tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304625179302666492024-03-05T06:27:21.901-06:00Chaos MagicA War Gaming blogvadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.comBlogger164125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-41820621977638754482024-02-29T12:00:00.001-06:002024-02-29T12:00:00.126-06:00Update: A New Future For Chaos Magic Needless to say that I'm long overdue for an update. The pandemic introduce new issues for me and made old problems that has plague the blog for a while worse. One reason I will get into here is that I think this blog has lost its identity and for a long time I've struggle to figure out where to go to next. When I first got into war gaming being able to make my armies truly my own was extremely important. And not just what my vision of an army in that particular gaming world but an army that is independ of the game world I'm playing in. The lore behind the armies I play are something wholly my own. I started this blog because I wanted someplace where I could post the stories I created for my armies and have my friends read it. The death of Warhammer Fantasy greatly hurt this blog. At the time none of my local friends had any interest in moving to Age of Sigmar and I had no interest in playing the fan game 9th Age. I got interested in other games but none of them really fit the needs of the blog. To be a replacement for Warhammer Fantasy a game needed 3 things. It had to be a game I was personally really excited to play. It had to be a game that I could find other people willing to invest in and play the game. And it had to be a game that lend itself well to game by game storytelling. All the games I got into since the end of fantasy hit one or two of these points. I couldn't find one that hit all 3 points.<br>
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So between all that and severe anxiety writing, I've been undecided on where to go next for a while. I felt that whatever plans I come up with to replace the hole Warhammer Fantasy left, I wanted them to be something that combines games and storytelling. And then in my indecisiveness I considered if that was worth being an issue at all. It was such a struggle trying to figure out what I wanted to do. This year I decided to put in the effort to make sure I was actually moving forward with personal goals, one of which is posting stories here. There are a handful of projects that I've been thinking about or have already put in some work. I think it is finally time to make those projects a reality on this blog. This will be a very new look and direction for the blog as pen and paper role-playing games plays a big part in many of my new projects. How that will affect the blog will be by me converting the game sessions into narrative chapters. My goal is for the sessions to read like they are apart of a novel. I will also write short stories that will be set in these new game universes. This will be information player characters already know, something the players will learn about later or just something to flesh out the worlds. Any additional content will be depended on the project as well as I'm still toying with things. With that overview, here are the projects I will be starting.
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My most ambitions project I'm currently calling Lancer X Battletech. It is my own game world that borrows some ideas from the mech pen and paper role playing game Lancer and the 40 years old mech war game Battletech. At its core the project is a Lancer game with the players being involved in a global militry conflict. I will be keeping track of both sides combat strength during the campaign in a similar way to a detail tabletop war game campaign. The players themselves will have a lot of control on the direction they go as a team. As a result, any battle that lacks the players will be played out using the Battletech system. These battles can greatly affect the story and the overall direction of the war. The results of these games will be reported here either as a game battle report or told as an in universe narrative story. Because the size of this project is so big, I don't plan on starting it any time soon. My needs will require a large collection of Battletech minis. I did invest in the last 2 Battletech kickstarters so I do own a lot of models with A LOT more coming soon. Still that might not be enough so it will take some time buying and painting up my collection to reach what I have in mind. Also for special mechs (which includes both enemy bosses and players "ultimate" design) I want to put together my own custom designs by using Gundam kits. Lastly I want more experiences in running role playing games before trying something this massive. I ran games before but not very often and what I did run didn't last very long.<br>
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So in the meantime I will be writing articles describing the elements of the setting. There are things my eventual players will need to know before they make their characters. I also would like to have lore that would be interesting if players wanted to know more the setting but is not mandatory. And the purpose of posting it here is for it to be valuable to the players and still be entertaining for science fiction/fanstay fans. I'm also toying with the idea of running another roleplaying game or two in the setting, ones that are much smaller and shorter. There are two possible systems I'm considering. One of couse would be Lancer. One of the reasons to run a smaller game is to get more experience game mastering so I might as well do it with the same system I'm planning the massive game with. And using Lancer it wouldn't be hard to come up with a side adventure that would feel like a complete story on its own and setup for things to come in the bigger campaign. My other idea for running a game in the setting is for a very VERY different game. The other game I'm considering running is called "You're In Space And Everything's Fucked." You can probably imagine the type of game that is and I can easy come up with an adventure using it that will tie into my bigger campaign and hint at some very sinsiter stuff that won't otherwise reveal itself for a while. And yes, that was the exact title of the game.<br>
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And that summarizes my plans on this project. The next few months I will be posting articles describing the setting and maybe a few pictures of how my Battletech forces is coming. But I will not be showing off any of my Gundam conversions, those deserve to be reveal for the first time in the story. And I might run a surprise game or two.<br>
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My second project is a modern fantasy role playing setting I call Dreams and Nightmares. I've had several ideas to run modern fantasy games using the new "World of Darkness" system or as it now known as Chronicles of Darkness. The version that became Dreams and Nightmares came about suddenly when I volunteered to run a game for my friends. I created my setting starting with Mage the Awakening Second Edition and trying to make it something more superhero like. After getting a general idea of the type of characters my friends wanted to play, I expanded on the setting, making it more of my own thing. Overall it is still very similar to the Mage default setting but that isn't going to last. Unfortunately that friend group is not good at meeting regularly. So much that my friends still have not finished making their characters. Yet there is still interest in playing and I've keep expanding on the setting. The point when I decided I wanted Dreams and Nightmares to be a blog project was when I realize why I felt uneasy about running a Beyond the Supernatural RPG. I was looking for a game to run and I've enjoy Palladium games in the past. Yet there was something about Beyond the Supernatural that made me not want to run it. I finally realize it was because I had already put so much energy into developing one modern fantasy game and I was reluctanted to do it again when Dreams and Nightmares was still sitting on the shelve. The two games are too different to try to run them both in the same setting... or are they? I came to an epiphany remembering (possibly missremembering) in my reading of the Mage setting, psychic stuff was mention to exist but I didn't see any game rules for it. And Beyond the Supernatural is game from the players point of view nearly all psychic. Even if I am wrong about Mage and it does have its own rules for psychics, I've decide Beyond the Supernatural rules is how psychic works in Dreams and Nightmares. In addition, adding a second rule set to a setting opens the door for third and more. Plus Mage the Awakening itself is one of about 10 game lines that was design to somewhat work together. Now in my mind I have ideas of multiple campaigns all using different gaming systems to reach an "Avengers: Endgame" like conclusion using yet another game system, or even every player using a different systems. I know this probably sounds needlessly complicated but I do gravitate towards complex games and I've spend some time thinking how I could run two different game systems at the same time and why.<br>
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What would this all look like? First I will continue trying to get the Mage game off the ground and in a few months try to get a Beyond the Supernatural game running as well. Like Lancer I planning on writing lore articles that describe the setting as well as a series of short stories set in the world. I will enjoy trying to figure out how to write short stories with characters whom identities are both secret with enough information to know who they are when they are reveal in the campaigns.
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I've been interested in certain types of history for all my life. In fact when I was in college I took so many history classes on the side that I was closer to a history degree than my declared degree. And I've been thinking about doing something with history for a while so while I was coming up with ideas for revamping the blog, I figured might as well try now. I don't know how well this is going to work on (or even what exactly this is going to look like) but I think it is time for me to see what I can do on this front.<br>
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The plan is for me to pick something about history and then spend three or four months researching it. After that try to come up with something interesting that I learned using miniatures. Still not sure how miniatures will play a role in this as I'm not really into painting models historically accurate. I'll just see what ideas I come up with when I doing the research. A possible example what this will look like is an article about a particular time in history and then I will talk about a historical game that tries to recreate that experience and go over what the game gets rights and what it glosses over.<br>
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I have one more project I want to mention here and I called it Halloween. It is simply a serial series that will only have chapters release in October. It will have artwork that consist of miniatures on a watercolor background. Watercolor painting is something I've recently pick up for the sole purpose of doing something like this with it. I don't consider myself good at it so there will probably be fewer pictures at the beginning while I'm practicing to get better. And that is basically it. Halloween is very different from everything else I do here given it does not have a gaming component and it is purely fiction. It is a fantasy setting that I took some inspiration from Norse Mythology and it can be expanded upon in many different ways. But I think I want to wait until the series starts before discussing side projects for it.<br>
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That leaves 2 final points to end on. One, these are not the only things I'm working on. Besides everything else I've mention I want to do, this year I also want to write a novel and write a comic book series, the latter I will briefly discuss in another article here, and I want to be more active in two other blogs. One is my Food Blog where I recount my adventures at restuarants and other related food stories. The other is my photography blog, Mirrorless Magic. Something else I've done since my last update is pick up photography and Mirrorless Magic is where my photography stories (not related to gaming) will go. It will also have my Watercolor art that I mention in the Halloween section. If a piece is more art than game, then it will be at Mirrorless Magic. The last thing I want to mention in this update is that the one thing I've learn about me and this hobby is that things can change and can change fast. Something new can easily change how I feel about any and or all my projects. While I was crafting this final version of this update, Gamesworkshop release Warhammer: The Old World and I still don't know how that is going to affect me or the blog, if it does anything at all. All I can say is that I wrote this update to be my vision for what I want this blog to be for the rest of this year and if something does change, I hope it doesn't take me another 3 years to mention it. Let the stories begin!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-19485552967017574202020-07-08T11:12:00.002-05:002020-07-08T20:43:43.597-05:00Pirates of the Out of Print GameI'm a little disappointed in myself for the lack of updates but I suppose this crazy world has contribute to that more than I am willing to admit to myself. I found myself going back to work a lot sooner than I anticipated. Even though it is a short walk home for me, the summer heat is such that I find myself completely exhausted once I do get home. There has been other personal events that has also contribute, but at least those events have the benefit to potentially being interesting story for a blog, maybe. Another blocker to my ability to update was my desire to only make post that showed some progress oppose to just being about my thoughts, ideas or plans. After reexamining that desire this week, I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off at least writing about something oppose to not writing at all. I have a lot of stories I want to tell so anything that helps me practice writing in general is a benefit to me at this point. My desire to only write post when I had made some kind of progress came from the frustration I felt at having post after post that just deals with concepts. I lost sight of the value of putting my thoughts and ideas on paper... um on virtual paper. I had forgotten that writing on concepts not only help keep the ideas fresh in my mind but the process itself of writing blog posts has inspired new ideas before. With that in mind I want to write about a new game I've invested in.<br/>
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Pirates Constructible Strategy Game is a game that was publish from 2004 to 2008. It is a strategy game that straddles the line between being a collectible card game (CCG) like Magic: the Gathering and miniature wargames like what I usually cover here. It came in random packs that you punch out cardboard pieces to make the ships(I say cardboard but I suppose its more like plastic as it feels similar to credit cards). I never played or collect it back in the day but I did have friends that were big fans of it. I don't think I got into it because I was getting tired of CCGs in general as well as I don't like the random aspect in a miniature wargame. The random aspect was also why I didn't get into the first version of Monsterpocalypse. I also wasn't as excited about cardboard models as I was with metal/plastic ones. Which is a little strange as at the time I dislike painting and would have preferred to have prepainted models. That preference has completely swap since then.<br/>
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So why am I bringing up a out of print collectible game? Two Fridays ago a friend was showing me his Pirates collection and that got me thinking about and looking into the game. I couldn't stop thinking about it over that weekend so I ordered some packs on the Sunday. I figure the price was just too good for something I had so many uses for. I've already had ships on the mind off and on for a while now. In the last year or two I started assembling the ships in the Dreadfleet boardgame. I stop when I screwed up gluing together one of the 2 main ships in the game. It had 3 pieces that needed to be glued together and it was really awkward trying to hold all 3 pieces together. So I glued two pieces together first but that meant that the third piece no longer fit. All 3 had to be glued together at same time. Even called Games Workshop for help but was told since the game was out of print, there was nothing they could do to help. Since that was one of the main ships, that killed my interest in finishing Dreadfleet. I still planned to go back to it. I had put 4 ships together and there were another 5 waiting to be assembled. On top of that I've been looking at Warlord Games miniature ship line. I think their line is in a similar scale as Dreadfleet so I could buy a box and either put the ships together as is or convert a few to be in the same high magic fantasy style as the Dreadfleet ships. I've also gotten a tip on how to fix my glue mistake that I haven't gotten around to trying (it work on a Chaos Giant model that I also misglued). In other words, I've been on the verge of having a miniature fleet collection for a while now.<br/>
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A Pirates pack on Amazon averages about $10 each, guaranteeing 2 ships each. Some expansions were price much higher than that while other were cheaper. Not a bad price for miniatures I have a lot uses for. Since I've never played Pirates before, it would normally be a little risky investing into an out of print game that I might not like when I actually played it. But I can use the Pirates ships to expand the play ability of Dreadfleet. Of course I've never played Dreadfleet either. In the event that I don't like Dreadfleet either or the ships are too small for it, I can still use the ships the next time I run a miniature fantasy campaign game where I can put a major seafaring aspect to it. Also with me exploring running more pen and paper role-playing games with Pathfinder and others, I could use the ships in a pirate heavy theme campaign. Lastly failing all that, I plan on doing comic book style stories using miniatures here and that requires a large collection of as many different models as possible. I hope I end up enjoying the game but if I don't it will still be worth it to invest in it.<br/>
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To make it more interesting for us, my friend and I decided to invest in different expansions. He stayed with the sets he already had packs for which was Spanish Main, Crimson Coast and Revolution. I went with South China Seas and Barbary Coast, which was probably a mistake given that South China Seas is one of the rare and most expensive sets for the game. For my first purchase I got 1 pack of South China Seas and 15 packs of Barbary Coast. The one China Seas pack was half of the cost of the 15 Barbary Coast! Here is a picture of some of the packs and one pic of my English ships.<br/>
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After actually having a few ships assembled in person, I really love the looks of the ships. I will be playing my first game of Pirates and really of any war game in person today for the first since the pandemic started. Of course with masks and social distancing. I will be discussing more about Pirates in future posts. Whether it be as a collector or as a fan of the game will depend on my first few games. Until next time, stay safe.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-83706488315805168602020-04-27T00:36:00.000-05:002020-04-27T00:36:50.930-05:00The World We Live InI finish moving at the beginning of the month. Since then I've been relaxing and getting used to the world we now find ourselves in. Needless to say the plans I had for after I had move are now completely out the window. It is kind of hard to get the motivation to work on hobby stuff when I don't know when I will get to play. In any case my art room/office still needs work to be used as intended. I need to rearrange the layout and buy new furniture so it can be a place I can always just sit down and work. So it will be a little while before I can get back to the miniature hobby. That and having to sort all my projects that got mix together in the moved. If I had to guess before I moved how many models I had, I would have been very very wrong. There is nothing like being tired of your moving and wondering if you can just toss that box in the corner that you haven't open in years in the trash. Only to open it up and realize no you can't because it has over $200 worth of miniatures in it, some of which is nicely painted.<br/>
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I normally have a beginning of the year update that explains what my plans for the year are. I really struggled with it this year because I found myself listing out the games I plan to work on without being able to show any kind of progress on them. And that got to me. So I've decide to do each game with it own article after I've done some kind of modelling progress with it. This might prevent me from talking about some projects but I will feel better if I have something to show off while talking about a game. I also had 3 other projects I wanted to talk about in that failed beginning of the year update. One was that I still wanted to do my 80s project and to put a deadline on me by announcing I will having something for it done by September. That's not happening now. I have a collection of miniatures I either got for it or I pick up for other reasons that fell apart and repurposed them for the 80s project. And while I can paint these miniature up, they are just a small amount to the number I models I need and we are in a time where my abilities to get models (and paint) are limited for the foreseen future. Until we get to some kind of normality I can't have a timetable on when I can release my 80's project. I also realize I shouldn't show off my progress on the models in the 80's project for storytelling purposes. If a new villain suddenly appears in the story, the shock of it is lost on the audience if you see me painting the guy up for a year before his appearance! So in the end I do still plan on doing the 80's project but I can't talk about it until I'm ready to start releasing it. The other two projects I wanted to talk about in January are also not happening! The projects were two very different podcasts. One was a podcast on Battletech and Gundam in a similar style to my War Journal podcast with a different friend. Being able to discuss and compare these two giant mech settings with a fellow fan would have been fun and eye-opening. The other podcast was me interviewing local artists. It would have force me to study art in a way I have never experience before and learn to come up with engaging questions to people I don't know. I miss doing podcasts and I now have easy access to equipment to make them again. However the pandemic shut those podcast projects down. I don't see recording podcasts as an option for at least a year and doing it online is not an option I want to take. I think the sound quality would be terrible and trying to setup an interview online with people I don't know is a headache I do not want.<br/>
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I've talked a lot about what is NOT going to happen here, I should probably get into what I will be doing. Due to social distancing, these last few weeks I've turn to looking at pen and paper games. Most of my physical games have move online to the Roll20 web site. While working on transferring my paper character sheets into digital ones for Roll20, I was filled with ideas for games that I could run. I've been thinking about running a game for a while and converting characters to Roll20 feed into that. Eventually I got an idea for a massive game universe with Pathfinder that I love so much I had to do it. Unfortunately I'm limited on what I can say about it because there will be a twist that I want to be a surprise for the players. I envision 4 ways for the game to interact with this blog; 2 ways immediately and 2 way later down the road. The setting resembles Arthurian Myth with Olympian gods. In universe there are many stories about the gods the populace tells themselves and these stories changes depending on the region. Instead of just summarizing these stories, I will write them out into full stories and post them here. The first few stories will be ones that the player characters would have heard growing up. As the party adventures through the world, they will come across both new stories and vastly different versions of stories they already knew. At higher levels and with the party interacting more with the gods themselves, the players will start to learn about the actual source of those stories, what the real version of those stories were. Some of these stories will be important to the campaign. Others are just there to enrich the world. I will post all those stories here so the players will have a place to read them as well anyone else who is interested in reading about a mythology I just made up.<br/>
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The second way Pathfinder will make an appearance here will be a narrative version of each game session. I won't post anything from the game sessions itself because I don't think it is fair for the people involve and there are some thing that should just stay private. What I will do is take a summary of what happen during the session (in-character stuff only) and make a narrative version of it. If I do it right, they should sound like classic Dungeon & Dragons novels like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. Once I have a few posted I will make a page dedicated to Pathfinder so all the myth stories and game session stories will be all in one place. Once the real world goes back to normal and I can meet with friends in person, I will have a need to buy and paint a new range of miniatures. I've been interested in painting miniatures for role playing games for a while and running Pathfinder in a physical place will give me a reason to do just that. If the game last that long, I will post pictures of any models I make for the game. Some of those pictures might have to wait until the party face them in the game first. Lastly, one of my players is also a war gamer. If everything goes will with my campaign, the two of us could come up with a way to use Warhammer or another war game to play in my setting. Might even get to a point where his character leads an army and the result of the battle affects the Pathfinder campaign. But those are ideas for a much later date.<br/>
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So, I'm back and Chaos Magic future will have a lot of tabletop role playing games in it. Beside the Pathfinder game I'm going to run, I still plan on writing those Flashback Storytime entries. My miniature hobby will make a return at some point. It is just that the menu is going to be role playing heavy for a while. Until next time, stay safe.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-35420719368777195952020-02-29T23:29:00.001-06:002020-02-29T23:29:22.489-06:00Fifty Shades of ... Red?I haven't updated in a while and I hope I will get around to discussing why. Part of it was due to putting my hobby on hold due to medical issues and preparing to move to a new apartment. I won't be doing anything hobby related until after I fully move which is looking to be around the end of March or beginning of April. To keep from having the drought here last until then, I wanted to write an article about a new project idea I came up with before I had to give my hobby a break.<br/>
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The idea is pretty simple. I want to try to paint a single large miniature in one color and have it still look good. Obviously to make it still be visually appealing I will need to use many different shades of that one color. That color being red. I haven't decide what model to use yet other than something larger than the standard 28mm, which is the scale for most of the games I play for normal sized troops. I immediately thought it would be some kind of demon as that made the most sense in my head for what this is going to look like. There are also a lot of choices when it comes to picking big demonic models in the industry. After putting a little thought into it, I wouldn't mind some kind of angelic model either, though that is far less common. The last time I was in a gaming store, I notice another very enticing option. There is a line of Dungeons and Dragons miniatures that come pre-primed and really for paint. I'm considering one of their dragons. It fits perfectly with what I'm trying to do with this project, both in size and price. Ironically, the model is suppose to be a White Dragon.<br/>
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I do have some unpainted models that might work, though I had something a little larger in mind. I have Games Workshop's Demon Prince and Cockatrice models that I could use for this project, though I will need to convert the Cockatrice as it is missing a hand (it came that way). I've assembled them but I never got around to painting or priming them. They are a good option if I want to try this on the cheap side since I already own them. It is just that the more I think about it, the more I want to use something bigger. Here are what those models look like:<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SRGD7YGVr2o/XliryX1bpVI/AAAAAAAABPE/Qg84PF2UzkA4aDbsk8793b9jWNdBXTFyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Daemon%2BPrince.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SRGD7YGVr2o/XliryX1bpVI/AAAAAAAABPE/Qg84PF2UzkA4aDbsk8793b9jWNdBXTFyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Daemon%2BPrince.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXc01Mnn0mnv5Sb2q2s86Xe0fi-nvygV8AAzFqoZy7mHBDZmHQIvEqJIWw4km7q8XMiziJQ9RsgzrQ1Ugtb4yEo9YIBHZpNy5HsvIn1-MCIwUehZ8sXbPu_CiMtx4Ssmws4cnPABqL11hf/s1600/Cockatrice.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXc01Mnn0mnv5Sb2q2s86Xe0fi-nvygV8AAzFqoZy7mHBDZmHQIvEqJIWw4km7q8XMiziJQ9RsgzrQ1Ugtb4yEo9YIBHZpNy5HsvIn1-MCIwUehZ8sXbPu_CiMtx4Ssmws4cnPABqL11hf/s320/Cockatrice.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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In any case, I will not be picking the model until right before I start this project in April. I plan on it being a long term project. And while I am historically been a slow painter, that is not the reason why I think this will take me a long time to finish. It is the paints themselves that is the roadblock. I'm surprised at how many different paints I actually have as I had gathered everything I own together to box them up for the move. If everything I had were red, then I would have the paints I need for this project. Unfortunately, this is all I own to work on this project with...<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbYafq7jkqt8LfvbgS3SBw-QB-RLk-OrCFDW8wYSM3vKZnPZ6MPWXP3T77LZKGIQBsu57B4exV8vNjC3eeLAVYZYLUti7EwcOdp69T4VZBvXtJBYdiVGvbJpNtpwQB5qnKCLYMPjZRi2qh/s1600/Red+Paint+Options.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbYafq7jkqt8LfvbgS3SBw-QB-RLk-OrCFDW8wYSM3vKZnPZ6MPWXP3T77LZKGIQBsu57B4exV8vNjC3eeLAVYZYLUti7EwcOdp69T4VZBvXtJBYdiVGvbJpNtpwQB5qnKCLYMPjZRi2qh/s320/Red+Paint+Options.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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Just 5 bottles which include a bottle of white ink and white paint to make lighter reds. Also I have two bottles of the exact same shade of red(I brought the second bottle thinking it was a different shade as it look different). I'm going to need a lot more paint that I have to buy. Buying a bottle or two isn't too bad for me. Buying 15 to 20 is a different story. If I was a much better painter I could make do by mixing my reds with my other colors. But I'm not. I don't trust myself to be able to mix red with something else and have the result still be red, outside of white and black. I also don't trust myself to be able to remake the exact same color. By that I mean if I mix a color and run out before I finish what I was painting, I don't know if I could reproduce that color to finish. So I will be buying a new bottle of red paint every month for a while. I doubt I will actually use 50 different shades of red, but at the very least I will be going for at least 20. That's a brief look at my new project. I will have more to discuss about it and many other projects in April. Until then, take care.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-63409408999918219352019-10-27T23:00:00.000-05:002019-10-28T00:27:16.033-05:00My Misadventures at Painting Continues... Plus a Tournament!On Friday I decided to do some painting on my Statue of Liberty in hopes of having at least one model that looks almost finished for the tournament on Saturday (yesterday). I wasn't going for an accurate look got for the Statue, especially since I'm planning on painting the main body copper, in theory the color the Statue of Liberty was when France delivered it to the U.S. For the stone pedestal I was going for colors that would look good and that I own. One of those colors, Game Color's Bonewhite came in a bottle that was a decade old. I use Bonewhite when I want something to look whitish. I tend to use it fairly often but in low amounts. And that is what lead to my misadventure Friday.<br/>
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I got the table ready for painting and tried to squeeze Bonewhite paint onto my palette. Nothing came out. I can hear liquid inside when I shake the bottle so I know it still has paint. A quick look at the nozzle tells me its clogged. I grab a toothpick and stabbed it in the nozzle. With the nozzle cleared, I tried squeezing paint onto my palette again. A very small dab came out which I decided wasn't enough for my needs. I start squeezing and again nothing came out. I had confirmation bias with the small amount of paint on my palette and thought the remaining paint must have congeal so I continued to squeeze. Had I realize having the paint congeal and in a liquid state that I could hear were mutually exclusive, I would have saved myself a lot of headache. Instead I continued to squeeze until the bottle exploded! I got paint all over the table and my clothes and me. My shirt was already ruined as I only wear it around the home so no lost there. My shorts on the other hand were fine shorts are now probably ruined. I had covered the table in newspaper so it escaped being coated in paint. Fortunately I didn't get any paint in my eyes (thought I did get it on an eyelid) and I didn't get any paint in the carpet. My palette did get the additional paint that I wanted, you could say it got a little too much!<br/>
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I dip my finger into it Saturday morning thinking it had dried. It hadn't. I suppose that much paint takes longer to dry. I found the nozzle on the floor (amazingly without getting any paint on the floor) and what I should have figure out before became crystal clear what happen. The nozzle was clogged at both ends. The dab of paint must have been in the nozzle itself. The toothpick was too thick to properly clear the nozzle. You could say something like this ruined my desire to paint. However I knew all of my Bonewhite was now on that palette and I didn't have the option to use it another time. I painted what I had planned on using the Bonewhite for, though as an added insult I notice something about my Statue of Liberty. Both of my Monsterpocalypse buildings got a little paint on them. Neither building will take much to fix but I notice the Statue of Liberty had 3 places the place could of landed on. The one place it DIDN'T touch was the part I was going to paint!<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CTB62kH1LEw/XbZyOCb1q7I/AAAAAAAABOI/j1c3qJLKu3U_NY5YBJXsZunUmXZZvC7agCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Statue.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CTB62kH1LEw/XbZyOCb1q7I/AAAAAAAABOI/j1c3qJLKu3U_NY5YBJXsZunUmXZZvC7agCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Statue.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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All of this led to my second Monsterpocalypse tournament on Saturday. I'm no where near having my own playable force so I was planning on just using Tracy stuff though I did use some of my own models this time. The first tournament I was confident that could do well if not win. I lost every game to took last place. For this tournament got less practice in, I was playing Destroyers which I'm less familiar with and I throw together a force based on what I own and which few units I knew. Based on all that I figure I would get last again. It didn't surprise me that my force did not work well together. What did surprised me was that I went 2 wins, 1 lost in the tournament and got second place. Both tournaments had the same 4 players and both times everyone played everyone. After the tournament I realize with the exception of Tracy whom won every game he played, every match result in this tournament was the reserval of the first tournament's. Second place got the building prize because Tracy already had one so he let whom ever took second have it, which again was me. Overall this was a very weird weekend with a lot of highs and lows for me. I've lost half a bottle of paint and shorts but I've learn a little more about painting and the game Monsterpocalypse. I also got a little more painting done and walk away from the a tournament with a new building. I guess I should say this weekend was worth it!<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV6LiO7SyviVw27xjtYGUAnKD3fg7131fCQxQkhxGYS7SQ3w3GBc8WYpVqEf9nv47Eoa-rsyJs57VYculz94ZPUjnF6MXxUuF4f6nfZa4uUTbKFW-4X4JIOySe98crPb8qXniOHJyzYr6L/s1600/Prize.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV6LiO7SyviVw27xjtYGUAnKD3fg7131fCQxQkhxGYS7SQ3w3GBc8WYpVqEf9nv47Eoa-rsyJs57VYculz94ZPUjnF6MXxUuF4f6nfZa4uUTbKFW-4X4JIOySe98crPb8qXniOHJyzYr6L/s320/Prize.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-9654401938356941752019-10-25T00:07:00.000-05:002019-10-25T00:07:44.452-05:00Introduction to Flashback StorytimeI initially created the Chaos Magic blog so I would have a place to host the stories I wanted to write that were about my Warhammer Fantasy Armies. I didn't have any ideas at the time what that would look like nor how I could expand with other content while keeping with the initial core concept. Over the years that core concept needed to be expanded and/or change over and over again. I'm always struggling with what I wanted the identity of this blog to be. One idea I keep coming back to and then rejected it is to write a series of stories about various events of my life. I can categorize these events into two groups: one is about funny or somehow interesting stories about food with other being about funny or somehow interesting stories about my gaming life outside of wargames. I still can't bring myself to post the food related stories here, which is why I made a food related blog. I just haven't done anything with that blog yet and this blog needs a lot more consist content, which is why I keep thinking about it. For that matter, I've made a separate blog for the game related stuff (and Shadowrun Crossfire content) as well which I also haven't done anything with. In my mind, tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) felt fundamentally different from wargames and deserve their own blog. However, since the blog has evolved far beyond Warhammer Fantasy, it makes less sense to differentiate RPGs from wargames. I suppose there is a case that it made no sense to not include RPGs when the blog added Flames of War and Team Yankee material. In any event, I've change my mind on the matter and want to introduction a new series I will be starting on the blog called Flashback Storytime.<br/>
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I have sat around the table with friends playing role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun and others for probably thousands of hours over the past 19 years. I probably have hundreds of hours playing fighting games in the arcade and I definite got more than a thousand hours playing fighting games on console systems. There is a way to look up how many game hours you have played in League of Legends but I'm afraid of how high that number would be. An average normal game last between 20 and 55 minutes though some games could last longer. My main account has over 2500 games on it and that doesn't include the many other game modes I've played nor my other accounts. All this says that I have a rich environment to pull from to retell interesting stories. Some of my stories happen many years ago and while I will try to be as accurate as I can remember, I might get details wrong. If there are parts of the stories I can't remember at all, I will be making stuff up to make sure the overall story works and is constant. I won't make up anything I know is false. I will just be trying to fill in holes in my memories of something that makes sense. For example I might write a story in which the real life event was at a different location but everything else was accurate. That is what I will be going for.<br/>
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I am unsure how often I will publishing these stories, which I will call Flashback Storytime. At the very least I want to publish one this month and one next month. However with next month being National Write a Novel Month, I doubt I will get much done on the blog in November. With my former core concept of stories for my wargame armies not being relevant anytime soon, several Flashback Storytime stories will probably be coming soon. I just wanted to give an overview of what I wanted them to be before a started posting. I hope people will enjoy them. Until next time!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-82437466171887387502019-10-18T22:55:00.000-05:002019-10-18T22:55:48.653-05:00Learning From Building MistakesI finally got a little painting done for the first time in a while on a building for Monsterpocalypse. Its not much with far more that needs to be done on it. Yet I notice I already made a mistake on it. It is not an "oops, I screwed up" mistake but a "I just realize I'm making life harder on myself" process mistake. Here are some pictures of it.<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pElv0Y8-47Q/XapUiocYk8I/AAAAAAAABNo/1ZMgXfOvS80BiyHdQ2GT0HeTzratH5A1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/GEDC0136.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pElv0Y8-47Q/XapUiocYk8I/AAAAAAAABNo/1ZMgXfOvS80BiyHdQ2GT0HeTzratH5A1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/GEDC0136.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cUMuIwlm7tY/XapUjRqzj0I/AAAAAAAABNs/EiTLQEApyeQv1krxpeeMwSTExuqwVMl0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/GEDC0138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cUMuIwlm7tY/XapUjRqzj0I/AAAAAAAABNs/EiTLQEApyeQv1krxpeeMwSTExuqwVMl0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/GEDC0138.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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The reason I primed the building black was because my white primer was low and while I had the opportunity to prime, I wanted to prime a group of models all at once. That group being 2 buildings and several Ubercorp units. Also thought black would be better for the Ubercorp units as I had an idea of how I was going to paint them. I had no plans for the buildings. Eventually I decided to paint this building brown with maybe a logo on top. And this is when I started painting. The problem is that I don't want the windows black. And I've learn from past mistakes that any washes on black does nothing! That means I have to paint each window by hand. If I had plan this out better, I would have primed the building white or at least a light color, if not whatever color I wanted for the windows. Had I done this, then after I painted the walls brown I would just needed to apply a wash to the entire building and I would be done. Instead, after I finished with the brown, I will have to paint in the windows which will take even longer than it will take me to paint the walls. After that I will still need to apply a wash before I would be done. Because of that, I will put it aside to work on other models. I'm not starting over with this building and I will go back and finish it. It just that I think I could make a lot more progress faster working on the other models. I still have a few days before the end of the month so I will hold off on further hobby updates. Until next time!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-35482572618616651672019-09-02T23:55:00.002-05:002019-09-02T23:55:24.146-05:00August Hobby ProgressAugust was the first time this year I've made significant progress on the hobby. It wasn't as much as I had hope but with working extra hours and starting back to college, I take it as a start. Also one of my flaws is that if I make major hobby mistakes, that tends to derail the project I was working on and August was no exception to that. I will go over where I fell short last month and what I did manage to accomplish.<br/>
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<b>Battletech -</b> For Battletech there was an evening I was going to put together the Septicemia. However I forgot when dealing with metal there is so much work to do before I can start gluing the figure together. I started some of the cleaning but I didn't have time that evening to do all of it, plus I need to wash it before I can add glue, a step that I don't need to do when working with plastic or resin. With the package open, its at the top of my list to finish this month.<br/>
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<b>Monsterpocalypse -</b> There were three things I was working on before a mistake detail everything. I opened the Carnidon/Spikodon pack and saw they needed a lot of work to remove model lines. I got Zor-Maxim and Sun Industries Buildings primed. I was about to start painting them when I notice a flaw on the Sun Building. It was like the primer didn't stick to a long thin stripe of it. I figure I will just prime it again and it should fit it. I was wrong.<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5k0kDbRFavU/XW3YBfwgx5I/AAAAAAAABMo/LPsgA_l7EzcKLpc2XCVl5CeDAmNFGgUpgCLcBGAs/s1600/Sun%2BIndustries%2BBuilding%2Bprime%2Battempt.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5k0kDbRFavU/XW3YBfwgx5I/AAAAAAAABMo/LPsgA_l7EzcKLpc2XCVl5CeDAmNFGgUpgCLcBGAs/s320/Sun%2BIndustries%2BBuilding%2Bprime%2Battempt.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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It is hard to see in this picture (I need to buy more lights but I don't have anywhere to mount them yet) but the primer bumbled up in several places. I don't know if this was because I rushed the second round of priming, I spray it too much, I did it when it was too hot or it was too humid at the time. More like a combination of all the above. I stop all work on Monsterpocalypse and been thinking about how to fix it. I've made many mistakes painting in the past with the need to remove it to try again. However I never actually removed paint, much less primer from a model before. Fortunately I'm in an Art Class this semester and have teacher to ask for help. The result of this will be in next months Hobby Progress as I will discuss it with my teacher tomorrow.<br/>
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<b>Flames of War -</b> I got started working on 6 tanks from the Panther/Jagdpanther Platoon box. The panthers needs a little work before I can play with them in practice games, but all 6 needs a lot more work before they are done.<br/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXesAjknaS_i4wxFj9AR9dr4yBfye2KWxL6LmMB8qDmnSx5Q_YXnmRSgdUwrdrhBRFzF0s3LwHxboHE4zrsoNVhXdM-V2CiI0tsLdep41m08HPj-X6NC6ETD-z8cJnElKJH1A3LB8zKVpM/s1600/Panther+single.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXesAjknaS_i4wxFj9AR9dr4yBfye2KWxL6LmMB8qDmnSx5Q_YXnmRSgdUwrdrhBRFzF0s3LwHxboHE4zrsoNVhXdM-V2CiI0tsLdep41m08HPj-X6NC6ETD-z8cJnElKJH1A3LB8zKVpM/s320/Panther+single.JPG" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>
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And no, I did not mod the tanks to swap between Panthers and Jadgpanthers. I build my tanks with the idea that in theory I could use all of them in a game. In retrospect, glancing at the new system, it seems it would be unlikely that I would use both Panthers and Jadgpanthers in the same game. A little late now but I plan on practicing some conversation ideas with the Jagdpanthers. I will model one to look like it is dug in. Another I will try to used bits and whatever I can find to make it look like a normal Jagdpanther. I will probably wait on the 3rd until I see which of the previous two conversations I like the most. Or just have it around in case I come up with a different idea. I've been taking my time with the tanks to make sure I get them right. I will be adding a lot of the optional bits on them, like spare wheels and tank tracks. That's all I have to say about the tanks and really all the progress I made in August. See ya next time!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-22961350824963388532019-08-30T02:58:00.000-05:002019-08-30T02:58:49.607-05:00Battletech UpdateI notice I've talked about several Battletech plans but I have yet to follow through with them. There were plans to do a battle report for a game and while we did play that particular game, I didn't take enough notes to be able to write a report about it. We made plans to do a campaign about an invasion of the planet David, but between miscommunication and me taking too long to write up a list, those plans fell apart. We still have those notes so it is possible for us to try to do the campaign again sometime in the future. Most recently we had plan to do a Word of Blake scenario this summer. That obviously didn't happen and I can say it wasn't my fault this time. The plan was for me to get as many of the actual mechs in the scenario as possible. I order 4 at my LGS (local gaming store) to start the project. However only 1 ever came in. I've come to learn (or remembered) that my LGS has trouble getting Battletech merchandise in. We still want to do that scenario so I will have to get the mechs elsewhere.<br/>
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My Battletech collection is about to get a massive surged. Not only did I recently pick up the two new box sets, I've also invested into Catalysis Games Clan Invasion kickstarter. I'm looking at getting 40 to 50 mechs from it depending on how we split our pledge level and paying for additional add ons. With such an influx of models I will be building multiple faction forces. Some will have a history appropriate to the lore of Battletech. Others will be more of my own touch. In general, it will probably be a mix of mechs that faction is known for plus mechs I personally really like the looks of. Some of the factions I'm making armies of are: Word of Blake (obviously), Comstar, "Rome" and the Society. I will be using my own color scheme for each of them though I will try to incorporate something from the official scheme in my version. The plan is to focus my Battletech energies into these 4 forces but I'm getting a lot of stuff from the Clan Invasion and I don't think all of it would fit for the Society. I'll find out more about that in the months coming up. In the meantime, I don't think I will do anything story or games related on the blog for the rest of the year for Battletech. I will be doing updates showing off progress I make with my minis and I'm sure these 4 Battletech forces will be making an appearance.<br/>
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<b>Word of Blake -</b> Word of Blake are the villains in my Battletech world. When I first heard about them I wanted to have a force dedicated to them. They never meant to be one of the first teams I wanted to work on but that changed when we pick a Word of Blake scenario to play. My friend wanted to play the good guys for once and since I already wanted to painted up Word of Blake minis, this sounded like the perfect scenario to play. As I've have grown tired of playing with proxies all the time, getting the actual minis the scenario calls for is important to me. Since I've only got one miniature for Word of Blake, it will be a while before we can play. I also don't plan on getting much more for Word of Blake outside of what the scenario calls for. I'm more interested in the other 3 factions. I've notice 3 of the mechs I need for the Word of Blake scenario will be available in the kickstarter so that will bring us closer to the scenario when the kickstarter products ship.<br/>
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<b>ComStar -</b> Besides maybe a Chaos flavor mercenary group, ComStar was the first faction that I really wanted my own version of. The more I learn about the history of the Battletech lore, the more I became fascinated with the Star League and ComStar. Yes, I know Star League and ComStar are two different but related organizations in the lore, but for me I see no reason to separate them for my army. I'm not sure how often I will be able to play as the Star League so it might not be a big deal. Of all my factions, this is the one I don't own any mechs for yet. Any progress for ComStar will have to wait until my Kickstarter stuff comes in. The kickstarter has 2 different ComStar packs and you can be sure I will be getting at least one of each, if not more!<br/>
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<b>"Rome" -</b> My Rome army is currently my only Battletech force that wasn't inspired by something in Battletech. Instead I was inspired by a character in the media empire "Fate" series by Type-Moon. Fate has many novels and games based on it and probably my favorite character in the Fate series is Emperor Nero. Despite Fate's Nero being a historical figure, you probably have no idea what this character is like unless you are familiar with the way Type-Moon approach to history. She (yes, she) has a personality that combines being supremely arrogant with fun to be around. She isn't the only arrogant character in Fate but she manifest it in a very different way. Characters such as Gilgamesh and Ozymandias feel other beings should be humbled and honored to be in their presence. Nero on the other hand feel that because she is so great, it is her duty to show you a great time by showing off the arts and wonder of her Rome. How this comes back to Battletech is when I learn Battletech has a Rome styled nation in its lore with the Marian Hegemony. I will start my Rome army by picking mechs in the 2 new box sets that are commonly used by Marian Hegemony. I don't know how many that will give me. I have the feeling that most of the mechs in new Box sets were widely used by most nations in the Inner Sphere.<br/>
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The funny thing I just realize is that I could make my Emperor Nero character be in proper Battletech canon. I supported the kickstarter at the level to get a canon character made into the setting. That's not going to happen. I did the kickstarter with a friend and the canon character was the first thing I gave up to my friend. I didn't want it at the time and my friends knows the setting well enough he could make someone that would fit perfectly. Oh well, it just means I don't have to do a crash course in Battletech lore in the next 2 months so I can get Fate Emperor Nero Battletech history right. It's a "what if" worth thinking about.<br/>
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<b>The Society -</b> The idea about doing a Society army is based on a random conversation and a single mech, Septicemia. My friend was telling me about his struggles in just finding information about a Battletech source book he wanted. His problem was that the book, Wars of Reaving had a particular mech. When tried to do online searches for the book, he kept getting information about that mech. That mech is the Septicemia. I had a fearful reaction when he told me the name of the mech. The name reminded me of one of the 3 types of plagues that I learn in a college class over a decade ago. I don't even remember what class that was but I told my friend that name probably meant something like blood disease because I remembered the plague had something to do with an infection of the blood. The disease I was thinking of was the Septicemic plague and I was right in that it's an infection of the blood. Eventually my friend was able to get the source book and inform me that the Septicemia was design to be like a blood disease to the Clans Warrior Culture. I might be a little fuzzy on the details but I believe this was because the Clan Warrior Caste thought there was only one way war should be perform and the Septicemia was meant to counter that way of thinking. It is an amazing story how I've learn this bit of Battletech lore and is the reason I decide to make a small Society force, along with me really liking the look of the Septicemia. It was a few months ago but I saw a pack for the Septicemia at my LGS. With the history I told you about, I instantly brought it. It will probably be the only mech I have for the Society for a while, but at least its a good one.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-24923379102354794372019-08-02T23:58:00.000-05:002019-08-02T23:58:41.967-05:00Intro to Monsterpocalypse and Back to Flames of WarSometimes when you are working on a project and can't seem to make any progress on it, its probably good idea to put it aside and work on something else for a while. This article is the something else to the project I wanted to finish before anything else on my blog. That project was suppose to be a followup youtube hobby progression video to the ones I did a few years ago, starting by summarize my current hobby. For some reason I could never finish the audio of what I wanted to say. The sad thing is the information I wanted to say is already outdated. If you follow my blog for any amount of time, you already know my hobby plans changes remarkable fast. 3 things happened two weeks ago that changed my hobby plans. This article will talk about two of them, starting with the game that was the catalysis for everything else, Monsterpocaylpse.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tracy's Monster Collection</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Monsterpocalypse is a miniature game about Kaiju (giant monsters) meeting up with giant robots and other giant creatures from media using a city as a ring as they destroy buildings trying to hurt each other, with a few planes and tanks thrown in to annoy them like gnats. Version 2 was just release last fall. I never got into nor played version 1 of Monsterpocalypse. This was mainly due to it being a collectible game. Like Collectible Card Games (CCGs) like Magic the Gathering, Monsterpocalypse version 1 was sold in random packs. You never knew what you were going to get. While I could accept that practice from CCGs, thought of doing that with more expensive miniatures was a non starter for me. Version 1 also came pre-assembled pre-painted, which for the younger me at the time would have been fine. Today pre-painted miniatures would be a reason for me to NOT get involved. In any case Monsterpocalypse version 2 is more like standard miniature games in that you know what you are purchasing and the models needs to be painted. Two weeks ago Tracy suddenly called me up to show me a demo of it. We haven't talk since the beginning of Summer so I was surprised to hear from him. It was a fairly easy game to learn and Tracy have at least one of everything that is currently available. I quickly found mechanics that I loved and wanted to make force around. Fortunately, the force construction rules are really simple.<br/>
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The first thing you pick when building a force is decide what agenda to used. Currently the agendas are Protectors (the good guys) and the Destroyers (the bad guys). Each agenda is made up of several factions. When making a force, everything you pick needs to be from the same agenda though some models may have rules that is only beneficial to their own faction. Standard games have 2 monsters, up to 20 units and 6 to 12 buildings per player. Monsters are the core of your force and are unique. That means you have to pick 2 different monsters from the same agenda in a standard game and you win the game by defeating both of your opponents monsters. Units are the smaller models of your force like planes and tanks. Units are used to control the battlefield and setup advantages for your monsters. Units don't start on the map, they need to be spawned in. When units are destroyed, you can just spawned the model back in the next time you can spawn units. In this way, you have unlimited units to spawn, your choice of 20 units is picking what options you have available to spawn. This opens the door for deep strategies as the game ages. I could see players having one unit in their list that they don't use in a lot of their games yet it is there in case the right scenario comes up. Buildings play an unique role in your list and the game itself. Both players build the game map by placing their buildings one at a time, taking turns. Game maps have spots mark for where buildings need to go. This makes building the map a mini-game of itself as you want to set it up to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible while your opponent does the same. There are two types of buildings: apartments which have a defense 5, no limit to how many you can bring and no special rules; and special buildings which have a defense of 6 or 7, a limit of 4 per type and a wide range of special rules. Some building special abilities require you to have 3 units around it first before you can use it. Here is some of Tracy's buildings...<br/>
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I decided to build a protectors force around Zor-Maxim and teleport rules. I first pick Zor-Maxim because I thought he could teleport around the battlefield only to realize that his ability only works on units, not himself. I stuck with him because I could envision controlling the battlefield by teleporting all over the place. Shadow Sun Industries is a building that interacts with models with the teleport rule. That's why the first two things I own of Monsterpocalypse are Zor-Maixm and Shadow Sun Industries. I haven't yet played a game utlizing my theme because Tracy doesn't own what I need to test it. My core force is going to need multiple Shadow Gate and Shadow Sun Industries. Once I have that, I can play a game to see if my theme is viable and what other units and Monster I want to add to my force.<br/>
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While learning how to play Monsterpocalypse, Tracy inform me that my Flames of War plans needed to change. My plan was to slowly collect models that I could use in a force from my Berlin list and evenually go to tournaments. I was aware that something about Late War was coming out this Summer but I didn't know any of the details. Little did I know that previous lists, like my Berlin list were becoming invaild with the new Late War book. That makes building a Berlin force for tournaments kind of pointless. A little frustrating that a lot of my recent purchases were from late Late LATE War are now useless until Battlefront comes up with new rules for them, in 3 or 4 years! On the bright side, my recent (beginning of the year) purchase included a box of Panther tanks which can make up over 50% of a force in the new system. Between that and the new plastic men, it shouldn't cost that much to finally have a playable army. I have several big ticket expanses to deal with so it might be closer to the end of the year before that playable army becomes real.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-4448020280294495322019-03-11T23:34:00.000-05:002019-03-11T23:34:21.033-05:00My German Flames of War ArmyMy German Flames of War army is a mess. Like a scrapyard, my army is a collection of unassembled troops and vehicles along with a handful vehicles assembled and primed but not painted. That is why when I saw the late war deal Battlefront was doing, I decided to ignore what I already had and based my purchases on making the core of a new army. I used the Berlin list because it is the only one I own. Also, given the list is such a hodgepodge of choices, I have the option to try out various designs and have it make sense as the list is literally whatever was still working in Berlin at the time thrown together to make an army, regardless what army it came from. I'm still going to paint the army non-historic fantasy colors. I have decided to use the German decals instead of trying to create my own fantasy ones.<br/>
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That was the plan when I made my ordered. I have gotten a couple of surprises since then. First, two-thirds of my order was out of stock. Its not going to cost me anything extra but it is a little frustrating as I don't know when I will get the rest of my order. Two things I really wanted to work on: an unit of tanks and 2 AA guns, I have to wait until who knows when for them to get here. What I did get was this:<br/>
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The first thing that surprised me when I opened the box was the sniper. I've been out of the loop about Battlefront news and I really didn't expect the sniper to come with the Team Yankee style cards. I suppose they were getting introduce to late war when I quit being active. Very cool but unexpected to me. I only brought the sniper because it was cheap and it got me over the minimum amount needed for free shipping. My other surprise is the Bedb... the Kleinpanzer Wanze tank unit. I was hoping since it was a newer product that the Wanze unit would be plastic. I enjoy working with plastic over metal or resin. To my dismay, the Wanze tanks are resin, which makes sense. To my knowledge the Berlin list is the only one with the Wanze tanks as an option and you can only take one of them. From the company prospective, product that sells high volumes is better to do in plastic while product that doesn't sell as well is better to do as metal or resin. As much as I would love to have a lot more Wanze tank units, there is no game reason for me to buy more than one, which is why it is in resin.<br/>
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At least I have some tanks to start working on. And as much as I don't want to, I have troops to work on as well. As for colors, I will prime my army with yellow/gold and paint the models grey and either dark red or dark blue. Which colors I pick would depend if the unit is from the army (Heer) or air force (Luftwaffe). Then I remember a lot of this list as well as what I purchase is not in either. I suppose I still have something to decided before I start painting. In any case, I will start priming within the next week or two.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-79764856099763885632019-02-21T22:22:00.004-06:002019-02-21T22:22:55.996-06:0080s ProjectFor the last 2 weeks or so, I've had this idea about a fiction series I want to write. I get these ideas all the time. It usually goes that I've come up with an idea, I think about for a while, I realize the reasons why its a bad idea or not a good time to work on it now so I can stop thinking about it. This time after a week thinking on it, it is still on my mind and I'm really excited to work on it. So I'm going to put in the effort to make this project happen. And that idea is to write a story that is inspired by 80s cartoons using characters also inspired by various cartoon characters I grew up loving. Overall a story that shows how much I love the 80s.<br/>
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I'm still in the brainstorm stage but there are a few characters I know I want to have it in. The overall story will probably be similar to ThunderCats with me using Lion-O, Cheetara and Mumm-Ra with the concept of a group like the Lunataks. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will also be a major influence. I want one of the turtles to be one of my heroes though I'm not sure which. I will probably pick the one that will best work with the rest of the cast (whoever that be) if I don't make it an amalgam of multiple turtles. I also want to use characters inspired by Bebop and Rocksteady, mainly the versions of them when they first appeared in the cartoon when they were a serious threat. I run into a slight problem here as I can't think of who else to add. Both He-Man and SilverHawks would make sense theme wise. But I never really watch He-Man as a kid though I was aware it existed. And while I did watch a lot of SilverHawks, I can't remember anything about it other than I watch it and the transforming villain looked better to me before he transformed. Transformers, G.I Joe, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and M.A.S.K. are all good candidates but I'm having trouble fitting them in with what I've already started with. They also have another problem which I will get into later. In any case, I think I have enough to work on to get a general feel of what the story will be like.<br/>
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My initial vision of the story resemble a light novel with each chapter or episode being a combination of artwork and text. There are many 2d character editors out there and I was planning on using one to make my artwork. I know these editors can take some time to master but making simple character profiles that show off what characters look like and their normal outfit are fairly easy to do. What will take more time to learn are dynamic poses and action scenes. I was going to host these chapters on a new site made just for it. It was most likely going to be another blog but I was planning on weighting my options. As I said, this was my initial vision, how it going to turn out will be quite different. The difference came about due to me changing my mind and deciding to host it here on Chaos Magic. Between me working on many other projects that will be on their own platform and current Chaos Magic projects future being uncertain, I wanted something here that would be updated regularly. Once I decided on that change, it made sense to me to change how to make the artwork. If I was going to put this on a site dedicated to miniature war gaming and storytelling, then I should use miniatures for my artwork on this project too.<br/>
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Switching to using miniatures is a significant change. Redesigning the characters in some ways are now both easier and harder to do. Not only do I have to factor in what I want the redesigns to look like, I'm also limited to what I can find in available miniatures as I'm terrible at using green stuff. I'm willing to look at any miniature range in the 28mm or 32mm heroic scale. I'm hoping painting and conversions will bridge any gap between what's available and what I'm envision for characters. Miniatures is the reason using stuff from Transformers, G.I Joe, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and M.A.S.K. is extra problematic. I think redesigning characters is fairly easy, redesigning vehicles and make them look good is something completely different. And then trying to build that in miniature form is quite possible beyond my current skills. Even if I could come up with something that works, those shows would be costly for me. Especially Transformers and M.A.S.K. where each character/vehicle represented would need 2 models. As a painter this means I would also have to paint 2 models in a way to make it seem like they were the same object. Not to mention the second model needs to be converted into something completely different. Just feels like they are not worth the trouble. That said, bringing in Transformers means Unicron is available, and I would love to use Unicron. In terms of storytelling and theme, a race like Transformers should be in the series from the beginning. However, it would be far easier on me if they got introduction in season 3 plus. It will be some time before these series starts so I have a little time to decide.<br/>
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The miniature swap is going to greatly affect how soon I can start this project. Maybe I was underestimating how long it was going to take me to make those initial 2d profile artworks, but I figure I could get them done in a timely manner and probably start working on the first chapter in 2 or 3 months. Now I'm thinking its going to be double if not triple that time before I can start proper. The only up side is that I know where to start. My former podcast buddy made me aware of Dark Sword Miniatures and their Critters Kingdom line. With how the my story is forming, I know I will need a lot of anthropomorphic miniatures. Even if they don't have anything to fit any of my redesigns, I'm going to need a lot of anthropomorphic animal miniatures for background characters, important non hero characters and villain minions. This will give me a large selection of material I can work on and have regular progress updates. One thing I won't do in miniature is the scenery. For me that is too expensive and I don't have the room to store it. For a project like this using terrain at my local gaming store won't cut it. Gaming terrain works fine for games but its probably too small for what I want to use it for. Plus official terrain would need some conversation for my story so they don't look like they are from the game world that they are from. My backgrounds will be some combination of landscape pictures taken by me and things I think up later.<br/>
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And that is my new 80s Project. The first two things I'm going to do is watch a bunch of 80s cartoons for ideas and plan a large Dark Swords Miniatures order. I have to say it is going to feel weird building and painting miniatures that I have no plans to play any games with. On the other hand, I created this blog to do a project just like this, with the only different in having the plot decided by war games. If this is something you might be interested in then stay tune. If not, I do have more war gaming news to post soon. Until then!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-67788007285554690942019-01-31T23:43:00.004-06:002019-01-31T23:43:48.085-06:00New Year, 2019It is a new year and I'm behind on my updates again. While slightly sad, I'm not disappointed this time around as I have a reasonable explanation for it. My lack of updates and really lack of doing anything related to the war gaming hobby in 3 months is due to me having a new job and finding time around it to continue my hobbies. I'm still trying to find that balance doing my time off to split between getting hobby time done and my other leisure activities like reading and video games. I'm sure I will find that balance soon as I really miss war gaming right now. I'm not going to do New Year's resolutions as I am already 3(4) weeks away from the start of the year and I really don't know where I see myself this year gaming wise. That said, there are 5 games currently on my radar.<br/>
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<b>Flames of War -</b> I quit Flames of War and Team Yankee for different reasons. I quit Flames of War because I really couldn't afford it at the time. I gave up Team Yankee because all the local players decided to switch to playing at 6mm and I don't see myself enjoying the game at that scale. As long as that is how the local players play the game, its not worth it for me to get back into Team Yankee. Affordability is less of a concern for me now as long as I take it slow. I'm interested in maybe playing in a Flames of War tournament across country plus the local players still play it at 15mm. It will probably be closer to the end of the year before I will have something worth taking pictures of but we'll see when we get there.<br/>
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<b>Dracula's America -</b> Still a game I enjoy and I have invested in the Hunting Grounds expansion book, I'm not where the future holds for me in Dracula's America. The campaign have not ended as far as I know but I have yet to hear about any updates on it. I have several models that I purchase with Dracula's America in mind. At this point, I will paint up the models I currently have and wait until I hear anything locally before I invest anything more.<br/>
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<b>Battletech -</b> My friend Chris, whom is already a huge BattleTech fan, has been collecting the BattleTech history books during the last 6 to 8 months. In general these books has far more lore than what I care to get into. However they do have one thing I'm interested in. They are full of scenarios, scenarios that allow you to replay famous battles in BattleTech history. My friend kept telling me about these scenarios he would like to play some day. So I told him to pick one and we will play it out this summer. He did so I will be building a Word of Blake army. The scenario calls for 18 specific mechs on the Word of Blake side and I to get as many of those mechs as possible, depending on availability and mechs I like the looks of. Now I just need to come up with a Word of Blake color scheme. BattleTech is the one game I have near 100% certainly that I will play this year.<br/>
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<b>Warhammer 40k -</b> I didn't like where 40k was going so I thought I would be done with it for far longer than this. But then the Chapter Approved book came out with the Sisters of Battle demo codex in it. For the most part, I like how Sisters are handled and it fits some of the problems I had with the Big FAQ 2 from last year, or rather it gives me the tools to better deal with them. I still haven't came up with how to base my units so I'm not going to get very far until I find a solution to that.<br/>
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<b>Monsterpocalypse -</b> Monsterpocalyse is more something a lot of local players are interested in and I'm considering it just to have a game with plenty of opponents to play against. I have never played it so I'm a little cautious. I don't want to invest in a game that turns out to be something I don't like or find out the system has a fatal flaw that ruins enjoyment of it. Once I play a few games of it, I will consider starting collecting providing I don't dislike it.<br/>
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It will probably be a few more months before I will be able to update the blog regularly again. And after I started writing this post BattleTech just release two new box sets and Battlefront is currently doing a significant sale on their late war stuff so I may have some new purchases to talk about soon. It may be slow going but there will be new stuff coming. Until next time!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-70414939231213156932018-10-09T22:08:00.000-05:002018-10-09T22:08:11.250-05:00My Twilight Order ForceThe Twilight Order is a religious group of vampire hunters. In the Dracula's America lore, before the current timeline, the Twilight Order hunted down and nearly destroyed Dracula. However Dracula manage to escape to America and infiltrate the political system. The Twilight Order learn about Dracula's whereabouts over a decade later and immediately sent agents to pursuit him. This lead to a secret war between the Twilight Order and the Red hand Coven, the servants of Dracula.<br/>
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I envision my Twilight Order posse to stay close to this lore. I imagine my posse to be a mix of agents from Europe and newly recruited Americans. All the models I have brought for Dracula's America were meant to be apart of my Twilight Order posse. Well, except for a vampire model which was meant to be either the vampire encounter that is possible from random events or a start of a Red Hand Coven posse in the future. However, with a new campaign on the horizon, the fact that most of my models are still not painted and my interests in playing a different faction, I'm going to take a hard look at my collection and decide what I want for Twilight Order and what could possible be better off as a different faction.<br/>
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She was the first model I brought for Dracula's America and she always was meant to be my Twilight Order's mage or arcanist as the setting calls them. She is one of the few models I got paint on though I still need to finish her, especially around the face. She was the prototype for designing how my Twilight Order models were going to look. I don't think I really decided on my posse color scheme when I started painting her. Eventually I decided to have every Twilight Order member have their own color scheme but paint everyone with a red cross on their back. That way I can show off a model's individualism (and practice different color schemes) and having an unifying theme with the red cross.<br/>
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In the campaign I made her my leader so she would have an easier time casting spell. Funny thing is that I've never successfully cast a spell with her and really only tempted to do so once. One thing I would like to do before the campaign ends is to summon the Twilight Order's unique summons, the Seraphim (I still need to get a model for it) in a game. In my Twilight Order lore, she is an important high ranking member of the Order but she is not the leader. I've always envision the leader (local leader I suppose) would be one of the two Crusaders of the Order, the special units you get free for being a Twilight Order posse.<br/>
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This is an official Crusader of the Order model by North Star Military Figures. I've was never a big fan of their models, plus they seem to be a little smaller than Reaper Miniatures. Now that I have it, I will paint it eventually but it is going to be after others that I like much more. One of the things I dislike about the model is that he has two pistols. The Crusaders of the Order are really slow due to them wearing armor. Being slow and using short range weapons doesn't seem like a great combination to me. Since I still haven't put him together yet, I might put a different weapon in his left hand. Extra rifle bits are probably going to more important models so this Crusader might still wind up with a short range weapon. But at least it will be a special weapon.<br/>
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An issue I had when I started working on my posse was that I needed a second Crusader of the Order. I wanted to find an armored fantasy model in a pose that it would be easy to removed a hand so I could replace it western bits. Eventually I did find what I was looking for but not before the campaign started. The other players didn't really care but I wanted something that made sense to count as having armor. With this guy I imagine his coat having metal plate woven into it. I named him Mr. G in the campaign because I was going to paint his coat gold. He had the biggest impact in my games in the campaign so far. I've played 3 games and he is my only model that had a kill in every battle. In every game, he took out a supernatural threat in one shot. He would hit the opponent hard and they would fail the save by 5 or more. That means dead. So even though I got a new model to be my second Crusader, I'm still painting Mr. G gold because he has earn it. I may even continue having him count as armored.<br/>
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The model on the left is the official Templar of the Order figure by North Star. Templar of the Order is a melee-only hired gun that only Twilight Order posses can hire. The model on the right is the Reaper Miniature I brought to be my second Crusader. That said, I almost like the Reaper Miniature better as the Templar of the Order! It would be less work and I can use my rifle bits on someone else. The problem would be then what would I use the official model for? Taking another look at the rules, I suppose it is possible to have 2 Templar of the Orders other than its a bad idea due to how expensive they are. Think I will stay with my original plan for him to be the second Crusader as that would make him my Twilight Order's leader. It is also fitting that Reaper calls the figure a Templar.<br/>
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This is the last guy I definitively keeping as a Twilight Order guy. Early on I was buying models armed with the same weapons and equipment I wanted them to have in the game. Lassos have interesting rules in the game and I wanted someone in my posse to have one. With the lasso being the main reason I brought him, I don't think I realize he has an eye patch. Either that or I didn't realize the game has rules dealing with characters with one-eyes, (they sucked). Once he is painted up, game rule-wise, the eye patch will be something we will just ignore.<br/>
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I have a few more models but I want more time before I decide what faction to put them in. If in the new campaign I switch factions, I will be picking up a few models specifically for that faction. Until then, the above miniatures will be the focus of my painting.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-35968872421680561582018-09-23T21:48:00.004-05:002018-09-23T21:48:41.718-05:00What is Next For Chaos MagicI had plan to do a solo podcast series about Dracula's America in a similar vein as my partnership War Journal podcasts. It was going to be very different in many ways but I did want to have a similar style and cover topics in a similar way. But I've since change my mind on doing it. Perhaps I spent too much time over thinking it or maybe I finally came to realize the would be limitations of the podcast. In either case, I don't think Dracula's America is broad enough to do a podcast on in the style I had in mind. Flames of War is a huge game. Now that I think about, our podcast didn't cover Flames of War as well as it probably should have. There was so much about Flames of War that our podcast never touch because neither of us played that army or we didn't play in that era. While Team Yankee wasn't that big at the time when we switch our focus to it, we knew over time the game was going to grow. And even at the beginning, there was plenty of things about Team Yankee we could discuss. I don't think I could do the same with Dracula's America. The second expansion was recently release and while that would be a good sign for a game just over a year old now, it seems the second expansion was meant to also be the last expansion as well. Obviously skirmish games will have less to discuss on than larger wargames like Flames of War but Dracula's America problems were more than that. The subject that can generate the most discussion are the strength and weakness of a games factions. In most games you need to pick a faction before anything else as that decides how your force will look, what options you have to pick and so on. In Dracula's America factions most just give one or two models free bonuses. These bonuses are quite significant but otherwise two different forces from different factions can look and play nearly identical. There are a handful of other things about how the game works that also restricts potential discussions. I still enjoy playing Dracula's America but between the above and the likelihood of additional releases being low, I think it would be better for me to focus on individual articles and videos about Dracula's America instead of doing ongoing series. If I ever get overwhelm by stuff I want to talk about I can revive the podcast idea, I just don't think it will happen.<br />
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My local Dracula' America campaign is about to end and we are planning on starting a new campaign soon after. That means some of my focus will remain on Dracula's America for probably the rest of this year at least. The new campaign is making some of the players (including myself) consider playing a different faction. The Twilight Order is the initial faction that I took a liking to. I've enjoy playing as them in the campaign and have future plans for them in terms of finishing building and painting a posse and writing narrative fiction about them. The expansion books each had a new faction that also interest me. Those two were the Shadow Dragon Tong and Salem Sisterhood. The Shadow Dragon Tong is an Chinese posse whom uses unique tattoo magic. I like magic and the Salem Sisterhood is the faction with the most powerful arcane magic in the game so far. They are balance by the fact that their 3 witches are encourage to stay next to each other. For a low model count skirmish game, trying to keeping 3 models together is a big disadvantage. They also don't have any unique creations to summon. I will probably write up an article on summoning and why this is a big deal in the future. The faction I will use in the newest campaign will be mostly depended on what other people play. I want to see as many different factions in the campaign and others are also thinking about the Salem Sisterhood. If someone else picks the Sisterhood then I will either stick with Twilight Order or try my hand at the Shadow Dragon Tong. Whatever I pick, I will be using mostly the same models. I probably won't get around to discussing the results of either campaigns, but I will post my progress with painting Dracula's America miniatures or building western style terrain.<br />
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One of my goals for while now have been to have create a constant stream of content here. I have lots of plans for Dracula's America but future updates here on will probably be slow coming. And since I'm still sidelining Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar, I'm going to need to expand the blog in new areas to have more content available to publish. I haven't made any decision yet but I do have 2 ideas for areas I could expand into.<br />
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For the past few months I've been looking into the Android Universe. It is a science fiction setting own by Fantasy Flight Games that reminds me of Shadowrun without the magic. A friend has been trying to get me interested in the Netrunner card game. It was my first taste of the Android Universe and I like what I saw. Of course when I decided to invest in the game was also when it was announce that the game was ending. For whatever reason, Fantasy Flight lost the license to Netrunner. That means trying to buy the cards I'm missing will get harder over time as they are now out of print as well as there will no longer be any official tournaments to play in (the last official tournament was earlier this month). Not a great time to get into the game. That said, the end of Netrunner doesn't mean the end of Android. There are 3 board games, a handful of novels and novelettes and Fantasy Flight is working on a RPG book that will allow people to play pen and paper role-playing games in the Android Universe. Besides playing Netrunner, I have read the first Android novel, Free Fall. I will be writing a review of it, both as a novel on its own and as an introduction to the setting. Besides the review, I'm still toying with how the Android Universe will appear on the blog. I suppose I could get an inspiration to paint up a few models set in the Android Universe. Or Fantasy Flight Games could come out with a war game set in the Android Universe. Fantasy Flight Games have already dip their toes in miniature war gaming with Star Wars:Legion and Runewars, and there is a war in the Android lore on Mars. I will probably have a clearer idea of what I want do once I play one of the board games.<br />
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For a few years now I've been thinking about starting a new blog about my 20 years of playing pen and paper role-playing games. I wanted it to be a new blog because at the time I had a vision of what I wanted Chaos Magic to be and I didn't think role-playing games fit even though there is a lot of crossover appeal to both. That vision started to crumble when I realize it wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Also I wanted it to be a different blog because the tone of it was going to be vastly different. I try to make the tone of Chaos Magic lighthearted. Sure my stories could be dark and depressing but I always wanted my commentaries to be uplifting. The name I came up with for the new blog was "Tales from a Jaded Gamer," and it was going to be just that. At the time I was burning out on role-playing games and wanted an outlet to write about my frustrations over the years. It wasn't going to be ALL negative as I had a few stories that were more interesting or funny than exploring my dark side of gaming. But at its core it was suppose to be a way to channel my anger into something positive. I have since recovered somewhat from my burn out. I'm back to playing tabletop RPGs again and I still want to tell some of those stories of past games. I still feel that the concepts of "Jaded Gamer" and my vision of Chaos Magic are different and big enough to warrant having their own blog pages. However I know I am unable to write enough to keep 2 different blogs actives, especially since I'm also working on a different blog that has nothing to do with gaming and I have other outside projects that I'm working on. Given that for many tabletop RPGs, I prefer to have models representing the battlefield like a war game, the two concepts has a closer connection than I initially thought. I will start with the more lighthearted stories to post here, keeping the name "Tales of Jaded Gamer." After I publish a handful, I will consider if I want to bring the darker ones here as well.<br />
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I want to end this article that took way too long to write on some painting I recently did. Its not Dracula's America related nor is it anyway close to being finished. However I wanted to work on something so I started painting my giant for my Shieldmaiden force. With no current gaming incentives for the model, I'm just painting her for the practice and I like the model. Hopefully my next update wouldn't be as long as this. Until next time!<br />
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vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-54526540300351426192018-07-07T16:10:00.000-05:002018-07-07T16:10:00.536-05:00Dracula's America and 40k updateI haven't played 40k much recently due to being slightly discouraged. This is partly because of proxies and partly because of the latest FAQ. I have played around 10 games this year and I've thoroughly enjoyed them. However the army I played with looks nothing like what its suppose to. I have a decent collection of miniatures but they are mostly not for 40k and unpainted. And most of my 40k miniatures are Blood Angels which I'm not even playing. Playing with proxies have been apart of my gaming life for over 10 years now and it slowly been getting to me. For a period of time during the end of Warhammer Fantasy, I could play with a force without using proxies. The models were unpainted or partially painted, but otherwise the army looked like it should. Now I don't even have that luxury and its not going to change any time soon. I have pick up a small sample of what I've been using this year but I'm still in the progress of assembling and painting them. My delay in getting them finish is because I can't decided on how I want my 40k bases to look. I've never been fond of the idea of basing. The default of gluing green grit to the base to make it look like the model is standing in terrain just doesn't look good to me. However I wanted to something this time around with me getting back into 40k. I have an idea of what I would LIKE to do, but I have no idea how to do it. Trying to find a base scheme that I would like and in my ability to do has been seemly impossible so far. Until I solved this riddle, I can't really finish the miniatures I started working on. Of course there is also another reason I've been delayed on getting things done...<br/>
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My 40k hobby has mostly been stopped in its tracks with the Big FAQ 1 release in April. In particular the Battle Brothers beta rules completely ruins how I wanted to play 40k. I will hopefully go into it more later but the highlights are thus. The small factions are probably not worth using. They have take up their own detachment and they do not give you command points. Given that using the various small factions of the Imperium was basically my army idea, I'm limited to only taking 3 factions (I sometimes use 4) and I have to organize them in an inefficient way that reduces the amount of commend points I get. In other words I get punished heavy for trying to make a Witch Hunter list from my 4th edition days. So now I'm not sure I want to use Sisters of Silence, Inquisition or the Assassins. And of course Inquisition and Sisters of Silence were some of the first new models I brought. I haven't even started painting Inquisitor Greyfax and now I don't think I want to use her anymore, not with the Big FAQ beta rules. The more I think about the beta rules, the more it depresses my interest in playing 40k. Besides working on an unit or two of Arco-flagellants I think I might need to step away from 40k for the time being. My future in 40k is too uncertain at the moment, and there are other games I'm interested in that aren't as much of a financial investment to play.<br/>
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One of which is Dracula's America. I played a few games last year and I've like what I played. There were talks of a campaign but nothing really came of it. I also joined a pen and paper Deadlands game that reduce the time I could play Dracula's America with others. I grab a few models for the campaign that never happened. I planned to make youtube videos about Dracula's America but that also never happened. So instead those models just sat on my shelf. Then two things change in recent weeks. My library has an audio video studio that will eventually be available for me to use. That will make recording audio for podcasts and youtube videos much easier to do and allow me to get shows off the ground I've been thinking about for a year or more. I also learn that a Dracula's America campaign was starting this week and I could join. I was not exactly ready to be apart of a campaign but now that I'm in one, I will take this opportunity to work on my western models and to make Dracula's America content. I don't know how much of the campaign I will cover here. It is a pretty simple 5 person, 7 weeks campaign. I will mention highlights in my new podcast but that will probably be the extent of it unless something interesting comes up.<br/>
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More Dracula's America content is coming! So stay tune.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-46378941578335092192018-05-09T22:45:00.000-05:002018-05-09T22:45:53.700-05:00Warhammer Gifts From A Friend, and ResetA friend of mine did some house cleaning and came across old miniatures (mostly Warhammer Fantasy) he brought a long time ago. He brought them with the idea of making a fantasy chess board. At this point that project was never going to happen so he offered them to his gaming buddies (which includes me). I, of course said loudly I wanted them and he was more than happy to toss the boxes and blisters packs my way. Here is a picture of some of those gifts...<br/>
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What to do with these new old models got me thinking. At first I consider using some of the collection for conversion projects but I couldn't think of anything they would be good for. Then I remember that I wanted an elven army eventually for Chaos Magic lore reasons and these miniatures would be a decent start. I'm not going to immediately put together the entire collection but I think I will work on the box of High Elves, the box of Dark Elves and maybe one blister soonish. This might even allow me to get in some Age of Sigmar games in.<br/>
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Which leads into another decision about the models and even the blog itself. Am I going to build these miniatures so I can used them in both Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition and in Age of Sigmar or should I only keep AoS in mind? There are elements of 8th edition I like and do not see in any game I'm currently playing. That and along with the good memories I have of playing 8th is why I held out hope that I will get to play it again sometime. I really want to finish the Border Prince Campaign as well as play through the scenarios that were in the End Times books. However I'm beginning to realize it is getting unlikely that I will get to play 8th edition again and will probably never get to regularly play it. I only have one friend that I know of that still has 8th edition armies and has an interest in playing. That said, we never played one last year and even he has started selling of some of his armies. The final nail for me is that my friend is leaving soon for college. That means there is no hope for me playing 8th edition for at least 2 or 3 years from now. It makes no sense for me to work on new 8th edition armies, especially since I don't own any of the elven army books. There are lots of local players that play 40k and/or Age of Sigmar. I don't know how these models will fit into AoS but they along with my Bretonnians should be fun to find out.<br/>
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I think it is time for me to remove the Border Prince Campaign page. I had a lot of story plans connect to the campaign but it doesn't make sense to have most of my blog's lore based on an unfinished campaign that will remain unfinished for years to come. As much as it pains me, at this point its better for me to reset my lore and start again with a new campaign or narrative tool. Age of Sigmar was made with narrative battles in mind and those are perfect for telling stories through fiction and gaming. Before I make any new plans for gaming fiction, I want to concentrate on getting more of my collection assembled and painted. I will need some time to decide where to take my fantasy stories and I have plenty of models to paint and even more to assemble.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-70609419110067133932018-05-01T23:03:00.000-05:002018-05-01T23:03:02.003-05:00An Arco-Flagellant ForceI never used Arco-Flagellants when I played Witch Hunters in 4th edition. I thought there rules were interesting but I didn't like the models at the time nor their lore. I didn't like the idea that part of my army were convicted criminals overdosing on combat drugs (and I still don't). Back then I had the idea of doing a conversion using ninja models with cybernetic limbs and using the Arco-Flagellant rules. That never actually happen. At the time I only wanted to use Games Workshop models and I don't think GW had anything in their catalog that fit what I was looking for. While I still think it is an interest idea for a conversion, it not something I would do today. The conversion would make them thematically similar to Death Cult Assassins and I already have 3 of the current miniatures.<br/>
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I have used Arco-Flagellants quite a bit in 8th edition. Earlier this year I made an Ecclesiarchy list to test out all the close combat options available in the Adeptus Ministorum. A lot of the options were okay at best in my opinion. But there were two that both my opponent and myself thought were really, really good. Of course Arco-Flagellants were one of them (the other being Penitent Engines). They have a clear battlefield role of killing low armor, mid range tough enemies. And they do that extremely well. The shear number of attacks they can generate in close combat is insane. More than once this year my Arco-Flagellants generated so many attacks that I had trouble holding the dices. In my test list I initially thought aforementioned Death Cult Assassins had the same role as Arco-Flagellants, only Arco-Flagellants were much much better. But after playing a few more games and taking a closer look at the Death Cult Assassins abilities, I realize Death Cult has a slightly different role from Arco-Flagellants. Death Cult Assassins are much better at dealing with low toughness, high armor opponents due to their armor piercing which Arco-Flagellants lack. Death Cult also possess a lot of close combat attacks of their own. In fact one Death Cult Assassin has the average number of attacks that one Arco-Flagellant has. I never realize that before. Though with Arco-Flagellants having random attacks, they benefit more abilities that give other units bonus attacks, like priests. I always did have a fondness for Death Cult Assassins (thought I never played with them either in 4th edition) with them essentially being Imperium ninjas. But with Arco-Flagellants being stronger, more resilient and point-wise cheaper, Arco-Flagellants are currently just better. That said, I will be using both.<br/>
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The Big FAQ 1 of 2018 was just release and it prevents taking a datasheet(an unit) more than 3 times. So far I have not used Arco-Flagellants more than twice in an army but I was contemplating a list with 6 units of Arco-Flagellants. Now with the Big FAQ 1 around, I can only use 3 Arco-Flagellants units at most. Which is more than enough for most of my games. I just wish I could have played one game with a ton Arco-Flagellants. It seems Games Workshop are constantly updating and amending the rules so I suppose there is a chance the 3 datasheet limit could get removed in the future and I can legally run a mass Arco-Flagellant army.<br/>
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I'm not the type of player whom makes a single army list. The player that plays the same list over and over again, making slight tweaks to the list after every game or two. That type of player only buys miniatures that are also in that single list. And once they have their army completed and painted, they will only buy new miniatures when they tweak the list. That type of player is definitely not me, though it would make miniature buying much much easier. Every time I played 40k this year, I made the army list from the ground up. Many of my lists were made to test certain elements while others were made based on what I was feeling like playing. The downside to make new list every time I play is that I can never fully learn the strength and weakness of a particular list. That only comes with playing the same list multiple times against a wide range of opponents and scenarios. However I can and have learn of the strengths and weaknesses of individual datasheets (units) as well as the strength and weakness of the overall collection of forces that I call my Imperium army (mostly the Sisters of Battle, Ecclesiarchy, Sisters of Silence and the Inquisition). The makeup of my army changes from game to game, but there are datasheets that I use repeatedly. And it is those elements I think I will focus on collecting models for first. Ever since I first learn how great Arco-Flagellants were, I've always included at least one unit of them. The 3 Arco-Flagellants pictured above will be the start of me building 2 full units of 9. With 3 already assembled, I'm thinking up ideas for conversions to use for some of the other 15. I'm not going to use my old cyber ninja idea, but I am thinking of doing a few priests with the cybernetic limbs. I haven't found any models I want to convert yet but the plan is buy probably a reaper priest model and replace the arms with Arco-Flagellants arms. I also have Chaos Spawn limb bits that when painted up metallic should work for Arco-Flagellants. Why priests? I have a short story idea that will explain in universe for priest Arco-Flagellants. Hopefully I can post it soon. I will be posting my painting progress on the Arco-Flagellants I currently have and the entire conversion process of the next batch of Arco-Flagellants. Stay tune!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-90886137791914160032018-02-18T11:20:00.000-06:002018-02-18T11:20:58.967-06:00The Sister Who SpeaksSometimes when I'm putting models together I brainstorm conversion ideas that I could do with said models. Other times I come up with mini-stories that explains the fictional role that the model or unit I'm working on has in the army overall and what are some of the intra-army relationships are like. And then there are those times I do both.<br/>
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One of the things I'm currently working on is a box of Sister of Silence. I love the miniatures but I also want to have at least one with a "traditional" look. I think it would make her look similar to my Sisters of Battle and therefore help make both Sister forces look apart of the same army. While head swaps is among the easiest conversion to do, I won't be converting any Sisters of Silence anytime soon. I want 2 squads (one armed with swords, the other with bolters) to be model as is. Once I get a third box of Sisters is when I will start looking into the conversion. Also I don't have a lot of female head bits in my collection to use in conversions.<br/>
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As I was crafting the story of how this future Sister conversion was going to fit into my army, a question came to my mind. Why would a Sister of Silence look so radically different from the others? I decided to go with her being the Silence Officer whom interacts with the rest of the army. That means she would be the one who would go to officer meetings, get issued orders for all of the Sisters of Silence in the field and in general the person to communicate to when concerning Silence affairs. This may not sound like a big deal but the job requires speaking and Sisters of Silence take a Vow of Silence when becoming members. With fantasy I would be more than happy to ignore setting fluff and make up my own fiction details in my stories. But 40k feels different. It is the setting a lot of fans call home and it is truly unlike anything I would have created on my own. Especially Sisters of Silence. Fortunately there is a really easy way to explain how this will fit into the setting. A jackass Inquisitor!<br/>
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Inquisitors' authority in the Imperium is insane. They can practically order nearly anyone to do anything on penalty of death as long as they claim it is for the benefit of the Imperium. An Inquisitor can easily conscript a force of Sisters of Silence to serve under him/her as his personal army/bodyguards. It would even make a lot of sense if it was an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor currently hunting a powerful psyker. Sisters of Silence communicate with each other with sign language and to outsiders by acolytes. Acolytes are women training to be Silence of Silence but have not yet taken the Vow of Silence. If said Inquisitor felt it was beneath him/her to talk to an acolyte or wants to be able to talk with someone in the middle of a firefight when acolytes are probably not going to be around, he/she could give an Imperial Mandate to a Sisters of Silence to permanently break her Vow. And I have an Inquisitor that could fit that role already assembled. Just need to be primed and painted. And I also need to get a better camera.<br/>
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With all that said, even though it makes perfect sense in the 40k lore, I'm not sure I want someone like that in my army. I suppose I could say the Inquisitor regrets issuing the mandate but that feels cheap and like poor storytelling to me. I think I would prefer to say that the Inquisitor was killed off and the Sisters of Silence were then later recruited into my current army. There is another scenario I could use that I just thought of. Starting off the same as before with an Inquisitor conscripting a force of Sisters of Silence, the difference being that the Inquisitor doesn't mind dealing with acolytes. In fact the Inquisitor grows fond of the working relationship they have with one of the acolytes to such a degree that they Imperial Mandate the Sisters of Silence order to accept the acolyte without her taking the Vow of Silence. Still a jackass thing to do and an abuse of power. However it doesn't setup a personality that makes me instantly hate the character. It will be awhile before I can bring this character to the tabletop. While I could use my new Inquisitor Greyfax model pictured above, this character for me deserves an unique model with my own personal conversions.<br/>
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A little weird when you think about it that I've put this much thought into the backstory of two conversion projects I don't plan to do anytime soon. But that is how my mind works. At least now I can start looking for bits to fit into these projects. Also just because they don't currently have models doesn't mean I can't put them into stories. Thank you for reading my random musings on story and conversion.
vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-43804299596872389072018-01-13T13:05:00.003-06:002018-01-13T13:05:53.374-06:00New Year Return and ResolutionsIt's the new year and this is my first update in nearly 4 months. By no means this was intentional. There are many reasons for the hiatus, but to go into those reasons now would probably derail this post. I hope I can discuss some of those reasons in the future but for now I want to focus on moving forward. Here are my Chaos Magic plans and goals for 2018:<br/>
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<b>Flames of War</b> and <b>Team Yankee -</b> I have decided to drop Flames of War and Team Yankee. There are a lot of games I'm interested in and I have very limited resources to apply towards those games. While I'm use to playing with proxies, I'm hate it and want whatever money I put into the hobby to go towards not having to proxy. For me Flames of War and Team Yankee is competing with Warhammer in this vein. Anything I want to get in Flames of War is just a drop in the bucket compared to what I need. The reason for this is the Flames of War Germany has so many lists with so many options that I could easy find 5 different late war German list and not duplicate any unit between them. Now if I made a single list and just try to collect models for that single list, then Flames of War would probably be the best game for me to get to playing without proxies. But that is not how I want to play war games. It is also not a very good idea since Battlefront changes the official point limits of games every year. Not saying Battlefront is bad for doing that, but it does help explain why Flames of War is not good for me to invest in this year. My reason for dropping Team Yankee is slightly different but still related to limited resources. I still have a ways to go before I can play a 100 point game with West Germans and even further to go before a can play a good list at 100 points. Given that the local interest in Team Yankee has wain a lot, it makes more sense to me to instead invest in other games. Team Yankee (as well as Flames of War) has an unique problem in that I need to invest a lot into carrying cases. What I have now works fine with every game I'm playing except Team Yankee and Flames of War. At this time I don't want to spend any of my limited resources on carrying cases.<br/>
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What this means is that I will not be picking up any new models, participating in any campaigns or write any short stories set in those games. With Flames of War still being active locally, I may still play one offs. I will also keep up with the rules and write any articles I think are worthwhile for others. It is also possible if I get into the habit of working on models regularly I may work on Flames of War and/or Team Yankee models I currently have and needs finishing. I will be posting pictures of any models that are newly painted. I know from last year that things can happen to change my plans and there is something I can foresee happening that could possibly have me picking Flames of War and/or Team Yankee back up. Nevertheless, I don't see me dealing with Flames of War/Team Yankee until 2019.<br/>
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<b>Warhammer 40k</b> and <b>Age of Sigmar -</b> I really miss playing 40k. The last time I was really involved in the game was mid 5th edition. I then discovered Warhammer Fantasy and completely left 40k behind because I was far more interested in the fantasy genre than sci-fi. I played 40k a handful of times since and I never really felt the spark. At one point I had the opportunity to play with friends every (or maybe every other) Saturday morning. I was not a morning person and it felt like a real chore to get out and play. So that opportunity closed on me and I didn't miss it. I played 40k last weekend on Saturday morning and I couldn't wait to do it again. I'm still not a morning person but I'm now excited enough to be willing to get up every Saturday to play if possible. When I left 40k, I did not have many miniatures, partly because I tried to build 3 separate armies. This time I want to concentrate on a single army. A Sisters of Battle army with some various Imperium aspects. I've nickname the army "Sisters with Friends."<br/>
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I wanted to spend Christmas money to get one new thing for my 40k army. Sadly my local store don't have much I want to buy on the shelf. I thought I had to settle for either the Triumvirate of the Imperium boxset which has the Saint but includes Belisarius Cawl which I have no interest in or the Talons of the Emperor which has more troops but is more expensive. After thinking it over I decided it would be better to get more troops to start. So of course when I finally decide to buy the box set that has been sitting in my store for 8 months was purchase under my nose recently. I can't even order it as its currently out of stock! So I ended up with the Triumvirate box set instead. Next month I will picking up a box of Sister of Silence and Sisters of Battle command retinue. I love the rules for the Imagifier and Hospitaller so I wanted to get those models soon. I actually wanted to get the Hospitaller ever since I started playing. At the time I was sad that she could only go with Inquisitors but now she is with Sisters of Battle proper.<br/>
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After next month I will probably only picking up single sisters packs every other month or so. I need a lot of special weapon girls and I currently have very little. For the first half the year I see my self only playing for fun with lots proxies. Once I feel comfortable with the rules I will start considering local tournaments as I do have a Blood Angels force I brought from a friend. After a few months I should be able to make a hodgepodge tournament Imperium force. Later in the year I will see about setting up a kill-team mini campaign. By the end of the year my 40k goal is to have 25 models painted and participate in one event.<br/>
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Age of Sigmar was a game I thought about dropping but this past weekend while I was playing 40k there was an Age of Sigmar tournament. I got to meet players that are into 40k and Age of Sigmar and were willing to travel to tournaments around the country. Traveling to tournaments is something I've wanted to do regularly do for a while. Even though I've only played a handful of AoS games, I've always stay somewhat up to date with the AoS environment by following Vince Venturella youtube channel. Now knowing there is a fairly strong AoS local community, it doesn't feel right to completely ignore it. Especially when I can supplement my AoS Poison Army with my older chaos stuff to make it playable. I still have a lot of work to do on the Poison models that I have. If I do get any new models for it, it will be the Skaven Plague Claw and/or the Verminlord. My AoS goal is to have 30 models for my Poison Army painted.<br/>
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<b>Smaller Goals -</b> Reflecting back on 2017 I notice a flaw in myself. I tend to make my goals way too big. I make plans that require hundreds of painted miniatures and several detail terrain pieces that goes from there when I don't own most of those miniatures, much less even have them assembled and painted. That is why I'm trying to make my goals this year smaller scale. I might have too many goals, but at least each individual goal should be something I can achieve. And as long as I'm able to complete some goals and still make progress with others, I will consider this year a great success. I still have my big plans but I now realize I need to wait on them until I have a build a proper foundation.<br/>
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<b>More War Journals -</b> The idea behind War Journal was to have a series dedicated to a particular war game that had a regular schedule release. Maybe with a co-host, maybe on my own. My first attempt at War Journal was for Battletech. That never got off the ground due to scheduling conflicts and failing to find a place to record. Later I did 26 episodes of War Journal: Flames of War with Tracy George. This year I want to start two new War Journals. One on Relic Knights which I've been promising to do for years. The other I want to be on Dracula's America. Both will be solo projects (though it is possible I could have guests) but will have their differences as well. Relic Knights will be about what it is like to start the hobby from the beginning and document my progress. Dracula's America will be closer to what War Journal: Flames of War was, except it will just be me and have video instead of an audio only podcast. My goal is to do at least 6 War Journal episodes.<br/>
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<b>Short Stories -</b> The initial purpose of this blog was to have a place to host narrative fiction of my adventures in fantasy campaigns. Very little was done on this front because our campaigns ended before I could get much written. This year I want to go back to Chaos Magic roots a little bit by publishing more narrative fiction. The Border Prince Campaign ended early and unfinished but I am still using my army's fiction in the overall Chaos Magic mythology. There are a few campaign turns that don't have a corresponding short story. I had story ideas for them but I never got around to flushing them out. Writing those missing turn fictions will be a major goal for me. Also I have a couple of short story ideas that are not necessarily connected to any campaigns that I want to write. These stories will help flush out other parts of my Chaos Magic mythology. Doing any new fiction for new campaigns is unlikely for the time being.<br/>
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<b>Catching Up on Past Articles -</b> In addition to missing turn fiction, there are some articles I said I would write that I never got to. The main ones I'm thinking of are the ones discussing my time at the Warlord's convention last year. I still have my notes on days two and three. I got sidetrack with other things and never wrote my article on day 2 and day 3. A 2018 goal of mine is to write 10 articles I said were coming. Included in this are Topics of the Week questions that I wanted to write about and I think are still interesting to have a piece on.<br/>
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<b>Other Things -</b> Beside the two Warhammer games I'm still interested in BattleTech, Darcula's America and Test of Honour. These games require a lot less resources than Warhammer. The BattleTech community is far more forgiving with using proxies than any other community I've been apart of. That means I only need a handful mechs to play BattleTech outside of large epic battles. Dracula's America is a low model count skirmish game. Using Reaper's Miniatures, each figure averages to around $5 each and I already have the bulk of what I need for a while. Test of Honour is the most expensive of the three in the short run. However each box set usually has 10 to 30 models in it. The exception being the newly release Ninja of Iga expansion. The fact that Ninja of Iga only has metal figures (unlike earlier expansions that had 1 metal figure and multiple plastic minis) explains the low model count and higher price. Being that I love ninjas, I will have to pick it up at some point. I've recently grab Chobei's Renegades box set with Christmas money so I probably won't need to get any more Test of Honour stuff this year once I have the Ninja of Iga as well. My BattleTech goal is to paint 5 mechs and play a few games. My Dracula's America goal is to paint 9 figures. For Test of Honour, my goal is to paint 50 figures by the end of the year.<br/>
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Lastly, beside War Journal, I have another series I want to do this year. It is a show that will mix League of Legends and Dracula's America. The idea is that I think a few characters in League of Legends would fit right in with the setting of Dracula's America. Trying convert miniatures to look like League's champions will be a major part of the show eventually. The first episode will explain more with how the series will work. I hope to do at least six episodes by the end of the year.<br/>
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And those are all my hobby goals I've set for myself this year. I'm sorry for not having updated in so long. I don't plan on that happening again. Thank you for reading and I got work to do. Happy Gaming!vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-75207525198387822802017-09-08T09:47:00.001-05:002017-09-08T09:47:30.601-05:00Progress Review #5I got back to some kind of track in August, making some progress on my models. Here is what I got done.<br />
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I started painting my spell caster for Dracula's America and finally decided on a look for my Leopard 2s. This is my only picture of the caster but I was only a third done with her at the time. I've since nearly finished her and will have more pictures of her later this month. For my Leopards, I've started the process of painting my tracks and attaching them, one by one.<br />
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By the end of this month I hope to have the caster finished and at least 4 tanks with the tracks and camo. I gave my 5th tank a commander and I'm having a slight issue with him. Once I figure out how I want to handle it, then I will bring it up to speed with the others. I primed an old Panzer IV H to test out washes for my Leopards. I ended up liking both washes. Once for the green base, the other for everything BUT the green. Using both is going to make the wash process really slow and a pain in the neck. I suppose it will be worth it to make sure I like the final results this time. Thank you for reading.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-11404239737893465002017-09-01T02:57:00.000-05:002017-09-01T02:57:04.499-05:00Issue with Weapons in Dracula's AmericaI've played four games of Dracula's America and my interest in the game is even higher. (I actually played two games before I publish my review.) Its unique system keeps all players involve for most of the game. And every game so far has been very close, though I've always been on the losing side. Without a doubt Dracula's America has become one of our favorite games to play and we are looking forward to eventually starting a campaign. But as we prepare what we want for our initial posse, we realize an issue with the weapons in Dracula's America, at least under a campaign system. Well, an issue if you don't want to buy and paint 5 times the amount of miniatures you would otherwise need.</br>
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The issue has to do with a "what you see is what you get rule", which a lot of miniature games have. If you don't know what this rule is, it means that the model needs to have the weapons its equip with to be physical modeled on the miniature. In most games this is not a big deal once you figure out how to make the model fit your playstyle. But with Dracula's America, a model can only have 3 weapons and no more than two models can have the same weapon beside the basic pistol. A starting posse has 6 models and $22 dollars to equip them with. You can't have any uncommon gear in your initial posse, like repeating rifles, sawed-off shotguns and others. After your first battle, both sides get some cash and then you can start upgrading your crew. So the equipment your posse has can (and most likely will) change after every game for most if not all of a campaign. As someone whom uses proxies a lot the hobby, I understand why the rule is in place. In games with fully equip posses, it is extremely important to know that a model with a rifle if that suppose to be a normal rifle, repeating rifle or a buffalo rifle. Losing track of whose who is a big problem with using proxies, both for the user or their opponent. But at the same time if I'm planning on making a character look vastly different in two or three games from now, why should I model how they look now? I don't want to buy a model for every version I want to use. I suppose I should say this is a problem unique to Dracula's America's campaign system. If you are not a campaign style of player, then this won't be an issue for you. Dracula's America does have a match play system where you build your entire posse with $100. But I haven't play it yet and I'm currently focus on campaigns, so my point of view is only from the campaign side of things.<br/>
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I didn't realize this issue when I pick up my first mini, a cheap Reaper Bone miniature. I like the model a lot but it only has a single pistol. Knowing what I do now, I wouldn't have pick it up, or I would have pick it up with the purpose of doing conversions on it later. But since I have it, I will make it my posse's spell caster (which the game calls Arcanist) and build the rest of my posse around her. Deciding on what to get next is further complicated by another issue related to weapons, available models. Northstar makes the official line for Dracula's America but I've not been that impress so far with what I have seen. To be fair, I've never seen their models in person which could make a difference. However, it is really off putting to me that they modeled something wrong. There are several creature that you can summon in Dracula's America and a specific summonable creature is an angelic two pistol using gunslinger called a Seraphim. The Northstar official model only has a single pistol. When the game has rules about models being accurately depicted, having the official model wrong undermines the rules. I also prefer to get my miniatures at brick and mortar stores and my local store would have trouble getting Northstar stuff. So that leaves me to find suitable western options that my local store currently has on the shelf, which is two: Malifaux and Reaper Miniatures. Malifaux has been on the edge of interest for me. I knew its setting was called the weird west but I've never got around to truly look at their model line until I needed to find stuff for Dracula's America. At this point I realize they went all in on the "weird" part as most of what I saw while flavorful was extremely outlandish and grotesquely weird. The only things I thought might fit was one crew (which another player interested in Dracula's America already have), a lone model and box of random bits that will allow you to build custom characters. The random bits is out of range of my budget for a while and I don't want the crew because I would like everyone posse to be as different as possible. The only other Malifaux model I'm interested in is the Forgotten Marshal. While he is pricier than what I would like, if no one else gets him, I will probably pick one up.<br/>
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With Malifaux out, that just leave Reaper Miniatures. I've always been fond of Reaper's products though in the past I just browse their stuff without looking for something in particular, and picking up any miniature I thought was interesting. Now I'm looking for wild west miniatures equip with particular weapons. And it doesn't help Reaper's website is awful for searching. Reaper's miniatures have searchable labels and western is one of those labels. However that doesn't bring up all their western models for some reason. If I had to guess, I think the problem is that the western label only brings up miniatures under their Chronoscope brand and not under any other brand, like Savage Worlds which has their Deadlands minis. Whatever is the reason, it means I will eventually have to look through Reaper's very large catalog, one mini at a time. The reason I need to do this is because I need figures with multiple weapons, in particular rifles, shotguns and carbines. Figures holding a weapon in a way to make it easy to snip the hands off for conversion purposes is a bonus. What disappointed me the most about Reaper was the lack of Native American figures. I found only 3 in their catalog so far and none of them had range weapons. I wanted at least one Native American in my posse but at this time I don't have any viable options. If someone wanted to play the Skinwalkers faction(which only Native Americans can join), then Malifaux and Reaper are not options for them. Unless you want to do heavy conversions on three different models, then you would have look at one of the smaller miniature companies for Native American figures. Who? I don't know. I didn't see any Native American figures at Northstar under Dracula's America either!<br/>
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As I mention earlier, many of these issue are only present if you play in a campaign. Under match play, you can make a list and then buy and convert your models to fit your list with little problems (unless you want Native Americans). For me, I think I will be looking to build my posse around where I see them during the middle of the campaign. Early in the campaign I think it will be easier to remember to disregard certain gear as weapon options are very limited then. As the campaign goes on, I can start buying items on the model but I don't have in my posse yet. By the time it gets past the middle and heading towards the end, I will probably be needing to expand beyond the initial six and will have a lot of experience to know what exactly I need. That's all I have on weapons in Dracula's America. Next time I will go into what I'm working on for my posse and talk a little bit about the factions. Thanks for reading. Until next time.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-57778268231546825912017-08-21T15:58:00.001-05:002018-01-13T13:07:04.101-06:00A Quick Review: Dracula's America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8hTAdBBZB4/WZtUJYM5RkI/AAAAAAAABCY/bqw5kCblFNklLfIQ3EJ2sNuNqHRshEDqQCLcBGAs/s1600/GEDC0035.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8hTAdBBZB4/WZtUJYM5RkI/AAAAAAAABCY/bqw5kCblFNklLfIQ3EJ2sNuNqHRshEDqQCLcBGAs/s320/GEDC0035.JPG" width="320" height="213" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1067" /></a></div>
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I had seen pictures of models on Twitter and in an email for Dracula's America. I wasn't really interested in it at the time. Partly because I'm already in too many games that I'm trying to buy miniatures for. And partly because westerns is a distance 4th for genres I want to play in. That said, I got the chance to read a review copy of the book during a 2 and half hour trip to play some Team Yankee. I wish I didn't. Not because it was a bad read. I wish I had not read it because now I really REALLY want to get a few western models and play a few games.<br/>
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Dracula's America is a skirmish wargame in a similar vein as Frostgrave, Necromunda and Mordheim. You have a warband of six to ten models (Dracula's America calls it your Posse) where you battle other players' warband and random encounters to earn treasure. Build in these games are campaign systems where your force can gain experiences and grew in power. I will admit that I haven't read all of Dracula's America from cover to cover. I didn't get to the fluff of its alternate history. But I did read the rules of how to play, the various game mechanics, how to build a Posse, a few magic spells and all the powers you get from the special factions. In all, I think I read about 65% of the book and I feel confident that I could play a game with a pre-made Posse and would only have to look in the book for charts. To me that is amazing after a single partial read. For me to do that means the rules were written in a simple and easy to understand way for a game that has quite a bit of complexity to it.<br/>
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The game uses a dice pool system in a way I've never seen or heard of before. Your base dice pool will depend on the action you want to take. For example, shooting is a 3-die pool while a dodge reactions is a 1-die pool. Situation modifiers can increase or decrease this dice pool, though nothing can reduce the pool below a single die. Any die that rolls a 5 or higher is a success. The more successes rolled, the better the result. The type of die used is depended on the characters. If a character has only recently started wearing a gun on their hip, then they will be using d6s for all their die rolling. Now if a character has been in a few fights and has seen a thing or two in their time, then they would be using d8s. But if a character's name is known throughout the country because of their exploits, then they would probably be using d10s. I really like this tier system. It is a way to make veterans of the west more powerful than novices without giving them bigger numbers for stats.<br/>
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Like all western based games, Dracula's America uses a deck of cards. A deck per player to be exact. Cards are used as an initiative system. At the beginning of the turn, all players draw cards equal to half the number of models in their posse, round up. So if you had 9 miniatures on the table, you would draw 5 cards. You get to draw an extra card if your boss (whom is the leader of your posse) is still on the table. Initiative is done by each player picking a card in their hand and playing it face down. Once everyone has picked, the cards are reveal. The player with the highest valued card gets to act first, any black cards before red cards. In case of ties, roll off. And if two of the exact same cards are used, a special event happens as well. When its your turn to act, you can either pick one model to take 2 actions or you can pick two models to take 1 action each. After you have resolved both of your actions the model/s get a done token and discard the playing card. The player with the next highest card gets to act. Once all the players get a chance to act, play repeats itself by everyone picking a new card. Models with done tokens can't act again. Play continues until either all models on the table have acted or all players are out of cards. I've never seen an initiative system like this and at least on paper I love it. While essentially play is swap back and forth between two players, I see interesting choices being available at all points. You never know if your opponent will activated one model or two on their next turn. With the right cards in hand, you can setup a plan to take two turns in a row by playing a low card followed by an Ace. You won't have enough cards to have all your models take two actions, so you need to strategize who best to get those extra actions and when.<br/>
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The types of actions available and interaction with terrain seem to be more or less standard with skirmish games. The one significant difference is that facing matters. Not only does a model have to face in the direction where it is shooting but also getting shot in the back does extra damage. Also one of the available actions is a ready action which allows you to interrupt an enemy model later in the turn. However you have to be able to see them to interrupt and if your back is to them, then you can't use the ready action. Now combat is anything but standard. I already explain how skill test work. For combat, you attack with a skill like shooting. If you get at least one success then you hit. The victim now has to make a save. This is not a test so a success isn't automatic at 5+. Instead the number needed to save is based on the number of successes the attacker got. 5+ on a single success, 6+ with two successes and so on. The victim needs to make this test even if they can't roll high enough to succeed. Damage is based on how much the victim fails their saved. There are three damage states in the game; shaken, down and casualty. Shaken means you have some light wounds and have some penalties. Down means you are either serious wounded, or too scared to get off the ground. Either way, the only thing they can do is crawl until they get healed. Casualty, like the name implies is being dead or too gravely wounded to continue. A model that takes a casualty is removed from the board.<br/>
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I didn't get to fluff where they explain the story behind the setting because I ran out of time. I only know the tagline which is that Dracula's minions assassinated the president and mind control the congress into making him President for life. I also read about the playable factions in the game. I only got to their game rules but that was enough for me to get a favor of who they are and the possible role in the setting. I think the setting has a lot to offer. I am reminded of Deadlands in tone and mystery. I could very easily see adapting Dracula's America to play a wargame in the Deadlands world. Also I can see adapting your favorite pen and paper roleplaying game to have a lot of fun in Dracula's America as well. Just using Dracula's America ruleset as is or with slight changes make work as rpg as well. Some of the available factions includes The Crusaders of the Twilight Order (whom members can have knight armor, holy bless weapons and can summon angelic gunslingers), vampires that serve Dracula, devil worshipers whom can summon demons, Native American shapeshifters and just a lot more. <br/>
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What I like most about Dracula's America is how they separated the mundane and supernatural. In most fantastical games, the supernatural aspect is entwine through out the rule system. This fine by me as I love my magic. But if someone was a historical player, it would be a headache if not just impossible to use these fantasy games as mundane historical games in my opinion. Dracula's America on the other hand has made it extremely easy to go mundane. If you want to play a historical skirmish western game, then all you need to do is read the first half of the book and play as it. If you do want to play with supernatural elements then the second half of the book can be seamlessly inserted into your game. I don't know if this design choice was intentional but it is really cool they gave us the option to play without magic if we want.<br/>
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The only thing that disappointed me about Dracula's America is the campaign system that came package in the book. After seeing a few Frostgrave campaigns and how seemingly rich Dracula's America backstory is, I was expecting something rich with story. Instead we got a very abstract campaign system with very bland scenarios. To be fair Frostgrave's rich campaigns came in separate releases from the initial book. But at the same time Frostgrave had more initial scenarios and those scenarios were far more interesting. I suppose its not too bad to have this as your weak point as it easily fix with a new campaign book release. And my complains only deals with how you suppose to organize a campaign, how to decide the campaign winner and the lack of any kind of story. The system for how your posse grows in strength is excellent.<br/>
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I'm really looking forward to trying Dracula's America. If you are a fan of a weird west setting or enjoy skirmish wargames with leveling up mechanics, then I would definitely suggest you take a look at Dracula's America. Even if you dislike westerns and/or vampires, as long as you are a skirmish wargame fan, I would still suggest looking at it. The uniqueness of the system might be enough for you to love the game despite its genre. Thank you for reading.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-32520394663823850512017-08-04T13:03:00.001-05:002017-08-04T13:10:08.514-05:00Topic of the Week - Allies in Age of SigmarThis week topic is related to the up coming General's Handbook 2. I'm not exactly excited about the book because I dislike buying books (just rather put that money towards more models). Also, personally it feels like I just brought General's Handbook 1 and seeing it replace is a downer to me. That said, I AM excited about Age of Sigmar getting allies. There is probably more details about it out at the time of my writing but I don't know it. I get the vast majority of my Age of Sigmar news from the Topic of the Week videos and the few times I get to watch Warhammer Weekly. My understanding is that in the General's Handbook 2 there will be the option to take up to 20% of your army from a different faction as allies and still keep your allegiance abilities. It is unknown to me exactly how this will work, including whether or not it will be possible to cross grand alliances. In any case, my response is that I'm all for it to the extreme. I certainly understand this can lead to abuses and realize this can bring a lot of headaches to the community. However I think the flexibility is worth the risk. I create my own lore and it rarely fits into the same boxes Games workshop sets up. I have two examples of armies that mixes alliances. To really understand why I mix alliance, I need to explain the lore and ideas behind each army.<br/>
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Funny that I was just talking about my goblin army in my last article when before that I probably hadn't thought about it since a little after Age of Sigmar was first release. My goblin army is a mix of death and destruction and I got inspired to build it from the Diablo 3 expansion. The undead in that game were an eerie light blue. The lore behind my goblin army is that an Angel of Death made a bargain with a tribe of goblins. If the goblins devote themselves and worship him, the Angel bestow his powers to them, allowing the goblins to use it as they see fit. The Angel showed off his powers by instantly killing the Orcs whom enslaved them (and greatly weaken himself in the process). The "default" army would be all goblins. Two-thirds of the goblins would be painted green like normal, while the rest would be painted light blue. The blue goblins would represent goblins that had died and are currently being animated by the Angel's power (gamewise, there is no different between green and blue). Once the Angel recovers some of his strength, he would then be able to animated and summon powerful undead that would be under the control of goblin shamans. The undead would be blue in color, in the same shade as some of the goblins. The undead would be mostly skeletons with the potential of a few heavy hitters, outside of vampire/Tomb King characters. A side benefit to this army was that it was a "reservable" army. By that I mean it wouldn't take much to make it playable as a completely different army. Get a few undead characters, expand a little on the undead elites and use the blue goblins as ghouls and it can serve as a playable pure undead army. The Angel himself wouldn't appear on the battlefield with the exception as unit fillers under 8th edition rules. The unit fillers would have represent the ability of large groups of goblins projecting a ghostly image of him. All I needed to find were Demon Prince size Angel models. Probably would have been one of the few unit fillers that would have cost more than just buying more models!<br/>
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I discarded the idea of building the goblin army early in Age of Sigmar because I had too many other games and armies I also wanted to work on. Which is probably for the best as it would probably get smash by anything remotely competitive. Since AoS split up goblins into 3 or more factions, I probably couldn't ever get allegiance abilities for it whether or not I included the undead. Its a shame as I really love the theme behind it and think it would have look cool on the tabletop.<br/>
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My Chaos Army is something I plan to get back to and has multiple narrative parts. Chaos has two separate storylines but the one that mixes alliances deals with the Chaos King Amirren. Amirren is pretty much my version of Archaon. Think I even use Archaon rules to represent Amirren once in a campaign. Powerful warlord, decent sorcerer, but Amirren's greatest gift was his charisma. With it he manage to convince 9 other warlords that were almost as powerful as he is to serve under him. Each of these warlords, which I called the Lords of Chaos, had their own uniquely looking armies (I very much didn't limited my imagination to what my budget could afford!). Half of the Lords of Chaos were sorcerers, some of the greatest in the world and each sorcerer was a master of something. There is the Master of Magic, a sorcerer with knowledge of nearly every possible spell in the world. When I have used him in 7/8th edition games, I've gave him the Third Eye to represent this aspect of him. There is also the Master of Fire, a sorcerer whom can bend flames to his will. Outside of always having lore of fire, I hadn't figured out how to show off his flame mastery on the table. I suppose I can use flamers to act as fire elementals he controls as part of his army. But the one Lord of Chaos I probably developed the most was Vikihra, the Master of Death. Amirren has ordered his Lords from time to time to temporary disband their army and wander the world alone to search for ways to better themselves. Vikihra, having completely mastered death magic, decided to seek the knowledge of undeath magic when she was asked to go on one of these worldly trips. Her goals were not only to gain more power, but also find a way to heal her body. Centuries ago she was burned alive and only survived due to her knowledge of death magic. However her burned body is a constant source of pain and healing magic have shown to have no effect on her. For decades she studied under various vampires and dark priests to learn necromancy directly from those whom wield it. Eventually Vikihra develop her own type of necromancy. In many ways it was inferior to either of the other necromancy magic, but to her, it was better because she made it. Her new fond powers and knowledge did nothing to heal her body. When Amirren summoned his Lords of Chaos and their armies, she shocked the other Lords and even Amirren himself when she arrived with a significant larger army that was bolstered with her own undead creations.<br/>
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Vikihra is one of the few characters I brought a specific model for though I never got around to convert and paint it. I loved the look of the Queen Khalida miniature and once I decided to use it, it help develop some of Vikihra's history. Unlike my goblin army, I do consider this an active project. And since Vikihra is one of the most develop concept I have, I could see myself having this army on the table in a year or two. It would be also a lot of work. Vikihra's undead will require a lot of conversion as her undead doesn't look normal. Kitbashing Chaos bits with undead parts and making it look good and easily identifiable will be time consuming (and maybe outside of my skill set at this time). But when I do get to it, I would want to be able to travel the country to events with it and not be handicapped. I do see it being stronger than my goblin idea but I don't think its overly strong. But that is something further down the road for me.<br/>
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What allies means for me NOW is less interesting. The AoS army I'm working on now is my Poison Army which is a mix of Nurgle Chaos Warriors and Clan Pestilens. I have a problem with battlelines. Nurgle Chaos Warriors is the only battleline I can/want to use. I don't mind warriors but they are too expensive to fill my battlelines ONLY with warriors. Plus I want the army to be more Skaven than Chaos. Allies will allowed me to add clanrats as battleline and still have the feel I'm going for. I suppose I could start looking for poison users in other forces and add them with allies though I can't think of any at the moment. Another thing I could do is have Chaos be my allies so I can have allegiance Pestilens. Since I want to use more than 20% Chaos, I'm probably not going to do that. But it is an option and having the option is much better than no option.<br/>
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Vince's Topic Video - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-NH2cFuZSc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-NH2cFuZSc</a>vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-830462517930266649.post-40500698627595315792017-07-29T00:22:00.003-05:002017-07-29T00:22:55.020-05:00Progress Review - My Plans For ArmiesMy progress in June had been on the lower end. I did make a lot of progress but most of what I did was start work on assembling several different miniatures. Progress is progress, but except for stuff I've already publish about, nearly all my progress was with incomplete models. Nothing I want to show off at this time. So instead I will talk about all the armies I have plans for.<br/>
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I've gotten the opportunity to get involve in a lot of new games recently. With a growing need to collect and paint new miniatures for these games, I've almost forgot the main purpose of this blog, which is to be the place where I can publish the narratives surrounding my war games. That aspect of the blog is something I haven't work on in a while. One reason I've delayed writing fiction was because many of my ideas required a better miniature collection. This was further complicated with the death of Warhammer Fantasy as I was no longer sure what game I can find people to play with. I crafted my mythological world by mixing concepts from Warhammer Fantasy (or rather concepts I thought were from Warhammer as I got some of them wrong) with some of my own ideas. I figure it would be fairly easy to swap to a different game. I was wrong. Finding a game system that thematically fits what I've already developed, that also excites me to want to play it and have local players interested in it is much harder to come across than I thought. This is the problem I have with <i>Of Gods and Mortals</i>. OGAM is a game I enjoy a lot and I have a lot of local player willing to play it. However it really does not fit into my setting. Aspects of classic mythology, sure. Armies made entirely from a single mythology and lead by a god causing havoc on the land, not so much. Trying to decide what force I wanted to play in OGAM was difficult because I wanted whatever I build for it to also be used, if possible in my narratives. What I settled on what take models from several different armies to have something playable, but not necessarily a complete force of itself. It might look like a single army when I'm done but whether that is the case because all its parts are from the same faction or just a happy accident remains to be seen.<br/>
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So between deciding on an <i>Of Gods and Mortals</i> force and discussing doing a Frostgrave campaign, I figure I should list all the different miniature armies I plan on building. Many of these armies are not apart of the Chaos Magic Mythology narrative that I've started here. However the ones that are apart of it I want to explain how they fit into that narrative. There are a few armies I had plan on building but are now off the table. I will mention the ones I can remember at the end.<br/>
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<b>Team Yankee -</b> Earlier this year I was still planning on having three Team Yankee armies. 120+ points of West Germans as my main army, exactly 100 points of Soviets and then going back and redoing my Americans. However I no longer see myself doing three armies any time soon. I rarely play Team Yankee anymore and it is hard to justify investing in three armies when I have so many other games I want to play as well. When I do get to play, I mostly enjoy it. So for now, the only Team Yankee army I will be working on is West Germans and once I get to around 120 to 140 points, I will probably be done with Team Yankee for a while. I would love to do more with Team Yankee but it doesn't make sense for me at this time. And it figures I decide this around the time Battlefront release rules for playing big Team Yankee games. It should go without saying but none of Team Yankee is apart of my Chaos Magic Mythology.<br/>
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<b>Battletech -</b> I almost forgot about BattleTech. Its also not apart of my Chaos Magic Mythology, though at some point I might make a space mythology for the sci-fi games that I play. I see all my current BattleTech models to be apart of a single force and will paint them up as such. I don't see myself investing a lot into BattleTech though I do see myself getting a vehicle here and there. I'm also will be playing in a campaign so BattleTech deserve to be on the list.<br/>
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<b>Relic Knights-</b> Given I know very like about the factions and their playstyles in Relic Knights, I plan to only have a single Relic Knight army, Roh Empire. The Roh Empire reminds me of my Chaos force and if I end up not liking the game I can still use the models for something Chaos. In fact, I have even more of an incentive to work on Relic Knights now. My <i>Of Gods and Mortals</i> army will use two Relic Knight miniatures. I plan on painting my Roh Empire force in a similar way to my other Chaos stuff. Relic Knights is not apart of my Chaos Magic Mythology but I may be reusing some of its miniatures in the Mythology anyway (OGAM isn't apart of it either).<br/>
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<b>Sisters of Battle -</b> The newest edition of Warhammer 40k has interested me enough to return to it. Even though I'm interested in most of the factions in the Warhammer 40k world, this time around I will only be working on one force, Sisters of Battle. Or to be more accurate, a force who's core will be Sisters of Battle. I will be adding Sisters of Silence and maybe the Adeptus Custodes to my force, but the rest of it will be Sisters of Battle. Outside of maybe grabbing the Talons of the Emperor box in the fall, I don't see myself buying much for this army this year. I have 10 year old models that I've never finish that I can work on. Will probably have to proxy my first few games to get a feel of what to buy next after finishing the old models. Sisters of Battle is not apart of my mythology either.<br/>
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<b>Chaos -</b> My Warriors of Chaos army is where this blog started. At first I didn't have a narrative behind the army, I just added to it without regards to any story. I later develop two narratives out of the army once I started playing campaigns. I didn't bother restraining my narratives to models I own. As such both armies look quite different from not only each other but also my actual miniature collection. Towards the end of Warhammer Fantasy, I started collecting with an eye to making key aspects of the narrative have model representation. These two armies (Chaos King Amirren and Arkyrian Cabal) were meant to be the backbone of my Chaos Magic Mythology, but I could never build on their narrative because campaigns kept ending early. With Warhammer Fantasy officially discontinued and my desire to find other games to play, my Chaos forces are frozen for the time being. It is unlikely that I will get to play with them anytime soon so it doesn't make much sense to work on models for it at this time. Getting miniature versions of units I mention in the narrative will be the first things I will work on when I go back to Chaos.<br/>
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<b>Poison Army -</b> My Poison Army is in a weird position in my mythology. I haven't develop any kind of narrative for it yet. The Poison Army came about from my desire to play something similar, yet different for my first army with Age of Sigmar in mind. I might even have multiple different narratives for it, also like my Chaos army. I consider the Poison Army to be an completely different army from my Chaos force even though a few units are in both. I have an idea for a Skaven campaign that will be sequel/side story to the unfinished Border Price Campaign. I will be using the Poison Army in said campaign and it should be the Poison Army's first entry into the my narrative. Now whether the campaign will shape the identity of the Poison Army remains to be seen. The answer will depend on the results of the campaign. Sadly that campaign wouldn't be able to start until I get a lot more done with the Poison Army first. Since the Poison Army is one of the armies I'm currently investing in, I hope the campaign will be able to start sooner rather than later.<br/>
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<b>Elven Nation -</b> An Elven Nation has been in the background of my writings for a while and future plot points will have them take on a more prominent role. That said, I don't have any plans to start on an army outside of picking up a random unit to practice painting or something to that effort. But if I get involved in a new game (which has happen a lot in the last 4 months) and elves fits in that game as a playable force, then it is possible the Elven Nation will see a sudden appearance on the table top. For now, I just have an unit of archers to paint.<br/>
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<b>Fae -</b> When working on my setting, I wonder if fairies and other fae creatures should be apart of the Elven Nation. As I flush out in my mind various nations' role in the story, I realize that the two should be separate entities. Allies, but separate nations. When I decided to get into Hordes, I felt a Fae force was the closest nation in my fiction that would fit the Circle Orboros. The more I look through Circle Orboros available units, the easier it was for me to get a clear picture of what the Fae army look like. This doesn't mean my Fae army was identical to Circle Orboros. While there are some overlap with miniatures I see little to no reason to do conversion, Circle Orboros also had miniatures that didn't fit my version of Fae. Not to mention I also thought about miniatures from other games that would flush out this army. I was planning on building a Circle Orboros army but that is on the back burner due to other games taking up too much oxygen in the room. Once I get done with some current projects, I will get back to Fae/Circle Orboros. It is also possible that Age of Sigmar suddenly becomes my main game and my Fae nation would make a perfect second army in AoS.<br/>
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<b>Thylalon -</b> The knights from Thylalon is going to be the protagonist in my Holy Moon stories. Thylalon started out as my Bretonnian Army. But I quickly develop concepts for Thylalon outside of Bretonnian. Warhammer Fantasy ended right as I was starting to build this army. With an uncertain future I haven't touch it since. More than any of my other forces, I've been looking for another game that I could play my Thylalon knights in. But the only thing I found with an Arthurian Legend favor was Saga and its another historical. Saga is a game I'm looking to get into down the road so I have reason to work on the mundane aspects of Thylalon. I will still be on the lookout for more traditional fantasy games to use my knights in.<br/>
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<b>Samurai Nation</b> - The idea was to have a country inspired by Japanese culture and separate from the events of previous campaigns, to have its own campaign that will setup who's who in the land. After that, one of the Chaos King's generals was going to sail to that land and invade it, creating a host of storytelling potential. However, due to Test of Honour, my Japanese miniatures have progress much further than the rest of my stuff for the Chaos Magic Mythology. While I could do a samurai campaign relatively soon, the invasion part wouldn't come for a very long time given there was suppose to be at least 2 or 3 campaigns worth history before said invasion happen. With Warlord Games release new Test of Honour stuff, I might have to change my planned story arc. In any case, my Test of Honour miniatures will be going strong for the foreseeable future.<br/>
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<b>Shieldmaiden -</b> My Shieldmaiden Knights started out as a desire to have a miniature force of all female warriors, regardless of rule set. I didn't have a story behind them and I didn't care if I could used them in a game. When I started this hobby, outside of using proxies for testing, I only wanted to use the official model for the war games I played. It did feel right to me to use another company's model to play their game. Nowadays, I'm far more willing to any model I feel is appropriate to what I'm trying to represent. Not only that but I'm sometimes modeling with an eye towards using a miniature for multiple games. This change to my outlook is what makes my Shieldmaiden Knights idea a possible gaming force. Also realizing that the Shieldmaiden Knights was similar to Sisters of Battle help inspire me to develop what their proper place should be in my mythology. Now that I have some understanding in how they are organize and why, I have some guidance on how to collect and build them as an army. Which comes at a perfect time as I want to use them in a Frostgrave campaign. Given that Frostgrave is a skirmish game, I only need to paint up a handful of figures which will allow me to ease into a full army later. I'm also have a short story idea which I can use to kick off the campaign and introduce who the Shieldmaidens are in the setting.<br/>
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And those are all the armies I am currently working on or could be working on any in the future. It it's a much bigger list than I initially thought and I'm glad to be able see everything like this. I do want to mention the armies I was planning to build at one point but are no longer a consideration. The first is my Flames of War German army. I was even planning on getting something for it this year, but chance my mind for more Team Yankee Soviets instead. But the death knell of my German army came with Version 4 of Flames of War. V4 looks like a great system but it is way too similar to Team Yankee while also being vastly different in key ways killed it for me. I recently visit a Team Yankee forum and I could see several players confusing the two systems. Now I just heard rumors that Team Yankee will eventually fully adapt the V4 system. If that does happen then I don't have a reason to stay away from Flames of War and my Germans, providing my time is completely taken up by other games.<br/>
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The two other armies I was planning on building were both Warhammer Armies and they both died with the transition of 8th edition into Age of Sigmar. One was a pure goblin army. I've never been fond of orcs but goblins always had a place in my heart when I want to be evil. Chaos was the only army I had for the entirely of 8th edition and after years of only playing Chaos I finally wanted to start on a second (and third) army. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to do goblins or Bretonnian or both. The story behind it was that a god-like being of death empowered goblins to kill their orc slavers and to worship it. I was inspired to make it after playing the expansion to Diablo 3. The army had a lot of ideas but when Warhammer became far less important to me, I had to cut it. I would love to work on it again but I just have too many other things that is more important to the mythology, plus the many games I'm playing that isn't apart of the mythology. The other army I cut was a 3rd Chaos army. This army not only would have had it own separate story but I would have start building and converting it like I didn't already have a ton of Chaos. I wanted to start with a short story and then continue the tale by playing narrative battles and more short stories. The same process I wanted to do with Holy Moon. But alas with me playing less Warhammer I really didn't need another Chaos army plus the Poison Army sorta took it place. I had almost completely forgotten about the 3rd Chaos Army and the goblin army until I started writing this piece. They both had great stories behind them and conversion I want do with them. Perhaps I will be able to revive one or both of these armies. Who knows what the future will bring.<br/>
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And that's all I have for my army plans. I'm sorry I haven't updated in over a month but this article took me far longer than I could have imagine to write. I've had troubles writing before but rarely has it been this bad. I won't have a progress review of July because I spent most of the month working on this. Sorry again, and thank you for reading.vadth_the_bluelockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06286071043233893249noreply@blogger.com0