Bell of Lost Souls posted the latest round of 40K 5th edition rule rumors. For the most part, I don’t get worked up about changes to 40K rules- I’ve only played 2-3 times in the past two years. But this one really burns me:
Line of Sight:
There are no height levels, all terrain is true LOS (even jungles and woods). They will need to be modeled appropriately if they are to block LOS.
Now even the terrain is made obsolete by a new rule set! As the person who frequently brings the terrain, I now need to bring and build taller terrain if I want to make sure LOS is blocked equally for all units. Short trees need to be replaced by tall trees. Short, fragmented ruins need to be replace by larger, more complete buildings. If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know that most of my terrain pieces are cast in plaster. Bigger terrain will mean heavier boxes, more sore backs and even worse fuel economy getting to events (OK, that last one is a bit of a stretch).
In related news - stay tuned for a new Warhammer Ancients army - those Chinese from 500 BC are not changing any time soon.
Fabulous 4×4 jungle temple board created for the Alkemy game.
Drop by the Alkemy forums for 27 more pics of this board, discussion in French. Work-in-Progress shots also on Alkemy. Discussions in English by the builder on Wyrd forums.
Construction appears to be mostly foam board shaved to fit with details scribed in pencil. Statues could be aquarium pieces. Figures in relief are gaming figures. All terrain items are modular - enhancing the playability of the board.
I particularly like this board because it would be so flexible to play on. Alkemy is a medieval fantasy game, but the board would work equally well for pulp adventure or High Seas with a eastern spin.
If there is one thing gamers like, its free stuff and the web is full of open source and advertiser supported programs to help out your gamer hobby.
Before those pictures of the new project can be posted online - the pics will need a little clean up. Paint.net is my current favorite editor to crop, size and retouch photos. Picasa can do a lot of the same and can help organize & post your photo collection. For heavy duty work GIMP is the one you want (be warned - the tool bar has enough buttons to launch the space shuttle). Or for light work, check the various online editors.
Getting ready for the weekend game? Write up your roster or track the league play at Zoho or Google Docs. Need a bit of artwork to spice up the list? Inkscape will let you create the vector drawings needed for a new look.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you already have a blog. But if you don’t and want to jump in and start your own, WordPress and Blogger are both self hosted (and nearly idiot proof) platforms. Want to go old school & write your own web site? Kompozer & Coffee Cup have free HTML editors and the web is full of free hosting sites. Don’t forget the forum, us gamers love to talk. Ever wonder why a lot of hobby stores look alike? They are all using the same shopping cart.
This post is just the tip of the iceberg. What software and services do you like to use with your gamer hobby?
Baegor the One Horned painted for the Adepticon Masterclass auction.
The figure is cleanly sculpted and cast with an attached rocky base. Detail on the model is crisp and easy to identify for painting. Cast in two pieces, the left wing is separate and requires assembly.
Assembling the wing joint was a bit of a chore. The figure comes with a small peg and hole as an attachment point. Not trusting the peg to hold the metal pieces together, I used (an over-sized) pin vise bit to drill a pin hole. The bit was much to large for the wing & ripped through the outer skin of the model. (Ever pin a Daemonette or anything by Rackham? It was sort of like that.) Plan B was to fill the hole with super glue and stuffed a ball of green stuff into the void. GS does a marvelous job of taking super glue and bonding metal parts together over large gaps.
Paint plan is white primer with GW brown ink base coat. Body is GW Dark Flesh blended to highlight with Vallejo Flat Red. Wings are GW bleachbone with GW brown ink wash. Details in light grey and bleachbone. Metals in bright silver and gold with brown ink wash.
Cleaned up my bookmark collection and posted the links to Del.icio.us. 350 book marks to various terrain builders, gaming forums and figure painting gallerys along with a few links to the technology sites that I have been reading lately. The collection is still a work in progress, I have links from several other sources that need to be integrated such as the blog list found on the Community RSS FAQ page.
Chaos Lord on mount. Weapon is a converted beastman sword with extended pommel.
Chaos Warrior Chariot. Look closely and you’ll be able to spot the halberd from the chaos lord kit.
Three fast tutorials for small, but interesting objects
Wooden Crates: crates with a realistic wood grain finish made from balsa.
Or if you prefer - flat grain Wooden Crates made from plastic card.
Pic credit to Cree1978 originally posted to Privateer Press forums
Bead Bottles: Snitchythedog was showing off some new Hirst crate pieces when everyone jumped on the cool looking bottles he included as extra detail. KeeblerOrc followed up with pics of his own using the methods layed out by Snitchy. The bottle solution is simply beads on a straight pin held in place with a spot of glue.
Pic credit to KeeblerOrc originally posted to Hirst Arts forums
Legends of the High Seas by Tim Kulinski
Legends of the High Seas is the latest release from Warhammer Historical. The book allows gamers to take to the seas as Pirates, Privateers and Royal Navy sailors of the 17th century. Printed in full color, High Seas counts 144 pages.
The game is based on the Lord of the Rings combat system and the Mordheim campaign system. Followers of either of these games will find High Seas very familiar. Game play begins by creating a crew of either Pirates, Privateers or Royal Navy. Each crew contains a Captain, several heroes and is filled out with a number of henchmen . The campaign system allows for the crew to develop skills and increased traits as they survive the nine missions provided in the book. The combat system is easy to learn but difficult to master. Heroes have access to Fame and Fortune which allows characters to influence the outcome of melee, movement and shooting. The armory is sparse, with only handful of common weapon types and a small number of exotic weapons.
High Seas is well presented with color photos of figures through out the book and contains a brief miniature gallery with figures from several manufactures.
The book is currently available in the US at various locations including The War Store ($44.99), Scale Creep ($38.00) and Amazon.com ($37.95). For a limited time, the book also includes a ships captain figure in 25mm scale.
Should everything go as planned, I will be enjoying my first game on Tuesday night.
Or at least a new PC. After 7 years, it was time to deep 6 the old Gateway and get a new computer. Through two days of playing around with the new computer, I can’t believe I waited this long. Its like moving from a Model T to a Corvette.
Dell Vostro 400
- Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 1066FSB, 8MB L2)
- 3GB memory
- 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS 2DVI.
- 22 inch Widescreen monitor
And due to Dell’s end of the fiscal year savings it turned out to be rather affordable. FYI -If you are looking for an XP machine, check Dell small business (and no need to be a small business). They are still providing XP as an OS option in that department
February has been a very busy month, and very little of it was able to be posted to the blog. Most importantly, C. was born January 27th - giving me two little girls to chase around the house. They say adding a second child is harder to adjust to than the first - but I don’t think its true. After L. I did not pick up a figure for six months. This time I’ve been able to keep at least a hour or two per week to myself. Cute little bug, isn’t she.
I’ve been casting up a pile of resin objective markers for Adepticon - 440 tokens needed for the tournaments and more for the convention sales. The blocks for the Hirst Seminars are about two thirds done.
Two weeks ago I took a Web design seminar as part of my MBA program. The seminar was a bit week, but it gave me a taste of HTML. Since then I have been reading up on the subject and playing around with products from Komposer and Coffee Cup. Komposer is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor with very few frills. Coffee Cup has a large line of products including both a Visual and WYSIWYG HTML editor - both have 30 day trial downloads! The class was taught with FrontPage 2003 - a nice enough program ( for a HTML rookie) - but I have concerns about witting pages in a format that requires the web server to have proprietary software.
After far too much effort, I finally have my Legend of the High Seas book from The Warstore. Contrary to popular opinion - this store is not the best to be found on the web: shipping delays, out of stock products and a failure to send the right product will keep me from ordering again. Despite all of that, I did get a group of Foundry pirates Scurvy Swabs to add to the pirate collection. Knew they were small (actually advertised as 28mm on the foundry site)- but these figs are tiny. They will look like children on the table compared with the GW, PP and Black Scorpion figures.
March is not going to be much better for blogging than February. Expect to see more pictures of armies buried in my gaming closet. I have 4000-5000 points of WFB Chaos, so plenty more of them to see. I also have an Eldar (well painted for 2002) and Chaos Space Marine army (not so well painted from 1999) if anyone would rather see pics from those collections.
