Monster May(hem) 2024 Wrap-Up

     Another May, another batch of monster painted. At the start of May, I was going to just do a smattering of random creatures in my collect. But as I looked through my pile of opportunity, I found something a bit more themed.

Rising Sun is a CMON game with clan vying for power over territories all over Japan. One aspect of the game is summoning Oni to help spread their influence. And what is an oni besides a monster?

Oni of Souls

Yurei

Cool shoulder and seemingly walking away?

Komainu

Oni of Spite

River Dragon

    Here are all the monsters gathered together for their group shot. I have previously painted up 3 warriors from the Koi clan which I used for scale.

    I have also picked up Fistful of Kung fu, which is why I have based them, just in case I want to use them as oni in that game as well.

    I am overall pleased with the results, they paint up pretty quickly which is good because I have another 3 to paint (Oni of Skulls, Hate and Blood). These last three look like they might be more difficult then these five. As per Keith's challenge? dare? ultimatum? mild suggestion? I have painted a dragon, a river Dragon. I believe I have a couple more Reaper dragons, and I have dragonmen? Do they count? Surely they were dragons before being men.

Painted: 15

Purchased: -17

Total: -2

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Our summer is going to be booked pretty solid with trips during the summer, I might see you all in the fall! Just kidding, I will have sometime later in June for painting. Probably go back to Tail Feathers to finish it up.

Penticton

   In an effort to spend quality time with Rachel's mom, her family booked a trip together to Penticton. Rachel's sister has a house there with her family. I was nice to have other kids for Rosalind to interact with. Cousin One is a 4 year old with a plethora of energy (what four year old doesn't?) and Cousin Two is 6 days younger then Rosie but isn't yet walking. 

    

    We drove to Edmonton to catch the plane to BC for $50 each way, how crazy is that? I sure wish Regina had direct routes like that! Not that I'm much of a flyer. I have a fear of highs, which is all fine on an airplane as long as I am not falling out of said aircraft. I actually do enjoy looking out the window and seeing all the mountain ranges and lakes and bonkers flat prairies when we land back in Alberta. 

    Before this year and last year,  I had only been to BC once. When I was 10, my family drove to Vancouver. We spent time at the Butchard Gardens, rode a ferry to the island and rented a cabin in Ninaimo, BC. There was also some visiting of Uncles and Great Aunts throughout the trip.

    In Penticton, there are bike lanes all around! Electric bikes are fairly common on the paths. I originally thought that took away from the experience, the point of a bike is to be fit and go places right? I wasn't thinking of major health problems as you age or whatever the case. Electric bikes assist those who need it and the more bikes on the road the better the infrastructure, hopefully. Some people are opposed to the bike lanes, on the board walk, there was a lady with a bristle board complaining about the bike lanes in small print. Who are you talking to? The tourists? Like that's going to change anything!

    Anyways! Bikes are great PERIOD. Rachel and I did manage to get some board games in with some of the family. We played Five Tribes, which we both haven't played, and Wingspan. 

    Five Tribes I had hear was good, and it is. I think the "worker placement" part of the game is a great change of pace for the traditional pick what you want to do type games. Instead you pick up any group of works on a tile and spread them out like bread crumbs from the original tile. On the last tile you pick up all the same coloured meeples as the last meeple in the line. Each colour is a different action to play out. Rachel beat me by 2 points with the other players being about 20 and 40 points more, not too bad for our first times.

    Wingspan is one of the only board game that Rachel's sister will play. We had some odd end of game bonuses, like Birds looking Right. Which I focused almost exclusively on throughout the game. Rachel won, of course, but the scores were 105,106, 107 and 111, the 107 being mine. That's only one more round of laying eggs or one more bird! Crazy! The copy of Wingspan also had 3D printed token holder and bird house action selection markers, linked for the Wingnuts out there. I might've sent those files to my local library that night to be printed so they would be ready when I returned home.

    We went on hikes through the forests, one which had a stream running parallel to the path. Swam in the lakes, and took in a farmer's market as well as visited family and such. 

So proud of her stick!

Discovering puddles on our morning walk

    There was a lot of down time for me during the evening, as I would stay and watch Rosalind so Rachel could visit with her family more. This meant that I surfed eBay quite a bit, and found a listing for some Imperial Guard Sentinels. Four Sentinels for the price of one new one.... ish. They aren't in the best shape, after putting in an offer and getting it accepted, I thought maybe these were metal Sentinels not described as such in the listing. They arrived a couple days ago and wasn't the case. 

    Sentinels are one of my favourite vehicles from the Imperial Guard line. I owned one sentinel before buying this lot so now I have 5! These would make for a good combat patrol, scouting out the frontline for the heavy support. Seeing as I picked up Sly Marbo for the previous edition of Kill Team and the store reopening/ support independent model, the Catachan Colonel. I think building a small Catachan force might be in my future if new models from GW come out or I find decent 3rd party miniatures.

    The weekend I got back from BC, I was able to go to a Warcry Tournament at our local GW store. Got three games in with my Slaanesh Daemons, with an ally of Vasillac the Gifted. 

Setup all original starter set Warcry Terrain

    The first round, I was paired against a warband made up of units from the Cursed City box. The blood born vampires, the one perched on ruins on it's base, were able to keep up with Slaansesh speed wise and did some good damage. The ogre was very tanky, taking them out wasn't an option. I mainly went for the objective of getting units off the board, but should have taken out more of his warband to deny him points. Lost the first round.

    I had a buy for round two. Third round I won, as it was a game of keep away against slow orcs. Due to a poor decision of activation, I almost lost the treasure which would have costed me the round. Silly me didn't take pictures, oops!

   At the end of the day we had a battle royal with 500 pts each with five players. Victory went to the warband that was holding the treasure at the end of round four. The other Slaanesh player brought Fiends which are able to climb, unlike my mounted Seekers. Letting him escape over terrain and leaving me in the dust.

View from my starting area

    Death and order had a bit of a grudge match in the opposite corner of the map, mostly due to how slow they both were. 

    This tournament has gotten me excited to keep playing Warcry, even if there is rumoured to be another version coming out this summer. And based on the turn out, two chaos, one order, two death and two destruction warbands) I want to start a Cities of Sigmar flavoured warband. There is a lot of variety and customization that can be added to the warband. A crew from Hammerhal Ghyra might have Stormcast Eternals of the Hallowed Knight or Anvils of Heldenhammer variety or Sylvaneth to aid them, where as the Aqshy might have Ironweld Arsenal at their disposal. What about Anvilguard? Under morathi's control the Daughters of Khaine and Black Arc Corsairs would fit in nicely. Lots of choices! I picked up some Freeguild guard and Crossbowmen from Varagesale for cheap to start with, all I know is this project could get wildly out of hand! I am already looking at the Demigryph Knights longingly.....

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I plan to join the Season of Scenery Challenge started by Dave Stone which starts on July 1st and runs to August 31st. In the last week of June, I have been finishing up miniatures that were an inch away from finish. Chaos cultists from Blackstone fortress, Metal Slaanesh Fiends and of course continuing with the Character of the Month Challenge, which I am really behind on! I have May finished, just need to post it with a story and June's character is getting close to being done too.

February Round Up

     Note for next time, I need to start making my blog entries when stuff happens instead of at the end of the month. Much easier to break it up in bite sized chunks for me and my memory. Oh also need to take pictures of my games. 

    To start this month off, Rachel picked out one of the new games she had on her list, Targi, to play together this month. My elder brother,Shawn, gifted it to us for Christmas this year. We both enjoyed the game, really tight game mechanics specifically for two players. Targi uses a grid of 16 cards with players picking one of the border cards to dictate which rows and columns will be their actions for that round. Opponents can't take actions across from pawns already played or where the thieve is placed.

Standings at the end of the game.

    Usually, I would be able to get a row or column to either get resources I needed or block Rachel, but this would come at the cost of not getting the right column as Rachel would play her pawn on the column. We did pretty well, scoring 37 for Rachel and 32 for me, there was a couple times I miss read or interpreted resources and gold as interchangeable when they aren't. I will also note that we started the game on my birthday during a nap, then continued the next day after work and during another nap, Rosalind woke up from a nap before scoring which made it more tense to find out who won!

    Sunday BBBS D&D had a new participant. The party went to investigate a disappearance at a farmhouse. When they rolled up on the house they noticed a cellar at the back of the house. Alright what do you do? I throw dynamite! Is what the new player cried out. Not worrying about details in the moment, I said okay you chuck the dynamite. Orcs came out to check out the explosion. Which is where we stopped. I don't want to go too off the rails with random stuff to happen, but I appreciate integration. The players are new and have pretty simple characters for ease of use, so this made me discuss this with the player after the session. Did they sneak in somewhere to find dynamite? Phandalin is a mining town, dynamite or a fantasy resource similar to dynamite could exist in this world. Or maybe this character's rogue character isn't just a rogue, maybe they are an arcane trickster, a blend of wizard and thief. It's a nice way to workshop this idea.

Squirrel plotting near tree.

    Rachel and I played through the expansion of Photosynthesis: Under the Moonlight, which adds in, you guessed it a moon cycle. I picked this up with my order from Board Game Bliss in January without really looking at reviews, because CUTE ANIMALS! What could Rachel want more in a board game? The game now has the sun and moon cycle and moving around forest critters to collect said lunar rays. Rules stated to randomize the critters, Rachel got the turtle, slow but can dig up babies for bonus victory point objectives and I got the squirrel, fast to basically never miss the movement of the moon and can eat seeds that the opposing player plants. Both were fun to play, there is a total of 8 forest critters to play. We played Moon and the Forest Animals with Moonstones, but could have played with The Great Elder Tree instead. 

If a tree falls in the forest does the turtle care?

    Rachel went to visit her mother in Fort Saskatchewan to help around the house. I feel so helpless when she leaves with Rosalind, not only does she take care of our child, she is a domestic, a nurse and daughter for her mom. They have been travelling a lot as a daughter/mother duo, Rachel has shown great strength and determination when it comes to taking care of Rosalind, I have the bar set high for when I start my parental leave at the end of March. 

    While away, Rachel gives me repairs and such to do around the house. We have multiple pets that makes it a bit difficult to leave our house for super long, luckily we have my brother, Nathan, who isn't as allergic to our cats, who will come to take care of them almost every time we leave.  Another reason why I stay home. Work, cats, and house. 

    Besides fighting off entropy of our rest shack, and feeding our somewhat domesticated lions, I was able to play a couple games of Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island. 

    The first tutorial game we played on Family Day with my brothers, Shawn and Nathan, I read the much thorough and competently written rules and thus picked up a bunch of rules that I didn't use or know about. This game went pretty smooth, that is until the Carpenter (me) found a venomous snake in his boot, getting sick and bringing the morale of the survivors all the way down. We all died on round 6 due to lack of health care on the island.

    On Sunday that weekend, we were determined to beat the first scenario. Focusing on the goal of making a 10 piece wood pile and making a fire to signal our rescue. We took it a bit too cautious to begin, assigning two pawns on exploring, gathering and building which meant that we would guarantee our success, but would make our progress slower and have no extra events happen. This could be rewards now for a punishment later, something we kept taking our last game, which is probably why we lost. For the most part they are hinderances. 

    Castaway, the first scenario, eases you into game mechanics, adding weather slowly, first just rain on rounds 4-6, then snow and wandering animals from 7-12. On the second last night, our island was hit with a devastating snow storm. We were forced to discard food and wood to help keep ourselves warm for the night. The next morning, before actions, we were to have the stockpile ready to signal the rescue, but we were one wood short. 

    Between games Adventures on the Cursed Island, Shawn came over to play Marvel Champions: The Card Game. I enjoy this game, there is a lot of replay value in the base set. Each player selects a hero and creates a deck based on four archetypes, then picks a villain to face as a group. Your options for heroes are Spider-man, Iron Man, She-Hulk, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel. With it being a Living Card Game, money will get you even more! Three villains are in the set as well, each having a bit different AI. 

    I played Black Panther, who is a "build up" type character, starting out weaker, then as he gets upgrades he can activate them all at once. Shawn was Captain America who discards cards to throw his shield around. While the players are heroes, the villain will just attack them, but as they switch to alter egos, the villain will scheme, which acts like a timer. If they scheme too much, they will succeed in their plans, adding minions or power up. 

    That is about it for playing, I was pretty busy painting this month. Originally, I thought I would do the Final Girls Expansion to Don't Look Back because it is Fem-bruary. Time to focus on the female miniatures! Okay so I didn't quite completely focus on just females, as I just painted all the miniatures in the core box as well, but that's still 7 minis. Working on some terrain for this setting to take a proper picture of the gang, for now, have one on top of my basing material container.

The whole gang with two killers, Jason is kitbashed from a Hal Gordan heroclix.

      

    I would also like to take this time to mention that I will be taking commissions for eyes. HA! I kid, he looked pretty good without the whites so now I don't want to make it even worse.

    I also finished off my Character of the Month, name and backstory to be determined with her own post and better photography.

Wizkids Female Pirate

    

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I spend a whole month neglecting the Corpse Wrack Mausoleum, time to get it done! The new Kill Team: Nachomonday is really catching my attention. Chaos and Corsairs! Could just run those two without buying the compendium. Might wait to see the price tag. 

January Games

    What a better time to talk about my January Games, then a week into February!

  At the beginning of January, I was able to brave the cold and walk to my brother's apartment for a game. Shawn, my eldest sibling was interested in playing King of Tokyo or Mice & Mystics. In the end we played Mice & Mystics, thinking that the other game would be quick enough to play if we had time. I have taught this game several times, always starting on Chapter One, which does do a good job of getting you into the action, but it was getting a bit much to play it over and over. 

My brothers, Shawn (left) and Nathan about to play Mice and Mystics

    We agreed to play Chapter Two, this scenario the heroes have escaped the dungeon and are holed up in a tree. It happens to be a city for white mice that live in the castle. The mayor, Linera is troubled by the resent disappearance of the rangers that have been sent out for supplies, specifically her daughter Lilly. 

     Lilly is located on the final tile, ensnared by a mousetrap and fighting off cockroaches. The heroes need to cross the courtyard they just came from to enter the castle again. This means evading the hungry Old Crow. If anyone, heroes or minions, rolls a 1 on their movement the Old Crow deals a wound to them without their defense roll. Shawn played Tilda, Nathan Filch and I Nez. Filch can carry an extra weapon in his tail, which we all tried to search for on each tile to no avail, we did find some armour for Nez though. Tilda deals more damage while beside allies that are wounded and Nez's hammer is most optimal on a space adjacent to minions. 

Moments before this rat rolled a 1 and was scooped by the Old Crow

    The first tile was quick to give us a Surge, normally cockroaches steal cheese from the heroes in lieu of damage. These roaches were GREEDY - meaning they added the cheese to the minion cheese wheel, making surges more frequent, moving out page marker closer to failure and changing the foes we face later in the game.

The roach behind the centipede desperately trying to get into base contact to eat our cheese

Lilly's epic slap fight with a roach comes to an end

   Lilly and the cockroaches, were both unable to hit each other for the entire game. But once the prospect of rescue was presented to the ranger, she became fired up, and one shot the boss, a centipede called Skit-Clak. After cleaning up the rest of the rat minions, the heroes freed her. One more cheese slice on the minion cheese wheel, and we would have lost. 

Can't kill a roach, but can one shot a boss!

    Shawn was interested in continuing our campaign, this meant we get to carry over one item from this Chapter. Nez was gifted by Filch a suit of Fishscale Armour, which is plus one defense and the ability to swim better but will attract Brody's attention. Brody is a cat that appears as a boss occasionally. This chapter did have a side quest that we could encounter him, but we opted not to do it due to time constrains. Lilly will be used by Rachel, the next time we play, it is on one of the "new/ forgotten" games to play for this year.

    Played Between to Castles of Mad King Ludwig, no pictures, I loss, but did get 52 points on both castles. Talk about consistency! My friend Shaye and I are running two nights of D&D  for BBBS using the Essentials Kit for small one shot adventures. Playing in Roll 20 and only once a month, this was the first session. I had two players, one was a big and other was his "little". Little is a relative term, he was actually 15, original, we played for younger groups and made the classes more accessible. Hopefully we will get more kids out, as Shaye's group was a parent, a "Big" and one "little" or combine the two groups.

    On Monday I was solo parenting and decided to play through Robinson Crusoe - Adventures on the Cursed Island. I read through the rules a bit silly, only reading what I needed to to play and not looking into weather, which plays a large part of the late game. It was pretty fun, Friday and Dog were my companions, though that nasty Sea Lion wasn't not interested in playing nice! Yowch! The rules in the version I have are poorly laid out, I found some online that look much better, might print them to make it clearer.

This was a Greater Danger Sea Lion, dealt 4 wounds!

    The following evening, Rachel was up for a quick game, she wanted to do Lords of Waterdeep. She likes to reread the rules before playing, so it was a bit too involved for her mind at the time. Instead, I suggested Machi Koro, which took slightly over an hour.

    My fruit and vegetable market was my big ticket roll, but it also meant that Rachel got to roll her Tuna boats, twice for two of them! That's a lot of dough! Rachel was slow to start, she focused on red shops, that would take money away from the opponent, which trigger first. So as long as I spent my money, she wouldn't get much from me. I would focus on blue and green card, oh, besides a couple red and one purple that took money. Both only had one landmark to build by the end, I just got a good roll. Next turn, I am sure I would have lost. 

    I frequent board game bliss from time to time, they have some pretty good sales, harder to find items from indie developers and of course Shadows of Brimstone still in stock! I split the order with my co-work/friend John and my brother to get free shipping or as I would call it, my excuse to buy more stuff! Runewars is being phased out, so they were only $11 buck for some sweet looking skeletons. We all need more skeletons! The Doctor/Nurse character pack I figured it would be more enticing to play for Rachel, being an actual nurse. And demons are cool? I don't have a good answer for the succubi besides MORE Shadows of Brimstone! Mr. Cabbagehead's Garden was the original reason for ordering, as my eldest brother Shawn, wanted it for Christmas, and seeing as his birthday is in March. I thought I would buy it early while it was in stock. The game is two player or solo, so it's also a good distraction for the pandemic world we are in. 

    On the last Saturday of the month, I invited my co-worker friend, John, to play Everdell with Rachel and I. He hadn't played it before, the mechanics of the game are like most worker placement games, with the addition of using the cards in the Meadow (the 8 cards in the middle) as a shared community pool that all players can access and retrieving workers is up to the player by preparing for the season. Next time I teach it, I think I will give some tips to build constructions, specifically green ones as they activate after the first and last seasons.

Snapped a quick picture as we were about to clean up.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Started painting up the Final Girls expansion of Don't Look Back by Black Site Studio as part of the Fembruary painting challenge. Got one mostly done, I'll post them once finished the four of them.

A Project that Clix

     While on my parental leave I had sometime thinking about the Heroclix, of all things, that I have and what their fate should be. My first thought - besides actually PLAYING heroclix, was to re-base select models to use in Heroscape, something that might one day be of interest to Rosalind? Or anyone else just starting to learn their first tabletop wargame. A quick google search took me to a large database of fan made Heroscape cards for playing super heroes in the game.

     This project I was pretty excited about while away from all my miniatures. Pondering up which villains and super hero squad I would like to paint up for the game. The Sinister Six against Spider-man that has called in the X-men for backup? A rampaging Red Hulk needs to be contained before he destroys have of Manhattan? Could try out just about anything.

    After a bit of jumping in and out of rabbit holes, I stumbled upon Angry Piper's blog. He has a bunch of battle reports, repaints of heroclix, forgotten heroes challenges - sculpting miniatures for lesser know characters in comics. Between Angry Piper and  Carrion Crows Buffet they also use a bunch of good looking Pulp Figures, probably will pick some up eventually. After reading a couple scenarios, it prompted me to pick up Super Mission Force 2nd which he uses for the battle reports. This systems seems like a lot of fun and had lots of creative options for fleshing out any super person you could think of, whether that be an existing trademarked character owned by The Mouse, or fan made. 

    The other side effect of looking through my heroclix, is that I have started borrowing comics from the library, Green Lantern and X-men mostly. For the most part, Yellow (use fear to control) and Green (harness willpower) Lanterns are arch enemies as they are basically polar opposites, but there was a great arc which Guy Gardener, your typical 50's beat cop who plays by his own rules, fights the biggest Yellow Lantern Arkillo without power rings, toppling the top dog to make the others in the corps to fall in line. Majority of what I repainted was heroclix, hope to branch out more... just need to prioritize my collection.

Top: Artocitus - leader of the Red Lanterns, Red Hulk, Arkillo - Second in command of the Yellow Lanterns, Kilowag - Instructor for new Green Lantern recruits 

Bottom: Saint Walker and Guy Gardener - One of four earth lanterns

    Later Green Lantern comics introduced the spectrum of colours each lantern using a specific emotion to create their constructs. Red - Rage, Orange - Greed, Green - Will, Blue - Hope, Yellow - Fear, Purple - Love, and Black - Death, which isn't an emotion but is metal AF!

Some of the other clix I was thinking about rebasing/painting. Still figuring out base sizes for models. With so many clix losing their base, their dials will make great damage dials. I should be busy throughout the winter now. Definitely don't need to BUY anything else.

    Throughout Covid the Regina Central library has been offering free 3D printing, I printed off some smaller things a few months ago. While in Fort Saskatchewan, I might've went a bit overboard with my submissions.... and well, they started charging for the service when they were finished. Shows me not to abuse the system! On the plus side, I got some really good dungeon crawling tiles and graves for some spooky ghosts that might hit the desk in October!

Caverns for In-Person D&D someday...

Close up for detail

    Some more detailed items turn into garbage with the filament printer that the library uses. This sarcophagus turned out well, the corpse has seen better days though! Expect to see these tombs on the Sorrowmourn Choir, Spooktober is coming!

    Previously, I had printed out some more traditional dungeon tiles with which I painted in grays. I wanted these caverns to glow a bit magically, hoping to add some vegetation to the walls, and some mushrooms, probably made with green stuff. 

Shadespire LOS blocking terrain featuring a friendly Gallanghann

    The rest is kind of a hodgepodge of what I have painted up, Orson Krennic had been mostly painted and in pieces on my desk for sometime now, his segmented body laughing at my lack of faith in the Dark Side no longer! The dwarves have been finished for a bit and the Blackstone Fortress Heroes I was hoping to finish off the Cultists with them but they still need more work. 

Krennic with his bodyguard dwarves.

    I was a bit lazy and didn't feel like getting out the BSF tiles for a photo shoot, so Gotfret and Servitor X-101 are hanging out on a Heroclix mat.

    The last thing to mention is a project that I hope to finish for October - which would be Shadows of Brimstone! This dungeon crawler is set in the wild west, where dark stone has been discovered in the near by mines outside of Brimstone. It has been found that these stones have a magic to them. Sadly, this power comes with a price, an explosion rips open a rift between worlds. Now unspeakable demons are flooding out of the mines, it's up to the heroes to close the portals to other worlds. Why not loot some of the precious stones at the same time as well?

Six Tentacles finished.

   We also played Root in our garage at the start of the month, why our garage? Because it seems that our cute furry cats are deadly to my eldest brother, Shawn. 

Here you have the typical "still on speaking terms" picture before the game.

    This was a learning game for both Shawn and Nathan. Shawn played the Marquise de cat and Nathan, the Eyrie dynasty. According to the game, they are the least complex. I would disagree in some way, as the other two factions aren't that hard to handle. 

    

    Eyrie have decrees which dictate what you must do on your turn, otherwise your leader disgraced and you lose victory points. Clearings are broken up into different animals, fox, rabbit, mouse or bird (wild card). One card must be added to the decree each turn, or more if you are insane. Bird cards do help, but they also cost you victory points for each used in the decree. As more turns go on, you have more and more potential that you can't build in a fox clearing as you might have already done that three turns in a row and there aren't any to claim or you can't battle in a certain clearing as the enemies were picked off by that blasted Vagabond's crossbow! Eyrie is simple to understand, but you definitely need to plan your next turn. We did help Nathan out as it was his first game, but this is a tough game to do a tutorial game as one faction can really take off if you aren't watching - like every time Rachel is playing the Woodland Alliance. First games you shouldn't be watching the points anyways right? It's about picking off those industrial cats with a well placed crossbow bolt from the Vagabond.

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I am getting close to finishing my painting of the core models in Shadows of Brimstone, contrast paints help speed up the process, but it doesn't help when I find more models at Dragon's Den to buy!? Oh well, will most likely get in a solo play soon.