The Next Warhammer Scenery Painting Challenge!

Off The Top of My Head

It may be patently obvious from my Sector Imperialis post I love Citadel Scenery.

Being a narrative player the world building portion of the game is my favorite, and nothing builds a story better than creating an interesting environment for your battles.

Over the years I’ve acquired a lot of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy battles scenery.  I’ve painted a few pieces but never got around to painting the vasst majority.  Completing my cityscape got the painting bug back in me and I decided to start doing the rest.  It’s no small task but even the small progress I’ve made makes a huge difference!

Craters, earthshaker cannon craters, a crashed Aquila Lander, a Citadel Hill, two Citadel woods, fantasy walls and fences, Magewrath Throne, Eternity Stair, Temple of Skulls, Firestorm Redoubt, some quad guns and Icarus Lascannons, a Wall of Martyrs Bunker, a Haemotrope Reactor, and some Promethium Relay pipes.

A lot of the craters and the hill I hand painted with what was left over from my Realm of Battle board.  Everything was spray painted with GW or Army Painter sprays.  Mournfang Brown, Desert Yellow, and Khorne Red making of the majority with some Fang spray on the Wall of Martyrs details.

Here you can see more Wall of Martyrs defensive lines, a Plasma Obliterator, a Balewind Vortex, the Honored Imperium set, and two Bastions.

The Skyshield landing pad, Fortress of Redemption, armored shipping containers (behind the towers) Witchfate Tor, Dreadstone Blight, The Garden of Morr, a watch tower and chapel from the fortified manor set (where my walls and fences came from too), Arcane Ruins, and the Dreadfire Portal.

Here’s the lot!

My Basilica Adminstratum, Manufactorum, Shrine of the Aquila, And Sanctum Imperialis ses are actually primered too, but they didn’t fit on my table!

Here’s hoping in the next few weeks I can provide updates on the progress of these sets too.  Getting all of this done will be a major accomplishment for me!

Making Easy Wargaming Smoldering Wrecked Vehicle Markers!

Off The Top of My Head

While trying to re-learn the intricacies of Warhammer 40k again I remembered what a pain it is to show a vehicle as being “wrecked.”  Many makers, including Citadel/Games Workshop, make “wrecked” markers, but none of these ever seem to have the gravitas necessary to show the drama of an exploded tank or burning transport.

While re-learning the game I found myself watching a lot of battle reports on YouTube.  By far the best have been by StrikingScorpion82 whose games are both narrative and competitive.  They are also filled with great personalities and cinematic moments.  Scorpion also has a number of reviews and “how to” videos, my favorite being how he makes his wrecked vehicle markers.  His are durable, well-built works of art.  You can see his technique here:

After seeing this I wanted to make some of my own, but wanted to add a bit of effect and admittedly wanted to spend twenty dollars or less…  They aren’t as dynamic as his but are MUCH better than turning a tank of its side!  here’s what I did:

I started with some red flickering LED tea lights.  I got mine from Amazon for $8.59:

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I went for red to give it the internal smoldering look I wanted.  They come in packs of twelve to give you plenty to work with.

I added some bent paper clips, which won’t be anywhere near as durable as the copper wire Scorpion uses but I had them on hand.  I used Gorilla Glue white to attach them to the candles.  I used two different version; one bent in half the other bent to stand all the way up with a folded hook at the top. The latter proved to be FAR easier to work with:

20170226_174935I masked off the bottoms of the candles (where the batteries, electronics, and switches are) and prepped the “smoke” portion.

Scorpion started with cotton wool, but I only had access to polyfill, which I got at Walmart for around $4.  I used copious amounts of PVA glue on the sides of the candles and shaped some polyfill around the base.  I then took various portions of the polyfill and shaped different “smoke” shapes around and on the paperclip bases:

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You can see the polyfill around the basses in the back. The rubber bands weren’t actually too hard to take off, but also weren’t really needed. I just held each piece for a few seconds and they usually stayed. Ignore Konrad cat seated in the background…
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Like Scorpion I made various sizes, based around two basic heights.

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I followed the instructions on the tutorial and spray based them all gray.

20170226_200437Then added the black spray around the lower portions of each marker.

You can see the finished videos of them below!

Realm of Battle Sector Imperialis COMPLETED!

Off The Top of My Head

So it finally happened.  Over the weekend I took two days and completed the Sector Imperialis Realm of Battle board I started 2+ years ago!

Again following on from our lord and savior, Duncan Rhodes, I used the techniques he detailed to complete the painting!

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Using pre-printed gaming mats is easy and fast, but for drama and detail it’s hard to beat this board.  Tt’s flexibility (six tiles that can arranged in various ways) and aesthetic are hard to beat.

20170219_185348You can see the tiny bit of Nurgle’s Rot I added to the open sewers for effect.

20170219_185514In Rhodes’ terrific tutorial he suggested using washes of varying colors to add character to the road.  This worked VERY well.  Here you can see the colors he recommended, Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade, and Athonian Camoshade with Dawnstone drybrushed over it.  You can also see the gutters.  They have also been washed with all three and finished with some Typhus Corrosion.  A bit of Typhus Corrosion was also added to the detritus in the gutters to unify the look.

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Other than Skavenblight Dinge, which was used for all the road and stone sections, my Leadbelcher stock took a big hit.  All this metal…  Here the metal floows and mechanical components are displayed.  All were washed in Nuln and drybrushed with Necron Compound.

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These bronze sections are some of my favorite pieces.  They were based in Balthasar Gold, washed in Nuln Oil, drybrushed with Necron Compound, and detailed with Nihilakh Oxide.

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One of the crypt sections and one of the eagles I wanted a marble effect.  They were based in Ceramite White, washed in Drakenhof Nightshade, and drybrushed with Prixati White.

If you’re thinking of painting one of these beware…you’ll get through some paint, this handful got me through about half of it:

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This was a great project and one I may be detailing and changing periodically as I use it.  It’s a great central piece and if you have one a fun project!

Doom (2016) – A Return to Form

I would say the game I spent the most time on as a kid was id Software’s Doom.  I played it on 32x, I played it as Shareware (yes, kiddies this was a thing) on my hard-drive-less PC (yes that was a thing too), and I played it on my regular PC when graphics hardware wasn’t even a thing and the most important aspect of getting a game to work was ensuring your SoundBlaster was functioning.

I spent hours on Doom and the best game sequel ever, Doom 2.  After beating both games I spent hours in god-mode just running around blasting monsters.  I’d write my own narratives and, because the player avatar really didn’t have his own personality, I could pretend to be anything as I went from level to level stomping demons.

I never got into Doom 3 but I did very much enjoy Bethesda’s Wolfenstein: New Order and Old Blood.  When I heard they were releasing their version of the venerable first person horror shooter I was excited but tentative.  I couldn’t get into the grim joylessness of the franchise’s third entry and capturing the free-roaming fun of the 90s originals seemed like a tall order in the modern era.

I finally got Bethesda’s Doom (2016) in October and…I love it.  It is as close to Doom as I think we’ll get without just getting graphically overhauled versions of the original games (which I would be for).  How does Bethesda get it right?

Finding an updated take on the classic Doom Marine Armor is incredibly exciting.
Finding an updated take on the classic Doom Marine Armor is incredibly exciting.
  • Mood: Original Doom was fun. It had some brutal imagery and scary moments but it was really a power fantasy.  Your Doom marine could take on hordes of undead monsters and massive demons with a chaingun and a rocket launcher and come through with just gritted teeth and maybe a bloody nose.  The narrative, which was there despite what some critics believe, took place in text crawls between chapters.  This game has a far more “Bethesda” story, which is to say it’s involved and excellent.  But you don’t have to pay attention to any of it.  This incarnation of the Doom marine certainly doesn’t.  The tone is just as power fantasy and irreverent as the original games; except here you can literally rip off demons’ arms and beat them to death with them or shove a mancubus’ explosive cells down his throat.  It’s all done with cartoonish hyper-violence and humor.  It’s brutal and violent but in more like a bloody looney tunes episode than Call of Duty.
I know and Imp, Revenant, and Cacodemon when I see them!
I know and Imp, Revenant, and Cacodemon when I see them!
  • Design: One of the problems I had with Doom 3 was the design. It felt more like Aliens and later Dead Space than Doom.  Everything was dark and cramped.  The monsters just vaguely resembled their origin creatures.  In Doom (2016) as soon as each monster appears Doom veterans will identify them.  Imps, Pinkies, Cacodemons, and Barons of Hell all resemble the original game enough that you get excited when you first see them.  Even the guns, the super-shotgun, the chaingun, the plasma rifle, all show their 90s origins.

  • Game Play: The most important aspect of any game and the one that concerned me the most about new Doom. But it got it right.  Of course it’s updated but the elements are there but you never reload your weapons; if you have 300 shots you can shoot 300 shots.  You don’t hide behind walls to heal; you brutally execute demons or find health power ups to heal.  The camera doesn’t wobble around like a drunk camera operator is in control of your character; it’s static and the gun moves when you run.  It feels like an old school shooter in a modern wrapper.  Brighter colors, faster pace, but with all the junk that clutters modern games stripped out.  The junk that makes them more “realistic” and less fun.

I can’t recommend Doom (2016) highly enough.  It’s a terrifically fun game and is a blast from the past for classic shooter fans.

One footnote, the music is TERRIFIC!

Life Lessons From Video Games: Falling Out of Love with Street Fighter?

 

LifeLessonsHeaderI’m not the kind to brag about my video game accomplishments.  Mostly because I’m very casual and don’t play games to “be the best.”  But I can say, quite unabashedly, I’m good at Street Fighter II in all its iterations.

It comes from having no life outside my Sega Genesis as an adolescent and really only being able to afford one game at a time.  I played Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II for years literally.

Since that time I’ve had every edition of Capcom’s imitable fighting franchise save for the wierdo 3-D one and the first incarnation of Street Fighter III.

I haven’t been as good at the rest of the series (except for the Street Fighter Alpha sub-franchise) mostly due to all the random over-complexity cluttering what I felt was a marvelously simple interface, but I still loved them and played them.

The announcement of Street Fighter V got me pretty excited.  I was awful at Street Fighter IV for the reasons mentioned above, but I still loved the game and playing the best 2-D fighting series on my PS4 was a thrilling concept.  Then the news broke: it’s online only; no tournament mode; no arcade mode!

Right now it stands to be the first main Street Fighter I’m choosing not to buy.  At least not in it’s current state.  The release, which Jim Sterling has brilliantly dubbed “Early AAAccess,” is severely disappointing and majorly off-putting.  While fighting games certainly lend themselves to be online, to me Street Fighter was an exercise in zen.  Like old-school beat em ups, you turn on the console, pick a character, and hit combos of buttons unleashing brutal combos on hapless foes.  Just turn your mind off to release some stress.

Even better was having a friend over, either to beat each other up or take turns at the AI.  My best friend for 20 years plus, Mike, and I bonded over games like this.  Beating up a CPU is harmless chill out fun.

Now Street Fighter has become competitive only, except for a lame-ass story mode.  It’s especially disheartening to me because, even in an arcade cabinet, the competition was almost always friendly.  You laugh when you screw up, opponents curse their failures, it’s all good fun.  Mostly because you’re all right there, looking each other in the eye.  While I’m sure somewhere there were epic arcade brawls, they never occurred in my skating rinks…

Online competitive gaming, at least in my experience, is almost never “all in good fun.”  The anonymity of the remote multiplayer makes it easy for assholes to be worse and even decent people to let their prick side protrude.  Essentially it’s the opposite of relaxing.

So like many other old school fans…I’m skipping Street Fighter V.  At least for now.  And it especially tragic because it’s beautiful.    Maybe when it gets a real release where we can play it the way we’ve been playing since the beginning.  It speaks to the changing nature of the industry that a game once the standard of excellent in home console fighting now embodies everything wrong with the AAA game business now.

Until then, at least I know Super Street Fighter II on my Sega Genesis is still playable, no servers or random online MLG wannabes necessary.  Just me, my controller, and maybe a friend or two.  It’s all it needs.  And all Street Fighter ever really should need.

Complete Review: Aliens and Predators Intro

Throughout my pre-adolescent and teenage years there were two film franchises that dominated my creative sensibilities: the Alien films and the Predator films.
These two IPs fueled a my art work, story-telling, and designing for years and even sparked my interest in warrior culture, comic books, and the sci-fi genre as a whole.
They were some of the first novels I bought for myself, and I wore the VHS taped-off-of-HBO versions of some of the movies out with repeated plays on summer vacations.


The years have not always been kind to these two venerable series as the films got reboots, sequels, spinoffs, and tie-ins that are of varying quality.  What hasn’t changed is my interest and love for the lore of both and some of the iterations of the franchises represent my favorites of their perspective media; from movies, to books, to comics, to video games.


The idea of a full retrospective has been floating around with me for a while but it seemed too big to do.  I’ve recently gone back to watch nearly every film in the movie franchise of both and the time felt right.  A long, complete review of all the movies in both the Alien and Predator franchise, including their various crossovers and tie-ins.  It’ll get years of opinions on two of my favorite series on paper for the first time and will be both gratifying and cathartic!


For the next ten weeks or so it’ll be all Aliens and all Predators all the time, covering the series from their most divine moments to their most ridiculous.

To start off here’s a nice taste of things to come: