My 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.

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!

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!

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!

Introduction to Flashback Storytime

I 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.

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.

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!

Learning From Building Mistakes

I 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.

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!

August Hobby Progress

August 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.

Battletech - 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.

Monsterpocalypse - 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.

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.

Flames of War - 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.

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!

Battletech Update

I 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.

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.

Word of Blake - 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.

ComStar - 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!

"Rome" - 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.

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.

The Society - 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.

Intro to Monsterpocalypse and Back to Flames of War

Sometimes 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.

Tracy's Monster Collection

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.

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...

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.

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.

My German Flames of War Army

My 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.

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:

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.

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.

80s Project

For 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

New Year, 2019

It 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.

Flames of War - 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.

Dracula's America - 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.

Battletech - 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.

Warhammer 40k - 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.

Monsterpocalypse - 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.

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!