Sending our love down the well

    Prairie Game Expo starts on October 5th, I am hoping to go set up Don't Look Back for some demos during the day. (It's too spooky to play at night!) With the trees finished, I went to work on my Annis Hag that I picked up from Sentry Box this summer.

    Killers have three qualities, MO, visage and trait. MO is how the Killer moves and is set up on the board. Visage is how the players react to the killer and traits are special rules, usually for how they attack. Mutilated is one of the visage which fits the Annis Hag perfectly. There also is ethereal, so I'll have to take a look for any spirits I could use. 

    

    Killers can be randomly rolled up or there are several pre-made in the rule book. In the new Core Rules, you can create your own Killer as well as let a player control the Killer. I haven't looked into the new rules much, maybe I will create a narrative setting with it's own killer! That is one of the reasons I picked up the new rules. 

    For the most part, I have all the terrain I need to play, but there is one plot (scenarios are called plots) that has the players preform a ritual at a well to summon an evil spirit killer. They, of course, instantly regret pissing off ancient evils and need to gather items to banish the ghost. Well, now I have a well. 

More like a pool for the Annis Hag

Killer Party!

Max beside the well

Max summoning the Old Ones.

    I'll probably paint up some more killers and some fences and bushes to add more variety to the board. As well as pick up a game mat to make sure everything stays flat.

Painted: 86 Troops, 4 Mounted, 8 Monsters/ Vehicles, 12 Small Terrain, 2 Large Terrain

Purchased: 195 Troops, 22 Mounted, 1 Monster/ Vehicle

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I was a bit out of sorts when I finished off these projects, I wasn't exactly sure where to go next. I settled on painting up some of my Warcry Slaves to Darkness warband as some of the new additions are just primed. This was before forming a solid plan for DLB.

Season of Scenery 2023

     Alright, recall the search parties, and take my picture off the milk carton. I was always here, just a bit busy with childcare and working. Though I did manage to get a few terrain pieces done for Season of Scenery this year. 

    I picked up some MDF modern house terrain from cardboard dungeon two years ago or so. These kits are pretty cheap at $20 CND or sometimes less, so one of the reasons I hadn't had the energy to tackle the two houses I had picked up is due to the lack of detail. Coyote Manor doesn't have detail on the exterior. I started cutting out cardboard to look like vinyl siding, this I didn't finish as my mind thought other things to add. Wires? meters? A basement... somehow? The Grey Harbour house C that I painted, at least had laser cut details on the walls.

    You'll notice that the windows on each floor look different, that's because I made my own on the top floor when I couldn't find the ones that came with the kit. I tried to remove the bottom ones, this made the carboard rip or remove the paint. I might come back to it later, but for now, I am fine with it.

    I only did the exterior as the interior would need a lot of detail work, stairs for the second floor, wallpaper, furniture, etc. Design wise it also doesn't really led itself to a real home structure. I can't see stairs, kitchen and a living room being in that small space. Upstairs could easily fit a bathroom and a bedroom with stairs going down.

    I also finished some 3D printed doors, six of them to be exact. These are to be used in Resident Evil 2 board game. 

    I also played a solo game of Don't Look Back, a co-op survival game that emulates 80's slasher flicks. Some interesting mechanics, hopefully I can run a group through a game or two during October. 

    Black Magic Craft does have a video on how to transformer these Christmas Trees from Michaels into regular looking tree, so I am working on getting them done soon.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Finishing up some of the adventuring party challenge, some have been finished for awhile and haven't had the motivation to post on here. Five are done... and it's basically October.. I gotta get moving on them if I want 7 more before the end of the year.

March Wrap Up

    Some projects are quick, and some take a lot of time. My Corpse Wrack Mausoleum was a long project it was such a beautiful piece of terrain, do I make it old? New? both? What colours do I use? I started out by spray priming all of the terrain blue. Then I wanted to get it on the table for a Warcry campaign Rachel and I started two years ago. I had jumped ahead in how I normally paint, highlighting the base colour on terrain before going into more finer details (skulls, so many skulls!). 

    When I picked it up again in January, I had to highlight over some of the details and such I had previously painted as well as watch to not get any on the roof. This just slowed the painting down, even the fences weren't evenly silvered. The blue spray was a Rustoleum can, painting GW silver over it wasn't the best idea, repriming with a brown solved that, just taking more time then I was hoping. Next time I just need to do it right in the first place. 

    I feel good with the final results, last year I 3D printed some gravestones, these will eventually be added to the crypt or to the nighthaunts that have been tormenting my hobby desk. A couple of the mausoleums don't have bases, this might be a future project, but for now, I am putting this crypt to rest.

    With mausoleum and the Azyrite Townscape, I will have plenty of options for Warcry and at least a table worth of terrain for Age of Sigmar.

    Only painted three heroclix to completion in the month of March, from left to right, Gorilla Grodd, Sabertooth and Giganta. Gorilla Grodd is a super intelligent ape with mind control powers, most of his schemes revolve around turning humans into apes. This particular sculpt has him holding a human skull, fitting for a primate bent on the downfall of the human race. Sabertooth is a mutant with superhuman strength and a healing factor. Unlike Wolverine, Sabertooth embraces his feral side. Giganta I decided I would start using different colours for the different comic universes, Marvel - red, DC - blue. Works for now, might be changed into different factions, Legion of Doom or Brotherhood of Mutants down the road. Using 32mm bases for the super heroes, debated on using 25s for civilians and heroes that didn't have super powers, but that seems a bit much. If you are giant, you get a bigger base. 

    As a distraction while painting up the mausoleum, I made a small camp for Don't Look Back using a CD and some terrain I bought with the Reaper Bones Kickstarter. Most of the scenarios use a camp as the starting area for players. I originally planned to do urban terrain for Super Mission Force, but I could make forest type terrain that would work for SMF, Don't Look Back AND PrimEVO.

    I have a couple more scatter from the Reaper Bone miniatures, but they are more urban, could make for good objectives, like getting to a pay phone to call for help.

I finished my Character of the Month for March as well, post to come for backstory.

Character of the Month for March

 

 I also picked up the Lord of the Ring's Fellowship, off eBay as well, no pictures due to laziness. Reading on Cheaphammer about his Quest of the Ringbearer got me interested in the game.

    I found someone selling some Warcry Cypher Lords and Iron Golems, enough to field both in Warcry but what made it really worth it was these two. A character and a cultist from Blackstone Fortress. The Darkoath Warqueen would have went for more then half of what I payed for the lot, if I bought her individually.

Darkoath Warqueen and Cultist (BSF)

Iron Golems 

Cypher Lords

Some were broken, nothing that the bit box can't fix.

    Every other weekend, I would bring some board games to my work to play them with the guys I care for. We played Scooby Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion, a coded Chronicles game, read a story and solve puzzles. Each character had one verb attached to them, Shaggy was eat, I tried to eat everything needless to say.

    Rachel and I played another game of Targi, I had to convince her that it was still a new game, instead of hopping to brand new games, we can really learn one for a bit so it sticks. Not much different then our last game, it ended with 5 points between us 39 for Rachel and 34 for me. 

 The other game in the "Old Pile" was Lords of Waterdeep. Nathan came over to play with us. We had to reread the rules, but it came back pretty quickly. Rachel destroyed us, being a nurse, she is used to multitasking. She had 152 points, I came in second with 123pts and Nathan with 118 pts. I went online to check what a high score would be on this game. Some forum posts mentioned the app and that they wouldn't play mandatory quests on one another, both which would muddy the numbers. 

Rachel's winning grin

    Rosalind had her first birthday on the 25th of March! Can you believe it? One year?! How fast as that! As a birthday treat, we went to the library to play with toys and pick up books to read on the potty. The central library kid's area was all ours, but it would have been nice for Rosalind to play with kids her age, maybe figure out this walking thing that humans do. 

Rosalind's favourite toy/walking aid

    Rachel made a cake for Rosalind on the day after her birthday (she worked on her birthday) and we had the family over to celebrate. Jon is bad at taking pictures, good thing Rachel is here to save the day!

Uncle Shawn and proud chin Rosalind

A boot is my very favourite gift

Grandpa and Grandma with the birthday girl

The girls dressed up, papa did not

First tastes of real SUGAR

Rosalind in a dress for her birthday party

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I am almost finished off some X-men heroclix repaints, just putting the finishing touches on the bases. Once this batch of clix are done, will transition to creating hero sheets and terrain for Super Mission Force. I will write up a story for the Character of the Month of March.