar, they're the same.  But you know what?  People love Space Marines.  They're fucking cool.)  Now, where the story starts again for us, Sigmar is sending his superior army of Sigmarites back into the 8 realms to take them back from Chaos.  The Chaos gods have grown complacent in their overall victory, once again bickering and battling for strength against one another, and Sigmar is taking the opportunity to strike against the disassembled foe.  With the Sigmarites leading the charge, the remaining holdouts of forces in opposition to Chaos that have been on the defensive for many years come out in full force to strike while the opportunity presents itself.

This first big book, as pictured above, details the first attack of the Sigmarites (which is what the starter box is, by the way) in narrative form, and then picks up the story in the Realm of Life (Ghyran) where the tree spirits (Treemen, Treekin, Dryads, etc.) are fighting with the forces of Nurgle.  The book has some wonderful story in it, and details several scenarios for playing out the current battles in the Realm of Life (because the starter box book has the scenarios for the first battles of the Sigmarites).  The book also provides some details on what the other races are up to in the other realms and/or their motivations, setting the stage for future stories and army releases.  Personally, I'm most looking forward to these guys:

The dwarfs return... and so do the chaos dwarfs!

 The Age of Sigmar has a living, progressive narrative.  The Old World was rich with stories and tales, which are just as worth reading now as they ever were before, but it's overall progression was halted.  That's not the case with AoS.

Overall, at least thus far, I'm very happy about the state of the game and its world and where they're taking it.  Obviously I'm not the most concerned individual about rules, and balance, and boring technicalities... because seriously, if you and your friends can't work those out and play with your toys, what are you even doing?