Dice junkies

I know we're all addicted to dice and can never have enough. Although I certainly lean toward steampunk gaming most of the time, I do still play the occasional sci-fi game. And for that, I need sci-fi dice. 

I backed a Kickstarter from a company called AKO Dice, and after a rigorous production period ensuring the dice are true, the rewards came in and they are gorgeous. 

Rather than pips, the number rolled is indicated by lines of varying direction and length. 

I chose the brushed aluminum, gold tone, purple and black with silver, plus the glow-in-the-dark with black stripes pair. (There was supposed to be a black with glowing stripes, but it didn't hold up its quality in production, apparently.) 

I think they have a definite Space Agency, Galactic Authority, System-spanning bureaucratic multicorps feel to them, sort of just as pure pulp is moving into the blockbuster feel of '70s and '80s sci-fi. 

So back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon (with my shiny new sci-fi dice!)

Counterblast has touched down

Counterblast has touched down in a cloud of pulpy scifi goodness. My kickstarter rewards arrived the other day, and they are, as I expected of anything sculpted by Patrick Keith, things of beauty and of exquisite quality. (Kevin Williams also svulpted figures for the line, and they, too, are wonderful.)

I opted for the starter sets for the Lancers faction and the Neiran Empire. The Lancers are your typical ragtag space mercs, while the Neiran forces are beautiful, two-toed, extremely tall alien female warriors. Think Zoe Saldana's Na'vi character from "Avatar" crossed with a Klingon.

Plus

The minis for the Neirans stand about a head taller than standard humanoids. Here's the size comparison photo Patrick and Vicky posted on the kickstarter project page.

The rulebook is finely produced as well, with the cover art by Matt Dixon recalling all those great pulp magazines of yesteryear. If you have old copies of Amazing or Astounding on your shelves, this book will fit right in.

The only tiny complaint I have is the grey screen behind the text and art on every page of the rulebook. It's not excessively dark, but as my eyes get older (seemingly faster than the rest of me) it adds a degree of difficulty to reading the rulebook that dampens my enjoyment. But realize I'm picking nits here. I love this product and am looking forward to picking up more Neirans and Lancers as they become available.

On to the pictures, I hear you cry. Well here they are, and may God have mercy on your souls. I took these with my new Android tablet in unsuitable lighting. I hope like hell you can see anything at all of these wonderful minis.

A Neiran Acolyte, top left, two Scythe Sisters and,
bottom row, two Clan Sisters and a Jamad.

The Lancers faction. Top left are the gun arms and jump packs of the two HOpR bots,
whose heads and bodies are top center. Second row are an Illyrian Plugger, the Shrinaar Captain, and an Alanti Lanceguard with a Gamma Ray rifle. Bottom row from left are the human Brute, another Illyrian Plugger, and a human plugger. Then two sets of alternate arms for the HOpR bots, which are actually supposed to go with the upcoming HLpR Bot designs.

A pleasant surprise! A bronze Bombardier pin in thanks for supporting Bombshell.
I'm proud to display it now on my Bag of Holding.

These are the arms for those oh-so-sexy Neiran ladies.

OK, I need to tell you about something Bombshell does with their kickstarters that I wish more companies did. Once they've collected for the kickstarter, rather than run a pledge manager, they issue you credit in their webstore in the amount you pledged. Then you can choose from the various rewards or, if you want, pick up other things they make, like the wonderful Bombshell Babes. This is a recent addition to that line, Blake Russell, a Rule 63 version of Snake Plissken from "Escape from New York."

I supported Counterblast at Pulsar level, which would normally be for three factions. Instead, I chose two factions and then picked up other items from the store, like these MiniBots, who will be painted with yellow upper bodies and blue lower bodies, naturally. Oh, I'm despicable! Then there's a Rottweiler. I always need more dogs.

Another Bombshell Babe, Andrea, the Vampire Hunter.
I'll be finding a place for her in Brass and Blood, you can be sure of that.

OK, that's it for now, cats and kittens. Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon.

The hand of the master revealed ... my Victorian Scrunts arrive.

As I suspected he would, Bob Olley beat me. I received my items from Bob's Victorian Scrunts kickstarter before I've finished tinkering with the company rules I'm writing for "In Her Majesty's Name." I have two days off coming up, so I'll try to finish them off this week and have them posted before the weekend.

(My excitement has me waxing loquacious. There's a tl;dr summary down at the end if you don't want to wade through my excess verbiage!)

But I cannot deny you, my faithful readers, a look at the glory that is the work of the master. Olley's Scrunts are some of the most characterful miniatures out there, and though I haven't yet removed these from their (unique) packaging -- I'm still at work and don't want to lose anything -- they appear to be incredibly clean casts with minimal mold lines and no flash at all. At least I can't find any yet through visual examination. I mean, these did come out of a mold, right? Bob hasn't discovered some moldless method of casting metal miniatures with the sheer power of his mind, has he? Wouldn't put it past him. These things are gorgeous.

I wish I could've plunged into this KS much deeper, but I could only plump for the three-pack deal. That means there were lots I had to leave behind, like the light weapons, both gambling dioramas, the queen and the two vehicles, and the head sprues. Oh, the head sprues! Not that there's not plenty of variety with what I now hold in my grubby little hands, but still, the more, the merrier. You can see pics of all that escaped my greedy grasp on the pages of the kickstarter here. Bob has said over at LAF that he has ideas for many further Victorian Scrunt civilians, so more of the line may be forthcoming. He will certainly get more of my hard-earned cash when he does. I also intend to scoop up more of those I had to forgo initially, once he gets these up in his webstore.

What I chose were the lads armed with the Heavy Weapons, Packs 1 and 2:

The "unique" packaging I mentioned, here encasing
pack 2 of the Heavy Weapon Victorian Scrunts. 

Look at that face! The heads, bodies, arms and
 steam backpacks are all separate, interchangeable components.

Another closeup of the heavies' faces.

A top-hatted head from the Heavy Weapons Pack 1.

If you can look through the glare, you can see the detail
and dynamism of that body sculpt. I am impressed beyond words.

For my third pack I chose the Thugs:

Here we have the pack of Victorian thugs,
armed to bring violence to the streets.

A couple of bewhiskered close-ups of the thugs here.
They look suitably violent, that's for sure.

tl;dr version: Olley's Armies Victorian Scrunts are dynamic sculpts with exquisite detail, cast with minimal mold lines and, I swear, no visible flash. The variations available due to the modular design mean your assembled Scrunts will likely be unique. Highest recommendation, without reservation.

That's it for today, o my brothers and my sisters. Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon.

Wide is the path and broad is the way

Like others, I received my Hell Dorado kickstarter package the other day. I knew from Cipher's frequent updates that it would be arriving soon, but as they didn't send out tracking or individual notices that packages had shipped, it actually slipped in unannounced. So it was quite pleasant to receive it when I checked my post office box Thursday. (I also got my recent Crooked Dice order, but more on that later.)

This is the hardcover expansion volume for Hell Dorado, Inferno.
 Very good writing, but the typos will make your head spin. Also, as Cipher Studios chose to ship in an envelope, I ended up with that healthy ding you see in the bottom edge of the cover.

I wasn't able to go in very large on the Hell Dorado pledge, as so many other worthwhile projects were soaking up my hobby budget. I got the Marbas package: the new Inferno expansion rulebook, the Inferno character cards, signed art lithograph (the size of a post card, but a beautiful rendition of the Inferno cover art) and the kickstarter-exclusive model of Anne Hale. I also plumped for the mini of Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King. He's one of my favorite literary characters, and I really liked the concept art behind this rendition of him.

The character deck for Inferno.

Signed litho of Inferno cover art. Small, but perfectly formed.

The Anne Hale mini and card. I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.
I was balancing all this on a piece of black felt on my lap when the cat attacked.

Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King! I've always loved "Journey to the West"
and I really like this incarnation of him.

From Crooked Dice I received my order I placed with some of my Christmas cash I. I got Tweedy 2, Miss Temple, Belle, the Traveling Tweedy heads, and the set of Time Lost Investigators. In addition, Karl and Graeme saw fit to include a couple of freebies, a Captain Jim Barrowight and a sprue of Federated Security carbines. Now would be a good time for anyone interested to place an order with them, as they've got 25 percent off all non-new release minis until the end of January with the code JAN25OFF.

Miss Temple, a noble woman if ever there was one, Tweedy Madison complete with glasses
(and a certain sound-related device behind his back) and Belle, Tweedy's latest energetic sidekick.

Here we have the Time Lost Investigators, including Eliza, the Victorian Samurai (with human or reptile head), Genevieve, her martial maid, and their mutated manservant Sachs, who can be assembled with either furry face or spud-like noggin.

Group Captian Jim Barrowight is overexposed (oooh, matron!) along with the
traveling Tweedy heads (Stetson, Fez and beard), along with the Federated carbines.

OK, so those are my latest pieces of ill-gotten booty, or ill-booten gotty for that matter. Back to the boards, my friends, and I'll see you all across the table soon!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

I hope everyone had/is having a wonderful Christmas celebration. My family focuses more on Christmas Eve than Christmas Day, not just because we are distantly German way back in our DNA, but also (and mostly) because it's my parents' wedding anniversary. Gary and Diane Sheets have now been married for 48 years. They set a great example for us (me and my sister, Vikki) of what a couple looks like when they attack life's challenges together. I'm very lucky to share that with my wife, Tracey.

My mom and dad (photo shamelessly stolen from my sister's Facebook.

Tracey and I exchanged gifts Monday night as we prepared for the brief drive up today to my parents' house. In addition to some Bath & Body Works products, I got her a new reaching tool (the Gopher II, for those of you who might be in the market for a grabber,) a couple of new ornate knitted headbands, a pair of gloves through which you can still operate touch-screen devices, and a couple of issues of a current Red Sonja conic with covers by one of her favorite artists, Frank Thorne. (We'll be picking up future issues of the comic as well.)

I told Tracey that I put so much into kickstarters during the year that she shouldn't get me anything else. It was a nice surprise that the new Spinespur rulebook and KS minis arrived in time for the celebration. Thanks, Bob Mervine and Comfy Chair Games! I'll post pics and a complete write-up over the next few days. Tracey did treat me to some new dice, which I, like every gamer, love. She'd heard me say I wanted to have some more d10's handy for IHMN games, so she ordered me some lovely steampunk engraved d10s made by Q Workshop. I even got a mix, some white-on-black and some black-on-white, so I could easily use them for percentile rolls too.

Word comes from the Hell Dorado kickstarter that they received their shipment of books and cards on Christmas Eve, so shipping should commence shortly. And Rovanite over at Grekwood Miniatures has given us all a gift, finally posting the free zombie rules he's been developing.

So all in all a wonderful holiday that I was privileged to spend with my wife, parents, sister and brother-in-law and two wonderful nieces.

I wish all you fine folks the best this holiday season and the coming year have to offer. You are a wonderful group of people; I am honored to know you and eager to share more gaming fun in the future.

Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon.

"Heroes, Villains and Fiends" arrives

I now have my grubby little mitts on the second volume published for the game "In Her Majesty's Name," the aptly titled "Heroes, Villains and Fiends."

The noise Jon Richardson makes for his "tennis gremlins" in the clip below is the same noise I keep making as I hold the volume in my hands.



Just substitute "book" for "ball" and you've pretty much got it.

While I haven't finished it yet, what I have read has been delightful. In addition to increasing the arsenal available to the companies, the book also introduces rules and stats for vehicles and beasts. There's also a campaign system with examples using companies from the original book. And for my overall impression, I don't think I can say it any better than I did earlier today in a post on the Lead Adventure Forum:

"Can't wait to dive into it more thoroughly, but I have to say that, even with the vast increase in availability of weapons, vehicles, mounts and equipment, Craig and Charles have shown the strength of sticking to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) design principles. They've taken Occam's Razor to rules and mechanics and presented a system that is flexible but not overly complicated, inclusive but not cluttered, and rich with choices without dampening the creativity of the player. Kudos, gentlemen! Another successful foray that makes me even more eager for the third volume."

Speaking of vehicles, Bob Olley has done a bit of redesigning on the steampunk vehicle stretch goals for his Victorian Scrunts kickstarter. I look forward to the flood of company concepts that are going to appear once these gorgeous figures are released. But take a look at this tank/tankette!

OK, back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon.

Second wave of Zombie Plague Kickstarter minis

This post may in some ways alleviate or abrogate or some other appropriate verb beginning in "a" the debt I owe our undead brethren and, to some extent, my fellow bloggers.

I utterly failed to fulfill the goals of Zomtober this year, despite my stated intent to participate and its amazingly low bar to be dubbed a participant -- paint four zombies or survivors during the month, debuting them on each Sunday of the month. Despite the great organizational and promotional efforts of the Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer, I blew it. I painted zilch. Zero. The only zombie-related activity I had during the month was posting my (still popular) unboxing of Wave 2 of the Zombicide Kickstarter. See that post here.

So now I've got Wave 2 of Brian Roe's Zombie Plague Kickstarter minis. (See the post about Wave 1, the survivors, here.) With Wave 1 I also picked up the new comic release that includes the latest version of the Zombie Plague rules.

Wave 2 comprises solely zombies and some themed resin bases. Unlike the earlier survivor minis, these zombies don't depict particular characters or creatures from the comic storyline.

As big a fan as I am of the pop-culture representations that have become commonplace in current zombie products (Zombicide, I'm looking at you!), I have to say that I find these original creations even more inspiring. And as I am a fan of so many retro things (7TV's '70s vibe, Atomic Cafe's skewed 1950s post-nuclear landscape), I find this '50s-looking bombshell called "Dead Sexy" to cause my chilled heart to beat just a little faster. She's a perfect realization of the concept art, and the casting is nice and clean. She has such personality (and sex appeal) that I may have to find a role for her as a "smart zombie," or some kind of unit leader for the undead. I can't decide whether she died in the Fifties and was just revived or if she dresses like she's into '50s car and Tiki culture and was caught up in the zombie apocalypse. Either way, she sports minimal injuries to her curvy form -- dead sexy indeed.

On all these minis there was some minor flash, most of which I was able to clear away with just my fingers. Some mold lines are visible but are so mild that I can't really differentiate them by touch. This should bode well for cleanup -- a quick swipe with a file and we're ready to rock.

Below we have Dirt Nap, captured in the act of emerging from the loose loam of his own freshly dug grave. I believe it to be a makeshift grave, too, as he's accompanied by a garden gnome. I wonder if this man's wife did away with him and planted him in the yard under her begonias, only to have her dispatched husband return, now perhaps to wreak his revenge? (Why am I hearing the sentence in Jonathan Ross' voice? "... weturn, now perhaps to week his wevenge?")

Forgive the intrusion of my Blu-Tack in the photo below, but it was the only way to get him to stand up long enough for this photo. The recesses on the custom base are well done and will work perfectly once the mini is actually glued in. Gotta wait until I clean him up, though. The little gnome is a hoot, too (and there's a spot for him over the zombie's right shoulder, but I couldn't get him to stand there. Uncooperative little gremlin. Uncooperative Blu-Tack too.)

Sorry for the blurry photo below, but it was the only one I captured of the multipart Joe Zombie. You can check the Updates in the Kickstarter project to see a couple of different ways he can be assembled. I think he's a stroke of genius. There are popular plastic zombie sets out there, but having that kind of choice for a metal model fills my with delicious dread. And I can always find good use for some extra arms and heads. My only regret is that I didn't order more of him. He is a great example of the miniature-maker's art and will make a great addition to any wargames table that needs a modern zombie. All hail the Roebeast, harbinger of the Zombocalypse!

And below we have the multipart female zombie, Rose Frum. (Took me a few minutes to get the pun. I know, sometimes I overthink things. Love it!) Rose is a little more hunched than Joe but has the same great choices for arms and heads. Her body's showing more damage than Dead Sexy, and her choices of heads span the gamut from vacant-eyed undead girl to meatbag corpse. We've also got a sprue (Is it still a sprue if it's metal?) of extra weapons -- the weapons wielded by the survivors, to boot. They are, as with all these, precise, clean, clear, direct and delicious.

And here's the zombie Brian calls Tubby. Her corpse is what cops would call a "floater," someone whose corpse was immersed in water after death and now features bloated flesh and sloughing skin. The presence of a bikini bottom makes me think she was in a lake or river rather than in an actual tub, but maybe she bathes in her underwear, who knows? Her sculpt again does a great job of capturing the putrescence present in the concept art.

And may I say I really appreciate the effort that Brian went to here with women that look like real women, not the siliconed-out supermodels we often see depicted in fantasy minis. Admittedly, these women are dead -- or rather, undead -- but they're amazingly realistically proportioned, which is, sadly, not the norm in the gaming industry. Kudos, Rsquared!

Here we have 10 themed Mud and Gutz resin bases that add horror to zombies, survivors, or just about anything. There's two each of five designs below, but you'll probably have a better result if you go the the Kickstarter pages and check Update 32 to see already painted versions. There's mud, blood, guts and skulls tromped into the dirt of these bases, and they look suitably horrifying.

So there you have it, compadres, a Kickstarter fulfillment that exceeded expectations and added unique, intriguing and useful components to my modern zombie collection. Every design choice in these figures tells a story, and it will help you tell stories through your own games. Whether you're playing ATZ, 7ombieTV, No More Room In Hell, AR:SE or Zombicide or even Last Night on Earth, any other zombie skirmish rules, these minis are a worthy addition to your own zombie horde.

So back to the boards, everybody, and I'll see you across the tables.

Remember, check back later this weekend for some more fiction from my IHMN setting featuring Miss Rossum and her Anthropomorphic Automatons and another piece revealing the women of the Ladies' Auxiliary. Cheers!