Terrain contest has ended!

Hello,

the terrain contest's time line has ended today. It wasn't really a contest, as only Shelldrake really participated, to be honest. And it wasn't really successful, as I haven't built as much terrain as I'd want to. Main problem was, that the contest wasn't advertised enough and my blog isn't as well known as some I follow!

However, entry is still an entry and a winner is still a winner. So,

congratulations to

SHELLDRAKE

from here and here

for winning the "terrain conquest".

I got the prize all figured out, but it will take me some (very long, most probably) time to get it to you. I know it sounds silly, but I need some things from somewhere I don't need many things from, and so...I hope I can get it to you by the end of the year. 

Strange Aeons AARs

 Hello,

last week, me and my brother sat down for three games of Strange Aeons. I played the Treshold Agents all games while he took over the lurkers. I made pretty basic list and was hoping for 5 wins in a row, which would allow me departure in the jungle on a special mission. Thing turned bad....


FIRST GAME

Treshold squad consisted of:

Character John Raymond Legrasse
armed with dual .45's and a bowie knife

 Agent Charles Fort
armed with .45, bowie knife and a shotgun

Agent Walter Williamson
armed with .45, bowie knife and a tommy gun

Civilian Howard Philips Lovecraft
armed with .22

First mission was Escape...into danger!
Treshold agents were on a reconnaissance mission, investigating reports about haunted graveyard. Once they were engaged with strange old man...a high priest (had 2, 3 and 5 evil spells), their mission was to leave the area and report back to office.

They were not aware of great knowledge the old man possessed and tried to eliminate him. Below, you can see the scene just before contact. We got old man lurking behind a crypt on right side. Above crypt is agent Williamson with tommy gun. Left of the crypt is Legrasse, below are Fort and Lovecraft.

The old man has chanted two spells, giving his cold hands a touch of death and eldritch barrier making sure he gets hit harder. He shot a fireball straight into Howard Phillips who instantly suffered a minor injury (has left the table but was okay next game)

Then the old man charged straight for Legrasse, dispatching him with touch of death. Williamson was ineffective with his kugelspritze and he has suffered the same fate. Eventually, even agent Fort suffered the same fate.

After the game I've thrown the dice to see what happened to our heroes.

If you got the book, you can see that:
Williamson was dead.
Legrasse became claustrophobic (has to roll on insanity table when he enters scenery)
Fort suffered from ballistophobia (has to pass resolve if he wants to shoot)

 As Williamson died, I got a chance to reequip my agents. Legrasse took hollow-point bullets for his dual .45s. His range decreased, but damage increased. Fort felt he is more than uncomfortable with his shotgun, so he swapped it for a meat cleaver he got from butcher's shop. Williamson was replaced with James Woodville, armed with a bowie knife, .45 and a bolt action rifle.

Here is a closer picture of an evil doer!

SECOND GAME

Second game was a monster hunt. Straight forward scenario where our reequipped team faced a Dimensional Shambler (with bunch of skills that made him virtually indestructable)

Here is a table:

 Long story short, I couldn't really hurt him and I should've fled the table (a  loss and everyone suffers a minor injury)

A highlight of battle was when shambler threw Legrasse into scenery (forest). Legrasse got so paranoid, he immediately  lost his consciousness!

 Seeing all his friends dead or seriously hurt, greenhorn Woodville fainted. He was charged by a shambler and removed as a major injury.

 Here is the outcome:
Lovecraft suffered a minor injury and was okay by next game again. As he is a civilian, he can't get phobias, but would be okay on a roll 4-6, dead on any other.

Fort got lucky this time and came out without any permanent effects!

Legrasse got unlucky, his injuries were severe and he got D3 injuries! (I threw 2, so 1) - but he got lucky and is now a basket case - immune to psychology!

As Fort, Woodville came out untouched.

 Last  game was a bag man. Lurkers were easy this time, a buffed Herbert West and two zombies. The plan was to insert serum into uneads and make them grow!
Reality was worse, one zombie died (even with reroll!), the other got super fast.

 Long story short, they almost eliminated Legrasse, who was my bag man (he had 25% chance to guess who is it!) He has dropped a bag but Fort charged in and killed a zombie. West was killed when he charged Fort last turn.

Quite a fast win for the Treshold. As they were all still on board, I rolled 4 dice for map pieces and fount two!

We ended after this game and I really hope he will play more cultists so my .45s can actually hurt someone! 4 more games and we're off to jungle, wish me luck!

Meet the Conglomerate!

"Hue hue hue"

"HUE HUE HUE HUE"

"HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE"

The sounds of evil laughter have mixed with the sounds of the stormy night.

The laughter came from filthy basement that medical student, one Herbert West has used as his laboratory. He started experimenting with reanimations with good intentions, but the thing have came too far. Driven by his wish to research a formula of elixir of life has twisted his mind. Right now he has finished stitching an abomination that looked like an ox, a human, an octopus and some other, unearthly beings would be mix together in a way, indescribable by pen and ink.

Herbert's laughter was masked by new, even more horrible sounds that could not be made by anything from this world! The beast got up and started destroying the laboratory. Herbert was still laughing maniacally! The creature turned, and then I saw it...the face of a man, screaming with hysterical fright! This face...could it be, it has retained its own brain and thinks separate from it?

This answer is unknown to me....as the moment I saw it, my knees got soft and, gracefully, I've lost my consciousness.



Not yet pained miniature that I've shown in last post:

 Painted front:

 Painted back (not happy with the eye :( )

 Some semi-atmospheric pictures:

Sorry for the raw hero. He will be first to get painted as he is my character in campaign now. He is new adventurer from BCB and I gave him lantern, so he looks like he has just heard something in the dark. Other options were a pistol (but he has one tucked on right side hip and another in arm, so he'd actually have 3 that way), a shotgun, an axe, a sabre, a broken bottle and even a pen. Second option was I'd give him reaper sawn off double shotgun on his back (thanks Johnny!), but that'd be too much. He's a fun mini. Need to get him painted!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

AAARGH MY EYES, MY EYES

I think I went mad then...

My sculpting mojo has came back after few weeks break and I've been sculpting little by little for whole week. I managed to get some sculpts to a degree where I call them "finished", even though they look half done.

Before we even start, let me assure you the post title refers to cosmic horrors that lurk the deepest shadow of our unimportant planet and by no means refer to the quality of the sculpts themselves! :D

I'd like to start with my crypt (from and old post ) roof. As the sign was bad, I went to fix it. Firstly, I have put a rectangle of putty on the roof and wrote the letters in. I wouldn't have been myself if I wouldn't write SCOOT at my first attempt. I wasn't satisfied with result and I scrapped the sign off. So I made a thin sheet of puty and cut the letters out. They are cruder than I had imagined, so I've added bolts (you press a toothpick in PVA and press it where you want bolt to be - voila). They still have to be painted, but you can get the general idea.

If you look careful, I've also sculpted unrecognizable face on the triangle above the name. Yikes!

 Once it get painted, I am pretty sure it should've looked better than it did!


Next, I've finished a "conglomerate" lurker for Strange Aeons games. As I've wrote in the post I've linked at crypt, he is supposed to be an experimental clump of organs, that does bad things. He is now finished. Suckers on the tentacle are horribly bad, but I couldn't succeed with any better attempt.

Overall I am quite satisfied with how it turned out.

 Backside:

Next is Shantak, WIPs were shown in few posts, for example here. He was started as early as July. When I start working on miniature, I have high hopes, which slowly sunk lower. Then I come so low, I don't know how to proceed and miniature sits until I get enough courage to do something with it :P.

If you're familiar with Strange Aeons rules, he will be used as a "winged nightmare".

 As you can see, for the ease of painting, he can be detached from his base.

Then we got a random "conversion" of mantic legs, also a few months long project. Wanted a "bloater" zombie, got a fat lady. Still considered a WIP!

We move back to eldritch  abominations....a dimensional shambler this time. You can see its start in one of the linked posts above. The miniature should be on all fours, like a gorrila, because I've planned to make a "missing link" at first, an ape-like creature, yeti, sasquatch, big foot. Whatever you'd like to call it. The wire armature broke and I just went for the shambler. Somewhow I've managed to give him two elbows per arm, but hey, hes from another dimension and something humans have never seen before! I still think he is too humanly looking, as he is partly described as an "insect". This one has nothing "insecty" about him, but never mind the details! :P
I quite like how twisted "dead eyed rudiment of a head" looks. Needs legs done. I've disobeyed laws of physics and built him upside-down. I've learned a lesson and let me tell you, people start sculpting at legs for a reason!

I got more to show!

Next is a WIP of "blasphemous construct", a Frankenstein. He my first attempt at twisted wire for an armature. I twisted wire for his legs really good, but somehow failed while coating it. He is totally out of proportions. I need to redo his girly feet, but having one hand "normal" and other king-side was my intention. I also wanted to make his fake look angry at world, but it ended up being retarded. Now that I'm writing this, he actually has stylish hair, modern in 1920's!

I've also tried to sculpt her , but plans got ditched almost as soon as I've started. So I've decided I'll make a female Treshold operative, with a 2-handed sword. Don't ask about the weapons choice, I just felt like doing a sword! Because I can't get myself to do her legs right, I'll gave her a longer skirt. Not practicable when slashing monsters from nightmare, but with strange aeons, even skirts can work.

For the end, I've put aside six 25mm bases as a "side project". When I sculpt I tend to have some leftover putty. As I don't want it to go to waste, I do all sorts with it. At first, I just sculpted on, ruining my work (sculpted a hand, worked on another one and destroyed the first one when i grabbed a miniature, for example). Then I did smaller things. Now I am making sausages that I'm putting on a pile. When pile will grow enough, I'll call it a "swarm". Pretty clever, eh? 

 Another way to use leftover putty is to make a thin stripes of it. Those can then be used at sculpting of weapons (found that on the internet!), or whatever. Works as plasticard, but its thinner!



I am glad I could finally put a somewhat decent post on my blog and I hope you guys found it interesting. I understand the sculpts are not of commercial quality, but we can't expect I'll be on par with people that have more years of experience than I have sculpts started! It is a great fun, however and it is really nice to see something become out of nothing. The Formless thing I've sculpted and painted, for example, was a great fun to make and offers a special satisfaction when I play with it. Also, Strange Aeons has rules for monsters that are not too widely available, so sculpting my own is a nice practice that also ends up useful! Last but not least, when you work on abomination that "even pen and ink can't describe", how can you do wrong?

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Saturday's presentation

Hello,

my gaming group plays on three locations, one of those is in a conference room in a suburban part of our capital city, Ljubljana. I like the location as the only WGS in Slovenia is in the center and I just hate parking there. Plus, to be honest, the store kinda puts me off. So, to keep the space (and maybe get a bigger one!)  we had to participate in local "meet the community" or something event. It was a picnic type of even where various associations and clubs represent themselves. It was also a good opportunity to make people aware of our hobby, new members are always a nice addition. We were representing Flames of war (my station :O) and Warhammer 40k and Fantasy, as those three systems are the most played. The club also plays Infinity more and more and few guys play Warmachine and Hordes. No love for Strange Aeons or zombies, but I'll work on that...especially SA, as zombie wargames require lots of models to be transported and I prefer doing it at home.

Apart from us, there was also a local voluntary fire brigade (we got limited professional fire brigades and every village and smaller city has its own voluntary one. As this part of the city used to be a village just some 30 years ago, it has retained its voluntary brigade). I didn't took my time to go and look around, but I saw pensioner's association, a rugby club (had no idea this is played here!), some random who-evers and even a police horse unit. They were just behind me and I got irritated by the way they treated their horses. They had two horses with them and both were in the trailer for the most of the day. I havent seen them outside once, but a mate of mine told be they were left out for few minutes. I understand there was a danger of horse doing harm to someone, but they might as well leave them in their base then...

So, back to us. 40k guys were playing the game, Fantasy had some miniatures displayed and we made two "dioramas". You can see pictures in the end of the topic. It was not supposed to be a game but youngsters got so annoying we made them play with some tanks so they could throw some dice. The public's opinion was quite pleasing (except for a mom asking "why can't the kids touch the miniatures"), it was nice to see people are interested in the hobby. The bad thing is, our target public doesn't go on such events. When I started playing FOW I was the youngest at 22. When they were on European Team Championship in Poland few months back, our 18 or 19 years old player was the youngest participant. And here the most interested public was 8-12 :D. We gave some leaflets away so maybe someone will find us!

For the tables, we used 2/3 of space we use in our normal games and we put just about everything on it, making a nice display pieces and that was about it. One half is supposed to be in North Africa, end of '42 where US forces got ambushed by soldati italiani. The second half was representing russian village and russian forces attacking the germans around '44.

The african terrain is all prepainted Battlefront's Battlefield-in-a-box sets. Russian terrain belongs to one of the guys. The church is from Battlefront, the resin log houses are from unknown source (but I can find out if anyone is interested), and so are the roads, bridges and I think rivers  as well. The forests are scratchbuild pannels with magnets, with pine trees on cents so you can take them off when tanks move trough. The fields are your ordinary doormats.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Grant, olive trees and such

Hello,

I've finally managed to finish my Grant figure. At first I didn't like him, but once I started painting him, i liked it more and more. I couldn't find my camera and I took photos with my mobile phone. Plus, I've took them while I was spraying my buildings outside on what appeared to be last sunny morning. On the photos, he is accompanied by Grom and I've already decided those two and other two from the pack (you can see "unboxing review" here). I went for my established urban cammo and olive drab equipment. I am really happy with the colors as I think it gives a nice contrast.

 As for the figure itself, it would be horrible expensive to play it WYSIWYG. He is armed with a machete, brass knuckles, two pistols and an SMG :P.

Below is just a random photo of the apartment blocks and a market store that I was spraying so I will be able to paint it over the winter or something.

Let me assure you I didn't spray on the pavement, capo di cassa would kick me out if I would!

And here are some more blurry pictures, this time of olive trees I was talking about. I had to shoot really fast as guys I was with didn't understood the importance of shapes for my hobby. Heretics!

 With all the shades and lightning, those groves really gave the spooky, fantasy feeling to the surrounding. A cinematic experience!


Heres a pictures of  what our agency sells as "the prettiest sandy beach on Corfu", well, its surrounding cliffs. Its not too visible, but those trees are also quite nice:

 And to end it, a random picture of Venice. Because I know you're interested in some architectural and flora history , a region called Karst (Kras) used to be covered in oak trees. Those forests were cut and logs were used as a foundation for the streets of Venice.

I might also mention I have spent another 35 euros on preorder and order of Strange Aeon's three Shocking tales expansions. One preordered book and 2 out of print PDFs! I really should write a review of the rules by now!

Cheers,
Mathyoo

Absence...

Hello,

I have realized I havent posted anything smart for a long time. I got mantic-hasslefree's Grant painted, just needs base done and photos taken. I also got conglomerate sculpt finished and some other mostly done. Last friday I found out I "had to" jump in and went on vacation. My brother had 2 tickets for week on Greek Corfu booked but his now-ex left him three days before departure -.- As he couldnt get any of his friends due to short notice, I went with him. The agency we went with was worthless, so we mostly explored the island with a rented motorbike. Only hobby related photos that I have are those of olive trees. Theyre trunks are twisted and they really got this "fantasy" feel to them.

I'll post pictures of Grant and those olive trees somewhere later this week. My postgraduate lectures have started today, so I am somewhat busy with all the stuff.

I have also based all of the BCB miniatures I got last time and will try to finish some by end of the week...I really can't wait to start painting hybrids, but I am reluctant as I dont know how well will I be able to blend grey-green of deep ones with human skin tones!

Cheers,
Mathyoo