Deathwatch: Stage One Complete

Fifteen of the Emperor's Finest venture forth into The Jericho Reach

After a while of gathering and collecting bits, my Deathwatch "platoon" is finally finished. I dug through my bits box quite extensively to get these guys started, but I promise you I would have NEVER completed them without the Barter Bucket.

First and foremost, these have not been assembled for 40k games, although I'm sure they'll see some action at one point in that capacity. No, these are for the Deathwatch RPG coming out (hopefully) this summer. These figs make excellent PC and NPC characters, and let's be honest, it was also a really good excuse to just do up some characterful models! Given that, who knows where they'll see action, any kind of small-scale skirmish is fair game.

Companies always say, "Make the game your own..." and that's what I intend to do here. I don't know what the "official" canon is when it comes to Deathwatch organization, but I had to come up with something that would solve any PC situation, regardless of what class they chose. That's the other thing, the DW RPG has introduced a new twist to the Deathwatch: classes; these include Tactical, Devastator, Assault, Librarian, Apothecary, Tech Priest.

My overall platoon consists of three squads, each with five marines. Two of the squads are fire-teams with a variety of troops, and the third squad is the command squad with associated specialist marines. Plus, they can all fit cozily in a Land Raider Crusader.


The Command Squad

My command squad consists of the Deathwatch commander himself (or whatever you call the high ranking-give you your missions guy) and the platoon's cadre of specialists. These include a Librarian, an Apothecary, a Techmarine, and a Lieutenant (or second-in-command, what have you). These specialists can and will be "loaned" out on a mission-by-mission basis to the other fire-team squads in the platoon as needed. So if a player at the table wants to play, say, a Techmarine, no problem. There may be only one in the platoon but when squad A goes dirtside, they might need the Techmarine to drop with them for a specific role.


The Deathwatch Commander in Terminator armor



Apothecary (left), and Lieutenant (right)

Nobody ever wants to play the medic/cleric/healer. Well some people do, but not me. Anyway, when making the Apothecary, I went with trying to make him look as 'cool' as I could. The only medic bit I had was the backpack, but that should be good enough. He's also got a scoped out bolter (Deathwatch standard) and a chainsword (for those battlefield amputations). Rounding out his kit is a first edition, Rogue Trader MkVI combat knife, and a missile reload. I clipped the missile reload to make it look different, and will paint it up as syringes and medical vials. My favorite part of this fig is his limited edition GamesDay captain head.

As you know, I'm a Dark Angels player. Given that I really tooled this guy up. He's got a power sword on his hip, and he keeps his detached scope here as well. He's also got an incense censer and a double mag pouch. His boltgun barrel was a mistake, I was trying to drill holes in the barrel as I had done the others, but screwed it up. Out of frustration, I just clipped a sprue bit and glued it on as a longer barrel. Now we can call it a Stalker-pattern bolter, haha. He's also got the cool DA hooded head and embossed Dark Angel shoulder pads.



Librarian (left), and Tech Priest (right)

You've seen the Techmarine before, and now he's got a new, all-metal cohort in the form of a Librarian. This is another limited edition fig, I don't know exactly where it came from, but I'm thinking it was another GamesDay promo. He fits the rest of my DW pre-reqs too; no helmet, and a scoped-out boltgun. I put Chaplain Grimaldus' backpack on him too since it has tomes chained to it, I thought that'd be a cool touch for someone of his discipline.


Kill-Team Lazarus


Kill-Team Gabriel

In addition to the command squad, the platoon also has two fire-teams, aka kill-teams. Each of these teams equal five troopers and are each composed of: two tactical marines, one devastator marine, one assault marine, and one sergeant. The platoon can mix-and-match, so if a squad needed to act as fire support, the other devastator from squad A would join squad B, or if a squad needed to act as a spearhead, both assault troopers would operate together.



The Sergeants

I really stressed overall character in each and every model I built for the Deathwatch. This shows a lot with the sergeants here. Deathwatch also offers a lot of fluff and mechanical differences just between the different chapters, so I'm trying to get figs to individually look like their parent chapters. In the two cases above we have a White Scars trooper and a stalwart Ultramarine as the respective sergeants of Kill-Teams Lazarus and Gabriel.

The White Scars sergeant has a 2nd edition backpack, and is equipped with a chainsword and 'Deathwatch' boltgun. He also has a ceremonial blade on his belt as well as a double mag pouch. The Ultramarine has a boltgun, which I still need to put a scope on. I think I'll go with using a Kroot rifle barrel tip and trim it down to look like a holographic sight. He also has a holstered pistol and a double mag pouch. He's a bit more clean cut looking as well.



Assault Troopers

Two brave marines equipped with jump packs round out the assault element of the platoon. I just had to go with a Space Wolf for one of these guys, and he's the one with the big hair. He's got a chainaxe converted from an old Chaos Marine sprue, and his right arm is actually a SM scout, arm with scoped-out, suppressed bolt pistol. On his hip is an old, 2nd edition hand flamer. He also has a wide bladed combat knife. The other trooper will probably be one of the Fists, either Crimson or Imperial. He has a very clean cut marine head but I don't know where it's from. He dual-wields a power sword and plasma pistol. He also has a bolt pistol within reach on his leg, and an equipment pouch. I'm very satisfied with how both of these turned out.



The Devastators

The pics I've seen of Deathwatch devastator marines have shown them all with heavy bolters, but I didn't have any heavy bolters! I did have a heavy plasma gun though, plus some missile launcher bits too, so there you go, a pair of heavy weapon marines; one for each Kill-Team. I made sure to also give both of them bolt pistols as their sidearms.



The backbone of the Deathwatch; the Tactical Troopers

The only real difference between these guys and everyone else is that these guys make it work without needing any fancy weapons! I tried to keep going for different 'looks' with the tactical marines as well. Using slightly different bits on each helped achieve this.

There's an obvious Black Templar with his Emperor's Champion backpack and clean cut head with bionic-monocle eye, he's also got an older knife and double mag pouch. One would pass for any of your codex, clean cut chapters with his Val Kilmer 'flat top' head. He's equipped with an auspex and a knife from a Catachan sprue. A third trooper has the head from Scout Captain Telion and a Kroot 'pistol package' on his belt. He also has double mag pouch; he could also pass for any chapter, I'm thinking Salamanders? Last is the only fig without an actual Space Marine head. I used a WHFB High Elf head with long hair and headband looking thing, so I guess he could pass as a Blood Angel in a pinch. He has utility pouches and a combat blade. All the tactical troopers have scoped-out "DW" bolters as their primary weapons.

Whew, that's a lot of talking for these guys aye? What can I say, they were a blast to put together, I had a lot of fun mixing and matching pieces and trying to get certain looks achieved. I feel good in saying I accomplished making each one a true individual. Grab any random trooper from the bunch and you'll see all kinds of little bits that set them apart from the others. Aside from the two metal figs and the one High Elf head, I had twelve troopers without helmets, and I used twelve completely separate and unique Space Marine heads as well.

Now of course I have to paint them, ahem...

600 Pounds of Top Soil Later...

This last weekend I got the garden up to readiness and then in the evening on Sunday got to planting. I had built the two newer boxes, and plotted a third box up top the week before. I started out this weekend by building the last of my raised beds for the year, and it ended up being absolutely huge, probably the largest single box I have in all. My post title is no joke, filling up the new boxes and mixing in some fresh dirt with last year's boxes, I ended up using fifteen 40-pound bags of top soil, yeah, six hundred pounds of soil!


The newest raised bed


zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, and more

It may look like a lot of wasted space in here with that tiny little plant, but this year I'm going with many more seeds than I did last year. The small plant is zucchini, and on the far left are my cucumber seeds. In the middle will be some Japanese eggplant if I can find some. If not, I don't know what else will go in here. Between the cucumbers and zucchini though, they may end up taking over most of this box as it is. I'd like to add at least one more veggie.


the staggered beds from last year, plus the new ones


hot banana peppers (front), cayenne peppers (middle), jalapeño peppers (top)

You can tell from the wood this may be the last year I get out of these landscape timbered beds. Trying to fix the middle box, two of the timbers just crumbled away in my hands so I had to put in a makeshift dirt dam. The jalapeño plants up top are heirloom seeds.


green bell peppers, red bell peppers, carrots, and basil

Here's the new bed I was building in the last post (with all the safety violations). I really intended on just making the one bed up front, but kind of just lucked out with the triangular bed in the back. It'll be hard to reach that one, so that's where the basil is going. Have you priced green or red peppers at the store lately? I have, and that's why this year I've made sure to put at least three of each out here. The carrots (can't see the seeds here) were just kind of a lark, but hopefully they'll turn out, but if not I won't hold it against them.


beefsteak and roma tomatoes

I mentioned last week that my tomatoes were out of control the year before. Out of control in a good way mind you, but they were impossible to manage. This year I'm not going to stake them, but use these cages. Also, instead of eight plants of a bunch of different types, I'm going with just two types; roma and beefsteak. Beefsteak tomatoes are great for salads and for slicing. They're also considered 'indeterminate', meaning they'll yield all season long. They're not your classic round shape, but that's okay, some of the uglier veggies are the tastiest. I have two cages of those. The last type, the romas, are smaller, firmer, and less juicy. These I am growing with the express purpose of salsa making. They're easier to cut up and scoop out, plus they won't over-water your salsa in the long run if it sits overnight.

I learned about tomatoes the most from last year's garden, so that's where the biggest change is, but I'm actually doing a lot of things differently this year. As you can see from last year's initial garden, I've more than doubled its size but still kept it fairly small overall. I've also doubled, maybe tripled, my vegetable variety with a better understanding on root growth and the like. I shouldn't have the overcrowding problems I did either with the way I've laid things out. This year I also took care in what specific types of plants I put out there and kept a mind towards acquiring heirloom seeds and the like. We'll see how it turns out!

The Hit-Girl Controversy

Meet Hit Girl: The Coolest (And Most Controversial) Superhero of the Year
InsideMovies.com, -Kara Warner
Entertainment Weekly's Adam Markovitz isn't surprised about more potential parental group grumblings, which will likely increase after the film opens in theaters April 16. "Some people have very strong beliefs about what kids should and shouldn't be asked to do," he says. "Even within the context of a movie ... It's a little girl swearing and stabbing through the head and that's bound to create controversy."

'One of the most irresponsible films ever'?
New York Post, -Kyle Smith

"If you don't like violent movies, fine, but don't say you weren't forewarned when the movie is rated R for "strong brutal violence throughout" and for many other good reasons."

Hit Girl Controversy: Is She Kick-@ss or a Bad Influence?
Associated Content.com, -Aida Ekberg
"Perhaps the real controversy doesn't lie in Hit Girl violently killing evil adults without it affecting her, but in the fact that her father Big Daddy is willing to sacrifice his daughter for revenge."



Kick-@ss's Hit Girl, and 9 Other Controversial Cinematic Children Up to No Good
Movie Line Nine, Kyle Buchanan

Chloe Moretz, 13, can kick your you-know-what
USA Today, Scott Bowles
"I don't see what the big deal of it was," says Moretz, who swears she had never said the word before reading the script and has never used it privately. "Just because I talk a way in a movie doesn't mean I'd ever do it in real life. My friends don't talk that way."

The Geek Beat: Hit-Girl Hysteria
Cinematical.com, -Elisabeth Rapper
What I find fascinating is what other writers have already theorized -- that there wouldn't be much hand-wringing if the character was called Hit Boy. Every bit of hand-wringing emphasizes Hit Girl's gender rather than her age, stresses her corruption, and worries about her language. A girl should never, ever be thinking such ugly things, let alone doing them.



Feisty Hit-Girl is a Positive Role Model -- and a Rare Kick in the @ss
Independent.IE, -Julia Molony
"The character represents the indulgence of two powerful adolescent urges. First, taboo breaking. (That's there in the prolific use of shocking profanities). And second, independence. That she is small and slight and sweet only serves to drive home the point even harder. Nobody can stop, chasten or restrain her. And if they try, she'll kick their ass."

Centaur Princess Chronicles, pt. 14

The Centaur Princess Chronicles

"There was a princess who lived in the forest. She was a centaur; half horse and half human. She wore her long, brown hair in thick braids and she had sparkling green eyes. She and her tribe were respectful of nature. Today was a special day because it was her birthday."

"It was the centaur princess' 16th birthday, which was special in her tribe. This meant that she was old enough to be considered a responsible adult. To prove this, she had to do a special quest. She got to pick what her quest would be."

"The centaur princess went to the oldest of the tribe, the wise woman. The wise woman was the keeper of the stories and she had many books in her hut. The two stayed up long in the night, reading about these legends by candlelight."

"There was a tale of old that spoke about an ice crown that belonged to a centaur queen. It was a very magical crown and all the best wizards helped to make it. There was an ogre; a large, terrible ogre warlock who was jealous and wanted the crown for himself."

"In a battle only remembered in ancient books, the ogre warlock attacked the centaurs. He had many monsters to help him. He stole the ice crown and fled to his fortress in the mountains."

"The centaur princess decided her quest would be to find the ogre warlock and take the ice crown back. It would be a hard quest and many thought it would be too difficult for her to do. But she had courage, and she made up her mind!"

"It was still winter but the centaur princess did not want to wait until spring to go on her quest. She would leave this week, but first she had to get supplies and say 'goodbye' to her family. It was a dangerous journey and she might not make it back."

"The mom and dad of the centaur princess were because their baby had grown up so fast. They were also very proud of her because she had grown up to be an honorable and caring young woman. They had a special feast the night before the princess was to leave on her journey."

"During the feast the dad of the centaur princess gave her his old bow made of white wood and it had green leaves painted all over it. He told her it would always aim true as long as her heart was true. It was her bow now."

"The mom of the centaur princess gave her a special necklace during the feast. It was called the Heart of the Forest and was a large, green gem the color of the princess' eyes. It glowed a magical green, and with it she could talk to the animals of the forest."

"The rest of the night was spent in celebration and feasting. Centaurs danced late into the night under a bright, full moon. The centaur princess was told she could take, and only one friend to help her on her quest. She thought long and hard about this."

"The centaur princess chose to take one ally with her to get the crown back. She chose her best friend she had known since they were both very young. This friend wasn't a centaur, but a sprite. This sprite was a special kind of wizard called a song spinner."

"The two stopped for lunch and the snow was getting thicker. Instead of going further, they decided to just make camp. They didn't know eyes were watching them from the snowy shadows. By this time there were more however, lots more!"

The Dark Knight? Not Exactly...

A lot of good movies are comics first...

Geez, it took me forever to finally get around to seeing the latest caped crusader flick. Except here, the star of the show's namesake doesn't wear a cape, apparently taking a page from Edna Mode's notebook. It's a tough one to narrow down, and looking at the taglines at IMDB.com, it was hard to narrow down there too: action, comedy, crime, drama, thriller...

It's a fun movie, it doesn't take itself too seriously, yet there are moments that are very serious. For the most part it is tongue-in-cheek while paying some seriously subtle homages to long-standing comic heroes; Spider-Man, Batman, and the like. The one-liners are delivered with effectual timing and feeling, and the overall dialogue as a whole was spot-on. Typing this, in hindsight, the dialogue was incredibly well done and ends up being very believable.

This world doesn't have "real" superheroes with actual super powers, but it does have those who are willing to don a mask and do their part. Along with the main character we have a small handful of others doing their part, and the youngest of the bunch, Hit-Girl really steals the show. This pint-sized powerhouse slices and dices her way through witty banter that would make a sailor blush, and action sequences that would make John Woo proud.

And in the "never thought I'd say this" department, Nicolas Cage does an excellent job as Big Daddy, the ex-cop turned crime fighter with an arsenal to make Frank Castle jealous. As a civilian, Cage plays a regular, albeit quirky father, but in the mask, Cage goes into total Adam West mode, and it's not shtick, he dons the mantle seriously.

I've gone on about the characters, but really, that's what the movie is about. That sounds obvious, but it's not the special effects, or the fight scenes (which rock), but it's the people in and out of costume that you get invested in. The story has some predictable moments, but at the same time it also some pretty surprising ones. It has a harsh grit to it, one I would compare to something like Sin City actually. It's in this unabashed brutality, for lack of a better word, that the humor, story, characters, and dialogue are juxtaposed against.

Just like all of those tags on IMDB, I can't really give one reason to see this movie. There are several reasons to go see it. If you think from the trailers and ad spots it's just a funny movie about high school kids being supers, it's not. It's also not a completely dark world like the current Gotham incarnations. It is, however, a superhero flick worth seeing.

Mouse Patrol T-Shirt: Product Review

In the mail today I got another gamer shirt! Not just any gamer shirt, but yet another fine piece from the group's podcast endeavor, the Minions of the Monster Master.

This is the second of the group's shirts I've picked up, here's the review of the first one (which I happen to be wearing as I type this). And to be honest, yeah, thirty-five years old and my mom still bought me this one. Thanks mom! To her credit she bought one for herself too, pretty cool.

Here's the official blurb from the store:

Time for the Guard to fall in! This shirt, available in two light colors, features a roll call of the podcast hosts in their "mouse patrol" RPG guises.

Look cool without breaking the bank. Our durable, high-quality, pre-shrunk 100% cotton t-shirt is what to wear when you want to go comfortably casual. Preshrunk, durable and guaranteed.

• 5.6 oz. 100% cotton
• Standard fit

Like the last one, the fabric thickness meter on the site it lists this shirt as just a notch or two below the midway point as well. But also with the green one, this new shirt is comfortably thick, but not too much so, and certainly not too thin. It feels very durable.


This is the graphic for the shirt via Chris Miller, sans text

As I've said before, I'm a big guy for my height, about 100 kilos, and sometimes "extra large" shirts aren't so large. Looking at the pic, the extra-large doesn't seem skin tight, but I could tell immediately after putting it on, it was not quite as roomy as the last shirt. Now when I said "it doesn't seem skin tight", just ignore the belly area, that's not the shirt's fault! Maybe I've eaten a bit much this weekend, or maybe this shirt is just a tiny bit smaller.


The graphic on the front is printed well, but I think the 'ash gray' color darkens it unnecessarily, especially in the areas where the graphic is the darkest. Also, the gray has something of a speckled pattern to it, it's light, but it's there. These light speckles kind of show through on certain parts of the graphic, mainly in areas where the color palette is on the lighter end of the spectrum. A brighter color would definitely 'liven' it up a little bit and make the vividness in the colors really "pop". For this reason I deleted the 'ash gray' shirt option on the site. The only option available now is 'natural' and I know it will have much bolder color.

Well, another $15 bucks, and another solid shirt on my back that looks great. This one is especially fun because it has great pics of all of our characters from our Mouse Guard campaign and is full of personlaity and just plain cool to boot. As usual, Chris' art is spot on, and to see it in shirt form is simply icing on the cake. Well, that's two down, but there is still tons of other options in terms of both color as well as designs, including the classic black. In the end I'm very happy with this new addition as well. Here's the official store link, enjoy!

Arcane Legions Up For Grabs

That's a lot of game for just...$45 bucks!

Well I don't feel too shameful posting this here, after all I've got well over five hundred posts and nary a 'buy my stuff' post in sight. It's pretty simple, I've had my Arcane Legions stuff sitting on a shelf for some time, and it's pretty apparent that my group's not going to be getting around to playing it anytime soon. Also, if you're a regular reader here, you know that A) we keep a very busy gaming around these parts, and B) with the Vikings almost done, 15mm sci-fi is nearing it's time in the limelight. Hence these guys on the block.


Full-on Han



Pre-painted characters and critters from three booster packs (x19)


Chinese Infantry Swordsmen (x20)


Chinese Archers (x20)


Cavalry, five each of archer, light, and heavy Samurai (x15)


To begin with I have the starter boxed set, which includes three armies (Egyptian, Han, and Empire). My buddy Chrispy also got a starter box for himself, and we traded; he got all of my Roman army stuff and I got all of his Han army stuff. So this is a starter box with all of the regular starter box stuff, except it's got double the Han, and zero Romans.


The starter Egyptian army, unopened


Just a bunch of the extras; bases, turn template, unit cards...


So why just $45 bucks? 'Cause that's all I paid for it. You may recall, I won the starter box in a raffle, so all I paid for was the three booster packs and the cavalry pack. There's another 'intangible' that comes with all of this, and that is where I've already snipped, trimmed, and assembled all of the Han models I had. This was a pretty tedious process, so I saved you a bunch of time, haha. I'm opening this up to the readers here first, if I don't get any bites, I'll be sticking it up on eBay for probably double as a 'buy it now'.

I'm not going to give you a sales pitch or anything, I've posted a review of it a while back anyway, but I will say it's a cool little, self-contained miniatures game that's got a lot of tactical and strategic options. I'm just hoping it will find some play in another person's collection. Furthermore, the money I get from selling this is going to go right back into 15mm sci-fi so I can pick up the fairly recent Future War Commander rulebook. I'll also go with a straight up trade, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, haha.


The whole enchilada:

• AL Starter box, double Han, no Romans
• AL Han Army booster packs, x3
• AL Han Army cavalry box
• Han army completely assembled

How about we throw in five bucks for shipping bringing it to an even fifty for the lot? If you're outside the United States, we may need to talk about the shipping charges a little bit. We can do PayPal, money order, check, whatever, I'm pretty easy going. Just email me at "miksminis at gmail.com" if you're interested, 'cause I really want to get FWCommander!

EDIT: SOLD! Thanks again Jason!

Valuable Cash and Prizes!

another winning random Google image search pic...

The "Pay-it-Forward" Super Blog Chain Giveaway!

Want some good gaming karma? Ready to 'game-it-forward' as I've heard some put it? Looking for a killer set of brushes for the paint desk? Look no further than the Santa Cruz site:

Basically they [gave] away a great prize pack, but [there was a] catch. Whoever the winner [was had] to have an equally good prize of their own to give away on their own blog, with the same conditions to be met by the new winner, who will in turn do the same.

It's a great idea, and I think it goes on to help further grow those gamer connections I had eluded too in my barter bucket editorial not too long ago. So head over give it quick once-over and then jump feet first into the whirlwind of karmic gaming goodness.

EDIT: The winner of the first part of the contest has been announced, it was Cawshis Clay of the blog Adepticus Prime. Congrats to him! Now he has started phase two of the 'blog chain giveaway' and is offering up a unopened Eldar War Walker squad box. To win these walkers, good for any alien tech baddie in any rule-set, simply sign up at Adepticus Prime, and say what prize you'll offer to your readers if you win those walkers.

Strange Aeons: Review and Batrep

This week we got in our first game with Strange Aeons, the new indie skirmish game set in a pulp 1920's Cthulhu-mythos setting. I've seen this one before and it's very appealing to me in all aspects, plus there's a free demo ruleset out there too. Fortunately, Chrispy has a pension for new rules and trying out a wide variety of games, and like the Fear and Faith game we had a blast playing, he came ready once again with minis and rules at the ready.


The rules themselves are straight forward and honestly, nothing too entirely special. The mechanics are solid and intuitive and I found no fault with them really, but at the same time they don't exactly blow you away or anything either. These are just the gameplay mechanics mind you, whereas the rulebook really shines is in the campaign structure and narrative scenarios. A lot of thought is put into linked 'mini-campaigns' that can be played in one day, and the rules used to handle what goes on in between games is detailed and let's you build a band of heroes or villains that have depth and you can keep alive, adding new skills and strengths while they gain experience.

There are basically two factions, the Threshold Agents who are the good guys; two-fisted action heroes and academics who fight the unseen forces of Eldritch Horror. For the most part they are basic, albeit above average, humans that can at later times gain extraordinary skills and even arcane powers. The forces of darkness (I forget what they're called) comprise the cultists, their coven leaders, and creatures benign, obscure, and terrible (werewolves, Godlings, winged terrors, even Yeti and the like). Everything is built on a points system and you have different levels of heroes and villains with varying costs, plus the cost of their weapons and equipment.

The inhuman adversaries can be pretty powerful too, in the game we played my band of heroes, four in all with weapons, equaled 15 points total. On the villains side, a single winged Night Gaunt was 15 points by itself. There's plenty of skills, both martial and arcane, for both sides; for instance the coven leader on the bad guy side in our game had spells at his disposal.


Threshold Agents emerge from a dilapidated mausoleum

We started with a beginning scenario, in this case it was "Escape" and our characters were trying to flee the clutches of evil and get off the short edge of the table. There were three players; myself running a 15 point band of Threshold Agents, Jake (my non-gamer brother-in-law) ran another 15 point band of Threshold Agents, and Chri3 who was ran a 30 point band of cultists and critters. Chrispy, who the game belonged to, adjudicated the rules.


Captain Ace McCoy and his crack zeppelin crew, look familiar?


Barracus and his comrades claw through to the surface amidst ruins


The Cult of the Swollen Goat led by a Magus, with a Night Gaunt ally


The Swollen Goat advances across the board

Gameplay takes place in turn activated rounds. Each side has a leader or commander that has the ability to activate other models. On a leader's turn, they can activate two other models that same turn to act. All activated models get two actions (move, shoot, charge, etc.) and you can double up on actions if you like, such as moving or shooting twice. There will be times where you have more figures than you can activate, when you run out of activations, play goes to the next player. When they are done, if you have any figures that have yet to act this turn, they get to go. Play alternates in this manner until all models on both sides have had an activation. Once the round is over, a new one begins. There is also a command distance for leaders, and if models are outside this distance, they aren't able to become activated by the leader.


Boom! Murph lights up a couple of cultist thugs with dynamite

I was a little disappointed in the weapon selection in the rulebook. The model in the pic above is armed with a BAR, but there weren't any stats for one, or even something close. Handguns were either heavy (1911's, .44 revolvers, etc.) or light (.22's, .25's, etc.) but there weren't stats for individual ones, Mauser stats would've been nice.

They did have some pulp staples like Thompsons and what not. The melee weapons seemed a little more varied, but apparently for the points, the meat cleaver is your best bet. It's probably best just to call this one any short bladed weapon however so you don't have a band full of butcher shop employees running around fighting evil.


Even more BOOM! Jake's munitions expert, blows up a couple more cultists


Ace McCoy takes on the Night Gaunt, and loses...

The core mechanics are flexible enough to allow for some cinematic heroics and other tabletop shenanigans, which is a big plus for me. In the case above my character scaled a tree and charged into melee with the Night Gaunt, this melee was most unadvised since the human was incredibly outmatched in terms of both strength and ferocity.


Taking a stroll down Victory Lane

Jake and I lost sight of our objective, get off the board, and instead met our demise trying to destroy the cultists to a man. We were understandably confident, we had wiped out all of the basic cultists and only two models remained of the enemy. Unfortunately, those two models were the coven leader magus and the Night Gaunt, the two most powerful models on the table. Every time the magus would fail a spell check he would roll on the madness table, every time he did this he would inexplicably get the 'frenzy' side effect which made him incredibly good in melee. I think Chri3 was frustrated he couldn't make his spell checks, but you certainly can't complain with your magus becoming a melee master!

It was a loss for the Threshold Agents, we weren't able to make it off the board and to our freedom. One of my models, second-in-command Sheila Ripcord, took a grievous wound and on the 'post battle' chart she shuffled her mortal coil. All three of my other characters took minor wounds, which all came up being a non-issue after the game. Nobody was able to gain any skills however, and now I have to replace my dead lieutenant. Jake also lost a character, although it was his leader unfortunately. On the enemy's side, the cultists were all dead, but that didn't matter because they were only of 'minion' level anyway, not able to gain new skills. The two that did survive however are just going to be more powerful next time.

In the post-game there are some more cool things your band can do. One of these is search the battlefield for 'map pieces' and artifacts. These pieces, if found (which isn't always guaranteed) can unlock new options for your band and their linked games. One of these options is opening up side quests that you can play out for the heroes that give significant rewards if you're successful. Another option they can unlock is allowing you to buy named and special characters from the Threshold Agents list. These characters, such as martial arts experts, sharpshooters, and the like can only be purchased with points earned through map pieces and side quests.


My overall impressions of the game are quite favorable. It's skirmish level, so you don't need a lot of figures, plus it's pulp on top of that, so you get a really cool selection of figs on the market to pick from. The forces are diametrically opposed, so your good guys look like good guys, and your bad guys definitely look like bad guys. Take all of this goodness and roll it up in a fresh tortilla of Cthulhu-mythos, cover it with mini-campaign secret sauce, and you've got Strange Aeons. It'll satisfy your pulp skirmish itch, and crank it up many more notches by mixing it up with some very well thought out and characterful Eldritch Horror.