Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Coteaz

Finished this fella a couple days ago. Fairly pleased with the result which looks better in person. Annoying little things was the hourglass was screwed but I havnt done anything to fix it yet, may come back to it later. Also the Inquisition Icon wasn't completely even across the top, simple fix and touch up to do.




I've had a couple days playing SWTOR in the afternoon so I suppose its time to get back to the paint brushes and ignore my Jedi Shadow. Looking forward to having a good look at the new GW paint range. Can't wait to get some more 'base' paints.

Have decided to play in Horned Rat/Gobbo so its crunch time for undead army selection. I have been trawling the forums and seeing quite a bit of contridictory information depending on where I look, oh well.

Monday, March 19, 2012

WIP - Coteaz

Lately I havn't been overly focused in the painting department. I have tryed a couple different things with different miniatures without really finishing anything.

I still have my Mortis Engine to complete which I took to Homecon and a couple larger projects about to start. However in the last few days I've done a little bit of work on this chap. I got him in the last order out of Maelstrom before the clamp down and he is the first finecast model I bought. For the initial batch he was in pretty good condition though the hourglass was shot to shit so I'll see what I can do with paint to redeem it.

Now I myself am not looking at using him in the near future but he should be making an appearence on battlefields under other people in my gaming groups command.

I originally was going to paint him in blue armour but after an initial thin basecoat I went back to red which I enjoy painting.




He should be done in the next couple of days (time on swtor depending) and then I'll start on some Grey Knight Terminators for a regular opponent.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Balancing the Party


For a very long time I have run/hosted table top roleplaying on a Monday night. This tradition goes back some 18 years(jebus!) to when Iw as 14 and my friends and I got some bits and pieces for Dungeons and Dragons, Hero Quest and Space Crusade. Once roleplaying became a regular thing and we had started playing Warhammer Fantasy with the High Elf and Goblin box and Rogue Trader 40k with all its grim dark wonder and confusing rules we got Warhammer Fantasy Role Play which we played on a Monday or Tuesday quite consistently for a couple years.

Following from this we played Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf and Mage where we ignored all the toss pot bullshit about the depressing world and just had a great time with a high action supernatural setting. By now I was running most games as I was the regular host and accumulated the books and seemed to be organised enough to have a game ready. The World of Darkness games became my own setting with Corporate villains and history spanning 800 years into the past. It was great and one player in particular (Stu) kept and developed the same character for probably 6-8 years!? However I simply burnt out on the setting as I had expended an awful lot of ideas on regular weekly play.

With some changes in players and residences we played many many more games using Modern D20, WHFRP, Star Wars and a hell of a lot of D&D 3 then 3.5. Now for the last year at least we have been playing the Shackled City D&D campaign using the wonderful Pathfinder rules. If anyone out there liked 3.5 and like us was not happy about Wizards of the Coast going to 4th ed just get Pathfinder from Paizo its 3.75 and better.

Now I have run this campaign happily with the players having a couple of fatalities but overall being very successful... until now. They have hit level 10 and the story challenges just got a little harder... and then some. I initially put it down to the party not having a balance of classes - Paladin(tank), Wizard(damage focused), Ranger/rogue(ranged damage and skills) and a Monk(average melee damage). See whats missing? A healer! The paladin did well throwing out Channeled Energy bursts to keep the party going and post combat, healing wands were chewed through quickly but with the increase in monster damage and spell effects the party was sliding.

In an assualt on Cauldron's(the campaign city) cathedral of Wee Jas, the parties Monk martial artist expert fell fowl of some angry Stone Giants and got smashed into a red paste upon the flagstones of the main worship hall. Now the player was not too upset and had been making noises about a character change anyway when I asked 'do you want to run the game?' to which he said 'yeah, can do'.

Now not to the detriment of the other players but this particular one Aaron is the only other one who will actually run a game. He has a bad reputation in that in all the games he has run over the years giving me a break from GM duties he has pretty much ruthlessly TPK'd us numerous times(Total Party Kill). However I had not actually played a game as a player for over a year so bugger it. I will leave my DM knowledge out of the game as best I can and give the party what they've been lacking - some real melee damage. So I made an awesome Elven swordsmen, using a Swordmaster of Hoeth as inspiration I made the most kick arse character I could and awaited the following game.

Well I got to use the Swordsmen and the build worked a charm cracking out 45+ damage a hit but after we had the 'boss' encounter in which the whole party got AoE'd about 3 times before the real fighting started and we barely survived the encounter at all with Aaron getting shit for living up to reputation I decided a Healer would be a lot more useful. So Rogal Dawn ;) cleric of Pelor was born.

We have had two games since then where after a lot of roleplaying mainly around the other party members wanting to use me as an errand boy WTF we are into out next 'dungeon' an ice filled network of chambers with the forms of six armed spell weavers incased in suspended animation filling most rooms. We have so far barely made it past Aaron's supremely devious Ice Devil who firmly put his infernal boot up our collective arse only for us to do a runner prepare and come back for an equally hard fight which we managed to prevail in. Then to have some infernalist Sorcerer with a fetish for Lightning bolts blast seven shades of shite out of us and teleport away before the killing blow got put in him(and taking all his loot with him too!).

However it is nice to be able to rush about in ones turn and keep the party going so they can perform their own roles properly. The Paladin can now barrel into combat and get wailed upon while smiting for all hes worth without having to stop and heal other people. The Ranger can sneak about and shoot like a semi automatic with his flaming longbow without fear of looking to closely at his remaining hit points and our wizard well... hes an elf... suppose I have to heal him too while he rains down fireballs and enhanced magic missiles. Certainly don't have a lack of things to do. However in the odd turns when the health of the party is ok I need to be able to chuck out a bit of magic damage surely. I'll have to scour the book collection for some nasty spells but these level 10 plus monsters just seem to pass their saves and shrug off the effects of anything I throw at them so I'll just focus and keeping the others upright... and next feat I get is going into Leadership so I can take the Swordsmen I made as a companion, healing and uber damage FTW.

Does anyone else who isnt a regular at my place play RPG's? If so what ones or what have you played and enjoyed?

Sunday, March 4, 2012

WIP NMM - or trying to learn something new

Trying my hand at NMM painting. For a long time I have looked, read about and wondered at the possibility of Painting Non Metallic Metal but never actually tried.

So being briefly 'between' focused painting projects I thought I'd give it a crack. I used the Captain from Assault on Black Reach as its a nice model, plastic, not ever really planning on using it in a game and not a lot of armour showing and with plenty of room to try other colours for comparison.


Now this is a rough WIP but I just wanted to get some of the techniques working. I used a base coat of Calthan brown then added to it Iyanden Darksun through to skull white. The first two colours are foundation paints so I did water them down a lot but with patience and practice I think its not too hard to learn. Very fine brushwork for the pure white spots and line work is needed and I did add some Devlan Mud and Gryphonne Sepia washes into areas to shade or glaze some of the colours but overall for a first attempt while watching tv the other night its encouraging.

I will be trying to simulate silver tones in the next test model but the basics for gold seem to work.

What differnt techniques have you learnt or wanted to try?

Friday, March 2, 2012

not long to go... Avengers Assemble



This wee post is not gaming related but another of my hobbies is reading comic books, predominantly Marvel ones. These include the core X-Men and Avenger titles as I have for many many years. So I'm quite excited to put it lightly about this coming out May 4th!

If what has been in the last trailers and teasers is anything to go by it will be awesome even if they screw it up somehow.

Avengers Movie Trailer