Thor's Day Hero: Sarah Connor

The ultimate tough chick, Sarah Connor. From oblivious waitress to hardcore mother of the leader of humanity's resistance against robot overlords, Sarah Connor has more in the hard-as-nails department than anyone we've seen here at Thor's Day Heroes, male or female! She is tough but more than that, as a recurring theme of my favorite characters, she is fractured and her psyche is beyond repair. She has seen the future...in the form of homicidal, unstoppable killer robots sent to destroy her and her son. If they succeed, the world of mankind ends. No pressure, right? Welcome aboard Ms. Connor, make yourself at home but try not to carve anything on the picnic tables please.

First Game of Pulp Alley

Hello all, Chris here.

My lovely wife and I played our first game of Pulp Alley this past weekend (She's not really a gamer, but she humors me).  Since my normal gaming room is currently undergoing a transformation into a nursery, I set up a small table in my new (much reduced) gaming room.   Fortunately, Pulp Alley doesn't require a large playing area.

My wife took the part of the Good Guys, a league by the name of Tennessee Smith and Antiquities Incorporated.  This was a small league of four stalwart adventurers built around the "Company of Heroes" league perk.  I played the Bad Guys, in the form of the foul Cult of Evil Spiky Death.  I took the league perk of "Mastermind", which meant that the leader of my league would not take the field.  The group would be commanded by his second-in-command, Wilbur the High Priest of Spiky Death.  The Mastermind perk allowed me to take additional henchmen, which meant I outnumbered my wife's league, though with troops of a lower caliber.

We set up the table for the Smash and Grab scenario, the first scenario in the Pulp Alley rulebook.  This is a simple scenario, revolving around collecting "plot points" from around the table.   The game was a bit off-the-cuff, so my defining of these plot points was a bit weak.  We used some plastic skulls I bought last Halloween as plot point markers.

I am afraid I didn't take enough pictures to recreate the battle as a full report, but I do have a few to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Being our first time playing, the game didn't flow perfectly, with much consulting of the rulebook.   That is not a reflection on the rules themselves, which I found enjoyable.  I particularly like the "fortune deck" mechanic, which allows the players to influence events during the game by playing fortune cards.  The rules are simple enough to prevent bogging down, but with enough crunch to be interesting. 

That's all for now, so thank you for your kind attention, and until next time, carry on gaming!

Monday Night Miller 019 ~ Zombies & Me

Hey Everybody! Monday Night Miller time! Tonight's posting draws inspiration from a genre that I happen to love very much and has been quite plentiful as of late. The genre of which I speak is the Zompocalypse! the Zombiepocalypse? The Zombie Apocalypse. However you say/spell it, its great and its hot right now. Its not about sparkling and brooding vampires anymore. Wait! That was a thing?! Anyways. Reanimated corpses that decided that that awesomely magnificent white light just ain't for them. Thats what I'm here to talk about.

We've seen our fair share of Zombie themed games grace the table at Mik's. Some great venturings into "Zombie Cinema" and "Fear & Faith." The latter of which I still plan to run at some future undefined time... I know Mik, I know. However thats more about getting off my butt to paint some minis. In all fairness though, a good portion of that laziness is spent delving into more zombie based adventures. Be it Dead Rising (1 & 2), Black Ops (1 & 2), Read Dead Redemption (Undead Nightmare), Skyrim (Draugr are zombies, right?) You get the point. Zombies? Awesome. Video Games? Awesome. Zombie Video Games? Time well wasted? F yea!

Throw on that my weekly viewings of "The Walking Dead" while reading the original in comic form and constantly checking my IPod to get my fix for the Zombicide "Season 2" Kickstarter and I'm creaming cheese about these undead bastards. FYI there is a "Walking Dead" marathon all this week up until this next sunday, 3/31 Easter-freaking-Sunday, which happens to be the season finale for Season 3. Also there are, while I type this, 5 days left for the Kickstarter, its worth a look. 

A few years ago I even did a month's worth of postings over at Minions about the Zed nation, check it out. Anyways heres my doodle.

Braaaiiinnnsss!

~ Enjoy!

Thor's Day Hero: Sergeant Lincoln Osiris

"I know who I am. I'm the dude playin' the dude, disguised as another dude!" -Kirk Lazarus

The first ten minutes of Tropic Thunder are too funny. The rest of the movie isn't bad, but it's hard to match the humor up front. In it, Robert Downey, jr. plays grizzled Vietnam veteran Lincoln Osiris. There's obviously a lot going on with the Lincoln character, considering in the movie within the movie aspect on top of everything else. Lincoln Osiris as character though? Great. Great lines, though none I can repeat here, great intensity, and great over-the-top action. If you haven't seen the movie, it's almost worth it just for Osiris alone. So forget that he's a character played by a character about a fake movie in a real movie, Lincoln Osiris is on the skids so "elevator up" for the Thor's Day Heroes.

Monday Night Miller 018 ~ Star Basterds

Hey Everybody! Monday Night Miller time! Tonight I bring you something from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away... 

Hopefully the devout readers of Miks Minis remember a play report post of Savage Worlds ala Star Wars meets Inglorious Basterds back in September 2009. Holy cow thats a while ago, yet, I still remember that game like it was yesterday! If not you can check it out here. I can honestly say it is one of the best games to date that I've played with the Minions gaming group. It was so much fun in fact that Andy has agreed to run some more "Star Basterds" goodness later this year. I am so eager to play this great setting again that my gears have been spinning since it was first mentioned a couple of months ago. I took that inspiration and drew up a character concept I had for the first session but never got to explore. This character is so cool, at least to me (opposing opinions and comments welcome below), that it ended up becoming two characters in one. Now originally I had doodled this pair up during the game but have since misplaced the drawing. I'll be sure to post it here when I find it. 

The core half of the background behind the duo's concept is of a lone jawa left behind, barely clinging to life, after an attack by some sand troopers destroyed a convoy of Sand Crawlers believed to be housing rebel forces and conspirators. In the end there were no rebels within the massive Crawlers however all the jawa's loved ones had been massacred and left to be forgotten in the burning wreckage as the sands of Tatooine buried the horrific site from history. The jawa managed to survive the onslaught and harsh desert conditions driven only by its unspoken vow to do whatever it could to make the Empire pay for these heinous acts. A once passive creature turned into a blood hungry soldier in an ongoing war with a great evil.

The other half of the background is that of a B-1 Battle Droid discovered amongst the ruins of a  dilapidated Trade Federation bunker. As the aforementioned Jawa wandered the desert ,barely maintaining it's sanity, it stumbled upon the ruins and took shelter within during a terrible sand storm and found his future companion. The droid was physically just a fraction of its former self. Its lower half blasted away during an exchange of fire as a Tusken attack breached the inner command stations. Unable to resist its nature to scavenge, the Jawa went to work looking around for whatever it could find of value. Imagine its surprise when the droid it was pulling from some rubble startled to life. The droid was a sentient model and its mental capacity had deteriorated substantially as it had been on its own for quite some time. The resulting personalty was that of a quirky individual to say the least. It had a penchant to speak and act before thinking in addition to having a knack of not understanding the seriousness of tense situations. 

Originally the jawa had intended to sell off the droid as that model had become a rare find in recent history. However the droid proved quite useful in its knowledge of tactics and what it could remember of the locations of Federation holdings on Tatooine. A mutual respect developed and in time the jawa had befriended the droid and even managed to tinker with and fine tune its inner wirings making it a better shot, a long standing problem of battle droids and storm troopers alike. Together they become a formidable force to be reckoned with. A jawa who rarely speaks and a droid that does more than enough talking for the both of them. Not long after they joined a group in the business of doin' one thing and one thing only... killin' Storm Troopers.

Aldo & Raine!

Enjoy!

Super Saxon and the Mad Baron

Hello again, Chris here with an update on my Dux Brit progress, and a couple of other odds and ends.

I'm afraid my progress on my Dux forces is a bit lacking.  I have only managed to finish 4 additional figures, all Saxon warriors.

I don't think they turned out to badly, though the one on the right is a bit odd.  After going ahead with a red and blue paint scheme for him, with yellow edging on the tunic, I realized he reminded of Superman's costume.  It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Saxon!

Though I didn't make any more progress in painting, I have got the whole lot of Saxons and Britons cleaned up and based, so I'll be pressing on again soon.

In a diversion from this project, I pulled out some of my "Back of Beyond" figures from Copplestone Casting.  I've been reading a bit about this era recently, including the Bloody White Baron by James Palmer.  I was thus inspired to paint up the Mad Baron figure from Copplestone (well, at least the mounted version).

As with all the Copplestone figures I've worked on, he was fun to paint, with loads of character.  Might have to add a few Mongol horsemen to ride alongside him.

I always wanted to mention a new rules book I recently purchased,  Pulp Alley.

I have not had a chance to play it yet, but I like what I have read so far.  Looks to give an entertaining game of pulp adventure, with a small teams of 5 to 10 figures to a side.  I first heard about it over on the Lead Adventure Forum , where you can read some excellent after action reports on the game.

Well, that's all for now.  Thank you again for your kind attention, and until next time, carry on gaming!

Some More Art Leftovers: Eastern Flavors

Well obviously it's not Tuesday, so these art leftovers will have to share a spot with today's Thor's Day Hero, lest I intrude upon Rucht's Friday slot!  Since he's still hitting the gamer books hardcore, I'll leave him to his own.

Eastern flavors abound this issue, coincidentally I might add.  Way back in the day...we were playing a lot of Legends of the Five Rings.  Man, what a great game; excellent system, amazing genre, great history, all kinds of good stuff.  Black magic was prevalent, and something you did not want to mess with.  The above pic is of two of us meddling PCs, obviously messing with the very thing they shoudn't.  To quote Primus, "...and in doing so, each gave just a little bit of their souls away."

The next one, as the joke goes, was inspired by my lovely wife.  Yes, this limbless, grotesque, demon-hag of an Oni was all because of the woman I married and chose to spend the rest of my life with.  See, she had a weird dream once, and woke up and hastily drew a very weird image of the "thing" from her dream.  This was the best translation I could come up with.  How'd you think she inspired me?

Next up is a pair of seafood flavored nun-chuks.  To those that are offended by those who can't spell these martial art beat sticks, I apologize.  Anyway, they belonged to a monk from a Forgotten Realms campaign, he worshiped one of the sea gods, whose name completely escapes me. 

And finally we have a Naga from Five Rings, or just about any eastern fantasy setting.  I wanted my Naga a little less snake-man and a little more man-snake.  Hence this guy.  All said and done I was really happy with the way his short sword / dagger turned out.

All right, that's your art fix for the week.  Sorry it's a few days late, but better late than never!  How have you been?  Things are good here.  We got a Pathfinder game under our belts, so I'll be showing off some new Lego figs of that.  We've also got a Dark Heresy campaign about to kick off this Saturday that I'm really looking forward to, so until then, enjoy!

Thor's Day Hero: Ellen Ripley

The character of Ellen Ripley is a pretty dynamic one. Ripley spans over two hundred and fifty years within the Alien franchise timeline, and as an actor, Weaver played the role four times over almost twenty years, 1979-1997. This is just the character's longevity, let alone her force of will and on-screen presence. Ripley's shining moment was alongside the colonial marines in the second movie, but her performance in the first Alien film is actually a bit better. The third film saw her character come full circle and she was at her most vulnerable. By the time the fourth movie came about, we had a cloned Ripley much changed and in a new future that was both darker and more sinister. She knows how to wield an M41a Pulse Rifle, she can operate a power loader, she's got a commercial spaceship license, she hates it when androids offer her corn bread, and her maternal instinct meter goes to eleven. You gotta induct Ripley into the Thor's Day Heroes, the first truly strong heroine I can remember in film or television

Thor's Day Hero: Beach Head

As a kid 1986 was a pretty good year for toys. Being an avid GI Joe fan up until that point I was blown away (once again) by the new lineup in 1986. The Dreadnoks got a new member (who looked like half the friends my parents had), there was a really cool new sniper and even Cobra got a crazy android trooper. But Beach Head was by far the coolest that year.

He wasn't a ninja, but he had a cool mask sort of like one. He had a chest rig loaded with ammo mags, a cool sub-machinegun, and a backpack that had a crossbow on it. He had a few, brief shining moments in the comics, but he was very underplayed. Backyard action however was where Beach Head really cleaned house, often having to save the rest of team because they went and got captured or some such. For cool equipment and good childhood memories Beach Head is a welcome addition to the Thor's Day Heroes.

A bit more Dux Britiannarum

Hello again, Chris here to talk a little bit more about my Dux Britiannarum project. 

For those how aren't already playing Dux, I'll give a little background on the opposing forces I am attempting to paint.  The warbands consist of 38 figures for the Saxons, and 44 figures for the Britons.  These each include 1 warlord, 2 nobles, and 1 champion.  The remaining figures are broken down into groups of 6, with exception of missle troops which are composed of 4 men.  For me, at least, this is quite a bit of painting to be done, but I persevere!

I have a couple of pictures to share with you.  The first is a group shot of my Briton standard bearer, my Saxon champion, and a Merlin-type fellow.

These are all Gripping Beast figures, with LBMS transfers for the banner and shields.  The Merlin-type will serve no immediate use in the pursuit of Dux Brit completion, but he could be useful for a game of Song of Arthur and Merlin.  The LBMS transfers are great, helping to improve my mediocre paint job.

The next picture is of 4 unarmored Briton spearmen.  Not the most exciting figures, but a necessary component of any Arthurian warband.

Again, Gripping Beast figures, with LBMS transfers. 

I hope to have more to share with you soon, though I'm a bit stuck on the Saxons I'm currently working on.  I should have them done before my next post.  In addition to miniatures, I have been collecting some terrain for use with Dux Britiannarum, including a set of buildings.  I'll try to have pictures of these to share as well.

Thanks for your kind attention, and until next time, carry on gaming!

Friday Rucht Hour: The Devil is in the Details

Every once in a while, I get really impressed with the small details on a model. Often, we get swept up in that which is bigger, better, more dynamic, but the fun part about this hobby is that pursuers of minis wargames are often just as taken with the small things. 

For example, I'll never forget when I painted one of my Warmachine zombie pirates only to find that the figure had a tiny fish skeleton stuck into the folds of his pants. That level of small detail truly impressed me. 

Anyhow, this week I had another one of those "small" moments when I saw this guy. I'm fixing up a dwarven officer and standard barrier. His shield is nicely done, with wood grain on the inside and small holes where you can put in the model's shield strap.                                                                                                                            

Check out the mini's shield strap...it fit perfectly into the shield. 

 I love this standard! Filled with lots of fine detail. Ribbons, anicent writing, and other knick-knacks on display.

That's it for me, this week. Short, sweet, and simple. What's your favorite small detail story?