Superhero SFX tokens

Just a quick post of some superhero sound effects I whipped up earlier today. After reading about Kaptain Kobold's adventures with some Batman rules here.

These could be used to mark disruption. There isn't really any design work to them. I found them as svg files on openclipart.org. Just the word put on a 1" square.

Any comments on improving them are welcome. It's all just for fun.

Pure silliness

Okay, so what with the new Pope being named Francis and all, I couldn't resist.

Te Absolvo!

I will say that I never noticed that the Pope had such a bewildering array of hats.

Now to continue this is a bit of a non sequitur but is at least partially related to wargaming. If you follow Ross Mac over at Battle Game of the Month then you may have read about his adventures in plumbing. This next item, in addition to a colorful vocabulary, should be an essential part of every plumbers kit.

I suspect it works on Wargamers crack as well.

Perhaps this will be on the back of next years Posties rejects shirts?

And finally, I'm already worn out from all the "active" blogging I've been doing.

Boobs!

This thing with google reader will certainly make it more difficult.

I know there is a special place in hell for me. I'll save you a seat.

One year ago today.

Another idea passed on from Phil at The Wargaming Site.

Go back one year ago today and post a link to a post you wrote then.

Hmm I didn't post on the 13th but on the 12th we have Nicholas has Chosen which I think was my first prize giveaway.

And then the 14th Interesting Painting Site which was where I found out about making my own washes. I still need to try that out.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

From: http://media.brain-terminal.com/promo/videos/poster/memory-lane.jpg

PS- I have no idea what this image is all about. I just found the juxtaposition funny.

Inspired by Tamsin

While she may not want to lay claim to this, Tamsin has really inspired me to get off my duff and paint. I had been aware of the the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge, but only just started following it as well.

She has been working on a truly massive amount of figures for pike blocks and it just sort of hit me. It wasn't a " well if she can do it, I can" moment but more of a "if she is doing this why aren't I trying to get things done?"

I meant to post these last night, but was feeling sleep deprived all day and just didn't have the energy.

Here are some pictures: (in an apparently completely random order, but I'm lazy)

Last Saxon for Tereken

 I was trying to show the pain in the ass I was having over coverage for priming this IMEX Saxon. The inside of the shield and the armpits were really not taking the paint. I had washed him, maybe not well enough.

Cluttered enough for Fran?

 Just and overview of the desk, I'm trying out doing the Saxon riders separately from their horses. As you can see to the right the orcs are already mounted.

Kind of crappy picture.

 The 15mm bugbears show up well. I think I was trying to show the white spots I missed on the wolf's base while getting a group shot. I should learn to zoom in on the view screen more to check the shot.

The forces of goodishness.

 Just showing the flesh and metal bits. The urge to paint "Gandalf" various shades of gray needs to be resisted. I'm thinking more brown and beige. Maybe I just need to search wizard for inspiration.

Overview of the green skins.

 Got all the flesh and silver metal bits blocked in. I like how they are shaping up.

Miniart Germanic warrior.

I had forgotten to blockout the flesh on his face. You can also see that the yellow looks decidedly green over the black base coat. I also may need to do a second coat of the flesh on many of these. With the black undercoat the colors are a blotchier than I would like. I'm not sure if blocking in white first would have helped or if  a wash will cure it. Decisions, decisions.

Well thanks to Tamsin and hope yet another WIP post wan't too boring.

PS- Looks like I'll have to go back and label this as my labels aren't showing up right now.

Scenarios and Solo for X-Wing

So we are in the midst of playing our second game of X-Wing here at the corner and here is where it stands after starting last night and resuming a few rounds before school this morning. (We are fortunate to have my wife be understanding enough to let us leave it set up.)

Darth Vader (my son) in the Tie Advanced and Dark Curse (my daughter) in the Tie Fighter are dueling  with me as Gold Squadron Pilot in the Y-Wing. I decided we would try the quick start rules again but they wanted to use the new ships, and honestly who doesn't want to be Darth Vader?

With a better grasp of how damage is dealt out, I have taken 5 hits while Darth Vader and Dark Curse have each taken two. For most of the game I have managed to do a slow spiral in the center, keeping one or both of them in my sites. This was after initially being thrashed in the first pass. The firepower and maneuverability of the Y-Wing is not my favorite, but it can take a lot of punishment.

But the main thrust of this post is not about our game but the resources I found online for X-Wing. Like many I was shocked to see only three scenarios in the  rule book. So I did a search for some. The mother load was at Board Game Geek.

Two pdf's and a cross post:

Flytrap, Dagobah's Death Star Trench Run, Refinery Raid

Then 3:10 to Yavin which you can download from the files section as a PDF here plus a bonus mission here, but you have to be logged on to BGG to access them.

There are also some Bulk freighter pieces here.

As well as a scenario from the WWPD forum that came from the Outpost Zero blog Star Wars tag.

I'm also excited to try this solo scenario from Deep Dark Dungeons.

Also check this out for a sweet render of a 3D “Blockade runner” space ship.

I am seriously considering buying or making a star field mat to play on. I like the idea of making one with my kids.

Welcome to Anne from Anne's Attic. Funny, talented painter and friend of Ray and Fran. Go check her out. It took me way too long to become a follower of hers.

Succumbed to X-Wing

Well after reading about Tamsin and Nick buying themselves some new expansions for X-Wing I broke down and bought it over the weekend.

Source: http://bitsofboardgames.blogspot.com/

As usual I stalled the kids until I could read the 4 page quick play rules and we played last night after finishing homework. I played the Rebel Academy pilot in the X-Wing while my son played the Academy Pilot in one TIE Fighter and my daughter the Obsidian Squadron Pilot in the other.

It was a little tricky for my 7 year old son to grasp the concept of getting into position to fire but my daughter really worried me as she managed to keep me in her sights an uncomfortably long time. Add to that my total crap rolls and I missed many opportunities to score damage.

We had a little trouble maneuvering around the 2' x 2' playing area and had to fudge some moves to keep the kids in the game. Aside from shooting both my kids down, the highlight for me was when I shot down my son and he still seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the game. In the past any loss has been met with tears and tantrums, no matter how much I try to convince him that I almost never won any games as a kid. lets hope this is a big milestone.

Anyway I think we're on for a rematch tonight, maybe even using the two add-ons I bought yesterday, the Y-Wing and TIE Advanced.

Also, speaking of gaming with kids, Bob over at MC Monkey Dew's posted a little set of rules he made with his then 4 (now 10) year old son. I'm going to try them out with my kids sometime soon.

Welcome to new follower Chris Kemp. If you have a blog please let me know, I didn't see one in your Friend Connect profile.

And watch this space for more X-Wing action. Darth Tater will crush the rebellion!

Old Stuff Day

I saw this originally mentioned over on Creative Twilight who credited the idea to Warhammer 39999. But the first concise explanation I saw for what this is was on The Wargaming Site.


"On this day, each blogger can go through their history and find posts that they’d like to shake the dust off and present again to the community at large. Some suggestions for content that would be good to post: 

* Posts that you considered special that didn’t receive as much attention as you thought they deserved
* Content that people liked in the past, but haven’t seen recently 
* Posts you might have created before your site received much traffic, and now deserve to be reshown
* Or any content you’re particularly proud of!" 

So here are my entries:

Flag Ripple Tutorial Series

How to Texture a Flag for Ray Part 1 the one that started it all, only got 42 views and the comments were that it was difficult to understand.

Flag Ripple Effect Video Tutorial was my attempt to show in realish time how to do it. I thought it might be clearer. Only 24 views and a "worst ever" review on Youtube for my efforts. See what you think.

Alternate Flag Ripple Tutorial actually got 71 views so as such was fairly popular by my blog standards. It took a question about possibly doing the ripples from a source image of actual rippled fabric. As it turns out it is a better way to do it. I was thinking of making another video on this method, I'll edit it to be concise, and perhaps a listing on TMP.

Maps of Greyhawk

Did you play AD&D? Did you stomp around the Flanaess slaying Giants and whatnot? Or did you just spend hours looking at the old Greyhawk maps and Gazeteer? Well prepare to have your mind blown by the truly awesome maps of Anna Meyer!

Fabulous maps of Greyhawk only got 23 views. Now it is quite possible that you all have just seen her stuff already. LOOK AT IT AGAIN. But seriously, she is constantly updating the maps and releasing them free on her website Fantasy Maps by Anna B. Meyer. If I had any gripe at all it would be that these are all post Greyhawk Wars. But that is just sour grapes because that passed me by when I stopped role playing. (Basically 1985).

Boardgame Resources

The Boardgame Resources wasn't really much of a post so it only garnered 17 views. Too bad really because the stuff on the site I linked to is really great. For this one I'll make you go and look at my post.

Don't overlook Cthulhu

Again The Cultist wasn't much of a post and only got 13 views. It was essentially a reblog pointing to a youtube video that had been a submission for a Strange Aeons competition. The video is quite good and really got me enthralled by the idea of setting up my own Cthulhu campaign. I still haven't done it, but I hope to this year.

Well that's my look back at Old Stuff. I hope you enjoyed it.

And just a note about turning over a new leaf blogging wise. I have righted a terrible wrong and followed back people who followed me over the last year plus. As I said there really is no excuse, just a thought at the time that I wanted to stay on task with my own blog. I've since come to realize that my interests are so all over the place that there really is no point to trying to compartmentalize on blogs I follow. I will however, still try to restrict the blogs I follow to game related as much as possible. I also think that active blogging (ie more commenting, replying etc) is driving more traffic to me. I could be wrong but there seems to be a slight up tick.