Tuesday 20 January 2015

We Built This City - Prelude

So, with the imminent arrival of my terrain tiles from Secret Weapons miniatures I thought I'd make a progress blog about getting it painted up and making scenery to go with it, I'll do a first impressions post when the tiles actually get here (hopefully tomorrow) but for now here's some of the bits I started putting together last year.






Road signs are made from brass rod, styrene sheet and the printouts from Worldworks Games, the streetlamps are from Fenris games.  The Billboard is the same as the road signs except the billboard itself is made using foamed PVC.  The first two buildings are from Worldworks' original Streets of Mayhem range resized to a 6" footprint (originally it was 7") and pasted onto a foamcore shell, the final building is from WWG's Swiftscenics range and didn't need any resizing.

My inspiration for some of the buildings is the Saints Row games (3 & 4 in particular) so I'll be doing some more stores from Steelport before I'm finished, I also have a fair few Stoelzel's Structures buildings I'm planning to put together as well so there's plenty more to come.

Until next time, take care.

J

Sunday 11 January 2015

Little Lead People

Due to shift changes I suddenly had an unexpected day off work today so decided that, rather than spend the day mooching around, I'd get round to taking some pictures of the minis I finished last year but never got round to posting up here.

First up we have the Pulp City minis I finished:

Giant Hadron

Doom Train

Supreme Zed

Sister Bedlam

Tangent

Draku
And just in case you're wondering, Giant hadron stands at 120mm, here's a pic of him next to a normal 28mm mini:

As I mentioned in my last entry, Pulp Alley is fast becoming one of my favourite games to play, so naturally I have to dig out some old minis to paint up and play with:


These guys are all from Bob Murch's Pulp Figures store and the look is based on one of the groups encountered early on in Bioshock Infinite.

And finally, here are the 15mm minis I finished, all from Khurasan Miniatures:

Vacation Aliens

Space Demon Queen

Space Demons (painted as Royal Guard)

Space Demons (painted as Warriors)

Not Colonial Marines squad 1 (movie themed)

Not Colonial Marines squad 2 (alt)

Federation troopers
All really nice models, now I just need to paint up some vehicles for them and then try to actually play a game with them...

Anyway, I hope you like my offerings this update, I have a couple of weeks off coming my way soon and will hopefully have a project to share with you all during that time.

So, until then, take care.

J

Thursday 1 January 2015

The Obligatory New Years Post

So 2014 was a year.

After my last post I did get more painted, all Pulp City related, I will post up photos here but for now head on over to my PC Forum post here and scroll down to the photos I put up there.

I still have a bunch of 15mm sci-fi minis to photograph and show but that may take some time.

On a positive note after 4 1/2 years of unemployment I'm now working again, unfortunately at the moment my hours don't give me a lot of painting time as I generally finish at 7pm get home, eat and then just want to crash, but I'm physically getting used to it now, so hopefully I will get back to some semblance of normality before too long.

The biggest upside of the whole thing though is I finally have a steady income and can buy lots of things...which as all hobbyists know is both a blessing and a curse, but what the heck I've been frugal for long enough so decided to celebrate my first proper paycheck with some retail therapy.

So winging their way to me I have a set of the awesome looking Urban Street Tablescape Tiles from Secret Weapon Miniatures (expensive yes, particularly when you add shipping to the UK, but I've been trying to make my own city tiles for almost a year now and quite frankly it's driving me nuts, so I'm happy to pay the price for something that looks that good and will get a lot of use, more on that later).

And I also have this little lot heading to me from Knight Models' Batman Miniatures Game because, well just because really.  I've wanted to get a Joker gang for BMG for a while, (I'm a massive fan of the Rocksteady Arkham games and at one point thought about doing a Joker themed Blackgate gang for Necromunda) so it seemed like a good idea.

So in 2015 these are games I want to try out and play more of:

  • X Wing - recently got into this as a LOT of the guys at my club play it so I know I'll always get a game.
  • Pulp City - still an awesome game and with the Kickstarter stuff due and opponents ready to play I should get more than 1 or 2 games in this year.
  • Batman Miniatures Game - will either have to convince someone to try it or just buy a second gang to lend someone but I hear good things and really want to give it a go.
  • Infinity - with the  new rules out it seems like a good time to get into this game, plus I've had a load of minis lying around for a while that I'd like to finally use.
  • All things Zombie (solo) - been planing a solo ATZ campaign for a few years now, time to give it a whirl I think.
  • Pulp Alley - in 2014 this gave Pulp City a run for it's money as my favourite game and I can't wait to play it more.
  • Super-hero Dinosaur Zombie Apocalypse - why wouldn't I want to play a game with that title?  Rules are being sorted and a number of nice looking miniatures have been released, check out the website and get a feel for the game.  (I think I want to do a Jurassic Park Lost Worldesque group of Dino Hunters possibly using some of these vehicles from Terranosis).
  • Beyond the Gates of Antares - I really wasn't interested in this game, then Warlord brought out the Algoryn...damn it, now I want to play.  The Mass Effect Turian vibe is just too strong for me to resist, plus, free rules (albeit Beta ones) so why not?
Also, after 15 years of being out of it I seem to have accidentally picked up a load of Magic the Gathering cards (and by "accidentally" I mean I actively walked into a shop and said "I'd like to buy those Magic cards please!"), so that's something else I'll be looking to play as well :)

So, most of the games I want to play can use the Tablescape tiles so I think the investment will be worth it and whilst I don't do resolutions I do intend to do what Wil Wheaton says and "Play More Games!" I hope you all will as well.

I hope 2015 treats you all well and all your dice rolls succeed.

Take Care

J