Another map for Melee

I haven't been a total slacker recently when it comes to working on game stuff; while I was off for the Christmas holidays, I cranked out this arena for Melee battles. Just like with my previous game mat, this came from a styrofoam sheet in some furniture packaging and was fairly simple to complete. This time, however, I decided to put just a single map on the board.

First, I pressed Heroscape tiles into the surface to imprint the hexes onto the styrofoam. After that, I painted the whole thing with white school craft glue for protection--and to save time, I mixed the base color of brown in with the glue (this also made it easy to see where I missed a spot). Once I had the base coat done, I painted the individual hexes, using different colors for each megahex and for the starting areas. Finally, I brushed a dark wash into all the hex borders for better visibility.  

Not counting drying time, this project probably took about an hour or so for me to finish. I like the earth tones here; it's a lot brighter than my first attempt, which is more dungeonesque compared to this outdoor desert arena look. And it looks pretty good with some of my newly painted minis to show it off. 

I have one more sheet of styrofoam I plan use for a Wizard map, with its additional megahexes. I'm thinking of a wholly different palatte--maybe with cooler colors for a more magical look, but we'll see. 

Dungeon decor

I picked up Artifacts Set 2 for Mage Knight Dungeons on the secondary market, and I really like the look of these prepainted pieces. I plan on using them for terrain and/or objectives for Melee/Wizard, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, and similar games. 

You can never have too much scatter terrain in your skirmish games, and this set even came with some rules for special game effects that I will try to port over to my own scenarios.

As you can see from my Warhammer Saurus hero (used as a Heritor for Ghost Archipelago), these castings are the right scale and style for dungeon crawls. I hope to see them in action soon.

Wizards

I've got plenty of warrior-types for games on my new battle board, but not many spell casters, so I remedied that with set of prepainted figures from Magic: The Gathering: Arena Of The Planeswalkers. These are not the stereotypical mage figures that I grew up with, but they will go well with my HeroScape mins for Melee or Wizard scenarios. I also like the fact that they're already painted. Am I the only one that games with prepainted miniatures?

Finished Melee/Wizard game board

Greetings, Dear Reader. I hope this blog post finds you well.

I finished up that big game board for Melee/Wizard that I had been working on recently. It's a hex pattern on a 2' x 4' sheet of styrofoam. It's a little bulky to move around, but more convenient then assembling and disassembling HeroScape hexes like I've been doing. Here is the map in all its glory:

With the Wizard arena on one side and the Melee arena next to it, I can run gladiatorial contests or some solo adventures. (Although I noticed once I was done that if I had started my Melee map one hex closer to the edge, I could have had a row of hexes separating it from the Wizard map.) Or I can ignore the hex colors for some larger scenarios of my own devising.

First I think I need to create a few warriors and spell casters and try my hand at Death Test. Or maybe I should start on a different gaming project--wouldn't it be great if I could complete more than one minis-related enterprise with all this time spent at home?

WIP: Hex mat for Melee/Wizard

The packaging from a recent purchase of furniture for the home office left me with a huge sheet of thin styrofoam (some two feet by four feet) that just begged to be used for gaming terrain. I decided I needed a large playing surface for use with games of Melee and Wizard. I've played before on Heroscape tiles, which look good but take some time to set up and break down. So I decided to use those tiles to imprint a hexagonal pattern onto the sheet.

 After that, I coated the styrofoam in a mixture of white glue and water for protection before spraying it black. I didn't coat the sheet thoroughly enough, because the aerosol ended up dissolving some of the foam. It made a nice texture that looked nice with some drybrushed gray, so no big deal--but I did add another coat of water-glue mix after that. 

While I want this terrain piece to be versatile, I also want to use it for battles based on the arena maps from the original Melee and Wizard. Toward that goal, I replicated those patterns on my game board, which is just big enough to fit the maps from both games. Then, because the colors were so bright, I gave everything a dark wash to blend the hexes back together. You can see the Wizard arena on the left, and the Melee map to the right. Entry hexes are dark green and hard to make out in this picture; I plan to drybrush them with a lighter shade to make them stand out more. I will get more pics once it's done.

It's not much in the way of gaming projects, but I'm happy to be getting something done while on lockdown. I hope everyone is staying healthy, and we can all get together to start rolling dice and pushing around minis again someday.

Another HPB gaming find

The Heroscape line of boxed sets and expansions may have been discontinued, but the ideas from that game live on in Arena of the Planeswalkers: Shadows over Innistrad. Set in the world of the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, Arena uses the concepts of heroes and squads, and even the interlocking hex tiles that HS is known for.

So when I saw the set discounted for their Memorial Day weeknd sale (on top of the usual markoff) at a local Half-Price Books, it was a no-brainer to grab this box. While the tiles are useful and the unpainted figures have potential, my main reason for grabbing this was the painted minis that came with it, which will make a nice addition to my collection for use as spell casters in games such as Melee and Wizard (a.k.a. The Fantasy Trip).

Arena of the Planeswalkers also comes with a two-sided, four-piece cardboard map, with hexes compatible with the 3-D Heroscape terrain that I can probably use for The Fantasy Trip battles. (And these hex mats could even be used for sci-fi tank combat in games of Ogre.)

A pretty good payoff for a $12 investment, even if I never actually play Arena.

The Fantasy Trip has arrived

My copy of The Fantasy Trip, part of a Steve Jackson Games Kickstarter, arrived this past weekend, and the box is huge! Not Ogre Designer's Edition huge, but huge nonetheless. The box contains, in addition to the role-playing rulebook, In The Labyrinth, the two pocket games that started it all: Melee and Wizard, along with the Death Test solo adventure and its sequel.

I received electronic copies of everything as part of the Kickstarter campaign, so I've had a chance to play these games recently. Still, it's nice to have the actual physical components, including fold-out-maps and counters in the smaller boxes. And the main box also has a four-panel GM screen that gives you plenty of room to put all your notes, while the landscape orientation makes it easy for you to see your players.

And there is a whole box of die-cut hex geomorphs, suitable for putting together your own labyrinth. Although I find the Heroscape tiles more aesthetically pleasing, these chipboard map parts are much more convenient to transport and assemble.

I'm glad I bought this, and I look forward to spending more time In The Labyrinth.

Dragon hunt

A few weeks ago, I brought out The Fantasy Trip (actually just Melee and Wizard) for a quick battle on game night. I decided that our four figures who had survived the Death Test last December got ordered to bring back a dragon. So we had our 37-point characters take on a four-hex dragon (the black spaces beneath it are so we can better tell the creature's facing; otherwise it gets confusing).

It was a hard battle, but in the in the adventures won because the dragon was in a cavern and couldn't gain altitude. Looking back, I should have had it charge and knock people down, instead of just using claws and breath. I may have to run this again sometime.

Passing the Death Test

After my gaming group's trial run playing Melee, I wanted to revisit the game system, but with more of a scenario than some unconnected arena battles. Luckily for me, The Fantasy Trip's Kickstarter campaign includes a reprint of the old preprogrammed adventure Death Test. So we all prepared characters (three fighters and a wizard created using the--wait for it--Wizard rules) and set out into the labyrinth.

It was basically one combat after another--and we got drawn into the game! We made our way through nine rooms of this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, dealing with traps and creatures and other mercenaries along the way. We defeated foes and found treasure--gold bars, jewels, even a potion or two.

In fact we we so immersed in getting our badly wounded characters through the dungeon--we were all injured, some dangerously so--that we completely lost track of time. Four hours later, we were about to pack up and call it a night when I convinced everyone to get through one more room. After defeating the big boss, we made our way to the exit.

Everyone really had a good time playing this adventure. I don't know if we will ever get a full campaign of The Fantasy Trip, but I hope to come up with some scenarios for us to play sometime in the future.

Bonus pic: Before I got to the game store to run Death Test, the group was playing Shadows of Brimstone, a hybrid boardgame/roleplaying game in a horror/Western setting. It's pretty fun, too, although more complicated than TFT.