Malifaux Brawls

This weekend I ran an event at 7th Heaven Gamers focusing on larger scales Malifaux games.  The event was called the "Masquerade Brawl" as a knowing wink to the larger games being called Brawls and many of the players at the liking a bit of a dress up.  In all the excitement I didn't get photos of people in their assorted masks (Ian was in a Lucius mask and wig at one point) and in one case full steampunk cos-play (Emily was a heroine in the heat yesterday!).

Brawls are games where 2 masters can be used and typically larger amount of soulstones are available to hire crews.  We decided on 50 soul stones and below you can see the crews that turned up.

This is Mark's exceptional Arcanist crew.  This is more than 50ss but its all the figures he could potentially use during the game due to powerful abilities that allowed models to be summoned, combined or powered up into Avatar form.

Of particular note is the wonderful Avatar Hoffman model Mark has recently completed.

Described by Mark as a robot-dragon-spider he was very keen to get to use this guy in the game.

 Mark's opponent was Matt C using a combined Misaki and Yan-Lo crew, as Ten-Thunders.

Here's the Torakage Matt's been working on, its looking really nice.

On to the next table we had Emily's Jacob crew, playing as Ten Thunders.  He was joined at the last minute by Misaki (not shown here).  This represents all of Emily's painted figures, but the Thunder will be adding choice soon I'm told.

 Emily's opponent was Andy using Guild, with Peridta and Lucas joining forces to round up some varmits.

This is Jen's crew of Ten Thunders (clearly a popular choice!) again Misaki turning up, this time only 1 master but Von Schill was hired to help out.  The Freikorps are actually Simon's but its all a cunning plan to combine collections to give the most choice I'm told.

Here's my crew - Neverborn lead by Zoraida with Lilith turning up to help.  Most of these figs have been shown on the blog before, but the Waldgeists are new and finished, whereas Lilith and Zoraida's avatar are WIP.  I got to play as it wasn't a tournament with time limits, poor Jen had to put up with me answering rule queries but we did get a solid 3 turns in.

The final game going on saw a huge crew lead by Lucius and Lucas taking the the field as Guild controlled by Ian.

Facing them would be Matt K with his Arcanists, Mei-Feng, Rasputina and Kaeris (as a henchman) all turning up for a crew that was very polarised with extremely powerful models and really weak gamin and totem.

I wanted to show the epic table that Ian and Matt K were playing on, Rob spent 2 days making this Terra-clips masterpiece, its a great showcase for the game.  Featuring 2 levels of streets over about half the table and several multi-story buildings it has lots of interesting locations to play over and a nice water fountain feature provided by local game designer Tarran.

Here's another shot as the game kicked off - you can see it fits nicely on a 4'x4' table as Malifaux is played on a 3'x3' area, leaving space for cards, rules, counters etc. around the edge.

The final shot from the day highlights Mark having a ball with all the large models he could possibly get on the table.  Both Ramos and Hoffman have manifested as Avatars here, the Cophee Duet have combined, a peacekeeper is pitching in and, not to be left out, Matt C threw Izamu the Armour in for good measure.  Despite how it looks, Hoffman died shortly afterwards as Misaki is a beast in melee.

My oft hinted at competition is almost ready to be unveiled - I just need the weather to cool down long enough to complete a few things.  If you want in, please subscribe!

Time Travelling adventurers from Heresy

Wow, my post last week is now the most visited page on my blog - thanks to everyone who shared it and my new subscribers.  I do have a competition on the way, the prizes are now almost ready so please do subscribe to get a chance at winning!  On to the new stuff...

I've been sitting on this post for a little while as these figures were done as birthday presents for big Dr Who fans I know.  Now they are happily with their new owners I can share them.

Heresy Miniatures do a wide range of figures for a variety of genres and there's a few of the sci-fi range that with a bit research could be painted up to resemble certain pop culture icons.  I selected Dr Hugh and a Sharclon officer as suitable figures.

So here's Dr Hugh, complete with red sneakers.  Very pleased with this chap, looks better in real life but my ongoing battle with my camera aside hopefully you can see how this chap looks.  I've noticed that these photos are at the stage where I hadn't quite finished the base, but you get the idea.

Detail from behind.  A nice coat he has on, quite a lot of surface to play with if you like that sort of thing when painting.

This stout little chap is the Sharclon.  I'm really happy with the paint job on this and the sculpt itself is a masterpiece in all the right detail in the right places, the face is wonderful and you get a selection in the pack, including a helmeted version if you prefer that.

Based to roughly match Dr Hugh, these two figures have ended up in the same household after a couple of birthdays - so now they can face off or band together as the wibbly-wobbly timelines play out!

Banana! Sculpting a minion

Another year another hobby challenge to craft a gift for my wife's birthday.  This year the choice was a minion from Despicable Me.  You've probably seen the Banana song doing the rounds recently...

So the question was how to make the little fella.  The sage advice my brother gave me for sculpting was to find or make something to sculpt over, so I got myself a kinder egg...

The story continues after the jump...

Hasslefree Adventurers

A quick post this week, lots of projects on but nothing finished yet I can share.  Instead I've got some great Hasslefree figures I painted last year as part of my Inquisitor army that I didn't get around to taking shots of.

The other reason I thought of these this week is that local game designer Taran will be using them at his Infected Dead launch event in a few weeks time - check out the link and come face the zombies if you can make it!  My own legions of zombies from a little while ago are going to join in the carnage, as well as the lady troopers from way back.

https://www.facebook.com/BlackRoninRolePlayingGames

Taran is also responsible for the splendid new banner at the top of the blog, many thanks!

Taken from their wide range of adventurers and other ranges, these figures are destined to be members of my henchmen squads.  Where the troopers I have from Heresy and Hasslfree are somewhat regimented, this figures are a more rag tag bunch, deliberately so as they are going to be on more dangerous missions, whether embarked in a flyer or acting as melee troops.

This first lady is, I believe a reference to Seline in Underworld, played by Kate Beckinsale.  Regardless, she's a tough looking one in a trenchcoat, bodyglove and packing 2 pistols.

Arguably this character is the same reference, but I am wondering if its more Kate in Von Helsing.  On this figure there's a great sense of movement in the swinging sword arm.

The huge bloke (no size reference I know, but trust me he's marine scale) is I think a Ghost in the Shell reference to Batou.  Wearing a bomber jacket and a t-shirt he's clearly not scared of anything - tiny gun too!

This gun toting teen is I think Buffy - I chose to give her a pulse rifle as I like the pose but there's no doubt she can handle herself at close range I like to think!

Lastly here's Hasslefree's own character Libby (who is I think is inspired by Sally White) in the Leia/Jedi cross over style.  A great figure and frankly with a light sabre a terror on the tabletop.

Where these characters had shiny leather elements on them, I've used some clear gloss finish acrylic to make them look the part, I think it works well and I've made sure I have a pot handy now for anything I do - although I have to paint it after varnishing as I use anti-shine spray!

This is only the first 5 I've completed, I have a bunch more ready to go at some point and Hasslefree have released a whole load more characters since my last order who are great as well!

Twisted Allegiances : Malifaux Tournament

Last weekend I ran my second Mailfaux Tournament - another multiplayer extravaganza!

After the first event earlier this year the feedback was generally "more of the same" so I looked into what I could do.  Some lessons learnt from the first time round was to be more prepared and to remind people to turn up promptly!

With this in mind I worked with Rob, the shop manager to ensure we had all the schemes and strategies printed out and protected to give out to all the players as packs as they arrived.  I had registration sorted out using the store PC and I made sure I took photos of all the crews entering the painting this time around.

I arranged a few votes to determine some of the details of the event and one of the changes this time was to try out a few story encounters.  These took a fair bit of play testing and while the first encounter seemed reasonably well rounded, the second was problematic and on the day proved tough make much progress with in the short space of time we had available.  The details of the full event pack are here.

Anyway on to the eye candy.  Here's all the crews that entered the painted competition.  A huge thanks here to the sheer number of new players and crews that turned up as well as the longer in the tooth players (and their crews) who constantly support these events and games we arrange.

Molly's crew by Si - I love Molly and the crooligans here especially

Von Schill's crew by Big Simon, bought and painted in the last couple of months - the Orian mere hours since the paint dried!

Jacob's crew by Emily, painted in what I am calling a canvas style,
really interesting and striking effect, even more so in person

Jacob's crew by Steve, my old mate.  Recently returned to gaming and painting,
he's adding more detail to these as he gets chance

Zoraida's crew by Jason - its all frogs here with a really nice shared  palette
and great bases to bring the models together

Nicodeem by Matthew, an interesting mix of book 1 and 4 models
overshadowed by the huge and grim Killjoy

Perdita's crew by Andy - the selection grows as Andy leaves no
corner of the guild unexplored for recruits
(he married the proxy into the family in one game)

Finally we have our winner, Rob's Leviticus crew.
We have a rule at 7th Heaven - you can keep entering a crew  until you win -
Rob was narrowly pipped last event, but now he'll have to paint something new!

One thing I did forget to do was take shots of all the tables, I had spent a fair bit of time constructing a pile of terraclips buildings to help on the day.  Before the event started Rob, Steve and I built 5 tables in readiness, you can see hints of them in the crew shots above and there's a few shots I've stolen from Matt below of some games in progress.

Battle at the farm!  The noobies take on Rob - Rob suffers!

Its Jacob and Jacob vs Lucius and Mei Feng - my Oogie Boogie guest starring here.

A streets of Malifaux table - very pleased with this board.   The Tazos are markers!

So the day went really well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, although once again time was the enemy. I'll have to consider how the sort this out for the next event, we'll certainly be doing more before Malifaux 2.0 hits officially.

The overall placings then were:

Best Painting: Rob
Best Sportsman: Jason
3rd Place: Jen (very narrowly pipping Ian on a technicality)
2nd Place: Matthew - for the second time just missing the top spot and...

1st Place: Big Simon - a stunning first place with a clear 2 point lead.  Newly into the game Simon is crushing his foes with the combination of Hulk Hogan moustache and giant leaping Iron Man suit.

40k Apocalypse "Big Cap Battle"

Last weekend I posted that I was preparing for a large 40k game.  Turns out it wasn't large, it was colossal!  I had a great time with the Big Cap gamers and we're already planning what we might do next.  I hope you enjoy the pictures and the ramblings that follow, there's a lot of pictures so this might freeze your browser a bit!

Chaos Reaver.  'Nuff said?

The Big Cap gamers are (left to right) "Slash" Ben, "Viking" Tristan , Ross "Whitehorn", Wiggy the Gnome and Rasta Dave.  You are fortunate I wasn't in the shot :)

Loads more after the jump

Riptide and Imperial Knight

For the last few weeks (or is it months?) I've had a background task of getting a number of big robots ready for a big fun game of Apocalypse 40k that my brother is organising.

He and some of his engineering genius friends have a huge collection (both in number and size) of models for the larger game of 40k and they were keen to have a big landmark battle.  The Beer and Pretzels event @ Spirit Games in Burton is hosting this event so I've been working towards this deadline for a while (as have several others!).  You can see various bits of progress by my brother and others on MyWargame.com.

I'm taking a bunch of dreads and some other bits but wanted to have a couple of larger toys to contribute.  Ben, the genius behind the Imperial Knight above (and seen in many other places including one of Beasts of Wars' podcasts), helped me acquire and build my own Knight and with the recent Tau releases, a Riptide was my second slot easily chosen.

So what have I managed?  Find out after the jump.