2016 Year in Review

This was an exciting year for me with a lot of completion on a lot of projects. Very productive. So here is a wrap-up for the year, as well as an update on my many projects.

Zone Mortalis Tiles
I spent countless hours casting the bits, gluing them together, and painting these tiles. It's a total of 18 tiles with doodads, and they have gotten some play time. Our local game store had an event where my tiles handled about 4,000 points between 4 players. I am surprised at how well they handled the punishment, and the players were all impressed with the table. They are a little brittle, but that is due to the material used, where I went a little cheap. A lofty goal in the future will be to create a fantasy themed set of tiles, but I may splurge for the good dental plaster if I can find out where to get a hold of some nearby.

The Coven of Verminlord Skrax (Warhammer 40,000 - Dark Eldar Haemonculus Covens)
This was quite a project that yielded a proud achievement for me. A lot of effort when into the modeling and painting and display board, not to mention the wonderful comic illustrated by my brother. It was all paid off when I won Best in Appearance at the 40k GT Harvester of Souls. A trophy which is still proudly displayed in our living room.

Jarom's Orks Commission Here and Here
The undertaking for illustrating my comic was no small feat, so I gladly paid in painting small portion of Jarom's Orks in exchange. Jarom also took Best in Orks at the same tournament.

Gorkamorka
My brother and I haven't really acted on our plans to run a little Gorkamorka campaign yet. Both of us live a distance from each other, and he has been busy with a job enough as it is. So Gogmagog's Questing Knights (Mutiez) and Da 'ard 'eads (Gorkers) will remain unpainted for now. I am looking forward to fielding Da Hukka Trukka on the table sometime in the near future.

Heavy Gear Blitz!
My Heavy Gear plastics kickstarter delivered this year. I now have a lot of plastic sprues of tiny mecha. I have been a very long fan of Heavy Gear's setting, but never got a chance to play it in any form. This game seems pretty solid, and my brother has expressed a desire to give it a shot. I look forward to that sometime next year.

Deadzone
My addiction to small skirmish games continues even still. Deadzone is an example of my enthusiasm that builds in a game in intense bursts. Then it dies out. I am still up for playing games with it though. So I have several small armies built for this game, but the beauty of most small skirmish games I own, a lot of the figures can be used interchangeably. So even when I am not playing Deadzone, I can still use the terrain and minis for something; like Rogue Stars... but that's another post for another day.

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower
The three of us (Jarom, Timo, and I) have been slowly working our way through the trials of the Silver Tower, and watching the story unfold and our characters progress. Jarom is playing an Orruk Warchanter, Timo is playing a Chaos Lord, and I am controlling the Order side with a Cogsmith and Lord-Relictor. What's even sweeter about this is how little money I have invested in this game and we are getting a lot out of it.

Censers and Tocsins (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Nurgle Rotbringers and Clan Pestilens)
This project will likely be set on the back burner. I love the idea of a Nurgle themed fantasy army, but until I get that burst of inspiration for it going again, I won't be doing much with it for now. I do believe I have some good ideas for the Nurgle Rotbringers at least. The Skaven, however, I can only think to make everything as-is. Which is fine for most, but I become passionate about something when I can think of a unique angle to take with it.

Forgesworn Eternals (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Stormcast Eternals)
I am proud to say my entire Forgesworn Eternal army is completely painted (barring some basing I still have left to do). Not something I can say much of for my big armies. I really don't plan on adding anything to this. I feel I have gotten all the minis I am interested in. I was considering some Dracoth Cavalry to make more dire bear riders, but the problem is finding variations of suitable bear heads, of which I have only really found the one. But for now I'm good.

Forthammer Clan Throng (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Dispossessed and Ironweld Arsenal)
Not all of my Warhammer Duardin are among the ranks of the painted, but a good portion of them are. I experimented with a unique paint scheme for dwarfs that I think has paid off to a color that complements my Forgesworn Eternals. All I have left for this LVO army is some basing, and maybe a display board. Carry-on luggage restrictions are becoming an issue.

That sums up this very awesome year. In the new year I will outline my goals for 2017.

Silver Tower - New mini standees

In playing Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, we found the stand-in miniatures to be a little immersion-breaking. Still too cheap to buy the real ones, I came up with an alternative.

Now paper miniatures is nothing new, but I just thought I'd give it a shot and like what they turned out to be. I think these will help with the confusion of what was what as the bases are clearly labeled what each standee reperesents and their wargear. I even made sure that the pictures in them represented their weapons. The pictures are all recognizable as I ripped them from GW's pictures of the models.

HeroQuest Silver Tower - Custom Hero Cards

Just a few little hero cards I made for Silver Tower. While we have the app for handling other hero quest characters outside of the ones that come in the box, I like to avoid electronics at the table where possible. So some have been transcribing the hero cards from the app onto real cards. A few nice guys on the internet have been making that happen, and even going as far as to help with templates so you can make your own.

I love my Duardin heroes, so when I take the journey into the Silver Tower, I plan on bringing them along. The following are my custom hero cards. While they have been renamed and reflavored, the core rules and mechanics are all the same and still there. They will play exactly the same as their originals.

 

This is the Lord of the throng. In Silver Tower he uses the Warden King hero card, but with his abilities reflavored to his signature steamsuit. Also I just realized that I hadn't really showcased these miniatures yet. Unfortunately they aren't painted though.

Lord of the Forhammer Clan, and son of Behrun Forthammer. He leads his throng with the same ingenuity and determination of his steam powered armour. Due to his lifetime work as an engineer, his throng is blessed with much in the way of engineering wonders. The Dispossessed see these as tools for getting back against whom they hold long grudges, namely chaos. Their quest is to reclaim their ancient holds. In AoS I use him as a Dwarf Lord on Shieldbearers. The core mini is from Black Scorpion miniatures, with one arm reposed to hold a hammer from an old metal GW Dwarf Engineer.

Master Cogsmith of the Forthammer Clan, and first son of Lord Dunhill. He is turning out to be an engineer prodigy like his father. Having taken over and even completing many of his family's projects. Even the steamsuit was originally seen as a hopeless cause until Drake got to finishing it. Now Drake manages all the throng's war machines and heads up the Irondrake regiments. The original miniature is a mix of the Cogsmith model and some bits from the Irondrakes.

Runelordess of the Forthammer Clan, and daughter of Lord Dunhill. Stubborn, headstrong, and definitely her father's daughter. Bree is constantly rebelling against her father's wishes, especially the mandate to stay out of the battlefield. Having done so for so long she studied and became proficient with rune magic. Now she refuses to stay hidden any longer and fights with the throng, much to her father's chagrin. The model is from Reaper, which has some excellent female dwarf models, with the shield from my bits collection.

Unboxing Warhammer Quest Silver Tower... sort of...

I am sort of cheating when it comes to getting into Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. When you research this product you find the trend that people tend to put more value into the game's models and miniatures than the actual game itself. This is not uncommon for GW boardgames, and Silver Tower (after said research) is looking more and more attractive to play. The advantage of people putting more value in the miniatures, is that you can generally get the non-miniatures game components for cheap. Then with some creative or simple proxying, you can have yourself a fully playable copy of the game. So here is my unboxing of Silver Tower - on the cheap.

First off I found an empty shirtbox and reinforced it with tape and did my own little logo on the top for storage.

All parts held in ziplock bags, just like all your other 'official' boardgames at home!

This is the real meat of the game. All this stuff here I got for about $25 at hobby titan. It's the game tiles, tokens, destiny wheel, rulebook and adventure book, and all the cards (Except the hero cards, but more on that later). With this and the proxy minis and some dice I can play a perfectly functional game of silver tower!

As it turned out I had quite the collection of old pre-painted D&D minis that I had forgotten about. Some of them I had bought during my more frequent RPG era, but others I got in bulk second hand. I searched through my collection for the most suitable minis, generally only finding those that are loosely suitable, but can work in the context. The bonus here is I will be playing with painted minis (haha) and using these may bring in more of a traditional D&D dungeon crawl feel to it.

As you may notice there is nothing here for the hero characters. Well that's what's nice about the Silver Tower app, but also I have made a few myself. More on that next time.