Synas LED light box

Yesterday my wife sent me a link to this newish IKEA LED light box. Called "Synas" it is a 24cm cube with 5 clear sides, and one that is a LED panel.  A bit pricey at $30 US, but it could make a nice miniature display case for either that special unit, or for people with out the room for a big display case.  It would particularly interesting to make use of the LED light coming up from below for a miniature diorama, possibly with light filtering up through a chemical pond or similar...

X-Wing Wave 4

That would be an E-Wing, Z-95, TIE Defender, and TIE Phantom

Fantasy Flight has just announced their next wave of expansions for the X-wing game, which will include my favorite, the Z-95, as well as fan favorite TIE Defender. 

The Z-95 stats out at 2/2/2/2, and starts at 12 points, so with no upgrades you could have eight in a 100 point list, just like an Academy TIE list, but with the ability to take missiles.  (and with 16 ships on the table, those two lists would be great fun to fight each other with!)

The TIE defender is a 3/3/3/3 ship with the ability to get cannon and missile upgrades, which coupled with TIE manoeuvrability should be pretty interesting (although it does seem to lack a tractor beam upgrade)

The E-wing is 3/3/2/3 can take droid and system upgrades, which with elite pilot skills will make for a huge combinations of potential abilities.

The TIE phantom is 4/2/2/2 but has a cloaking system.. not sure how that is going to work.

Pretty excited about this release.. still need to play the darn game though!

Inquisitor d1000 Part 7 - Appearance

Here is a d100 table of Appearance as part of the d1000 inquisitor attributes project. Go back and read that post if you want to know what this is about. (has it really been 11 months since I had one of these?)

Still to come are tables for Demeanor, Psyker, and Stats, and then a combined chart which will have all of the options (and some from Porky and other places)
 

Roll	Appearance
1	ancient
2	angled
3	Attractive
4	average
5	bewildered
6	bloodied
7	cadaverous
8	cute
9	dandy
10	disheveled
11	dowdy
12	drab
13	elfish
14	fancy
15	feminine
16	filthy
17	gaunt
18	gorgeous
19	graceful
20	handsome
21	ill
22	masculine
23	plain
24	polished
25	presentable
26	repulsive
27	scruffy
28	sexy
29	ugly
30	unkempt
31	well built
32	wizened
33	young
34	blue-eyed
35	brown-eyed
36	green-eyed
37	Grey-eyed
38	red-eyed
39	unusual eyes (mismatched, violet, replicant, golden, cadaver)
40	wide-eyed
41	fat
42	fit
43	flabby
44	muscular
45	over muscled
46	Bald
47	black hair
48	blonde hair
49	brunette hair
50	greasy hair
51	grey hair
52	red hair
53	shaved head
54	thinning hair
55	unusual hair
56	white hair
57	Big head
58	colossal
59	crooked
60	curvy
61	deep chest/busty
62	gangly
63	heavy frame
64	hunched
65	long legged
66	misproportioned
67	narrow frame
68	obese
69	plump
70	scrawny
71	shapely
72	Small head
73	square
74	stocky
75	Svelte
76	thick frame
77	diminutive
78	dwarfish
79	large body
80	petite
81	short
82	small
83	tall
84	albino
85	bearded
86	black skin
87	dark skin
88	dry skin
89	flaky skin
90	hairy body (Legs, arms, chest, all over)
91	itchy skin
92	moist skin
93	painted skin
94	pallid skin
95	pierced skin (d4 face, torso, R arm, L arm)
96	ruddy completion
97	scarred skin
98	tan skin
99	tattooed  (d6 face, torso, R arm, L arm, back, roll twice)
100	unusual skin (Grey, necrotic, transparent, scaled, rough)

Anyway, as always, let me know what you think.

Lead Painter League 8

As I mentioned last year, Lead Painter League is a contest put on by the excellent Lead Adventure forum.

Here are the rules for this year. Changes are that photography is further limited, and that the bonus themes are just one team, rather than having one or more of them with two opposing teams.

And the bonus themes this time around are "Fantasy", "Ancient World", and "Great War", the last of which is obviously quite topical.

Even if you do not particpate (although you should!) it is certainly worth browsing the contest entries as they are in the main, quite excellent.  The competition starts March 22nd, and there are only 50 spaces available, so get painting.

White Dwarf Weekend

This weekend I made it into the local game store to get the new weekly White Dwarf, the new monthly Warhammer Visions, and also to scope out all the newest and greatest things.

I was partly successful, in that they did not have any copies of Warhammer Visions, but I did manage to get the weekly White Dwarf, as well as the previous two months' magazines.  I also noticed that Flames of War is down to about 3 feet of space in the very large store, and Bolt Action has taken all of its wall space.  X-wing was down to a couple of starter boxes and some TIE fighters, where as Star Trek Fleet Action took up all of its former space. The store was pretty quiet, but there were some older guys playing Battletech (with unpainted miniatures of course).

In regards to the weekly White Dwarf, it seems like a nice enough little magazine to me, and with a few tweaks I would be happy to subscribe to it.  However, there is currently no subscription option for the White Dwarf (just the Warhammer Visions), and having to go down to the shop weekly and spend $208 a year is a bit more than I can stomach.  So, in the absence of some sort of money saving subscription, I think that I will have to restrict myself to buying only the magazines associated with the games/armies I have, which will be difficult, as they are not announced in advance.

I have only had the chance to flip through the new magazine, so all I can say is that I liked the articles and material that were retained as compared to what was cut (no more store listings!).  I will also say that I was surprised that a more "disposable" version of the magazine has an even higher print quality, as the cover and pages are quite thick and durable.  Indeed, it compares to the quality of a Warhammer 40k 3rd edition Codex, but full color.

Painting progress

I am in fact still alive, and still working on Tau, albeit a bit slowly.  Previously I had base coated, based, and inked all the figures, as reported here.  Then I laboriously went back and highlighted with the base coats again, wherein the poor definition of the casting for these figures annoyed me again (particularly in the legs).  Yesterday I finished up the armor paint job, and today I painted the feet and hooves, so I am just a few colors away from completion.  At this point I estimate that I will have invested around 25 hours into this project, which works out to be an hour per figure.  Not too bad from sprue to finished project, but a bit long if I were intending to paint up another couple platoons worth for a full company.

When these figures are finished, I have the pathfinders to build and paint, as well as a few filler figures for this platoon (mostly to allow them to be standard 40k Tau, instead of configured for StarGrunt II)

In other news, White Dwarf Weekly and Warhammer Visions both launch on Saturday, so if I can slip out of the house to buy copies of each, look forward to a review of sorts.

B-Wing

As a late Christmas present from a friend, I got a B-wing miniature for the X wing game:

.

 

Aside from the miniature, this package supplies more tokens, as well as some system and weapon upgrade cards (including the useful autoblaster). It also has a rule card to explain how ion cannons work.  Since B-wings range in points from 21 (worst pilot, not upgraded) to 62 (best pilot, fully upgraded), they can be a challenge to fit into a list, but with a potential of nine combined shield and hull points, it seems like it can take a beating as well as dish one out.

 

Now I just need to actually PLAY the darn game...

GW bitz service

As you might recall, at one time Games Workshop had a massive bitz service, whereby one could buy old miniatures, parts of miniatures, and individual sprues from kits, as well as other ephemera related to the vast Games Workshop hobby.  In the US at least, this reached its peak in the early 00's when the massive "phone book" bitz catalogs were released in all their hardback glory.  This regularly caused me to go on mad buying sprees as I matched this arm with that body and this head to create (at least on paper) some amazing conversions or weird custom units.

However, Games Workshop decided to get out the bitz business right before they decided to get out of the metal business, and stopped the broad swath of what they had available, reducing it to just a few sprues and figures, now priced even higher. Gradually, this lack of available bitz from Games Workshop was replaced by eBay and other online bitz sellers, chopping up kits and selling the pieces.  This year, Games Workshop has decided that the terms of sale to merchants would not allow for this practice, and to a certain extent the availability of bitz has declined from some sellers (matched of course by the rise in price from the remaining).

Tangentially to this, Games Workshop has always had an excellent replacement service. When kits are incomplete, or miniatures are miscast, they quickly replace the missing pieces, often with complete new ones.  So when my new box of Tau Pathfinders was missing one of the muzzles for a rail rifle, I duly contacted Games Workshop for a replacement, visions of a whole new box, or at least that particular sprue dancing in my head. As the weeks wore on,

So I was a little surprised to get the following in the mail:

Faugh!  Exactly what I needed to complete the kit, and no more?  Which was perfectly fine of course, and ultimately amusing when I realized that GW is effectively supplying bitz in the same way as all those online chop shops...

FLASH - White Dwarf to end?

There are numerous rumors floating about that White Dwarf magazine, Games Workshop's house organ since 1977, will end in February.

White Dwarf is possibly being replaced by a weekly smaller magazine (?) and another magazine of much larger size.

Seems astounding if true, but I guess time will tell.  As someone who has been reading the magazine for... well, a long time, I would be pretty upset to see it go.

Brigade Models January Sale

I have mentioned my love for Brigade Models previously, when I missed their 25th anniversary sale, and I am going to do it again to mention their January New Year's sale, which is 15% off everything in the store that they make.  With the pound at $1.65 USD this is a great deal, particularly as Brigade Models is VAT listed.

I will not be able to take advantage of this sale, as I have other fish to fry so to speak, but you should.

Here are some of my painted Brigade castings (from long ago):

Hmm, I really should get back to 6mm sometime, and finish off these forces.