#DadGoals

Revenge of the Calvinball

My son has been designing his own war-game with his Marvel superhero Lego mini-figures and a board he constructed for the heroes and villains to fight over.  Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon and our many games of Heroclix seem to be the inspiration of the current version of his creation.  There's no dice and combat resolutions are very subjective but the lists of powers are very true to the characters involved and it can be fun to a play a game with no sense of balance or traditional gaming logic.  For at least the first 30 minutes, then the disparity between the large amounts of HP characters have versus the small amount of damage the attacks inflict starts to make the game drag a little.  However the joy of sharing my favorite hobbies (comics and gaming) with my son and watch him create his own game more than makes up for the current lack of game balance...

Scenic Distractions V

Imperial Army Checkpoint TK 421

Not a mighty fortress just yet, but certainly enough for a security perimeter around a supply depot...

This Imperial Guard checkpoint is a perfect example of the way your hobby can spiral out of control in a constructive way sometimes if you follow your imagination.  All these items came in a sampler pack of terrain from Ender Toys Terrain which I have mentioned on this blog before.  When I first looked at buying some Ender Toys Terrain on Amazon, I was a little cautious because of how low their prices were so I bought a variety pack that contained a wide range of their terrain items so I could gauge the quality of their offerings. These pieces were primed white for a year after buying the set, but as I started taking in game pictures for this blog the bright whiteness of the bunker in particular was driving me crazy.  On a mostly basecoated board with a lot of the other terrain in various stages of painting, the primer white bunker stood out like a sore thumb.  Follow along after the jump if you want to know more about the rabbit hole I fell down thanks to these scenery items...

3rd Squad, 4th Company

Tactical Squad Peliel Part II

Since I mentioned my aversion to painting bare heads in an earlier post, you know one of the first things I did was head swap the sergeant.

Like the Sex Pistols repeatedly selling the same songs on albums with different names, I'm revisiting the third squad with detailed pictures of their finished paint jobs.  Since I dove deep into 40K history and the reasons behind my middlehammer unit markings in the first post about this unit, now I can do what people normally do on these sorts of blogs, namely post pictures of miniatures and talk about paint.  So follow along after the jump if you read the first artcle about this unit and kept shouting at your computer screen, "but when is he going to tell us what color green that is!"

Epic Proportions Army Pitch

Assembling The Legions...

Not bad for having ridden unused in some boxes through twenty-five years and several moves through a few states...

I am dropping some quick WIP pictures of my Epic sorting and repair work in anticipation of Dr The Viking posting an update on the Epic Army Challenge for month's end.  For the last two weeks I have been sorting tiny miniatures and studying NetEpicGold army cards in order to figure out the best disposition of my forces.  In an ideal world I would be pooling all my space marine epic miniatures into one giant Legion.  However since I'm jumping headfirst into a long discontinued game and planning to play with fan generated rules I have to be pragmatic about how many opponents I am initially going to be able to find.  Especially since we haven't left our house in six weeks and who knows when I'll be back to playing games in person.  For now, I am very fortunate to have a gaming apprentice in my son so I am shaping up this prospective army to be two separate army groups from two different chapters.

#DadGoals

Cross-Time Caper !

All the best superhero battles occur in crowded office buildings.

My son and I got in a game of Heroclix over the weekend.  In a bit of alternate universe shenanigans it was the Legion of Superheroes versus the Agents of Shield.  My son rushed forward in the crowded office buildings confident that his usual strategy of crushing me under thrown objects would suffice against my non super-powered government agents.  However he was unaware of the Shield team's interlocking powers and buffs and his Legionnaires rapidly fell.  He came back at the end when Timberwolf took out Fitz, Fury, and Coulson in rapid fashion but then agent May saved the day in typical "cavalry" fashion.  I actually won a game against my son!!!  This is so rare it only improves my record to 2-20 vs him in Heroclix but it's progress.  More pictures after the jump...

Epic Proportions

A Get Back Into The Epic 40,000 Universe Army Challenge

Tiny Space Marines, Attack!!

Hello hallucinatory chums!  Since painting my Dark Angels, plus some scenery, the game board itself, and mechs for our ongoing Battletech campaign were apparently not enough for my hobby butterfly, I have joined in on an Epic Army Painting challenge.  This friendly challenge is being coordinated by the excellent blog, Dr The Vikings Miniatures Games Hell (try saying that five times fast).  If you love Epic 40K in any of it's many incarnations or if you just love tiny miniatures you should head over to his blog and check it out.  There are more pictures after the jump but I will save the long story about my excitement for this project, my long time love of epic, and why these tiny space marines are Salamanders and not Dark Angels for future posts ...

Battletech Goes Zoom!

Adaptive Battle Tactics Skill Unlocked!

Sorry these pictures are a little blurry, as you can see both my devices with autofocus were occupied when I took this picture

WIP Battletech

Giant Robots!

Green and Gold is the color scheme you end up with when your gaming group is made up of too many William and Mary graduates...

Battletech is another of my lifelong loves and my gaming group had only gotten two games into a campaign right before lockdown 2020 happened.  We have found an innovative way to keep it going which I will post on next week but until then I'm including a WIP Mech that is the current ride of one of my lance mates.  This Griffin is from the Battletech 2nd Edition box set that I bought off the off the Games/Hobby shelf of a Waldenbooks wayyyy back in 1992.  That was my first introduction to the game but I was immediately hooked and it has remained one of my favorite games and background settings, second only to WH40K.  I stripped his very old and unskilled paint job I had applied long ago and now I'm repainting him and his lance mates in the colors requested by my weekly gaming group.  Using the Dark Angels Green contrast paint, and honestly I know this wasn't GW's intent but contrast paint works great on Battlemechs.  It settles into the many recesses and skips you right to the step of drybrushing which is the heart of most Mech painting.  I used Soulstone Blue from the short-lived gem colors paints from GW for the cockpit and I really like the glossy effect that it gives.  More on the subject of Battletech to follow in the future...

Scenic Distractions IV

Can I Get A Forestry Service Merit Badge For This?

Since I stay home with my kids, on my birthday my wife gives me a day to just go out and pursue my interests kid free which usually involves trying to hunt out a new hobby shop in my region that either I have never been to before or possibly haven't been to in years.  I really lucked out this year and found a huge gaming store about 45 minutes from my house, Huzzah Hobbies.

Great Rao! The tornado swept almost all the trees off the hillside...

Spaceships Are Not Supposed To Be This Close Together Part X

Force Ten From the Third Moon Of Endor

"Shuttle Tydirium, transmit the clearance code for shield passage"