Building the Gundam - 08

Despite having jumped the gun a bit and assembled the wings... I can't put them on the Gundam without the harness, so that took priority.

A New Game, a New Drink

We've started on Super Mario World over at First Person Shooters.  Give it a watch, and if we suck at playing video games... well, it's because we're drunk.

Building the Gundam - 07

I spent the majority of a night just assembling one of the wings, and applying the third party feather upgrade.  The pictures below show the wing in "extended mode."  Basically, the upper left and upper right portions can fold in towards the center to make the wing more compact.  

Stock wings

After applying feather upgrade

Applying the upgrade took a lot of time, as this actually required glue (unlike the rest of the model).  Also, despite the instructions, I had to take care of the placement so that the new feathers would not interfere with the wing's ability to fold and unfold.

Building the Gundam - 06

So that leg that's been sitting on my desk for a week...?  I figured if I didn't at least finish it off over this 3-day weekend, there'd be nothing for it but to consider myself a lazy oaf, haha.

Playsets

I love me some tabletop roleplaying games, but my biggest problem is that my regular gaming buddies are busy, and spread out geographically.  It's often been a chore to find the right set of tools to re-create that tabletop feel remotely.  Enter Playsets.

A lot of things, but not a lot of any one thing

It's been a busy weekend for me, though it may not look like I got a lot of any one thing done.  Despite that, I'm exhausted.  Physically and emotionally exhausted.

Building the Gundam - 05

 I've had this leg assembled for a couple days now, just waiting to be painted up, but was only able to get to it yesterday, due to crazy schedules and projects.

Megaman X: Part 5

Part 5 is up!

I'm kind of learning new things about myself as these videos come up.  I don't remember any of this.  It's like watching an alien wearing my skin.  At least I seem happy, LOL

Megaman X - Part 4

In this episode, I have peaked out on alcohol.  Everything is funny to me, I whisper to the camera, profess my man-love for Zero, and my eyes cross uncontrollably.  Enjoy my inebriation.

Also, so that I don't constantly bombard you guys with Episodes of First Person Shooter, I've set up another page on the blog (tab at the top) for updates on this project.  That doesn't mean that you won't occasionally see here as well ;)

Building the Gundam - 04

Second arm all assembled and ready to paint!
I'm continually amazed at how articulate the resulting build is, especially considering that this whole process has been glue-free; just precisely shaped pieces that snap together to hold others in place, create hinge joints, ball-socket joints, or what-have-you.  Crazy.

First Person Shooters - Megaman X, part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of me failing drunkenly at Megaman X.  I'm apparently getting more hammered by the episode.  I don't recall most of this conversation.

X-Buster - PART 1 - First Person Shooters

So... a little while ago I was "talked into" doing a YouTube series in which we play video games while drunk.  First episode just went live today. 

Apparently I agree to anything if plied with enough drinks ;)

Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a game that I've been addicted to for some time.  Despite several story play-throughs I still find myself coming back, if even just to play in endless mode.  I don't know, there's something innately relaxing about mindless tasks.

Building the Gundam - 03

Not a whole lot new since the last update, so I'll keep it short.

Finished painting the left shoulder unit.  Above is after paint, before weathering powder.  Needs more dirt.  When I took the photo, I didn't realize the Gundam was sitting in frame in the background, quietly supervising my progress, haha.  Just sitting there.  Judging.

And now it's dirty.  Let's see if the Gundam approves.

Check it out!  I got a new shoulder!

Building the Gundam - 02

And so the Gundam build continues.  The head took me probably the longest to build so far.  There were lots of very tiny components, and hitting each little bit with spray primer was pretty rough, but I like the end result.

Building the Gundam

I found a cool image on Google of the model we're building, and immediately took it into Photoshop to start sending my friend some ideas around color-scheming.  At this point, I knew he didn't like the mostly white canon color-scheme, and derided the "red booties" that were the feet.  He had mentioned that he did like blue, so I thought I'd start him off with a blue scheme...

Gundam Landed

Look what just landed on my desk:

It's that big ol' Gundam Zero Wing box that my friend ordered.  I was more than a little surprised at how large the box is, but I'm so excited for this.

Incoming Gundam Project

A good friend of mine is interested in collecting some Gundam models... but he doesn't like the idea of them just being in their pre-colored plastics.  So, I'm going to help out by painting them.  This is the first model up:

It's the Wing Gundam Zero, Master Grade, 1:100 scale.
Bandai makes a veritable ton of these very articulate and poseable models in a variety of grades and scales... something that we both had to educate ourselves on in order to make a better selection.  Master Grade applies specifically to the 1:100 scale, and is a measure of complexity, model articulation, and poseability of the model.  It's in the mail, and I can't wait to get my mitts on it.

There will be a little bit of conversion work to be done, involving an upgrade kit that supplies more feathers.  The end result will look like this:

We still have yet to discuss color scheme.  The only solid decision made on that front is that he does not like the default mostly-white scheme, and we've been in discussion about some possibilities.  I'll see about making some mock-ups to send his way to help finalize the scheme.

One of the intriguing bits about this is that (outside of the extra feathers upgrade kit) it involves no glue.  All the pieces are snap-on, several involving ball-socket joints.

I'll post pictures occasionally to keep you all updated on progress.  :)

Back from Vacation

It's been a week of amazingness in the Yucatan Peninsula with some friends for me.  Thought I'd share some photos :)

A large group of us went for a friend's wedding, though we took advantage of the locale and went on a Mayan excursion one of the days.

The one up top is of me grimacing towards the jungle below from the top of the Coba Pyramid.  The picture makes me laugh because it looks like I'm running my own survival reality-TV show... but all I did was climb up there, hahaha.  Not to say it wasn't hard, mind.  It was hot and very humid.  Just walking around on flat ground was enough to make sweat ooze from every pore... and Coba's steps are steep, but that pic kinda looks like I'd been without civilization for days instead of just hours, hahaha.

Vacation

I'm heading out tomorrow morning for a friend's wedding in Cancun.  Given the location, thought we'd make a week of it.  Hello beach, food, and drink!  See you all in a week or so.

I may still post snippets of things over the week, but don't expect anything heavy, as I don't think the TSA looks kindly on packing dozens of paint-pots. ;)

Hyper Light Drifter

Came across another awesome looking kickstarter-driven video game: Hyper Light Drifter

"Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D Action RPG in the vein of the best 8-bit and 16-bit classics, with modernized mechanics and designs on a much grander scale.

Visions for this game have been fluttering in my skull for ages; something dark and fantastic, with giant forests to navigate, huge floating structures to explore, deep crumbling ruins to loot, massive throngs of enemies to rend, and behemoths both flesh and mechanical to overcome. I want it all to be as beautiful as possible, forging color with the dark and eerie wastes and intimidating landscapes. It plays like the best parts of A Link to the Past and Diablo, evolved: lightning fast combat, more mobility, an array of tactical options, more numerous and intelligent enemies, and a larger world with a twisted past to do it all in."

They have a pledged goal of $27,000 ... which they've already shattered on their second day.  Their stretch goals include additional features.  Let's push to $100k to get a co-op mode unlocked.

MERCS KemVar test model

Spent some time picking out paints for the KemVar Caes de Guerra, and decided that the guinea pig would be Alejandro here.

Step-By-Step Black Legion Daemon Prince

So this buddy has been sitting in my cabinets for a while.  I built him up before the new CSM codex, and afterwards, came to the conclusion that there was no place for him in the army :(

So into the cabinet he went, unpainted, while I focused on collecting and assembling what would make a good army.  

Now that I'm not focusing on armies as much, I looked into my model cabinet and saw all these great models with a renewed motivation.  I didn't care if they were viable in-game or not, I liked the models and dammit, I was going to paint them.

So, let's do a step-by-step on this model...

Space Marine Centurion War-Suits

So much of what made Warhammer 40K compelling to me was the fluff/setting.  The models are cool, sure, but I got involved back in 2nd edition; The models were OK then, but not great.  It was the fluff that held shit together, that made me want to act out battles between squads of stoic Dark Angels and a lithe and deadly strike-force of Eldar.  There was a serious cool-factor to the idea of that universe: Humanity in a technological dark age, having lost technology they once had, superstition and mysticism prevailing, the empire crumbling under the weight of bureaucracy...

Finished CCC Yellowjackets Breacher

With that, I have completed all 7 of the CCC Yellowjackets squad.  This guy is the most recent addition of the team, apparently his ability is to open a base-width hole in any fortification/wall.  Sounds cool, but situational at best.

That was fast

Wow, it's been 2 days since Mighty No. 9 was put up on Kickstarter as a "spiritual successor to Mega Man."  Their goal is set at $900,000.  The goal has already been surpassed.  2 days!  That's insanity.

I'm definitely excited to see how this game turns out, it looks incredibly fun, especially the mentioned mechanic of swapping out parts for others, i.e. swapping out legs for tank treads so you can cross spikes.  If done right, this could be an amazingly fun and challenging game.

Stuff

I've been far more busy/active than it may appear from what posts are up lately... although a lot of that has been video games, so I don't know if one would call that "busy" LOL.  Video games, more comics, possible YouTube show, real-life work... you know... the usual.

Finished CCC Yellowjackets Demolitionist

That makes 6 finished, and only 1 left.

M42

Dilemma:  I am in love with the fluff, background, and setting to the Warhammer 40K universe.  I am not in love with the game itself, nor GW's various practices.

So what's a fan to do?  It's been over a month since I aired some of my grievances in this post.  A month and a half of staring at cabinets full of 40K miniatures.  Each shelf reminding me of a particular project unfinished.  They're always unfinished.  Grand thoughts of collecting 2,000 pt. armies turned into buying sprees, then assembled models, then partially painted armies.  Even the models weren't the full 2,000 points most of the time, due mostly to the changing editions and codices.  Changes of those magnitudes meant portions of my already assembled/painted armies were less viable, and sudden additions to codices meant new models, keeping me in a constant state of consumption just to keep up.  Like a Warhammer 40K version of the Red Queen Hypothesis, haha.

I had mentioned before a thought that had occurred to me as a possible solution to this.  I was going to watch and see how GW handles this rules edition.  Will they update all the codices before shifting editions?  If so, I could snatch up the various 6th ed codices and just play 6th ed, regardless of future updates.  Remove the constantly changing environment, as it were, so that progress made in various armies actually felt like progress.  It would be foolish of me to put all my eggs in that basket, though, so let's look at an alternative...

Finished CCC Yellowjackets Incinerator

5 Yellowjackets members complete, only 2 left to go!

Neat projects around the 'tubes

Just a quick post to highlight some of the neat stuff some other bloggers are working on that have caught my eye...

DEI GRECI

Klaus over at Dei Greci has been working for quite some time on this amazing steampunk airship.  The craftsmanship and attention to detail at work here is nothing short of fantastic.  Go check it out.

IDICBeer 40k

IDICBeer has begun work on the Forgeworld model for the Eldar Avatar.  I've had my eye on that model for years now; I love everything about it. Unfortunately for me, back in the day I didn't have the money to buy it... nowadays, the current LOS rules in 40k make the model especially difficult to field, as it gives you a major disadvantage despite how awesome it looks.  Fortunately for me, I get to follow along in IDICBeer's progress and live vicariously through him ;)

Tale of Painters

Garfy over at Tale of Painters has been building a Necron Tesseract Vault that looks absolutely stunning.  I love following the large projects, mainly because I rarely get around to doing them myself.  It's very satisfying to see it come together piece by piece like this.

Fix That Leak!

Based on FTL: Faster Than Light.

One of the things that always struck me about that game stemmed from the fact that your ship's evasion rate drops to zero if the pilot leaves his station (without upgrades, that is), but the same is not true of other stations.  This means that in a battle whenever shit goes down on the ship, the pilot is the last guy you want to send away from his station.  I often imagine him as a lazy asshole because of that, sitting up front, sipping his coffee like a goddamn jackass.

Finished CCC Yellowjackets Sniper

That's 4 down now and only 3 left before the entire Yellowjackets team is ready to deploy!

Crowdfunding Projects

The two crowd-funding projects I mentioned last month are almost done, and both surpassed their goals!  They both close out tomorrow, so this is your chance to hop in last minute!

RAFM's Call of Cthulhu miniatures is well into their stretch goals and they've started adding new miniatures to the line.  Check out this investigator model:

I want that model just to paint, roleplaying game or no.  Here's their link on indiegogo.

Warmachine Tactics is also winding down on its Kickstarter project, and they've more than doubled their stated goal.  I'm happy that not all of the stretch goals are purely related to the video game, as they are known for their miniatures as well.  Check this mini out:

Again, like with the above Cthulhu mini, I'd buy this just for the fun of painting it, period.

Faster Than Light

I was cued on to this game by a friend of mine some time ago on Steam.  It's a fun space-themed strategy game in which you control one spaceship and its crew.  Rather than fly it around like in a sim, you micro-manage the crew and systems in the hopes that you can overcome your obstacles and survive.

FTL has a bit of a reputation as being a brutal game in which you don't "win."  That was partly what encouraged me to try it out.  I love me some Dwarf Fortress every now and then, and trust me: you don't win Dwarf Fortress.  So the idea of a space version of that game seemed kinda awesome.

Finished CCC Yellowjackets Assault Leader

3 down, 4 to go to finish out the CCC Yellowjackets team.  Assault Leader Danny Williams reporting for duty.

If you're curious how I painted him, the process is pretty much the same as that used in the Heavy Assault.

Skyrim

So I got the urge to play some Skyrim the other day (It's been easily over a year since playing it), and I always seem to find myself drawn in to some side quest or another to the exclusion of all else.  Last playthrough I ended up the Archmage of Winterhold and made it my personal quest to find all the legendary masks.  First time through, I literally followed the story quests without any sides.  Ended up being the least interesting route to go.  Flavoring the experience with some side quests seems to make things incredibly more fun for me, at least.

Here's an example.  I started my new game the other day... and after telling myself I'd play as something I'd never played as before, I ended up choosing a Nord and deciding he'll be a warrior who also casts magic (just like every playthrough except the archmage one, lol).  Upon reaching Whiterun, I thought "you know who I never really payed attention to?  The Companions.  Let's go see what they're about."

Step-By-Step MERCS: CCC Yellowjackets Heavy Assault

On the bench today is the Heavy Assault miniature for the CCC Yellowjackets.  For full disclosure, there's really not a lot that I'm doing to deviate from the MERCS concept art for this team.  I actually really like how the Yellowjackets are portrayed.  Other teams may get different treatment, though.

Enough of my prattle, though.  On with it!

Game Review - Sid Meier's Civilization V

I only bought this game a few weeks ago (opening day of the Steam Sale, in fact) and I've already lost several days of my life to it.  It's addictive, and it's fun as hell.

As should be obvious from my obsession with Warhammer 40k and the like, I have a love of the strategy genre in video games as well.  One of my favorite older games was Age of Empires II.  I loved the diversity of choice you got in picking what culture you play as, with each getting some exclusive perks relevant to that choice.  Well, Civ V is the same... except better in every way.  The range of technology, units, eras of play, cultures, paths to victory, etc. are all very satisfyingly dense, giving this game some serious replay value.  I can't get through one game without already thinking about how I'm going to go about it "next time."

At the onset, you are asked to make a few choices to begin a game.  How fast do you want time to move?  Size of the world (and thus number of competing civilizations)?  Composition of the land (i.e. islands, continents, pangaea, or like our current continents)?  What culture will you take hold of?  I also purchased and installed the two expansion packs (Gods & Kings, Brave New World), so the amount of cultures to pick from was simply staggering.

Once actually into a game you start at roughly 4,000 B.C. with a settler unit and a warrior unit.  From relative simplicity, things will progress into the more complicated.  Choosing where to establish cities becomes key, as they expand your borders and gain you resource advantages if nearby.  This gets offset by a population happiness factor that is negatively impacted by higher populations and number of cities.  Finding ways to keep your population's happiness in check as you expand is vital mid to late game.  Early game typically is a mass land-grab by all the civilizations, if only to block off the others from resources, once the land is accounted for, war usually happens.  Different civilizations progress through "eras" at different speeds, depending on what they're researching, so you'll come across groups with varied technology depending on what routes they've taken in their growth.  This may seem simple enough, but then they throw "great people" and world wonders into the mix that give certain civilizations major benefits in specific areas, potentially rocketing them forward by large amounts.  Then come spies, which can monitor and steal technology from other cultures.  By late game, the focus intensifies with regards to the win.  There are a few paths to victory, but generally speaking you'll need to pick one and focus on it in order to gain any traction... and other civilizations are doing the same.

On my first play-through, I chose Harald Bluetooth of Denmark.  Map was largest setting, continents, time was normal.  I had the thought that I would beef up militarily and win by force of might.  As fate would have it, a military victory was not in the cards for my Danish vikings.  Copenhagen was placed on an isthmus separating a rather large peninsula from a much larger continent.  I would in later games discover this to be crazy-fortunate.  Blocking off the isthmus was easy, and allowed me to expand freely into the peninsula undisturbed.  With such a narrow land border, most civilizations flat out ignored me while they focused on shooting arrows at their immediate neighbors.  So I sat there for a couple thousand years amassing a huge army, building wonders, trading, and researching.

All of my actual confrontations with other civilizations ended up being strangely passive-aggressive as I wasn't exactly sure what the other leaders were getting at when they'd make demands or ask me for stuff.  The first of which was Venice, whom I discovered sending missionaries into my territory to start converting my cities to the Jewish faith.  Assuming this would have the effect of converting my unit to Venice (a la Age of Empires), I quickly started developing my own culture's faith, and founded the religion of Briantology.  I sent missionaries into his towns, some harsh words were exchanged, and we spent the rest of the game eyeing each other dramatically.

I have a Great Prophet within spitting distance of Venice, and he knows it

Past the Medieval era when technology really starts picking up, I found myself more and more at odds with Korea.  They had a spy in Copenhagen stealing my advances in technology.  My spies couldn't catch or stop him either; he was like some kind of legend.  Anything I did, Sejong of Korea knew... which meant any move I made resulted in an audience with Sejong's frown.

"I saw what you did there."

This was amusing for a while, but then upon reaching the Atomic era, one country in particular decided it had had enough of everyone's shit, and declared war on EVERYBODY.

I present to you Ghandi, Lord of chaos

Given how good the animations and voice acting were for the world leaders, I just stared slack-jawed at Ghandi declaring war on me from sheer shock alone; this was easily the last thing I expected.  Ghandi amassed his own army and bided his time until he could sow the largest possible amount of chaos and havoc.  Given that I was halfway around the world from him, I thought it funny and quite considerate of him to include me on the invitation to mass destruction... but after taking stock of where I was sitting in game, I realized that I had a good shot of winning a science victory if left to my own devices.  Especially if everyone else in game was focused on some major threat... so I secretly started sending Ghandi money and units.  There was no way he was going to last against all the others, united... but I had a ton of money and units sitting around.  So I fed him what he needed to keep them all at bay.

God, I KNOW that you know what I'm up to!  Shut up!

And so Ghandi became my Lord of chaos while I quietly built a spaceship and flew my viking ass into the cosmos to victory.

Any of you have good stories from Civ V playthroughs?  

Step-By-Step Possessed/Daemon Skin

I fretted about for a long time on how to paint possessed Chaos Space Marine flesh.  I want it to be some combination of what I would have done for normal human skin and what I would have done for daemon skin.  Here's what I got out of it.

Step 1: Rakarth Flesh

This is our basecoat, so lay it on thick.

 Step 2: Praxeti White

As a drybrush step, I picked the "dry" white paint.  We only want edges and raised areas picked out here.  Also, there will be a lot of washes, so don't worry if this comes out a little messy.

 Step 3: Reikland Fleshshade

This is the final step for what I would do if it were just normal human skin.  The idea here is to move forward and elaborate more to make it inhuman.

Step 4:  Druchii Violet

I love purple, and want this to end up being my unaligned daemon skin-tone.  I'm purposefully keeping the wash away from extremities here, notice the fingertips.  This is where I would normally stop for a Slaaneshi daemon's skin... and then elaborate with more pinks across the model... so we're going to keep going.  

There's some interesting stuff going on with the Possessed models, in that there are areas where it looks like the armour has fused with the daemon, and I want to play off of that a bit.  So our last step will be to bring the skin closer to the armour.

Step 5: Nuln Oil

This was applied where the purple flesh meets armour.  The overall effect is that the skin-tone itself darkens significantly in a way I like quite a bit.  It becomes a little harder to distinguish where armour ends and skin begins.

Note that the model itself is not "done" yet, as even in the face (which is incredibly dark, I know), I have yet to pick out the eyes and teeth in that last pic.  Here's what that looks like:

What do you guys think?  The effect works really well in my opinion due to the black armour... Not sure how it would look with other legions, though.