Straight to the throat...

You know, normally I put a little more thought into my blog posts but today, as it's Monday (In  New Zealand anyway), I'm gonna be a little more direct.

If Games Workshop thinks I'm going to spend $145 NZD for four "Finecast" non-mounted Miniatures they are frakking insane. The prices attached to the new Hobbit line are beyond ridiculous, they are an insult to every table-top gamer and fan.

If you are planning on buying this stuff then you're supporting a company who are directly engaged in price-gouging in its worst possible form. Here's a price comparison for around the world...

The Hobbit Ultimate Bundle Set is:

$1,460 in New Zealand Dollars.
$745 in United States Dollars.
£447 in Great British Pounds.

Using XE.COM:

$1460 NZD = £750.216 GBP
$745 USD = £484.85 GBP
£447 GBP = $870.01 NZD

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Finecast Status Check: Part Two

A few weeks ago (Scratch weeks, insert months) I posted about GW releasing a new batch of Finecast Miniatures; I haven't purchased a Finecast Miniature for a very long time now due to my dislike of the abysmal quality, but figured since my favourite metal miniature is being released as a Finecast I would give it a go, and here we are; Has Finecast improved? Let's find out...

The Miniature that started all this was the 'Blood Angels Vanguard Veteran'. I love this miniature. I think it was the best metal miniature ever released by GW. It has a dynamic pose, and all the little Blood Angel Iconography is great.

Awesome as metal...

OK, I need to get the kicker out at the very front. The first Finecast Miniature of the Veteran I received was shocking. I'm not talking a little shocking, I'm talking outrageous. The sword was broken, the leg was warped and the jump pack was so misaligned that it wouldn't have fitted the miniature. I have no photos, as I honestly feel that the miniature was a Quality control problem rather than an accurate representation of GW Finecast. I took him back to the local GW straight away and was then subjected to a month long wait for a replacement. That by itself almost killed the review, but here I am... And here are the side by side shots.

Performance anxiety?

The first thing you'll notice is the lack of heads. The metal head was given away a long time ago, as all my marines go into combat with helmets on (Helmets are important people!), so to make this as "fair as possible" I'm not including the FC head as part of the review. Secondly, the photos are huge when clicked on, detail is important here so I have not yet shrunk them down. You have been advised. Both miniatures were assembled today. Aside from clipping excess flash or joins no work has been done on either to remove moulding lines.

The Front:
Performance anxiety aside, the sword is the feature of this miniature and it being bent is not a good thing. To correct it it'll need a little bit of heat and resetting. There is also small bubbles in the fingers and the wing / guard of the sword. I'm very concerned with the thinness of the sword. It will break very easily. Totally not viable for actually playing games with the miniature.

There is also a very large connector of flash in the central part of the jump pack between the two vents at the front. This is obscuring the detail there, and cannot be cleaned, It is physically attached. it would need to be completely removed & the detail put back in there with green stuff. No small job. Especially for those people whose GS'ing skills are limited (Which mine are). Some of the details on the legs are obscured on the FC mini. The Band / Ring on the minis upper right thigh is meant to have a BA Icon in it. The FC's one is misshaped.

So far I'm not impressed...

Base post...

Bases are relatively easy to paint, fast too... But they're something that I'm often guilty of rushing through at the very end of a project, in order to combat this and give some love to the bases I decided to paint them first, and all at once to hopefully capture a uniform type feel for my next Infinity Unit. I did use an Airbrush though... I'm still getting used to my new one...

Start Positions!

I started with a white undercoat. Another thing I don't do too often... I missed a few cracks here and there, but it would be passable.

Step one: Asphalt

A little bit of tape...

Used a dark grey and then a lighter grey for the asphalt. Remember Asphalt isn't a uniform color. The more used it is, the more patchy it is, so I just went a little crazy and drew some aimless shapes... I think I wrote my name a couple of times... How narcissistic is that? Then I added some masking tape and started the blue

The Blue

The Blue... but lighter...

 With the white primer I used a dark blue kind of sparingly; again I wanted to look to be slightly used. Then I went around the cracks with a much lighter blue, giving it a worn non-uniform look.

More tape!

After the asphalt and blue tiles were done I taped again and started on the curb. I wanted it to be a lighter color but not white, so I went with the lightest and second lightest grey I could find. The lightest grey was for around the cracks. The second lightest was for the base color.

And done for the day...

I stopped here for the day. Time elapsed so far: 78 minutes. Not bad for 25 bases... Details tomorrow...

Being Evil is Fabulous Darling...

Finished the 2010 Gamesday Chaos Sorcerer!



This is how far behind I am in my painting... So very much! ^_^

Being Evil is Fabulous Darling...

 - PINK: The pink highlighting doesn't quite show on the photos, but there's a little more there than it looks. I actually started with a deep purple base and went to pink from there, but I wasn't really happy with the look so I washed it with Red Gore, and went to pink from that.
 - BLUE: The blue hasn't really been touched since the last photos save for some tidying.

Everything else is pretty standard for me, if you've got a question feel free to ask... As always I appreciate you taking the time to view and leave some constructive criticism... :)

Chaos Sorcerer: Day Two

Chaos Sorcerer on day two...

The Blue: Pretty standard; went from a dark blue and just used cream to lighten it as I went, rather than use different blues.

The Pink: Why Pink? I honestly don't know. I was looking at it and for some reason Pink seemed the way to go. Plus it bounces with the Blue. There's a few places where the color change is a little harsh, might have another go on some parts. Still a little more work to do on the Pink...

Other stuff to do: I don't think I'll use metals for anything on this guy, which means I'll practice my very terrible NMM technique. Belts will be Leather. Book will be flayed skin, much like the DE guy from diorama. Still not sure how I'm going to do his stomach shield thing...

The base was made with cork, Secret Weapon skulls and some army painter plant thingies. Pretty simple to so, drybrushed up from a very dark grey. I was thinking of having some blood in the skulls, but I'm not so sure anymore...

ONWARD!

Zombicide Review: Part Two

Having broken down the box last week I figured this week I'd look at how the game plays.

I've played a few games, mostly running a few people through the tutorial mission, but also getting the first two missions done as well, and I gotta say this is pretty fun. The rules are easy to follow, the conflicts are few, and I only really had to dive into the rule book for clarification once. I imagine this will be different when you get a little further down the mission track, but for now everything was pretty easy.

The key to Zombicide seems to be co-operation. If you're a lose cannon and like to charge ahead, you will die alone and possibly screw over the group. Which brings up my next point, things can change quickly, very, very quickly. Especially when the danger level changes rapidly. The danger level basically states what spawns every zombie turn. Blue: Meh. Yellow: Be alert. Orange: Holy crap. Red: OMFG! Run you dumbass run. You need to keep moving  pausing only long enough to thin down big groups of bad-guys, especially at the higher color levels, stopping can leave you swarmed pretty quick. So let's see how the first mission panned out shall we...

Mission one

Mission one had the survivors starting in the center, our safehouse. We needed to clear each of the objectives, and high-tail it to the exit (Bottom left, my skills with a camera cannot be beat) after we'd found some food, water and more food. Overall this didn't seem to tricky, or so I thought. Starting in a locked room of course means that the first turn is basically a search for a door opening weapon, which is of course where things went wrong...

Zombie in the Safe Room!
THEN IT'S NOT SAFE IS IT?!

I managed to get a chainsaw for Josh on the first search, but rather than bust out and charge with that and Phil's pistol I figured I'd search again and gear up a little. The third card we turned over, not even having left the SAFEROOM was, of course, the "Aaaah!" card. Meaning there was a zombie in the room with us. Fantastic start. Phil, having already action-ed, couldn't do anything, and no one else had a weapon to fight back except Josh. This meant that we had to absorb a wound before even stepping outside! So Doug took a hit, Zombies Spawned, and then Josh mowed the Z down with his trusty chainsaw before deciding to get the frak outta dodge and open a door.

Ned, clearing objectives and getting the precious food and water...

Then things were pretty quiet, zombies spawned in ones or not at all, and the group having geared up a little had no problems with them. Doug got a rifle, and got some pay-back keeping the streets clear and allowing us to get objectives with ease. Ned and Josh cleared the top of the board of objectives, and while doing so picked up the three food item objectives. In clearing the objectives Ned also went up a danger level. That's where things got interesting...

Four?! Oh crap, I'm next to a spawn point!

We moved down to the next objective and spawn card was for four walkers on each spawn point. Eep! I was pretty close to a spawn point, and the others were blocking me from freedom. Time to step up. Ned and Doug, working together took down four closest to them pretty easily, and Phil having gotten a Molotov went to town...

Burn!

So with that minor danger averted the group was a little spread out. Phil and Ned took up station near the spawn point that was in the way of leaving the board, determined to keep it clear. Josh and Doug cleared another Objective and then started to head  for the last one. There was a LOT of zombie activity on the top of the board, but they moved pretty slow, so everything was  looking OK...

ABOMINATION! 

BAM! Flipped the next spawn card and there it was An abomination heading towards Doug, and Fatties (+ two walkers) spawning on the other points, including the one blocking the Exit board. At this time we realised our biggest mistake... We couldn't kill the Abomination. Those suckers are tough, and we had no weapons capable of taking him down. Hell, we only had one weapon which could take down a Fattie! Josh's Chainsaw. Realising this Doug made a tactical withdrawal (running like frak) towards the others... I wish I had saved that Molotov now...

When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die...

Phil and Ned, knowing their weapons were useless on the Fattie took down his two walkers, and then stayed put, knowing the Fattie would enter their Zone, but not be able to attack just yet. There was still one more objective to clear and Josh had the only way to either open doors AND kill the Fattie. Stupid mistake that. Having entered the yellow danger level Josh had another Action point to spend, so he headed straight for the Fattie, and revved up his chainsaw. It was time to gamble... If he could take him down next player turn (Safe-ish bet) there wouldn't be a need to shoot with survivors in the zone (Ouchies!).

VROOOOOOM!

The plan worked. Josh mowed down the Fattie, opened the door and stepped closer to the objective. Doug joined Phil protecting the street and they took some shots at walkers getting a little closer than liked. Ned, carrying the victory conditions, decided to make a break for it, and got clear.

"I am so out of here"

This basically ended the game. Josh cleared the last objective and Ned walked off the exit zone.  The survivors win! However there were still three survivors on the board. Could we get them all off? Short answer, no. But it was fun trying! ^_^

Despite having read all of the Walking Dead comics, Phil was torn to pieces...

Being one survivor down makes the game pretty tough, your options change, and running seems like a much better idea if you can. I managed to get Josh through the bottleneck thanks to his slippery talent. Phil took down three Zombies, letting Doug get past, but trapping himself there. as he ran out of Actions, and then there was four zombies Spawning on top of him. He missed twice with his pistol, took down two others, but was finally brought down... Fighting to the very end!

---

There are a few things we will do differently when we play this again, search lots more and make sure all survivors can open doors and get some big weapons for more dangerous foes being crucial. Everything worked, but there was quite a bit of luck in the win, having some redundancies will be important. At the end of the day this was a lot of fun. It captures the run and fight aspect of the horde of the living dead really well, and if you stay still for to long you will be trapped, especially when you hit higher danger levels. I'm very eager to play the next few missions.

Review Bottom Line: Love it. Fun game. Fast paced. Balanced Rules. With all the additions coming out you will not be disappointed with it. Really good if you want to have fun with friends in a non-combative atmosphere!

Next time I'll briefly discuss all the extras, and the online stuff Guillotine Games have made available... Bye bye!

Zombicide Review: Part One

As a fan of the horde of the living dead, I naturally got into the Zombicide Kickstarter pretty early on... I believe my exact words were "shut up and take my money", but I digress. The international orders shipped a little while ago, and I was lucky enough to get my last week. It has sat in the corner of my room calling to me for a few days, but I withstood the temptation until I had more time to open it up and breath in the goodness. Zombicide is released to everyone pretty soon so I figured I'd chuck out a review over a couple of parts so people can see what they'd be getting when they purchase it.

Zombicide is co-op game for 1 - 6 players, for ages 13 & up. It's designed by Guillotine Games in association with Cool Mini or Not. I'll break the review down into a couple of sections. Game play will be up in a few days. I'm gonna solo play a mission tonight and hopefully get a quick game in tomorrow night with a few friends.

Right away Zombicide captures your attention. I gotta say the box itself looks mighty impressive.

Box Cover

Box Bottom

The box is a big chunky affair, and has a pretty good weight to it, which always makes people happy. The cover art is enough to capture most peoples attention from the get go; and with its animation style art you get a feel for the feel of game from the very start. But let's take a look inside...

Contents

The first thing you notice is the way all of the contents are neatly packed into their own compartments. As someone who gets quite a few board games, I gotta say this is a pretty important  thing for me. There is NOTHING worse than getting a game with miniatures and they're all just stuck in a plastic bag to bend around and get damaged during transit. I imagine that the good folks at CMoN had a hand in making sure the miniatures were well packaged. The tile holder is a nice touch as well. I'll be keeping all the inner boxes, as well as the plastic trays... The tiles and tokens are thick card stock and are pretty tough. Everything is double sided, including the game board tiles; locked doors on one side, busted down doors on the other. I like the Pimpmobile car (look for it in later photos) a little to much... Which is disturbing... ^_^

Survivors... Except that Big Grey guy.  I suggest running...

"You're gonna need a bigger Gun..."

The mini count for the game is 71 in the box (Let's not bring up the Kickstarter pledge rewards just yet...). 6 Survivors, 40 Walkers, 16 Runners, 8 Fatties & 1 Abomination. I can handle those numbers... I might have to engage in some batch painting *shudder*, but I can handle those numbers... Yes good reader, I am trying to convince myself... Big thanks to Regan for offering to paint ONE miniature, you're all heart... Let's see what else is in the box...

Character Tiles

Blank sheet on the back of every tile.
Very groovy.

If you know nothing about Zombicide then the character tile shows an important point. Your characters get better with the more zombies you kill. I like this, I like this a lot. One of the bigger problems with other zombie games is that everything is pretty static character wise, also you've got an inventory too... Quite important when deciding to ditch that baseball bat for a chainsaw... Chainsaws make noise people! Zombies are attracted to noise! the blank sheet on the back is cool, means you get to make your own characters down the line... I think I'll be laminating mine. Each sheet comes with a XP tracker to stick on, but I still think dry-board marker might work better...

Zee rules...

Rule Layout. Clear and easy.

The rule book is 28 pages long. Everything is laid out in an easy to understand format and flows nicely. Game play will be discussed next time in case you're wondering... The back page has a turn summary. A couple of those for people to hold onto and pass around might be needed in addition to the rule book. Small issue, but easily rectified. There are ten missions in the rule book, there is also a map Map Editor for creating your own missions. I'm not sure if that is available for everyone just yet, or only the Kickstarter crew? I'll put up a link to it when I find out...

The cards. Zombie Spawn pile and player items.

The cards are pretty standard, although a touch smaller than I'd like, means they're quite fiddly. But since it's co-op you can lay your cards out in front of you. So what does it look like all laid out? Well, here's a small sneak-peak:

PIMPmobile... Oh god, I have a problem...

"Quickly! To the pimpmobile!"

Next time, I'm gonna talk about the game play. So  if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to go a little further... Ten points for the movie quote...

Finecast status check...

I am a Finecast critic. I want to get that out at the very start. I think 'Finecast' miniatures were a failure from before they were released. I have gotten a selection of them since release and have been massively disappointed every time. The details are good, yes. But the flaws when present, which is often, are horrible, and releasing liquid green stuff for release at the same time shows a marketing plan where Quality Assurance was second to profit As a friend put it; Finecast & liquid green stuff is kind of like a cruise ship charging for life jackets after running aground. Suffice to say I have not been happy with Finecast and my purchases from GW have been lacking because of this...

Fast forward to today, GW announces new Finecast miniatures are available for pre-order and one of those miniatures is the 'Blood Angels Vanguard Veteran'. 

This miniature was the pinnacle of GW Metal miniatures. When I got mine it was flawless, an absolute gem of lines and details. It went together flawlessly and looked amazing. So much so, that I put it away, to paint when I happier with my ability to do it justice. Seeing that it will soon be available as a 'Finecast' fills me with dread. I can only imagine the number of bent swords (cough cough), bubbled torsos and chipped details that will come out. But I am willing to give Games Workshop the benefit of the doubt that they may have improved. Indeed, this release offers me the perfect chance for an evaluation of current Games Workshop Citadel Finecast products. Have they improved? Are they still willing to push faulty products?

I'm looking forward to the release in a couple of weeks, so I can photo both the metal miniature and the Finecast one straight from the box and compare them... This is basically the last chance I'll be giving Finecast miniatures... It should be interesting...

This too shall pass...

I'm pushing ahead and figure the way forward is to put aside all my current projects and paint something I've never even considered before and see how I go with the motivation... To that end I spent the afternoon making a base for my chaos sorcerer guy... At least I think he's a chaos sorcerer... Truth be told I have ZERO clue where I got this miniature. It did say GW on the tab, so at least I know the brand...

Painting motivation...

I'm having some massive problems with motivation to paint these days. It's not just a case of not wanting to, because I do want to, but when I sit down to actually paint some stuff I can't seem to keep going. I'll do a tiny little bit and then descend to read... I thought I was bored with GW stuff so I tried a few different things, but the result is the same. I start, I get bored, I leave. If you're bored when you're painting what should you do!? If I'm bored when I paint a mini I can only imagine that the mini will be boring to look at when I finish...

Part of me wonders if the 'critical recpetion' I got when my mini-diorama was posted on the GW Facebook page is part of the problem here. Not all of it was negative, but having it ripped to shreds by the few who did so was a real good kick to my painting gonads. It's at times like these I'm glad I'm not good enough to take commissions, because then I'd be up a certain creek without the paddle... Or even the boat!

So what are the options I've got?

a) Pack everything away until I feel the desire to paint? Dunno if this will work. Like I said, I do want to paint. Or at least I think I do. But ensuring I stay painting when I start is the goal. Besides what would I do with the room... (Yes, good one, that's what we should be concerned with...)

b) Paint anyway! Force it until I get 'Over the Hump'. A possibility, I've done it before when I wanted to get a few things finished, but the overall-outcome wasn't the best. I'm a trainee perfectionist at heart. Failure to get things right just pisses me off, but forcing things will leave me in a state of 'Close Enoughs' which isn't fun when you look back on stuff...

c) A new option! Feel free to chime in here. If you've got advice for me; good, bad or mean, let me have it!

 Finally finished the Diorama!

Marine and Dark Eldar:

Using the internet for gain. Or: HELP ME WIN LOOT!!

We need you! Haqqislam Soldiers are trapped in tiny cells awaiting liberation and redeployment to a battle field of my choosing! Your actions are all that stand between their freedom!

Now I hear you saying: 'But I'm just one stunningly amazing modest person! What can I do to help?'

The answer is simple! Are you on the Facebook? If so go to this page and click 'Like'.

The Ork knows what to do! Be strong! Be Vigilant! AND HELP ME WIN LOOT!

IT CONTINUES!

Here is the start of the Dark Eldar mini to go with the diorama. It's for Xarboth over at 40k forums.com. I needed to check with him that the blue was appropriate. He said to go nuts with it...So I did...

More of the blue. Still some more to do, a few more layers and washes and layers... Some people said not to go with blue up around his head cloth, but it seemed appropriate. You can be the judge. :)

EDIT: I had to stop using my WIP backgrounds. The blue was too close to the blue used.

EDIT: I can't stop singing "I feel pretty... Oh so pretty..." Every time I look at the miniature... I think I Should be concerned...

Mini Diorama Continues...

More work on the Diorama. Mainly Battle Damage. Rawr! ^_^