Monsterpocalypse is Coming!

Monsterpocalypse brings the kaiju (loosely translated from Japanese as ‘giant monster’) genre – a pop culture favorite – to the tabletop in the form of a fast-paced, action-packed CMG. Designed by Matt Wilson, the award winning creator of WARMACHINE and HORDES, Monsterpocalypse leverages the critically acclaimed abilities of Privateer Press as a leading miniatures manufacturer to enter a new category of product with a property that will appeal to a world-wide fan base of all ages.

I'm not entirely thrilled about the "collectible" aspect of it, but who am I kidding? This game looks to be a blast! I can't think of a better beer 'n pretzels format than giant monsters duking it out in the downtown streets. I've enjoyed WARMACHINE going on a few years now, and this being from the same creative team, I've got higher hopes than just some random CMG off the shelf from creators I've never heard of. There's no information on it other than a teaser off Privateer's main page, but something about this has got my interest piqued more than just a little. Lately there hasn't been a whole lot from the geek world out there to get me excited, but this here has done that very thing. It may have something do with all those hours playing Rampage back in the 1980's!

Black Basalt Towers

"Piping their powers from black basalt towers, they loom like colossi, I'm under their sway!" -Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

I'm not a big terrain guy, heh, I'm doing good just to paint my figs half the time! Just look at some battle reports here, the tabletop isn't exactly straining under the weight of beautiful terrain pieces. Sadly, a milk crate full of rounded shapes cut from wood with a jigsaw, then spray painted green is about as good as it gets. Terrain really makes the table though, and makes battles that much better.

Here's my first foray at "giving a crap" with terrain. I've got six little towers of black basalt, carved by hand, probably by human, but who knows? They can be clumped together to form an area of columns, maybe even rough terrain, or placed singularly here and there as tabletop "flavor text". I used a hot wire cutter to slice up some sheets of pink insulation foam. I then stacked little disks on top of each other, carving them up some more. Each tower is approximately 3.5" inches high, and everything's been mounted on 2" steel washers. Painting was nothing fancy, a coat of flat black, a heavy brush of midnight blue, then some dark gray drybrushing. I based them with some coarse railroad ballast and some "gravel", which turns out to my chagrin to be just clumps of dirt. A sprig of foliage rounds it all out. After looking at these photos, I'm going to go back and give the tan rocks a brown wash, and maybe drybrush areas of that ballast with some more gray.


Here's a size comparison shot next to a blurry 28mm sci-fi alien trooper. These could pass for either being carved by hand, or just part of the alien topography.


Here's another comparison shot, this time next to a 15mm trooper. At this scale they really do start to "loom", taking on an entirely different tabletop presence. I like how they can pull double duty in regards to scale also. Really, they could work for just about anything. Enjoy!

Enter Hacker-Pschorr

Named for the excellent beer, this Chaos Blood Bowl team hails from the north. Game night was going to be Wednesday night this week, but we had a last minute switch-up. At such short notice though, we didn't have anything planned, so we dusted off Blood Bowl, truly one of the greatest miniatures games...ever. Basically it's football, played with fantasy monsters and races, easy enough. It's got a set of rules that a newbie will know the ins and outs of by halftime, the replay value is high, and overall, it's just awesome to play. I truly forgot how much fun and how great of a game this is.

Maybe it's because fall is here, and I've been watching a lot of pro football, maybe it's because I am absolutely getting my butt kicked in our money fantasy football league, or maybe it's just because it's simply overdue, but we decided to kick it off Blood Bowl style, hopefully we can get the players on board. Back in the day, I think we hit our heyday in a pretty massive league; we numbered twelve players and had a deep league with tournies, a great commissioner who put out weekly newsletters, and updated league results at the local comic shop on the wall. There were some great times to be had back then, this was about twelve years ago or so. We've always had something going with Blood Bowl to one extent or another however, just like now. Here's a match report!


Here's the setup for the kickoff at the beginning of the second half. My team is a Chaos team, Andy's was a Human team. They're unfinished/unpainted because neither of us had ever played our prospective teams before. In the past Andy has been a stalwart Skaven player, and myself usually Wood Elves or Humans, and yeah, those teams are painted, heh.


Up top we've got a scramble for the ball. It doesn't look good for me since Andy's got a Sure Hands Catcher up there, with the Dodge skill too, no doubt. A pick up, a dodge or two, and it's open ground to the end zone...


...it didn't happen though! We burned through some reroll counters and had a few bad rolls. Needless to say, Horns on my Beastmen were kind of a saving grace thanks to the extra strength on a blitz. My Chaos Warriors already had the increased strength, so I was able to clear out some breathing room. Agility scores of three aren't too bad, but I don't have any of the specialized types like on a human team, so no Pass, Catch, or Sure Hands skills. I got the job done though and flung the ball down field. I had a Beastman make a quick pass to the Chaos Warrior seen here, who's making a mad dash to the end zone as fast as his speed five will let him.


Andy managed to get some of his team around my guy, much to my surprise, but they didn't have enough move to put me in multiple tackle zones. All I had to do was make a single dodge roll and I'm home free...which I did, woohoo! It was a grinding game without a lot of scoring, but still a lot of action. Possession of the ball changed hands more than a couple of times, and had a few good hits, one human getting taken out of the game. I'll hang with Chaos too, they'll take some getting used to, I like my fast and agile Elves, and my multi-purpose Humans, but a change of pace will be nice. Plus, as you can see from the pics, I can add a new project to the minis queue, which is refurbish my Chaos team. Oh, and I'd like to add a Minotaur.


A sight for sore eyes! Any Blood Bowl player will recognize this circle, it's part of the post-game ritual. We only had one player on either team earn enough star player points to get a skill roll, my TD scoring Chaos Warrior was the candidate. After much deliberation, I took the rather vanilla, but imperative, Block skill.

The Last Colony

Well, it's kinda obvious I haven't put brush to mini lately, however, I have been able to catch up on some reading. Some great reading as it turns out, too. John Scalzi is relatively new on the scene, his first sci-fi novel, Old Man's War, came out in 2005. OMW blew me away, it was a promising start to what is now a great trilogy, The Last Colony being the conclusion.

Our heroes of the Colonial Union are still with us, John and Jane, and they've staked out a modest foothold on a backwater colony world. Given the opportunity to help settle a new colony on an uncontested planet, they give up their routine and go. This wasn't a standard colonization from the word go, and our heroes find out far too late to be able to avoid trouble. The action escalates fairly quick, with a galaxy-spanning cluster mess coming to a head in orbit above the newly settled planet of Roanoke.

John could've written the whole book on just the rigors of getting the planet settled, and little else. I would've been happy with some kind of drawn out storyline with the Werewolf primitives, who were a bit scant in appearance. But I got a lot more, flying through the colonization steps we go knee deep into politics, both on a human scale, as well as the rest of the universe. Great character development and dialog took up a good deal of the book with a host of very interesting supporting characters. As with his books, there is a richly detailed universe contained within, leaning heavily on military sci-fi themes. Also, with his books, there's just enough ambiguity to leave much of the construction of his universe up to yourself, fleshing out empire of aliens who are only briefly hinted at. It's a great read, and quick too, that I highly recommend, make it part of the trilogy, Old Man's War, and The Ghost Brigades, forming the first two legs of the journey. Each book has it's own style and feel apart from the others, yet the three pull together and weave a story between them that neatly fits in the big picture.

The Orc King

Rolling right along with another Salvatore book, this one is the first of the new trilogy, Transitions. The Orc King picks off wonderfully right where the Hunter's Blades trilogy left off, with only a couple of months passing between them. The original party of well-known adventurers is present and the action takes place squarely in the Silver Marches region of the Forgotten Realms. This was a great book, plain and simple. It was wonderfully Dwarf-centric with a great deal of action, but not to the point of hollow distraction. Many split factions of the Orc hordes present themselves, and fringe elements, such as the Elves of the Moonwood are also in there. Salvatore even managing to return briefly to Auckney, the land from the novel Spine of the World.

Transitions is a trilogy title with so many implications too. Mainly, people will clamor for the information regarding the new shape the Realms are about to take as Wizards of the Coast get ready to change to their fourth edition rules. There is a prologue in the beginning where Drizzt, one hundred years in the future, speaks of the impending Spell Plague, the destruction of prominent cities, such as Luskan, and the chaos that has swept across the lands for over a century. Many characters undergo significant transitions as well, with at least one of them drastically changing character classes, and another taking a most divergent path to the rest of the heroes.

Salvatore plays with the emotions of the reader in a few, key, areas, making for some dramatic reading. During key battles, specifically in the end, the pace was so frantic, and tense, I found myself skipping words in the sentences just to reach the climax. I was caught off guard by many of the twists in the story as well, and am excited to see where the next book, the Pirate King will take us. It is clear that after the close of this book however, that this major story arc, four novels long in the making, has come to a clear conclusion. Five stars, two thumbs up, what have you, this one's worth reading for sure, even if you haven't invested the time to read the rest of Bob's massive library. Read the Hunter's Blade trilogy prior to it, because those books are excellently written as well, and combined with this one, make for a great tale.

Elf Ranger Mage

Lady Talon, a displaced High Elf who has become restless within the aristocratic circles of the Old World. She has turned her efforts to adventuring, and for a short time was the leader (umm, lantern holder) of a group of warriors. When Andar the Barbarian joined their ranks, to her chagrin, Lady Talon relinquished the responsibility of group leader to the musclebound Northerner. She shares a common arcane bond with the Wizard, Thane, yet she can hold her own in combat thanks to her array of magic rings, items, and fighting prowess. She is thankful for the presence of a cousin Wood Elf in the part, although she is openly arrogant towards Vynd.

Lady Talon is my second level character for Warhammer Quest, taking the Mage path of the Elf Ranger boxed set (as opposed to the Knight path). In addition to her standard stat line, she picked up an extra permanent wound thanks to a random traveling event. At second level instead of rolling up a new spell, she got the skill endure, once per adventure she can ignore the killing blow caused by a monster. Not bad, but I'd rather have a new spell. She's got enough gold (for now) to level up to third, if only we can find a city instead of constantly getting sidetracked by blizzards, plagues, and other maladies. She didn't cherry-pick the treasure cards, as some would suggest, ahem, but being the party leader for so long, she just happened to gain some powerful items.

First up are her rings, three in total. The Lightning Fire Ring; For a green item, this one is quite the gold producer. Once per adventure I can automatically strike a monster within line of sight for a whopping 5d6 damage, with no modifiers for armor or toughness. Invisibility Ring; Not as useful, this ring still comes in handy every now and then. For one turn I am immune to all attacks from monsters, yet I can still attack, it's good for ambushes and such. Ring of Regeneration; The last of my rings, this one will heal 2d6 wounds on the roll of a natural "6" each turn. It's not always reliable, but good to have just in case. No self-respecting Elf would go adventuring without their Boots of Swiftness, adding +1 movement while I wear them. These were super handy when I was the lantern bearer, but help out just as well now that I'm in the backfield. I've also got an Orb of Might, but I've been liberally using up its inherent magic power to help me cast spells. It's a neat item, but will be depleted by the end of the next dungeon I'm afraid. Last is my pride and joy, the Blade of Leaping Gold, which I painted the fig's sword to match the one on the card. Nothing fancy here, unless you consider +3 attacks per turn fancy, heh. Actually, in the hands of a Mage, or second line fighter, this blade is quite handy and can support the front line fighters quite well.

New Toopers Hit Dirtside

After what seemed like forever, I finally finished up the last of my 'core' Star Grunt II army. I've gone with a variant on the Islamic Federation overall, but I picked the best looking units from Ground Zero Games to round it out. I am using Islamic Federation troopers however for one of my rank and file platoons, troopers in helmets led by a command squad wearing keffiyehs. The last of three helmeted trooper squads are shown above.


In SGII, Power Armor is the last word in infantry units. They are the elite of the elite, and on the battlefield they truly deserve the fear they spread. MY PA platoon is smaller than regular infantry ones, as it should be, and these guys form the last of three total squads. Islamic Federation troops don't have Power Armor figs in the GZG catalog, so I went with NSL Power Armor, 'cause it looks killer. The entire army, now well over a hundred figs, shares the same color scheme, so there's an overall Islamic Federation feel, even if I did mix and match units. I'll get around to taking some large army pics, and maybe post a nifty TO&E as well. It's not completely done, remember that line of silver through the middle of my box? It's done for a while at least...

The Fountain of Light

Looks like Warhammer Quest was this week's game, woohoo! In a stunning display of both stategery and trickery, the man whose idea it was to play, Oz, backed out at the last minute, haha. Nonetheless, we trudged on, and trudge we did. Ray was playing the human Wizard, Thane, another return for this now second level mage. Given the items he now carries, as well as the plethora of spells he now has, he was rockin'. Jon was present with his character, the Wood Elf Vynd and his magic bow, magic arrows, magic potions...yeah, he was rockin' too. I played Sir Talon, err, make that Lady Talon. All transgendered Elf jokes aside, I hit the local hobby shop and picked up the Reaper Elf Wizard I had wanted and got her all painted up. She turned out rather well and when I get some good light, I'll snap some pics. According to Andy he said, and I quote, "This is probably the best figure you've ever painted." Hmm, coming from him, I'll take that any day of the week. Anyway, Lady Talon was in the hizzy, with rockin' magic items and the like; our second level party was doing well...very well. One would say, almost too well. To round it all out, Andy rolled up a new character, a Barbarian named, ahem, Andar. That means I lost the lantern, ugh. Losing the lantern also means losing the treasure responsibility, and after I screwed Ray with a 3gp Bag too! We're going to have to review the lantern rules anyway, I think it switches hands every game in the roleplay extended rules, but I dunno. With as easy as we rolled through the dungeon, we're certainly going with second level monsters next time, Andar may have a bit of a tough time, but he'll level up easy after a dungeon or two with the group. For this last jaunt, we headed through the dungeon looking for the Fountain of Light, which serves as the well of fresh water for the town of something-or-other. Anyway, those pesky Skaven dumped some of their warpstone in the drinkin' water and voila, some adventurers get suckered in to investigate. Enter us, we rocked. I forgot to take pics during the dungeon, so the only pic I have to offer is the shot above, a flaunting pic of enough WHQ hardware to make even the most diehard fan jealous, heh.

Works in Progress

All right, I've been pretty busy lately, in both the geek sense as well as everything else. I feel pretty darn productive as of late though and I've got some stuff ready to post. That 'projects' post below has done exactly what I intended this blog to do in the first place...keep me accountable and on track with my stuff. I probably won't even get a chance to go downstairs, let alone get any work done this weekend, but this is what I've been up to. I finished up those two squads of Star Grunt II troopers, they're finished, based, and sealed. I also went out and picked up the elf fig I mentioned, and painted her up in time for a game of WHQuest last Wednesday night, I'm really pleased with how the paint job came out too. Last up, which is kinda funny, I put together some terrain. I know I said it's the last thing on my list, but damnit, I had to make some mushrooms. I took all of those random wooden 'shrooms I whipped up ages ago and actually did something with them. I also went to work with the hot wire cutter and made little black basalt stone towers. They'll "loom like colossi" in a 15mm game, but just be some stone pillars in 25mm. All in all, I feel good cranking out some of this stuff over the last week or so and I'll post some pics soon. In the meantime, enjoy these WIP pics; up top is my painting desk, the pic on the bottom is the overflow work area (the corner of the 8x4 gaming table). Rock on...